Ron is the candidate with the most truthiness... go figure.

[PastaRocket848]

hxxp://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2011/aug/26/gop-candidates-politifact-truth-o-meter/

doing research for my new website (ok, ok, stealing design ideas), i came across this page. turns out ron is the most honest candidate in the bunch... by a considerable margin. bachmann lies 66% of the time, and mitt actually comes out looking better than you would expect.

it's interesting stuff, if not probably a bit liberally biased.

[pp0rker]

Here's an email I sent to PolitiFact -

I like your site and hope it will continue, but Ron Paul’s my guy and I’m sensitive to any misinterpretations or revisions of his record.

I have been reviewing your claims that Congressman Ron Paul has made false statements and find your conclusions wanting by doing my own fact checking.

Here’s what I found…

You give Paul a false rating for the statement his campaign has made that, "Dr. Paul never votes for legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the Constitution."

But your examples are almost all wrong:

He did NOT vote for the Rosa Parks Medal.
He did NOT vote for the Reagan medals.

The "Living Organ Donation Act" you cite *reversed* criminal charges for kidney donations in the original act. Hardly an unconstitutional vote although it did authorize Medicare funding. Why wouldn’t he vote for what corrects a prior unconstitutional act?

You cite his vote for encouraging flying the flag on Father's Day as unconstitutional? Really? It is not a law. It is only encouragement. Geesh.

Moving MLK birthday, really?

So that leaves “National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act, 1980” reauthorizing NASA funding. So you could say that only once did he vote for a strictly unconstitutional bill. Pretty good record I’d say. He rates much better in this area on the Truth-O-Meter than the St. Petersburg Times.

You give Paul a false rating for stating that, “the country's bankrupt."

You claim that because the US is ‘paying’ its bills that it can’t possibly be bankrupt, but that misses Paul’s point completely. You state, “Since the U.S. government hasn't landed in bankruptcy court and been declared unable to pay its bills, we'll simplify it to whether the United States can pay its debts.”

You’re taking his claim too literally. He has also stated that countries don’t default like businesses or families by stopping payments. Countries default by debasing their currency which he’s repeated many times. Businesses and families aren’t able to just print money… governments can and do. So the country keeps paying but with paper that’s worth less all the time. He’s making a rhetorical statement that people can understand. You are misinterpreting his statement. At least he deserves a half-true rating on this one.

You give Paul a false rating for his statement that, “In the '80s, Democrats promised spending cuts, but delivered only tax hikes.”

The devil here is in the details. What is a cut? To Congress, including the Democrats, a cut is applied to future *increases* and not an actual cut in spending. Same problem they have today. There were no bills proposed in the 1980’s I’m aware of that would have actually *cut* spending from previous levels. Therefore, Paul’s statement is factual and you need to change your rating to true.

You give Paul a ‘pants on fire’ rating for his statement that, "The last Christians are about to leave" Iraq.

You state in your comments that no one can actually verify just how many Christians are in Iraq and there’s no way to know if those who remain are about to leave or not. He expressed an opinion and didn’t represent it as a statement of fact. You are being ridiculously uncharitable here since thousands of Christians were being murdered in the streets. Why wouldn’t they be considering escaping. This one seems pretty petty to me.

You give Paul a barely true rating for his claim that, “The money supply has doubled in the last year.”

His statement was true if applied to M0 which is money in circulation. He didn’t qualify the statement but you are and concluding he was wrong. His point though which explains (and you don’t) is that by printing money, the gov’t is reducing the value of people’s savings. It’s a hidden tax. That message *is* true… why not apply that to your Truth-O-Meter?

In conclusion. You’ve chosen some pretty bizarre things to say Paul has been untruthful about and as we have discovered, even those mostly turn out to be true. The only one I’m willing to concede is the NASA reauthorization in 1980 which I’ll chock up to an accidental slip. Maybe he went to the dentist that day and was high on nitrous-oxide.

[freeforall]

Awesome!