Bad Deeds for 9-5-2008

 

Lieberman and Thompson Make Misleading Claims About Obama on Day Two of the Republican Convention – Joe Lieberman and his former Senate colleague Fred Thompson both made misleading claims about Obama in their prime time GOP convention speeches on Tuesday. We’ve heard two of them before – many times.

• Lieberman said Obama hadn’t “reached across party lines” to accomplish “anything significant,” though Obama has teamed with Republican Senators. Tom Coburn and Richard Lugar to pass laws enhancing government transparency and curtailing the proliferation of nuclear and conventional weapons.
• Thompson repeated misleading claims about Obama’s tax program, saying it would bring “one of the largest tax increases in American history.” But as increases go, Obama’s package is hardly a history-maker. It would raise taxes for families with incomes above $250,000. Most people would see a cut.
• Lieberman also accused Obama of “voting to cut off funding for our American troops on the battlefield.” But Obama’s only vote against a war-funding bill came after Bush vetoed a version of the bill Obama had supported – and McCain urged the veto.
• Lieberman stated several times that he is a Democrat, however, he is an Independent.

 

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Her Republican Supporters Dish Out More Falsehoods on Day Three of the Republican Convention – Some examples:

PALIN: “I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending … and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress ‘thanks but no thanks’ for that Bridge to Nowhere.”

THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a “bridge to nowhere.”

PALIN: “There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it’s easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform — not even in the state senate.”

THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.

PALIN: “The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars.”

THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama’s plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain’s plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded. Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families. He also would raise income taxes, capital gains and dividend taxes on the wealthiest. He would raise payroll taxes on taxpayers with incomes above $250,000, and he would raise corporate taxes. Small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year would see taxes rise.

MCCAIN: “She’s been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America’s energy supply … She’s responsible for 20 percent of the nation’s energy supply. I’m entertained by the comparison and I hope we can keep making that comparison that running a political campaign is somehow comparable to being the executive of the largest state in America,” he said in an interview with ABC News’ Charles Gibson.

THE FACTS: McCain’s phrasing exaggerates both claims. Palin is governor of a state that ranks second nationally in crude oil production, but she’s no more “responsible” for that resource than President Bush was when he was governor of Texas, another oil-producing state. In fact, her primary power is the ability to tax oil, which she did in concert with the Alaska Legislature. And where Alaska is the largest state in America, McCain could as easily have called it the 47th largest state — by population.

MCCAIN: “She’s the commander of the Alaska National Guard. … She has been in charge, and she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities,” he said on ABC.

THE FACTS: While governors are in charge of their state guard units, that authority ends whenever those units are called to actual military service. When guard units are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, for example, they assume those duties under “federal status,” which means they report to the Defense Department, not their governors. Alaska’s national guard units have a total of about 4,200 personnel, among the smallest of state guard organizations.

MIKE HUCKABEE: Palin “got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States.”

THE FACTS: A whopper. Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 mayor’s election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries.

MITT ROMNEY: “We need change, all right — change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington — throw out the big-government liberals, and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin.”

THE FACTS: A Back-to-the-Future moment. George W. Bush, a conservative Republican, has been president for nearly eight years. And until last year, Republicans controlled Congress. And while Democrats have a majority in the Senate, they don’t control it, since they don’t have the 60 votes needed to override the Republican stall tactics.

Fact Check the GOP.

 

McCain Had Criticized Earmarks From Palin – Three times in recent years, McCain’s catalogs of “objectionable” spending have included earmarks for this small Alaska town, requested by its mayor at the time — Sarah Palin. records show that Palin — first as mayor of Wasilla and recently as governor of Alaska — was far from shy about pursuing tens of millions in earmarks for her town, her region and her state. This year, Palin, who has been governor for nearly 22 months, defended earmarking as a vital part of the legislative system. “The federal budget, in its various manifestations, is incredibly important to us, and congressional earmarks are one aspect of this relationship,” she wrote in a newspaper column.

 

Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin Belittle and Sneer at Community Organizers – The mockery began when Giuliani said of Obama, “He’s never had to lead people in crisis. … Barack Obama has never led anything. Nothing. Nada. … He worked as a community organizer. … What?” The he laughed openly. Palin then continued the theme by saying, “I guess a small town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.” One blogger commented, “I’m not sure which was more frightening: Rudy Giuliani deriding Obama’s years as a community organizer on Chicago’s South Side, or the audience exploding with glee when he said it. The truly awful thing was, it took people a half second to believe what he had said, as though they knew it was over decency’s line. It was, and they loved it anyway.

The Republicans do not give a flip about community organizers. And that means they don’t care about you. Want to talk about small-town values? Then don’t criticize the people who fight for people who have community issues.

Here’s Stephen Colbert’s take on this:

 

Contrary to Republican Inferences, Palin Has Never Issued an Order to the Alaska National Guard – When presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain introduced Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate last Friday, the Arizona senator emphasized her role as the commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard.

Later, when questions were raised about Palin’s lack of experience in national and international affairs, the McCain campaign pointed again to her military command experience as governor. Some reporters have tried to follow up.

“Can you tell me one decision that she made as commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard?” CNN journalist Campbell Brown asked Monday while interviewing McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds. “Just one?”

Bounds couldn’t, because Palin has never personally ordered the state guard to do anything.

 

Sean Hannity’s Memory Lapse: “I don’t remember Chelsea Clinton being attacked” – On Hannity & Colmes, Hannity said, in reference to Internet rumors about Gov. Sarah Palin’s daughter, “[T]hey tried to make the attack that she has a young daughter, pregnant and engaged. Is that fair that they would attack that? I mean, I don’t remember Chelsea Clinton being attacked. I don’t remember Al Gore’s children being attacked. I thought there was a general rule that children of candidates ought to be left alone.” In fact, Chelsea Clinton was not “left alone” — not by Sen. John McCain, and not by Rush Limbaugh.

McCain reportedly told a “joke” about Chelsea Clinton in 1998, saying: “Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno.”

On his TV show, early in the Clinton administration, Limbaugh put up a picture of Socks, the White House cat, and asked, ‘Did you know there’s a White House dog?’ Then he put up a picture of Chelsea Clinton, who was 13 years old at the time.

 

Palin Accuses ‘Obama/Biden Democrats’ of Attacking Her Family, But Her Campaign Can’t Name One – Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin sent out a fundraising solicitation today that charged that “the Obama/Biden Democrats have been vicious in their attacks directed toward me, my family and John McCain.” ABC News’ Senior National Correspondent Jake Tapper asked spokespeople of the McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee just which “Obama/Biden Democrats” they’re referring to.

The response he got was that Obama spokesman Mark Bubriski erroneously attacked Palin as a supporter of Pat Buchanan. That’s it. That’s the evidence. An attack on Palin herself.

In other words, they can’t name one person affiliated with the Obama-Biden campaign who attacked the Palin family. But she made the charge anyway, to help raise money.

Regards,

Jim
Will you listen to your hopes or your fears?