Tonite's debate fact checks Both sides

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081008/ap_on_el_pr/debate_fact_check

good review of the debate

Brings to point the question from the Lady who asked why should we trust either party....

I gotta say... I was less than impressed by Obama this time. He had a few good points, but he was boring and pretty long-winded. And I think I could've done a better job than he did on that Russia question. I will give him points, though, for being forthright in telling folks that he reckons that healthcare is a "right". I mean- if you're gonna be a socialist... might as well OWN it.

But McCain came across as a grumpy old man. Unlike Palin, he can occasionally speak beyond the standard talking points- and I see that somebody finally told him to lay off the "maverick" line. He made several attempts at joking... looked to me like a pissed-off old man yelling at some damn kid.

I don't reckon that many peoples' minds were changed. And that's bad news for McCain.

Nice avatar, Nitro.

A most fu**ed up election we are headed into.

I agree. Maybe we should go four years without and see if anyone notices. Don't even have an inclination to vote for either.

I don't know now if I am going to vote for " that one " or " this one " .

I'm scared of Sarah Palin. Even if I didn't like Obama, I'd vote for him because I would genuinely fear the possibility of her being president in the event of McCain's death.

Besides, her voice reminds me of the Church Lady, the tone, the sachharine sweetness that you know is fake and the bad grammar and faux folksy(hereafter called fauxy) way she speaks... makes my skin crawl.

CelticDragon wrote:

I'm scared of Sarah Palin. Even if I didn't like Obama, I'd vote for him because I would genuinely fear the possibility of her being president in the event of McCain's death.

Besides, her voice reminds me of the Church Lady, the tone, the sachharine sweetness that you know is fake and the bad grammar and faux folksy(hereafter called fauxy) way she speaks... makes my skin crawl.

LOL. I knew she reminded me of someone.

Welcome to the board!

A Taxpayer voting for Barack Hussein Obama is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.

I agree with you to a point, Sam. I'm not too happy about Obama's socialist tendencies.

But what I'd disagree with is the implication that Republicans offer a better alternative. They have a proven track record. Deficit spending and the national debt increased VASTLY more under both Regan and Bush II than under any Democrat. Regan simply put payment off to future generations... Bush is doing much the same, along with monetizing the debt (printing money wildly, which is why the gov't no longer publishes M3... and why your dollar is worth far less nowadays than when Clinton left office).

Democrats want to take your money up front, and spend it on their social-engineering programs.

Republicans prefer to run up massive debt, screwing both the economy and future generations... to fund their military fetish.

Our only real choice in this election is "more war" or "more socialism". I reckon I'll vote for socialism. At least it won't kill hundreds of thousands of people like Bush has.

Will McCain's health care proposals raise taxes? Biden says that McCain’s proposal will cost people money. The Tax Foundation finds that could easily be "roughly deficit-neutral over ten years."

-- Under an Obama Administration the middle class will "pay no more than they did under Ronald Reagan"? No, the tax rates will be similar to the higher rates under Clinton.

-- Did "we spend more money in three weeks on combat in Iraq than we spent on the entirety of the last seven years that we have been in Afghanistan building that country"? No, one year’s worth of spending in Iraq equaled five in Afghanistan.

-- France and the U.S. "kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon"? No, and it wouldn't have made much more sense if he had said "Syria" instead.

-- Is it really “simply not true” that Obama said that he would meet with the leader of countries such as Iran without preconditions? No, Obama said “I would.”

-- Did Obama warn against letting Hamas participate in Palestinian legislative elections in 2005? No.

-- Do “Iraqis have an $80 billion surplus”? No. If oil prices had remained high, it might have reached $50 billion by the end of this year.

-- Finally, an amusing point as evidence that Biden is just one of the people he pointed to, inviting anyone to have a beer with him at "Katie's Restaurant" in Wilmington, Del. Unfortunately, people will have a hard time taking him up on his offer, since the restaurant hasn't had that name for probably 15 years.

Unfortunately, voters who are trying to get an accurate count on whether the candidates are telling the truth can’t rely on the media. FactCheck.org mentions only one of these points, the size of the Iraqi surplus. The Washington Post mentioned Biden’s misstatement on Hamas and Katie’s restaurant. AOL’s coverage of the errors in the vice presidential debate was by far the worst, though that might not be too surprising given that Tommy Christopher, who wrote their news analysis, also blogs on the Obama Web site. None of these checkers mentioned Biden's statements about the role of the vice president.

Compare this to the attacks on Sarah Palin:

-- FactCheck.org criticizes Palin for claiming that McCain’s health care tax credits will be "budget neutral" – they argue that the tax credit will be larger than the new taxes that the program will impose. Fine, but if the people at FactCheck.org believe that is true and that the Tax Foundation is wrong, Biden’s claim about increased taxes is even more inaccurate. But FactCheck.org doesn't even mention Biden’s statement from the debate.

-- From AOL's news analysis piece. “Palin: Said that it is untrue that the U.S. is killing civilians in Afghanistan. According to an analysis by the AP, however, the U.S. is killing more civilians than insurgents are.”

What Palin actually said was: “Now, Barack Obama had said that all we're doing in Afghanistan is air-raiding villages and killing civilians.” Whether one believes the AP estimate or not, the question is whether she was accurately characterizing Obama’s statement of the job that our forces were doing. And Obama said, “We’ve got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians” (emphasis added).

-- FactCheck.org’s first critique claims that Palin was wrong to claim that troop levels in Iraq are down to their pre-surge levels. They are correct that after the recently announced drawdown, 6,000 more troops will be in Iraq than immediately before the surge. But why not mention that 84 percent of the 38,000 troops in the surge are home or are in the process of coming home?