Originally posted by Q5echo
the FULL transcript from Sarah Palin's interview with Charles Gibson September 11, 2008.
the BOLD print is what was edited out for TV.
it's disgusting what ABC did to her. anybody who thinks what they did wasn't wrong or represented even a modicum of journalistic integrity is a complete dumb and should choke themselves. anybody.
Yes, distract away from all valid points with large quotes. And bold colors. And colors. And personal attacks.
Excellent. Excellent. Yes. How familiar.
pkcRAISTLIN
yeah, whilst i agree that her comments should have been included in full, she's still a ing moron and the fact that you're gonna vote for her Q5 just shows us your one-eyed approach to american politics ;)
Chryz707
I thought this was a funny shirt I found on T-shirt hell
I think the Palin effect is going to wear off soon and people will see who she really is. Hopefully she will release her Tax records and then the skeletons will come out of the closet!
Chryz707
quote:
Originally posted by Q5echo
the FULL transcript from Sarah Palin's interview with Charles Gibson September 11, 2008.
the BOLD print is what was edited out for TV.
it's disgusting what ABC did to her. anybody who thinks what they did wasn't wrong or represented even a modicum of journalistic integrity is a complete dumb and should choke themselves. anybody.
Its not disgusting it's agressive reporting. Why do we have to sugar coat everything cause of her position currently.
LatinLover
Jesus christ! The far left basiclly censored half the context of Palins interview
Lebezniatnikov
quote:
Originally posted by LatinLover
Jesus christ! The far left basiclly censored half the context of Palins interview
They're out to get you. ;)
Seriously, I'm as mad as anyone they cut the interview short (though it is definitely just standard practice) - she looks far worse in some of the omitted parts!
LazFX
quote:
Where Have I Seen Sarah Palin Before?
by Arash Kamangeer
I grew up in Iran and immigrated to US to avoid living in a theocracy. Lately though, the trajectory of US politics is something to worry about, not only to me, but also to many others in my predicament.
Wednesday night at the Republican convention was an especially poignant moment. I was watching Sarah Palin deliver her acceptance speech. As I was watching her, her family, and her adoring fans in the Republican convention, I could not overcome a feeling that I have seen this scene before...
Right after the Revolution in Iran and the establishment of the Islamic Republic, the Iran-Iraq war was started. To be fair, Iraq started that war, but the new revolutionary leaders of Iran saw the war as a godsend. They milked it for all it was worth. They labeled anyone against the war as a traitor or unpatriotic. Anyone who suggested that there may be a negotiated settlement was ridiculed and purged from power. Even Ayatollah Khomeini once said that this war is a blessing from God himself. You may see the parallels here already, but keep reading.
One of the problems the government faced was opposition from legions of mothers whose sons had been maimed or died in the war. To confront this problem, the government-controlled TV would parade a mother whose son had died in the war in front of the TV on a regular basis. Invariably, this "show mom" would be carrying an infant child and a few other siblings with her. And invariably, she would say something to the effect that "I have given one child to this 'sacred' war, and I am ready to give the next one." Almost always, there would be an adoring crowd who would follow her statements by chants of "Allaho-Akbar" (God is Great). And again invariably, her statements would follow by a not-so-veiled threat from her and the adoring crowd. She would say something like "I and my family would not tolerate traitors and betrayals to the faith and country". Then the crowd would break into several standard chants such as "Death to traitors" or "War, war, until victory."
Sarah Palin was much better dressed than the average show mom paraded on Iranian TV more than 20 years ago. The show moms were typically dressed in a black veil. But that’s about the biggest difference. The rhetoric was eerily familiar. When she was finished, I knew I had seen her before. Only that it wasn’t her. It was her ideological predecessors at a different time in a different country.
Now, I am not a politician. I just cannot understand the need to drag a child afflicted with Down syndrome in front of national TV at 10:00pm. Is that good for him? Or does the need to rally the base trump the needs of a child? Whatever the explanation, I am sure I have seen that child when he was carried in the arms of the Iranian show moms for the cameras. So much for family values.
And then I wake the next morning and read that Sarah Palin is quoted as saying that the Iraq war is a "task that is from God." It’s like déjà-vu all over again.
Jesus, does this remind you of someone???? Hint- Arabian Horse
quote:
Once elected, Palin hired friends, lashed foes
By JO BECKER, PETER S. GOODMAN and MICHAEL POWELL
New York Times
Published: Sunday, September 14, 2008 at 1:04 p.m.
WASILLA, Alaska — Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.
So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.
Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.
When Ms. Palin had to cut her first state budget, she avoided the legion of frustrated legislators and mayors. Instead, she huddled with her budget director and her husband, Todd, an oil field worker who is not a state employee, and vetoed millions of dollars of legislative projects.
And four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor’s career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to hear an assistant to the governor on the line, she said.
“You should be ashamed!” Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. “Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!”
Ms. Palin walks the national stage as a small-town foe of “good old boy” politics and a champion of ethics reform. The charismatic 44-year-old governor draws enthusiastic audiences and high approval ratings. And as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, she points to her management experience while deriding her Democratic rivals, Senators Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., as speechmakers who never have run anything.
But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics — she sometimes calls local opponents “haters” — contrasts with her carefully crafted public image.
Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials.
Still, Ms. Palin has many supporters. As a two-term mayor she paved roads and built an ice rink, and as governor she has pushed through higher taxes on the oil companies that dominate one-third of the state’s economy. She stirs deep emotions. In Wasilla, many residents display unflagging affection, cheering “our Sarah” and hissing at her critics.
“She is bright and has unfailing political instincts,” said Steve Haycox, a history professor at the University of Alaska. “She taps very directly into anxieties about the economic future.”
“But,” he added, “her governing style raises a lot of hard questions.”
Ms. Palin declined to grant an interview for this article. The McCain-Palin campaign responded to some questions on her behalf and that of her husband, while referring others to the governor’s spokespeople, who did not respond.
Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell said Ms. Palin had conducted an accessible and effective administration in the public’s interest. “Everything she does is for the ordinary working people of Alaska,” he said.
In Wasilla, a builder said he complained to Mayor Palin when the city attorney put a stop-work order on his housing project. She responded, he said, by engineering the attorney’s firing.
Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.
Rick Steiner, a University of Alaska professor, sought the e-mail messages of state scientists who had examined the effect of global warming on polar bears. (Ms. Palin said the scientists had found no ill effects, and she has sued the federal government to block the listing of the bears as endangered.) An administration official told Mr. Steiner that his request would cost $468,784 to process.
When Mr. Steiner finally obtained the e-mail messages — through a federal records request — he discovered that state scientists had in fact agreed that the bears were in danger, records show.
“Their secrecy is off the charts,” Mr. Steiner said.
State legislators are investigating accusations that Ms. Palin and her husband pressured officials to fire a state trooper who had gone through a messy divorce with her sister, charges that she denies. But interviews make clear that the Palins draw few distinctions between the personal and the political.
