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In a TV ad, McCain says Obama "lied" about his association with William Ayers, a former bomb-setting, anti-war radical from the 1960s and '70s. We find McCain's claim to be groundless. New details have recently come to light, but nothing Obama said previously has been shown to be false. In a Web ad and in repeated attacks from the stump, McCain describes the two as associates, and Palin claims they "pal around" together. But so far as is known, their relationship was never very close. An Obama spokesman says they last saw each other in a chance encounter on the...

CHICAGO--John McCain's campaign ads use "false and misleading statements" about the relationship between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers, according to an analysis by FactCheck.org. FactCheck.org conclusion Voters may differ in how they see Ayers, or how they see Obama's interactions with him. We're making no judgment calls on those matters. What we object to are the McCain-Palin campaign's attempts to sway voters - in ads and on the stump - with false and misleading statements about the relationship, which was never very close. Obama never "lied" about this, just as he never bragged about it. The foundation they both worked...

October 06, 2008, 9:20 a.m. Shame of the Fact-CheckersBy the Editors American journalists take pride in policing political debates for inaccuracies. During the last few election cycles, many news outlets have institutionalized a “factchecking� feature that grades politicians’ veracity during campaigns. Over the last few months, a number of journalists have suggested that John McCain is running a particularly dishonest and dishonorable campaign and that journalists should not allow the desire to be even-handed keep them from saying so. That judgment, by our lights, tells us more about journalists’ political inclinations than about the campaigns. Neither the Republican nor...

Fact check needed. That red-haired Obama Suck-up is on Fox proclaiming that in 2006 Obama introduced legistation in the US Senate to rein-in and better control sub-prime loans backed by Fannie May and Freddie Mack. Can anyone corroberate this or is this just another Obama lie? (I also note that she looks rather distressed at the moment -- a result of today's wailing of Obama by McCain and Palin?)

The Statement: Republican vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin said Saturday, October 4, that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is "someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." Get the facts! The Facts: In making the charge at a fund-raising event in Englewood, Colorado, and a rally in Carson, California, Palin was referring at least in part to William Ayers, a 1960s radical. In both appearances, Palin cited a front-page article in Saturday's New York Times detailing the working relationship between Obama and Ayers.SNIPCNN's review of...

Main Bullet Points: Palin Trips Up on Troop Levels Biden Fudges on Troop Funding Palin's False Tax Claims Biden's False Defense Palin's Health Care Hooey McCain in Spain? Palin's Small Business Balderdash Defense Disagreements Killing Afghan Civilians? Out of Context? McCain in the Vanguard of Mortgage Reform? And There's More...

(Not bothering with the goop. Go to the link if you can stand it.)

* Palin mistakenly claimed that troop levels in Iraq had returned to “pre-surge” levels. Levels are gradually coming down but current plans would have levels higher than pre-surge numbers through early next year, at least. * Biden incorrectly said “John McCain voted the exact same way” as Obama on a controversial troop funding bill. The two were actually on opposite sides. * Palin repeated a false claim that Obama once voted in favor of higher taxes on “families” making as little as $42,000 a year. He did not. The budget bill in question called for an increase only on singles...

Garbage. Pure garbage.

·11250 Waples Mill Road ·   Fairfax, Virginia 22030    ·800-392-8683 Factcheck And Brady Campaign Share Same Sugar Daddy Tuesday, September 23, 2008 Impartial? Independent? NO! FactCheck and Brady Campaign in Bed with Annenberg Foundation FactCheck supposedly exists to look beyond a politician's claims. Ironically, in its analysis of NRA materials on Barack Obama, these so-called "FactCheckers" use the election year campaign rhetoric of a presidential candidate and a verbal claim by one of the most zealous gun control supporters in Congress to refute facts compiled by NRA's research of vote records and review of legislative language. There's another possible explanation behind FactCheck's...

Xrlq points us to this ridiculous FactCheck.org piece on Obama and gun rights. I am by now completely disenchanted with FactCheck.org and virtually every other “fact checking” site out there, and this piece does nothing to dispel my depression. The summary version: FactCheck ridicules the NRA in this piece. But the NRA is careful to say: look at Obama’s record and not his rhetoric. And at least two of the NRA claims are backed up by references to Obama’s record. Yet FactCheck.org goes on to minimize or completely ignore Obama’s record on these points, choosing instead to concentrate on citations...

