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The "Enough" Club
THE "ENOUGH" CLUB....Michael Kinsley is a liberal, but he's about as moderate and contrarian a liberal as you're likely to find. After a lie or five too many from the McCain campaign, however, he's finally had enough:
Maybe when this is over, one way or another, McCain will swear off corrupt lying the way he has sworn off corrupt money.
But it shouldn't be necessary to wait for one of McCain's conveniently delayed conversions to righteousness. In a democracy, obvious lies and obvious liars should be self-defeating. Why aren't they?
One reason is that the media have trouble calling a lie a lie, or asserting that one side is lying more than the other — even when that is objectively the case. They lean over backwards to give liars the benefit of the doubt, even when there is no doubt.
....But that shouldn't let John McCain off the hook. He says he'd rather lose the election than lose the war. But it seems he'd rather lose that honor he's always going on about than lose the election.
So how many people have joined the "Enough" club? It only counts if they sort of liked McCain in the first place, so folks like Krugman and Harold Meyerson don't count. Off the top of my head I count eight and a half: Kinsley. Friedman. Mallaby. Joe Klein. Dionne. Marcus. Halperin. Herbert. Brooks seems like he might be getting there. Who else?
Liberals are losing their minds. Kevin cites a Kinsley column over the silly lipstick deal and considers that consequential? Kinsley's contention is that McCain doesn't really believe that Obama's lipstick comment was meant to refer to Palin. How can that possibly be of any significance? Then Kevin lists 8 liberals dying for Obama to be elected as supposedly significant because they "sort of liked McCain" at one time.
Obama on Letterman says, "Keep in mind that, technically had I meant it this way ?- she would be the lipstick!"
South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler sharply attacked Sarah Palin today, saying John McCain had chosen a running mate " whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn't had an abortion."
This is insanity by the democrats.
It gets worse. Howard Fineman on the MSNBC website of all things:
"Obama seems to want to do things on his own, and on his own terms. It's understandable. Obama has his own crowd ? from Chicago, from Harvard, and from a new cadre of wealthy, Ivy-educated movers and shakers.
"He's an arrogant S.O.B.," one of the latter told me today. "He wants to do it his way, and his way alone." But politics doesn't work that way. And has Obama should know, or is about to find out, that everyone needs a little help."
Pretty soon, Olbermann will say something critical of Obama and pigs with lipstick will fly.
"One reason is that the media have trouble calling a lie a lie, or asserting that one side is lying more than the other ? even when that is objectively the case."
There seem to be no problem calling Democrats liers. Perhaps it's time to call "the media" biased, even when that is objectively the case.
"One reason is that the media have trouble calling a lie a lie, or asserting that one side is lying more than the other ? even when that is objectively the case"
This is not true. The fact we accept this assertion is pathetic. Why do we pretend the period from March 1999 through October 2000 never happened? We suck at this.
Liberals are losing their minds. Kevin cites a Kinsley column over the silly lipstick deal and considers that consequential? Kinsley's contention is that McCain doesn't really believe that Obama's lipstick comment was meant to refer to Palin. How can that possibly be of any significance? Then Kevin lists 8 liberals dying for Obama to be elected as supposedly significant because they "sort of liked McCain" at one time.
Obama on Letterman says, "Keep in mind that, technically had I meant it this way ?- she would be the lipstick!"
South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler sharply attacked Sarah Palin today, saying John McCain had chosen a running mate " whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn't had an abortion."
This is insanity by the democrats.
It gets worse. Howard Fineman on the MSNBC website of all things:
"Obama seems to want to do things on his own, and on his own terms. It's understandable. Obama has his own crowd ? from Chicago, from Harvard, and from a new cadre of wealthy, Ivy-educated movers and shakers.
"He's an arrogant S.O.B.," one of the latter told me today. "He wants to do it his way, and his way alone." But politics doesn't work that way. And has Obama should know, or is about to find out, that everyone needs a little help."
Pretty soon, Olbermann will say something critical of Obama and pigs with lipstick will fly.
"One reason is that the media have trouble calling a lie a lie, or asserting that one side is lying more than the other ? even when that is objectively the case."
