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2012 Players Guide
FactCheck Mailbag
FactCheck Mailbag, Week of Jan. 24-30.
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Viral Spiral
Author Archives: Brooks Jackson
Mangled Facts in Manchester
Truth took a punch or two at the first of two GOP debates before New Hampshire’s critical presidential primary. Romney, talking about taxes, said federal, state and local government consume 37 percent of the economy today compared with only 27 percent when John F. Kennedy was president. In fact …
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Posted in Articles
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Our Year-end Appeal
Update: As of Jan. 1, our total stood at $83,607. We will be processing additional late-arriving paper checks in the days to come, and will update again in a few days when we make our regular quarterly financial report. Thanks to all who made year-end donations. Your gifts will make …
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Posted in The FactCheck Wire
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The Final Iowa Debate
The final Republican presidential debate in advance of the Jan. 3 first-in-the-nation Iowa party caucuses produced a few claims we found worthy of quibbling over. Gingrich challenged Bachmann’s factual accuracy regarding the former speaker’s record on abortion — but we found Bachmann was mostly correct. On the other hand, Bachmann …
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Posted in The FactCheck Wire
Tagged campaign 2012, Jon Huntsman, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul
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More Baloney at ABC/Yahoo! Debate
False and misleading claims were flying again at the latest Republican presidential candidates’ debate in Iowa. Romney falsely claimed that no president before Obama had cut Medicare, and that Obama favored pre-1967 borders for Israel. Gingrich said he opposed cap-and-trade, even though …
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Posted in Articles
Tagged Election 2010, Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry
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Gingrich On Climate Change
Newt Gingrich went too far when he claimed that “I’ve never favored cap-and-trade.” It’s true he’s never favored the approach taken by Democrats, but he said in 2007 that he would “strongly support” cap-and-trade if combined with “a tax-incentive program for investing in the solutions.” Furthermore, Gingrich said in House …
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Posted in The FactCheck Wire
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Pre-Thanksgiving Leftovers
The latest GOP debate was thin on memorable moments or major factual bloopers, but we do have some leftover claims to dispute before we shut down for the Thanksgiving holiday. We wouldn’t want anybody’s turkey dinner to be spoiled by worries that terrorists have come over the border with Mexico, …
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Posted in The FactCheck Wire
Tagged Herman Cain, illegal immigrants (26), Iran, Keystone Pipeline, Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, Republican debate
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Romney’s Ad ‘Deceitful & Dishonest’?
The Obama campaign is in a lather over Mitt Romney’s first TV spot, calling it “a deceitful and dishonest attack” because of an edited quote from 2008. That’s a matter of opinion. We find a far more consequential issue is the ad’s exaggerated claim that the new health care law …
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Posted in The FactCheck Wire
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‘Government-Run’ Nonsense
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce puts a new twist on a tired old falsehood about “government-run health care” in one of its new ads attacking Democratic lawmakers. We noted other dubious claims as well. An ad against Sen. Jon Tester in Montana accuses him of favoring “government-run health care” — …
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Posted in The FactCheck Wire
Tagged energy (38), health insurance (74), medicare, taxes (91), U.S. Chamber of Commerce
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Junkie Math
All sides agree that the federal government borrows too much, so why exaggerate? In the latest example, a national TV ad shows an actor portraying a drug addict and claiming that the U.S. is borrowing 41 cents of every dollar spent, which isn’t true. As shown in this chart, which …
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