Posted by Dirty Harry on Saturday, September 20th, 2008 Most every time you turn on MSNBC or CNN — or click on over to the likes of the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz, Factcheck.org, and ABC’s Jake Tapper – they’re constantly proclaiming themselves the high and mighty arbiters of truth with their so-called “Truth Squads,” and I’m telling you this is the single most insidious thing going on in the campaign right now. Obviously they are taking hammer and tong to McCain with much more frequency than Obama, the result of which effectively undercuts both McCain’s legitimate criticisms of Obama and...

That's right. They replaced all of their high-res, image files with lo-res image files that are 90% smaller than their originals. BUT, they have the gall to leave their original file sizes listed on their links. So, like instead of getting a 2 MB image file, you now get a 200K image file. In FactCheck's original story, posted, August 21, they made specific references to a few of my discoveries I made about the COLB forgery in an attempt to dismiss them out of hand: Among the most frequent objections we saw on forums, blogs and e-mails are: * No...

Summary A new Obama ad characterizes the "Bush-McCain privatization plan" as "cutting Social Security Benefits in half." This is a falsehood sure to frighten seniors who rely on their Social Security checks. In truth, McCain does not propose to cut those checks at all. The ad refers to a Bush proposal from 2005 to hold down the growth of benefits for future retirees. Compared to the buying power of benefits paid to today's retirees, that would not have been a "cut" for anybody. It would have been a "cut" of half only in relation to benefits now promised to retirees...

I have seen some factcheck.org reports on McCain ads that just appeared to me to be superficial and outwardly wrong. Out of curiosity I went to their web site and under "About" looked at some of the biographies of the staffers. Seems they like to hire some very politically active interns from the left and throw in a couple of RINO's to make it appear balanced. This makes me wonder about the politics of the rest of the staff.

The reason I am asking because there is this guy at work that is telling everyone to go check out political rumors at factcheck.org because they are middle of the road.

An independent watchdog group says that Republican John McCain's campaign aired a negative TV ad on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but a tracking company says there's no evidence of that yet. The group Factcheck.org said Friday that the Campaign Media Analysis Group, an advertising data and analysis firm, found a negative ad from the McCain campaign airing on Denver television on Thursday. That would be a violation of the pledge both the Democratic and Republican camps took to take a one-day break from attacks and traditional campaigning. But Evan Tracey of CMAG said the company's data...

A new ad from McCain attacking Obama's army of lawyers.

For two straight days, CNN repeated liberal rumors about Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s political record – rumors that had already been debunked by their own correspondents, as well as the respected FactCheck.org, a group led by former CNN reporter Brooks Jackson. During Monday evening’s Election Center program, CNN’s senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin claimed that Palin "wants to ban all abortions," despite a September 2 report by his own network which included a quote from the Alaska governor that she is "pro-life... [w]ith the exception of a doctor's determination that the mother's life would end if the pregnancy continued."...

Summary We’ve been flooded for the past few days with queries about dubious Internet postings and mass e-mail messages making claims about McCain’s running mate, Gov. Palin. We find that many are completely false, or misleading. * Palin did not cut funding for special needs education in Alaska by 62 percent. She didn’t cut it at all. In fact, she tripled per-pupil funding over just three years. * She did not demand that books be banned from the Wasilla library. Some of the books on a widely circulated list were not even in print at the time. The librarian has...

In a rousing speech at last night's Republican National Convention, vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, touted her record, attacked the opposition, and in some cases bent the facts. PALIN: "[Obama] is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word 'victory' except when he's talking about his own campaign." FACT: On July 15, in a speech in Washington, D.C., Obama twice used the word "victory" in reference to Iraq. "In fact," he said, "true success in Iraq -- victory in Iraq -- will not take place...

I revisited the "Born in the U.S.A." story that FactCheck produced which shows digital photos of OBama's alleged genuine paper birth certificate, or COLB, taken in a number of angles. I found something new: A note that the story had been "updated August 26." Update, August 26: We received responses to some of our questions from the Hawaii Department of Health. They couldn't tell us anything about their security paper, but they did answer another frequently-raised question: why is Obama's father's race listed as "African"? Kurt Tsue at the DOH told us that father's race and mother's race are supplied...