There seem to be no problem calling Democrats liers. Perhaps it's time to call "the media" biased, even when that is objectively the case.
"One reason is that the media have trouble calling a lie a lie, or asserting that one side is lying more than the other ? even when that is objectively the case"
This is not true. The fact we accept this assertion is pathetic. Why do we pretend the period from March 1999 through October 2000 never happened? We suck at this.
Chris Matthews really really wants to take the plunge but needs a little more pushing.
Buy a TPM lipstick on a pig t-shirt. I just did and I feel much better.
Andrew Sullivan.
I think Senator McCain is a true American hero. He bleeds red, white, and blue. He is a real maverick who would never have lobbyists on his staff and would never degrade his opponent. As an Annapolis grad, he would never tell a deliberate lie in a campaign. He always puts country first, which is why, during a time of two wars and numerous potential foreign conflicts, he chose a running mate who was head of the Alaska National Guard, and whose proximity to Russia must have Putin shaking in his boots.
Also, do you know that he was a POW?
Andrew Sullivan lost all respect for McCain, it appears.
It's not just the past week or so that's done it, but he had glimmers of McCain sympathy even just a few weeks ago, though he was leaning more toward Obama.
While I acknowledge that Sully had some glimmers of respect for McCain semi-recently, he's been riding the Obama train for nearly a year now. IMO he doesn't count.
Has McCain ever explained his wanting to kill Iranians when he sings "Bomb Bomb Iran? How do Iranian Americans feel about this? There is no media coverage at all on this divisive issue. Is there truth that Palin referred to Obama as "Sambo"?
MoDo? I'm usually not a fan -- I think MoDo's columns are part of the problem with our politics. I would think she'd fit in better at Vanity Fair than the NYT, except that VF's journalists are better than she is. But this column is a winner:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/10/opinion/10dowd.html
Brooks? David Brooks never seem to much care when Bush does it? Repeatedly.
No Brooks lies as much as john McCain does if not more.
You can add the WaPo editorial board.
I think I'd agree that Sullivan has been an overt Obama partisan for a little too long to count.
As for MoDo, who knows what she thinks? She's just crazy.
Irresistible. Just up from the Beeb:
US oil officials in sex scandal
The two-year investigation by the interior department's inspector general, Earl E Devaney, found that some government employees were both figuratively and literally getting into bed with the oil industry they were supposed to be policing.
Drill! Drill! DRILL!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7609597.stm
David Brooks? Getting there?
Puh-leeze!
This is the same Brooks who just wrote the other day:
If I were McCain, I'd make the divided government argument explicit. The Republicans are intellectually unfit to govern right now, but balancing with Democrats, they might be able to do some good. I'd have McCain tell the country that he looks forward to working with Congressional Democrats, that he is confident they can achieve great things together.
Brooks is living in a fantasy world; his opinion on anything matters less than zero. Did he not watch the GOP convention? Does he not understand how completely McCain has jumped the shark?
Of course he doesn't - his livelihood depends on rationalizing away the inconvenient truth that every bad behavior McCain demonstrates is unavoidable - because no one can get the GOP nod for president who does NOT embrace all of the package: the hypocrisy, the lying, the slandering. It's all the GOP does these days, and all they have to offer after 8 years of thoroughly demonstrating their ideology Does Not Work. They have nothing else to off except Fear and Smear.
if Brooks joins I'll consider hell frozen over and look out for the flying pigs. Lipsticked or not.
Write the editorial board of your local paper and ask them to write an editorial decrying McCain lies and distortions. Not to take sides but to take a stand against lies, distortions and smears. I wrote my local editors today.
Kevin Drum: "As for MoDo, who knows what she thinks? She's just crazy."
Thanks, that explains my problem with her much more succinctly than I ever could.
Someone should dial up Michael Lewis.
Obama can still win this thing (my God, it's a mega-Democratic year in the congressional races), but it really is funny to see fervent liberals tripping over themselves. You don't even understand the overall society, or even the media culture, to figure out how to counter McCain. His campaign is killing your presidential hopes -- with mere spitballs!
