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| 5/25 |
| 2008/10/4-9 [Politics/Domestic/Election] UID:51381 Activity:low |
10/4 You know what I hate more than a politician focused on truthiness?
A politician like Biden who just flat out lies.
http://tinyurl.com/474d2r
\_ dude, new york post, seriously?
\_ Dude, New York Post, seriously?
\_ Oh, I'm sorry that you're such a sorry sack that you ignore
lies because you don't like the source. Here are a few more:
http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=307927962885677
His lie about "supporting clean coal":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yjx8RnDfdvM
His lie about Obama never supporting the Hamas election:
http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/rnc-obama--foreign-policy-flip-flops
\_ That hardly says what you claim it does. I know you are
desperate to make people forgot what a mendacious campaign
McCain is running, but this is weak at best.
His lie that Obama never said he'd meet with the president of
Iran without preconditions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1dSPrb5w_k
\_ What is the 'with preconditions' crap? I don't get it.
It's not a very good sounding soundbite. Presidents meet
with whoever the hell they want.
Full transcript of the debate:
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/02/debate.transcript
\_ I know at least some of those New York Post "facts" are
disingenuous at best. For instance the leading general
in Afghanistan specifally said that, while he needs more
troops in Afghanistan a surge like in Iraq would not
be effective because the two contries different (ignoring
the question did the surge really work considering the
higher troop levels were still there and the whole point
of the surge was supposed to be a short term tactical
surge that would alleviate the need for a long term
force buildup.) Meanwhile Palin claims troop levels
in Iraq are lower than pre surge which is a flat out lie
and when called on it she insists that it is true. What
the hell is that?
\_ You know what I hate more than calling the NYPost a newspaper?
When supposed newspapers rely on paraphrases rather than
quotes, and then attack those paraphrases with opinion and
further paraphrases of poorly named sources rather than facts
and quotes. How hard would it be to line up a Biden quote with
a source showing an actual lie?
\_ They lost me at "For all the focus on Srah Palin's graceful
performance..."
\_ What is the Dittohead desperation level now? I guess it was too
much to expect you guys to lose gracefully.
\_ Can you take a video of your head exploding after America elects
the most liberal member of the Senate and a renowned Marxist, to
the most liberal member of the Senate and a reknowned Marxist, to
the highest office in the land?
\_ Marxist doesn't mean what you think it means.
\_ http://csua.com/Politics/Domestic/President/Reagan/?page=1#50284
I don't really think he is the most liberal member of the
Senate either. -pp
\_ Why aren't you concerned about Palin's lies?
http://tinyurl.com/4fpela
\_ I didn't say I wasn't. -op |
| 5/25 |
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| tinyurl.com/474d2r -> www.nypost.com/seven/10042008/postopinion/editorials/the_lies_biden_told_132104.htm Leave a Comment Posted: 4:34 am October 4, 2008 For all the focus on Sarah Palin's graceful performance in Thursday's vice presidential showdown, a more significant spectacle was taking place behind the other rostrum. That's where Joe Biden, speaking with the pompus self-importance befitting his 36 years in the Senate, told one baffling fib after another. He smeared Dick Cheney as "the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history." To which we must take specific offense: After all, the founder of this newspaper, Alexander Hamilton, was killed in a duel by then-Vice President Aaron Burr. Barack Obama said he'd meet Iran's president without preconditions, Biden insisted. Yet when Obama was asked if he would in a debate during the primaries, he said yes - a position Biden back then termed "naive." That claim's only remotely intelligible if he limits Afghan expenditures merely to US rebuilding efforts - and even then, he's off by a factor of three, according to State Department numbers. That may not be an out-and-out lie, but it took supposed foreign-policy neophyte Sarah Palin to bring any context or nuance to the statement. David McKiernan had said was that tribal realities in Afghanistan are very different than in Iraq - requiring a different form of cooperation. But he flatly said more troops, and more local engagement, are needed. Said Biden of the Bush administration's supposed Middle East follies: "When . along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, 'Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't, Hezbollah will control it." Assuming that Biden was referring to when, in 2005, American and French pressure helped the Lebanese people kick Syrian troops out of Lebanon, who ever thought NATO occupation of that deeply divided country was a good idea? As if America's NATO allies would have gone in the first place. At some point, Americans have to wonder: Is this a fellow who should be a heartbeat away from the White House? |