When Obama's association with William Ayers was raised at a Democratic debate this year, Obama replied: "This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood....He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis." Tuesday's release of papers from a Chicago school reform project known as the Annenberg Challenge shows once again Barack Obama has a problem with the truth.

An independent watchdog that checks the facts on statements and political ads from candidates and campaigns says Barack Obama is misleading people abortion. The FactCheck web site of the University of Pennsylvania reviewed the debate over the Illinois Born Alive Infants Protection Act. At issue is the bill that Obama opposed that would provide medical care for newborn infants who survive abortions. Obama says he voted against the bill because it didn't mirror a national version that had language making it neutral on Roe v. Wade -- even though Obama voted for language in committee to make the state legislation...

Throughout the summer months, many voters supporting John McCain have been frustrated by his failure to respond forcefully to Obama’s charges against him. I felt his failure to swat about at each charge was because he was an old fighter pilot, taught to hold his fire and stay concealed as long as possible. If circumstances permitted, he would not budge until his opponent had made a potentially fatal move from which it was going to be exceedingly hard to extricate himself. Whether my assessment was right or not, it appears that the moment to strike has arrived, and like the...

Factcheck Obama Birth Certificate Alignment problem August 23, 2008 http://texasdarlin.wordpress.com/2008/08/21/factcheckorg-has-new-birth-certificate-story/ Snoopy said, on August 22nd, 2008 at 4:32 pm Anyone notice the certificate number isn’t level with the security pattern. Looks like it was added later. The old COLB certificate number was level to the pattern. http://www.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/birth_certificate_2.jpg (when you follow above link, click the mouse to expand the image. On some images, you can right click and click view image and then expand the image. This is the case at the Obama webpage.) The word certificate may be pre-printed. The certificate number is variable information like Honolulu below. Honolulu is...

The Annenberg Political Factcheck website has published photographs and an analysis of what it says is the "original birth certificate" of Barack Hussein Obama II. While the physical document depicted in the photos resemble the document image previously scanned and published by the Daily Kos website and Obama's own "Fight the Smears" site in June, FactCheck's case for authenticity and its claims to objectivity are undermined by a litany of process flaws, conflicts of interest and factual inconsistencies that raise doubts about its motives and methods of those of the Obama campaign. -----snip----The Factcheck.org report, titled "Born in the USA,"...

The Annenberg Political Factcheck website has published photographs and an analysis of what it says is the "original birth certificate" of Barack Hussein Obama II. While the physical document depicted in the photos resemble the document image previously scanned and published by the Daily Kos website and Obama's own "Fight the Smears" site in June, FactCheck's case for authenticity and its claims to objectivity are undermined by a litany of process flaws, conflicts of interest and factual inconsistencies that raise doubts about its motives and methods of those of the Obama campaign. The Factcheck.org report, titled "Born in the USA,"...

In June, the Obama campaign released a digitally scanned image of his birth certificate to quell speculative charges that he might not be a natural-born citizen. But the image prompted more blog-based skepticism about the document's authenticity. And recently, author Jerome Corsi, whose book attacks Obama, said in a TV interview that the birth certificate the campaign has is "fake." We beg to differ. FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a...

What's This, FactCheck?? From the high-res photos that FactCheck provided, I was able to confirm a number of my findings that exposed the FactCheck COLB image as a manufactured forgery. To get everyone up to speed, there has been one, and only one forged image. From this one source image, several copies were generated. One was kept by the Obama campaign while one copy went to the Daily Kos, and the other went to FactCheck. Both the Daily Kos and the Obama campaign cropped their images before posting them on June 12. The Obama Campaign posted a very small, low-res...

The problem of Barack Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers will not go away. Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn were terrorists for the notorious Weather Underground during the turbulent 1960s, turning fugitive when a bomb — designed to kill army officers in New Jersey — accidentally exploded in a New York townhouse. Prior to that, Ayers and his cohorts succeeded in bombing the Pentagon. Ayers and Dohrn remain unrepentant for their terrorist past. * * * This much we know from the public record, but a large cache of documents housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University...

The problem of Barack Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers will not go away. Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn were terrorists for the notorious Weather Underground during the turbulent 1960s, turning fugitive when a bomb — designed to kill army officers in New Jersey — accidentally exploded in a New York townhouse. Prior to that, Ayers and his cohorts succeeded in bombing the Pentagon. Ayers and Dohrn remain unrepentant for their terrorist past. Ayers was pictured in a 2001 article for Chicago magazine, stomping on an American flag, and told the New York Times just before 9/11 that the notion...

