If John McCain’s “Lipstick on a Pig” attack was criticized for being petty and irrelevant to the “real issues” of the campaign, what should we make of this stellar piece of investigative reporting?
Sarah Palin brought one unusual accessory to the Alaska Governor’s mansion after moving in last year: A tanning bed.
Al Giordano’s NarcoNews first reported that Palin had the apparatus installed in the mansion in Juneau, and a spokesman for the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, Roger Wetherell, confirmed the account to Politico.
“She paid for it with her own money,” Wetherell said in an email.
It does get awful dark up there in Alaska, but health authorities like the American Cancer Society generally frown on tanning beds as cancer risks.
The McCain-Palin campaign didn’t have an immediate comment on the purchase.
Matthew Yglesias, true to form, puts the tanning bed caper in “proper context” by pointing out that only those weird, hillbilly Alaskans who eat stuff like “Moose Stew” would think it middle class to have a tanning bed:
But that’s all pretty weird. Normal Americans don’t live in Alaska, don’t experience 22 straight hours of darkness ever, and don’t own personal tanning beds. Long story short, tanning beds are about as all-American as moose stew, which is not to say not all-American at all but rather idiosyncratic elements of the culture of an odd state located northwest of Canada.
I thought that kind of venomous, class conscious, dripping condescension went out of style for the left when Gus Hall moved on to that great proletariat gig in the sky. Jesus Lord God and they wonder why those of us in flyover country believe people like Yglesias to be effete, elitist snobs? Substitute “moose” for “rabbit” or “squirrel” or even “possum” and you have a delicacy enjoyed by millions of hunters and just plain folk all over the south and mountain west - two regions where Democrats, not surprisingly, are as scarce as hen’s teeth.
But the point isn’t that Yglesias and other lefties are out of touch. It’s hysterically funny that they threw a tantrum over McCain’s “Lipstick” attack for being irrelevant to the campaign and now they are attacking Palin for having a tanning bed that she paid for herself?
What is Obama’s position on tanning beds? A vital issue like this and Obama hasn’t formulated a position? How many tanning bed advisors does he have? I would say that’s just one more piece of evidence showing that he is unfit to be president.
Then there’s the latest Obama ad that comes right out and says McCain is “lying” about Obama’s record. The press, rousing itself temporarily from its peripatetic slumber, has suddenly realized that John McCain is indeed making a mockery of the campaign by attacking Obama mercilessly, exaggerating his record beyond recognition. To their mind, it is unfair - especially since it seems to be working. The pushback on the editorial pages and even by friendly columnists has probably hurt McCain or at the very least, blunted his momentum.
But the question is: Are they going to referee this contest and call both candidates out when they exaggerate or lie about their opponents record?
They didn’t do very well when Obama was using McCain’s “100 years” quote to falsely claim his opponent wanted to fight a war in Iraq for 100 years. In fact, most of these same columnists who are tsk-tsking and wagging an accusing finger in McCain’s direction never lifted a pen to take Obama to task for that hugely unfair portrayal of what McCain was saying.
But now that the press is awake and have presumably had their morning coffee, perhaps they’d like to do something about the lying being done by both Biden and Obama regarding McCain’s common sense statement yesterday that the fundamentals of the economy are sound:
“You know that there’s been tremendous turmoil in our financial markets and Wall St. And it is — people are frightened by these events. Our economy, I think still — the fundamentals of our economy are strong. But these are very, very difficult times.”
What does McCain mean by “fundamentals?” Old Wall Street hand Mayor Bloomberg of New York, agreeing with McCain, helps the clueless Democrats and liberals out:
“I do agree that fundamentally America has an economy that is strong,” he said. “America’s great strength is its diversity, its hard work, its good financial statements, its broad capital markets,its enormous natural resources” and its work ethic, he said at an afternoon press conference devoted to reassuring New Yorkers that the city’s finances and its economy are intact.
“I’d rather play America’s hand than any other country,” he said. “Without problems? No.”
Obama and Biden both twisted McCain’s words and made it sound like he was saying all was well, that the economy was doing great. First Biden yesterday:
I believe that’s why Senator McCain could say with a straight face, as recently as this morning, and I quote “the fundamentals of our economy are strong.” That, “We’ve made great progress economically” during the Bush years. But friends, I could walk from here to Lansing, and I wouldn’t run into a single person who thought our economy was doing well, unless I ran into John McCain.
John McCain just doesn’t seem to understand what middle class people are going through today. I don’t doubt that he cares. He just doesn’t think that we have any responsibility to help people who are hurting.
That statement is a vicious, false lie. First, McCain did not say “as recently as this morning” that “We’ve made great progress economically…” That is an out and out lie since McCain said it months ago. Secondly, McCain did not say the “economy was doing well.” In fact, he took great pains to say the opposite. What he said was that the underpinnings of the economy - imports, exports (McCain was wrong in saying we’re the #1 exporting country - Germany is), capital markets, and the most productive work force in the history of human civilization - are still strong. There is nothing myopic about this statement. It is a fact despite Obama and Biden’s attempt to lie about what McCain actually said.
Obama’s lies were even worse:
Why else would he say that the economy isn’t something he understands as well as he should? Why else would he say, today, of all days - just a few hours ago - that the fundamentals of the economy are still strong?
Senator - what economy are you talking about?
What’s more fundamental than the ability to find a job that pays the bills and can raise a family? What’s more fundamental than knowing that your life savings is secure, and that you can retire with dignity? What’s more fundamental than knowing that you’ll have a roof over your head at the end of the day? What’s more fundamental than that?
The fundamentals we use to measure economic strength are whether we are living up to that fundamental promise that has made this country great - that promise that America is the place where you can make it if you try - a promise that is the only reason that we are standing here today.
Obama is not describing the “fundamentals” of the economy and he knows it. He is, in fact, talking about the micro of all micro parts of the economy - the individual citizen’s pocketbook. Obama knows damn well McCain’s statement was about the macro economy. It was not only common sense to say what McCain said. It was the sign of a responsible leader that on a day when hyperbole and lies were coming from Democrats about a serious but manageable crisis on Wall Street, John McCain stood up and sought to remind people that despite the turmoil, we were not going into a depression. He didn’t seek to minimize what was going on. He didn’t try and sugar coat what was happening. But his common sense words sought to keep people calm and try to reassure them that there was nothing to panic about, that the Federal Reserve and the government were on the job.
He never said the economy was doing well. He never said individual Americans weren’t suffering. He said that the economy was not going to collapse - something the statesman Obama did not do and instead, the messiah tried to use scare tactics by totally misrepresenting what McCain said.
So where’s the press? How about a little fairness here? Obama and Biden have shamelessly lied about what John McCain said and not a peep from our guardians of truth in the media. They have reported what Obama and Biden said yesterday without any mention of the fact that they lied through their teeth.
That’s the problem, of course. They never will - especially now that they’ve called McCain out for lying, they are going to allow Obama to get away with even more exaggeration and hyperbole. This is “fairness” as far as the press is concerned.
