Fact Checking the Debate

Via Factcheck.org, Newsweek presents a list and analysis of supposedly demonstrably false or misleading statements made by Biden and Palin during last night's debate, covering surge numbers, tax effects, and health-care plan costs.

Comments

[The Extispicator]

The distortions started with "It's nice to meet you" and "I'm glad to be here" and ended with "It was really nice meeting you."

[joshua corning]

Palin wrongly claimed that "millions of small businesses" would see tax increases under Obama's tax proposals. At most, several hundred thousand business owners would see increases.

HA!

[cunnivore]

corning, a factor of ten is a big deal.

[cunnivore]

I mean, wouldn't you cry foul if someone said that tens of thousands of US soldiers had died in the Iraq war?

[sage]

I didn't watch a whole lot of it. I really just wanted to see if Ifill was going to openly hostile to Palin. But for the part I watched neither of them really talked about cutting spending. Joe Biden said we'll need to "slow down" on foreign assistance.

What a joke.

[The Extispicator]

Yeah, his answer on slowing down foreign assistance reminded me of an interviewee stating that one of his negative qualities is that he works too hard.

[Guy Montag]

So, Sen. Biden is still a big giant fakie liar and Gov. Palin is still an adorable hottie.

Next issue please!

[Nonnie]

They missed Biden's statement regarding Lebanon. The following is copied from the CNN transcript:

"When we kicked -- 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 know -- if you don't, Hezbollah will control it."

Now what's happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel."

No one has EVER kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon. The only call for NATO troops that I know of since 2006 came from a suggestion for an international force, POSSIBLY including NATO troops from Secretary Rice.

[Abdul]

I find Palin's assertion that when Chuck Norris does a push-up, he actually pushes the Earth down, to be highly suspect.

[sage]

They were doing some fact checking on CNN this morning and one thing they pointed out was that Biden voted for a bill in 1999 that allowed banks to buy MSBs. Ooopsie!

[sage]

Uh, make that MBSs. Oopsie.

[J sub D]

Wow! Politicians will lie out their ass to get elected.

Who knew?

[R C Dean]

They also missed Biden's mischaracterization of the Vice President's role under the Consitution. Here's what he said:

The idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch.

Wrong. Article I deals with the Congress, not the executive. This is pretty basic stuff.

He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that.

This may be true (whatever "works" means), but the Constitution only provides any role for the VP as the presiding officer of the Senate; the Constitution provides no role/duties/powers whatsoever for the VP in the executive branch.

Everyone should understand that. . . . The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress.

Wrong again. He is the presiding officer of the Senate, although the only time he has a vote is when there is a tie.

The idea he's part of the Legislative Branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive and look where it has gotten us. It has been very dangerous."

And, finally, wrong again. The VP was actually part of the Senate's budget and administrative structure until Nixon, and the VP's only expressed role in the Constitution is in the Senate. The migration of the VP from the Senate to the White House is actually pretty recent.

[John]

They missed Biden claiming that the US and France kicked Hezbollah out of Lebenon. Biden is supposed to be Mr. Foreign Policy and he says that. If Palin had said it, it would have been all over the front page. Biden says it and doesn't even get into a fact checking piece. You have to give Biden credit for having a command of the facts. It just that he makes up most of the facts he has command of.

[John]

Dick Cheney the most dangerous vice President in history was another whopper. Really? More than Aaron Burr who committed treason and murdered someone? More than Henry Wallace who was an unretpetant Stalinist and had Truman not taken his spot on the ticket in 1944 would have been President at the dawn of the cold war? More than Spio Agnew who was a convicted crook?

[libertarian democrat]

Yes. Really.
Also, I don't think Burr was found guilty of anything.

[Elemenope]

More than Aaron Burr who committed treason and murdered someone?

Lied us into a war that killed thousands. Outed an active CIA agent. Advantage: Cheney.

More than Henry Wallace who was an unrepentant Stalinist and had Truman not taken his spot on the ticket in 1944 would have been President at the dawn of the cold war?

From Wiki: "In 1952, Wallace published Where I Was Wrong, in which he explained that his seemingly-trusting stance toward the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin stemmed from inadequate information about Stalin's excesses and that he, too, now considered himself an anti-Communist. He wrote various letters to "people who he thought had traduced him" and advocated the re-election of President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956."

Unrepentant my ass. And this is as opposed to giving succor to a cabal of neo-Trotskyites (neocons, bitches!) Advantage: Cheney.

More than Spiro Agnew who was a convicted crook?

I'd rather that than an *unprosecuted crook*. Advantage: Cheney.
---------------
See, he really *is* the worst VPOTUS ever.

[John]

"Lied us into a war that killed thousands. Outed an active CIA agent. Advantage: Cheney."

Advocated for a war that was supported by Congress, the relevant intelligence at the time indicated was necessary and resulted in the only functioning democracy in the Arab world, the death of 1000s of foreign jihadists and the end of one of the most murderous dictatorships in the world. The Iraq debate is over. The war is over. We are coming home in a couple of years and the Iraqis are wishing us a safe trip. It sucks I know. No Saigon. No humiliating defeats. None of what we had all so fervently hoped for. But sometimes life is like that.

Wallace was an unrepentant Stalinist at the time and the Democrats knew it and were responsible enough to kick him off the ticket. Yes, later he claimed ignorance but so did the entire left. The nature of Stalin's regime was well known in the 30s and 40s. Useful idiots like Wallace just didn't want to see. Maybe he would have been a fine President after he recanted in the 1950s, but he sure as hell hadn't in 1944.

