The Washington Post has done a little fact-checking on Sarah Palin and her interview with Greta von Sustern and lo and behold she is wrong, wrong, wrong on almost everything. In fact they point out no less than FIVE errors (lies?) in a 30 minute interview.
And they are all over the board....Foreign Aid, Drill, Baby, Drill!, Social Security, Stimulus, and of course the [spooky music]DE-E-E-E-E-BT[/spooky music]
Sarah Palin Collects a Bushel of Pinocchios on her bus tour
And of course this doesn't include Palin's mangling of Paul Revere's ride
Number 1
“We don’t have the $2 billion [to give to Egypt]. Where are we going to get it? From China? We are going to borrow from foreign countries to give to foreign countries. … We want to know where those dollars are going because we don’t have the money to be providing foreign countries, not in this day and age when we are going broke.”
Despite the conciseness of Sarah's comment here, the WP manages to find that basically EVERYTHING about it is wrong. We do not give money willy-nilly, the Obama plan for Egypt involves debt forgiveness and debt swaps, loan guarantees at no cost to the US taxpayer and finally that aid we give is majorly as military aid used to pay American companies to employ American workers to make planes and other stuff to give to Egypt.
Number 2
“If you have more recipients than you have payers into the [Social Security] system, it is like a Ponzi scheme that’s going to be upside down in no time at all. We are going to be underwater with Social Security.”
Social Security is not foretasted to be underwater until 2036, as the WP points out, and then taxes will be enough to pay 75% of benefits for the next fifty years. AN issue? A problem? Sure, but not a huge problem.
Number 3
“Look at the debt that has been accumulated over the past two years. It is more debt under this president than all those other presidents combined.”
Just wrong, factually wrong. The debt was 10 trllion before Obama and the debt ceiling is a little less than 5trillion. So....wrong.
Number 4
“[Obama passed] a trillion dollars in stimulus package projects that still have resulted in record-setting unemployment, a heartbreaking number of home foreclosures, crashed markets left and right.”
OK, $800 million, not $1 trillion OK 1/3rd of that was tax breaks, not projects. OK not record-setting unemployment. OK drawing a line from the stimulus to the foreclosure crisis and crashed markets left and right (which by the way the markets have in fact recovered strongly since the stimulus, not crashed). Once a gain a statement in which, although every word is used correctly, when she makes sentences with them they turn out completely wrong.
Number 5
“[Look at] the impacts of that [drilling permit] moratorium [in the Gulf of Mexico], where 97 percent of our offshore has been locked up. What we are looking at now is 150,000 barrels less per day next year, and 200,000 barrels per day less being able to be developed from the Gulf the year after. …We are going to be looking at $8 billion a day that we are going to be pouring into foreign countries in order to import that make-up fuel that we are going to need to take place of what we could have gotten out of the Gulf.”
Let's just look at the numbers: 97 percent of offshore drilling has been locked up. No, just 20 percent according to the Energy Information Agency. 150,000 to 200,000 barrels per day less is actually about right, but the moratorium has been only one of several factors and not necessarily the main one. and finally $8 billion a day, which is actually about how much is spent per day by the WHOLE WORLD at $100/barrel)
She squeezed all this into a 30 minute interview and manage to earn
FOUR Pinocchios!! The maximum!! The Washington Post probably has to go into the Strategic Pinocchio Reserve just do find enough Pinocchios for the entirety of Sarah's bus tour.
Ah yes, an issue close to Palin's heart....Oil, baby, oil!