Friday, November 30, 2007

Friday is Be Mean to Candidates Day

At the NY Times. First Paul Krugman slices and dices Obama's incomplete health care plan, then he gives him a wake up slap for using right wing clap-trap to attack the other Dem candidates.
I recently castigated Mr. Obama for adopting right-wing talking points about a Social Security “crisis.” Now he’s echoing right-wing talking points on health care.

What seems to have happened is that Mr. Obama’s caution, his reluctance to stake out a clearly partisan position, led him to propose a relatively weak, incomplete health care plan. Although he declared, in his speech announcing the plan, that “my plan begins by covering every American,” it didn’t — and he shied away from doing what was necessary to make his claim true.

Now, in the effort to defend his plan’s weakness, he’s attacking his Democratic opponents from the right — and in so doing giving aid and comfort to the enemies of reform.
Barrack needs a lot more seasoning to be president.

Ms. Rudi takes it on the chin in the article by Michael Cooper headlined "Citing Statistics, Giuliani Misses Time and Again" examining his use and gross misuse of statistics in his campaign.
Discussing his crime-fighting success as mayor, Mr. Giuliani told a television interviewer that New York was “the only city in America that has reduced crime every single year since 1994.” In New Hampshire this week, he told a public forum that when he became mayor in 1994, New York “had been averaging like 1,800, 1,900 murders for almost 30 years.” When a recent Republican debate turned to the question of fiscal responsibility, he boasted that “under me, spending went down by 7 percent.”

All of these statements are incomplete, exaggerated or just plain wrong. And while, to be sure, all candidates use misleading statistics from time to time, Mr. Giuliani has made statistics a central part of his candidacy as he campaigns on his record.
When you live by the stat, you die by the stat when you lie about the stat.

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