First and foremost: This little table, like many of the points contained within it, is full of false dichotomies, illogical imposition of choice, overly simplistic phrasing, analysis, and semantics, and generally looks like something that a particularly bright ten year old might come up with. But, since my source for this happens to be a conservative white middle-aged college-educated female executive at a large (1000+ employees) corporation, it appears that perhaps a particularly bright ten year old puts as much thought into his favorite ice cream as presumably intelligent voters put in to making leadershp decisions.

Now, let's take the table point by point. Please note that I have copy&pasted the 'issues' word for word from this e-mail.

Issue: "Favors new drilling offshore  US"
McCain: Yes
Obama: No

Facts: There are currently over 40 million acres of offshore land held by oil companies that are not being used in any way. If one stretches the definition of 'new drilling' to mean 'drilling on property that the oil companies don't already own,' then one must concede this point. However, if one chooses to leave behind the deliberately manipulative phrasing and disigenuous attempt at redefining 'new drilling offshore,' then the statement is patently false. From the Obama campaign (http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/factsheet_energy_speech_080308.pdf) "Oil companies have access to 68 million acres  of land, over 40 million offshore, which they are not drilling on. Drilling in open areas could   significantly increase domestic oil and gas production. Obama will require oil companies todiligently develop these leases or turn them over so that another company can develop them."

It's also worth noting that the objection to offshore drilling voiced initially by Obama and echoed by many economists and energy policy experts is this: offshore drilling will take years - a decade or more - to produce meaningful results or have any economic impact. If we were going to have this as a viable solution to current energy price issues, the time to act on it would have been ten, fifteen, twenty years ago or more. The simple fact is that we cannot continue to sustain an economy in which fossil fuels play a mission-critical role. It is a far wiser and more productive use of taxpayer dollars to find research and development of newer, cleaner technologies that will remove us completely from the internal-combustion/fossil fuel paradigm. This would, in one bold stroke, address major issues not only with energy prices, but also with pollution.

Issue: "Will appoint judges who  interpret the law not make it"
McCain: Yes
Obama: No

This is one of the oldest and most ridiculous strawmen in the republican political playbook. First and foremost: Judges can not make laws. That is a power that is specifically reserved to the legislature in the US constitution. The judiciary as two functions: to interpret existing law, and to determine, when the issue arises, whether a new or existing law is in violation of the Constitution. Neither president "will," or for that matter can, appoint judges who 'make the law.'

That said: the odious and illogical notion of 'activist judges' or 'judges who make laws' is a political euphemism employed by underhanded partisans who want to disguise their true intent. Most often, it is used to mean "judges who won't overturn Roe v. Wade, or who will otherwise refuse to outlaw abortion." It also has been used over the years to mean "letting gay people, women, and ethnic minorities enjoy the same rights as straight white people." This is a euphemism most often employed by white conservatives in the fifties to criticize the "Brown v Board of Education" decision which overturned the 'separate but equal' doctrine outlined in Plessy v. Ferguson, and other decisions that have promoted equality or determined that state actions limiting citizen rights were unconstitutional (as Roe v. Wade did, or more recently the Lawrence v. Texas decision that overturned Texas' sodomy law as unconstitutional).

As a whole, the 'interpret the law not make it' - aside from being composed with all the grammar skills of Borat - is a strawman, a red herring, and is most often (although not always) invoked by people who are prejudiced against a segment of society, but aren't cure that they can admit to the person they're speaking to that what they really mean is "he's gonna put judges on the court that will allow abortion/let gays get married/change that whole black people get 3/5 of a vote thing, and we can't let that happen."

Issue: Served in the US    Armed  Forces  
McCain: Yes
Obama: No

First, the snarky reply: Lee Harvey Oswald, Jimi Hendrix, Drew Carey, Julius Rosenberg, Oliver North, and Lindy Englund also all served in the US armed forces. Does that automatically mean they're more qualified to be president than Barack Obama?

