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Rachel Maddow took the so-called "nonpartisan fact checking" web site, PolitiFact to the woodshed this Wednesday night for yet another incident where the site doesn't seem to understand what the definition of what a "fact" is.

Paul Krugman has more on what set Rachel off this evening here -- When Facts Aren’t Facts:

The criterion, according to Politifact, seems to be that a fact isn’t a fact if it helps a Democratic narrative.

Jared Bernstein watches the train wreck. Obama said:

In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than three million jobs. Last year, they created the most jobs since 2005.

which is just true. Period.

But Politifact rated it as only “half true” because he was “essentially taking credit for job growth”. He didn’t actually take credit — and even if he had, a fact is still a fact.

I do not think that word means what Politifact thinks it means.

Paul followed up on that post which I'll share just a bit of here -- Finding the Truth:

Unfortunately, Politifact has lost sight of what it was supposed to be doing. Instead of simply saying whether a claim is true, it’s trying to act as some kind of referee of what it imagines to be fair play: even if a politician says something completely true, it gets ruled only partly true if Politifact feels that the fact is being used to gain an unfair political advantage. In the case of Obama’s job statement, Politifact first called it only half true, then upgraded that to mostly true, not because Obama said anything factually incorrect, but because Politifact perceived Obama as trying to imply that he was responsible for the gains.

This is deeply wrong on two levels. First, fact-checking should be about checking facts — not about trying to impose some sort of Marquess of Queensbury rules on how you’re allowed to use facts. Aside from undermining the mission, this makes the whole thing subjective — notice that Politifact wasn’t even analyzing what Obama said, they were analyzing their impression about what he might have been trying to imply. Leave that for the talking heads! [...]

But having defined its role as something that goes beyond checking facts to saying whether the facts are being used in some “proper” way, it then finds itself under pressure to be “even-handed”, which ends up meaning making excuses for Republican falsehoods and finding ways to criticize Democratic true statements.

And as Karoli already noted here at C&L, this is far from the first incident with this sort of behavior from the site -- Politifact Lie of the Year? More Like Politifact Pander of the Year.

Rachel Maddow had it right tonight with the end of her commentary:

MADDOW: PolitiFact, you are fired! You are a mess. You are fired. You are undermining the definition of the word fact in the English language by pretending to it in your name. The English language wants its word back. You are an embarrassment. You sully the reputation of anyone who cites you as the authority on "factishness" let alone facts. You are fired!

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The Nation's Chris Hayes filling in for Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC's The Last Word talked to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Jared Bernstein and the Movement Vision Lab's Sally Kohn about where things are headed on these debt ceiling negotiations.

As Bernstein pointed out, even stalling around with this game of chicken as Republicans are doing can start to have real costs and consequences for our fragile economy with the possibility of interest rates going up if the markets start to get spooked that nothing is going to be done as the deadline moves closer.

Sally Kohn I believe, really made some of the best points during the discussion where she noted that the majority of the public does want to see tax increases on the rich and asked why the Democrats are not fighting harder on those issues and what lines in the sand the Democrats should be drawing during these negotiations when the Republicans are acting like "ideological terrorists" who are willing to blow up the economy if they don't get their way on everything.

As Fran and Driftglass pointed out in their podcast this week, Kohn, who regularly appears on Fox but who isn't what you would consider one of your typical "Fox Democrats" actually wrote a very good article this week which appeared in of all places, Fox's opinion page on their web site, which you can read here -- We Don't Need to Cut Corporate Taxes, We Need to Raise Them.

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After Van Jones gave his speeches both at Netroots Nation 2011 and with his Rebuild the Dream movement, I was glad to see him get some air time on MSNBC to talk about the political games the Republicans are playing with their hostage taking on raising the debt ceiling. We'd be well served if we had more of their Democratic counterparts speaking this clearly and succinctly as Jones and former adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, Jared Bernstein did here.

