With a handful of days to go before Election Day, the Republican Federal Committee of Pennsylvania is going after Sen. Barack Obama with a mailer that claims the presidential nominee has “a record of being soft on crime.” Luckily, our fellow fact-checkers at PolitiFact.com are all over this one. According to PolitiFact, the mailer (also being distributed in Florida) “cherry-picks a few choice examples and conveniently ignores evidence that contradicts its conclusions.”
For example, the mailer says that Obama is “against tougher penalties for street gangs,”
Reckless Driving
The Obama-Biden campaign has released an ad as part of its “closing argument” to the American people. But we have a few factual objections to raise.
The ad is called “Rearview Mirror” and says that if you “wonder where John McCain would take the economy” just “look behind you,” alluding to the Bush administration. The ad even pictures President Bush’s face in the rearview mirror of a car.
But it touts some misleading claims Obama has dropped along the long campaign trail.
Social Security and Spanish Ads
We posted two new pieces on the main site today. The first looks at a common theme among Democratic congressional ads: the accusation that Republicans want to gamble away Social Security in risky private investments. We count 58 ads with such charges that have aired since Oct. 1. Read all about how they’re trying to mislead voters in our full story:
More Social Security Bunk
October 30, 2008
Our second article examines four Spanish-language ads from the presidential campaigns,
Sleaze Sells
When we ran an article yesterday calling the first TV spot from The National Republican Trust PAC one of the sleaziest false ads we’ve seen, the group had reported spending just under $1 million. But it seems that the attack, which featured Mohammed Atta, may have helped the upstart group strike gold: In an Oct. 29 fundraising e-mail NRT PAC claims to have raised more than $3 million.
The ad flashes an image of the 9/11 terrorist’s Florida driver’s license while falsely charging that Obama has a “plan”
A Spam Metamorphosis
We’ve seen a lot of misleading spam this season claiming Sen. Barack Obama is guilty of one or all of the following:
He won’t place his hand over his heart for the national anthem.
He refuses to wear a flag pin.
He replaced the American flag on his campaign plane with his campaign logo.
He has listened to Rev. Jeremiah Wright say offensive remarks such as “God damn America.”
Now the claims have appeared in an ad from the conservative group Our Country Deserves Better PAC.
“Tiny’s” Back…
The McCain-Palin campaign announced today that it will release “its latest television ad” called “Tiny.” But it’s not the campaign’s newest ad – not by a long shot. The ad was announced and aired in August when it was also described as the campaign’s “latest television ad.”
In a press release, the campaign claims the ad was released in light of comments reportedly made by French President Nicolas Sarkozy describing Sen. Barack Obama’s position on Iran as “utterly immature”
Berg Gets Sunk
Readers have been champing at the bit to know our view of the lawsuit brought against Obama by a Philadelphia Hillary supporter, which alleges that the candidate is not a natural-born U.S. citizen. (We know —this again?) Of course only a judge is qualified to legally determine the validity of a suit, so we’ve held off on opining, though we’ve certainly put forth our findings on various aspects of the claim. But we stress that there are no such qualification requirements to bring a suit.
A Little Ditty ‘Bout Taxes and Trade
The Obama-Biden campaign has released a radio ad in Indiana featuring favorite native son John Mellencamp. In the ad, Mellencamp says, “John McCain will keep giving tax breaks to companies shipping American jobs overseas.”
Mellencamp is referring to an aspect of the tax code that allows companies to skirt paying U.S. corporate taxes on profits they make overseas and leave overseas. But economists have consistently said this tax provision isn’t a major reason jobs are being sent abroad.
Erratic Quotes
The Obama-Biden campaign has a new, unannounced ad that says McCain has been “erratic” in his response to the financial crisis:
The ad includes various critical quotes from editorials in the Washington Post, USA Today and Politico. We looked up the original articles, and all the quotes are in context.
But the ad also cites the August 15 Tax Policy Center report, with text on screen saying “nothing for the middle class.” Within the ad, the words do not appear in quotes,
Taxes, Bailouts, Court Fights and More
Looking for some weekend reading material? Well, the past week has been busy at FactCheck.org. If you haven’t checked out the main site recently, here are several new articles that we hadn’t yet told our Wire readers about:
Right Change Is Wrong
October 24, 2008
A conservative group misleads voters mightily on Obama’s tax plans for small businesses.
The Rifle Association’s ‘True Story’
October 23, 2008
A misleading NRA ad claims Obama voted “to deny citizens the right of self-protection.”