Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

The politics of deceit and deception

Editor's Note: Thomas's commentary is in blue and Marcie's is in purple.

The Democrats have rolled out the same old playbook this year for the election. One problem for them is that they have opened up, with both barrels ... at each other. The other problem they are having is that they are either knowingly lying, or being shrewdly deceptive. The difference is one is purposefully distorting their record of experience to pad their resume, and the other is doing it because they have no paper trail by which people can judge their experience. Either way one sees it neither can be honest to the American electorate. The Left can accuse President Bush of lying, yet they cannot prove that assertion when confronted. Senator Clinton has lied. Senator Obama has been calculatingly ambiguous. Both are now under a microscope they had hoped to avoid.

Senator Clinton's biggest mistake in this election was in releasing her schedule as First Lady. She had one major policy issue in that record -- her national health care plan. After that failure she was removed from any participation regarding the official policy of the Clinton Administration.The "Hillarycare" plan cost the Democrats their majority in the House in 1994 which is the main reason why she wasn't allowed to weigh in on any further policy issues. Her schedule also shows that in 1998, while President Clinton was dealing with the Belfast peace talks, Senator Clinton was attending an event in Washington, DC, honoring Bella Abzug. The one thing that really gained national attention was her visit to Tuzla, Bosnia in 1996. She has stated on the stump -- on more than one occasion -- that there was a "corkscrew" landing under "sniper fire"; that the greeting ceremony noted in her records had to be moved inside because of the same "sniper fire" the tarmac was taking. CBS News, along with a number of other MSM, and alternative media sources, drew attention to CBS's released archives about that trip. She is shown in the news report disembarking from the plane, and calmly walking towards the greeting entourage on the tarmac. She's smiling and waving, and her Secret Service detail doesn't look the least bit nervous. She tried to explain it away as that's-how-I-remembered-it. When the MSM confronted her on the lie, she replied "I was sleep-deprived," which has drawn howls from critics when they point to her "3 A.M." ads she is running. She got caught in a lie, and lied to cover it up.

Senator Obama's problems with honesty began in Chicago with his early forays into politics. His connections to Chicago fixer, Tony Rezko, continue to come up in Mr. Rezko's trial on an almost daily basis. Each day the painting is added to, and Senator Obama's ties are expanded. While he claims to have had no knowledge of the "business" Mr. Rezko was involved in, he willingly accepted donations and advice from Mr. Rezko. Yet when confronted by the media on his connections, Mr. Rezko is denied; at least how close the two are is denied. As for his political ideas at the time, those are being "adjusted" as his campaign goes forward, but the devil is in the details. The two largest issues in his early political career that he wishes people would not take note of are abortion and gun control issues. He is the most pro-abortion candidate in the race, possibly ever, and refused to support the Born Alive Infants Bill. That bill would have recognized children who survived a partial-birth abortion procedure as "persons," thereby making it mandatory for doctors to care for the child. On guns, he is radical in his beliefs. The Politico located a survey that he filled out in 1995 where his views on firearms is plain and clear. (He had denied filling it out, yet his handwriting is on the survey.) In that survey he stated that he believed in a ban on the manufacture, sale, and ownership of handguns. In Pennsylvania, he is telling gun owners that he supports the Second Amendment, but that is simply not true. He has said he believes the Second Amendment applies only to hunters or sport shooters, and not the average citizen.

The Tuzla lie was bad, but compared to her stance on NAFTA, it's a typical drop in the bucket for the Clintons. On the stump Senator Clinton has repeatedly stated that she was opposed to NAFTA. she used this line in Ohio, in Michigan, and now in Pennsylvania. But ABC News uncovered the truth, and the truth is she's lying again. On 10 November 1993, Senator Clinton attended a closed-door briefing with a number of women involved in international trade. She has tried to spin this as a "drop-by" stop that was just put on her schedule, sort of like tea and crumpets with a dignitaries wife. But those that came forward to ABC state that her comments there were completely "pro-NAFTA." In fact, they say that this was not merely a "drop-by" visit, but rather it was on the schedule. She was the last speaker on the schedule for the meeting, and her speech was designed to "close the deal" for NAFTA, not stand in opposition to it as she claims. In 1996 she stopped by a Texas event where she praised "the president's stance on NAFTA" according to United Press International. The Buffalo News reported in 1998 that she "praised corporations for mounting 'a very effective business effort on behalf in the US on behalf of NAFTA'." When the press confronted her on her apparent lie, she maintained the claim that she was opposed to NAFTA, and that she is against the Columbia Free Trade Agreement -- a treaty that was sent to the Senate by President Bush on 7 April. And she claims she will vote against it, provided she can find time to attend the vote itself. Granted, the treaty needs to come up, which Nancy Pelosi has no intention of allowing.