| www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=307927962885677 Post Truthless Joe INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted 10/3/2008 Election '08: It's hard choosing the worst in last Thursday's vice presidential debate: Sen. Joe Biden's continual untruths, his certitude in delivering them, or the free pass he got all night long. php In "The Prince of Darkness," his memoir of 50 years as a reporter in Washington, Robert Novak points out that while Jimmy Carter successfully ran for president by acting as "the anti-Washington, anti-government, anti-lawyer candidate telling audiences, 'I'll never lie to you' and setting post-Watergate standards of honesty," behind the smile Carter was actually "a habitual liar who modified the truth to suit his purposes." But neither Carter nor Bill Clinton, whose twists and turns before a grand jury led to his impeachment, ever stared into the camera and spouted such a string of outright fabrications as if they were gospel truths the way Barack Obama's running mate did last week. Thankfully, the blogosphere has been having a field day cataloguing Joe's whoppers. First, as InstaPundit's Michael Totten instantly noted after the debate, Biden -- the great, seasoned foreign policy expert who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- falsely claimed France and the US "kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon." Of course, the debate's moderator, Gwen Ifill of PBS' "Washington Week," didn't call Biden on the gaffe; that might not be good for sales of her upcoming book, "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama" (especially if there turns out not to be an Age of Obama). There was also Biden's accusation that John McCain is soft on regulation, when in fact he tried to beef up regulations on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- an explanation for why he got so little campaign money from Fannie and Freddie over the years -- under $22,000 -- as opposed to the more than $126,000 Obama received in his short time in the Senate. Biden falsely claimed that Obama didn't pledge to meet with Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; Sarah Palin supported a windfall profits tax on oil companies; he said he's always been for clean coal in spite of his record of voting against it in the Senate. Biden said we have to drill for more of our own oil, easily leading viewers to conclude he and Obama are in favor of more domestic drilling, but as the American Thinker blog's Rick Moran noted in a list of "Biden's Big Lies," "Biden has opposed offshore drilling and even compared offshore drilling to 'raping' the Outer Continental Shelf." David McKiernan in Afghanistan said that the surge could not be applied in Afghanistan; David Petraeus' Iraq strategy could be part of our war efforts in Afghanistan. And Biden was wrong when he claimed that both McCain and Obama opposed troop funding; McCain simply opposed legislation with a withdrawal deadline. The Delaware Democrat falsely claimed that McCain's health care plan raises taxes, failing to mention his proposal's offsetting tax credit. And he was untruthful in claiming that under an Obama Administration the middle class will "pay no more than they did under Ronald Reagan." Obama, in fact, says he will return income tax rates to the Clinton levels, which were significantly higher than those in effect after tax reform during the Reagan Administration. National Review's Jim Geraghty noted Biden's claim that "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" and concluded Biden was "off by 2,000%." Maybe the senator was too busy conferring with imaginary French liberators of Lebanon to visit his constituency. But when tall tales are told with a straight face and mock conviction they are, unfortunately, believed by all too many -- especially when the media helps peddle the disinformation. sid=353&ct=INVESTORSCOM_H OMEPAGE_ROS&tr=MARKETPLACE&num=5&layt=2 Investor's Business Daily, Inc. Reproduction or redistribution is prohibited without prior authorized permission from Investor's Business Daily. Database and all data contained herein are provided by William O'Neil + Co. Incorporated and are used by IBD under license agreement. Daily Graphs and Daily Graphs Online are trademarks of William O'Neil + Co. Price and Volume data is delayed 20 minutes unless otherwise noted, is believed accurate but is not warranted or guaranteed by Interactive Data Corp. Real Time Services and is subject to Interactive Data Corp. The S&P 500 data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Inc. |
| www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yjx8RnDfdvM Biden Contradicts Himself on Coal Hello, you either have JavaScript turned off or an old version of Adobe's Flash Player. |