The first step toward Democratic presidential recovery is to get over this liberal obsession with Palin. The avalanche of Palin-bashing at the Huffington Post and left-wing blogs won't amount to a damn thing in actually undermining her chances. The only thing that will are either a truly major scandal or some dumbass comment that she might in the debate. (For precedent, see "Ford, Gerald: 1976 presidental debate re Poland.")
If Obama/Biden takes swipes at her with an "enough" theme, it will fail.
I'd like to hear from David Foster Wallace.
Liberals are losing their minds. Kevin cites a Kinsley column over the silly lipstick deal and considers that consequential? Kinsley's contention is that McCain doesn't really believe that Obama's lipstick comment was meant to refer to Palin. How can that possibly be of any significance? Then Kevin lists 8 liberals dying for Obama to be elected as supposedly significant because they "sort of liked McCain" at one time.
Obama on Letterman says, "Keep in mind that, technically had I meant it this way - she would be the lipstick!"
South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler sharply attacked Sarah Palin today, saying John McCain had chosen a running mate " whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn't had an abortion."
This is insanity by the democrats.
It gets worse. Howard Fineman on the MSNBC website of all things:
"Obama seems to want to do things on his own, and on his own terms. It's understandable. Obama has his own crowd from Chicago, from Harvard, and from a new cadre of wealthy, Ivy-educated movers and shakers.
"He's an arrogant S.O.B.," one of the latter told me today. "He wants to do it his way, and his way alone." But politics doesn't work that way. And has Obama should know, or is about to find out, that everyone needs a little help."
Pretty soon, Olbermann will say something critical of Obama and pigs with lipstick will fly.
HuffPo has a long list of people and organizations pushing back against McCain for his recent dirty campaign. Among them:
O'Reilly and Ramesh Panuru.
CBS News.
The NY Times.
Frank James of the Chicago Tribune.
I would think O'Reilly alone is enough to rverse the effect of this for Obama.
HuffPo has a long list of people and publications criticizing McCain for dirty campaigning. Among them: O'Reilley (really), Ponuru, CBS News, The NY Times, and others.
Tried to put the links in a separate comment but it has been blocked for containing too many links (4).
Obama got it just about right in Norfolk, Virginia when he said,"What their campaign has done this morning is the same game that has made people sick and tired of politics in this country. They have seized on an innocent remark, try to take it out of context, throw up an outrageous ad, because they know it's catnip for the news media.
"We have an economy that's causing hardship for families across America; we have two wars going on; and veterans coming home not being cared for. And this is what they want to talk about. This is what they want to spend two out of the last 55 days talking about?
"I don't care what they say about me, but I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies, and phony outrage and swift boat politics. Enough is enough."
The media who reported this were forced to give Obama a platform to do what they won't: expose the Rove/McCain strategy for what it is.
This is the first time I've heard widespread coverage of Obama not just saying he disagrees with McCain or that McCain is wrong, but holding up McCain's play book and revealing Rove's game plan.
The lying damages our democratic institutions. If successful, the McCain campaign will be a model for every future two-bit demagogue; our democracy will become totally dysfunctional.
"One reason is that the media have trouble calling a lie a lie, or asserting that one side is lying more than the other even when that is objectively the case."
There seem to be no problem calling Democrats liers. Perhaps it's time to call "the media" biased, even when that is objectively the case.
But it shouldn't be necessary to wait for one of McCain's conveniently delayed conversions to righteousness. In a democracy, obvious lies and obvious liars should be self-defeating. Why aren't they?
Mr. Greenwald has the answer to that, if Kinsley is really interested. It's the national press - they simply let politicians lie. All of McCain lies as well as Obama and Democrats FISA Bill lie. It isn't about reportering any more, it's about hype and love of spreading it.
As Kinsley did at one time write that McCain and Lieberman were both honest men, so if Kinsley has changed his mind about those two - perhaps he should start with "I'm sorry, I misinformed my readers a while back, like the rest of sorry members of the press these days." Does Kinsley really know anything about anything at all?
