Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Voting on the facts

Ah, it's that wonderful time again when we are bombarded with political ads from our presidential hopefuls about what they plan on doing and why the other guy sucks and you'd be an idiot to vote for him/her.
Actually, I really enjoy elections, having spent a good many years in the Washington DC area and even hobnobbing with some of our government's finest. Nowadays, I get to enjoy watching the catfights from 3000 miles away in my suburban Arizona home. Ah.. .the life.

In this election, there seems to be more nasty smears/rumors/etc about the candidates than in years past. Some of the claims that have been made about this or that candidate have run the gamut from misquotations, to just flat out liar-liar-pants-on-fire falsehoods. I was equally surprised that people actually believed some of them, and/or had no idea how to check out the validity of the claim. So I thought I'd post the URL's to some fact checking sites around the internet for those (as few as you may be) who read my little blog.

www.factcheck.org
www.snopes.com
www.politifact.com

ETA: also check out www.taxpolicycenter.org to see a breakdown of each of their fiscal plans

Now there are a few more, and you can find those links usually on one or more of the sites listed above. But really, they all pretty much say the same thing. I urge you to not only get out and vote, but vote intelligently!!! Check out the candidates website and actually READ what they say on the various issues. Check out claims that they make against each other, especially the negative stuff as it's often been manipulated to make themselves sound better.

Anyway, hopefully by posting these here, someone somewhere can make a more educated, informed vote in this election year.

As far as the rest of my life, this past week was spent buried in my Organic Chemistry books in preparation for an exam on Wednesday (as in tomorrow), so nothing really new to report on any front. Got in a few short workouts, and have not been able to knit very much (which means I'm still working on The Cardigan).

Hope everyone has a good week!

1 comment:

Kim B said...

Still working on that cardigan, eh?

Loving the current comments on the political scene. Puhleeze.....