| www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1dSPrb5w_k YouTube Debate: Would You Meet with Iran/Syria/North Korea? Hello, you either have JavaScript turned off or an old version of Adobe's Flash Player. Good comment Marked as spam Reply Both Obama and Biden have flat out denied that Obama said this. The question was, would you meet during your first year in office without precondition the leaders of Iran, Syria, etc. It's one thing to clarify your answer and spin it in a positive way. But to say he never said it is just a flat out lie and dishonorable coming from someone that is running for the Presidency. Good comment Marked as spam Reply That's why they call it leadership. Waiting to see how other people feel about something or waiting to see how they answer, to decide how you feel is pretty weak. Certainly not for someone wanting to be President of the United States. Good comment Marked as spam Reply Biden just makes up stuff as he goes along. I don't think I've seen a single word of criticism from a Democrat (including journalists who are clearly in the tank) for his statement that FDR got on television when the stock market crashed. If Sarah Palin had said something like that, she would have been laughed out of the race. Good comment Marked as spam Reply Appears that Biden lied about this tonight. How can you lie about something that happened so recently Joe? Good comment Marked as spam Reply Obama's a naive idiot. Biden just said that Obama "never said the president should meet without preconditions." On July 23, 2007, CNN and YouTube partnered to sponsor the first Democratic primary debate of the 2008 election cycle. Questions were asked by citizens from around the country by uploading persona... On July 23, 2007, CNN and YouTube partnered to sponsor the first Democratic primary debate of the 2008 election cycle. Questions were asked by citizens from around the country by uploading personal videos to the YouTube website. |
| edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/02/debate.transcript -> edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/02/debate.transcript/ Print Transcript of Palin, Biden debate * Story Highlights * Joe Biden, Sarah Palin debate Thursday night * Vice presidential candidates discuss election issues in St. INTERACTIVE Decrease font Decrease font Enlarge font Enlarge font WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The vice presidential candidates, Democratic Sen. I'm Gwen Ifill of "The NewsHour" and "Washington Week" on PBS. Welcome to the first and the only 2008 vice presidential debate between the Republican nominee, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, and the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden of Delaware. The Commission on Presidential Debates is the sponsor of this event and the two remaining presidential debates. Tonight's discussion will cover a wide range of topics, including domestic and foreign policy matters. Each candidate will have 90 seconds to respond to a direct question and then an additional two minutes for rebuttal and follow-up. The specific subjects and questions were chosen by me and have not been shared or cleared with anyone on the campaigns or on the commission. The audience here in the hall has promised to remain very polite, no cheers, applause, no untoward outbursts, except right at this minute now, as we welcome Gov. As we have determined by a coin toss, the first question will go to Sen. The House of Representatives this week passed a bill, a big bailout bill -- or didn't pass it, I should say. The Senate decided to pass it, and the House is wrestling with it still tonight. Biden, Palin have different missions in debate As America watches these things happen on Capitol Hill, Sen. Biden, was this the worst of Washington or the best of Washington that we saw play out? BIDEN: Let me begin by thanking you, Gwen, for hosting this. And, Governor, it's a pleasure to meet you, and it's a pleasure to be with you. I think it's neither the best or worst of Washington, but it's evidence of the fact that the economic policies of the last eight years have been the worst economic policies we've ever had. As a consequence, you've seen what's happened on Wall Street. If you need any more proof positive of how bad the economic theories have been, this excessive deregulation, the failure to oversee what was going on, letting Wall Street run wild, I don't think you needed any more evidence than what you see now. So the Congress has been put -- Democrats and Republicans have been put in a very difficult spot. But Barack Obama laid out four basic criteria for any kind of rescue plan here. We're not going to write any check to anybody unless there's oversight for the -- of the secretary of Treasury. He secondly said you have to focus on homeowners and folks on Main Street. Thirdly, he said that you have to treat the taxpayers like investors in this case. And, lastly, what you have to do is make sure that CEOs don't benefit from this, because this could end up, in the long run, people making money off of this rescue plan. And so, as a consequence of that, it brings us back to maybe the fundamental disagreement between Gov. McCain and Barack Obama, and that is that the -- we're going to fundamentally change the focus of the economic policy. We're going to focus on the middle class, because it's -- when the middle class is growing, the economy grows and everybody does well, not just focus on the wealthy and corporate America. I appreciate this privilege of being able to be here and speak with Americans. You know, I think a good barometer here, as we try to figure out has this been a good time or a bad time in America's economy, is go to a kid's