The real reply: Nobody denies that McCain served, served honorably, and deserves all the respect in the world for his service. But military service is not a requirement for the presidency, and military service in and of itself does not make a candidate more or less qualified to be president. Furthermore, McCain was of military age during the Vietnam era. Obama turned 18 in the late 70's, when there was no pressing need for service and indeed, public sentiment toward the military was at an all-time low. McCain comes from a military family - both his father and grandfather were high-ranking officials - and likely was expected to enlist as a matter of family pride. This is an apples and oranges comparison, and has no relevance to the question of 'who will be a better president.'

Issue: Amount of time served in the  US Senate
McCain:22 YEARS  
Obama:173 DAYS  

 
• First, this is deliberately deceitful, as it tallies only the days Obama spent actively working on senate business, where it aggregates the entire period of McCain's service.
 
• Second, McCain is 25 years older than Obama.
 
• Third, with all due respect for McCain's service as a senator, one of the issues we're facing in this election is that an entrenched bureacracy of career politicians has really made a mess of things, and while McCain was leading the pack to head off in the wrong directions, Obama was standing up and saying 'no, let's not.'
 
• Fourth, If you're going to declare yourself an agent of 'change in washington,' it's pretty disingenuous to then tout your 22 years as a Senator.
 
• Finally, Joe Biden has served as a US Senator for 35 years; Sarah Palin for zero.

This rather mitigates the concerns that Obama's "lack of experience" will be an issue, as his closest advisor has more than enough experience for both of them in terms of being a politician. It also neatly avoids the hypocricy that McCain is engaged in, as Obama's "change" mantra is a matter of his judgment, his outlook, his approach. In taking on Biden as his running mate, he allows an opportunity to temper his 'inexperience' with experience while still ensuring that the decisions are his to make. In McCain/Palin, on the other hand, you have a career politician running with a semi-neophyte who has no experience at the federal level, very little even at the state level, yet by all accounts is a skillful political manipulator in the mold of Machiavelli and Schopenhauer via Rove. It's just my opinion, but the only tangible difference I see between Sarah Palin and the same old conservative religious white guys who have been screwing things up for the last 8 years is that she's younger and has boobs. Her political opinions are identical; her religious beliefs (and more importantly, her willingness to let those beliefs dictate her actions as a public servant) are perhaps even more radical and fundamentalist than G.W. Bush's, and her record of power in Alaska is riddled with episodes of abuse, heavy-handedness, and machination. Sarah Palin is not an agent of changing anything except the cut of the wool the wolf is wearing.

Issue:Will institute a socialized  national health care plan  
McCain:No
Obama: Yes

This is another one of these issues riddled with nonsense trigger words. It is clear that neither a fully capitalist nor a fully socialist health care system is effective. The only people who are against some kind of comprehensive health care reform that includes extending access to all citizens are those who have health care, have the money to afford constantly increasing insurance premiums, and who have no regard for the health and well-beingof their fellow citizens. While it's all well and good to get on a moral stump and condescend toward these selfish individuals, the larger issue at hand is that lack of health care affects everyone. Poverty affects everyone. This is a selfishness issue on both sides, but in my opinion the greater selfishness is on the side of those opposed; if you are one of the millions of Americans who have no health care, or who have to routinely decide between paying rent and buying medicine, or whose health is deteriorating every day because youhave no access to health care, or your access is limited to ill-equipped doctors who choose to participate in Medicaid and are so overwhelmed wth patients that it's impossible to give adequate care to all your patients...socialized medicine doesn't seem like a bad idea at all.

Issue:Supports abortion throughout  the pregnancy  
McCain:No
Obama:Yes

This is just a lie, no matter how you look at it. Both Obama and McCain have stated that they believe abortion should be legal with the life of the mother is at stake. I find no suggestion that either of them have restricted that point of view to a time period. Obama's own words on the matter: "On an issue like partial birth abortion, I strongly believe that the  state can properly restrict late-term abortions. I have said so  repeatedly. All I've said is we should have a provision to protect the  health of the mother, and many of the bills that  came before me didn't have that."

