Obama working hard at taking the lead from McCain

You know...I really can't wait until election season is over. I'm at a point now where I am so sick of it all that I don't even want to vote.

In any case, having drunk deeply of the Obama Koolaid, my good friend E over at Eclectablog has been doing a bang up job of chronicaling every single possible mistep of the McCain campaign and all it's "lies," so in the interests of equal reporting, I thought I'd mention some of the Obama inconsistencies that the faithful seem to miss.

Now...Obama, much like any other candidate, hates to be behind is opponent in anything. Recently, it seems he's been concerned about being behind McCain in the number of ads that are completely bullshit about his opponent, so he's upped his game and he's in the process of catching up to him. I guess he was jealous of the amount of airplay McCain was getting on Saturday Night Live and the Daily Show for his less than accurate ads.

For instance, in several up for grab states, Obama ads have erroneously suggested (my buddy would call this a lie, heh) that Mr. McCain “has stood in the way of” federal financing for stem cell research. Now while it's true that McCain did once oppose such federally supported research, he broke with the President after that one time, and has consistently supported it since in 2001.

In another commercial running in NYC on Thursday highlighting McCain’s votes against incentives for alternative energy incorrectly asserted that he supports tax breaks for “one source of energy...oil companies.”  McCain’s corporate tax proposal would cover all companies...including those developing energy generation techniques.

In yet another tv spot playing all over Florida, and other states with high concentrations of retirees, reminds everyone that McCain supported the adminstrations failed plan of Social Security privitazation, accounts misleadingly clamed that McCain supported “cutting benefits in half..." a claim that doesn't hold up too well once an analysis of  Bush’s plan is done, which shows that such a cut would have applied only to upper-income Americans retiring in the year 2075. Good scare tactic though...sounds like something the GOP would do in their campaign ads.

Then of course there's the Spanish language ad that's been running for the last few weeks, and is still running, that links the McCain's support of Bush's rather sweeping immigration overhaul, to those of Rush Limbaugh. The ad implies Limbaugh is a close “Republican friend,”  of McCain, and goes on to quote Limbaugh calling Mexicans “stupid and unqualified.” The truth is that the quote was cherry-picked from a completely different context, and as much of a tool Mr. Limbaugh is, he never said it in the way it's been implied.The truth of it is that Limbaugh is a harsh critic of the Bush plan and, frequently, of McCain in general...and they don't get along very well.

The NYT, of all places, wrote a piece on this penchant for less than accurate campaign ads yesterday in the political section. From that piece:

In all, Mr. Obama has released at least five commercials that have been criticized as misleading or untruthful against Mr. McCain’s positions in the past two weeks. Mr. Obama drew complaints from many of the independent fact-checking groups and editorial writers who just two weeks ago were criticizing Mr. McCain for producing a large share of this year’s untruthful spots (“Pants on Fire,” the fact-checking Web site PolitiFact.com wrote of Mr. Obama’s advertisement invoking Mr. Limbaugh; “False!” FactCheck.org said of his commercial on Social Security.)

Never let it be said that Obama wasn't good at playing catch up ;)

peace,
Aielman