soccer game on Saturday, and turn to any parent there on the sideline and ask them, "How are you feeling about the economy?" And I'll bet you, you're going to hear some fear in that parent's voice, fear regarding the few investments that some of us have in the stock market. Fear about, how are we going to afford to send our kids to college? A fear, as small-business owners, perhaps, how we're going to borrow any money to increase inventory or hire more people. The barometer there, I think, is going to be resounding that our economy is hurting and the federal government has not provided the sound oversight that we need and that we deserve, and we need reform to that end. Now, John McCain thankfully has been one representing reform. Two years ago, remember, it was John McCain who pushed so hard with the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reform measures. People in the Senate with him, his colleagues, didn't want to listen to him and wouldn't go towards that reform that was needed then. I think that the alarm has been heard, though, and there will be that greater oversight, again thanks to John McCain's bipartisan efforts that he was so instrumental in bringing folks together over this past week, even suspending his own campaign to make sure he was putting excessive politics aside and putting the country first. Biden, how, as vice president, would you work to shrink this gap of polarization which has sprung up in Washington, which you both have spoken about here tonight? BIDEN: Well, that's what I've done my whole career, Gwen, on very, very controversial issues, from dealing with violence against women, to putting 100,000 police officers on the street, to trying to get something done about the genocide in -- that was going on in Bosnia. I think it's fair to say that I have almost as many friends on the Republican side of the aisle as I do the Democratic side of the aisle. But am I able to respond to -- are we able to stay on the -- on the topic? BIDEN: Yes, well, you know, until two weeks ago -- it was two Mondays ago John McCain said at 9 o'clock in the morning that the fundamentals of the economy were strong. Two weeks before that, he said George -- we've made great economic progress under George Bush's policies. Eleven o'clock that same day, two Mondays ago, John McCain said that we have an economic crisis. That doesn't make John McCain a bad guy, but it does point out he's out of touch. PALIN: John McCain, in referring to the fundamental of our economy being strong, he was talking to and he was talking about the American workforce. And the American workforce is the greatest in this world, with the ingenuity and the work ethic that is just entrenched in our workforce. Now, what I've done as a governor and as a mayor is (inaudible) I've had that track record of reform. And I've joined this team that is a team of mavericks with John McCain, also, with his track record of reform, where we're known for putting partisan politics aside to just get the job done. Now, Barack Obama, of course, he's pretty much only voted along his party lines. In fact, 96 percent of his votes have been solely along party line, not having that proof for the American people to know that his commitment, too, is, you know, put the partisanship, put the special interests aside, and get down to getting business done for the people of America. And that's why, with all due respect, I do respect your years in the US Senate, but I think Americans are craving something new and different and that new energy and that new commitment that's going to come with reform. I think that's why we need to send the maverick from the Senate and put him in the White House, and I'm happy to join him there. IFILL: Governor, Senator, neither of you really answered that last question about what you would do as vice president. throughout the evening to try to see if we can look forward, as well. Now, let's talk about -- the next question is to talk about the subprime lending meltdown. Was it the risky home-buyers who shouldn't have been buying a home in the first place? PALIN: Darn right it was the predator lenders, who tried to talk Americans into thinking that it was smart to buy a $300,000 house if we could only afford a $100,000 house. There was deception there, and there was greed and there is corruption on Wall Street. Again, John McCain and I, that commitment that we have made, and we're going to follow through on that, getting rid of that corruption. PALIN: One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let's commit ourselves just every day American people, Joe Six Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I thi... |
