There's been an over abundance of rumors and myths about each candidate.  Since I support Obama, I find it important to dispell the myths and lies.   I'm going to post clarifications to the most common of those spread about Obama.

"One thing you can believe: It'll only get worse between now and Election Day.  Obama's spokesman Tommy Vietor said their strategy has been to 'confront these rumors head-on'.  Although this year's level of rumors has been ferocious and bizarre, the phenomenon of whisper campaigns, misinformation, and smears is as much a part of our nation's roots as elections themselves. Thomas Jefferson was accused of being anti-Christian; his opponents warned that he would destroy the religious fabric and values of the country and promote an orgy of rape, incest, and adultery. John Adams, opponents said, was pro-monarchy and was planning on marrying his son to the daughter of King George III.    ~The Associated Press.

Bill Ayers Issue....

We find McCain's accusation that Obama "lied" to be groundless. 

Obama never denied working with Ayers.

The education project is far from being "radical,".....The project is described by Education Week as reflecting "mainstream thinking" about school reform.

there's still no evidence of a deep or strong "friendship" with Ayers,

Obama never said Ayers was "just" a guy in the neighborhood. The quote is from a Democratic primary debate on April 16 in Philadelphia, and Obama actually was more forthcoming than McCain lets on. Obama specifically acknowledged working together with Ayers on a charitable board, and didn't deny getting some early political support from him. Here's the exchange:

She's repeated the charge again and again at different campaign stops [that Obama pals around with terrorists] citing the Times. What the Times article actually says, however, is this:  "[T]he two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers."

According to an Obama spokesman, the two men first met in 1995, when Obama was tapped to chair the board of the newly formed Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Ayers had been instrumental in creating the organization, which was to dispense grants for projects that would improve Chicago's schools.

the McCain-Palin campaign’s attempts to sway voters – in ads and on the stump – with false and misleading statements about the relationship, which was never very close. Obama never “lied”

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/he_lied_about_bill_ayers.html

Rock on Obama!  Nurses across America support you.  I for one will be honored to have you as my next President. 

Snubbing Wounded Troops?
 
A McCain TV spot falsely insinuates that Obama canceled his visit because "the Pentagon wouldn't allow him to bring cameras."
 
his insinuation – that the visit was canceled because of the press ban or the desire for gym time – is false. In fact, Obama visited wounded troops earlier – without cameras or press – both in the U.S. and Iraq. And his gym workouts are a daily routine.

It's unlikely, however, that the absence of press coverage would have been a factor in Obama's decision, as the ad implies. Obama says he never planned to take reporters on the Landstuhl visit, and Department of Defense rules prohibited him from taking reporters on previous visits he made with wounded troops.

Reporters were not allowed to accompany him when he visited wounded troops at Walter Reed Medical Center on June 28. The small "protective pool" of reporters that routinely accompanies him was told by Obama's staff to remain outside, in the van, according to a reporter covering the campaign. Similarly, Obama visited wounded troops in Baghdad earlier in his overseas trip, but he did so without reporters and "without a lot of fanfare, just to say 'Thanks',"
 
As we've already noted, no cameras or press were planned.

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/snubbing_wounded_troops.html

Jerome Corsi's "The Obama Nation" is a mishmash of unsupported conjecture, half-truths, logical fallacies and outright falsehoods.
 
 
Jerome Corsi's "The Obama Nation" is not a reliable source of facts about Obama.

Corsi cites opinion columns and unsourced, anonymous blogs as if they were evidence of factual claims. Where he does cite legitimate news sources, he frequently distorts the facts. In some cases, Corsi simply ignores readily accessible information when it conflicts with his arguments. Among the errors we found:

• Corsi claims that despite Obama's "rhetorically uplifting" speeches, the candidate has never detailed any specific plans. In fact, Obama's Web site is full of detailed policy proposals.

as a scholarly work, "The Obama Nation" does not measure up. We judge it to be what a hack journalist might call a "paste-up job," gluing together snippets from here and there without much regard for their truthfulness or accuracy.

 

A comprehensive review of all the false claims in Corsi's book would itself be a book.

some of Corsi's inaccuracies can be debunked with a simple Internet search.