I find it impossible to believe that McCain, or anyone else short of the most rabid anti-abortion activist, would have a problem with the above statement.

Issue:Would pull troops out of Iraq     immediately  
McCain:No
Obama:Yes

Again, a pure lie. Obama's own words on the matter: "Barack Obama believes we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as  we were careless getting in. Immediately upon taking office, Obama will  give his Secretary of Defense and military commanders a new mission in  Iraq: ending the war. The removal of our troops will be responsible and  phased, directed by military commanders on the ground and done in  consultation with the Iraqi government. Military experts believe we can  safely redeploy combat brigades from Iraq at a pace of 1 to 2 brigades  a month that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer  of 2010 more than 7 years after the war began.

Under the  Obama plan, a residual force will remain in Iraq and in the region to  conduct targeted counter-terrorism missions against al Qaeda in Iraq  and to protect American diplomatic and civilian personnel. He will not  build permanent bases in Iraq, but will continue efforts to train and  support the Iraqi security forces as long as Iraqi leaders move toward  political reconciliation and away from sectarianism.

I have to wonder if the people who are spreading this kind of deliberate lie would actually prefer that we annex Iraq?

Issue:Supports gun ownership rights  
McCain:Yes
Obama:No

More lies, more over-simplified thinking, more fear-mongering nonsense. McCain doesn't support the right of, say, convicted felons to own guns. That's a "gun ownership right." Neither candidate has suggested making automatic weapons legal again, but that's a gun ownership right. Here's what Obama himself has to say on the matter: "Respect the Second Amendment: Millions of hunters and shooters own and use guns each year. Barack  Obama believes the Second Amendment creates an individual right, and he respects the constitutional rights of  Americans to bear arms. He will protect the rights of hunters and other law-abiding Americans to purchase,own, transport, and use guns." How is this not showing "support" for "gun ownership rights?"

Issue:Supports homosexual marriage
McCain:No
Obama:Yes

False again. Obama has stated numerous times that he believes the issue of gay marriage should be reserved to the states and, more ideally, to churches. Again, I think the man himself has said it better than I could: "Now, with respect to marriage, it's my belief that it's up to the  individual denominations to make a decision as to whether they want to  recognize marriage or not. But in terms of, you know, the rights of  people to transfer property, to have hospital visitation, all those  critical civil rights that are conferred by our government, those  should be equal."

What no major candidate has been willing to address is that state-sanctioned "marriage" actually violates the separation of church and state. A marriage is a religious institution. The legal partnership that derives from it should, if we are to take our constitution seriously, be treated as a business partnership, regardless of the orientation or even number of participants. Any partnership based on love and mutual trust - whether you call it marriage, civil partnership, or polygamy - involving consenting adults strengthens our economy and makes us more stable economically as a country and emotionally as individuals. Unfortuantely, marriage is so intertwined with law in this country that it will be many, many years before this simple reality can take hold: marriage is a religious institution, and the government is constitutionaly forbidden to sanction religious institutions.

Issue:Proposed programs will mean a  huge tax increase
McCain:No
Obama: Yes

More fearmongering and selfishness. We're half a trillion dollars in debt; do people really think that's going to disappear on its own? Do people think that the prolonged occupation of Iraq, so ardently endorsed above, is free? Of course not. This is more duplicitous euphemism for 'proposed programs will mean a huge tax increase for people who are already loaded with money." The FACT is that regardless of who is elected, they're going to inherit a huge deficit, a badly-broken infrastructure, poorly-funded social programs that cannot be dismantled, and a whole lot of problems that are going to cost a lot of money to fix. The difference here isn't how much tax, but who pays it; McCain would prefer the poor and middle class to foot the bill; Obama would suggest that those making more than a quarter-million a year should be willing to chip in and help. Again, this is an issue that is deliberately pushed toward affluent as a "they're takin mah money" proposal, but it's really no such thing. The lack of properly funded and administered social programs in this country is costing all of us. .