| csua.com/Politics/Domestic/President/Reagan/?page=1#50284 com/article/ALeqM5hi9TDNHvuBZpFsO8ZbiFYsnbIl3A \_ Isn't this what Nixon did? As far as I know it's just speculation, and there is no proof. Besides, is Nixon really the role model you want for the next president? For decades we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals." Liberals hate candidates with big egos & obnoxious personality. fuck all issues and just look nice on TV and be bright and be seen. The Ronald Reagan card is wins 48% of the votes, and is exactly what will get candidates into office. If the Dems "got it," they'd remind people that: --McCain divorced his first wife, a former swim-wear model, after she was horribly disfigured in a car accident. while McCain was in POW camp, his wife was in a terrible car accident that required 25+ surgeries that left her 4 inches shorter. she didn't tell him this while he was in POW camp, figuring he was suffering enough. when he got back to the states, he divorced her, and soon married the rich Arizona heiress. com/6gbzhw (Daily Mail) \_ According to the article, he got back to the US in 1973, and divorced her in 1980. So it's a pretty big stretch to say he divorced her because of the accident. It's more accurate to say that he was running around on her, chasing other women, and that he divorced her to marry a rich and pretty younger trophy wife. If you've ever been in a relationship you'll know that there are sometimes ugly fights. The divorce stuff does, however, say something about McCain. On the other hand, it is extremely difficult to get his message across without violating his messages. On one hand, I'd wish he would bike to conferences using a single speed bicycle and wearing spandex. On the other hand, no one really listens to hippies dressed in tie dye shirts shouting "Global warming is here! com has a picture of RONALD REAGAN Oh yeah this is a GREAT message and a GREAT site RONNIE is our GREAT HERO YES VOTE CONSERVATIVES NOW! As long as you are eco-conscious or can help others become more eco-conscious, what do you care? op \_ Al Gore is trying to get policies enacted to force me to act in a way that he himself doesn't. It's clear that he doesn't actually believe in his global warming hoax since he doesn't even do a thing to live like he tries to tell the rest of us to live. com/id/25686589/page/2 \_ The macs are gov't partnerships with business--what has that to do with free market? Previous sarcastic poster, the free market/ownership society doesn't work very well if we are in a global depression. It took an inept government you trust completely to do that kind of economic damage. Do you trust the free market to allocate resources or do you trust Big Government to do so? In the former case you sometimes have market corrections. Some things are better allocated centrally and some by a market system. Morality is a pretty personal thing, but I believe in a mixed economy morally as well, since both extremes cause huge amounts of human sufferring, when tried. Let's say that current trends continue, and oil and food prices continue to go through the roof. Poorer countries like those in Latin America will be more heavily impacted than the US The real free market solution to the problem would be for the Latinos to move to the wealthy US The libertarian nutjob solution is to build a bigger wall, because "a primary function of government is to protect property rights." the "free" market will cause a war due to resource scarcity. I think it is primarily _/ the afteraffects of colonialism, which for this discussion was perpetrated by both government and market actors. tom \_ I would have to say colonialism is almost exclusively perpetuated by governments. Even the East India Company was basically a front for government interests. However, \- this is mostly not a meaningful statement but is mostly wrong before the East India Act. somewhat interesting note in re: your somewhat humorous first sentence: at one point coca cola was more or less going to buy the country formerly known as British Honduras slight exag- geration ... you may want to read about how belgian colonialism int the congo changed when it went from being a personal possession of the king to a state colony. I think there's more blame to direct at the current corrupt and petty governments. I think Africa, as a whole, would benefit more from being run by corporate interests than corrupt governments. In fact, corporate investment in Africa is probably the the easiest path to salvation probably the easiest path to salvation just like it is in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other troubled regions. To really mess things up you need to get governments involved. ") -tom \_ I notice you still haven't defined your position. I certainly feel that someone who uses a machete to kill a person whose family he knows, must be significantly culpable for that act. Only somone who has never worked in the private sector could say such a thing. has never worked in the private sector could say such a thing. "Globalization and technology and automation all weaken the position of workers," he said, and a strong government hand is needed to assure that wealth is distributed more equitably. In the past the government of the united states WAS concerned when regular wages stayed stagnant or dropped while the upper 1% gained a higher percentage of the pie. That's not Marxism, no matter what your Libritarian echo chamber says. Fuck globalization and trickle down to China economy, it was a dumb idea in the beginning, and a complete disaster in practice. Compared to then, this is a golden time for the economy for rich, middle class, and poor. Or wait, there's a third option I forgot: you're a troll which is why you keep mentioning Reagan; you're looking to draw someone out on how great