Last summer State Representative John Harris, the Republican speaker of the House, picked up his phone and heard Mr. Palin’s voice. The governor’s husband sounded edgy. He said he was unhappy that Mr. Harris had hired John Bitney as his chief of staff, the speaker recalled. Mr. Bitney was a high school classmate of the Palins and had worked for Ms. Palin. But she fired Mr. Bitney after learning that he had fallen in love with another longtime friend.
“I understood from the call that Todd wasn’t happy with me hiring John and he’d like to see him not there,” Mr. Harris said.
“The Palin family gets upset at personal issues,” he added. “And at our level, they want to strike back.”
Through a campaign spokesman, Mr. Palin said he “did not recall” referring to Mr. Bitney in the conversation.
Hometown Mayor
Laura Chase, the campaign manager during Ms. Palin’s first run for mayor in 1996, recalled the night the two women chatted about her ambitions.
“I said, ‘You know, Sarah, within 10 years you could be governor,’ ” Ms. Chase recalled. “She replied, ‘I want to be president.’ ”
Ms. Palin grew up in Wasilla, an old fur trader’s outpost and now a fast-growing exurb of Anchorage. The town sits in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, edged by jagged mountains and birch forests. In the 1930s, the Roosevelt administration took farmers from the Dust Bowl area and resettled them here; their Democratic allegiances defined the valley for half a century.
In the past three decades, socially conservative Oklahomans and Texans have flocked north to the oil fields of Alaska. They filled evangelical churches around Wasilla and revived the Republican Party. Many of these working-class residents formed the electoral backbone for Ms. Palin, who ran for mayor on a platform of gun rights, opposition to abortion and the ouster of the “complacent” old guard.
After winning the mayoral election in 1996, Ms. Palin presided over a city rapidly outgrowing itself. Septic tanks had begun to pollute lakes, and residential lots were carved willy-nilly out of the woods. She passed road and sewer bonds, cut property taxes but raised the sales tax.
And, her supporters say, she cleaned out the municipal closet, firing veteran officials to make way for her own team. “She had an agenda for change and for doing things differently,” said Judy Patrick, a City Council member at the time.
But careers were turned upside down. The mayor quickly fired the town’s museum director, John Cooper. Later, she sent an aide to the museum to talk to the three remaining employees. “He told us they only wanted two,” recalled Esther West, one of the three, “and we had to pick who was going to be laid off.” The three quit as one.
Ms. Palin cited budget difficulties for the museum cuts. Mr. Cooper thought differently, saying the museum had become a microcosm of class and cultural conflicts in town. “It represented that the town was becoming more progressive, and they didn’t want that,” he said.
Days later, Mr. Cooper recalled, a vocal conservative, Steve Stoll, sidled up to him. Mr. Stoll had supported Ms. Palin and had a long-running feud with Mr. Cooper. “He said: ‘Gotcha, Cooper,’ ” Mr. Cooper said.
Mr. Stoll did not recall that conversation, although he said he supported Ms. Palin’s campaign and was pleased when she fired Mr. Cooper.
In 1997, Ms. Palin fired the longtime city attorney, Richard Deuser, after he issued the stop-work order on a home being built by Don Showers, another of her campaign supporters.
Your attorney, Mr. Showers told Ms. Palin, is costing me lots of money.
“She told me she’d like to see him fired,” Mr. Showers recalled. “But she couldn’t do it herself because the City Council hires the city attorney.” Ms. Palin told him to write the council members to complain.
Meanwhile, Ms. Palin pushed the issue from the inside. “She started the ball rolling,” said Ms. Patrick, who also favored the firing. Mr. Deuser was soon replaced by Ken Jacobus, then the State Republican Party’s general counsel.
“Professionals were either forced out or fired,” Mr. Deuser said.
Ms. Palin ordered city employees not to talk to the press. And she used city money to buy a white Suburban for the mayor’s use — employees sarcastically called it the mayor-mobile.
The new mayor also tended carefully to her evangelical base. She appointed a pastor to the town planning board. And she began to eye the library. For years, social conservatives had pressed the library director to remove books they considered immoral.
“People would bring books back censored,” recalled former Mayor John Stein, Ms. Palin’s predecessor. “Pages would get marked up or torn out.”
Witnesses and contemporary news accounts say Ms. Palin asked the librarian about removing books from the shelves. The McCain-Palin presidential campaign says Ms. Palin never advocated censorship.
But in 1995, Ms. Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues that she had noticed the book “Daddy’s Roommate” on the shelves and that it did not belong there, according to Ms. Chase and Mr. Stein. Ms. Chase read the book, which helps children understand homosexuality, and said it was inoffensive; she suggested that Ms. Palin read it.
“Sarah said she didn’t need to read that stuff,” Ms. Chase said. “It was disturbing that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she didn’t even read it.”
“I’m still proud of Sarah,” she added, “but she scares the bejeebers out of me.”
Reform Crucible
Restless ambition defined Ms. Palin in the early years of this decade. She raised money for Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican from the state; finished second in the 2002 Republican primary for lieutenant governor; and sought to fill the seat of Senator Frank H. Murkowski when he ran for governor.
Mr. Murkowski appointed his daughter to the seat, but as a consolation prize, he gave Ms. Palin the $125,000-a-year chairmanship of a state commission overseeing oil and gas drilling.
Ms. Palin discovered that the state Republican leader, Randy Ruedrich, a commission member, was conducting party business on state time and favoring regulated companies. When Mr. Murkowski failed to act on her complaints, she quit and went public.
The Republican establishment shunned her. But her break with the gentlemen’s club of oil producers and political power catapulted her into the public eye.
“She was honest and forthright,” said Jay Kerttula, a former Democratic state senator from Palmer.
Ms. Palin entered the 2006 primary for governor as a formidable candidate.
In the middle of the primary, a conservative columnist in the state, Paul Jenkins, unearthed e-mail messages showing that Ms. Palin had conducted campaign business from the mayor’s office. Ms. Palin handled the crisis with a street fighter’s guile.
“I told her it looks like she did the same thing that Randy Ruedrich did,” Mr. Jenkins recalled. “And she said, ‘Yeah, what I did was wrong.’ ”
Mr. Jenkins hung up and decided to forgo writing about it. His phone rang soon after.
Mr. Jenkins said a reporter from Fairbanks, reading from a Palin news release, demanded to know why he was “smearing” her. “Now I look at her and think: ‘Man, you’re slick,’ ” he said.
Ms. Palin won the primary, and in the general election she faced Tony Knowles, the former two-term Democratic governor, and Andrew Halcro, an independent.
Not deeply versed in policy, Ms. Palin skipped some candidate forums; at others, she flipped through hand-written, color-coded index cards strategically placed behind her nameplate.
Before one forum, Mr. Halcro said he saw aides shovel reports at Ms. Palin as she crammed. Her showman’s instincts rarely failed. She put the pile of reports on the lectern. Asked what she would do about health care policy, she patted the stack and said she would find an answer in the pile of solutions.
