Member since:
August 22, 2007

PoliticalWhoppersCheck.org

October 05, 2008 04:32 PM EDT (Updated: October 05, 2008 11:23 PM EDT)

views: 379 | rating: 10/10 (13 votes) | comments: 48

First my bias. I love to read which makes it hard for me to be happy during an election year or even mildly misinformed. I am also an active Obama volunteer and have been making telephone calls across the country and in my own local precinct in Washington State.

Although I hope my state's electoral votes will go to Obama, I have learned to take nothing for granted. When I call voters, my main pitch is to encourage people to educate themselves before they vote and to vote early or absentee whenever they can. I am confident that if people are well-informed they will vote for Obama and Biden, but perhaps I am naive.

Although it is at best immoral and unethical, we can expect smears, lies, untrue email forwards and doctored video-tape to appear at the end of a campaign. Underhanded politicians and their political operatives - in a last desperate attempt to game the system - intentionally spread these lies, circulate unfounded rumors and tell such gigantic whoppers I am always newly astounded.

The unfortunate part of this behavior is that it can also be done anonymously and when there is no time left to counteract the dung. If you all remember, the Republicans did this to John McCain during the 2004 election campaign when they circulated the falsehood of his having a 'black child out of wedlock'. This smear was particularly effective in the south and he lost electoral votes, and the primary, because of it.

Obama has been smeared repeatedly by Steve Schmidt, the Karl Rove protege, who is running McCain's campaign. If I see one more picture of Obama in a turbin or under the email sub-title of "Obama Secret Muslim", I will pull my eyelashes out one by one. There is only one thing worse than being a black man in this country and that is being a black Muslim. In a country founded on the principles of religious freedom, this is a great sacrilege, but that's another rant.

It would seem silly to worry about such balderdash, but I know I will undoubtedly receive several of these ridiculous email forwards, many originated by people who believe they are well-meaning and have received them from their 'Christian' ministers. Yes, I meant to put Christian in parantheses, as these forwards are so un-Christian I am convinced Jesus would surely be as appalled as I am.

My daughter is flying back from Ohio this morning having spent the last five days with volunteers there campaigning on Obama's behalf. She has described her trip as 'epic' and I am sure history will lend credibility to this assessment, as Ohio may be the state that gives Obama the final electoral votes he needs.

When she called me to say hello she was walking quickly back to her hotel. You know how those conversations go with your adult kids. They have ten minutes to kill and so they call the one person who will drop everything she is doing, no matter how important, just to hear them talk about themselves.

She has a very big political job here in Portland and will be working extra hours to get caught up, but she was obviously exhilarated. She laughed as she said, "We knocked on so many doors my nipples hurt."

She immediately claimed she said, "my knuckles hurt", but I swear I heard her say nipples. Besides, maybe, that is the kind of heroic effort it is going to take for Obama to win this election. All of us throwing our bodies out there, knocking on our neighbors' doors, and educating every potential voter with the real facts and figures before the operatives can try to appeal to their basest emotions, prejudices and fears.

John McCain's campaign advisers warned the other day that, "John McCain is going to really start attacking Obama over the next couple of weeks". This is code-speak, folks. Translated it means, "We've got some real goo that we can throw at the wall and even though it is only goo, we know some of it will stick. After all, isn't that how we got George W. Bush into the White House? Hell, even his father thought it was a mistake."

The political analysts agree that lying in campaigns works, which is why this unethical technique is still employed with such gusto. No matter how untrue something is, that initial impact sticks with people, even when the lie is immediately exposed by a reputable source.

I wonder what sort of smear the McCain team will come up with. Hey, I bet it will be something like, "Obama has secret white love child". Naw, it will be something even more ridiculous, as Steve Schmidt is nothing if not creative. Whatever he dreams up will surely be leprous if not gangrenous.

Ater the primary, sexism almost seems insignificant compared to the racism and bigotry currently proliferating in the country around the presidential election. The attacks on Michele Obama as an 'angry black woman' were undoubtedly made because Obama's disposition just would not lend itself to the preferred 'angry black male' caricature. From my own experience I do not believe the money-lenders in this country give a damn about the color of one's skin, and certainly wall street and the ultra-rich could care less whom they have exploited in this latest financial fiasco, but the fact is,we are a tribal species. Even with little encouragement, prejudice exists and flourishes. Can the American people as a whole rise above them? As I said above, maybe I am naive, but I believe we can.

