McCain's Campaign of Lies Keeps on Trucking

From the New York Times this morning:

“Every intelligence agency in the world believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” Mr. McCain replied, adding that the Hussein government had also violated human rights. He then quickly shifted to the need to persevere, saying he expected attacks by Al Qaeda in Iraq “so they can erode support for the al-Maliki government” during the American election campaign.
“We will come home with honor and victory, and it will be dictated by facts on the ground,” he continued. “We have succeeded, and I am confident we will win victory, and that is all contingent on our commitment to making sure we withdraw according to conditions on the ground.”
In a speech at a fund-raising luncheon in Detroit, Mr. McCain also implicitly criticized Mr. Obama in suggesting that his trip to Iraq — the schedule for which remains undisclosed, partly for security reasons — might be at hand.
“I am sure,” Mr. McCain added, “that Senator Obama is going to arrive in Baghdad in a much, much safer and secure environment than the one that he would have encountered before we started the surge.”
The McCain campaign also infuriated the Obama camp with the new advertisement, which accused Mr. Obama of “voting against funding our troops” and said he was abandoning his original positions on the war “to help himself become president.”
Bill Burton, a spokesman for Mr. Obama, described the ad as “patently misleading,” and campaign officials issued a phrase-by-phrase rebuttal.
Those salvos were preceded by an interview, published Friday in The Kansas City Star, in which Mr. McCain suggested that Mr. Obama might be a socialist. At a campaign event in Kansas City on Thursday, Mr. McCain accused Mr. Obama of having the “most extreme” voting record in the Senate. When The Star asked about the comment, he said Mr. Obama had taken positions “more to the left than the announced socialist in the U.S. Senate, Bernie Sanders of Vermont.”
The reporter then asked Mr. McCain if he thought Mr. Obama himself was a socialist. “I don’t know,” Mr. McCain answered. “All I know is his voting record, and that’s what people usually judge their elected representatives by.”


McCain's growing desperation seems to go against everything he once stood for. While the press continues to focus on whatever he or other Republicans say about Obama, they appear to be missing the big story of this election -- which is the complete disavowal of everything McCain claims to stand for on a daily basis.

As I have discussed in detail below, he has completely retrenched on campaign finance reform. He has all but eliminated any of the heterodoxy that once made him a "renegade," at least in conservative and McAuliff-style liberal camps. He claimed he wanted a civil election about the issues, and has since done nothing but offer one lie or attack after another against Obama. But this is just getting absurd. The same day Graham quits the campaign, he tells us that all respected intelligence in the world said Hussein had WMDs, when that is far from the truth, even in this country. He claims Obama is a socialist, when it is clear his positions are so far removed from that ideology it is beyond preposterous, and he demands that Obama go to Iraq and then criticizes him incessantly when he does. Let's hope the press begins to at least cover this "flip flopping" dirty politcal gambit that appears to be McCain's only hope of victory.

On a lighter note, the EPA just lowered the value of a human from slightly over $8 million to around $7.2 million. This is good news for big business and those who think corporate profitability will be hurt if we actually make decisions that benefit humanity. Thank God for that move as inflation rises and the cost of actually keeping Americans above the poverty line increases dramatically.