“She was fresh, and she was tomorrow,” said Michael Carey, a former editorial page editor for The Anchorage Daily News. “She just floated along like Mary Poppins.”
Government
Half a century after Alaska became a state, Ms. Palin was inaugurated as governor in Fairbanks and took up the reformer’s sword.
As she assembled her cabinet and made other state appointments, those with insider credentials were now on the outs. But a new pattern became clear. She surrounded herself with people she has known since grade school and members of her church.
Mr. Parnell, the lieutenant governor, praised Ms. Palin’s appointments. “The people she hires are competent, qualified, top-notch people,” he said.
Ms. Palin chose Talis Colberg, a borough assemblyman from the Matanuska valley, as her attorney general, provoking a bewildered question from the legal community: “Who?” Mr. Colberg, who did not return calls, moved from a one-room building in the valley to one of the most powerful offices in the state, supervising some 500 people.
“I called him and asked, ‘Do you know how to supervise people?’ ” said a family friend, Kathy Wells. “He said, ‘No, but I think I’ll get some help.’ ”
The Wasilla High School yearbook archive now doubles as a veritable directory of state government. Ms. Palin appointed Mr. Bitney, her former junior high school band-mate, as her legislative director and chose another classmate, Joe Austerman, to manage the economic development office for $82,908 a year. Mr. Austerman had established an Alaska franchise for Mailboxes Etc.
To her supporters — and with an 80 percent approval rating, she has plenty — Ms. Palin has lifted Alaska out of a mire of corruption. She gained the passage of a bill that tightens the rules covering lobbyists. And she rewrote the tax code to capture a greater share of oil and gas sale proceeds.
“Does anybody doubt that she’s a tough negotiator?” said State Representative Carl Gatto, Republican of Palmer.
Yet recent controversy has marred Ms. Palin’s reform credentials. In addition to the trooper investigation, lawmakers in April accused her of improperly culling thousands of e-mail addresses from a state database for a mass mailing to rally support for a policy initiative.
While Ms. Palin took office promising a more open government, her administration has battled to keep information secret. Her inner circle discussed the benefit of using private e-mail addresses. An assistant told her it appeared that such e-mail messages sent to a private address on a “personal device” like a BlackBerry “would be confidential and not subject to subpoena.”
Ms. Palin and aides use their private e-mail addresses for state business. A campaign spokesman said the governor copied e-mail messages to her state account “when there was significant state business.”
On Feb. 7, Frank Bailey, a high-level aide, wrote to Ms. Palin’s state e-mail address to discuss appointments. Another aide fired back: “Frank, this is not the governor’s personal account.”
Mr. Bailey responded: “Whoops~!”
Mr. Bailey, a former midlevel manager at Alaska Airlines who worked on Ms. Palin’s campaign, has been placed on paid leave; he has emerged as a central figure in the trooper investigation.
Another confidante of Ms. Palin’s is Ms. Frye, 27. She worked as a receptionist for State Senator Lyda Green before she joined Ms. Palin’s campaign for governor. Now Ms. Frye earns $68,664 as a special assistant to the governor. Her frequent interactions with Ms. Palin’s children have prompted some lawmakers to refer to her as “the babysitter,” a title that Ms. Frye disavows.
Like Mr. Bailey, she is an effusive cheerleader for her boss.
“YOU ARE SO AWESOME!” Ms. Frye typed in an e-mail message to Ms. Palin in March.
Many lawmakers contend that Ms. Palin is overly reliant on a small inner circle that leaves her isolated. Democrats and Republicans alike describe her as often missing in action. Since taking office in 2007, Ms. Palin has spent 312 nights at her Wasilla home, some 600 miles to the north of the governor’s mansion in Juneau, records show.
During the last legislative session, some lawmakers became so frustrated with her absences that they took to wearing “Where’s Sarah?” pins.
Many politicians say they typically learn of her initiatives — and vetoes — from news releases.
Mayors across the state, from the larger cities to tiny municipalities along the southeastern fiords, are even more frustrated. Often, their letters go unanswered and their pleas ignored, records and interviews show.
Last summer, Mayor Mark Begich of Anchorage, a Democrat, pressed Ms. Palin to meet with him because the state had failed to deliver money needed to operate city traffic lights. At one point, records show, state officials told him to just turn off a dozen of them. Ms. Palin agreed to meet with Mr. Begich when he threatened to go public with his anger, according to city officials.
At an Alaska Municipal League gathering in Juneau in January, mayors across the political spectrum swapped stories of the governor’s remoteness. How many of you, someone asked, have tried to meet with her? Every hand went up, recalled Mayor Fred Shields of Haines Borough. And how many met with her? Just a few hands rose. Ms. Palin soon walked in, delivered a few remarks and left for an anti-abortion rally.
The administration’s e-mail correspondence reveals a siege-like atmosphere. Top aides keep score, demean enemies and gloat over successes. Even some who helped engineer her rise have felt her wrath.
Dan Fagan, a prominent conservative radio host and longtime friend of Ms. Palin, urged his listeners to vote for her in 2006. But when he took her to task for raising taxes on oil companies, he said, he found himself branded a “hater.”
It is part of a pattern, Mr. Fagan said, in which Ms. Palin characterizes critics as “bad people who are anti-Alaska.”
As Ms. Palin’s star ascends, the McCain campaign, as often happens in national races, is controlling the words of those who know her well. Her mother-in-law, Faye Palin, has been asked not to speak to reporters, and aides sit in on interviews with old friends.
At a recent lunch gathering, an official with the Wasilla Chamber of Commerce asked its members to refer all calls from reporters to the governor’s office. Dianne Woodruff, a city councilwoman, shook her head.
“I was thinking, I don’t remember giving up my First Amendment rights,” Ms. Woodruff said. “Just because you’re not going gaga over Sarah doesn’t mean you can’t speak your mind.”
When the biggest draw to an event is the understudy, is pretty ing wrong..
quote:
McCain (lacking Palin Power) had open seats available at his pancake breakfast this morning
Empty Seats Greet McCain at Fla. Rally
By Robert Barnes
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Republican presidential nominee John McCain held his first rally without running mate Sarah Palin today, and let's just say there were seats available.
The McCain "Road to Victory" rally was originally scheduled to be a pancake breakfast, but the campaign said there was such an outpouring of enthusiasm the event was shifted to the 15,000-seat Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena.
That might not have been the best idea: There were almost no supporters in any of the cavernous arena's 24 upper-level seating sections, and only eight of the 21 sections downstairs held fans. Only four of those were filled, though some supporters crowded around the stage on the arena floor.
McCain and wife Cindy made a point of thanking supporters for coming out on "a Monday morning'' for the 9 a.m. rally.
McCain said he had a soft spot in his heart for Jacksonville, because his first wife and his children awaited his return from a Vietnamese POW camp at a nearby naval base. "The years I was away in prison, the people of Jacksonville and Orange Park took care of my wife and children,'' McCain said. "My children had about 50,000 parents while I was gone.''
McCain noted the sharper criticism of him that has been coming from Democratic rival Barack Obama and his running mate, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware. He said it didn't bother him.