Corsi ignores evidence that doesn't fit his chosen thesis. In discussing the baseless notion that Obama was secretly a Muslim at some point in his life In fact, the entire third section of Corsi's book – titled "The Candidate Is the Message" – is a study in how to ignore evidence that doesn't fit. In one passage,

Contrary to Corsi's claim, Obama's Web site is packed with details of what he proposes to do if elected. He lays out descriptions of his policy proposals, including tax cuts for most families and increases for those making more than $250,000 per year; a $150 billion, 10-year program to develop alternative energy sources and more efficient vehicles; a proposal to increase the size of the Army by 65,000 troops and another to create a public health insurance plan for those whose employers don't offer health coverage. Whether or not one agrees with them, Obama has indeed presented detailed plans for dozens of policies. It's hard to see how anyone writing a book on Obama could fail to acknowledge their existence.

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/corsis_dull_hatchet.html

Did Obama say we "are no longer a Christian nation"?

He said we are no longer "just" a Christian nation, but a nation of many other faiths as well. A chain e-mail drops that key word and thus changes the meaning.

This is an example of how omitting a single word from an otherwise accurate quote can twist the meaning so completely as to reverse it.

Saying that the U.S. is not "just" a Christian nation carries the sense that it is both a Christian nation and more: a nation of Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and nonbelievers as well. Furthermore, any survey of religious beliefs held by Americans will show that to be a factually correct statement.

However, what the authors of this and similar mass e-mails have chosen to omit is the word "just," converting Obama's factual description of America's diversity of religious beliefs to a statement that some interpret as anti-Christian.

Great Job on the post!!!!

Gobama/Biden '08-'12

This forum is intended to dispell myths about Obama.  Everything I have posted has been true.  I will continue to do the same.  My intentions always have and will remain to provide the Truth About Obama, thus the name of this forum.  That is the sole purpose of this forum.  It is not a place to bash either candidate, fight and argue with nurses about opinions, or be negative.  This is a positive forum to shed light on the man who may be our next president.

If you are an Obama supporter like myself, I urge you to ignore any negativity and lies that may find it's way here so as to keep the focus of this forum on its intended goal.  Fortunately, this is a free country we live in, so if one must feel the need to be negative here, that is your free will, but know that your actions will not show you in a positive light.

As I said earlier, I have chosen to submit information from factcheck as this appears to be a common reference for individuals across party lines. 

To all of my friends on nursinglink, you can find me here from now on (or at least until Obama wins)! 

A conservative group misleads voters mightily on Obama's tax plans for small businesses.
 

A conservative group called RightChange.com has spent $3 million running ads that largely criticize Obama and his tax plans. They're false:

• Two ads say Obama would tax "small businesses" at a rate of "62 percent." He wouldn't. That number is an inflated estimate of the very top tax rate, and it doesn't represent what Obama has proposed.
  
  
  


• That false figure includes an increased Social Security tax rate that Obama doesn't support, plus the state income tax rate paid by people making more than a million dollars a year in California.
  
  
  


• One ad implies that regular folks just trying to make it as entrepreneurs would be hit with such a rate. But even if this estimate were correct – and it's not – it would affect the wealthiest taxpayers and only 1 percent of those who could generously be considered small-business owners.

RightChange.com, a 527 group out of North Carolina, is largely bankrolled by its president, Fred Eshelman, the CEO of a pharmaceutical research firm, who has contributed $2.7 million of the $3.8 million the group has raised this year. According to OpenSecrets.org, Eshelman has also contributed $2,300 to Sen. John McCain's campaign. Two of the other three members of its board of directors are GOP state legislators in North Carolina. RightChange.com has spent just over $3 million so far.


The group has been running ads on national cable networks targeting Sen. Barack Obama, mainly by calling into question his tax proposals. The ads offer a false picture of how Obama's plan would affect small businesses.


In one of its ads, titled "Angry?," Right Change says that "Obama will tax Wall Street firms ... at 35 percent, while many small businesses pay 62 percent."


An outrage, right? The Tax Foundation's Gerald Prante sure thinks so – about the ad's claim, that is. He wrote a blistering critique of the ad, saying, "This is so ridiculous that I'm almost at a loss for words." Prante went on to question RightChange.com's general knowledge of how taxes work, saying: "The people behind this ad are either downright deceitful or too stupid to understand [marginal tax rates]; and given what else they are putting out ... I don't know which it is."

