It's becoming crystal clear that we have more than enough good reasons to vote against the Obama-Biden team. At the top of the ticket stands a man who has no experience whatsoever that prepares him to be President of the United States. His most highly touted claim to accomplishment is that he was once a community organizer.
The fact is, the man has no accomplishments beyond winning primaries and elections. Once in office his goal becomes winning the next primary or election, and to do this he must stay in the good graces of his party patrons. That means in his entire political career he has never once gone against his own party on any issue large or small. Never. His choice for running mate is further evidence of his unwillingness to stray from the party line. The Barack Obama/Joe Biden team has spent their entire political careers in lockstep with the Democratic political machine. If ever there was a philosophically unattractive pair, Obama-Biden are it.
This has suddenly sunk in with pundits at the Washington Post who to all outward appearances have decided en masse on a strategy for rescuing fading liberal hopes. Attack John McCain and Sarah Palin. Opinion recyclers at the Post have begun their effort to rebrand McCain and Palin as liars. Ruth Marcus has today's attack, which she calls True Whoppers.
McCain's transgressions, though, are of a different magnitude. His whoppers are bigger; there are more of them. He -- the easy out would be to say "his campaign" -- has been misleading, and at times has outright lied, about his opponent. He has misrepresented -- that's the charitable verb -- his vice presidential nominee's record. Called on these fouls, he has denied and repeated them.
The most outrageous of McCain's distortions involve Obama on taxes. He asserts that Obama's new taxes could "break your family budget," and that an Obama presidency would inflict "painful tax increases on working American families." Hardly. Obama would lower taxes for most households, and lower them more than McCain would. The only "painful tax increases on working American families" would be on working families making more than $250,000.
Suffice it to say that in the liberal view, accusing the anointed one of making promises that he will break at a later date is lying. One must take the messiah at his word. The disciples will stand for nothing less.
Take a look at how Marcus accuses Sarah Palin of lying. Says Marcus,
Palin sold the gubernatorial jet, on eBay and for a profit -- except that she didn't.
I'm struck by the clever wording from Ms. Marcus. Notice that she doesn't accuse Palin of actually saying that she sold the jet on ebay for a profit. Marcus chooses wording that invites the reader to infer that she said it. Marcus did exactly what she would call a lie if a Republican said it about a Democrat. Here's what Palin actually said.
While I was at it, I got rid of a few things in the governor's office that I didn't believe our citizens should have to pay for.
That luxury jet was over the top. I put it on eBay.
I also drive myself to work.
No sale, Ruth. And no mention of profit, either. Those things must have come out of the dim recesses of her own head.
Yesterday it was Eugene Robinson and Richard Cohen in a tag-team match against the McCain-Palin ticket. Somehow both Washington Post pundits came up with the same brilliant idea -- and at the same time -- of accusing McCain and Palin of lying. They must have been a great help to Marcus as she pondered her topic for today. First Robinson disputes Sarah Palin's claim that she killed the bridge to nowhere.
Saturday, days after the interview, Palin said this to a crowd in Nevada: "I told Congress thanks but no thanks to that Bridge to Nowhere -- that if our state wanted to build that bridge, we would build it ourselves."
That's not just a lie, but an acknowledged lie. What she actually told Congress was more like, "Gimme the money for the bridge" -- and then later, after the whole thing had become an embarrassment, she didn't object to using the money for other projects.
Although you wouldn't know it from listening to liberal pundits, there are two sides to a story. The other side can be found in an article in the Anchorage Daily News from last March.
A common target for earmark snipers is the so-called "bridge to nowhere" plugged by Alaska Rep. Don Young into the five-year transportation bill in 2005. Congress stripped the earmarks directing the spending but let the state keep the money to use on the bridge if it wanted.
Palin ruffled feathers when she announced - without giving the [congressional] delegation advance notice - that the state was killing the Ketchikan bridge to Gravina Island, site of the airport and a few dozen residents.
Palin's office said a state transportation official had earlier told Stevens the project was too expensive. Palin has said the federal funding was short and Congress clearly wasn't going to pay for the rest of such a controversial bridge.
Palin also declared last year that her administration was going to cut back its own earmark requests submitted to the delegation. Her budget director, Karen Rehfeld, wrote, "to enhance the state's credibility," state requests should only be for the most compelling needs.
The state requested earmarks for 31 projects worth just under $200 million this year. Rehfeld said five of them are new and four have been funded intermittently in the past. She said it's down from last year's request of 54 projects for around $550 million.