In March the sermons of Reverend Jeremiah Wright came to light. Reverend Wright was pastor of the church Senator Obama attended for twenty years. The sermons were played by press outlets and across talk radio, and were heavily laden with anti-American, racist rhetoric. It appalled voters, and those offended demanded to know if Senator Obama had heard any of the controversial sermons. On March 14th, Senator Obama released a statement that "The statements Reverend Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity [United Church of Christ]." Hugh Hewitt, noted talk show host, discovered that in his book Dreams From my Father he admits to hearing at least one of those sermons; it was titled "The Audacity of Hope." On March 18th, Senator Obama gave a speech to the nation called "A More Perfect Union." The speech was to be on race relations in the US, and it failed to resonate with voters. Additionally, in that speech he admitted he lied to the nation. "Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes." So in just over fifty hours, or so, the story went from "I did not hear them" to "I did hear them." A direct lie, and all done to distance himself from a controversy that, to this day, still hangs over his head.

When she was 27 years old, Hillary Clinton (then Hillary Rodham) worked with investigators on the Watergate scandal. Jerry Zeifman was the general counsel and chief-of-staff for the House Judiciary Committee which was working on the Watergate proceedings, and he stated he had to fire her for "lies" and "unethical behavior;" behavior that shows her deceit dates back much further than most understand. She openly advocated denying then-President Richard Nixon from having counsel defend him -- a fundamental right guaranteed to every American accused of a crime. Not only did she support this view, but when Mr. Zeifman informed her there would be counsel, she tried to lobby the Judiciary Committee to deny him his due counsel; an act which earned her a reprimand from then-Majority Leader Tip O'Neill. Mr. Zeifman also noted that she behaved most unethically during her tenure with the committee, including violating House rules and she disclosed information to unauthorized people. Mr. Zeifman was assured by Hillary that she hadn't tried to push for any rules changes, but he discovered that she had, and continued to lobby the committee to adopt them. Furthermore, it was decided that President Nixon's counsel would be Justice William O. Douglas, and that the Douglas impeachment files were to remain in their congressional offices for inspection by the public. While she agreed to leave them there, she absconded with them, taking them to the impeachment inquiry office, and removing them from the public record. This shows voters that she has a nasty track record of deceit and calumny.

On March 31st, Senator Obama stated at a Lancaster, Pennsylvania, town hall meeting that "You know, John McCain wants to continue a war in Iraq perhaps as long as 100 years." That was an out-and-out lie, and a gross misrepresentation of what Senator McCain said. In January Senator McCain was on the stump in Derry, New Hampshire, when a questioner confronted him:

Questioner: President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for fifty years…

McCain: Maybe a hundred. Make it one hundred. We've been in South Korea, we've been in Japan for sixty years. We've been in South Korea for fifty years or so. That'd be fine with me as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed. Then it's fine with me. I would hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where Al Qaeda is training, recruiting, equipping and motivating people every single day.

The press has basically given Senator Obama a pass on this, but the alternative media has not. He lied about what Senator McCain said. Granted, we can chalk this up to election year politics; a cheap ploy to score some points for his side. It does not exactly equate to the lies I have outlined above, but what is most upsetting about his statement is that he continued to repeat it for his supporters on the stump. As the old Democrat adage goes "If you tell a lie long enough your supporters will begin to believe it, and so will you." He has backed off of this assertion, but it remains a talking point for the talking heads in favor of Senator Obama.

No one has found a single lie Senator McCain has uttered (and believe me, we've tried to find them, if any exist).He has been upfront and honest with voters. But neither Democrat has been. They lie repeatedly, and even after getting caught in them, they offer up sad excuses to those lies; usually more lies to cover up the initial ones. When voters see that the people asking for their vote are willing to lie so brazenly -- almost a pathological trend -- it tends to turn them off. Only the most ardent and fervent devotees to the candidates will excuse the lies, and ignore them. But the American electorate, especially this year, is hardly in love with any of the candidates. Likewise, when the general electorate begins to pay attention after Labor Day (statistically when the majority of voters DO start paying attention to election year politics) they won't be pleased to see these lies dredged up. We knew that Senator Clinton was a serial liar. But Senator Obama is supposedly the candidate of "hope" and "change," but it's plainly obvious that the only sort of change he brings is the subject of the lies.

He is a scholar of history, especially American history, and the United States Constitution. She has finished her undergrad studies, graduating with a BA in English and history and will move onto law school this fall where she will specialize in Constitutional Law. Together, Thomas and Marcie form the vanguard of conservative opinion at Hamilton, Madison, and Jay -- a blogging site devoted to advancing the conservative cause by challenging the liberal lies and deceit spread by the media, and espoused by the Left in general. Both are expert debaters, and have beaten many liberals into submission with their collective wit, and unmatched knowledge. The pair is married, and resides in Arizona

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