 

What has Prante so upset? Well, first, the 62 percent number is just plain wrong. No business – of any size whatsoever – would get hit with such a rate. And "many small businesses" wouldn't face a rate anywhere close to that. Most, in fact, wouldn't see their taxes go up at all. The ad compares taxes for corporations and small businesses based on the assumption that some small-business owners file their taxes as individuals, not corporations. But the overwhelming majority of small-business owners that do so wouldn't face a tax increase under Obama's plan, because it proposes no tax hikes for anyone earning less than $200,000 a year, or $250,000 for married couples.


Plus, the ad's claim that small businesses would "keep only 38 cents of every dollar" shows a fundamental lack of understanding of how people are taxed in this country. That claim is doubly wrong: The figure is false, and, even if it were correct, the "every dollar" charge is nonsense.

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/right_change_is_wrong.html

McCain calls Obama's refundable tax credits "welfare," but calls his own "reform."
 

The McCain campaign has taken to denigrating some of Obama's tax proposals as "welfare" rather than tax cuts. And it continues to mislead about who would see a tax increase.

• A new McCain-Palin Web ad characterizes Obama's proposed refundable tax credits as "welfare." But McCain himself proposes refundable tax credits, too, as part of his health care plan, and calls them "reform."
  
  
  


• The ad also says "hard-working families" and "seniors" would pay higher taxes. But – need we say this again? – that would be true only for the affluent few, not for the many.
  
  

As we've said any number of times, what Obama proposes would not raise taxes on any "hard-working families" unless they make more than $250,000 a year, a very small fraction of families. Independent analysis has shown than 95 percent of families with children would see federal income taxes go down.


As for "seniors," most of them would not see any increase in their federal income taxes either. In fact, Obama proposes to reduce federal income taxes to zero for persons 65 and over who make less than $50,000 a year. No other seniors would see an increase in what they pay to the IRS unless their income is $250,000 for a couple, or $200,000 for a single filer. It's true, as the McCain campaign likes to point out, that seniors who make less would be adversely affected by Obama's proposal to close down billions of dollars in tax preferences for corporations, which independent analysts calculate would flow through to owners of stocks and bonds in the form of lower dividend payments and reduced profits from capital gains. But while experts at the Congressional Budget Office and the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center tally this reduced income as "tax increases" for purposes of analyzing how proposed tax policies would affect different groups, it would not show up as an increased tax bill for any individual taxpayer, whatever their age.

 

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/obamas_welfare.html

"Joe" would actually benefit under Obama's plans:

As for the star of this ad, Joe Wurzelbacher (a.k.a. Joe the Plumber): He told ABC News, among other news organizations, that he makes much less than $250,000, in which case he'd get a tax cut under Obama's plan. But, he said, he hopes to make that kind of money one day.


For now, Joe would certainly qualify for a tax cut under Obama's plan. According to his hometown newspaper, the Toledo Blade, publicly available divorce court proceedings show that he made $40,000 in 2006. And according to the Tax Policy Center's analysis, 93.5 percent of those making between $40,000 and $50,000 a year would see a tax cut under Obama's plan, averaging $1,124 for the year in 2012.

 

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/obamas_welfare.html

I've had some people mention to me that they'll be printing some of this info to share with friends and family. 

That is a fantastic idea!  I encourage everyone who wants Obama to win to do so.....especially if you will be doing any canvassing.  It always helps to have some non-partisan facts in hand when you're trying to win the vote! 

Let's keep the momentum going!!!!!  Only 7 days left, but these are 7 very crucial days. 

girl u kno ur stuff!!! lol u should be a spokesperson for obama u have really cleared the air about alot of stuf which proves anytime a really good person in office try to run for president and has a chance of winning hands down they wil do whatever they can to bash him. Good

Work Girl !!!!! lol

Are three former Fannie Mae executives "economic advisers" to Obama?
 

No, claims made in a chain e-mail are false. Jim Johnson advised on non-economic matters but quit after a week. Franklin Raines says he took a "couple of calls" but was never an adviser. We find no evidence Tim Howard ever had a connection to the Obama campaign.
 
We addressed Raines' connection to Obama on the FactCheck Wire back in September after a McCain-Palin campaign ad claimed that Raines, the former Fannie Mae chairman and CEO, was advising Obama on economic matters. Both Raines and the Obama campaign denied that Raines was, or is currently, working for the campaign as an adviser. And the Washington Post's Michael Dobbs, who writes the Fact Checker column, found that the connection between the two was being exaggerated.
 
