Snopes on this race.

BenBurch said:
None at all and as webmaster of whiterosesociety.org, all of these eventually wind up in my inbox.

Now, this isn't because you couldn't come up with some slander on McCain if you set your mind to it. Its not hard to tell lies. But nobody has, and I think that says something.
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Well, McCain is as old as Moses and his entire adult life is contained in government files since he was a military man turned government employee.

Obama is an unknown and thus smears about his background are easier to get rolling. Its not merely that somehow Hillary voters and Republican voters are more evil than Obama voters. I think Obama being so new on the national scene means you can throw all sorts of things out about him that sound plausible and have idiots forward them to their friends.
 
I have never trusted Snopes. Consider this article on the Swift Boat Vets. Note that the article was never updated after July 30, 2004, even though the Swift Boat Vets made their big splash in August of that year. Consider that Snopes includes this quote from David Alston as evidence that Kerry's men respected him:

I can still see him now, standing in the doorway of the pilothouse, firing his M-16, shouting orders through the smoke and chaos… Even wounded, or confronting sights no man should ever have to see, he never lost his cool.
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One problem. That's not John Kerry that Alston's describing, but Captain Edward Peck, who preceded John Kerry as the skipper of PCF-94. As described by Douglas Brinkley in Tour of Duty:

... suddenly there was a booming explosion that literally lifted PCF-94 right out of the water. Peck was standing in the pilothouse doorway with an M-16 at the ready to start strafing the jungle. Just as he pulled the trigger he was hit by two machine-gun bullets, one in his arm and one in his chest... [a]lthough bleeding profusely, Peck managed to continue firing back...
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Sounds an awful lot like Alston's supposed memory of Kerry.

Somehow Snopes managed to ignore Kerry's fantasy trip to Cambodia; I guess nobody ever put that one in a chain email?
 
corplinx said:
Well, McCain is as old as Moses and his entire adult life is contained in government files since he was a military man turned government employee.

Obama is an unknown and thus smears about his background are easier to get rolling. Its not merely that somehow Hillary voters and Republican voters are more evil than Obama voters. I think Obama being so new on the national scene means you can throw all sorts of things out about him that sound plausible and have idiots forward them to their friends.
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Lots and lots of room for "Manchurian Candidate" stuff, though, and I haven't (thankfully) seen that at all. And there is certainly room to "swift boat" him based on obscure (and obscured) details of his military career.

I hope we don't see any of that, but you absolutely could make something of those things.
 
BenBurch said:
Seems I spoke too soon;

http://www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnmccain.com/

I'll have to digest that and see if they say anything likely to be true.
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Yikes. Not happy with a lot of this. The "Mafia Ties" thing based on;

In 1995, McCain sent birthday regards, and regrets for not attending, to Joseph "Joe Bananas" Bonano, the head of the New York Bonano crime family, who had retired to Arizona. Another politician to send regrets was Governor Fife Symington, who has since been kicked out of office and convicted of 7 felonies relating to fraud and extortion.
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Sorry. Thanks for playing. Anybody who sends an invite to a Senator's office gets a regrets card like that. Does not matter who you are or what you are inviting them to. HAD HE GONE, then you might be able to make something of it. Sheesh.
 
corplinx said:
Yeah, that's what I am wondering. There aren't many chain-mail McCain smears I've seen. Snopes mainly deals with chain-mail type stuff.
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That's been my obeservation. I'm a self-professed liberal and friends with a lot of people who actually work for the Democratic party, yet I get virtually no smear mail about McCain. I get numerous smear mails (including several that Snopes has discussed) about Obama, though that may have something to do with my family back in Alabama or my wife's family who would say things like "Clinton is a Communist who is trying to take our guns." Still, I find that these kinds of smears are predominantly right-wing phenomena. Not wholly, of course, but significantly.

Maybe Snopes and Barbara and David Mikkelson lean to the left, I don't know. I have found that skeptics tend to do so, in general, especially when right-wingers include so many fundamentalists and anti-science types. That may prejudice her selection of topics, but I seriously doubt it. She's running a business, and it is not wise to ignore those who patronize your site. If there were left-wing smears being submitted, she'd be shooting herself in the foot to ignore them.

Here is an example where she debunked a smear against GW Bush.
http://www.snopes.com/history/american/bushscan.asp

Here's another one.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/humor/saint.asp

Here's another one.
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/prayer.asp

Here's one that debunks the idea that Laura tried to kill her boyfriend.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/laura.asp

Here's another one debunking an unflattering legend about Bush.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/eminem.asp

Here's another one.
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/bush.asp

Here's another one.
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/bush.asp

Here's another.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/canada.asp

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In short, you would have a hard time supporting the notion that Snopes was playing favorites. They appear to take what is submitted to them and report on it honestly and fairly. And they used to even warn you about believing them by listing some obviously false things, calling them "true" and then telling you to beware of the fallacy of "argument from authority", even if the authority was them. (I can't seem to find that section now). Nobody is completely impartial, but I'm betting that if "McCain rumors" were flooding into Snopes, they'd be investigated.
 
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joobz said:
that's been my take as well. I get a ton of crazy forwards emails from conservatives (my dad's a card carrying NRA member) and have seen multiple anti-obama ones. Unfortuantely, I do not see any crazy liberal email forwards. I'm guessing they exist, but I do not know anyone who passes them along.

Last thing I need is a bunch of PETA spams.
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PETA is not liberal - it is made of the same kind of slime fundies, Shrub and his BBoys are.
 
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