and i'm more curious as to why there isn't some way to stop all of this lying shit. at first it was because the media wouldn't say he was lying, but now they're beginning to. so how can he keep getting away with it.

maybe we need an ombudsman to sue his pants off for blatant lying.....some sort of truth squad.

just sayin.....

orange

I'm confused, which is the more charitable interpretation: that he doesn't mind lying to the voters, or that he has aged-related memory problems? I don't see how it could be anything else.

Why on earth would McCain bring back a demonstrably ridiculous claim now?

Okay, I'll play the speculation game! How 'bout desperation?

The crowd McCain/Plain is playing to doesn't follw normal conventions. They know Obama isn't a terrorist. They know Palin didn't oppose the "bridge to Nowhere." The lies fit their needs, so they embrace the needed effect of the lie. They begin to function in an alternate dimension where truth is relative to need. To embrace Palin they must embrace the lie because that's what she's been fashioned from.

He's just going through the motions. He might as well pull out of Wisconsin as most of the polls seem to be passing the Bradly threshold there. Maybe he knows what's coming with the report on Friday, and it is too late to change the VP spot at this point.

It solidifies his base. Studies have demonstrated that more than any other group, conservatives hold more tightly to their positions when the elements underpinning them are proven false.

Can you say fundamentalism?

biggerbox:

Don't you know that any immoral act is acceptable so long as your cause is righteous? The idea that the ends justify the means is the cornerstone of modern conservative political thought.

It's time to admit that McCain is just a tape loop. He is senile - addled. What's it take to get this across. Does he have to pull out his weenie?

Theory: McCain disliked getting attacked on the "Bridge to Nowhere" BS less than he disliked getting questioned about the details of his $300 billion mortgage bailout.

The "Bridge to Nowhere" lie is a small lie and it supports his campaign message of cutting wasteful spending.

He needs something to mix with his surge talk.

Steve

Why the exasperation and hand wringing? It's not like politicians on both sides of the isle have just started doing this. Hell it's been going on since the beginning of the republic. Nothing new. They all lie, stretch the truth, etc. for their own benefit and/or to degrade their opponent.

You think that today's standards are bad. Go look back in history to what pols did and said about one another. Thomas Jeffersons opponent said that Jefferson raped wemon, had sex with slaves and fathered children with them. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.

How about just report the news without all the "astonishment" about what they are doing or what they are saying. It gets old.

He is slowly breaking down. His suppressed rage at being pounded to a pulp by an uppity black man, the uselessness of harping on how great he is because he was a holy POW (who collaborated!), and the fact that his ancient, dried up, angry, flaky mind is actually failing him is putting him over the edge.

I wouldn't be surprised if he strokes out before the election at this rate.

Now, every reporter on hand knew he was lying. I suspect even most of the crowd knew he was lying. -Steve Benen

Of course, that doesn't stop some people from defending these hacks, as we clearly saw on an earlier comment thread.

Tell me again, why should Obama bend over backwards and put his security at risk for the regurgitating, fact-averse stenographers who claim to be journalists?

His campaign is the bridge to nowhere. Obama was right, 4 more weeks is a political eternity.

That bit you said about Jefferson...isn't all that stuff about impregnating slaves true?

Or as Chasing Amy put it:

Hooper: Gentrification! They gon' drive out the black element to make the galaxy quote, unquote, safe for white folks. And Jedi's the most insulting installment! Because Vader's beautiful black visage is sullied when he pulls off his mask to reveal a feeble, crusty, old white man! They tryin' to tell us that deep inside we all wants to be white!

Banky Edwards: Well, isn't that true?

;)

The Dow is off over 459 points today. I'd say that our 401K's are becoming a Bridge to Nowhere.

They're going for the People Who Can Be Fooled All Of The Time demographic.

I would like to suggest that we operationalize the term for this behavior. We could call it "mccaining."

mccain noun, verb, mcained, mcaining

-noun

a demonstrably false statement that is repeated frequently, even when it is universaly understood to be a false satement.

-verb

to frequently make false statements even when the mendacity of the statement has been conclusively proven; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues to mcain about the jewish holocaust.

Why on earth would McCain bring back a demonstrably ridiculous claim now?

Because he can. I mean, if he can get a few more suckers to believe it, and the press is not gonna call him out on it, why should he stop?

McCain's brain contains millions of synapses to nowhere.

David G:

Thomas Jefferson did have sex with slaves and father children by them. There's DNA evidence. Seriously. Google "Sally Hemings" sometime.

