David Sirota on Rachel Maddow last night.
Rachel was on after the debate last night and had David Sirota on to blast McCain’s lies and bullshittery in the debate. There was a shitload of em, lemme tell ya.
From Sirota, the facts vs the McSame lies and half-truths:
MCCAIN CLAIM: ”American business pays the second-highest business taxes in the world…”
FACT: Page 42 of this Bush Treasury Department report found that America has the second lowest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world, as a percentage of our GDP (ie. the real way to measure this). Last month,Congressional Quarterly reported: “Most corporations, including the vast majority of foreign companies doing business in the United States, pay no income taxes, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Tuesday.”
MCCAIN CLAIM: ”We’ve got to start also holding people accountable.”
FACT: What about the lobbyists in McCain’s own campaign? What about Phil Gramm, the guy who passed all this deregulation?
MCCAIN CLAIM: ”We have to do is get spending under control in Washington…How about a spending freeze on everything but defense, veteran affairs and entitlement programs”
FACT: Non-defense discretionary spending is at its lowest levels as a share of GDP in a generation, and are projected to be the lowest since the Hoover administration in coming years.
MCCAIN CLAIM: ”We need very badly to understand that defense spending is very important and vital, particularly in the new challenges we face in the world, but we have to get a lot of the cost overruns under control.”
FACT: Minutes later he said we need “a spending freeze on EVERYTHING BUT DEFENSE, veteran affairs and entitlement programs.”
MCCAIN CLAIM: ”I have opposed the president on torture of prisoner - Guantanemo Bay…”
FACT: The Los Angeles Times reported in February that “McCain squandered some of his moral authority by supporting the Bush administration’s position that the CIA should have more leeway than military interrogators” in torturing prisoners. The Boston Globe reported that McCain “had a choice between his principles and propping up a failed president. He chose the latter…McCain, a Vietnam prisoner of war, has long condemned waterboarding as torture, making him more sensitive than President Bush on an issue that stained America’s image. But the Arizona senator and virtual Republican nominee to replace Bush voted against the bill.”
MCCAIN CLAIM: ”If we drill off-shore and exploit a lot of these reserves, it will help, at temporarily, relieve our energy requirements. And it will have, I think, an important effect on the price of a barrel of oil.”
FACT: The U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Agency has statedthat the benefits from such drilling would be too small to have any significant effect on oil prices.
MCCAIN CLAIM: ”America is safer today than it was on 9/11.”
FACT: The New York Times reported in 2007: “On Tuesday, in a dark and strikingly candid two pages, the nation’s intelligence agencies offered an implicit answer, and it was not encouraging. In many respects, the National Intelligence Estimate suggests, the threat of terrorist violence against the United States is growing worse, fueled by the Iraq war and spreading Islamic extremism.”
I can’t believe how low McSame and his handlers will stoop to lie to the American voters. Its criminal, but all’s fair in love and politics if your a Rethug.
The Path to a National Popular Vote
December 28, 2007 by Guest Author · Leave a Comment
The Path to a National Popular VoteBy David Sirota
Creators Syndicate, 12/28/07
Right now, many are frustrated about Iowa and New Hampshire voters having such oversized influence in America’s presidential elections. In a few months, as the general election campaign unfolds, we will be similarly frustrated about Ohio and Florida. Who arbitrarily gave this handful of states the disproportionate power to determine our national political path?
When it comes to the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, the answer is the parties. They decide which states select nominees first. In the general election, the culprit is the Electoral College. Most states award their electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis. By no matter what margin presidential candidates win your state, they get all your state’s electoral votes. That means if you don’t live in a “battleground” like Florida or Ohio whose statewide vote is perpetually up for grabs, you are ignored.
The nominating system is easily modified. Parties can add early primary and caucus states if they choose. Changing the general election, on the other hand, looks much harder. The Electoral College and its negative consequences seem locked into the Constitution.
But the operative word is “seem.”
To read the full nationally syndicated newspaper column, go to:
http://www.creators.com/opinion/david-sirota/the-path-to-a-national-popular-vote.html
