From the new west blog: Presidential Election
Fact Checks and Polls: VP Debate
By Jill Kuraitis, 10-03-08
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UPDATE: Another site, FactCheck, has its own list of checks from the debate.
CBS News’ “Reality Check Team” filed this report Thursday night after the Vice-Presidential debate between Democrat Sen. Joe Biden and Republican Gov. Sarah Palin. Among the questions which CBS fact-checked are, “Did McCain Vote to Cut Off Funding for the Troops?” “Obama Voting 94 Times to Increase Taxes?” and “McCain’s Health Care Plan.”
Here is Fox News’ “Fact Check” piece, which draws slightly different conclusions from CBS’. It includes checks on statements the two candidates made, such as PALIN: “We cannot afford to lose against al-Qaida and the Shia extremists who are still there, still fighting us.” And BIDEN: Warned that Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s $5,000 tax credit to help families buy health coverage “will go straight to the insurance company.”
CNN’s poll which showed “Biden Won; Palin Exceeds Expectations” is parsed and analyzed here. “The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. said 51 percent of those polled thought Biden did the best job, while 36 percent thought Palin did the best job.”
“On the question of the candidates’ qualifications to assume the presidency, 87 percent of those polled said Biden is qualified and 42 percent said Palin is qualified.”
And this: “Respondents overwhelmingly said moderator Gwen Ifill was fair during the vice presidential debate, repudiating critics who said that Ifill, of PBS, would be biased because she is writing a book that includes Biden’s running mate, Sen. Barack Obama. Ninety-five percent of those polled said Ifill was fair.”
The Pew Research Center has excellent analyses about the race for the White House.
[End of article]It is amazing what different people hear from the same source. I watched the debate on c-span which had nothing but the candidates faces on a split screen the entire time without any other angles or even the moderator, and only the sound. Afterward I have checked different views and am amazed at the different opinions. I did a little bit of debate judging when my son was in high school, and the main thing that I noticed, was that Biden followed general debating principles and answered the questions, and gave rebuttals accordingly, with direct and informative information. Palin on the other hand even stated that she was not going to follow the rules and the proceeded to talk about whatever she had been coached to say, using her cutesy way of stating things. I am sorry I cannot deal with having a cutesy, un-informed maverick as vice- president. My overall opinion? Biden won hands down.
Comment By flounder, 10-03-08That fact check by CBS is dead wrong.
McCain did vote against funding the troops through an "emergency" appropriation. The bill was H.R. 1591. The date was March 29, 2007. In addition to funding troops in Iraq, it added $1 billion to Veteran's Affairs.
Here is the the vote tally:
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=1&vote=00126
As you see, McShame is listed as "nay".
Here is the statement McCain released that day:
http://mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressOffice.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=f199ef61-5499-469b-b45e-bda6137dbe3e&Region;_id=&Issue;_id=
I really hate our broken press corps.
Good Lord!
How can anyone read MCCain's statement and be so devoid of inteligence as to imagine he doesn't support our troops?
tomc,
That is really the point I am making.
In the same time frame as McCain voted against a troop funding bill, Obama voted against a different one. The net result is they both are technically on the record as being "against" funding the troops at one point.
The key difference is that McCain dishonorably keeps bringing up Obama's vote in his speeches, commercials, and during the debates as some sort of evidence that he doesn't support the troops. Obama could do the exact same thing, but he doesn't do this.
That is why McCain has earned the McShame nickname.
The problem is all of the pork that gets piled onto every single bill, including incidently the emergency bailout! McCain routinely votes against earmarks (pork) as much as possible. The bill he voted against included a timetable for leaving Iraq.
Biden told some real whoppers adn he is supposed to be the expert. Without a doubt Palin won. I can think of little worse than having a pair of lawyers in charge. I personally think that lawyers shoudl be automatically disqualified from being in congress in any capacity.
The two candidates pushed a lot of words at us in those 90 minutes, and as noted, Biden was largely responsive and somewhat scripted, while Palin was pretty much entirely scripted.
Her folksy act is very well practiced. arrowpm1, you missed those charming half dozen winks that would have won you right over.
Here's a lsit of Biden's tall tales.
http://townhall.com/columnists/AmandaCarpenter/2008/10/03/biden_tells_14_lies_during_vp_debate
Correction: Marion's list is a list of things that Townhall.com, a far-right website, says are Biden's lies, not a list of Biden's lies. There is a difference.
Blogging about news stories requires that information that appears elsewhere is cited as "what this source says" rather than "this is true information."
Jill, which are not true? I heard Obama during the debates, and he DID say he would meet with all of the terrorist leaders without preconditions, and Biden even disagreed with him during the debates. He has beena senator for 36 years and did not know the VP is the vice president of the senate at all times. He said Hezbullah was forced out of Israel, they are still there. Again what is not true about them? I grant you Townhall is a conservative website, but facts are facts.
Comment By Tom von Alten, 10-03-08So Marion, you are going to school Joe Biden in how the Senate works? Yes, the Vice President is the President of the Senate "at all times," but that formal role does not have meaning except in the case of breaking tie votes. Do you know how much time Richard B. "Dick" Cheney has spent presiding over the U.S. Senate?
You wrote "He said Hezbullah was forced out of Israel," but this did not happen last night that I remember, or from looking at the transcript. You can't get facts right with all the time in the world, you shouldn't be surprised that someone misspeaks in the heat of a live debate.
So, should we gloss over Palin's misspeech? It's not the same thing: she doesn't confuse facts and assemble things out of order, she's simply ignorant of so many of the salient facts, or juggling them from the cram sessions the campaign has been giving her to bring her up to speed on the 98% of the country's concerns that she hadn't had to care about before that surprise call this summer.
Palin, speaking about those freaks that dare ask her about Supreme Court cases instead of snowmobiling or fossil fuels (actually strike that--by calling them fossil fuels you are biased toward thinking the Earth is older than 6,000 years old), in order to determine her fitness for the highest office in the land, to that Cameron guy from Fox today:
"As we send our young men and women overseas in a war zone to fight for democracy and freedoms, including freedom of the press, we've really got to have a mutually beneficial relationship here with those fighting the freedom of the press, and then the press, though not taking advantage and exploiting a situation, perhaps they would want to capture and abuse the privilege. We just want truth, we want fairness, we want balance."
Sounds like Lincoln, eh?
As usual, you are right on target, Jill!
Looking forward to a spirited debate on Tuesday!