FactCheck.org Author: Viveca Novak

GOP Convention Spin

September 3, 2008

Summary
Joe Lieberman and his former Senate colleague Fred Thompson both made misleading claims about Obama in their prime time GOP convention speeches on Tuesday. We’ve heard two of them before – many times.

Lieberman said Obama hadn’t "reached across party lines" to accomplish "anything significant," though Obama has teamed with GOP Sens. Tom Coburn and Richard Lugar to pass laws enhancing government transparency and curtailing the proliferation of nuclear and conventional weapons.
Thompson repeated misleading claims about Obama’s tax program,

Context Included: Obama on Iran

August 27, 2008

Summary
McCain’s new ad, released on Day 3 of the Democratic National Convention, quotes Obama saying that Iran is a "tiny" country that "doesn’t pose a serious threat." It implies that he fails to see Iran’s threat to Israel.
The picture changes dramatically when Obama’s full quotes are considered:

Obama actually said of Iran, Cuba and Venezuela: "These countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union" (emphasis ours).
Likewise, he said those countries don’t pose a serious threat to the United States "the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us."

Waste Worries

August 14, 2008

Summary
An Obama ad running in Nevada accuses McCain of favoring storage of waste from nuclear power plants at Yucca Mountain, which is the government plan, while not wanting the waste shipped through his home state of Arizona. The ad uses a clip of a 2007 interview of McCain, in which he responds, "No, I would not," when asked whether he’d be comfortable with having the waste travel through Phoenix on its way to Nevada.

Do VP Candidates Win States?

July 22, 2008

Q: Historically, have vice presidential candidates really helped win states in the general election?
A: Presidential nominees don't pick their running mates based on this strategy as often as one might think. Even when they do, the results are decidedly mixed.

A Full Tank of Nonsense

July 22, 2008

Summary
McCain’s new ad accuses Obama of keeping gas prices high, all by himself. That’s absurd, and McCain knows it – he has said repeatedly that our current problems were "30 years in the making."
The ad also tells us that gas prices are high because "some in Washington are still saying no to drilling in America." Not true. The federal government’s estimate is that if the moratorium on offshore drilling were lifted today, it would be 2030 before we’d see a noticeable effect on supply and prices.

Obama’s Work Claim

July 2, 2008

Summary
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 at first 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,

Farm Bill Funds Distribution

May 23, 2008

Q: In the farm bill, how much money goes to direct subsidies for farmers, what percentage goes to higher income farmers and how much is allotted for feeding the poor?
A: About $26 billion will be spent on direct payments to farmers over the next five years. We can't give a figure for exactly how much will go to "upper income" farmers, but the income limits are set quite high.

Gunning for Obama

May 6, 2008

A mailer sent from Clinton’s campaign to the homes of selected Indiana voters just before the Democratic primary goes after Obama for allegedly shifting his position on guns to suit his audience. The mailer’s not outright wrong in any of its statements. But the facts muddy the picture.

DNC vs. McCain

April 29, 2008

Summary

The Democratic National Committee has produced two TV ads against McCain, hoping to soften him up while the party figures out who its own presidential nominee will be.

One ad shows selected portions of McCain’s comments that a 100-year U.S. presence in Iraq would be "fine with me." The ad uses dramatic images of war and violence, and omits any mention that McCain was speaking of a peaceful presence like that in Japan or Korea.

Winning Ugly in Wisconsin

April 4, 2008

Summary
In a Wisconsin throwdown, incumbent Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler narrowly lost his reelection bid after being hit with a barrage of deceptive attack ads. We’ve written about some of them in recent weeks.

Attack ads targeting the incumbent heavily outnumbered attacks aimed at the business-backed winner, Circuit Court Judge Mike Gableman. In the closing days of the campaign the ratio was roughly 2 to 1.

A misleading attack ad that ran hundreds of times implied that the incumbent overturned a murder conviction despite overwhelming evidence of the convicted man’s guilt.