I really liked Jones' hand grenade analogy on Medicare. I actually think the Republicans are cynical enough to try to force the Democrats to make cuts to the program and then try to run against them on it in 2012 and hope that the public is uninformed enough along with a complicit media that would help with that factor for them to get away with it. As Jones noted, they need to get out there and defend the program if they don't want that hand grenade to blow up in their face.

I don't know about anyone else, but as someone who has been following this issue, I'm sick to death of the Republicans throwing temper tantrums and telling the public that they'd be willing to let the world's economy crash if they don't get their way on tax cuts whether it be Cantor or McConnell of any of the rest of them. It's long past time for the majority of our media to start calling out these hostage takers if they would like to still have a country worth living in, and not one in the middle of another depression, which there's some argument about whether we're already there now. For far too many Americans sadly, we may as well be.

O'DONNELL: In the House, they walked out of the budget negotiations. Cantor, simply because they were talking about tax expenditures. No one, the Democrats, the Vice President, no one was talking about raising income tax rates of any kind, just going after the expenditures.

BERNSTEIN: That is a key point, that is a key, I wrote about that on my blog today. It's a key point. No one was, the thing that you hear Republicans inveigh against the most and the conservative supply side theory economist, the thing they inveigh against the most is an increase in tax rates, but if you broaden the base and close loopholes, you're not increasing rates. And so that's the way, that's the direction that this panel needs to head now I think.

O'DONNELL: Van, Sen. Chuck Schumer said today that they were looking at possibilities in Medicare, the what they call the delivery system in Medicare. There might be some ways to shave things there. Not cuts that would in any way affect beneficiaries.

This is the kind of cuts that Democrats have done many times before. President Clinton did $200 billion in that his first six months in office, he did a big Medicare cut, but it was all on the provider side of the equation.

If the Democrats go into Medicare in that way, will that undercut any of the argument they've been making against Paul Ryan?

JONES: You know, we're going to have to get all the way through this process, because I will say this. Somebody throws you a hand grenade, you can try to fiddle with it, or you can throw it back. And part of the problem is, that we get so earnest trying to figure out, well maybe we can do this, maybe we can do that, and we are holding the hand grenade they want us to hold.

Here's the bottom line, Medicare, the main threat to Medicare, is coming from the Republican Party, that's the main threat. And Democrats need to stand up and defend the basic principles of this program, which is a sound program. When we begin to accept the terms of debate of the other side and start to fool around and fiddle with the hand grenade, we always wind up with the explosion in our face.

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Rachel Maddow feels the same way I do after listening to this pitch by the administration. Jared Bernstein did not say one thing that swayed me that this is a good idea. Listen to Evan Bayh? You've got to be kidding me. A spending freeze in the middle of an economic downturn is insane. And of course there's no freeze for defense spending or Homeland Security.

TPM has more on the proposal--Obama Administration To Propose Freezing Non-Military Discretionary Spending:

President Obama will propose freezing non-security discretionary government spending for the next three years, a sweeping plan to attempt deficit reduction that will save taxpayers $250 billion over 10 years.

When the administration releases its budget next week, the discretionary spending for government agencies from Health and Human Services to the Department of Treasury will be frozen at its 2010 level in fiscal years 2011, 2012 and 2013.

A senior administration official detailed the move, speaking on a condition of anonymity because Obama will announce his decision during his State of the Union address Wednesday night.

The cuts would target "duplicative," "ineffective" and "inefficient" spending withing government, the official said on a conference call with reporters.

"This is not a blunt, across-the-board freeze," the official said, adding that some agencies will see spending increases while some will see spending cuts as the total remains constant.

Exempted from the freeze would be Pentagon funding, and the budgets for Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security.

"We do need to reflect the fact that we remain at war," the official said, noting the president was able to win several battles on cutting Pentagon spending.

The official declined to discuss specifics but said the new plan would save taxpayers $250 billion over 10 years. Read on...

UPDATE: Jared Bernstein posted this response on The White House Blog to last night's interview. Budget Freeze-eology 101: Hatchets vs. Scalpels