Born in the U.S.A. August 21, 2008 The truth about Obama's birth certificate. Summary In June, the Obama campaign released a digitally scanned image of his birth certificate to quell speculative charges that he might not be a natural-born citizen. But the image prompted more blog-based skepticism about the document's authenticity. And recently, author Jerome Corsi, whose book attacks Obama, said in a TV interview that the birth certificate the campaign has is "fake." We beg to differ. FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements...

The University of Illinois said Friday it is releasing records of Barack Obama's service to a nonprofit organization linked to former 1960s radical William Ayers. Supporters of John McCain have been trying to exploit the tie between Obama and Ayers, with a conservative group spending $2.8 million on an ad focusing on Ayers. Ayers' Weatherman group took credit for bombings that included nonfatal blasts at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol four decades ago. The records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an organization that Obama chaired and that Ayers co-founded, will be made available to the public Tuesday, the University of...

Would Obama's tire inflation plan really allow this country to conserve as much oil as we might produce by off shore drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf? Ever since Obama made the hard to believe assertion, the media has fiercely defended his claim. Time's Michael Grunwald declared "Obama is right." Politifact backed him up, finding Obama's claim "true." The only problem: it isn't true. Politifact rival Factcheck.org delivered a lengthy opinion today on the matter. Their finding: So ending the ban on offshore drilling would result in 3.5 billion gallons of petroleum product per year under the government's estimate, and...

It would help Obama's campaign if they, while trying to refute Corsi, did not refer to Bob Beckel as a Republican strategist. Twice. Republican Strategist Bob Beckel Said That He’s Convinced Michelle Obama Meant That She Had Seen People Unify Around The Basic Issues And It Made Her Proud. Republican Strategist Bob Beckel said about Michelle Obama’s comment, “She should not have said it the way she said it, but in fairness to her, she said that she had seen people unify around the basic issues and it made her proud. But she was talking about was the fact that...

Obama’s latest ad repeats an often-stated claim, saying he "worked his way through college and Harvard Law.” We know Obama took out loans to get himself through school. But the campaign provided information on just two jobs Obama had in those years, and they were both in the summer. The ad also says he "passed a law to move people from welfare to work, slashed the rolls by 80 percent." Actually, the Illinois law was a required follow-up to the 1996 federal welfare reform law worked out by President Clinton and the Republican Congress. Welfare rolls did go down by...

NOTE: I have spoken with Brooks Jackson, who will give me an opportunity to respond and keep it as a PDF on the factcheck.org site. Viveca Novak described me as a conservative Republican. That's fair, but I think she also needs to be descibed. Her previous job was with TIME MAG from which she was fired for not telling her bosses she was called in by the OIC to testify in the phony Plame case. If some of you have some time, please do some research for me about her. I will be preparing the full responsed when I return...

McCain's Misleading Mailer January 15, 2008 He faults Romney for "providing" state funding for abortions that Romney didn't seek, and courts ordered. Summary McCain is sending out a postcard mailing in South Carolina that is misleading on more than one point. It says that "Romney provided taxpayer-funded abortions," a distortion. Romney's Massachusetts health-care plan faced a court order requiring abortions to be covered. It says Romney "refused to endorse Bush Tax Cut Plan," but fails to note that McCain himself voted against it. It says, "Hillary tried to spend $1 million for a Woodstock museum" until "John McCain said NO."...

WASHINGTON - Rudy Giuliani, under fire for protecting illegal immigrants as mayor, insists that New York was not a refuge for people in the U.S. illegally. "New York City was not a sanctuary city," Giuliani said — twice — during Wednesday night's GOP presidential debate. In reality, while it has never adopted the moniker, New York offers protections similar to those in cities that label themselves sanctuary cities. The pugnacious Giuliani managed to deflect some of the criticism in the debate, pointing out that his rival Mitt Romney had illegal immigrants work on his lawn. "So I would say he...

