herbiehancock

Not long ago, one of my friends linked me to the site Politifact.com, a project of the St. Petersburg Times in Florida which investigates the claims by various political entities and rates them as to how true that claim was. They have six levels of, for lack of a better term, truthhood: True, Mostly True, Half True, Barely True, False, and Pants on Fire. After keeping up with this site for several weeks, I decided to make a very stripped-down, simplistic list of who among the political elite are mostly telling the truth, and who are not. In order to do this, first of all I am approaching it from a completely non-partisan point of view. I am not mentioning my own political beliefs, except to say that they are philosophically and diametrically opposite from the friend who recommended the site to me, and we both (apparently) subscribe to the non-partisan quality of Politifact. I am choosing people to investigate based on whether I recognize their name, and limiting it to people who h...

As many locals know, our little 'green' haven is far less progressive than some in the media, government and Arcatarati would have you believe. Evidence of this comes in many forms, including this eye-rolling incident I experienced at work today: An esteemed councilperson, upon checkout, was seemingly begrudged to hear (from me) that they had an overdue fee. This led to the not-subtle-at-all-and-all-too-common customer threat: "You guys are pushing me towards Netflix. I shop at your store because I live in Arcata, but you need to find a better system." This, after I cut down their late fee (which is rare). After a short explanation of the rental industry (if you don't give people incentive to return your property, they won't) they dubiously rescinded their threat: "Well, it is my fault." Yes. It is your fault. You didn't return your movies on time and thus obtained late fees. Thank you for clarifying, because I was being submerged with guilt over...