From Countdown, Oct. Oct. 16, 2008:
OLBERMANN: And in the frequency with which he used them on the campaign trail, it should be no surprised that some of John McCain's worse most obvious canards about used things about Barack Obama ended up in the debate last night.
Our fourth story on the Countdown: Tonight, a partial inventory of McCain misspeaks from debate number 49.
There were, of course, the obvious muffs anyone could make, albeit, ideally not in such quantity, calling, for instance, Governor Palin a bresh of freth air, calling Obama "Senator Government," saying Obama voted for Supreme Court Justice Breyer, even though Obama was not in the Senate at that time, it was a decade earlier; promising he would fight for the line item veto ruled unconstitutional in 1988, and in some golden oldies-hitching on the nuclear subs to show how safe nuclear power is-despite this year's nuclear leak aboard the USS Houston; accusing Obama of breaking a pledge to participate in public campaign financing, knowing that the pledge was always conditional and working out an agreement for same with the Republican nominee; putting the launch of Obama's political career in Bill Ayers' living room instead of where it really happened in a Ramada Inn and no-that's not a holiday. And claiming Obama earmarks $300 million for an overhead projector rather than, yes, a planetarium projector, for projecting overhead in a planetarium.
In new screw ups, in his own fields of supposed expertise, Columbia-no, not the number one importer of U.S. agriculture - Oh Canada; his own mortgage plan, no, not the same as Hillary Clinton's; on Iraq, botching the central element of Joe Biden's Iraq plan, not three countries as McCain said, but three divisions of one country.
On taxes-small business pay half of all taxes? U.S. companies among the highest tax in the world. Quote, "Both are wrong," reports the "Washington Post." More than half U.S. corporations paid zero taxes from '96 to 2000, and, in fact, most federal taxes are paid by ordinary people. One tax claim needing no debunking at all because Senator McCain revealed the truth about it himself in the course of the very same debate. First, he claimed Obama, not he, would raise taxes.
MCCAIN: Why would you want to increase anybody's taxes right now? Why would you want to do that? Anyone-anyone in America, nobody likes taxes. Let's not raise anybody's taxes. I'm not going to raise taxes the way Senator Obama wants to raise taxes.
OLBERMANN: McCain not raising taxes, refuted just 25 minutes later by McCain admitting his healthcare plan will tax benefits.
MCCAIN: Ninety-five percent of the people in America will receive more money under my plan because they will receive not only their present benefits, which may be taxed, which will be taxed -
OLBERMANN: Likewise on abortion, while journalists again refuted McCain's smear that Obama voted to let babies die after delivery, no one had to debunk McCain's claim about Roe v. Wade and the Supreme Court.
MCCAIN: I would never and have never in all the years I've been there imposed a litmus test on any nominee to the court.
OLBERMANN: Just two minutes after denying the Roe v. Wade litmus test, McCain admitted how he would decide the judge's qualifications.
MCCAIN: I would consider anyone in their qualifications. I do not believe that someone who has supported Roe v. Wade, that would be part of those qualifications.
OLBERMANN: Let me give you a few more, but it's only an hour long show.
