Eye on McCain
Media Matters Action Network in Washington likes to keep an eye on the media that's keeping an eye on John McCain. It has concluded -- with a great deal of supporting evidence, published in a book earlier this year -- that McCain mostly has had a free ride. He's enjoyed a soft press for years, monitors at Media Matters concluded. Today, the organization put out a list of McCain "lies to expect in tonight's debate," and here are a few:
CLAIM: Barack Obama voted to raise taxes on people making just $42,000 a year.
FACTS: Obama did NOT vote to raise taxes on people making $42,000 a year. Any fair observer would agree that in order to accurately say that a politician “voted to raise taxes,” the legislation in question would have to have raised taxes. But this is not the case with the legislation to which this claim refers -- a budget resolution -- and the fact that most people don’t know how such resolutions work helps the lie go unnoticed. . . . What Obama voted for was a budget resolution that, in calculating future revenue, assumed the Bush tax cuts would begin to expire in 2010, as they will under current law. (The lowest level of income affected by the reversion to Clinton-era tax rates is $42,000.) That is the entirety of the basis of McCain’s claim. As Congressional Quarterly wrote in criticizing the claim: “But voting for a congressional budget plan is quite different from voting for a tax increase. Budget resolutions are non-binding, don't have the force of law and don't include precise details on taxes or spending. They're different from legislation that actually raises or lowers tax rates.” . . . Budget resolutions have no effect on anyone’s taxes. They do not raise taxes, and they do not lower taxes. They set targets for government spending. To repeat, one cannot honestly say that a vote for any budget resolution is “a vote to raise taxes,” particularly when the budget resolution in question merely assumes that the Bush tax cuts will proceed exactly as the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress wrote them.
CLAIM: Obama voted to cut off funding for our troops in Iraq.
FACTS: While Obama voted against a war-funding bill in May 2007 because it lacked a timeline for withdrawing troops from Iraq, the month before, Obama voted for a war-funding bill that included such a timeline, and, in fact, Obama has voted 10 times for war-funding bills. . . . As FactCheck.org noted, “McCain (who was absent for the vote) urged the president to veto that funding measure, because of the withdrawal language. President Bush did veto it, and McCain applauded Bush's veto. Based on those facts, it would be literally true to say that ‘McCain urged a veto of funding for our troops.’ ” . . . Morever, by McCain’s standard, he too voted to cut off funding for our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. McCain voted against the Senate version of a March 2007 bill that would have funded the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and would have provided more than $1 billion in additional funds to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
FACTS: As nonpartisan groups and media reports have verified, Obama’s plan is NOT for government takeover of health care.. . . Obama’s plan allows people to keep the insurance they have now or enroll in a plan similar to what members of Congress have, which gives people a choice between a variety of private insurers. Obama’s plan would offer a government plan similar to Medicare, but enrollment in that plan would be completely voluntary. Under Obama’s plan, neither the health care system (as in Canada and Great Britain) nor the health insurance system (as in most European countries) would be “government run.” Even if it was passed in its current form, Obama’s plan would not place a government bureaucrat “between you and your doctor,” as McCain has asserted.
CLAIM: John McCain led the charge to reform Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, while Barack Obama and congressional Democrats opposed such efforts.
FACTS: McCain signed on as a co-sponsor to a 2005 bill that would have increased oversight of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae 16 months after the bill was introduced, when the housing collapse was “well under way,” according to FactCheck.org. . . . McCain’s actions on behalf of the bill amounted to little more than signing on belatedly as a co-sponsor and delivering one short speech on the Senate floor. A New York Times article investigating McCain’s action on the legislation reported that McCain “overstates the role he has played.” . . . The claim that Obama and the Democrats were “silent” on the issue is also misleading. In fact, even though McCain and his fellow Republicans were in control of the Senate at the time, the 2005 bill never made it to the Senate floor. While some key Democrats did express reservations about the bill, particularly over a provision that would have limited the size of the two companies’ portfolios, it’s a stretch to say that Obama and Senate Democrats killed the reform since the Republican-controlled Congress never even brought the bill to a vote.
CLAIM: Obama has a close and meaningful “association” with former ‘60s radical William Ayers.
FACTS: Ayers is neither a close friend nor an adviser of Barack Obama’s. He has no involvement in Obama’s campaign. . . . The “association” of Obama and Ayers, as has been extensively documented, consists of (1) a 1995 meeting of Chicago political figures at which Obama appeared, which took place in Ayers’ home; (2) the fact that the two served together on the board of the Woods Fund, a charitable organization; and (3) the fact that the two attended six meetings of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a program funded by the late Walter Annenberg, a longtime Republican donor and Richard Nixon’s ambassador to Great Britain. Obama chaired the group’s board, and Ayers attended the meetings to brief the board on education issues. But as The New York Times reported on October 4, “the two men [Obama and Ayers] do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called ‘somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.’ ” Indeed, Obama was not in any way involved in Ayers’ actions in the late ’60s and early ’70s; Obama was between 8 and 11 years old at the time of the bombings in which Ayers said he participated as part of the Weather Underground.
CLAIM: Obama is the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate.
