In today’s Washington Post, Michael Dobbs, a.k.a. The Fact Checker, writes about a few more stumbles from the debate, including a couple items that we didn’t have in our story on Friday. Dobbs, a former diplomatic reporter, says Sen. Joe Biden was wrong when he said the U.S. and France “kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon.” He was correct in saying that there was talk of sending NATO forces to the country in 2006. Dobbs also cites Biden’s invitation to voters to “go... Click to Read the Full Post
There’s more on Sarah Palin’s claim, made in her ABC News interview, that Alaska produces 20 percent of the nation’s energy supply. As we noted in our original article, official statistics from the federal government show that Alaska produces only 3.5 percent of the total energy produced in the U.S., and 2.4 percent of the energy consumed. McCain-Palin campaign officials said she meant to say that Alaska accounts for 20 percent of the nation’s oil and gas production, which... Click to Read the Full Post
Last Friday, we wrote an article debunking Sarah Palin’s claim that Alaska “produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy.” That’s false. The state’s share of U.S. energy production is actually 3.5 percent. Palin has now changed her tune: Palin (Sept. 15, Golden, Colorado): My job has been to oversee nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of oil and gas. That’s still bogus. As our colleague the Washington Post’s Fact Checker points... Click to Read the Full Post
In our recent article “Sliming Palin,” we addressed the pervasive rumor that Gov. Palin slashed funding for special needs education. She didn’t. Instead, she increased funding. Here’s more detail on how an increase got mistaken for a 62 percent decrease. The evidence that’s been cited to support the false decrease claim: The special schools component of the education budget for fiscal year 2007, before Palin was governor, was $8.3 million. The special schools budget... Click to Read the Full Post
Last Friday, we pointed out that a Palin-McCain talking point stating that Alaska “produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy” was false. The actual figure was 3.5 percent. Within the story, we allowed (several times) that Palin and McCain may have misspoken and meant to say “oil” instead of “energy,” or “production” instead of “supply.” We ran the calculations and found that they were still off. Keeping with our standards... Click to Read the Full Post
So far, we’ve received roughly 43,937,809 (note: number is exaggerated for effect) e-mails asking us whether the chain e-mail from Wasilla’s most famous non-Palin, Anne Kilkenny, is accurate. As we wrote earlier this week, yes, Kilkenny is a real person and she did in fact write the e-mail. We looked at her claims about the fired librarian in our Sliming Palin article, where we concluded that the evidence that Palin fired Wasilla’s librarian for refusing to ban books is, well,... Click to Read the Full Post
Dipping one more time into last night’s Gibson/Palin interview, we found another misleading claim, this time on climate change. When Gibson accused Palin of flip-flopping her stance on the causes of global warming, Palin denied her position had changed on whether humans are partially responsible. But that doesn’t quite jibe with what she’s said in the past: Gibson: Do you still believe that global warming is not man-made? Palin: I believe that man’s activities certainly can... Click to Read the Full Post
We generally don’t take it upon ourselves to parse ABC’s morning gabfest. But we noticed that when the chat turned to Palin’s record on earmarks McCain got it wrong. He was correct on one point: Palin vetoed $500 million in spending as governor. She axed over $230 million in state spending in 2007. And the Anchorage Daily News reported that she lopped off another $268 million in spending for 2008. But then the ladies shot back with this: Barbara Walters: She also took some earmark... Click to Read the Full Post
