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Blogs Eric Reads
Suspension? What Suspension?
When John McCain says he’s suspending his campaign, here’s what he really means:
- Sending campaign advisers Nancy Pfotenhauer and Tucker Bounds on FOX to attack Obama, with Pfotenhauer following up with a Washington Times live chat.
- Continuing to run television ads in battleground states.
- Keeping swing state campaign offices open throughout the country.
- Holding interviews wtih ABC, NBC, and CBS.
So really, other than trying to wiggle his way (and Sarah Palin’s way) out of the debates, it’s just business as usual. My friends, that’s not Straight Talk™ we can believe in.
McCain Campaign Lies to Media During Conference Call Complaining About the Media Calling Them Liars
You just can’t make this stuff up:
Sen. John McCain’s top campaign aides convened a conference call today to complain of being called “liars.” They pressed the media to scrutinize specific elements of Sen. Barack Obama’s record.
But the call was so rife with simple, often inexplicable misstatements of fact that it may have had the opposite effect: to deepen the perception, dangerous to McCain, that he and his aides have little regard for factual accuracy.
…
“Any time the Obama campaign is criticized at any level, the critics are immediately derided as liars,” Schmidt told reporters.But as he went on to list a series of stories he thought reporters should be writing about Obama and Biden, in almost every instance he got the details wrong.
…
Asked about the series of errors, McCain aides could not provide evidence to back up Schmidt’s assertions.One McCain aide, Michael Goldfarb, said Politico was “quibbling with ridiculously small details when the basic things are completely right.”
Another, Brian Rogers, responded more directly:
“You are in the tank,” he e-mailed.
I guess John McCain really has been talking to Karl Rove. The lies will never stop.
Pathological
Sarah Palin just can’t stop lying:
In her first solo campaign rally outside of Alaska, Gov. Sarah Palin drew an enthusiastic crowd at the Pony Express Pavilion Saturday and returned to a familiar refrain about the “Bridge to Nowhere.”
Palin has come under fire in recent days for misleadingly saying she told Congress “thanks but no thanks,” refusing an earmark for a bridge to a sparsely inhabited island in her home state. Independent groups and media fact-checkers have said Palin advocated for the federal earmark before opposing it, only ended after Congress had essentially killed it, and kept the $223 million for the appropriation after the project was killed.
What a liar.
There’s also this:
Nevada Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki said on stage that 10,000 people were in the crowd, but parks officials said the pavilion held only 3,500 people.
Which sure sounds a lot like this:
McCain aide Kimmie Lipscomb told reporters on Sept. 10 that an outdoor rally in Fairfax City, Virginia, drew 23,000 people, attributing the crowd estimate to a fire marshal.
Fairfax City Fire Marshal Andrew Wilson said his office did not supply that number to the campaign and could not confirm it. Wilson, in an interview, said the fire department does not monitor attendance at outdoor events.
In recent days, journalists attending the rallies have been raising questions about the crowd estimates with the campaign. In a story on Sept. 11 about Palin’s attraction for some Virginia women voters, Washington Post reporter Marc Fisher estimated the crowd to be 8,000, not the 23,000 cited by the campaign.
Even if they wanted to stop, they couldn’t. Then again, they don’t want to stop because winning is all that matters to them, no matter the cost.
Fighting Back
It’s not 2004 anymore, folks. Team Obama is not going to let the Republicans get away with making shit up. Now that’s change I can believe in.
(via)
Clinton Lied About NAFTA Support
I wrote yesterday about the inconsistencies between Sen. Clinton’s campaign speeches and the newly-released records of her time as First Lady. One of the biggest issues–and one that might have had a huge impact had the Clinton papers been released prior to the Ohio primary–was NAFTA.
On February 24, just before the March 4 primary which included Ohio, the Clinton campaign issued this “fact check” regarding NAFTA:
Hillary criticized Sen. Obama for sending out a mailer that claimed she said NAFTA was a “boon to the economy” when she never did. Today, the University of Pennsylvania’s FactCheck.org concluded “We do judge that the Obama campaign is wrong to quote Clinton as using words she never uttered, and it has produced little evidence that she ever had strong praise of any sort for NAFTA’s economic benefits.”
Also, Hillary has been critical of NAFTA long before she started running for President. For example, here’s Hillary in March 2000:
What happened to NAFTA I think was we inherited an agreement that we didn’t get everything we should have got out of it in my opinion. I think the NAFTA agreement was flawed. The problem is we have to go back and figure out how we are going to fix that.
Well, now that we’ve had a chance to look at all the facts, it turns out that not only did Hillary Clinton support NAFTA in 1993, but she stopped by a closed-door briefing to encourage others to do so as well.
“It wasn’t a drop-by it was organized around her participation,” said one attendee [of the briefing]. “Her remarks were totally pro-NAFTA and what a good thing it would be for the economy. There was no equivocation for her support for NAFTA at the time. Folks were pleased that she came by. If this is a still a question about what Hillary’s position when she was First Lady, she was totally supportive of NAFTA… For people who worked hard to pass NAFTA and who support the importance of markets opening for the economy in the long term, they’re very upset. A number of the women who were there are very upset. You need to have some integrity in your position. The Clintons when Bill Clinton was president took a moderate position on trade for Democrats. For her to repudiate that now seems pretty phony.”