You decide. Robinson was, at best, nitpicking. And so we come to Richard Cohen who took on the Ugly New McCain. He accused John McCain not just of lying, but of personal treason. I guess when you're a Republican lying is treason. When you're a Democrat aid and comfort to the enemy is merely a different point of view. But I digress. Here is Cohen.
The precise moment of McCain's abasement came, would you believe, not at some news conference or on one of the Sunday shows but on "The View," the daytime TV show created by Barbara Walters. Last week, one of the co-hosts, Joy Behar, took McCain to task for some of the ads his campaign has been running. One deliberately mischaracterized what Barack Obama had said about putting lipstick on a pig -- an Americanism that McCain himself has used. The other asserted that Obama supported teaching sex education to kindergarteners.
"We know that those two ads are untrue," Behar said. "They are lies."
Freeze. Close in on McCain. This was the moment. He has largely been avoiding the press. The Straight Talk Express is now just a brand, an ad slogan like "Home Cooking" or "We Will Not Be Undersold." Until then, it was possible for McCain to say that he had not really known about the ads, that the formulation "I approve this message" was just boilerplate. But he didn't.
Actually, they are not lies," he said.
Actually, they are.
Actually they are not. Let's take the McCain lie about sex education. Mr. Cohen could have taken a moment and straighten us out by giving us the truth of the matter, but apparently there was not enough room in the column for that. He would have us take his word for it. Fortunately we don't have to. As it happens the bill is available here at the Illinois General Assembly website. (Via Byron York)
1 AN ACT concerning education.
2 Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois,
3 represented in the General Assembly:
4 Section 5. The School Code is amended by changing
5 Sections 27-9.1 and 27-9.2 as follows:
6 (105 ILCS 5/27-9.1) (from Ch. 122, par. 27-9.1)
7 Sec. 27-9.1. Sex Education.
8 (a) No pupil shall be required to take or participate in
9 any class or course in comprehensive sex education if the
10 pupil's his parent or guardian submits written objection
11 thereto, and refusal to take or participate in such course or
12 program shall not be reason for suspension or expulsion of
13 such pupil. Each class or course in comprehensive sex
14 education offered in any of grades K 6 through 12 shall
15 include instruction on the prevention of sexually transmitted
16 infections, including the prevention, transmission and spread
17 of HIV AIDS. Nothing in this Section prohibits instruction in
18 sanitation, hygiene or traditional courses in biology.
According to Section 27-9.1 the amended bill replaces "grades 6 through 12" with "grades K through 12". The same change is in Section 27-9.2.
5 (105 ILCS 5/27-9.2) (from Ch. 122, par. 27-9.2)
6 Sec. 27-9.2. Family Life.
7 (a) If any school district provides courses of
8 instruction designed to promote wholesome and comprehensive
9 understanding of the emotional, psychological, physiological,
10 hygienic and social responsibility aspects of family life,
11 then such courses of instruction shall include the teaching
12 of prevention of unintended pregnancy and all options related
13 to unintended pregnancy, as the alternatives to abortion,
14 appropriate to the various grade levels; and whenever such
15 courses of instruction are provided in any of grades K 6
16 through 12, then such courses also shall include age
17 appropriate instruction on the prevention of sexually
18 transmitted infections, including the prevention,
19 transmission and spread of HIV AIDS. However, no pupil shall
20 be required to take or participate in any family life class
21 or course on HIV AIDS instruction if his parent or guardian
22 submits written objection thereto, and refusal to take or
23 participate in such course or program shall not be reason for
24 suspension or expulsion of such pupil.
So, there it is, a law that addresses how sex education should be presented for grades K through 12 -- age appropriate of course. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess "K" stands for kindergarten. Yet Cohen accuses McCain of lying without the least bit of embarrassment. There is much at stake, I suppose. Which explains the concerted attacks by liberal pundits.
They are not new, and they won't end when the election is over. Well, they might if the Obama-Biden ticket comes out on top, which at this point is looking less and less likely by the day. Absent that, a McCain-Palin administration will be wise to expect the liberal media to treat every revenue projection with which they disagree, every policy disagreement with Democrats, every gaffe, as a lie which they will write and broadcast endlessly about. Expect a 24/7 public relations campaign that incessantly accuses McCain and Palin of lying whenever they say things that might be disagreeable to liberals. And the most disagreeable things are the ones liberals can't refute.