McCain Campaign Just Makes Stuff Up At All Levels

Others might say stuff like "Dishonorable, Despicable" McCain Campaign, but I'm content just to note that the McCainiacs just make stuff up when they don't like the facts as they lie.

It starts with the Ayers nonsense. In fact, I received a mailing today. It reads: "This is the story of William Ayers. Terrorist, Radical, Friend of Obama." (I should fire off an email to the Huffington Post...)

As noted before, the Ayers nonsense has been thoroughly refuted. The GOP just perceives reality differently from we children of the Enlightenment, a.k.a. the Reality Based Coummunity. At least, that's what all the culture war symbolism sure signifies to me: hot rhetoric caressing raw emotions. At any rate...

The tale of Social Security reform attracted my attention, though, for McCain is completely re-inventing historical reality here.

This is important for the following reason. Paul Krugman wrote a book in 2001 called Fuzzy Math. Unfortunately for us all, it didn't appear early enough to really influence the policy debate over the initial Bush tax cuts. Nevertheless, it presented a brilliant analysis of the utter mendacity employed by the White House in presenting its tax cut plan.

And guess what? The medacity highlighted by Krugman repeated itself again, on another huge policy initiative, the Iraq War.

They did it again, spinning, distorting facts, and making some stuff up entirely. It was easy to spot since Fuzzy Math laid bare their techniques: distorting the truth, endless repetition of "facts" that were in no way true but because of sheer repetition came to be an accepted part of the discussion (so quasi-"true", where "true" means possibly believable), and complete and utter lies.

All this "stuff from the past" remains important, since McCain, in his discussion of Social Security, repeats the Bush Administration's strategy for beating back legitimate criticism of half-baked schemes. Remeber those half-baked schemes?

The campaign is repeating this at various levels, as well.

Are you aware of the Emo campaign worker nonsense? I won't rip on her too much, since she's obviously disturbed. Just this: it's amusing that the campaign is in such depths of despair that a campaign worker would do that. However, as you can image, liberal bloggers aren't so amused. What reinformes my amusement is how bad it make Matt Drudge look.

Spencer Ackerman compares Ms. Todd to a character from the (fantastic) show The Wire, one Detective Jimmy McNulty.

But that's not all. Breaking news implies the whole thing wasn't just the act of a depressed campaign worker. This is just...whack.

But it may also provide the conclusive proof that standards of truth are quite different in McCain-land.

For below the level of the campaign, lurking the netroots, the righties bought into the story completely. Kos of the Daily Kos gives us this:

Wingnutosphere punk'd (yet) again
by kos
Fri Oct 24, 2998 at 11:05:10 AM PDT

You heard the story -- it was all over the right-wing blogs. Some poor white girl, 20-year-old Ashley Todd of Texas, was mugged at an ATM, but when the mugger (a big black guy) saw her car with the McCain sticker, he beat her and carved a letter "B" in her face with a knife. Apparently it was a dyslexic mugger because the "B" was carved backward, but whatever -- it proved that Obama's supporters were violent and craaazy!

Ever the blowhards, Fox News piled on, and their Executive VP of "news" wrote this:

Part of the appeal of, and the unspoken tension behind, Senator Obama’s campaign is his transformational status as the first African-American to win a major party’s presidential nomination.

That does not mean that he has erased the mutual distrust between black and white Americans, and this incident could become a watershed event in the 11 days before the election.

If Ms. Todd’s allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee.

Rank idiocy, of course. Could you expect anything less from Fox? But there was a caveat:

If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting.

I guess McCain's quest is over.

Police sources tell KDKA that a campaign worker has now confessed to making up a story that a mugger attacked her and cut the letter "B" in her face after seeing her McCain bumper sticker [...]

Investigators did say that they received photos from the ATM machine and "the photographs were verified as not being the victim making the transaction."

This afternoon, a Pittsburgh police commander told KDKA Investigator Marty Griffin that Todd confessed to making up the story.

The commander added that Todd will face charges; but police have not commented on what those charges will be.

The story was instantly suspect, as the pictures of her supposed beating, her Twitter account, and her timelines all patently contradicted themselves. But the wingnutosphere, with the healthy assist from Fox News, piled on anyway, letting their ideological blinders get in the way of reality. As usual.

And now they look like idiots. As usual.

As for Ms. Ashley Todd, being a liar and race-baiter is par for the course for College Republicans.