Posted by
Warner Todd Huston on Wednesday, October 15, 2008 9:56:49 PM
Climate change. Give a specific number on how we can lower foreign oil
-McCain hits Obama on his idiot comment that got Canada all upset on "renegotiating" trade unilaterally. Claims we can become energy independent in 7, 8 or 10 years.
-Obama -- in 10 years he says we can reduce dependence on foreign oil. He is hitting the use them or lose them about acres oil companies aren't currently drilling (most of that land doesn't have oil under them in the first place. This is a cynical attempt to make it seem like the oil companies aren't drilling when they could).
-McCain hits Obama on his mushy language. McCain pledges to do off shore oil drilling NOW. Hits Obama being against the Colombian free trade act.
-Obama lies about the union leaders being killed in Colombia. These attacks on labor leaders in Colombia have fallen 80% since the current gov't there got into power. Is this not progress??? Car dealers are closing??? Where is this happening? I have heard no such reports. This is an outright lie. Now Obama runs the car industry to "retool and make new fuel efficient cars"??
-Hitting Obama on no preconditions meeting with foreign dictators. Obama wants to restrict trade and raise taxes like Hoover did.
**Update** 10/17 1:00 AM
As I mentioned about Colombia's recent improvement that the Dems are not giving them credit for, the Wall Street Journal also noted the point and here is a short editorial laying out more details on the matter:
Obama Makes It Up
Repeating union distortions.
In Wednesday night's debate with John McCain, Barack Obama defended his opposition to the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement this way: "The history in Colombia right now is that labor leaders have been targeted for assassination, on a fairly consistent basis, and there have not been any prosecutions." Among the many falsehoods in this Presidential campaign, this is one of the worst.
It is true that Colombia has a history of violence. But since President Álvaro Uribe took office in 2002, that violence has been substantially reduced. The homicide rate through the end of 2007 was down by 40.4% and the rate among union members was down almost 87%. There is nothing "consistent" about a drop to 26 union member murders in 2007 from 155 in 2000.
As for prosecutions: In union-member killings, there were zero convictions from 1991-2000 and one in 2001. But from 2002-2007, there were 80. According to the Colombian attorney general's office, 29% of those murders were "found to have been results of theft, petty crime and random violence unrelated to union activity." Mr. Uribe has nonetheless created a special investigative unit for crimes against union members, and he expanded a special government protection program for unions.
More broadly, in 2004 Mr. Uribe pushed through congress a judicial reform that has reduced the average time needed to issue an indictment for a homicide to 50 days from 493. He also increased the budget for the attorney general's office to $598 million in 2008, from $346 million in 2002 -- a 73% increase.
If Colombia hopes to keep spending on judicial improvements and better law enforcement, it needs an expanding economy. In addition to misrepresenting the country's progress on reducing violence, Mr. Obama has never explained how denying Colombians the FTA will help the country reduce violence. Maybe this is because he knows he's merely repeating union distortions.