"Friends, Senator Obama's been saying some pretty nasty things about me and Gov. Palin,'' McCain said. "That's OK, he can attack if he wants. All the insults in the world aren't going to bring change to Washington and they're not going to change Senator Obama's record.''
McCain has also come up with a new formulation that allows him to resume his war against congressional earmarks and keep Palin in the mix.
He said last week that she had not asked for earmarks as governor, something that is not true. In fact, she hired a lobbyist and asked for $256 million in projects her first year in office, and in the current fiscal year, her second, is seeking $197 million.
McCain is now characterizing it this way: "Every year she's been in office, Gov. Palin has cut those requests."
Palin, by the way, will resume campaigning with McCain tomorrow.
Sign of the Apocalypse: FOX NEWS destroys McCain spokesweasel re. lying about Obama's record
Lebezniatnikov
52 Fact Checks
Salon: New McCain Ad Is False In Any Language. "It turns out John McCain can lie in Spanish, too. McCain's campaign is running a Spanish-language TV ad in Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico that blames Barack Obama for the failure last year of a sweeping immigration reform bill. 'Obama and his Congressional allies say they are on the side of immigrants. But are they?' the ad asks. 'The press reports that their efforts were 'poison pills' that made immigration reform fail.' ... Obama may not have been as involved in drafting the immigration legislation as McCain once was (though McCain was on the campaign trail for most of 2007, and wasn't as involved as he once was, either). And yes, he may have backed some amendments that supporters disliked. But it was McCain who abandoned his own legislation after the Republican base rose up against it, and it was McCain (and the White House) who were unable to convince allies on their side of the aisle to change their minds about the bill. Blaming Obama for the failure of immigration reform is simply wrong, no matter what language you do it in." [Salon, 9/15/08: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_r...rosa/index.html]
Washington Post Fact Checker: 4 Pinocchios for McCain Earmark Claim. "John McCain is trying to claim that black is white when he argues that his running mate, Sarah Palin, has not accepted earmarks as Governor of Alaska. While it is true that she has sought fewer earmarks than her predecessor, Governor Frank Murkowski, Alaska still leads the nation in terms of per capita spending on earmarks, according to Citizens Against Government Waste. ...I will give Governor Palin a pass this week, to mark her inaugural media outing. Four Pinocchios for McCain for his clumsy attempt to rewrite history." [Washington Post, 9/13/08: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fa...nd_edition.html]
FactCheck.org: McCain Energy Claim "Not true. Not even close." Palin says Alaska supplies 20 percent of U.S. energy. Not true. Not even close. "Palin claims Alaska 'produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy.' That's not true.... It's simply untrue that Alaska produces anything close to 20 percent of the U.S. 'energy supply,' a term that is generally defined as energy consumed. That category includes power produced in the U.S. by nuclear, coal, hydroelectric dams and other means -- as well as all the oil imported into the country. ...Sen. John McCain has also has used this inflated, incorrect figure. On Sept. 3, McCain told ABC News' Gibson: 'McCain: Well, I think Americans are going to be very, very, very pleased. This is a very dynamic person. [Palin's] been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply.' McCain repeated the false figure more recently, in a September 11 interview with Portland, Maine, news station WCSH6." [FactCheck.org, 9/12/08: http://www.factcheck.org/elections-...ally_wrong.html]
Bloomberg: McCain Campaign Misleading on Crowd Sizes. "McCain aide Kimmie Lipscomb told reporters on Sept. 10 that an outdoor rally in Fairfax City, Virginia, drew 23,000 people, attributing the crowd estimate to a fire marshal. Fairfax City Fire Marshal Andrew Wilson said his office did not supply that number to the campaign and could not confirm it. Wilson, in an interview, said the fire department does not monitor attendance at outdoor events...The campaign attributed that estimate, and several that followed, to U.S. Secret Service figures, based on the number of people who passed through magnetometers. 'We didn't provide any numbers to the campaign,' said Malcolm Wiley, a spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service. Wiley said he would not confirm or dispute the numbers the McCain campaign has given to reporters." [Bloomberg, 9/13/08: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?...&refer=politics]
New York Times: "Disrespectful" Ad Resorts to "Dubious Disregard for the Facts. "The advertisement is the latest in a number that resort to a dubious disregard for the facts. The nonpartisan political analysis group FactCheck.org has already criticized 'Disrespectful' as 'particularly egregious,' saying that it 'goes down new paths of deception,' and is 'peddling false quotes.' Even the title is troublesome. 'Disrespectful' is one of those words that is loaded with racial and class connotations that many people consider offensive." [New York Times, 9/13/08: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/13/u...s/13madbox.html]
FactCheck.org: McCain Ad "Less Than Honest" About use of FactCheck.org: With its latest ad, released Sept. 10, the McCain-Palin campaign has altered our message in a fashion we consider less than honest. The ad strives to convey the message that FactCheck.org said "completely false" attacks on Sarah Palin had come from Sen. Barack Obama. We said no such thing. We have yet to dispute any claim from the Obama campaign about Palin. They call the ad "Fact Check." It says "the attacks on Gov. Palin have been called 'completely false' ... 'misleading.' " On screen is a still photo of a grim-faced Obama. Our words are accurately quoted, but they had nothing to do with Obama. [1]
FactCheck.org: A McCain-Palin TV ad accuses Obama of being "disrespectful" of Palin, but it distorts quotes to make the case. "The new McCain-Palin ad 'Lashing Out' begins like an earlier ad we criticized, with its reference to Barack Obama's celebrity, but then goes down new paths of deception. It takes quotes from news organizations and uses them out of context in an effort to portray Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, as unfairly attacking Sarah Palin and making sexist remarks. We've long been a critic of candidates (Obama included) usurping the credibility of independent news organizations and peddling false quotes, and this ad is particularly egregious." [FactCheck.org, 9/11/08: http://www.factcheck.org/elections-...ling_palin.html]
Five Ohio Papers: McCain 'maverick' ad inconsistent with facts. Palin was originally for the Alaskan "Bridge to Nowhere" while running for governor -- before she was against spending federal money to build it. She opposed the bridge only after it had become an embarrassment to the state and after $233 million in federal money earmarked for the bridge was diverted to other transportation projects in Alaska. In six of his 25 years in Congress, McCain voted for spending bills that included 12,763 pork-barrel earmarks worth more than $144.4 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. Campaign finance reports also show Palin received significant support from oil industry executives, lobbyists or their wives during her 2006 election as governor and 2002 race for lieutenant governor. Her husband, Todd, is an oil fields production operator. [2]
Wall Street Journal Headline: "Record Contradicts Palin's 'Bridge' Claims." "The Bridge to Nowhere argument isn't going much of anywhere. Despite significant evidence to the contrary, the McCain campaign continues to assert that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told the federal government 'thanks but no thanks' to the now-famous bridge to an island in her home state... But Gov. Palin's claim comes with a serious caveat. She endorsed the multimillion dollar project during her gubernatorial race in 2006. And while she did take part in stopping the project after it became a national scandal, she did not return the federal money. She just allocated it elsewhere." [Wall Street Journal, 9/9/08]
