Politicians and pundits of all political stripes know their public statements will be scrutinized and debated in the press and the blogosphere, but did they ever expect to be graded by PolitiFact‘s Truth-o-Meter and Flip-o-Meter? A project of the St. Petersburg Times newspaper, PolitiFact seeks

… to help you find the truth in American politics. Reporters and editors from the Times fact-check statements by members of Congress, the White House, lobbyists and interest groups and rate them on our Truth-O-Meter. We’re also tracking more than 500 of Barack Obama’s campaign promises and are rating their progress on our new Obameter.

President Obama and assumed 2012 aspirants to the Republican presidential nomination like Newt Gingrich and Governor Sarah Palin can lay claim to one shared attribute on PolitiFact: all have said things that wound up flagged as “Pants on Fire” on the Truth-o-Meter. Bloggers whose unsubstantiated claims go viral and the chain e-mails your conspiracy-obsessed cousin likes to forward from an undisclosed location are also subject to a reality-based dose of reason…and a reasonable level of humor.

Nathan Yau is a happily married UCLA PhD candidate in statistics who is completing his dissertation in Buffalo, New York, because…he’s happily married and followed his wife east to her new job. Nathan is also the founder of FlowingData, which he started in 2007, around the time when he took up shoveling snow as a favorite winter pastime. The site’s tag-line is “Strength in Numbers,” and Yau’s interest in showcasing the best and worst of data visualization along with some of his own informative graphs and “how to”  (or, more accurately, how not to) posts makes for a very engaging site.  One particularly topical post worth exploring: 27 Visualizations and Infographics to Understand the Financial Crisis. And don’t miss the range of data displays in the projects section of the site. Once again, a big Soomo shout-out to Miguel Centellas for sharing this site with us!