Issue:Voted against making English  the official language  
McCain:No
Obama:Yes

Pure bigotry. The US has never had an official language, has never needed one, and doesn't need one now. Furthermore, if the English in this communication, as well as what I see on the 'net every day from the sort of ignorant bigot that supports this kind of nonsense, is any indication, if English were the 'official language,' most alleged English speakers would find themselves in serious trouble. One of the greatest weak spots of our education system is that, unlike the vast majority of the rest of the world, multi-lingualism is the exception rather than the rule. "English as official language" is a crutch of fear and ignorance that people lean on because they're afraid that the dominance of their particular way of life is being threatened.

And it is, but the threat isn't coming from 'furrners,' it's coming from our own home-grown ignorance and provincialism.

Issue:Voted to give Social Security  benefits to illegals
McCain:No
Obama:Yes

Another lie: McCain actually proposed the legislation. http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=24987

Issue:Taxes
McCain:Santa John
Obama:OMG THIEF

The e-mail ends with a bunch of numbers that were apparently made up from whole cloth. Included are numbers not found in any reputable source (such as the claim that those making 30K will see their taxes go to 8.400 under Obama, and stay at 4,500 under McCain, allegedly 'proposed taxes' that would massively reduce the profit on home sales, etc.) These statements simply have no basis in fact, and for all I can tell from my research, they're an invention of the author. The bottom line, as described by several independent analyses: Obama's proposed changes to the tax system would increase the tax burden at the upper reaches of the income scale (the top 20% of earners, and especially the top 1 and 0.1%) while substantially decreasing it for those in the lower 80% of the earnings spectrum. The McCain plan would increase the tax burden at the lower end of the income scale (the bottom 60%), while decreasing it by a huge margin in the most affluent households. Personally, I find this enraging. If someone's making ten, twenty, fifty million dollars a year, I fail to see how adding another million to their after-tax income is particularly helpful in the day-to-day lives of average Americans. If someone is making twenty thousand a year and their tax burden is reduced by a thousand dollars, the impact is easy to see.

This entire e-mail missive strikes me as classist fear-mongering directed at older, rich, white, conservative voters who frankly don't seem to be interested in doing a lot of their own thinking or research and would prefer instead to believe an uncited article they get in their e-mail. It's all about "speaking 'our' language" and "let us keep what we earn for ourselves (nevermind that what we earn is actually earned on the backs of the millions of lower- and middle-income employees that we underpay in order to inflate our own bonuses)" and "omg socialism is bad bad bad." It ignores a huge swath of reality, and indeed in many places seems to simply make up its own story as it goes along.

In the final analysis, even if you are "pro-life," "pro-gun," "conservative," or filthy rich, there is nothing in this document that comes close to an accurate or meaningful portrayal of either candidate's positions. It deliberately whitewashes or outright lies about McCain's positions on a number of issues, and deliberately demonizes - and lies outright at every single point but two - about Obama's history and positions.

This is exactly the kind of "lie about something long enough and eventually enough people will be dumb enough to believe you that you get what you want" politics that had 60% of Americans believing at one point that Iraq was responsible for 9-11. As a voter and citizen of this country, I am absolutely fed up with politicians trying to lie and play on my fears in order to get elected or get away with making policy decisions that profit them personally.

No responsible, intelligent human being should take this or any other similar nonsense seriously, regardless of which candidate it's trying to elevate or denigrate. Each of us, as American citizens, have an obligation to find the truth between the lines...and frankly, if you're "too busy" to do the leg work, then you're "too busy" to vote. Stay home and let the people who actually take the time to try and understand the issues make the decisions.