Clarence Lee of Shallowater, a veteran with four tours in Vietnam to his credit, completed 15 years in the Marine Corps the hard way. "The last tour was 14 months long, because that's when I got captured," he said. Lee can stand with a crutch, and moves about with a wheelchair or motorized scooter because of permanent injuries inflicted when he was a prisoner of war. He attributes his survival of nine months of torture to help from God. Lee, now in his 60s, was a helicopter pilot during the war and received five Purple Heart medals while fighting the...

MoveOn.org Political Action attacks three Republican House members in TV ads saying they were "caught red-handed" supporting money spent on Halliburton contracts and wasteful Iraq projects. But a majority of Democrats voted the same way on most of the same measures, usually overwhelmingly. MoveOn endorses one Democratic House member who voted the same way 10 out of 14 times, and two senators who voted for the same measures every time they reached a recorded vote in the Senate. Another ad says the same three Republicans were "caught red-handed" taking donations from military contractors while failing to support penalties for contractors...

Myth that Abortions Increased Under Bush Dismantled By Unlikely Source If you remember your high school Greek mythology class, one of the most intriguing tales remains as relevant today as it was when written thousands of years ago. It is the myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus angered one of the many Greek gods and he was condemned to push a stone up a hill for all of eternity. Beyond the physical pain and labor, an extra soul-sapping punishment was added. Each time he managed to get the rock to the top, it would roll back down the hill. Endless frustration and...

I've noticed during this year facktcheck.org seems to be getting more and more liberal. I don't have the time to detail everything; but anyone else have a comment on this?

Katrina: What Happened When It will take months to get the full story, but meanwhile here are some of the key facts about what happened and when officials acted. September 16, 2005 Modified: September 16, 2005 eMail to a friend Printer Friendly Version Summary Multiple investigations are likely into the response by federal, state, and local officials to the disastrous flooding of New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina. New facts are still emerging, and we expect it will be months or years before a full picture can be properly assessed. In response to numerous requests, we present here a brief timeline...

It will take months to get the full story, but meanwhile here are some of the key facts about what happened and when officials acted. Summary   Multiple investigations are likely into the response by federal, state, and local officials to the disastrous flooding of New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina. New facts are still emerging, and we expect it will be months or years before a full picture can be properly assessed. In response to numerous requests, we present here a brief timeline of events, as best as we can document them from public records and the best news reporting...

Advanced Search Is Bush to Blame for New Orleans Flooding? He did slash funding for levee projects. But the Army Corps of Engineers says Katrina was just too strong.September 2, 2005Modified: September 2, 2005 eMail to a friend Printer Friendly Version Summary   Some critics are suggesting President Bush was as least partly responsible for the flooding in New Orleans. In a widely quoted opinion piece, former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal says that "the damage wrought by the hurricane may not entirely be the result of an act of nature," and cites years of reduced funding for federal flood-control projects...

Can we please come up with a better way of arguing about Supreme Court nominees? Fellow liberals, face it: The advertisement created by NARAL, the abortion rights group that opposes John Roberts's nomination to the Supreme Court, is outrageous. It ties Roberts to people who bombed abortion clinics. If this isn't guilt by association, I don't know what is. Here's what the ad says: "Seven years ago, a bomb destroyed a women's health clinic in Birmingham, Alabama." The ad then quotes Emily Lyons, whose clinic was bombed in January 1998: "When a bomb ripped through my clinic, I almost lost...

FRIDAY, AUGUST 12, 2005 Anti-Roberts ad distortions The politicizing of judicial appointments over the last few decades, though regrettable, doesn't appear reversible any time soon. But that doesn't mean television outlets should sell air time for advertisements that lie or intentionally mislead about appointees to the nation's highest court. According to the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Political Fact Check (factcheck.org), a widely respected service of the non-partisan Annenberg Policy Center, a current television ad urging opposition to the Supreme Court nomination of Judge John Roberts does just that. Yet that "Speaking Out" ad from NARAL Pro-Choice America is scheduled to...

The Borking of John Roberts has officially begun. And by "borking," we don't mean just ideologically opposing a Supreme Court nominee, but blatantly misrepresenting what he stands for.... The culprit this time is the abortion-rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America. The group has a TV ad that basically accuses Roberts of supporting violence at abortion clinics. It shows a woman injured in the 1998 bombing of a Birmingham, Ala., clinic — a heinous crime perpetrated by radical anti-abortionist Eric Rudolph that took the life of an off-duty cop. In the ad, the woman states, "I nearly lost my life." The piece...