Reagan was or something. That in the Carter era we had double digit inflation, we voted in prop 13 to save people from outrageous property taxes and that the country was headed downhill in a huge way as stated by Carter himself in a major speech? If you don't know those things then as I said you're either ignorant, a troll, or just plain dumb. Try the Cato Institute web site if you want to convince me. So you only accept facts authorized by the Authorized accept facts approved by the Authorized Conservative Statistical Institute? An overwhelming body of evidence points to three decades of stagnate wages for the middle three decades of stagnant wages for the middle class. PS my kids have US citizenship, nah nah nah nah nah -fuck Reagan \_ Believe it or not the world isn't binary. However that doesn't mean, say, Pell grants are Marxist. But Pell grants do have a good track record of increasing social mobility and in doing so decreasing the inqequality of wealth. A large, desperately poor, increasingly hopeless segment of the population is something any government wants to avoid if it wants to prosper. I want the people and the country as a whole to prosper. Providing some education assistance (or a more reasonably priced educational price at each institution would really be more helpful) is helpful. Raising taxes on everyone and flushing more money down the drain is not helpful to anyone unless you're one of those government employees sucking the life out of the rest of us who earn our living the traditional way: working. Raising taxes on the wealthiest as the income gap continues to grow makes a lot of sense. The folks making tens and hundreds of millions are mostly hedge fund manger and other NYC financial types who are taxed at the cap gains rate instead of the income rate where they belong. That is the only place you need to change the tax code if you want a fairer tax on the truly rich. But slamming people who make $100k in this area with a higher tax rate because they are 'rich' is just stupid and harmful to the economy. Raising taxes across the board is not going to cause economic prosperity. Making income>$1m level pay their fair share, though, might. If he means family income, I am sc... |
| tinyurl.com/4fpela -> www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/factchecking_biden-palin_debate.html Printer Friendly Version FactChecking Biden-Palin Debate October 3, 2008 The candidates were not 100 percent accurate. Summary Biden and Palin debated, and both mangled some facts. Levels are gradually coming down but current plans would have levels higher than pre-surge numbers through early next year, at least. The budget bill in question called for an increase only on singles making that amount, but a family of four would not have been affected unless they made at least $90,000 a year. Biden was referring to an amendment that didn't address taxes at that income level. Independent budget experts estimate McCain's plan would cost tens of billions each year, though details are too fuzzy to allow for exact estimates. Actually, McCain didn't reject a meeting, but simply refused to commit himself one way or the other during an interview. At most, several hundred thousand business owners would see increases. For full details on these misstatements, and on additional factual disputes and dubious claims, please read on to the Analysis section. We noted the following: Palin Trips Up on Troop Levels Palin got her numbers wrong on troop levels when she said "and with the surge that has worked, we're now down to pre-surge numbers in Iraq." President Bush recently announced that another 8,000 would be coming home by February of next year. But even then, there still would be 6,000 more troops in Iraq than there were when the surge began. That's a lot of middle income average American families to increase taxes on them. I think that is the way to kill jobs and to continue to harm our economy. vote to increase taxes on "families" making as little as $42,000 per year. What Obama actually voted for was a budget resolution that called for returning the 25 percent tax bracket to its pre-Bush tax cut level of 28 percent. That could have affected an individual with no children making as little as $42,000. But a couple would have had to earn $83,000 to be affected and a family of four at least $90,000. The resolution would not have raised taxes on its own, without additional legislation, and, as we've noted before, there is no such tax increase in Obama's tax plan. Palin is referring here to the Democrats' 2008 budget proposal, which would indeed have resulted in about $217 billion in higher taxes over two years. But measured as a percentage of the nation's economic output, or gross domestic product, the yardstick that most economists prefer, the 2008 budget proposal would have been the third-largest since 1968, and it's not even in the top 10 since 1940. Biden's False Defense Biden denied that Obama supported increasing taxes for families making $42,000 a year - but then falsely claimed that McCain had cast an identical vote. The vote she's referring to, John McCain voted the exact same way. joe Biden was correct only to the extent that the resolution Obama supported would not by itself have increased