McCain Never Lies
John McCain responded to Katie Couric’s question about when it was appropriate to lie to the American people saying, “only when you really needed to win an election. Kidding!” Okay, we’ll take him at his word, though he doesn’t seem to have been kidding at all!
In 2004 McCain said this about privatizing social security: “Without privatization, I don’t see how you can possibly, over time, make sure that young Americans are able to receive Social Security benefits.”
In July of this year he said this: “I’m not for, quote, privatizing Social Security. I never have been. I never will be.”
In January, 2008, John McCain said, “…in 24 years as a member of Congress, I have never asked for nor received a single earmark or pork barrel project for my state…”
Okay, so what was the $10 million for the University of Arizona for an academic center in 2006? And what about $14.3 million in a defense appropriations bill to create a buffer zone around Luke Air Force Base in Arizona in 2003?
In July, 2008, when asked about the well-documented admission that he is not exactly an expert when it comes to the economy McCain jumped on the interviewer with “I have not. I have not. Actually, I have not. I said that I am stronger on national security issues because of all the time I spent in the military. I’m very strong on the economy. I understand it. I have a lot more experience than my opponent.”
The McCain-Palin campaign produced an ad which states that FactCheck.org called Obama’s attacks on Palin “absolutely false” and “misleading.” A FactCheck.org spokesperson confirmed the quoted statements were from them. They just weren’t about Obama. They were, said FactCheck.org, referring to anonymous emails posted around the Internet that made false and bogus claims about Palin. FactCheck.org did not say, or even suggest, that these originated with Obama or the Obama campaign.
A McCain-Palin ad also twisted a quote from the Wall Street Journal columnist saying that the Obama camp had sent a team to Alaska to “dig dirt“. The Wall Street Journal actually said “dig into her record and background” — ie: nothing about “dirt” — and there are no facts to support the accusation that any team was sent to Alaska by the Obama campaign.
In September, 2008, John McCain claimed that Sarah Palin never requested an earmark for her state. In fact her state gets more earmarks than any other state in the country. This year alone she asked for $197 million worth of them herself.
In the first presidential debate McCain said, “President Eisenhower, on the night before the Normandy invasion, went into his room, and he wrote out two letters. One of them was a letter congratulating the great members of the military and Allies that had conducted and succeeded in the greatest invasion in history… And he wrote out another letter, and that was a letter of resignation from the United States Army for the failure of the landings at Normandy. Somehow we’ve lost that accountability. I’ve been heavily criticized because I called for the resignation of the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. We’ve got to start also holding people accountable…”
In fact, it wasn’t President Eisenhower who wrote these letters. It was, at that time, General Eisenhower. And he did not offer to resign in the second letter. He said, “If any blame is found attached to the attempt, it is mine alone.” His fate would be in the hands of the President.
And McCain didn’t actually call for the Security and Exchange Commission chairman to resign either. He said that if he, McCain, were the president he would fire the chairman of the SEC. Of course, that is also interesting since the president doesn’t actually have the authority to fire to SEC chairman.
The one thing that may well be true in those quotes above is, “We’ve got to start also holding people accountable.” Perhaps the voting public will hold John McCain accountable for his lies, distortions, misrepresentations, and what has apparently become his deplorable lack of judgment.