We addressed Jim Johnson's connection to Obama in another wire post also in September. Johnson, who was CEO of Fannie Mae from 1991 until 1998 (he left the company in 1999), was picked to join a selection committee (along with Caroline Kennedy and Eric Holder) to help choose Obama's vice presidential running mate. However, Johnson resigned from the position just one week later
 
The claim about Howard is pure fantasy. We found no press reports or other evidence indicating that Howard has, or ever had, any relationship with the Obama campaign, let alone being "a Chief Economic adviser." Normally, chief advisers to the campaigns do interviews with reporters and are widely quoted. When we asked the Obama campaign if Howard had ever been an adviser, spokesman Vietor said, "Timothy Howard is not a policy advisor and has not been one." Howard served as the chief financial officer for Fannie Mae until 2004, when, along with Raines, he was dismissed from the company under speculation of mismanaging Fannie's financial records.


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

FACTCHECK.ORG
Obama's Social Security Whopper

He tells Social Security recipients their money would now be in the stock market under McCain's plan. False.

By Brooks Jackson | factcheck.org

Sep 20, 2008 | Updated: 6:20  p.m. ET Sep 20, 2008

FACTCHECK.ORG

Summary

In Daytona Beach, Obama said that "if my opponent had his way, the millions of Floridians who rely on it would've had their Social Security tied up in the stock market this week." He referred to "elderly women" at risk of poverty, and said families would be scrambling to support "grandmothers and grandfathers."

That's not true. The plan proposed by President Bush and supported by McCain in 2005 would not have allowed anyone born before 1950 to invest any part of their Social Security taxes in private accounts. All current retirees would be covered by the same benefits they are now.

Obama would have been correct to say that many workers under age 58 would have had some portion of their Social Security benefits affected by the current market turmoil – if they had chosen to participate. And market drops would be a worry for those who retire in future decades. But current retirees would not have been affected.

Analysis

In our "Scaring Seniors" article posted Sept. 19 we took apart a claim in an Obama-Biden ad that McCain somehow supported a 50 percent cut in Social Security benefits, which is simply false. Then, on Saturday Sept. 20, Sen. Barack Obama personally fed senior citizens another whopper, this one a highly distorted claim about the private Social Security accounts that McCain supports.

Obama, Sept. 20: And I'll protect Social Security, while John McCain wants to privatize it. Without Social Security half of elderly women would be living in poverty - half. But if my opponent had his way, the millions of Floridians who rely on it would've had their Social Security tied up in the stock market this week. Millions would've watched as the market tumbled and their nest egg disappeared before their eyes. Millions of families would've been scrambling to figure out how to give their mothers and fathers, their grandmothers and grandfathers, the secure retirement that every American deserves. So I know Senator McCain is talking about a "casino culture" on Wall Street - but the fact is, he's the one who wants to gamble with your life savings.

That's untrue. All current retirees would be covered by exactly the same Social Security benefits they are now under what the Obama campaign likes to call the "Bush-McCain privatization plan," which Bush pushed for unsuccessfully in 2005.

Disappearing nest eggs?
Also worth noting here:

The private accounts would have been voluntary. Anybody fearful of the stock market's risk could simply stay in the current system.

Obama's reference to "casino culture," disappearing "nest eggs" and gambling with "your life savings" are also misleading exaggerations. Only a little over one-fourth of any workers' total Social Security taxes could have been invested (a maximum of 4 percent of taxable wages, out of the total custhelp.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/ssa.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=31...">15.3 per cent now paid, split equally between worker and employer.)

Speculation in individual stocks would not have been permitted. Workers would have had a choice of a few, broadly diversified stock or bond funds.

While McCain has voted in favor creating private Social Security accounts in the past, and endorsed Bush's 2005 proposal (which never came to a vote in Congress), he is not making a strong push for them as part of his campaign. In fact, a search for the term "Social Security" on the McCain-Palin Web site brings up the following: "No documents were found."

Footnote:  When we contacted the Obama campaign for comment, spokesman Tommy Vietor defended Obama's remarks as accurate:

Vietor: You don't have to be retired to rely on Social Security. Millions of people who will one day retire rely on Social Security as they plan their future. Senator Obama's bottom line is absolutely true. If McCain got his way and we had private accounts . . . people who are relying on that money for their retirement would be in a very difficult situation.