Chicago Tribune Blog: "The McCain-Palin Campaign Keeps Up the Misleading Line That She Was the Main Palyer in Taking Out the Bridge." "Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin keeps saying she stopped the infamous 'Bridge to Nowhere' in an attempt to burnish her credentials as a pork-fighting reformer. And reporters keep pointing out that her claim is exaggerated. Still, the McCain-Palin campaign keeps up the misleading line that she was the main player in taking out the bridge. And still reporters keep shedding light on the inexactness, to put it politely, of that claim. One of the latest journalistic efforts to separate fact from fiction comes from PolitFact, a service of the St. Pete Times and CQ. Yet, the McCain campaign has cut a TV ad that pushes the line that Palin stopped the bridge. It's as if they've decided to go with that first two parts of that famous Lincoln quote: 'You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time...'" [Chicago Tribune Blog, 9/9/08]
Factcheck.org: Congress Had All But Killed Bridge to Nowhere When Palin Killed It, Was Sharp Turnaround From Position During Gubernatorial Campaign. "Palin may have said "Thanks, but no thanks" on the Bridge to Nowhere, though not until Congress had pretty much killed it already. But that was a sharp turnaround from the position she took during her gubernatorial campaign, and the town where she was mayor received lots of earmarks during her tenure." [FactCheck.org, 9/4/08]
Politifact: Palin's Stance On "The Bridge To Nowhere" Is "A Full Flop." Politfact, a service of CQ and the St. Petersburg Times wrote, "McCain said Palin has 'stopped government from wasting taxpayers' money on things they don't want or need. And when we in Congress decided to build a bridge in Alaska to nowhere for $233-million of yours, she said, we don't want it. If we need it, we'll build our own in Alaska. She's the one that stood up to them.' Nevermind that Alaska didn't give the money back. It spent the money on other transportation projects. The context of Palin's and McCain's recent statements suggest Palin flagged the so-called Bridge to Nowhere project as wasteful spending. But that's not the tune she was singing when she was running for governor, particularly not when she was standing before the Ketchikan Chamber of Commerce asking for their vote. And so, we rate Palin's position a Full Flop." [Politifact]
AP FACT CHECK: Palin's Broader Story on the Bridge to Nowhere is "Misleading," Her Self-Description as a Champion of Earmark Reform "Is Harder to Square With the Facts." "Palin did abandon plans to build the nearly $400 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport. But she made her decision after the project had become an embarrassment to the state, after federal dollars for the project were pulled back and diverted to other uses in Alaska, and after she had appeared to support the bridge during her campaign for governor. McCain and Palin together have told a broader story about the bridge that is misleading. She is portrayed as a crusader for the thrifty use of tax dollars who turned down an offer from Washington to build an expensive bridge of little value to the state. 'I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere,' she said in her convention speech last week. That's not what she told Alaskans when she announced a year ago that she was ordering state transportation officials to ditch the project. Her explanation then was that it would be fruitless to try to persuade Congress to come up with the money... Her self-description as a leader who 'championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress' is harder to square with the facts." [AP, 9/8/08]
USA Today Adwatch Headline: "A Disconnect on Palin's Bridge Claim." "It's the claim that Palin 'stopped the 'Bridge to Nowhere' that sparked the dispute. The reference is to a proposed bridge to a remote Alaskan community that would have cost the U.S. government more than $200 million. Palin has said repeatedly that she told the federal government: 'Thanks, but no thanks.' As a candidate for governor, however, Palin supported the bridge." [USA Today, 9/8/08]
Anchorage Daily News Headline: "Palin Touts Stance on 'Bridge to Nowhere,' Doesn't Note Flip Flop." "When John McCain introduced Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate Friday, her reputation as a tough-minded budget-cutter was front and center. 'I told Congress, thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere,' Palin told the cheering McCain crowd, referring to Ketchikan's Gravina Island bridge. But Palin was for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it. The Alaska governor campaigned in 2006 on a build-the-bridge platform, telling Ketchikan residents she felt their pain when politicians called them 'nowhere.' They're still feeling pain today in Ketchikan, over Palin's subsequent decision to use the bridge funds for other projects -- and over the timing of her announcement, which they say came in a pre-dawn press release that seemed aimed at national news deadlines. 'I think that's when the campaign for national office began,' said Ketchikan Mayor Bob Weinstein on Saturday." [Anchorage Daily News, 8/31/08]
Daily News Miner: Palin Supported Bridge to Nowhere, Later Kept the Money -- "That Was Hardly 'Thanks, But No Thanks.'" "In her introductory speech Friday as McCain's running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin picked up on the Ketchikan bridge that was never built as a symbol of bad federal policy... That is not how Palin described her position on the Gravina Island bridge when she ran for governor in 2006. On Oct. 22, 2006, the Anchorage Daily News asked Palin and the other candidates, 'Would you continue state funding for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina Island bridges?' Her response: 'Yes. I would like to see Alaska's infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now — while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.' Palin's support of the earmark for the bridge was applauded by the late Lew Williams Jr., the retired Ketchikan Daily News publisher who wrote columns on the topic... The money was not sent back to the federal government, but spent on other projects. That was hardly 'Thanks but no thanks.'" [Daily News Miner, 8/31/08]
TIME: "Palin Has Continued to Repeat the Already Exposed Lie" About Her Opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere. "Palin has continued to repeat the already exposed lie that she said, 'No, thanks,' to the famous 'bridge to nowhere' (McCain's favorite example of wasteful federal spending). In fact, she said, 'Yes, please,' until this project became a symbol and political albatross." [TIME Magazine, 9/9/08]
AP: Palin Supported Bridge, Later Abandoned Project But Used the Federal Money for Other Alaska Projects. "Palin voiced support for the bridge during her campaign to become Alaska's governor, although she was critical of the size, and later abandoned plans for the project. She used the federal dollars for other projects in Alaska." [AP, 9/9/08]
Washington Post's Kurtz: Palin's Assertion on Bridge to Nowhere a "Whopper." "The senator from Arizona has made a crusade of battling pork-barrel 'earmarks,' but the whopper here is the assertion that Palin opposed her state's notorious Bridge to Nowhere. She endorsed the remote project while running for governor in 2006, claimed to be an opponent only after Congress killed its funding the next year, and has used the $223 million provided for it for other state ventures." [Washington Post, Kurtz Column, 9/9/08]
