Outrageous McCain Lies

Lies

For links and more detail, read John Aravosis:

St. Petersburg Times (Editorial) “Campaign of lies disgraces McCain” McCain's straight talk has become a toxic mix of lies and double-speak.

Atlanta Journal Constitution (Jay Bookman) The volume and audacity of lies pouring from the McCain campaign is startling and even historic…That’s really something, lying straight out about a FactCheck group, knowing that you’re going to get caught but not giving a damn about it.

Pittsburg Post Gazette (Tony Norman) Where have you gone, John McCain? You once said you'd rather lose an election than lose a war. Is it worth winning an election if it means forfeiting your soul on the altar of political expediency?

Kansas City Star (Barb Shelly) McCain stoops to deception, distortion: Maybe you’ve seen it. [snip] Distort. Twist. Deceive. Damage. And the winning candidate drags a load of public contempt into office.

Boston Globe (Scot Lehigh) Pretzel logic from the McCain campaign: Here’s the question voters should be asking themselves this week: Just how stupid does the McCain-Palin campaign think I am? The answer: Dumb enough to hoodwink with charges so contrived and cynical they make your teeth ache...

Washington Post (David Ignatius) Stopping at nothing to win: Thinking about the Palin choice, you begin to ponder other moves McCain has made on the road to winning the Republican nomination.

Washington Post (Eugene Robinson) The Scream Machine: There was a time when Republicans campaigned on their ideas, programs and values.

Chicago Tribune (Steve Chapman) To McCain the truth is expandable: McCain has concluded that a fact-based case about Obama isn't enough to prevail in November. So he has chosen to smear his opponent with ridiculous claims that he thinks the American people are gullible enough to believe.

Chicago Tribune (Frank James) This is an old-fashioned, unreconstructed politics whose goal, first and foremost, is to get the candidate elected, the truth be damned.

Chicago Tribune (Eric Zorn) 'I'm John McCain and I approved this message.' With that infamous admission, McCain surrendered his integrity and signaled a willingness to say or do anything to get elected… We used to expect better from John McCain. No longer.

TIME (Joe Klein) A new rule here: Rather than do the McCain campaign's bidding by wasting space on Senator Honor's daily lies and bilge--his constant attempts to divert attention from substantive issues--I'm going to assume that others will spend more than enough time on the sewage that Steve Schmidt is shoveling and, from now on, try to stick to the issues.

TIME (Joe Klein) Apology Not Accepted: he is responsible for one of the sleaziest ads I've ever seen in presidential politics, so sleazy that I won't abet its spread by linking to it... [snip] Talk about putting lipstick on a pig.

TIME (Joe Klein) Another McCain Flip Flop: Army Times, which is not--last time I checked--a radical left wing publication, takes John McCain to task for changing his position on the Future Combat Systems program. This is yet another example of how running for President has driven McCain off the deep end.

New York Times (Paul Krugman) Blizzard of Lies: And now the team that hopes to form the next administration is running a campaign that makes Bush-Cheney 2000 look like something out of a civics class. What does that say about how that team would run the country? What it says, I’d argue, is that the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse.

New York Times (Editorial) This from that straight-talker of yore, who fervidly denounced the 2004 Bush campaign’s Swift Boat character attacks on John Kerry’s military record. What a difference four years makes, especially after Mr. McCain secured the nomination by hiring some of the same low-blow artists from the Bush campaign.

New York Times (Larry Rohter) The advertisement [“Disrespectful”] is the latest in a number that resort to a dubious disregard for the facts. The nonpartisan political analysis group Factcheck.org has already criticized “Disrespectful” as “particularly egregious,” saying that it “goes down new paths of deception,” and is “peddling false quotes.”

New York Times (Michael Cooper and Jim Rutenberg) McCain Barbs Stirring Outcry as Distortions: Mr. McCain came into the race promoting himself as a truth teller and has long publicly deplored the kinds of negative tactics that helped sink his candidacy in the Republican primaries in 2000. But his strategy now reflects a calculation advisers made this summer — over the strenuous objections of some longtime hands who helped him build his “Straight Talk” image — to shift the campaign more toward disqualifying Mr. Obama in the eyes of voters.

ABC News-Political Punch (Jake Tapper) One can only imagine what the John McCain of 2004 – who called the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads “dishonest and dishonorable” – would say about this ad… I suppose one could twist this stuff any way you want if your only point is to make an inflammatory charge. And win an election... and the Washington Post’s Fact Checker ... says the ad is a gross distortion. I agree -- in both senses of the word "gross."

