Straight Talk?
I’ve said before that while I’ve never seen myself voting for McCain, I have been able to respect him as a candidate and as a politician who has attempted to do good in his office.
It is surprising and disappointing, then, to see him beginning to slide into a campaign so full of untruths and blatant misrepresentation of facts. For a man who has based his campaign on a stance of “Straight Talk,” we are hearing more and more falsehoods about his running mate and his opposing candidate.
At the moment, the current McCain ad that has me up in arms is his spin on Obama’s sex education plan. Obama has supported a bill that teaches age-appropriate sex education from an early age. This does not mean our first graders would be learning the difference between condoms and diaphragms or that our kindergartners would be watching videos starring Jenna Jameson.
The primary direction of the bill was to help teach children appropriate scientific and medical truths. At the age in question, he has suggested no more than the difference between “good touch” and “bad touch.” It has been Obama’s goal that this kind of preemptive education may help protect children from pedophiles.
Obama has been quoted as saying “We have an existing law that mandates sex eduation in the schools. We want to make sure that it’s medically accurate and age-appropriate… so that kindergarteners are able to exercise some possible protection against abuse, because I have family members as well as friends who suffered abuse at that age.” (See full text of the quote here.)
Recently, McCain has taken this bill and warped it into an attack on Obama. The ad ends with the words “Learning about sex before learning to read? … Wrong on education. Wrong for your family.”
Because we all know that teaching children how to recognize inappropriate behavior and creating legislation that is designed, at it’s core, to protect our children is wrong for our families, right? Particularly when this law includes an “opt out” feature for parents who are uncomfortable with the concept.
As awful as the idea is that McCain would take a concept designed to protect children and twist it into something ugly, he has not stopped there. McCain has also provided blatant lies about Obama’s tax plan, citing increases for families making less than $42,000 a year. While it may be true that tax increases may go up for a single person making that much (by about $15 a year), Obama’s plan would not increase those taxes for families at that rate. (See this page at www.factcheck.org to learn about other McCain lies about Obama’s tax plans.)
And if lying about Obama isn’t bad enough, McCain hasn’t stopped there. Now he is taking facts about his running mate, Sarah Palin, and tilting them to his advantage.
At the risk of running this subject into the ground, we cannot ignore her “Bridge to Nowhere” remarks. As previously mentioned in Palin – Not the People’s Choice posted earlier on this site, Palin mentions the bridge in almost every speech. McCain is touting it as proof of her “maverick” tendencies and the goal of ending pork barrel spending in Washington.
The problem is that her claim to have stopped the bridge is not entirely true. Actually, that part isn’t even a little true. Before the bridge was doomed by Congress, Palin was an avid supporter. It wasn’t until the bridge project became a disaster that Palin opposed it. And while she may not have used the federal funds to build the bridge, she did take the money.
Here’s my beef: If Palin would openly state that she had been on-board and then shifted her view upon some sort of revelation that this decision was bad for the country and the state, I might be ok with it. Instead, she waves the flag of anti-earmark spending as though she wove it herself like an Alaskan Betsy Ross. I don’t judge her for taking the money for her state. I judge the misrepresentation of it. By claiming to have turned from the project and by speaking against taking federal money, she is implying that she neither supported the bridge or the funds and yet she tried to have the bridge built and took the money anyway.
And while the “jet on eBay” quip makes a great cocktail party antedote, Palin did not actually sell the governor’s jet on the Internet site. Yes, she posted the jet on eBay. No, she did not sell it there. (And from a completely subjective point of view, I’m not entirely comfortable with using eBay as a method of dealing with economic issues or government spending. It just reminds me a bit of banking on Power Ball for your retirement plan.)
I am by no means the only person getting fed up with McCain’s lies and attacks on Obama. What I want from McCain is a detailed understanding of his tax plan, not lies about Obama’s cuts. I want to know what he has in store for education, not twisted versions of Obama’s stance. Tell me less about your version of Obama’s campaign and tell me more about yours.
Take a look at this article on msnbc.com. The links will take you to various articles concerned with the same issue of McCain and his new version of “Straight Talk.”
I urge you, as always, to vote. Know for whom and for what you are voting. Research the issues and hunt for truth.
NOTE: www.factcheck.org is a nonpartisan organization that supports neither candidate.
Pro-bama ‘08!
Just as a side note – When Karl Rove says you’re lying too often and that the campaign has started to slip into inappropriate territory, you know you’re in a bad place.
Pro-bama ‘08!
September 15th, 2008 at 3:27 pmAnd, from what I have read, the plane was sold at a loss…
September 17th, 2008 at 10:30 pmWow – negative campaigns, who would have thought we’d come to this. I see ads from both campaigns somewhat negative and incredibly misleading. And of course the Obama campaign has not twisted a single phrase, misrepresented a single fact and has not embellished a bit. Me thinks we look with rose colored glasses at a candidate decked out in Hollywood style (recall the hoot nanny at Mile High).
This post would have been more prolific had we sited the misgivings and mist-truths of both candidates but hey, who says that any website or blog should report the truth without bias?
Shoulda been Clinton in 08.
September 28th, 2008 at 11:47 pm[...] Obama as a flash in the pan celebrity. They’ve mocked the DNC’s exuberance (see the comment my father left on this site), and a few months ago McCain was facing negative press as his [...]
September 29th, 2008 at 4:00 pmClinton sucked. Sorry Kari’s dad but it’s true. Her policies were just plan awful and were set in some kind of magical world where reality never sets foot.
September 30th, 2008 at 1:08 amAhhh – more from the membership of the “Celebrities for President club” where never never land meets Oz. We should discuss this over a brew my friend….How’s life in Denver?
NO-bama 08
October 1st, 2008 at 11:21 pmShoulda been Clinton in 08