New York Times: Ad on Sex Education Distorts Obama Policy. "The commercial also asserts that a sex-education bill introduced in Illinois, which Mr. Obama did not sponsor and which never became law, is his "one accomplishment" in the field of education. Both sets of accusations, however, seriously distort the record... It is a misstatement of the bill's purpose, therefore, to maintain, as the McCain campaign advertisement does, that Mr. Obama favored conventional sex education as a policy for 5-year-olds. Under the Illinois proposal, "medically accurate" education about more complicated topics, including intercourse, contraception and homosexuality, would have been reserved for older students in higher grades. The advertisement, then, also misrepresents what the bill meant by "comprehensive." The instruction the bill required was comprehensive in that it called for a curriculum that went from kindergarten and through high school, not in the sense that kindergarteners would have been fully exposed to the entire gamut of sex-related issues. [New York Times, 9/11/08: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/u...checkpoint.html]
Washington Post: Three Pinocchios for Education Ads. Nobody expects television ads to be fair and objective analyses of public policy. Almost by definition, the ads are partisan sales pitches, designed to promote one political brand while running down the rival brand. But they should not misrepresent the record of the other side and should clearly distinguish quotes from non-partisan news sources from standard political rhetoric. The McCain "education" ad fails this test. [Washington Post, 9/10/08: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fa..._education.html]
AP: McCain Campaign's Charge That Obama Voted Against Troop Funding Is "Misleading." "The ad's most inflammatory charge — that Obama voted against troop funding in Iraq and Afghanistan — is misleading. The Illinois senator consistently voted to fund the troops once elected to the Senate, a point Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton made during the primaries when questioning whether his anti-war rhetoric was reflected in his actions." [AP, 7/18/08]
Factcheck.org: McCain Campaign's Attack On Obama's 2007 Supplemental Vote Is "Oversimplified To The Point Of Being Seriously Misleading." The Annenberg Public Policy Center's factcheck.org wrote, "Prior to the sole 2007 vote cited by the McCain campaign as justification for this ad, Obama voted for all war-funding bills that had come before the Senate since 2005, when he was sworn in. So did all other Senate Democrats, except for a few absences. As recently as April 2007, Obama voted in favor of funding U.S. troops again, but this time Democrats added a non-binding call to withdraw them from Iraq. McCain (who was absent for the vote) urged the president to veto that funding measure, because of the withdrawal language. President Bush did veto it, and McCain applauded Bush's veto. Based on those facts, it would be literally true to say that 'McCain urged a veto of funding for our troops.' But that would be oversimplified to the point of being seriously misleading, which is exactly the problem with McCain's ad. Furthermore, by saying that 'John McCain has always supported our troops,' the ad insinuates that Obama doesn't. But funding a war and supporting troops are not necessarily the same thing. If they were, we'd reiterate our point above, that both men expressed a willingness to see a war-funding bill killed unless it met their conditions. For the record, here are Obama's votes in favor of war funding bills. We count 10 votes on five separate measures." [FactCheck.org, 7/22/08]
FactCheck.org: Troops Ad Based on "False" Insinuation. "McCain's facts are literally true, but his insinuation - that the visit was canceled because of the press ban or the desire for gym time - is false. In fact, Obama visited wounded troops earlier - without cameras or press - both in the U.S. and Iraq." [Fact Check.org, 7/28/08: http://www.factcheck.org/elections-...ded_troops.html]
Washington Post Fact Checker: McCain Campaign Attacks on Obama Tax Plan "Overblown," "Wrong," and "Greatly Exaggerated." "The McCain camp is attempting to persuade Americans that their taxes will increase dramatically with Barack Obama as president. The presumptive Republican nominee has repeatedly said that Obama would enact 'the largest tax increase since the Second World War.' A surrogate, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, insists that Obama has not proposed 'a single tax cut' and wants to 'raise every tax in the book.' ... The claim that Obama will 'enact' the largest tax increase since World War II is also overblown. The Bush tax cuts will expire automatically at the end of 2010, so it is hardly a question of 'enacting' a new tax increase. ... Carly Fiorina is wrong to claim that Obama has proposed no tax cuts and wants to raise 'every tax in the book.' John McCain is on more solid ground when he claims that Americans from many different backgrounds could be affected by a rise in capital gains taxes, but he has greatly exaggerated the adverse impact." [Washington Post, 6/11/08]
Politifact: McCain's Statement That Obama's Tax Plan Would Raise Taxes Is "False." Politifact reported, "So calling it a tax increase might not be considered fair. There's no disputing that taxes will rise, but the question of who's responsible for that tax increase is another matter entirely. At PolitiFact, we've concluded, as have others, that it's unfair to call Obama's plan a tax increase merely because it doesn't change existing tax law to keep rates low. We think about it this way: The reason taxes will increase is because of tax policy signed into law not by Obama, but by somebody else... the more recent data — combined with the fact that Obama's proposal does not constitute a tax increase in the traditional sense, since some taxes would be lower under his plan than they would under current law — persuades us to classify McCain's statement as False." [Politifact, 6/11/08]
FactCheck.org: McCain's Claim That Obama Would Raise Tax Rates For 23 Million Small-Business Owners Is "A False And Preposterously Inflated Figure." "McCain has repeatedly claimed that Obama would raise tax rates for 23 million small-business owners. It's a false and preposterously inflated figure. We find that the overwhelming majority of those small-business owners would see no increase, because they earn too little to be affected. Obama's tax proposal would raise rates only on couples making more than $250,000 or singles earning more than $200,000. McCain argues that Obama's proposed increase is a job-killer. He has a point. It's true that increasing taxes on those at the top would leave them less money for other purposes, including investment and hiring in the case of business owners. But the number of business owners who would see their rates go up would be only a small fraction of what McCain says. Many would see their taxes go down." [FactCheck.org, 7/14/08]
Independent Economists At The Tax Policy Center Came To The Conclusion That Obama's Tax Plan Offers A Net Tax Cut—Which Holtz-Eakin Has Repeatedly Used To Claim Obama's Plan Is "Fiscally Irresponsible." Michael Scherer of Time wrote, "So I want to make a few things clear. First, the Obama campaign calculates that its tax plan offers a net tax revenue reduction over ten years, if the health plan is included. Second, independent economists at the Tax Policy Center come to the same conclusion. Third, Holtz-Eakin has repeatedly, and quite seriously, invoked the net-tax-cut calculations of Obama to make the argument that the Democrat has a fiscally irresponsible economic plan." [TIME Magazine, 7/30/08]
Annenberg Political Fact Check: Claim That Obama "Promises More Taxes On Small Business, Seniors, Your Life Savings, Your Family" Is "Simply Not True For The Vast Majority Of Viewers Who Will See It." "The TV ad also says that Obama 'promises more taxes on small business, seniors, your life savings, your family.' This statement is simply not true for the vast majority of viewers who will see it. Obama, in fact, promises to deliver a $1,000 tax cut for families making up to $150,000 a year, and he says he would increase income tax rates, capital gains tax rates and taxes on dividends only for those with family incomes over $250,000 a year, or for single taxpayers making over $200,000." [FactCheck.org, 8/8/08]
