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Thursday, October 14, 2004

Bush lie not mentioned by CNN

I am too tired to blog the debate (it is 5 am here). My guess is that the spin will be roughly a draw with some focus on how Bush didn't act as stupid or crazy as in the first and second debate. I hope the spin will be that Bush lies like a rug.
There is one blatent lie which CNN's fact checkers didn't call

"BUSH: He forgot to tell you he voted to tax Social Security benefits more than one time. I didn't hear any plan to fix Social Security. I heard more of the same.

He talks about middle-class tax cuts. That's exactly where the tax cuts went. Most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans. And now the tax code is more fair. Twenty percent of the upper-income people pay about 80 percent of the taxes in America today because of how we structured the tax cuts."

Obviously the claim in bold is a lie. The CBO proved that and besides everyone knows it. Oddly I haven't seen this lie called on the left blogosphere either. I think well informed people are too used to Bush lying about this to notice. I read comments on how Bush attacked Kerry for voting to tax Social Security benefits without mentioning that Cheney did too. I think the first sentence, which is not a bad zinger, distracted from the totally false claim.

This could hurt Bush. About 30% of Americans think their taxes were increased. It is very hard to convince Americans you have cut their taxes, even when you have. A lie here is likely to cost Bush once people mention it.

CNN didn't call Bush on the Pell grant falsehood. Kerry knows more about the issue than Bush or the CNN fact checkers (no surprise). Given that Bush answered about education no matter what question he was asked, this should cost him.

I think Bush is going to pay for claiming that he never said he wasn't worried about Osama Bin Laden. This would be very costly if TV stations rolled the tape. Even if they don't, It is a flat out lie on a simple vital issue.

Kerry made 2 false claims caught by CNN. They are also being unfairly balanced.

Kerry left out "private sector" before 1.6 million for the second time. This is weird.
Kerry claimed Bush hadn't met the congressional black caucus. Bush has met them twice (sloppy).

The other Kerry claims that CNN challenges are a claim about the future (cut deficit in half they also challenge Bush on that) and 5 million Americans have lost health insurance for there are 5 million more uninsured. The second is just the way people colloquially describe the data. It is not a lie or distortion. It's like objecting to a claim about the average American on the grounds that there is no such person (as opposed to on the grounds that you are trying to convince people that you are talking about the median American in some dimension).

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