debunk this email a coworker sent me. She will check this with me later...

[TN al]

debunk whichever point you are the expert on. I've already told her it is full of lies.





ISSUE
John McCain
Barak Obama

Favors new drilling offshore US
Yes
No

Will appoint judges who interpret the law not make it
Yes
No

Served in the US Armed Forces
Yes
No

Amount of time served in the US Senate
22 YEARS
173 DAYS

Will institute a socialized national health care plan
No
Yes

Supports abortion throughout the pregnancy
No
Yes

Would pull troops out of Iraq immediately
No
Yes

Supports gun ownership rights
Yes
No

Supports homosexual marriage
No
Yes

Proposed programs will mean a huge tax increase
No
Yes

Voted against making English the official language
No
Yes

Voted to give Social Security benefits to illegal’s
No
Yes

CAPITAL GAINS TAX

MCCAIN
0% on home sales up to $500,000 per home (couples). McCain does not propose any change in existing home sales income tax.

OBAMA
28% on profit from ALL home sales. (How does this affect you? If you sell your home and make a profit, you will pay 28% of your gain on taxes. If you are heading toward retirement and would like to down-size your home or move into a retirement community, 28% of the money you make from your home will go to taxes. This proposal will adversely affect the elderly who are counting on the income from their homes as part of their retirement income.)

DIVIDEND TAX

MCCAIN
15% (no change)

OBAMA
39.6% - (How will this affect you? If you have any money invested in stock market, IRA, mutual funds, college funds, life insurance, retirement accounts, or anything that pays or reinvests dividends, you will now be paying nearly 40% of the money earned on taxes if Obama becomes president. The experts predict that 'Higher tax rates on dividends and capital gains would crash the stock market, yet do absolutely nothing to cut the deficit.')

INCOME TAX

MCCAIN

(no changes)
Single making 30K - tax $4,500
Single making 50K - tax $12,500
Single making 75K - tax $18,750
Married making 60K- tax $9,000
Married making 75K - tax $18,750
Married making 125K - tax $31,250

OBAMA (reversion to pre-Bush tax cuts)
Single making 30K - tax $8,400
Single making 50K - tax $14,000
Single making 75K - tax $23,250
Married making 60K - tax $16,800
Married making 75K - tax $21,000
Married making 125K - tax $38,750
Under Obama, your taxes could almost double!

INHERITANCE TAX

MCCAIN
- 0% (No change, Bush repealed this tax)

OBAMA
Restore the inheritance tax

Many families have lost businesses, farms, ranches, and homes that have been in their families for generations because they could not afford the inheritance tax. Those willing their assets to loved ones will only lose them to these taxes.

NEW TAXES PROPOSED BY OBAMA

New government taxes proposed on homes that are more than 2400 square feet. New gasoline taxes (as if gas weren't high enough already) New taxes on natural resources consumption (heating gas, water, electricity) New taxes on retirement accounts, and last but not least....New taxes to pay for socialized medicine so we can receive the same level of medical care as other third-world countries!!!


You can verify the above at the following web sites:

http://money.cnn.com/news/specials/election/2008/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/issues/issues.taxes.html

http://elections.foxnews.com/?s=proposed+taxes
http://bulletin.aarp.org/yourworld/politics/articles/mccain_obama_offer_different_visions_on_taxes.html

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/candidates/barack_obama/

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/candidates/john_mccain/

[EstimatedProphet]

1. Here's my verification:

Half the things on this list that are implied to be bad are things I want. If you don't want them then you are a Neanderthal. Go back to your fucking cave and let the rest of us live lives that are worth living.

[d_b]

3. ding ding ding

[pinkpops]

12. Amen

[Whalestoe]

2. Here's one part.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/taxes.asp

[tulsakatz]

4. in the first place,

...about Judges, that's all they do is interpret the law! They don't make it, that's the job of the legislative branch!

And Obama does not support abortion, he supports a woman's right to choose what happens to her own body. He doesn't give that choice to a legislator.

And taxes, Obama's plan says unless you make more than $250,000 per year, you will get a tax cut!! He will eliminate the tax breaks to the very rich under Bush and that's how he will pay for many programs.

It would take a lot of to debunk all of them......but that should get you started.

Just tell them to go to http://www.barackobama.com

[yardwork]

5. A lot of these are just flat-out lies.

Obama is not opposed to gun rights. Obama is opposed to gay marriage (a point on which I strongly disagree with him). Obama has no plan to institute a "socialist national health care plan," another point on which I disagree with him. Obama does favor offshore drilling (I don't agree). Obama does not "support abortion throughout the pregnancy." I could go on and on.

These are all lies.

[nichomachus]

6. Don't waste your time

These idiots don't want to be educated -- and they're not looking for discussion.

If you have any spare time, clean out your sock drawer. Your life will be much better for it.

[JaneQPublic]

9. Yes, but it will make them mad, which is its own reward. (nt)

[abumbyanyothername]

10. I would adopt the kill them with kindness approach

Most pugs (and for that matter many dems) use politics as a way to prop up their ego. The ego only survives through conflict. (Conversely, if you are 'looking for a fight' you are almost certainly propping up your own ego.) These pubs would shrivel in agony if you refused to give them the fight they crave.