Washington Post: McCain's Attack On The Obama Tax Plan "Crosses The Line From Reasonable Argument To Unacceptably Misleading." "Barack Obama and John McCain have important differences on tax policy. These are fair game for campaign ads, and no one expects 30-second spots to be suffused with nuance. But Mr. McCain's latest attack on the Obama tax plan crosses the line from reasonable argument to unacceptably misleading." [Editorial, Washington Post, 8/10/08]
Washington Post: McCain's TV Ad States That Obama Has A Plan To Raise Electricity Taxes; "The Short Answer: There Isn't One. Long Answer: Both McCain And Obama Would Make Electricity Derived From Fossil Fuels More Expensive." "The few campaign watchers who aren't transfixed by the images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton in Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) new attack ad aimed at Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), might be asking themselves right now, 'What's this about an Obama electricity tax?' Short answer: there isn't one. Long answer: both McCain and Obama would make electricity derived from fossil fuels more expensive, since they're both committed to setting mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions through a cap and trade system. In fact, they would raise energy costs by the same amount over the next 12 years, since they have identical short-term emissions goals." [Washington Post, 7/30/08]
Annenberg Political Fact Check: McCain's Ad Is "False" In Its Claims Obama Will Raise Taxes On Electricity. "McCain's new ad claims that Obama 'says he'll raise taxes on electricity.' That's false. Obama says no such thing. McCain relies on a single quote from Obama who once -- and only once so far as we can find -- suggested taxing 'dirty energy,' including coal and natural gas. That was in response to a reporter's suggestion that a tax on wind power could fund education. Obama isn't proposing any new tax on electricity or 'dirty energy' as part of his platform, and he never has. It's true that a coal/gas tax would raise electric rates, but so would a cap-and-trade program to restrict carbon emissions. Cap-and-trade is an idea that both McCain and Obama support, in different forms. Neither candidate characterizes cap-and-trade as a 'tax.'" [FactCheck.org, 7/30/08]
Cincinnati Enquirer: McCain's Ad, on A "Truthful" Scale From "0" to "10," Gets A "0." "HOW TRUTHFUL? 0 on a scale from 0 (misleading) to 10 (truthful)" "The McCain ad's claim that Obama says 'he'll raise taxes on electricity' is based on an interview Obama gave to a San Antonio newspaper in February in which he said 'what we ought to tax is a dirty energy like coal, and, to a lesser extent, natural gas.' According to the Obama campaign, what Obama was referring to in the interview was his proposal for a cap-and-trade mechanism that would set a limit on greenhouse gas emissions, allowing entities to buy and sell rights to emit. If that is the case, McCain is criticizing Obama for a proposal that he, too, supports." [Cincinnati Enquirer, 7/31/08]
New York Times: Charge That Obama Voted 94 Times For "Higher Taxes" Is "False." "McCain's false charges have been more frequent: that Mr. Obama opposes 'innovation' on energy policy; that he voted 94 times for 'higher taxes'; and that Mr. Obama is personally responsible for rising gasoline prices." [Editorial, New York Times, 7/30/08]
Annenberg Political Fact Check: In Repeating Their "Misleading" And "Inflated 94-Vote Figure," The McCain Campaign "Falsely Impl[ies] That Obama Has Pushed Indiscriminately To Raise Taxes For Nearly Everybody." "Republicans claim Obama 'voted 94 times for higher taxes.' But their count is inflated and misleading. ... [B]y repeating their inflated 94-vote figure, the McCain campaign and the GOP falsely imply that Obama has pushed indiscriminately to raise taxes for nearly everybody. A closer look reveals that he's voted consistently to restore higher tax rates on upper-income taxpayers but not on middle- or low-income workers. That's consistent with what he's said he'd do as president, which is to raise taxes only on those making more than $250,000 a year." [FactCheck.org, 7/3/08]
Annenberg Political Fact Check: The McCain Attack That Obama Has Voted To Increase Taxes On Those Earning $32,000 Is "Wrong" And "Not True." As FactCheck.org noted, "The McCain campaign claims that Obama voted to raise income taxes on individuals who earn as little as $32,000 per year. That's wrong...[and]...not true." In fact, as FactCheck.org also noted, Barack Obama's "tax plan would provide a tax cut of $502 for a non-married taxpayer earning $35,000." [FactCheck.org, 7/8/08]
Annenberg Political Fact Check: Claim That Obama Would Have Raised Taxes On "Families" Making $42,000 Is "Simply False." "A Spanish-language radio ad claims the measure Obama supported would have raised taxes on 'families' making $42,000, which is simply false. Even a single mother with one child would have been able to make $58,650 without being affected. A family of four with income up to $90,000 would not have been affected." [FactCheck.org, 8/8/08]
Washington Post: McCain's Attack On Obama For Voting To "Raise Taxes On People Making Just $42,000" Is "Unacceptably Misleading." "Barack Obama and John McCain have important differences on tax policy. These are fair game for campaign ads, and no one expects 30-second spots to be suffused with nuance. But Mr. McCain's latest attack on the Obama tax plan crosses the line from reasonable argument to unacceptably misleading. 'Obama voted to raise taxes on people making just $42,000,' the announcer warns. The basis for this statement is the senator's vote for the fiscal 2009 budget resolution, a nonbinding blueprint that assumed that all the Bush tax cuts would expire as scheduled. However, Mr. Obama has repeatedly said he wants to extend the Bush tax cuts for families making less than $250,000 a year. If anything, he has lavished too much in tax breaks on the middle class, proposing an expensive $1,000-per-family additional tax credit and, last weekend, piling on top of that an immediate, presumably one-time, $1,000-per-family rebate for energy costs." [Editorial, Washington Post, 8/10/08]
Washington Post Fact Checker: 2 Pinocchios for McCain Claim That Iran Is Training al-Qaida. "There is no reason to doubt the statements by U.S. generals that some of the weapons and munitions used by Sunni extremists in Iraq can be traced back to Iran. Odierno's statement about movements of 'a small number' of al Qaeda personnel through Iran to Iraq also seems quite credible. But it is a big stretch to conclude from these statements that Iran is providing organized support for al Qaeda in Iraq." [Washington Post Fact Checker blog, 3/20/08]
Washington Post Fact Checker: 3 Pinocchios for Verb Tense Defense of Comments About Drawing Down Troops to Pre-Surge Levels. "McCain insists that he did not make a mistake, in verb tenses or any other way. 'I said we had drawn down,' he told reporters today. 'I said we have drawn down and we have drawn down three of the five brigades. We have drawn down three of the five brigades. We have drawn down the marines. The rest will be home the end of July. That's just facts, the facts as I stated them.' ...For the record, those are NOT the facts as he 'stated them.' What he said was that U.S. forces had "drawn down to pre-surge levels...Prior to the conference call, I was inclined to give McCain a maximum of two Pinocchios for his misstatement about troop levels in Iraq. Everybody misspeaks once in a while. But the attempt by the McCain media machine to spin the mistake as a simple matter of 'verb tenses' is an insult to our intelligence. Pointing to Obama's recent misstatement about his uncle liberating Auschwitz, Scheunemann says that all candidates should be held to the "same standard." I agree. Three Pinocchios." [Washington Post Fact Checker blog, 5/3/08: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact..._verb_tens.html]