Agnew really was a crook. Cheney is not. You just like him or agree with him. You do yourself or your cause no good by engaging in self important hyperbole.

[libertarian democrat]

You do yourself or your cause no good by engaging in self important hyperbole.

[Elemenope]

resulted in the only functioning democracy in the Arab world

Ha. HahhaaahahahhahahahHAHAHAH! [Choke] HAHHHH!

I'm sorry. What was the rest of your comment again? I got caught up on the ridiculous bit above.

[Art]

Newsweek?? What did Pravda have to say?

[Why Certainly]

"Also, I don't think Burr was found guilty of anything."

That's because there's no guilt in shooting a former Secretary of the Treasury. 😀 Poor Hamilton. Poor Paulson.

[Guy Montag]

And, finally, wrong again. The VP was actually part of the Senate's budget and administrative structure until Nixon, and the VP's only expressed role in the Constitution is in the Senate. The migration of the VP from the Senate to the White House is actually pretty recent.

All correct and I will add that W@alter Mondale is credited by many as expanding the unofficial but functional, role of VP as an active filter and advisor to the President. Forgot the name of his memo to President Carter on the idea, but it was adopted and seems to have been in place ever since. Well, maybe not during the Quale VP period, but the rest of the time.

[Elemenope]

Agnew really was a crook. Cheney is not.

You know, it's funny how you didn't address the treasonous "outed a CIA agent" business, which his chief of staff, Mr. Libby, was *convicted* of in a court of law. Cheney's involvement was instrumental, as the record shows.

Agnew's crimes were penny ante shit compared to that.

[R C Dean]

You know, it's funny how you didn't address the treasonous "outed a CIA agent" business, which his chief of staff, Mr. Libby, was *convicted* of in a court of law.

Actually, no. Mr. Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice. As with so many trials lately, there was no conviction, or even attempt to seek a conviction, on the underlying offense.

And "outing" a Foggy Bottom proliferation analyst whose husband is publishing columns in the NYT on proliferation strikes me as being something less than treasonous.

[joshua corning]

hey dipshit cunnivore,

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.

As 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.

To repeat myself:

HA!

Not in a million fucking years would the Brookings institute or the Urban institute ever say one small bad thing about Obama's tax policy.

They are the fuckers who wrote it in the first place.

Independent my ass.

[Oregon Scott]

Since this was originally an article on fact-checking the debate, here's a couple of links to NPR's fact checking. Several items mentioned on this discussion page are discussed.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95324948

http://www.npr.org/blogs/politics/fact_check/

Scott

[Elemenope]

RCD --

She wasn't exactly a NOC operative, but neither was she a Langley desk jockey. She did enough on-site work to have been placed in danger by being outed as a CIA analyst, and at the very least made it so she could not work effectively in her area of expertise.

And while there may be a reflexive warm & fuzzy for futzing with the government's clandestine activities among us libertarianish types, the fact remains that damaging the intelligence gathering capacity of the US is material support to enemies in every sense that matters.

And it's not like she was burned in furtherance of some legitimate intelligence aim. She was burned in order to punish her husband, who discovered some inconvenient facts regarding the claims of the President. Burning an agent for political purposes is utterly disgusting.

And WHERE THE FUCK were all the "country-first" patriotic conservatives on this one?

--------

I agree on the point that "Scooter" got pinned on obstruction, not the larger charge. That the prosecution couldn't flip him was unfortunate, and the lesson is, as Jon Stewart perceptively pointed out, the mafia paradigm:

"I got pinched. I though you'd get mad."
"No Johnny, You did good. You didn't talk. You ain't a rat."

The only reason Cheney didn't get pinched was because ol' Scooter refused to talk, *successfully* impeding an investigation. And the quid pro quo that followed was nauseating; Bush's pardon can't really be read any other way.

And if you want to point out that Obstruction of Justice is a nebulous and often abused frame of law, I would be the first to agree. But it seemed to be applied *in this case* pretty cleanly.

[Orange Line Special]

I link to some more fc'ing here.

And, guess what: ABC News primary quote source in a smear turns out to be the "validator" for the same smear from the BHO campaign. How incredibly odd.

[PapayaSF]

From the article:

Whether Obama said that this was "all we're doing" is debatable. He said that we need to have enough troops so that we're "not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians," but did not say that troops are doing nothing else.

If I say: "We need X so that we're not just doing Y," doesn't that mean we are just doing Y? Factcheck.org seems to be bending over backwards on that one. Combined with the unmentioned Biden howlers on Hezbollah and the VP's Constitutional duties noted above, I wonder how "non-partisan" they really are.

[Kolohe]

Burr declared himself emperor of the mississippi valley.

Cheney declared himself king of the legislative branch.

I call it a draw.

[zoltan]

Hey John, be polite. When you're splooging all over the boards about Iraq and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, try not to get any of it on the rest of us.

[Gilbert Martin]

"And "outing" a Foggy Bottom proliferation analyst whose husband is publishing columns in the NYT on proliferation strikes me as being something less than treasonous."

Particulary when it was Richard Armitage, not Libby who "outed" her in the first place.

[Gilbert Martin]

"Via Factcheck.org..."

Just because an outfit calls itself "factcheck" doesn't mean it's any actual authority on the facts.