McCain Ads - Where is the Straight Talk?

If you watch television, then you know that McCain thinks a negative campaign is the ticket to victory. As of the end of July, McCain was running negative ads over three times as often as the Obama campaign. That was to be expected. But what is most bothersome about the negative ads that McCain is running is the degree to which they slander Barack Obama. On the issues that Americans care about most, John McCain is consistently putting false and misleading statements on the airwaves. Thankfully, factcheck.org, a non-partisan website that even John McCain himself has directed people towards, has been presenting the facts on misleading and deceptive ads.



TAX POLICY
McCain seems to believe that he can lie about Obama's tax policies because the public thinks that Democrats support higher taxes. So he has pushed ad after ad claiming that Obama will raise taxes on America's families. But as this chart shows, the vast majority of taxpayers will pay less under Obama's plan than they will under McCain's. So McCain has to resort to lies to get his point across:

* McCain's campaign lied about Obama raising taxes on those earning only $32,000

* McCain's campaign misrepresented the number of times Obama had voted for higher taxes

* McCain's campaign exaggerated how Obama's plan would affect small businesses by a factor of 50

* McCain's campaign made up the idea that Obama will tax electricity

* McCain falsely claimed that Obama will institute "the single largest tax increase since the Second World War"

* After receiving corrections from factcheck.org, McCain campaign adjusted one old tax deception but put out FIVE new ones

* McCain lies about how Obama will tax working families

* Speakers at the Republican convention continue to lie about Obama's tax plan



If you want the truth, you can get a real analysis of Obama and McCain's tax plans from the Tax Policy Center. More information can be found in Reuters and the Wall Street Journal.



SUPPORTING THE TROOPS
A second issue on which Republicans often attack Democrats is on support of the troops. Obama has been exemplary on this issue, but that doesn't keep McCain from making things up.


McCain consistently repeated the false rumour that Obama cancelled a troop visit because he couldn't bring cameras. As factcheck.org pointed out, not only was this attack false, but Obama had recently visited wounded troops in Iraq and at Walter Reed in D.C. with very little publicity.

McCain claimed that Obama had voted against funding the troops, hadn't been to Iraq in years, and didn't hold any hearings on Afghanistan. In fact, Obama had voted to fund the troops at least 10 out of 11 times, visited Iraq in 2006 and was on his way again when the ad was released, and the full foreign relations committee had held hearings on Afghanistan three times in the two years in question. Lieberman repeated some of this deception at the RNC.

McCain broadcasts ads that take Obama's statements about Iran completely out of context.

Finally, McCain defended his record on veteran's benefits by claiming, "I received the highest award from literally every veteran’s organization in America." The real facts:

* McCain publicly opposed the new GI bill that veterans had asked him to support

* McCain received a rating of only 20 from Disabled American Veterans (Obama was given an 80)

* McCain received a "D" from Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (Obama got a "B+")

* According to the Vietnam Veterans of America, McCain voted against legislation for veterans 15 times while only supporting it 9 times. (Obama had 12 supporting votes compared to only 1 negative vote).

* The Non-Commissioned Officers Association gives McCain a rating of 40. (Obama has not yet been rated by them, but Biden has a rating of 100.)

Now who do you think supports the troops?


(A small side note - Barack Obama serves on the Veterans' Affairs committee. Since he entered the committe he has been responsible for successful legislative work that provides food and telephone services for wounded veterans in VA hospitals, provides more comprehensive housing options for veterans, increases funding for homeless veterans' programs by $40 million, ensures that veterans in Illinois and other low-benefit states are notified of their rights to appeal benefit decisions, ensures that all Iraq veterans are tested for Tramatic Brain Injury, keeps the VA from altering full-benefit cases regarding Post-tramatic Stress Disorder, and forces the Department of Defense to report on its slowness in aligning its systems with the VA.)


ENERGY POLICY
This year's hot button issue is energy policy. Barack Obama, like many other Democrats, has been fighting for alternative energy sources and ending our dependence on oil since he entered the Senate. So when oil prices jumped and Americans started realizing how addicted to oil we were, McCain was forced to distort Obama's record in order to try to score political points.

McCain repeated claims that Obama was responsible for high gas prices.

McCain likes to say that Obama has proposed no solutions for energy, has no energy plan, or that Obama's plan is nothing more than "inflating your tires". In fact, Obama has a detailed $150 billion energy plan and has had detailed plans for longer than McCain. And while inflating tires won't save quite as much oil as offshore drilling will produce, it could save 1 billion gallons a year and will start helping much sooner than drilling will.

McCain falsely claims that Obama has rejected energy innovation, and also makes the false statement that Obama has rejected nuclear energy.

McCain claims that Obama voted for an energy bill full of giveaways to the oil industry, when overall it actually raised taxes on the oil industry while subsidizing alternative energy much more. McCain then repeated the false claim in his RNC acceptance speech.


SARAH PALIN GETS IN ON THE ACT

In her acceptance speech before the Republican National Convention, Palin showed that she was just as eager as McCain to lie about Obama's record. Some of her statements are stated here on yahoo, and there are even more from Factcheck.org, including:

* "But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform — not even in the state senate."

In fact, Barack Obama authored over 800 bills in the Illinois State Senate and has authored nearly 300 bills in the U.S. Senate, a number of which have become law. His successful efforts in the Illinois Senate include major laws that reformed the death penalty, ended racial profiling, and a joint effort with Republicans to write the first major ethics reform in 25 years. In the U.S. Senate, he coauthored with Republican Richard Lugar a significant weapons non-proliferation law aimed at terrorists, wrote two ethics reform laws with Republican Tom Coburn, and had a number of smaller bills and many amendments successfully passed.


* "The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars."

Actually, Obama will only raise income taxes on those earning over $250,000 a year, will only raise payroll taxes on those earning over $250,000 a year, will not raise the "death tax", and will decrease the overall tax burden on the American people by nearly $100 billion dollars.


The inaccuracy didn't stop with her convention speech. A list of Sarah Palin's factual errors in her first week on the campaign trail can be seen here.



THE FALSE ADS CONTINUE

As the campaign accelerates, the McCain/Palin tendency to state lies as facts has drawn greater attention. You can see some opinions about their inaccuracy here. The Democrats have even put out a website now called "Count the Lies"


For quick reference, here are a few of them:

McCain is distorting Factcheck.org themselves!

No, Barack Obama did not call Sarah Palin a pig. He called John McCain's policies the pig. McCain's ad claiming that Obama has been belittling Palin is full of mistruths.

The McCain campaign is purposely misleading voters when they imply that Obama supported teaching kindergarteners about sex. Also here.

John McCain was absolutely wrong when he said that Sarah Palin did not request any earmarks as governor of Alaska. In her 20 months as governor, Palin has already requested over $450 million in earmarks.

Sarah Palin was not responsible for stopping the Bridge to Nowhere project. She supported the project during her campaign for governor, and only changed her mind when Congress was ready to kill it. Rather than saying "no thanks" to the money, she used it on other projects.

Barack Obama was not responsible for John McCain not getting his immigration reform through. Senate Republicans blocked passage of the bill, and John McCain himself abandoned his efforts for comprehensive immigration reform when he started running for office.

Alaska does not produce 20% of the United State's energy supply. It's closer to 3.5%.