{"id":2184,"date":"2008-09-27T13:00:21","date_gmt":"2008-09-27T17:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/?p=2184"},"modified":"2011-03-19T11:36:38","modified_gmt":"2011-03-19T15:36:38","slug":"fact-check","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/2008\/09\/fact-check\/","title":{"rendered":"Fact Check"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>FactCheck.org has a great <a href=\"http:\/\/www.factcheck.org\/elections-2008\/factchecking_debate_no_1.html\">analysis of the debate<\/a> last night. <\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s just the Summary for a quick perusal &#8211; but you <em>really<\/em> have to read the analysis:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>Obama said McCain adviser Henry Kissinger backs talks with Iran \u00e2\u20ac\u0153without preconditions,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but McCain disputed that. In fact, Kissinger did recently call for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153high level\u00e2\u20ac\u009d talks with Iran starting at the secretary of state level and said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I do not believe that we can make conditions.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d After the debate the McCain campaign issued a statement quoting Kissinger as saying he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t favor presidential talks with Iran.<\/li>\n<li>Obama denied voting for a bill that called for increased taxes on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153people\u00e2\u20ac\u009d making as little as $42,000 a year, as McCain accused him of doing. McCain was right, though only for single taxpayers. A married couple would have had to make $83,000 to be affected by the vote, and anyway no such increase is in Obama\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tax plan.<\/li>\n<li>McCain and Obama contradicted each other on what Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen said about troop withdrawals. Mullen said a time line for withdrawal could be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153very dangerous\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but was not talking specifically about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Obama\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s plan,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as McCain maintained.<\/li>\n<li>McCain tripped up on one of his signature issues \u00e2\u20ac\u201c special appropriation \u00e2\u20ac\u0153earmarks.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He said they had \u00e2\u20ac\u0153tripled in the last five years,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d when in fact they have decreased sharply.<\/li>\n<li>Obama claimed Iraq \u00e2\u20ac\u0153has\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a $79 billion surplus. It once was projected to be as high as that. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s now down to less than $60 billion.<\/li>\n<li>McCain repeated his overstated claim that the U.S. pays $700 billion a year for oil to hostile nations. Imports are running at about $536 billion this year, and a third of it comes from Canada, Mexico and the U.K.<\/li>\n<li>Obama said 95 percent of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the American people\u00e2\u20ac\u009d would see a tax cut under his proposal. The actual figure is 81 percent of households.<\/li>\n<li>Obama mischaracterized an aspect of McCain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s health care plan, saying \u00e2\u20ac\u0153employers\u00e2\u20ac\u009d would be taxed on the value of health benefits provided to workers. Employers wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t, but the workers would. McCain also would grant workers up to a $5,000 tax credit per family to cover health insurance.<\/li>\n<li>McCain misrepresented Obama&#8217;s plan by claiming he&#8217;d be &#8220;handing the health care system over to the federal government.&#8221; Obama would expand some government programs but would allow people to keep their current plans or chose from private ones, as well.<\/li>\n<li>McCain claimed Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower had drafted a letter of resignation from the Army to be sent in case the 1944 D-Day landing at Normandy turned out to be a failure. Ike prepared a letter taking responsibility, but he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mention resigning.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/flickr.com\/photos\/27403767@N00\/2451875761\" title=\"I Wanna Be Erected!\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/09\/2451875761_6bcffd710e.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s just one example:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Boeing Boasts<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>McCain was went too far when he said, &quot;I saved the taxpayers $6.8 billion by fighting a contract that was negotiated between Boeing and DOD that was completely wrong. And we fixed it and we killed it.&quot; <\/p>\n<p>McCain <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/2008\/03\/04\/john-mccain-boeing-face-markets-cx_ll_0304autofacescan04.html\">certainly did lead a fight<\/a> to kill the contract, and the effort ended in prison sentences for defense contractors. But the contract isn&#8217;t exactly &quot;fixed&quot; yet. In fact, questions have been raised about the role McCain has played in helping a Boeing rival secure the new contract.<\/p>\n<p>After the original Boeing contract to supply refueling airliners was nixed in 2003, the bidding process was reopened. And in early 2007, Boeing rival EADS\/Airbus won the bid the second time around. But Boeing filed a protest about the way the bids were processed, and the Government Accountability Office <a href=\"http:\/\/www.governmentexecutive.com\/pdfs\/061808cd1.pdf\">released<\/a> a report that found in Boeing&#8217;s favor. In the summary of GAO&#8217;s investigation, the organization said there were &quot;significant errors&quot; with the bid process and that the directions given to Boeing were &quot;misleading.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Further, the <em>New York Times<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/06\/19\/business\/19tanker.html?partner=rssnyt\">reported<\/a> that &quot;McCain&rsquo;s top advisers, including a cochairman of his presidential campaign, were lobbyists for EADS. And Mr. McCain had written to the Defense Department, urging it to ignore a trade dispute between the United States and Europe over whether Airbus received improper subsidies.&quot; A liberal campaign finance group ran an ad hitting McCain on the connections back in July and our colleagues at PolitiFact <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politifact.com\/truth-o-meter\/statements\/574\/\">found<\/a> their attacks to be true, saying: &quot;Center for Responsive Politics prepared a report for PolitiFact that backs [the charge] up. U.S. employees of EADS\/Airbus have contributed $15,700 in this election cycle to McCain&rsquo;s campaign.&quot;\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/flickr.com\/photos\/15215510@N00\/109471103\" title=\"Too Many!\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/09\/109471103_099ea0c3af.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>FactCheck.org has a great analysis of the debate last night. Here&#8217;s just the Summary for a quick perusal &#8211; but you really have to read the analysis: Obama said McCain adviser Henry Kissinger backs talks with Iran \u00e2\u20ac\u0153without preconditions,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but McCain disputed that. In fact, Kissinger did recently call for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153high level\u00e2\u20ac\u009d talks with Iran starting at the secretary of state level and said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I do not believe that we can make conditions.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d After the debate the McCain campaign issued&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/2008\/09\/fact-check\/\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,17,5,3],"tags":[3730,5138,2450,5140,4769,458,5137,99,637,5136,5139,151],"class_list":["post-2184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-armchair-activism","category-alien-nation","category-culture","category-politics","tag-barack-obama","tag-boeing","tag-dwight-d-eisenhower","tag-eadsairbus","tag-factcheckorg","tag-healthcare","tag-henry-kissinger","tag-iraq","tag-john-mccain","tag-mike-mullen","tag-presidential-debate","tag-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2184"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4737,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2184\/revisions\/4737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}