Continued from The lies Presidential candidates say, and the facts that prove it Part 2...

“There are 300,000 babies born deformed every year in this country because of women who are alcoholics while they're carrying those children to term.”

In fact the number is nowhere near that. I mean not even by a factor of 10. According to the Surgeon General the number of birth defects is 8,300 in total. Even is you take all births with complications from alcohol you can only get 40,000. But it doesn’t sound as important as 300,000 now does it?

But I will end this with a few Pant-on-Fire lies. There is nothing even with a glimmer in truth in the following statements. I can only imagine they were said to fool the American public into supporting the candidates, and nothing else. Thank goodness some check on these things.

“Edwards says if Congress won't pass universal health care, he'll tell Congress: "I'm going to use my power as president to take your health care away from you." – John Edwards

A complete fabrication. Can’t happen. How many donated money and will voter for him because of that lie?

“I'm probably one of the four or five best-known Americans in the world.” – Rudy Giuliani

Rudy may be popular, and New York City is well known but get serious. That’s just self-aggrandizement. Seriously.

“In 1972, we had a 179,000 human beings in jail in this country. Today, it's 2.3-million, and 70 percent of them are black, African-American.” – Mike Gravel

What is this supposed to mean? Besides being a huge lie, it seems to fall into stereotypes that are base at best. The fact is that 60% of those in jail today are White or non-African American. I don’t know who Gravel is trying to impress here, maybe the KKK. But is suppose they might just be the only ones that are interested in a lie of such grand and ridiculous proportions.

You want to know more? Want to see where candidates are just saying anything to get your vote? Want to see how far some are willing to push, or outright hide, the truth to become the most powerful elected official in America? Want to know how to protect yourself from the worst of the bunch. Check out PolitiFact. I will be.

**This can also be seen at Presidential Race Blog, where I am a contributing author.**

Labels: John Edwards, Mike Gravel, PolitiFact, Rudy Giuliani, Senator Clinton, Senator McCain, Senator Obama

Continued from The lies Presidential candidates say, and the facts that prove it Part 1...

Take for example Senator Obama. In taking on the illegal immigration issue, the senator needed to have a strong sounding soundbite. The facts must have not been juicy enough because his quote is just wrong.

“Right now, an employer has more of a chance of getting hit by lightning than be prosecuted for hiring an undocumented worker. That has to change.”

But that’s just one item. How about playing on the feeling of African Americans that they are not being taken serious in politics?

“If African-Americans vote their percentage of the population in 2008, “Mississippi is suddenly a Democratic state.”

Sounds impressive right? Except its absolutely wrong. Even doing highly generous math, applied to every southern state, it just won’t create the outcome zealously stated By Senator Obama. But I bet it swayed a few voters.

Don’t think that I’m just picking on Democrats. Republicans are just as bad. Take for example Rudy Giuliani.

“The crime decline in the United States would be fairly small if it wasn’t for the crime decline in New York City.”

Sounds impressive doesn’t it. I mean it makes you think that Rudy made an impact on the whole nation. That he is obviously a strong leader that can handle the whole nation. But it’s completely false. As big as NYC is, it’s not that big. And crime dropped in the entire nation. That had nothing to do with Rudy. But what a soundbite.

How about Senator McCain? His credibility is unquestioned right? He has been out there telling the truth constantly, or has he? Well, not really. Like in his assertion that

“We spent $223-million on a bridge in Alaska to an island with 50 people on it.”

Senator McCain implies he is a fiscally responsible man. While that is true, and the Congress has been comatose when it hasn’t been screwing up, he knows this one is a lie. While the soundbite sounds great, Senator McCain should know that the pork earmark for this bridge was removed. The bridge has never been made, nor will it. And the money for Alaska went elsewhere.

And just for a bit of fun, and obvious dislike, I want to include a lie of immense proportions. I don’t Like Joe Biden, and I won’t hide that fact. Yet that does nothing to take away the epic lie about birth defects caused by alcoholism in this nation.

Concluded in Part 3...

Labels: John Edwards, Mike Gravel, PolitiFact, Rudy Giuliani, Senator Clinton, Senator McCain, Senator Obama

So everybody knows that politicians lie. Whether it’s a local assemblyman or a Presidential candidate, we all know that at least some of the time they all tell untruths. But when are they lying, and how much of what they say is a shade of grey?

I recently found a site that can help decipher the truth and facts in the midst of a popular or catchy soundbite. PolitiFact covers everything from true statements, to pants-on-fire outright lies. Here are a few of my favorites (from Barely True to Pans-on-Fire with no particular emphasis on political party).

