Fact-checking the GOP debate in Florida

[cal04]

From Social Security to HPV vaccines, the truth vs. the talking points
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44495689/ns/politics-decision_2012/

(snip)
MICHELE BACHMANN: Obama "stole over $500 billion out of Medicare to switch it over to Obamacare. ... These are programs that need to be saved to serve people, and in their current form, they can't."

ROMNEY: "He cut Medicare by $500 billion. This is a Democrat president. The liberal, so to speak, cut Medicare. Not Republicans, the Democrat."

THE FACTS: "Stole" is a hyperbolic way to describe the kinds of shifts in budget priorities that happen every day in Washington. To pay for expanded insurance coverage, Obama's health care law cuts $500 billion in payments to the Medicare Advantage program, which a congressional agency said was being overpaid — and to hospitals and nursing homes. Nearly all House Republicans, including Bachmann, later voted for a GOP budget plan that retained the same cuts Obama had made.

PERRY: The $814 billion economic stimulus program pushed by President Barack Obama "created zero jobs."

THE FACTS: There is no support for that assertion. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said last year that the stimulus increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million as of mid-2010. It cut the unemployment rate between 0.7 and 1.8 percentage points, the CBO found.

http://news.yahoo.com/fact-check-social-security-prompts-debate-miscues-013414715.html

Fact Check: Perry Debates Himself on Social Security
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/12/fact-check-perry-debates-himself-on-social-security/?hp

(snip)
And opting out is not always a good idea: when the city of Central Falls, R.I., filed for bankruptcy this year, it moved to cut the pensions of its police officers and firefighters by as much as half — and, since they had opted out of Social Security, many have no other income to rely on.

Mr. Perry spoke about the need to fix Social Security for “kids that are my children’s age.” In the past, when he suggested that Social Security might not be there for his children, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal think tank, wrote him a letter noting that the program is projected to have enough money to pay more than 80 percent of its benefits after 2038 even if its trust funds are exhausted then. “This means, for example, that if your children — currently 28 and 25, respectively — were to retire at age 67 and do as well as you have in their working careers, they would receive $38,145 and $39,410 (in 2011 dollars) each, every year, for the rest of their lives,’’ the letter said. “It is clearly inaccurate to say that this program will not exist for young people.”


Think Progress
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/09/12/317368/cnn-tea-party-debate-live-blog/
Gingrich knocks taxpayer subsidies for ethanol. But not too long ago, Gingrich was paid by the ethanol lobby to support those same giveaways in the tax code.

Governor Perry makes it clear that he can’t be bought with a $5,000 campaign contribution (it was actually $6K). How much would it take?

Rick Perry defends his vaccine order by saying that he is for life. But what about his death penalty execution record?

FLASHBACK: Before it was known as Tea Party Express, CNN’s debate co-sponsor was known as “Move America Forward,” a Republican front group that organized pro-Iraq war rallies.

[gratuitous]

1. What is "An exercise in total futility" Alex?

Correct, gratuitous! Select.

I'll take Celebrity Sex Positions for $800.

Seriously (yeah, right), it's good to run some of this nonsense through the old fact checker, but for the choir these charlatans are preaching to, "facts" are really superfluous. It's all about sounding or looking "presidential."

[Thinkingabout]

2. Now Ricky boy is going to have to do a better job of lying or bragging n

Perry has been bragging on the number of jobs he has created
and this was after he took stimulus money and now he is saying
the stimulus money created 0 jobs.  Can't be both ways.  He
would rather climb a tree and tell a lie than stay on the
ground and tell the truth.