Honesty

I watched Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention last night on CNN. She impressed me as being an honest person. She appeared genuine and trustworthy and her message was uplifting. She seems very intelligent too. I was going to say that she must be very smart because she graduated from prestigious Princeton University, but as the world now knows, you can have an Ivy League education and still be an idiot.  I think she will keep Barack on track when he is elected President of the United States of America. I can’t imagine that she would let her husband invade another country based on a bunch of lies or pardon someone like “Scooter” Libby, who was convicted of obstructing justice and lying under oath, before he served even 5 minutes of his sentence. One of the lies was that Libby blamed an innocent person, the late Tim Russert, for leaking classified information about Valerie Plame. Judith Miller, an innocent New York Times reporter, spent 85 days in jail for refusing to discuss the case with a grand jury. A lot of things would be different if Libby had just been honest. It’s not too late though. He could still confess if he wanted to.

After 8 years of lies from Bush and his thugs, it will be refreshing to have a president and administration you can believe in.

The Republicans are running television lies that say Obama is going to raise your taxes. More lies? Yes. I was at the Washington County Fair, in upstate New York Sunday. I stopped by the Democratic party’s booth to pick up an Obama lawn sign. As I was leaving, a man in the next booth saw my sign and said, “he’s going to raise your taxes.” I stopped, looked at him and said “that’s not true”.  I told him to read the article in the New York Times Magazine of August 24, 2008, “Obamanomics“, by David Leonhardt.

To briefly quote from the article: “For the bottom 80 percent of the population — those households making $118,000 or less — McCain’s various tax cuts would mean a net savings of about $200 a year on average. Obama’s proposals would bring $900 a year in savings. So for most people, Obama is the tax cutter in this campaign.”

It’s an excellent article with a lot of detailed information. Read it and you will know how to respond to people who say “he’s going to raise your taxes.”

Rush Limbaugh, the Republican radio loudmouth who broadcasts from Palm Beach, Florida, apparently read the Obamanomics article too and distilled a very thoughtful, well documented article into a cheap slogan. He quoted Barack Obama paraphrasing Warren Buffett and turned it into “Just tax the heck out of people”. He suggested that McCain could use it as a campaign ad. Obama didn’t say it, he was paraphrasing Buffett. But, it doesn’t matter to Rush, the truth is irrelevant. If Rush was Pinocchio, his nose would stretch from Palm Beach to the South Side of Chicago.

I suppose that the campaign ads will just get worse from now until the election. I expect that the ads will be mostly negative, especially from the Republican side. Who cares about honesty? Just take a snippet of something somebody said, or a soundbite out of context and turn it into propaganda.