energy policy

I’m listening to the Morning Joe crowd (first mistake of the day), and the gist of their comments is that Obama is an elitist who called Sarah Palin a pig. Of course, that’s not true, as Andrea Mitchell is desperately trying to point out, but reality has nothing to do with the media and the way they convey a story.

We’re screwed if this is what we have to put up with until November.

Are the American people really stupid enough to do this again? (It’s beginning to look that way)

Are the women in this country really stupid enough to fall for this Palin woman? (Apparently)

Obviously our Dems in Congress are stupid. Otherwise, why would they refuse to bring up the S-CHIP bill? If ever there were a winner for the Democrats, S-CHIP is it, but our leadership is too stupid (or lame, or scared) to bring it up.

Why would they be caving on offshore drilling?

Just shoot me. The stupid is too overwhelming to contemplate.

The untruths continue to flow from the McCain campaign as it tries to capitalize on the new-found celebrity status of Sarah Palin. (McCain was against celebrity before he was for it, but that was then and this is now.) Speaking in Colorado Springs yesterday, Palin claimed that lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had "gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers." The first part of that statement may be true, but the second is impossible because the two institutions aren't funded by tax dollars. In fact, that's why they need a bailout - they are dependent on their own earnings to stay in business. As Sam Stein reports on Huffington Post today, the claim reflects a shocking lack of comprehension about a critical issue likely to face the next administration:

"You would like to think that someone who is going to be vice president and conceivable president would know what Fannie and Freddie do," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "These are huge institutions and they are absolutely central to our country's mortgage debt. To not have a clue what they do doesn't speak well for her, I'd say."

Meanwhile, the McCain campaign is doubling down on prior falsehoods, including the debunked claim that Sarah Palin stopped the Bridge to Nowhere. That whopper is repeated in the latest McCain ad, called "The Original Mavericks." As Obama spokesman Bill Burton points out, the ad is replete with false claims:

Despite being discredited over and over again by numerous news organizations, the McCain campaign continues to repeat the lie that Sarah Palin stopped the Bridge to Nowhere. John McCain has voted with George Bush 90% of the time and he and Sarah Palin will continue Bush's economic policies, his health care policy, his education policy, his energy policy, and his foreign policy. McCain and Palin will say or do anything to make people believe that they will change something besides the person sitting in the Oval Office. That's the kind of politics people are tired of, and it's anything but change

Specifically on the claim about the bridge, Politifact rates that a "Full Flop" because Palin supported the Bridge to Nowhere while running for governor and didn't come out against it until after Congress had already killed the project. And Alaska received and spent the money that would otherwise have gone toward the bridge.

UPDATE: Today Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic, pointing to the "I Stopped the Bridge" lie, wonders why "the electorate doesn’t seem to penalize campaigns for deliberately distorting the record of their candidate and their opponent." Matthew Iglesias responds that it is because the press, including Ambinder, are choosing not to create that narrative:

McCain, by contrast [to Al Gore and the "exaggeration" narrative], has not only been caught in several bald-faced lies, but in a few instances — this business with Palin and the bridge most notably — keeps on doing it in very high-profile contexts even though they’ve gotten called on it repeatedly. So where’s the narrative about how McCain’s key strategy introducing Sarah Palin to the public and turning his campaign around is based on putting lies at the heart of the presentation? There are a few dozen people, of whom Marc is one, in a position to create this narrative. They’ve chosen not to do so, but that’s a decision they’ve made not a fact about “the way consumers process news.”