AP (Charles Babington) The "Straight Talk Express" has detoured into doublespeak. He says Obama would raise nearly everyone's taxes, when independent groups say 80 percent of families would get tax cuts instead.

Browne Sues McCain For "Running On Empty"

Jackson Browne sues John McCain

Reuters:

Rock star Jackson Browne has sued U.S. presidential candidate John McCain for copyright infringement, accusing the presumptive Republican nominee of using the singer's 1977 hit "Running on Empty" in a campaign ad without permission.

The suit, filed on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, also names the Republican National Committee and the Ohio Republican Party as defendants. It seeks a permanent injunction against further use of Browne's music and at least $75,000 in damages.

The campaign spot mocks McCain's Democratic rival for the White House, Barack Obama, for suggesting the nation conserve gasoline through proper tire inflation, with Browne's most famous song, "Running on Empty," playing in the background.

The suit claims use of the song without Browne's permission is a copyright violation and a breach of the U.S. Lanham Act by falsely implying Browne is associated with and endorses McCain's bid for president.

It also says use of Browne's voice in the ad violates the performer's so-called right of publicity under California law.

Browne's lawyer, Lawrence Iser, said his client is "a well-known, lifelong liberal activist and supporter of Democratic candidates, and use of his song and his voice in a commercial bashing Barack Obama is anathema to Jackson."

[ 5:27 ]
McCain’s copyright problem: oh, the hypocrisy

ZDNet:

In fact, McCain supporters have an unnerving habit of violating copyright, which is more than ironic; it’s hypocritical, given McCain’s technology policy:

John McCain Will Protect The Creative Industries From Piracy.

The entertainment industry is both a vital sector of the domestic economy and among the largest U.S. exporters. While the Internet has provided tremendous opportunity for the creators of copyrighted works, including music and movies, to distribute their works around the world at low cost, it has also given rise to a global epidemic of piracy. John McCain supports efforts to crack down on piracy, both on the Internet and off.

Add to Browne, violations of songs by John Mellencamp, Abba, Frankie Vallie – and Saturday Night Live. Just days ago, the LA Times reported that McCain’s campaign lifted a clip from the “Wayne’s World” sketch for a Web ad.

Mr. Negative

Pay attention to the candidates for a week. One of them is laying out ideas and plans for the future, talking about what needs to be done both in America and around the world and what he will do.

The other candidate is mainly talking about his opponent.

Guess which is which?

John McCain actually caught a break this week when the New York Times refused to publish his letter to them after they had published Senator Obama's letter. The reason was because McCain's letter was not, unlike Obama's, a thoughtful treatise on how to improve things, but rather was just another attack. And if it had been published it would have gone together with the rest of the steady stream of attacks that Senator McCain has been leveling (instead of actually plugging himself) over the past week or so. In fact the refusal by the NYT became a net plus for McCain. There is nothing that seems to rally the nutbag right behind a candidate faster than being attacked or otherwise dumped on by the New York Times. But had the letter been published it would have made it clear that McCain's main tactic in the election is to impugn Senator Obama, with little else he can say.

Now, granted this is a campaign and attacking your opponent when you are behind is standard strategy and is as old as politics itself. And while Senator Obama has refrained from more than a passing mention of Senator McCain most of the time, he certainly has surrogates (as does McCain) out there doing the job for him. The difference is that it is ununsual for the candidate himself to personally get out in front on the mud wrestling. That may be why McCain is toying with the idea of choosing his running mate early. But my guess is that he won't but will instead just continue launching the spitwads himself.

It also says volumes about McCain's lack of anything meaningful to say. His plans for the economy and continuing to stay in Iraq are virtually the same as George Bush's, a President who if he were running today would lose in a landslide. He's praised Bush's Supreme Court appointments and said he would appoint the same kind of judges. I wrote a post three months ago pointing out that McCain's website never even mentions the words "social security" one time. I went back there the other day and it still doesn't. The man is devoid of new ideas, other than to continue the present path of the Bush administration on virtually everything. So I understand why he doesn't want to talk about any of that, so what's left is to attack Obama.

Is Obama vulnerable to attack? Sure, all candidates are. But at least he has some new ideas and some new plans for doing something in the next decade that is different from what we've done in this one.

In the meantime though I don't think these attacks will succeed. McCain has been called a 'grumpy old man,' and he's doing everything to live up to that rap. Maybe after the election Bob Dole (another guy famous for going on the attack himself) will let him co-star in another of those Viagra commercials.