Ah, come on, that’s not all of it - you make it sound like they’re just being bribed.
It also has a very large hispanic population and an entirely different cultural than Texas, Colorado, or Arizona.
It’s only recently become competitive, too; Gerald Ford won it by 1.5.
More with the fact checking via Froomkin at the WP:
The Fact-Checking Continues
Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball wrote in Newsweek wrote yesterday afternoon: "With virtually all of the administration’s original case for war in Iraq in tatters, Vice President Dick Cheney provided shifting and sometimes misleading arguments in last night’s debate with John Edwards about Saddam Hussein’s ties to terrorists and his access to weapons of mass destruction. . . .
“[E]xcept for the allegation about Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda – a claim that is now more in question than ever – the other examples cited by Cheney in Tuesday night’s debate never have been previously emphasized by Bush administration officials, and for good reasons.”
Halliburton Watch
Robert O’Harrow Jr. writes in The Washington Post: "Edwards occasionally jumbled or oversimplified the complex details of the company’s role as a contractor and of its ties to Cheney, who served as Halliburton’s chief executive from 1995 to 2000.
"Cheney, for his part, said the Democrats ‘know the charges are false,’ even though some are the subject of ongoing investigations.
Not the Hometown Paper
Erin Olson writes in Editor & Publisher: "In last night’s debate, Vice President Dick Cheney seemingly scored points when he referred to a nickname for his opponent coined by what he called Sen. John Edwards’ ‘hometown newspaper.’ The paper, he said, had called Edwards ‘Senator Gone,’ a barb aimed at the senator’s absence from a number of Senate floor votes.
"Cheney did not cite the paper by name, and most probably assumed that it was The News & Observer, the major daily in Raleigh, N.C., where Edwards has lived for several decades. . . .
“As it turns out, Cheney’s quote source is a small paper published three times a week in North Carolina’s Moore County, called The Pilot.”
Here’s the editorial.
Some Loophole
Blogger Ragout writes that Cheney criticized Edwards for taking advantage of a “special tax loophole.” The loophole? Filing under subchapter-S – a staple of Bush and Cheney’s stump speeches.
“In their stump speeches, subchapter-S corporations are virtuous job creators, but when their opponent starts a perfectly typical corporation of this type, he’s a tax dodger. What a cheap shot,” Ragout writes.
Edwards Wrong on Taxes for Soldiers
Edwards said Tuesday night that “millionaires sitting by their swimming pool . . . pay a lower tax rate than the men and women who are receiving paychecks for serving” in Iraq.
Reader Karen Mango sent me the following e-mail: “Most knowledgeable journalists, or at least one who knows a soldier or could Google, would point out that soldiers on Iraq fall under the combat zone exclusion policy. Enlisted soldiers have their entire pay, while in the combat zone, exempt from federal income taxes. So, in effect, their tax rate is zero. It is shameful that Senator Edwards used these troops as his props, and his glaring lie has not been pointed out by the liberal media.”
When Cheney Met Edwards II
But he whopper getting the most mileage today is the one I led with in yesterday’s column.
Thomas Fitzgerald writes for Knight Ridder Newspapers that Cheney was mistaken when he said he’d never met Edwards until their encounter Tuesday night in Cleveland.
“Now, in my capacity as vice president, I am the president of Senate, the presiding officer. I’m up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they’re in session. The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight,” Cheney said.
Fitzgerald writes: "It also was a stretch for Cheney to suggest that he frequently presides over the Senate. Cheney wields the gavel only when he’s needed to cast tie-breaking votes, which happened only three times in 2003. He does visit Capitol Hill on Tuesdays, for strategy lunches with Republican senators, but no Democrats are invited.
“Cheney aides said Wednesday that his comment wasn’t misleading. It pointed up a larger truth, they said: that Edwards has often been absent from his Senate duties, busy running for president.”
It depends on what the meaning of the word “met” is, writes Richard Leiby in The Washington Post’s Reliable Sources column.
“Was Cheney dissembling – as Edwards suggested post-debate – or misremembering? Of course not! The Bush-Cheney camp yesterday portrayed those occasions as ‘casual encounters,’ not meetings.”
Ovetta Wiggins and Chris L. Jenkins write in The Washington Post: "While Cheney made little mention of the nationally televised encounter, his wife, Lynne, was still brimming with enthusiasm. . . .
“‘I know it’s a good thing to go to a prayer breakfast sometimes, but don’t you think the senator should go to the Senate every once in a while?’ Lynne Cheney said.”
Here is the text of remarks by the Cheneys in Tallahassee and Gainesville.
The liberal Media Matters Web site notes that NBC’s Tim Russert said Wednesday morning that he knew Cheney lied about not meeting Edwards. “So why didn’t he mention it in his post-debate commentary?”
What’s the Big Deal?
Several bloggers are hearkening back to four years ago when Al Gore said in a debate with Bush that he had recently accompanied James Lee Witt down to Texas, when in fact it was another official.
Blogger Just My 2, for instance, recalls this quote, from Cheney himself: “Al Gore has described these presidential debates as a job interview with the American people,” Cheney said. “I’ve learned over the years that when somebody embellishes their resume in a job interview, you don’t hire them.”
Factcheck Dot Wrong
Dana Milbank writes in The Washington Post about how Cheney by mistake ended up sending people to the Web site of a billionaire Bush-basher.
“After Democratic nominee John Edwards raised some nasty allegations about Halliburton Corp., the company Cheney once ran, Cheney angrily responded to the ‘false’ charges. ‘If you go, for example, to FactCheck.com, an independent Web site sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania, you can get the specific details with respect to Halliburton,’ he said.”
Cheney meant to say FactCheck.org.
FactCheck.com, up until Tuesday night, was Web site that refers people to sellers of dictionaries and encyclopedias. But Name Administration, the company that owns the site was annoyed when it suddenly got an enormous burst in traffic.
“To avoid crashing, and to exact revenge on Cheney for causing it such grief, Name Administration decided to forward traffic to GeorgeSoros.com – a site that could handle the traffic, was not soliciting funds and clearly wasn’t tied to Bush,” Milbank writes.
"But, unfortunately for Cheney, FactCheck.org was not much more helpful than Soros in knocking down Edwards’s charges.
“Cheney ‘wrongly implied that we had rebutted allegations Edwards was making about what Cheney had done as chief executive officer of Halliburton,’ the Annenberg site wrote in a posting yesterday. ‘In fact, we did post an article pointing out that Cheney hasn’t profited personally while in office from Halliburton’s Iraq contracts, as falsely implied by a Kerry TV ad. But Edwards was talking about Cheney’s responsibility for earlier Halliburton troubles. And in fact, Edwards was mostly right.’”
Links to the full stories from this article available here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/politics/administration/whbriefing/
How come the first place I heard about all of those false statements Cheney made was on The Daily Show?
Because the Liberal Media is … er … oh, wait. Um.
Hilarious, as usual :D
Because you didn’t watch the post-show analysis or read that much coverage?
ABC News, to use one example, called out some of those false statements right after the debates. There were also news stories in most of the sources I normally check.
Also, The Daily Show waited a day for its coverage.
Went back through race2004.net’s polls today - looks like Kerry has jumped 2 or 3 points across the board. Nice; Bush would be in serious shit if the election was today.