Recalls a second attendee, “they were looking for women in international trade who supported NAFTA. Senator Clinton came by at the end. And of course she asked for our support and help in passing NAFTA.”
Women who attended that event, the second attendee says, have been incredulous to see Clinton distance herself from the trade agreement as she campaigns today. “They’re all saying, ‘What’s this all about?’ We all heard it firsthand.” She says Clinton isn’t being honest with voters today.
Hillary Clinton lied. She lied when she said, “I have been a critic of NAFTA from the very beginning.” She lied in Ohio and she’s lying in Pennsylvania. She lied blatantly. She lied deliberately. And I’m willing to bet that she’ll lie again.
ThinkProgress Fact-Checks the State of the Union
Those of you who watched the State of the Union address on Monday night may be wondering, “Wow, are all of those things that the president said really true?” By now, of course, you should have already realized that the answer to that question is a resounding No.
If you’re having trouble discerning fact from fiction, the fine folks over at ThinkProgress have been fact-checking the State of the Union sentence-by-sentence. Some examples:
Bush said: “Over the past 7 years, we have increased funding for veterans by more than 95 percent. As we increase funding, we must also reform our veterans system to meet the needs of a new war and a new generation.”
FACT — 1.8 MILLION VETERANS LACK HEALTH INSURANCE: “The new study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, estimated that in 2004 nearly 1.8 million veterans were uninsured and unable to get care in veterans’ facilities.” [New York Times, 11/9/07]
…
Bush said: ” The Congress must pass liability protection for companies believed to have assisted in the efforts to defend America. We have had ample time for debate. The time to act is now.”FACT — IMMUNITY ABSOLVES TELECOM COMPANIES OF VIOLATING THE LAW: Immunity “would wipe out a series of pending lawsuits alleging violations of privacy rights by telecommunications companies that provided telephone records, summaries of e-mail traffic and other information to the government after Sept. 11, 2001, without receiving court warrants.” [Washington Post 10/18/07]
…
Bush said: “American troops are shifting from leading operations, to partnering with Iraqi forces, and, eventually, to a protective overwatch mission.”FACT — IRAQIS ANTICIPATE TAKING CONTROL OF SECURITY BY 2018:
Iraqi defense minister Abdul Qadir “that his nation would not be able to take full responsibility for its internal security until 2012, nor be able on its own to defend Iraq’s borders from external threat until at least 2018.” [New York Times, 1/15/08]FACT — CORRUPTION AND SECTARIANISM PLAGUE SECURITY FORCES: “Rampant corruption and lingering sectarianism” within Iraqi security forces are “major hurdles that Iraqi defense and police leaders must overcome in order to take responsibility for Iraq’s security,” according to Gen. James Dubik, head of the Multi-National Security Transition Command in Iraq. “[S]hortages of key personnel, equipment, weaponry and logistical capabilities mean that Iraq’s security forces will probably require U.S. military support for as long as a decade.” [Washington Post, 1/18/08]
Now, healthcare, FISA, and Iraq are some of Bush’s big-ticket political issues, so he’s obviously not going to stray very far from Republican talking points on any of those, so let’s take a look at what ThinkProgress has found on some less divisive issues:
Bush said: “Tonight the armies of compassion continue the march to a new day in the Gulf Coast. America honors the strength and resilience of the people of this region. We reaffirm our pledge to help them build stronger and better than before. And tonight I am pleased to announce that in April we will host this year’s North American Summit of Canada, Mexico, and the United States in the great city of New Orleans.”
FACT — KATRINA HAS SLIPPED FROM BUSH’S RADAR: In the 2007 State of the Union, there wasn’t a single mention of Hurricane Katrina or the ongoing Gulf Coast reconstruction effort. [SOTU, 1/23/07]
…
Bush said: “I have submitted judicial nominees who will rule by the letter of the law, not the whim of the gavel. Many of these nominees are being unfairly delayed. They are worthy of confirmation, and the Senate should give each of them a prompt up-or-down vote.”FACT — DEMOCRATIC-LED CONGRESS HAS CONFIRMED MORE OF BUSH’S JUDGES THAN DURING GOP CONGRESS: Despite the Republicans’ loss of control of the Senate, 40 of Bush’s judges won confirmation this year, more than in the previous three years when Republicans held the majority. [LA Times, 1/2/08]
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Much more can be found at ThinkProgress.
New Study: White House Lied During March to War
A new study by two nonpartisan organizations, the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism, confirms what most of us have already accepted: the Bush Administration lied to the American people in order to justify the Iraq War. So what makes this study so special? Well, it turns out that they didn’t like to us once or twice or twenty times. No, in the two-year period between September 2001 and September 2003, according to this study, they lied to us 935 times.
The study concluded that the statements “were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.”
…
The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.
…Named in the study along with Bush were top officials of the administration during the period studied: Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.
Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq’s links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell’s 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida.
For those of you who can’t quite wrap your head around the magnitude of lies we’ve been told, here’s a timeline of the 935 lies that lead up to the Iraq War.
Yes, America, we’ve been had at the cost of 4000 American soldiers and who knows how many Iraqi soldiers and civilians. To see the specific lies, you can read the study online and search their database of lies.