Let the fact-checking begin!

In the immortal words of John Stewart of "The Daily Show" :

Mr Vice President, your pants are on fire.

Last night's debate between the two candidates for V.P. has to be considered a win for the incumbent... at least as far as the award for unmitigated and shameless mendacity is concerned. The WaPo weighs in with its fact-check of last night's debate. By my count, Cheney won on technical merit by a score of 10-7, but clearly when it comes to artistic merit, he is the hands-down winner for most egregious falsitude by asserting that he never suggested that Saddam had direct ties to the attacks on 9/11. As the article points out, he has damned near made a career out of doing just that. Why else would 33% of Americans (scroll down) still hold the highly debunked and repeatedly refuted belief that Saddam was directly responsible for 9/11?!

(Update: Just re-read the polling data and the good news is that people are waking up from this delusion... 33% today, down from the 39% in September that I previously noted in my original post and 51% in May 2003).

The one point that I take exception to is the WaPo charcterization of Edwards's statement regarding tax cuts as being misleading:

Edwards asserted 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. President Bush last year cut the tax rate on dividends to 15 percent, whereas most soldiers would be in a 15 percent tax bracket -- and pay an effective rate much less after taking deductions for children and mortgages.

The fact is that Edwards is correct in his statement. Millionaires sitting by the pool sipping cognac pay either nothing, or a far smaller effective rate into Social Security and Medicare (FICA),because Social Security is capped at $5,449.80/yr which is reached at roughly $64,000, whereas the troops in Iraq have 7.5% for FICA and another 1.5% (I think that's right) deducted from their pay. Bottom line, the little guy gets screwed while the rich get the real benefits of the administration's tax cuts, which was Edwards's point. Don't think that point was lost on the majority of voters who know better and who also know that they are paying higher state and local taxes to make up the difference.

As for who won the debate, I think that Edwards won even though many of the pundits are calling it a draw. Anytime the vice presidential challenger can demonstrate that he can go toe-to-toe with the incumbant, as Edwards clearly did last night, it is a win for the challenger as his goal is to convince the voter that he has what it takes. What really matters to the voter is the top of the ticket. I mean, if nothing else, Dan Quayle proved that point beyond any reasonable doubt:-)

It will be interesting to watch the post-debate spin cycle to see how effectively the Dems play the mendacity card, continuing their campaign theme that Edwards so effectively started out with in the debate ("Mr. Vice President, you are still not being straight with the American people") given that Cheney basically threw them a hanging curve ball to hit out of the park with his statements last night.