Sunday, October 5, 2008

“One heart beat away”; Biden - the man who cannot be trusted to tell the truth

One problem with debates of contenders for president and vice president is that lies become an essential part of the Democrat candidate’s presentation. Another problem is that the Republican opponent (in this case Governor Sarah Palin) does not have enough time to respond or, in the case of John McCain, his debate advisors don’t properly advise him how to run a good campaign. Of course, the third problem is that the news media in the tank for Obama/Biden will not take the liars to task or correct the misstatements. The result is it falls on some of us lesser scribes to try to inform voters about how Obama and Biden try to scam the public with untruths.

With that in mind, let’s consider how Senator Joe Biden either stretched or actually evaded the truth in the sole debate in which he had to face Sarah Palin.

For starters, here are some of what may be charitably described as misstatements by Fact Check.0rg.

“BIDEN: Complained about ‘economic policies of the last eight years’ that led to ‘excessive deregulation.’

THE FACTS: Biden voted for 1999 deregulation that liberal groups are blaming for part of the financial crisis today. The law allowed Wall Street investment banks to create the kind of mortgage-related securities at the core of the problem now.

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.’

THE FACTS: Of course it would, because it's meant to pay for insurance. That's like saying money for a car loan will go straight to the car dealer.

BIDEN: Said McCain supports tax breaks for oil companies, and ‘wants to give them another $4 billion tax cut.’

THE FACTS: Biden is repeating a favorite saw of the Obama campaign, and it's misleading. McCain supports a cut in income taxes for all corporations, and doesn't single out any one industry for that benefit.

BIDEN: ‘As a matter of fact, John recently wrote an article in a major magazine saying that he wants to do for the health care industry — deregulate it and let the free market move — like he did for the banking industry.’

THE FACTS: Biden and Obama have been perpetuating this distortion of what McCain wrote in an article for the American Academy of Actuaries. McCain, laying out his health plan, only referred to deregulation when saying people should be allowed to buy health insurance across state lines. In that context, he wrote: ‘Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.’

BIDEN: ‘The charge is absolutely not true. Barack Obama did not vote to raise taxes. The vote she's referring to, John McCain voted the exact same way.’

THE FACTS: The vote was on a nonbinding budget resolution that assumed that President Bush's tax cuts would expire, as scheduled, in 2011. If that actually happened, it could mean higher taxes for people making as little as about $42,000.”

Although FactCheck.org described many false remarks by Biden, there are actually more examples that should be known.

When asked how he would “shrink” polarization, Biden gave as example “putting 100,000 police officers on the street, to trying to get something done about the genocide in -- that was going on in Bosnia”; these things sure sound like Biden doesn’t know what shrinking polarization means.

Something that keeps coming up in Obama’s remarks during the current “financial crisis” is that he warned about the coming problem two years ago. Biden echoed this supposition also. When asked about the subject, Biden replied:

“Well Gwen, two years ago Barack Obama warned about the sub prime mortgage crisis.”

The problem with this praise of Messiah Obama as prescient is that the actual warning supposedly issued by Obama is not cited; all they do is make the bald statement without any evidence that this actually happened. If this actually was the case, why wouldn’t they indicate where, when and how this “warning” was issued?

While this is may be not a lie, it has not been proven to be true and it shows how Obama/Biden are willing to mislead the public with broad unproven assertions.

Some other Biden “misstatements”:

Biden said: It's "simply not true" that Barack Obama said he'd meet Iran's president without preconditions.

THE FACTS: Obama was asked if he would in a debate during the primaries, he said yes - a position Biden back then termed "naive."

Biden said he has "always supported" clean-coal technology – however he said last month, "We're not supporting clean coal."

Biden repeatedly said: the US spends more money on three weeks' combat in Iraq than it's spent in Afghanistan since the war began.

THE FACTS: That claim is false; even if he referred to Afghan expenditures merely for US rebuilding efforts he is off by a factor of three, according to State Department numbers. Biden also said that "our commanding general in Afghanistan said the surge principle in Iraq will not work" there.

THE FACTS: What Gen. David McKiernan really said tribal realities in Afghanistan are very different than in Iraq - requiring a different form of cooperation and that more troops, and more local engagement, are needed; he never said the surge would not work in Afghanistan.

Much has been written about Biden’s lies during the debate but for readers of this blog I wanted to more particularly note Biden’s statements and the facts which show that the man “who would be a heart beat away” from the presidency cannot be trusted to tell the truth.

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