Lies, Lies, and more Lies

So, I'm sitting here listening to John McCain talk (he's on CNN), I'm hearing him talk on and on giving the usual stump speech, and I have to say, the man looks desprate. First off, he said he was glad to be in Virginia. There happens to be a problem with that though, he wasn't there. He was close to Virginia, but he was in Tennessee. Last time I looked at a map, they were seprate states.

While that's a little nit-picky, his attacks on Obama were not. He refered to Obama's policy as "spreading the wealth". Never mind that under the conservative messiah Reagan, taxes were almost twice as high on the wealthiest class as they are now, and while he slashed them, they were still higher. McCain constantly refers to Obama as being untested in the White House with respect to foreign problems. But last time I checked, neither of the two major candidates have been in the White House before.

McCain likes to talk about how Obama's refundable tax credits are "welfare", but that same tax credit is a central part of McCain's healthcare policy. McCain also has continued to say and broadcast that Obama wants to raise taxes on everybody making more than $42,000 a year. Once again, thats just simply not true. His policy clearly says taxes will raise only on individuals making more than $200,000, or couples/families making more than $250,000.

The thing that makes me the most mad though, is that immideately after the speech was over, was that there was no mention about the validity of the arguments on CNN. They went straight to commercial and when they came back, said not a word about it. Why do they continue to ignore the responsibility of the media to referee the campaign, and point out when people lie?

Obviously though, it's a political campaign, and both sides have been spewing false information like it's their jobs (which it is). Obama continues to proclaim that McCain opposes stem cell reaserch. This is only kind of true. Yes, McCain opposed stem cell reaserch, but only up until 2001, when he switched, saying he thought its benefits outweighed its risks.

While in a presidential election, it borders on stupidity to believe that a campaign will be run cleanly, I don't think it's too much to ask for major news outlets to look at the validity of what people are saying. At least I hope it's not.