Finally

The Obama campaign is just now getting around to politely pointing out that a certain LIAR^* has been making false statements for over a week now. Sadly, so-called journalists have played those lies for free on the grounds that they were controversial^** rather than a flat out lie.



I'm glad they are not going to roll over and take it, but they have been a bit slow to react. Maybe they have been waiting for enough sound bites to show up so they won't have to air the lies again in the process of debunking them. That won't work in the final weeks of the campaign.

Now if they would only get some national talk-TV spokespeople who can point out that no one ever called Reagan "presumptuous" (UPPITY) for looking more presidential than the actual President at the time. It's not like Obama can help the fact that he is competent and has outstanding leadership skills that rival those of President Reagan. Sorry, J Sidney McCain III, you can't "presume" that you are owed coverage when you can't even lead your own campaign without having the campaign correct your mistakes, saying that you don't speak for your own campaign on Social Security tax policy.

As for calling Obama "arrogant" (UPPITY) or "elitist" (UPPITY), has no one noticed the "arrogance" of McCain to assert that he knows more about winning the War on Terror than anyone despite supporting a losing strategy against Al Qaeda since late in 2002? (How arrogant does he have to be to think he has shown us he can win a war, or that the President will actually make specific tactical decisions rather than the generals? Does the man think he is a cross between Napoleon and Eisenhower, leading our troops into the Pakistan tribal areas on horseback?) If McCain is such a military expert, where was he when Bush fired Gen. Shinseki for speaking the truth?

The next version appears to claim Obama is "out of touch", which is pretty funny coming from a man who does not know the difference between Sunni and Shiite, a crucial detail when dealing with the different sides in the Iraqi civil war, despite his many visits to the region - and might not know the difference between Persian and Arab given the way he talks about Iran.

One thing is clear: the McCain campaign told the media to pay careful attention to Obama's trip to Iraq and Afghanistan, watching for any blunders he made, as the cornerstone of their summer campaign. I think they were shocked to see Obama welcomed by cheering troops and perform flawlessly on the world stage while their own candidate made repeated mistakes - like not knowing the tax policy of his own campaign. Since they can't imagine a world where intelligence and articulating ideas matters more than race, they can only see "celebrity" as an explanation. When they say that, they seem to forget that McCain would not be a serious candidate if his role in a previous round of bank collapses had not been overshadowed by his celebrity status as a survivor of torture in North Vietnam.

^*I am willing to concede the possibility that the Republican candidate for President was and is completely IGNORANT of the facts on the ground when he approved his false advertisements and made false public statements, but ignorance (on his part as well as that of the key staff who will run the government for him) is even worse than lying.

^**I think it was Andrea Mitchell on NBC who set a new low for "journalism". Rather than simply report what she knew about whether Obama wanted cameras along during another visit with wounded troops as a simple fact, having been physically present during the trip to the Middle East and Europe, she repeatedly prompted a campaign staffer to point out the lie for her. What has happened to the media when a reporter is afraid to report her own observations?