We published several tidbits here on The Wire during last night’s presidential debate. Our full article contains a few more misleading statements and falsehoods that we needed a little more time to research. Check it out on our main site:
FactChecking Debate No. 2
October 8, 2008
Nonsense in Nashville
Stories by Lori Robertson
Director, FactCheck.org
Health Care Fines for Small Businesses?
McCain said that Obama’s health care plan would mandate that “small businesses” provide coverage for their employees and would fine them if they failed to do so. Actually, Obama’s health care plan, posted on his Web site, says: “Small businesses will be exempt from this requirement.” McCain previously used this charge in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention.
Dubious Health Savings Claim
Obama said that his health care plan would cut costs, saving $2,500 a year per family. When we asked health care experts about this claim earlier this year, they were quite skeptical. M.I.T.’s Jonathan Gruber told us, “I know zero credible evidence to support that conclusion.” Obama has also said on the campaign trail that more than half of the savings would come from the use of electronic health records, a major part of his plan to cut health costs.
Pakistan Attack
McCain charged that Obama has said he would “attack Pakistan.” What he really said, on Aug. 1, 2007, was: “It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”
As we noted in February, when Sen. Hillary Clinton criticized Obama for his remarks, that’s pretty much what the U.S.
Biden on Hezbollah, and other late debate goodies
In today’s Washington Post, Michael Dobbs, a.k.a. The Fact Checker, writes about a few more stumbles from the debate, including a couple items that we didn’t have in our story on Friday.
Dobbs, a former diplomatic reporter, says Sen. Joe Biden was wrong when he said the U.S. and France “kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon.” He was correct in saying that there was talk of sending NATO forces to the country in 2006.
The Full Fact-Check of the V.P. Debate
We posted several items to The Wire last night as Gov. Sarah Palin and Sen. Joe Biden were debating. But in the wee hours of Friday, we also posted a full article on the misleading statements and factual errors we found in their exchange. See our story on the v.p. debate at FactCheck.org:
FactChecking Biden-Palin Debate
October 3, 2008
The candidates were not 100 percent accurate. To say the least.
Who’s to Blame for the Financial Crisis?
Two new ads point fingers: MoveOn.org pins the blame on Sen. John McCain’s advisers. The McCain-Palin campaign says it’s Obama and Democrats in Congress. We say both are wrong.
See our full article, posted on our main site, FactCheck.org, for more on these misleading TV spots:
Who Caused the Economic Crisis?
October 1, 2008
Health Care Deregulation?
Biden said that McCain wrote in a magazine article that he wanted to do for the health care industry what deregulation had done for Wall Street. That’s taking McCain’s words out of context, as we’ve written before.
Biden is referring to a phrase from a journal article under McCain’s name that said he would reduce regulation of health insurance “as we have done over the last decade in banking.” But the full context shows McCain was talking specifically about a proposal to allow the sale and purchase of health insurance across state lines.
McCain Mentions Us
It wasn’t exactly in a favorable light, per se.
On NPR’s “Morning Edition” today, anchor Steve Inskeep asked Sen. John McCain about balancing honor and winning in a campaign that Inskeep called “brutal.” In their conversation, Inskeep asked about a particular ad that we found to be “false”:
Inskeep: Have you come back to your advisers at any point and said, “That ad,” like for example the ad that ran with your name on it saying that Barack Obama supported comprehensive sex education for primary school students,
Not Coming Clean on Coal
Summary
The McCain-Palin campaign is airing radio ads in four states claiming that the Obama-Biden ticket "oppose[s] clean coal." That's false:
Obama's energy plan, which he began promoting well over a year ago, calls for investing in "low emissions coal plants" and creating "5 'first-of-a-kind' commercial scale coal-fired plants with carbon capture and sequestration." His position in support of clean coal has been clear.
The ad's claim rests solely on a remark Biden made when questioned while shaking hands on a rope line in Ohio.