Why the exasperation and hand wringing? It's not like politicians on both sides of the isle have just started doing this. Hell it's been going on since the beginning of the republic. Nothing new. They all lie, stretch the truth, etc. for their own benefit and/or to degrade their opponent.

yeah, but in recent years at least they've been subtle about it. Or at least nuanced. At the very least they make it difficult to explain WHY they're lying.

It's practically an art form. You can look back at Bush in 2000 and find places where he is obviously lying - but it takes you a while to explain why and by the time you're done the person on the receiving end is no longer thinking that they're lies but rather "oversimplifications" or "shortcuts" or whatever.

McCain's lies are freaking obvious, and easily debunkable by a 12 year old with access to Google. They're not anything that requires a nuanced explanation - just dozens of YouTube clips and news reports showing exactly where what he says is not only wrong, but so wrong that the only way he can make the claim is if he's lying about it. Not an oversimplification, not a "shortcut" just a bald-faced lie and an assumption that you're too stupid to do anything but believe it.

That's what makes it so infuriating. He's not even trying. His entire campaign seems to be based around "not trying", in fact. He doesn't seem to want to put any effort into actually winning this thing.

If I didn't know that 40% of the population of this country would vote for a houseplant if it had the right letter next to it's name, I'd be really frustrated by his standing in the polls right now merely because he's doing such a half-assed job at campaigning.

Me thinks John McCain has hired the remaining crew of P.T. Barnum's circus cuz they are trying to win an election by not underestimating the stupidity of the American people. It won't work!

It's just this time around we're in the 21st century when the American people have had a great learning curve for the past 8 years of our nation's history. -Kevo

McCain knows that he can say whatever he likes, and the employees of the giant media corporations that he plans to enrich with $1.44 BILLION in tax cuts will not challenge him on it.

John Cole put it nicely:

John McCain is not man enough to own his shit. John McCain will not openly confront Obama with his smears and lies and innuendo. John McCain will not come out and talk about Ayers, he has to be asked. That is why he goes to places like Fox News, so he can be asked. What a coincidence.

John McCain is a coward.

John McCain would rather hide behind his wife and Sarah Palin than say it himself.

He would rather produce 2 minute ads that his campaign will never pay to air anywhere, and hope that the tire-swinging media will bring up the topic so he doesn’t have to do it himself.

John McCain just wants to throw shit out there, and “raise questions� about Obama, and hope his supporters connect the dots, because he is too much of a coward to directly push this toxic stew. He would rather hide behind right-wing bloggers, surrogates, and scummy websites staffed with wingnut welfare recipients like the NRO and the Weekly Standard.

John McCain had 90 minutes to bring this stuff up to Obama, to his face, and passed.

John McCain is a coward.

Joe Biden is right:

“All of the things they said about Barack Obama in the TV, on the TV, at their rallies, and now on Youtube and everything else,� Biden said — referring to McCain and Palin tying Obama to Weatherman bomber Bill Ayers and accusing him of “palling around with terrorists.�

“John McCain could not bring himself to look Barack Obama in the eye and say the same things to him,� he said to cheers. “In my neighborhood, you got something to say to a guy, you look him in the eye and you say it to him.“

Coward.

Aravosis over at AmericBlog has been speculating about the effects of Ambien and some energy drink McCain supposedly takes. Maybe he's closing in on something, maybe not. But McCain's behavior is just too weird and erratic not to be explained by either an injested substance or a mental health issue.

David G: Thomas Jefferson's opponent said that Jefferson raped women, had sex with slaves and fathered children with them.

The difference here is that, at least a portion of the statement above is demonstrably true.

But McCain's behavior is just too weird and erratic not to be explained by either an injested substance or a mental health issue.

Please. We don't need to get into a Bill Frist remote diagnosis here. McCain's. Got. Nothing. He has no substance to run on. He can't fall back on most of the conservative ideology playbook because everything he wants to suggest (cut taxes! less government spending! deregulate more!) are things that we're being told are either counterproductive to getting out of this mess or are the whole cause of the mess in the first place. He can't fall back on foreign policy because he's somehow managed to convince folks that Obama is more of a hawk than he is about going after terrorists.

He's got nothing. So he's going to go with the things that seem to work (the things that get him cheers at rallies) like going after corruption and waste in the budget. And he needs a story to go along with that, so out trots the Bridge to Nowhere. And the crowd at the rallies eat it up and he gets some cheers. But there's no need to go any further than that - his campaign is desperate and they're probably hoping for something dramatic to show up in the next few weeks. Steve Schmidt is probably praying that bin Laden releases a tape endorsing his "spiritual brother" Obama and suggesting that Americans vote for him or else. Because he needs SOMETHING to change the subject and until he can find it McCain is just treading water.