Beyond the lying no one is talking about what an absolute travesty a McCain admin would be. Palin has proven as prolific as Bush at mean-spirited vindictiveness and as ham-handed in employing revenge and payback. These are behaviors not easily changed in someone approaching their 50's. McCain's temper and short fuse are scarier still, what with access to an unrivaled military death machine and ICBM launch codes. Before his crimes Nathan Leopold, Jr. wrote his friend Richard Loeb and said "A superman . . . is, on account of certain superior qualities inherent in him, exempted from the ordinary laws which govern men. He is not liable for anything he may do." We don't need another 4-8 years of this governing moral philosophy. Palin has it in spades and McCain shows signs of drinking from the same pitcher of sociopath inducing Kool-Aid.
The government can give millions of dollars to CEO's from the failed Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac and yet, cannot give a second stimulus checks to American citizens in these hard economic times?
Republicans say No to a second stimulus while the Democrats say Yes to a second stimulus!
Is the Republican Congress working for CEO's or are they working for you, the people?
And yes, politicans who lie to the public is engaged in a betrayal of the public trust and should be unethical.
And yes, politicans who lie to the public is engaged in a betrayal of the public trust and should be unethical.
Posted by: Angellight
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A harrumph too far.
Unfortunately, all of those you list were probably going to vote for Obama anyway. The question is whether McCain's and Palin's disgraceful campaign will ever begin to cause reasonable but McCain-leaning independents and Republicans to defect. The jury is still out, but each of us need to talk to our friends who meet that description about what a McCain presidency will do to the country. Person-to-person campaigning is the most effective kind. We can't let those two move into the White House.
You know what gets me?
That we live in a country where anyone, ANYONE, thinks the original "joke" about a pit bull and lipstick is in any way funny, clever, witty, cute, appealing, or in ANY sense worth saying ONCE, much less being repeated ad nauseam.
Just freakin' shoot me right now.
This is a pretty extreme group here. In terms of appealing to most voters, I think Obama already has gone too far in accusing McCain and Palin of lying. Now, you folks urge going ballistic on this minor little lipstick deal. Obama still has a chance to win the election, but it won't be by accusing two people that America basically likes to be liars over silly stuff about pigs, lipstick and the bridge to nowhere. One problem for Obama supporters it that McCain and Palin are not only liked, but that each has had a high character moment in their life that neither Obama nor Biden approaches and that most reasonable people consider very very impressive -- McCain turning down early POW release in the midst of torture and Palin having the Down Syndrome baby and declaring him perfect.
Obama's remark "Lipstick on a Pig", gaff or calculated?
Only if you believe Barrack Obama is a gifted orator who knows how to play to an audience, would you be offended by a remark that seemingly jabs Sarah Palin?
You would also have to know the street use of this term, analogous to putting a paper bag over a woman's head before sexual intercourse.
Brian--
Practically everybody on earth agrees that McCain and Palin are liars.
Why do you defend liars, hypocrites, and smear artists, Brian?
Why do you yourself lie with such inanities as "you folks urge going ballistic"? How do you know what "most reasonable people think"? You have no idea what you're talking about.
I don't know which is worse: that you're getting paid for this BS or that you're giving it away.
"In terms of appealing to most voters, I think Obama already has gone too far in accusing McCain and Palin of lying."
Oh, yes, it's not the LYING that has gone too far.
It's the exposure of the lies.
Oh, and lies about "silly things" don't count.
Jeepers.
Just freakin' shoot me right now.
I still can't past your assertion that Kinsley liberal. I don't think you are correct. Or, if he is one, he is a self-loathing one.
You can add Richard Cohen, WaPo:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2008/09/the_gop_takes_host...
"One reason is that the media have trouble calling a lie a lie, or asserting that one side is lying more than the other even when that is objectively the case"
This is not true. The fact we accept this assertion is pathetic. Why do we pretend the period from March 1999 through October 2000 never happened? We suck at this.
Ed Koch?
While Sullivan has been in the Obama camp for some time, this is because of his opposition to Bush. Up until recently he still thought well of McCain, but thought the only way to get past the current problems with the republicans was to bring in the change Obama brings. Now, however, that respect is clearly gone.
Wow. The same Richard Cohen who demanded that Obama pass "a Farrakhan test" now writes:
As for John McCain himself, it is now clear he would rather be president than proud. If he keeps this up, he should be neither.
The times they are a-changin'.