A popular soundbite from Mitt Romney accuses Senator Clinton of having no experience

“She hasn't run a corner store. She hasn't run a state. She hasn't run a city. She has never run anything.”

Of course it fails to account for her work while First Lady or as a lawyer. This is a barely true statement, but we don’t really know exactly what she did in the law firm or while First Lady. Which leads me to a favorite quote by Senator Clinton.

“All of the records, as far as I know, about what we did with health care, those are already available.”

Well yes they are sort of available. Except that President Clinton has the right to question anything being presented to the public, like all Presidents do. That means he reviews items first. Thus he has not ‘stopped’ anything from being published, he just isn’t moving things along with any need for speed. It’s all how you word it.

Speaking of wording things to get a positive response from particular groups, how about the green/global warming crowd. Here is a group that has gotten a lot of attention since the Al Gore film. But Mike Gravel has no qualms about mixing fact with the feasibly impossible.

“If we manufactured 5-million of these 2.5-meg windmills across the country, we could electrify the entire nation — the entire nation.”

While that could handle the load, it is not realistic that all the mills would capture consistent wind, and creating a electricity grid to handle, store, and distribute the electricity is unrealistic. But doesn’t it sound great?

But how about straight out lies? Comments made just to get a quick vote or shift polls even thought anyone who checks the facts will find out that this is just smoke being blown up our collective… well you know.

Continued in Part 2...

Labels: John Edwards, Mike Gravel, PolitiFact, Rudy Giuliani, Senator Clinton, Senator McCain, Senator Obama

I was writing about Stephen Colbert recently at Presidential Race Blog, and I wanted to say a bit more about him. The fact he is running for President is a statement. And that statement is making an impact.

Already in a poll of potential voters Mr. Colbert has gained better numbers (he received 2.3 percent of the vote with a 5 percent margin of error) than Gov. Bill Richardson (2.1 percent), Rep. Dennis Kucinich (2.1 percent) and former Sen. Mike Gravel (less than 1 percent). Considering the margin of error that potentially places him just behind former Sen. John Edwards (12 percent) and easily the closely ranked Sen. Joe Biden (2.7 percent).

On the Republican side, Mr. Colbert is running on both ballots, he had less than 1% of the potential voters, but again Ron Paul is hardly a frontrunner either. Even Senator John McCain has only 10 percent of potential votes.

Both the Democratic and Republican parties in South Carolina say that Mr. Colbert could run. In fact,

“Mr. Werner said, “our executive council would have a hard time not putting him on the ballot.’’

And it gets more serious when you consider Colbert’s viewers tend to be young, white, educated, and male. Their median age is 37 and there’s a 60/40 male-female split. So far this year, he’s drawn a nightly audience that averages 1.3 million viewers nationwide, 874,000 of them in the 18-49 year-old demographic. The U.S. Census bureau says South Carolina has about 1.4 percent of the nation’s population, which would suggest that Colbert has about 12,200 viewers there.

Greater minds than my own have found that Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, and Mike Huckabee, and yes Ron Paul too, are all potentially doomed by Mr. Colbert making any attempt to further his chances in South Carolina. Isn’t that interesting?

So what do we take from this?

The current political landscape is a horrible mess with as much truthiness coming from pundits and satirists as from the candidates themselves. There is reason for concern. Because this highlights how little many believe in the ability of our politicians in providing a cohesive and functional answer to the problems of the nation.

I want Mr. Colbert to get a delegate in either or both parties. I want him to be able to shake the stolid and grave foundations that both political parties are firmly entrenched in. I want there to be a question of ‘Who the hell did that happen’ in the media.

The point is that what we see politics today is little better than 30 seconds of showmanship. At least Stephen Colbert provides the honesty of absolute incredulity. That makes him more consistent and honest than any politician in decades perhaps.
If Mr. Colbert is able to get a delegate, or even a better than 10% vote total, the message will be clear. Politics has devolved as badly as major news media. This will be confirmation of how substance has been thrown to the wayside, with showmanship the guide to future elections. And with that, the degradation of the American quality of life will be apparent.

Sometimes it takes a slap in the face, or a joke in the worst of taste to wake people up about what is before them. I don’t think that is the intention, nor the fact, of what Mr. Stephen Colbert has done. But it’s close enough to both, that perhaps it will make a difference.

Maybe.

Labels: Chris Dodd, Dennis Kucinich, Gov. Bill Richardson, John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Presidential candidates, Presidential Race Blog, Ron Paul, Stephan Colbert