FactCheck.org: McCain's Spending Plans Don't Add Up. According to the non-partisan FactCheck.org, "McCain's big promise is that he can balance the budget while extending Bush's tax cuts and adding a few of his own. He likes to leave the impression that this can be done painlessly, for example, by eliminating "wasteful" spending in the form of "earmarks" that lawmakers like to tuck into spending bills to finance home-state projects. We found that not only is this theory full of holes, it's not even McCain's actual plan." [FactCheck.org, 5/13/08]
Washington Post Fact Checker: 4 Pinocchios for McCain's "Fantasy" Plan to Balance Budgets by Cutting Earmarks. "McCain's talk about eliminating $100 billion a year in earmarks is largely fantasy. His advisers are now promoting a more realistic plan of eliminating $100 billion in overall spending. But it is difficult to take even that promise very seriously given the fact that the senator refuses to identify exactly which projects he will be cut. To use a phrase coined by George H.W. Bush, this is 'voodoo economics,' based more on wishful thinking than on hard data or carefully considered policy proposals." [Washington Post Fact Checker Blog, 5/23/08]
FactCheck.org: McCain's Largest Tax Increase Charge "Wrong" and "Misleading." According to the Annenberg Public Policy Center's Factcheck.org: "By the measure most economists prefer, McCain is wrong in his claim that Sens. Clinton and Obama want to implement "the single largest tax increase since the Second World War;"... At a more basic level, it's misleading to tag Clinton and Obama for something that was scheduled during the Bush administration - the expiration of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, which by law will occur at the end of 2010." [FactCheck.org, 5/14/08]
Fact Check: McCain's Plan Would Result In Employers, Particularly Small Businesses, Dropping Coverage. According to FactCheck.org, "McCain's plan to tax workers on the value of their employer-provided health care plans and provide tax credits would encourage some employers, mainly small businesses, to drop health benefits, say experts, and the proposal could eventually eliminate job-based insurance altogether." Director of the health research and education program at the Employee Benefit Research Institute Paul Fronstin "says a tax credit plan like McCain's likely would mean the end of employer-sponsored health care." [FactCheck.org, "McCain's $5,000 Promise, 5/1/08]
Washington Post Fact Checker Blog: Claim that Special Interests Haven't Given Me "Any Money" is "Patently False." "His claim that he is the only presidential candidate not to receive money from 'special interests' is patently false. I was tempted to award four Pinocchios, but I am subtracting one because it is an old quote. Let me know if McCain has repeated the claim recently." [Fact Checker, Washington Post, 2/29/08]
FactCheck.org: McCain Claim to Have Supported Every Katrina Investigation "Is False." "McCain was asked by a New Orleansreporter why he voted twice against an independent commission to investigate the government's failings before and after Hurricane Katrina, and he incorrectly stated that he had "voted for every investigation. McCain actually voted twice, in 2005 and 2006, to defeat a Democratic amendment that would have set up an independent commission along the lines of the 9/11 Commission. At the time of the second vote, members of both parties were complaining that the White House was refusing requests by Senate investigators for information...McCain's statement that he 'supported every investigation' is false. The record shows McCain lined up with his party as it circled the wagons to defend the Bush administration against a more aggressive probe of what went wrong before and after Katrina." [FactCheck.org, 6/5/08]
FactCheck.org: McCain Voted for MontanaEarmark he Mocks. "Despite the fun McCain had ridiculing the bear project on the Senate floor, he didn't actually try to remove it from the bill. He did introduce several amendments, including three to reduce funding for projects he considered wasteful or harmful, but none removing the grizzly bear project appropriations. And despite his criticisms, he voted (http://www.senate.gov/legislative/L...on=1&vote=00034 ) in favor of the final bill." [FactCheck.org, 11/20/07]
Non-Partisan Analysis Says 25 Percent of McCain's Tax Plan goes to Households Earning More than $2.8 Million Annually. "Both John McCain and Barack Obama promise to cut taxes for the majority of Americans. But an Obama administration would redistribute income toward lower- and middle-class households, while a McCain White House would steer the bulk of the benefits to the wealthiest families, according to a nonpartisan analysis of the still-evolving tax plans of the presidential candidates. [Wall Street Journal, 6/12/08]
FactCheck.org: McCain Gas Tax Holiday Will Not Drive Prices Down; Would "Give Federal Funds To Oil Refineries." "But economists say that the proposal is unlikely to actually lower the price of gasoline. McCain's plan would essentially give federal funds to oil refineries... But the nonpartisan American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials estimates ( http://www.transportation.org/news/109.aspx ) that the total savings for the average American motorist works out to about $28; for a two-car household, that would be $54. That's IF prices actually dropped 18.4 cents per gallon. However, there's every indication that they wouldn't. Here's why: According to the basic principles of supply and demand, cutting the price of an item causes people to buy more of it. That's why stores put items on sale. But when something is priced too low, consumers will buy it faster than it can be manufactured, which leads to shortages. [FactCheck.org, 5/2/08]
FactCheck.org: McCain's Spending Plans Don't Add Up. According to the non-partisan FactCheck.org, "McCain's big promise is that he can balance the budget while extending Bush's tax cuts and adding a few of his own. He likes to leave the impression that this can be done painlessly, for example, by eliminating 'wasteful' spending in the form of 'earmarks' that lawmakers like to tuck into spending bills to finance home-state projects. We found that not only is this theory full of holes, it's not even McCain's actual plan." [FactCheck.org, 5/13/08]
Washington Post Fact Checker: 4 Pinocchios for McCain's "Fantasy" Plan to Balance Budgets by Cutting Earmarks. "McCain's talk about eliminating $100 billion a year in earmarks is largely fantasy. His advisers are now promoting a more realistic plan of eliminating $100 billion in overall spending. But it is difficult to take even that promise very seriously given the fact that the senator refuses to identify exactly which projects he will be cut. To use a phrase coined by George H.W. Bush, this is 'voodoo economics,' based more on wishful thinking than on hard data or carefully considered policy proposals." [Washington Post Fact Checker Blog, 5/23/08]
FactCheck.org: McCain's Largest Tax Increase Charge "Wrong" and "Misleading." According to the Annenberg Public Policy Center's Factcheck.org: "By the measure most economists prefer, McCain is wrong in his claim that Sens. Clinton and Obama want to implement 'the single largest tax increase since the Second World War;'... At a more basic level, it's misleading to tag Clinton and Obama for something that was scheduled during the Bush administration - the expiration of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, which by law will occur at the end of 2010." [FactCheck.org, 5/14/08]
Originally posted by DJ Shibby
Yes, distract away from all valid points with large quotes. And bold colors. And colors. And personal attacks.
Excellent. Excellent. Yes. How familiar.
hey you've got edited live action video of that convo. all i have is what was edited appearing as merely font. i'm doing the best with what i've got. get a life.
DJ Shibby
quote:
Originally posted by LatinLover
Jesus christ! The far left basiclly censored half the context of Palins interview
There is no "Far left" in America... there is far right, and moderate right. =P