FACTS: There are many ratings of members of Congress; only one -- and one that used a subjective methodology -- found Obama to be the Senate’s most liberal member in 2007. . . . The source for the claim is the National Journal’s 2007 Vote Ratings. Unlike other ranking systems that use all or most votes cast, this ranking is based only on 99 “key” Senate votes selected by National Journal reporters and editors. Among the votes Obama cast that earned him National Journal's "most liberal senator" label were those to implement the 9-11 Commission's homeland security recommendations, reauthorize and expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program, support embryonic stem-cell research, and oppose the repeal of a federal minimum wage. By contrast, a study by political science professors Keith Poole and Jeff Lewis that used every non-unanimous vote cast in the Senate in 2007 to determine relative ideology -- in other words, not a subjective assessment of which votes are “key” -- placed Obama in a tie for the ranking of 10th most liberal senator. American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Norman J. Ornstein has also criticized the National Journal's rating of Obama, calling it "pretty ridiculous."
Comments
Well ... Media has given OBAMA A FREE PASS ...Makes me sick no one will make him answer.
Here are just a few facts ...Way to go Sarah !!! About time someone had the guts to bring all his radical ties up and make him answerto them. All we want is truth and tell me if he has nothing to hide as he says why did he lie about association with ayers... what about rezco ...what about the pastor which if anyone has read the senior thesis of his wife you would see she shares the veiws of the pastor .you can not tell me that he sat in the pews of a church for 20 years and didnt realize what the pastor was preaching. I for one am glad Sarah has the guts to raise these questions because the mainstream media sure hasn't. and I did by the way watch the special on Obama and his radical ties Very scary. But honestly what I find more scarey is the ad the Obama camp put out it was of little children singing the praises of Obama....then today on you tube there is the Obama Chant by students...this stuff I find scarey ..that is what they do where dictators rule .....Is that what we want for our country ????? Wake up America.. and to Mr.Obama if you are so innocent as you say well then quit the lies answer truthfully ..the truth will set you free .But do not think that we Americans are that stupid to accept "i hardly knew him" or I didn't listen" We just want the truth.
Posted by: tammy | October 7, 2008 5:49 PM
McCain - Free Passes as the Son of an Admiral
Article 134 - Adultery
Article 64- Fraternization (having enlisted build his deck)
Article 92, Uniform Code of Military Justice, Failure to Obey a Lawful Regulation (Political Activities in Uniform for Reagan)
Need I continue? Iran-Contra, Voting against making it a felony to bomb an abortion Clinic, against the Bubble law,
Keating 5 and
NOT VOTING FOR THE NEW GI BILL OR ANY BILL AT ALL DURING 2007!
I'm a Veteran and you are?
Posted by: SueMVeteran for Obama! | October 7, 2008 6:14 PM
Tammy, have you ever heard of a spell check? Do you know how to use capital letters and punctuation? Seriously, my six-year-old niece has better writing skills than you.
If you're going to accuse the media of giving Barack Obama a "FREE PASS" (your emphasis), then you should hold also hold the media accountable for not demanding that Sarah Palin hold a press conference. Even lightweight Dan Quayle was able to hold one after he was chosen by Bush 41. What is Sarah afraid of?
Posted by: MCG | October 7, 2008 6:22 PM
Chanting freaks you out, huh? Does "Drill baby, drill" give you the warm and fuzzies then?
Posted by: studentandthinker | October 8, 2008 8:22 PM
I am simply not surprised anymore with what the McCain campaign comes up with. Soon they are going to start claiming that Obama is the antichrist. Throughout this campaign, they have managed to stoke fears that Obama is muslim (like simply being one is a dangerous thing, but the fact that Obama is actually christian is not known to many people), link him to all sorts of associations with crooks, sometimes simply on the basis of Obama being in the same room with a person, lie about his tax plan for the middle class, continue to charge that the media is biased (to innoculate their lies). Now they claim Barack Obama is associated with the Weathermen (Obama was 8 when they were active!). There is a difference between an casual acquaintance, and an undeniable influence on someone's decisions. Yes, indeed Obama has gone into attack mode as well, but his attacks are based on far more relevant associations like McCain's deep links with Lobbyists (the McCain campaign is both financially supported and staffed by lobbies, and he has demonstrated his culpability to corrupt commercial influence thru the Keating 5 scandal), McCain's dangerous healthcare plan (taxing your healthcare benefits to give you healthcare tax credits), his proposal to open up social security for investment decisions (good idea, but also adding considerable risk to people's security net), and McCain's behavior (claiming that the fundamentals of our economy is strong, and then messing up the bailout talks for political gain, his impulsive my-way-or-the-highway approach to foreign policy, his irresponsible selection of Palin), his tactics of dividing the electorate on choices that do not matter to the challenges we are facing today (guns, abortion, gay marriage etc), and his unethical attempts at voter caging across swing states to disqualify democrat votes. So while both campaigns have gone negative, we need to take things into perspective, and understand the difference between mud slinging versus relevant criticism, they are very different things. I have given up trying to convince the hard-core right wingers, and racially prejudiced people, because these are a group that have been completely swayed by their own preconceived notions about a candidate they have not even tried to read up about. This group has been hugely affected by John McCain's systematic strike at the media establishment (so they can say anything they want), to believe only what John McCain is saying, and have been programmed to allow their prejudice to claim that Obama is not experienced enough. TRUTH IS, YOU CAN HIRE EXPERIENCE AND YOU CAN BUY KNOWLEDGE, BUT THE ULTIMATE CRITERIA FOR PRESIDENT IS JUDGMENT, STRENGTH OF IDEAS, AND THE FUNDAMENTAL MORAL COMPASS THAT GUIDES THEM. Throughout this campaign, it is clear to me that one is out for personal 'victory', and the other has set his sights much higher - on American excellence, on greatness. I am hoping that the Independent voters and undecided voters, who tend to be more deliberate, and inquisitive in their considerations would be able to make these critical distinctions.
Posted by: roarks | October 8, 2008 9:12 PM