Lieberman at the RNC: Lied When He Said He's a Dem and Never Stopped
By Howie Klein, Down With Tyranny! Posted on September 3, 2008, Printed on December 22, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com//97408/
It isn't likely that a widely discredited Washington insider who was thrown out of his own party by Connecticut voters will persuade many Democrats or independents to vote for his closest crony and fellow deranged warmonger, John McCain. Ironically, the outgoing Republican Rep. in Maryland's first congressional district, Wayne Gilchrest, endorsed conservative Democrat Frank Kratovil over neo-fascist GOP candidate Andy Harris. That will have a great deal more impact than Lieberman's distorted presentation of his buddy McCain. "Distorted," you ask? Well I'm glad you did because I'd like to lay out some facts for you that counter Lieberman's most egregious lies from last night.
1- "When others were silent, John McCain had the judgment to sound the alarm about the mistakes we were making in Iraq."
Just last April ago McCain said "No one has supported President Bush on Iraq more than I have." And during a March 2008 interview on the Mike Gallagher Show, McCain stated, "no one has supported President Bush on Iraq more than I have," apparently a line he liked repeating a lot last spring when he was hoping Republicans would make him their nominee. I haven't heard him say it recently though. You? And we he visited O'Reilly at Fox on March 18, 2003 he was even more blunt and to the point saying he would have handled Iraq exactly as Bush had and that he didn't have even one Bush move he disagreed with. "Nothing. The president has handled this, in my view, skillfully."
2- In one of his frequent nasty attacks on Obama last night, Lieberman lied, "In the Senate he has not reached across party lines to get anything significant done, nor has he been willing to take on powerful interest groups in the Democratic Party."
In actuality Obama and far right Republican Tom Coburn (OK) worked together in 2006 to pass a landmark bill creating c "Google-like" database for the public to search details about federal funding awards. It passed unanimously and Coburn said "I consider Barack a friend. He's a liberal. He's not ashamed of it. What we agree on is that things should be transparent." The same year, Obama worked with Indiana Republican Richard Lugar to pass legislation to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists, the Cooperative Proliferation Detection Act, which was passed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee unanimously on May 26, 2006 and was eventually incorporated into the Department of State Authorities Act of 2006 and signed into law on January 11, 2007. It wasn't the first time Obama had teamed up with Lugar. In 2005 they worked together to pass an amendment to fund research for hybrid/flex fuel vehicles. Then in 2006, Congress passed a Veterans Affairs Committee bill which included several provisions originating in Obama's SAVE Act (S. 1180) and Homes for Heroes Act (S. 3475). Obama worked with two Republican colleagues on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, Senators Larry Craig and Richard Burr, on the legislation. This year, Obama worked with Senators McCaskill (D-MO) and Bond (R-MO) to pass several provisions from their "Dignity for Wounded Warriors Act" into law. The legislation improved standards at military medical care facilities. The new law would require the Secretary of Defense to establish a set of standards for military medical care facilities and oversee compliance with those standards by a specific deadline. Finally, the new law would require an annual report to Congress on the conditions of those facilities. The provisions would improve health care services and health care tracking for service members, and would require post-deployment, face to face mental health screenings for returning service members within 30 days.
3-"When others wanted to retreat in defeat from the field of battle, when Barack Obama was voting to cut off funding for our troops on the ground, John McCain had the courage to stand against the tide of public opinion and support the surge, and because of that, today, our troops are at last beginning to come home, not in failure, but in honor!"
Last month, the extremely pro-McCain A.P. denounced this oft-repeated McCain campaign canard as "misleading." It's "misleading" because its a deliberate lie. "The ad's most inflammatory charge-- that Obama voted against troop funding in Iraq and Afghanistan-- is misleading. The Illinois senator consistently voted to fund the troops once elected to the Senate, a point Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton made during the primaries when questioning whether his anti-war rhetoric was reflected in his actions." The Annenberg Public Policy Center's factcheck.org wrote, "Prior to the sole 2007 vote cited by the McCain campaign as justification for this ad, Obama voted for all war-funding bills that had come before the Senate since 2005, when he was sworn in." Obama said in a statement, "This vote is a choice between validating the same failed policy in Iraq that has cost us so many lives and demanding a new one. And I am demanding a new one. We must fund our troops. But we owe them something more. We owe them a clear, prudent plan to relieve them of the burden of policing someone else's civil war. We need a plan to compel the Iraqi people to reach a political accommodation and to take responsibility for their own future. It's time to change course. I opposed this war in 2002 precisely because I feared it would lead us to the open-ended occupation in which we find ourselves today. This President has led us down a disastrous path and has arrogantly refused to acknowledge the grim reality of this war, which has cost us so dearly in lives and treasure. After he vetoed a plan that would have funded the troops and begun to bring them home, this bill represents more of his stubborn refusal to address his failed policy. We should not give the President a blank check to continue down this same, disastrous path. With my vote today, I am saying to the President that enough is enough. We must negotiate a better plan that funds our troops, signals to the Iraqis that it is time for them to act and that begins to bring our brave servicemen and women home safely and responsibly."
4- "They are worried about their homes, their jobs, and their businesses; they are worried about the outrageous cost of gas and of health insurance..."
In a CNN debate on Jan. 30, 2008 McCain said, "I think you could argue that Americans overall are better off, because we have had a pretty good prosperous time, with low unemployment and low inflation and a lot of good things have happened. A lot of jobs have been created." McCain voted against the 1993 Economic Plan, which largely eliminated the federal budget deficit and created 22 million new jobs, resulting in the lowest unemployment in 30 years, the highest home ownership in history, the fastest and longest real wage growth in over three decades, and a budget surplus.
5- "I have personally seen John, over and over again, bring people together from both parties to tackle our toughest problems we face-- to reform our campaign finance, lobbying and ethics laws, to create the 9/11 Commission and pass its critical national security reforms, and to end the partisan paralysis over judicial confirmations."
On January 18, 2007 The Hill reported that after sponsoring reform legislation that included a "requirement for grassroots lobbying coalitions to reveal their financial donors," McCain did an "about-face" on the issue in the run-up to his 2008 presidential campaign, caving to conservative pressure and voting against the provision in 2007. It was "strongly opposed by groups such as the National Right to Life Committee, Gun Owners of America, and the American Civil Liberties Union...McCain's past allies in battles to reform government...were surprised to discover his position had changed."
6- "If John McCain was just another go-along partisan politician, he never would have led the fight to fix our broken immigration system..."
McCain didn't even support his own immigration reform legislation when the right-wing base started howling. Jesus' General summed it up best:
If you felt like there was a wave of sleaze washing over you when you watched Lieberwhore lie his old ass off last night, let me suggest you take a look at this four minute video of a fellow POW of McCain's who, unlike Lieberman, has no aspirations to run the country. Phillip Butler just wants to show that, despite McCain, many veterans do believe in actual straight talk. Here's the real story about why someone who knows John McCain thinks it would be a catastrophe to have this disingenuous and reckless old man capture the presidency.
He's not cut out to be president of the United States":
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