Author: Karen

I’m sorry, I don’t mean to turn this blog into a political forum, but don’t you find all of these misquotes and incorrect assumptions, from both parties, just fascinating? If checking Factcheck.org teaches you anything it should be this – politicians like to twist, turn, stretch, distort and exaggerate the truth all in order to make themselves look good – NO ONE is being completely straight with you – remember that.

It’s amazing that we can believe anything they say at all. Isn’t it sad that we’ve been reduced to vote for the lesser of two evils? I know that 98% of all political campaigns are like this, but now, right now, it’s more important than ever, with our economy on the edge of a cliff, flailing it’s arms in a desperate attempt to find its balance once again, to get an administration in there that will champion the people.

Is that even possible?

Did you watch the Vice Presidential debate last night? I wasn’t going to – I honestly wasn’t. But the husband turned it on and the voices lured me in. I think both candidates did very well. I disagreed with Biden on everything but what we should do in Iraq and Afganistan – I definitely think we need to issue a timeline and give the people a chance to govern their own countries for a change. I don’t know what channel you watched the debates on, but we watched it on a channel that kept track of the audience’s reaction and it was really interesting to see how it would fluctuate over the candidates’ spiel on different issues.

Here is a summary of the debate from Factcheck.org:

Biden and Palin debated, and both mangled some facts.

* 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 making that amount, but a family of four would not have been affected unless they made at least $90,000 a year.

* Biden wrongly claimed that McCain “voted the exact same way” as Obama on the budget bill that contained an increase on singles making as little as $42,000 a year. McCain voted against it. Biden was referring to an amendment that didn’t address taxes at that income level.

* Palin claimed McCain’s health care plan would be “budget neutral,” costing the government nothing. Independent budget experts estimate McCain’s plan would cost tens of billions each year, though details are too fuzzy to allow for exact estimates.

* Biden wrongly claimed that McCain had said “he wouldn’t even sit down” with the president of Spain. Actually, McCain didn’t reject a meeting, but simply refused to commit himself one way or the other during an interview.

* Palin wrongly claimed that “millions of small businesses” would see tax increases under Obama’s tax proposals. At most, several hundred thousand business owners would see increases.

For full details on these misstatements, and on additional factual disputes and dubious claims, please read on to the Analysis section.

All I know is … given the fact that no one in the political arena ever really tells us the truth, how can we possibly entertain the fact that we need MORE government in our lives? That just seems so counter-productive to me.

Oh, and a quick sidenote: I LOVED what Palin said about the media: “I like being able to answer these tough questions without the filter, even, of the mainstream media kind of telling viewers what they’ve just heard. I’d rather be able to just speak to the American people like we just did”.

Amen. Wouldn’t that be refreshing great? If the media would just report the facts and keep their snotty, biased opinions to themselves? The media just steams my broccoli.

In conclusion, here are some of my favorite quotes from their closing statements:

Palin: I’ve been there. I know what the hurts are. I know what the challenges are. And, thank God, I know what the joys are, too, of living in America. We are so blessed. And I’ve always been proud to be an American.

Biden: You know, in the neighborhood I grew up in, it was all about dignity and respect. A neighborhood like most of you grew up in. And in that neighborhood, it was filled with women and men, mothers and fathers who taught their children if they believed in themselves, if they were honest, if they worked hard, if they loved their country, they could accomplish anything. We believed it, and we did.

If they only practiced what they preached – think what a better country we’d live in!

The political arena is heating up and there are more and more rumors and TV ads being released out into a gullible public. Please take everything you read and hear with a grain of salt and keep your emotions out of it – weed through the rhetoric and learn where the candidates REALLY stand so that when it comes time to vote, you vote for the best candidate.

Which, I’m sorry to say, is neither candidate for me at this point. Though I would still rather have a Republican president than a Democratic one for the simple reason we need to get government out of lives – look what happens when government people/programs rule our lives – a collapsed economy.

I won’t pretend I understand half of what is being discussed right now, but I ran across this tidbit about our economic crisis on Factcheck.org and thought I would pass it along.

The Real Deal

So who is to blame? There’s plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn’t fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn’t do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of “layered irresponsibility … with hard-working homeowners and billionaire villains each playing a role.” Here’s a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:

* The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.

* Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.

* Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.

* Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.

* The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.

* Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.

* Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.

* Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.

* The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.

* An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.

* Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.

The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) is just political grandstanding. We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task more difficult.

–by Joe Miller and Brooks Jackson

You can view Factcheck’s sources here.

Stay focused folks. You’re being lied to and the government (both parties!) will do everything in their power to make you hand over more and more of your hard-earned money. When are we going to put our foot down and say ENOUGH?!