Wednesday, September 17, 2008

I cannot abide a liar

I cannot abide a liar.

There’s a saying that the truth is the first casualty of war. Well, if that's true, then the presidential race must be World War III. I know many of you would never vote for a Democrat even if your life depended on it…BUT, I cannot abide a liar. Especially one who promised to run an honorable campaign.

McCain has been lying about so much that I cannot believe anything he says – I do not believe he will do anything that is good for this country or the average person. I have listened to both McCain and Palin tell a bushel full of lies. I have fact checked their statements and found most of them to be cherry-picked half truths and outright bald-faced lies, not only about their opponent but about their own records: i.e. McCain being against lobbyists and Palin turning down the “bridge to nowhere” are both outright lies. Palin did not sell the jet on Ebay – she sold it through a broker at a great loss to the state. She did take earmarks as governor -- $256 million she sought last year, and the $197 million wish list for 2008. Now the McCain/Palin team is obfuscating the troopergate investigation, refusing to honor subpoenas, when, before being nominated for VP, she once agreed to cooperate. This sounds too much like the Bush administration personnel refusing to answer Congressional subpoenas. Hang the rule of law.

The notion that there is any serious equivalence between the campaign sins of Obama and the massive moral sins of McCain is inane: “Ideological differences aside, John McCain's campaign has been more dishonest, more unfair, more -- to use a word that resonates with McCain -- dishonorable than Obama's… McCain's transgressions, though, are of a different magnitude. His whoppers are bigger; there are more of them. He has outright lied about his opponent. He has misrepresented [to put it nicely] his vice presidential nominee's record. Called on these fouls [lies], he has denied and repeated them....” Ruth Marcus, Washington Post

Is there any reason to trust that a man running this campaign full of lies would go on to be an honest president? The only answer is NO.

He's a fantastic and shameless liar. In a heated campaign, some half truths will be told, but this is sickening. During an interview with the women of "The View" last week, McCain offered one lame excuse after another for his conduct: Obama's ads are “hard-hitting”, too… The tone wouldn't be so negative if Obama had agreed to the townhall debates… his own lipstick comment was different because he was referring to health care. McCain refused to admit that Obama had not been speaking of Palin in using that time-worn cliché.

Too many times, I have watched McCain directly questioned about his lies and listened to him deny that he is lying. The mark of a moral person is not their occasional failures, but their response to them. Does he correct and apologize? Does he ultimately care about the truth, about reality? Or does he refuse to acknowledge his lies and continue to repeat them, even after they have been proven beyond the slightest doubt?

Now the economy is so very bad that even McCain has to admit there is a problem. But, yesterday, when called on his statement that the fundamentals of the economy were strong, he sat there and lied once again, saying that he really meant that the workers were strong, that the “fundamentals” were the workers. He did not mean the workers when he made that statement over 20 times in the last several months. Liar, liar, pants on fire.

McCain has failed the most basic of ethical tests. He is morally and ethically unfit to be the president of the United States. The same is true of Palin.

I cannot abide a liar.