Why on earth would McCain bring back a demonstrably ridiculous claim now?

Maybe it's because he doesn't want to talk about the Dow Jones dropping another 678 points today. Would rather distract us with absurd trivialities such as this.

The resurgence of the Bridge to Nowhere lie.

"But the beauty of icons is that they get to have it both ways which is how they ride out the contradictions of history." Betty Fussell in "Raising Steaks"

John McCain, the dishonorable honorable, the straight talking teller of lies, the maker of his own unreal reality, country first and country be damned.

When will the psychologists weigh in and finally tell the people that McCain really does exhibit histrionic personality disorder and is mentally unfit to be president?

I think it's time to post undercover progressives at the front of his speech platforms to yell the truth at him when he lies.

Since he (& his evil sidekick Sarah) lies a lot & each undercover liberal should expect to be booted upon "correcting" McSame, there needs to be about a half dozen at each event who all should act like they don't know each other.

PS - wear those ugly McCain/Palin t-shirts too. It'd be a nice touch to have national TV show McSame's supporters smacking him upside the head (verbally of course).

Thomas Jefferson did have sex with slaves and father children by them. There's DNA evidence. Seriously. Google "Sally Hemings" sometime.

From what I've read, I think it's probably true that Jefferson fathered some or all of Hemings's children, but the DNA evidence does not definitively establish it. What the DNA tells us is that it was Jefferson or one of his relatives. The rest of the argument -- that it was Jefferson himself, and not, say, his brother -- rests on other evidence.

Just brazen lying, I think.

I think it's his Vietnamese-induced conditioning breaking down. Beware the Manchurian Candidate.

Why the exasperation and hand wringing? It's not like politicians on both sides of the isle have just started doing this.

Er, you do understand "magnitude", don't you?

It is all about his audience--he was speaking to republicans in Waukesha Wisconsin. The thing about Wisconsin Republicans in general--and Waukesha Republicans in particular, is that a lot of the older ones think Joe McCarthy was a great Senator who deserves to be on Mount Rushmore. The Republican party was formed in the state as was the John Birch Society.Wisconsin also produced Fighting Bob LaFollette, Gaylord Nelson and Russ Feingold. In other words, politics is an extreme sport in this state and at the edges facts never matter. In the end, who wins the state will come down to turn out and McCain has no chance unless he fires up the GOP base. Even then he loses unless Obama's ground game falters.

I think there's a very simple explanation: the McCain campaign knows their base consists of some of the lowest watt bulbs out there. He could literally say "My friends, I'm so proud of Sarah Palin here, who performed the first artificial heart transplant and is the first woman to win Nobel Prizes in economics and physics," and they'd just cheer louder. The know nothing, don't care that they know nothing, and think that fact-checking is evidence of liberal bias in the media. It's a wonderful base to have -- no questions, no doubts, no knowledge about anything except that you're on a divine mission.

Seriously, if it gets these knuckledraggers to the polls, what does the McCain campaign have to lose? It's not like they're answerable to the media or the rest of the country.

Why would McCain repeat the lie?

To make the crowd cheer, just like they did in that video. Clearly not *everyone* knows it's a lie.

True. You can SHOW them footage of what she said, and they STILL won't believe.

It works for McCain because he's talking to the only people who actually believe these widely debunked lies - the people at his rallies. Remember these people admit to not trusting anyone but Fox News. That just goes to show how utterly hopeless they are.

McShame probably suffers from fatigue, information overload, and memory gaps much of which is due to his age. He's also desperate, not in control of his campaign - the Roverians are - and he appears to be losing in key states. All that may explain why he repeats what is now generally known to be untrue.

However, his base doesn't care if it's true or not. Several studies have been done among conservatives who, once misinformation has been exposed, believe the misinformation all the more. That takes denial to a whole new level, and is the result of life-long conditioning against anything or anyone who contradicts your faith. It's all about faith, and it appears to be a heritable trait.

As a foreigner watching from Australia I had all my prejudices about the mindlessnes of the American presidential system vindicated when I first heard about the elevation of Palin.
Fortunately I lucked on to this site which proved that (once again) I was too hasty in judgment.
There are plenty of sane (and outraged) people still alive and well over there.
Maintain the rage and good luck.