This morning, listening to John McCain speaking at a rally, I was incensed by what I perceived as lie after lie issuing forth from his Bush-like twang. How many lies? And how many lies is Obama telling at his rallies? I decided to quantify it. Taking a look at various fact checking sites, this is how truthful the two candidates were in their October 23 speeches.
By my count, Obama is more than twice as truthful as McCain, but just as untruthful. Where McCain really shines is in that careful parsing of words so that he’s not really lying, but is pulling quotes of out context or omitting important facts in order to mislead the audience. A whopping 63% of his statements were misleading in this way. For instance, his new hammer, “Obama is going to raise taxes!” is true but misleading because he is only planning to raise taxes on people making over $250,000 a year — in fact, his plan is to cut taxes on everyone making less than that. Is this statement by McCain a lie? Technically, no. But it’s not the whole story. The whole story would just gain votes for Obama.