Tell them you hope whoever wins in November, wins by 10% or more, that you look forward to a unified, united, not red and blue state, but UNITED States of America, that you know that whoever the next President is he or she will face an extremely difficult task dealing with a Current Account Balance deficit of nearly 800 Billion dollars (how long can we go on exporting $2,500 of wealth per person per year?).

Compliment Sarah Palin on doing a great job balancing her career and family, and compliment Todd also for stepping up and quitting his job to help out.

When they see you don't want to play, they will feel even worse than if you helped them get mad and puff up their ego and they probably won't even know why. Its probably not a bad thing to play a little jedi mind game and link politics with feeling bad in a Republican.

[JaneQPublic]

7. The referenced links really don't corroborate the e-mail

They're mostly just collections of recent articles on politics previously posted on the websites, none of which specifically address the claims of the e-mail.

[calmblueocean]

8. My religious mom sent me this forward, too. Here what I sent back:

>> Anyone know if these are accurate?

I've just given this a cursory once-over, but they don't spell his first name right (Barack, not "Barak") and many of the positions they attribute to him are wrong or misleading. Obama does not support gay marriage, and is not against offshore oil drilling, so long as it's part of a bigger energy plan that gets us off oil. His health plan is not "socialized national health care", at least in the way they mean it here, where doctors would have to work for the government. Obama does not want things to work that way. He does want to regulate the health insurance industry, something I think pretty much everyone agrees we need these days, except John McCain.

For instance, Obama wants to make it illegal for health insurers to deny people coverage based on a pre-existing condition. That's one of the major reasons I support him. To do that, he wants to offer a health insurance plan you can buy into if your health insurer decides they don't want to play the health insurance game anymore, or wants to jack the price of it up too high. It's a way of taking power away from the insurers and giving it back to you. McCain doesn't support that. He thinks it's fine that health insurers can deny coverage. He calls that 'competition'.

What do you think? Hospitals these days won't even do operations if you're not insured. If you get sick, and then lose your job and your health coverage, should an insurance company be able to refuse to sell you insurance? Even if that means you die? The answer here is pretty straightforward to me.

McCain's health insurance plan is actually kind of crazy to me. Right now, you don't pay taxes on the amount of your health insurance that is subsidized by your employer, which averages about $9000. You pay maybe $4000 out of pocket. McCain wants you to pay taxes on the full value of your health insurance. (Seriously! He does. I doubt you'll be getting that info in an e-mail forward!)

So, because of that, he says he wants to offer a tax credit of $2500 for individuals to offset those new taxes. But after all is said and done, that won't be enough to pay off what you would owe thanks to John McCain's new taxes! So you'll be even further behind than today. And the health insurance industry will still be free to deny you coverage if they can find anything they can call a pre-existing condition in your medical file.

There's a good, impartial article in the Dallas News that explains it well. I'll just quote the final paragraph:

Lawrence Louie, a 40-year-old Plano telecommunications worker, is one of those. He doubts the McCain tax credit will be large enough to buy insurance on the open market for himself and his wife.

"Basically, I would be forced to choose between paying the increased taxes , or pay at least $4,000 out-of-pocket per year for private insurance, after adjusting for the value of the tax credit," he said.

"Anyone with good insurance is not going to find this acceptable."
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/dmn/stories/081608dnpolmccainhealth.43edf6d.html

So I could try to go through the rest of this e-mail bit by bit, but I pretty much follow the 3 strikes, you're out law. If I spot 3 errors or attempts at misleading people, I'm done. Besides, I need to go to bed! :-)

[Gabi Hayes]

11. don't bother,,,, just send them this:

http://www.usvetdsp.com/jan08/mccain_military_record.htm

sampley is a very bad guy, but this will give them pause

if there's a cc list on the email, make sure you send it to everybody

[Mojorabbit]

13. Snopes has this

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/taxes.asp

[DeeDeeNY]

14. Estate tax is a bogus issue

Less than 1 percent of estates pay any tax at all. David Cay Johnston (the author of this article) researched the estate tax a few years ago and could find NO instance of any kind EVER where anyone lost a family business or farm or anything else because of the estate tax.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2005/06/repealreformestatetax.html

As for income tax, 95% of the country will get tax cuts under Obama's plan. You need to have an income of over a quarter million dollars, and even then it would only revert to what the tax rates were during Clinton's reign - when there was economic prosperity. This website says it all:
http://alchemytoday.com/obamataxcut/

[AnnetteFun]

17. Factcheck.org said this s*it is made-up

Sorry, I don't know how to do this as a link, but cut and paste... The funny thing is, whoever made this s*it up included all those links to make it look official...I clicked on a couple of the links and they didn't even have anything to do with the claims in the "comparison". Pretty bad when they have to sit around and make stuff up just to scare people.

http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/would_obama_tax_my_profits_if_i.html

[justiceischeap]

15. Gay Marriage

Joe Biden:
"It will eventually happen."

Barack Obama:
Believes in civil unions and gay marriage should be a state issue but does not support a constitutional amendment.

[Mz Pip]

16. I think if you actually click on the links

you will find they have little or nothing to do with the bogus claims in that email. That seems to be a new tactic - add links and be fairly confident the no one will bother to check them.

http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/would_obama_tax_my_profits_if_i.html

[zulchzulu]

18. Nearly EVERY issue that McCain has stood for a year has reversed

I would just say that McCain has flip-flopped on EVERY issue, so it is impossible to tell what he actually stands for...so by default, Obama wins.