The negative campaigning has been bad enough, and sending Sarah Palin out as his surrogate has been even worse, but the lies have really boiled over, if you ask me, and it's not the liberal media telling me the GOP is lying through their teeth, it's McCain's own site. I try to keep abreast of all the news, and sometimes I do a pretty good job (I read maybe 50 articles a day and check the polls probably 15-times), but I've never thought to check out McCain's own site… and might I say, wow, that guy is breaking my heart.
John McCain's site says, and this was found on his Why McCain page, that "Barack Obama will raise taxes hardworking Americans to give a government handout to the 40% of Americans who pay no income taxes." This is an outright lie, and it's only the latest in a disgusting, shameful string of them.
If this is the lie he's putting out there, who's it for and what on earth could he possibly hope to gain by it? Even a cursory fact-check says this is a patently untrue statement, so what's the game here? All I can imagine is that he's pandering to the mentally incapacitated, hoping they vote, and in huge, huge numbers.
But it's indicative of the campaign's lies, and it makes me sad. Like left-of-me Bill Maher, I was a staunch McCain supporter in 2000. I reveled in his heroism, admired him for his approach to politics, and recognized there were few candidates in the field who could match his experience. As even his fans have pointed out, the McCain of 2000 has been body-snatched by a pod being, perhaps a Cheney spore. The McCain we fell in love with is, if not dead, hidden in a basement somewhere on life support.
We don't know this McCain, and if the polls know anything about anything, we can say that the rest of America doesn't much like him either.
He sends Palin out on the campaign trail to tell plain lies. To say Obama "pals around with terrorists" is disgusting. Half of America sees it for the lie it is, and hates the right for it. The other half of America doesn't know it's a lie, so they hate Obama for it… He's going to be our president, or Washington will burn, and when he is there will be a 48% of the nation firmly believing the lie that they're governed by a radical maybe-Muslim… which is untrue.
Muslims are generally good people, as are Arabs and Christians, but Mr. Obama is not a Muslim (nor an Arab.)
McCain surely knows he's sunk, but he permits these horrible lies to permeate, even though all it can possibly accomplish is to divide the countries in the Knows and the Know-Nothings. Sure, he's old, but he can't be so bitter as to throw us all in the toilet before he kicks off, can he?
Jon Stewart pinned down conservative mouthpiece Bill Kristol last week about these detestable lies, and his response was something to the effect of, "well, we don't mean it, people don't take it seriously." The problem there is that many people do. When you say Obama will raise taxes, even though every scrap of evidence shouts the contrary, there will be some who believe it. When you say Obama doesn't have a plan, and that McCain does, people believe it… it isn't true, but there will still be those that believe it.
Obama laid out a number of very specific objectives in his 30-minute infomercial, and instead of McCain offering his plan, he complained about the fact that Obama didn't take public financing.
Let's clear that air once and for all. McCain took it because it was his surest past to the most money possible, and McCain didn't take it for the same reason. Obama has generated more nickels from more donors than any political candidate in the history of the world by a factor of more than four.
And stop saying "We don't know where the money came from." Yes you do. We all know perfectly well where it came from.
It came from all the people in all the offices in all the cities that have volunteers out every night, phones ringing off the hook and senior's getting picked up for early voting. It came from everybody. It came from Dems, Repubes (yes, I said re-pubes) and from everybody else, and we all know it.
But the biggest lie, and I hope it's a lie, is that McCain said just a few days ago that he "guarantees" a win on November 4th… He guarantees it. That's absurd, insane and disingenuous at best, but it may be that he isn't lying to us. It may be that he's just that out of touch. It may really be that, even in the face of all evidence, even pollsters working on behalf of Karl Rove, he still refuses to understand what reality really is… is this the man I want deciding when my children go to war?
And FOX, by the way, is my new favorite network. Not only did they preempt their pre-game coverage of the final game of the world series to run an infomercial for the candidate they despise (money talks and FOX always listens) but now they're saying that nutfuck Sarah Palin is the future of the GOP… Really? Her?
Golly I sure hope she is, because as long as you've got an extremist nut like her guiding the party, it's never going to get traction. She appeals to a radical demographic that's already in decline, and an elderly voting base with one foot in the grave and the other ever less likely to stand in a voting booth. The far religious right may cling to anti-gay, anti-reason, anti-personal freedom doctrines, but they're as "out" as half of their most prominent leaders… and that's a gay joke for those of you too lazy to read between the lines.
John McCain deserves to lose because he's a liar, a panderer, and a greater fool than even myself; a status I thought I'd never give to anyone. The more he falters, the more he redoubles his efforts for more of the same… and the same don't sell anymore, but you can't tell that to him. He's a maverick, and if there's one thing he'll do that his party doesn't want him to, it's lose this election. Now that's a real maverick move.