There are powerful forces working against the greater good and attempting to maintain the status quo. Obama's pledge to re-orient this country for the benefit of the majority - the middle class - is being taken seriously. These bastards live their lives to avoid paying corporate or personal income taxes, and that is all they have ever cared about. For this reason Obama is a real threat to the power-brokers and ultra-wealthy who have been exploiting the goodness, naivite and hard work of the average American. (Note to readers: Not all rich people are evil. Really, I know many who are good citizens and great people.)

American workers now work longers hours than the Japanese - a statistic that shocks most of us - but we have always worked longer hours than any European. Europeans, by the way, have an average of 2.5 months of vacation a year, their health care is paid for by the government and the majority seem content with that system. As a self-employed person, I worry if I take off the weekend. I cannot even imagine what a month's vacation a year might do for my general sense of well-being.

We Americans, on the other hand, have fallen for the praise and rhetoric about how independent and hard-working we are. It is subliminally suggested that this should be ample reward in addition to the paltry, inflation-busted paychecks we may receive. After all, middleclass Americans should be proud to support the infrastructure in our cities and states, right? It is patriotic, as Biden said, to pay our taxes but wait a minute. What he meant was that we need to reintroduce fairness into the tax code. While you and I pay real estate taxes on our homes, federal and state income taxes, 25% of all corporations do not pay a dime. The minimum tax for a corporation in Oregon, for example, is $10.

Two-working families wonder why our more modest middleclass parents were able to have vacation homes, take annual vacations and send us to college without refinancing the mortgage. All while the majority of our mothers did not work outside the home. From the Reagan days to the present, the tax burden has been shifted onto the backs of hard-working Americans. Capital gains taxes are a joke, as on a continuing basis they benefit only the rich. W-2 wage earners have no meaningful way to reduce their tax burden, which makes our unequal tax liability allocations a national disgrace.

Senator Obama's tax reorganization plan is quite clear - and has been analyzed by outside non-partisan entities. He will reduce taxes for anyone making under $250,000. For those making between $250,000 and $650,000, there will be a slight increase, and for those making over $650,000 a year? They will pay at the same tax rate they did under the Reagan years. Taking someone, for instance, in the $650,000 category, they will pay perhaps $30,000 $50,000 more in income taxes, which means they will have to 'get by' on what? $400,000 to $420,000? The family making under $90,000 will probably pay several hundred a month less in taxes, and single people making under $42,000 will probably save $1,000 to $2,000 a year. Clearly, 95% of all Americans will benefit under Obama's tax plan.

Fact checking and the truthiness of political statements, comments, campaign rhetoric and media pieces have always been the weakest part of American politics.   The Internet purportedly has made this fact-checking easier, but there are so many conflicting sites it is almost impossible to know which one to believe. Hence, I give everyone I call some solid advice. Do not believe anything you read in those forwarded emails. Put them in the same category as 'facts' cited by Rush Limbaugh and Fox News - purely for entertainment purposes.

Granted, in the heat of a debate it is understandable that candidates might slip up or revert to campaign rhetoric to divert attention from their lack of knowledge or specifics, or to slam home a point. These statements can be immediately addressed with a good moderator (Tim Russert, how we miss you!) and the candidates themselves, but especially and more importantly by a well-informed public.

We all know that politicians - and the ones I support are not excluded from this gross generalization - love to rally a crowd with a great performance.   No matter how hard some of them try to keep it real, all major in hyperbole. McCain used it with his '100 years in Iraq' comment for which Obama slapped him around plenty. I cannot think of a specific with Obama - I tend to overlook miscellaneous flaws in people I support - but I am sure my commenters will throw in a few below. (Keep them truthful, by the way, or they will be deleted by Yours Truly.)

Regardless of who does or doesn't exaggerate, we need to really stomp whoever tells the Whoppers. I take notes, by the way, and then I check those statements against the facts. It has become easier and easier to do that in the age of video tape but also through the congressional record and sites like washingtonwatch.com.   There is a record of how every single Senator has voted on every single bill.

What is misleading, of course, is that the bills that go through congress often have 'amendments' attached that were compromises. So a candidate could claim his opponent voted for an alternative energy bill that gave breaks to the oil companies, when in fact that same claiming candidate was the one who wrote the amendment adding those breaks on to the bill.

After watching the first two debates - and looking forward with great anticipation to Tuesday night's second debate between McCain and Obama - I would love to go beyond the 'factcheck.org' set up as they are overboard and truly nitpickers in their attempts to be 'fair and unbiased'.   We need to start a new site called either 'LiarLiarPantsOnFire' or 'PoliticalWhoppersCheck.org'.

Any takers?

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