taxes; it was a vote on a budget resolution that set revenue and spending targets. vote on the budget resolution in question, however, came in the wee hours of March 14 and was a mostly party-line tally, 51-44, with Obama in favor and McCain not voting. Palin's Health Care Hooey Palin claimed that McCain's health care plan would be "budget-neutral," costing the government nothing. Palin: He's proposing a $5,000 tax credit for families so that they can get out there and they can purchase their own health care coverage. a $5,000 health care credit through our income tax, that's budget neutral. palin The McCain campaign hasn't released an estimate of how much the plan would cost, but independent experts contradict Palin's claim of a cost-free program. fiscal voter guide estimates that McCain's tax credit would increase the deficit by somewhere between $288 billion to $364 billion by the year 2013, and that making employer health benefits taxable would bring in between $201 billion to $274 billion in revenue. That nets out to a shortfall of somewhere between $14 billion to $163 billion - for that year alone. Palin also said that Obama's plan would be "universal government run" health care and that health care would be "taken over by the feds." before, Obama's plan would not replace or remove private insurance, or require people to enroll in a public plan. It would increase the offerings of publicly funded health care. Biden said that McCain had refused to meet with the government of Spain, but McCain made no such definite statement. Biden: The last point I'll make, John McCain said as recently as a couple of weeks ago he wouldn't even sit down with the government of Spain, a NATO ally that has troops in Afghanistan with us now. interview on Radio Caracol Miami, McCain appeared confused when asked whether he would meet with President Zapatero of Spain. He responded that "I would be willing to meet with those leaders who are our friends and want to work with us in a cooperative fashion," but then started talking about leaders in Latin America. He did not commit to meeting with Zapatero, but it wasn't clear he'd understood the question. But the McCain campaign denied that their candidate was confused. com, campaign adviser Randy Scheunemann e-mailed CNN and the Washington Post the next day, saying that McCain's reluctance to commit to a meeting with Zapatero was a policy decision. Scheunemann, September 2008: The questioner asked several times about Senator McCain's willingness to meet Zapatero -- and id'd him in the question so there is no doubt Senator McCain knew exactly to whom the question referred. Senator McCain refused to commit to a White House meeting with President Zapatero in this interview. That's not a refusal to meet with Zapatero, as Biden said. It's simply a refusal to commit himself one way or the other. Palin's Small Business Balderdash Palin repeated a falsehood that the McCain campaign has peddled, off and on, for some time: Palin: But when you talk about Barack's plan to tax increase affecting only those making $250,000 a year or more, you're forgetting millions of small businesses that are going to fit into that category. So they're going to be the ones paying higher taxes thus resulting in fewer jobs being created and less productivity. we reported June 23, it's simply untrue that "millions" of small business owners will pay higher federal income taxes under Obama's proposal. According to an analysis by the independent Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, several hundred thousand small business owners, at most, would have incomes high enough to be affected by the higher rates on income, capital gains and dividends that Obama proposes. That counts as "small business owners" even those who merely have some sideline income from such endeavors as freelance writing, speaking or running rental properties, and who get the bulk of their income from employment elsewhere. Defense Disagreements Biden and Palin got into a tussle about military recommendations in Afghanistan: Biden: The fact is that our commanding general in Afghanistan said today that a surge - the surge principles used in Iraq will not - well, let me say this again now - our commanding general in Afghanistan said the surge principle in Iraq will not work in Afghanistan, not Joe Biden, our commanding general in Afghanistan. We need to spend more money on the infrastructure in Afghanistan. Palin: Well, first, McClellan did not say definitively the surge principles would not work in Afghanistan. Certainly, accounting for different conditions in that different country and conditions are certainly different. We have NATO allies helping us for one, and even the geographic differences are huge but the counterinsurgency principles could work in Afghanistan. The counterinsurgency strategy going into Afghanistan, clearing, holding, rebuilding, the civil society and the infrastructure can work in Afghanistan. reported: Washington Post: "The word I don't use for Afghanistan is 'surge,' " McKiernan stressed, saying that what is required is a "sustained commitment" to a counterinsurgency effort that could last many years and would ultimately require a political, not military, solution. also said tha... |