Have You No Decency, Sir?

Yes, I'm fully aware that the answer is no. But today's events in the Obama-McCain campaign maybe put Mr. Maverick in the most dishonorable light yet.

The McCain campaign started by whining incessantly at a comment made by Joe Biden about the Republican Party's extremism on medical research and science:

“I hear all this talk about how the Republicans are going to work in dealing with parents who have both the joy…and the difficulty of raising a child who has a developmental disability, who were born with a birth defect,” he said. “Well, guess what folks? If you care about it, why don't you support stem cell research?”

That's a perfectly factual statement, and yet it was called "a new low." This goes along with the hissy fit over a common analogy uttered by Barack Obama today.

(Oh, and Biden's right - the Republican ticket is going to have to defend their unpopular, extremist viewpoints. Tough.)

But if you want to talk about new lows, take a look at this new ad.



The Obama vote that McCain is actually talking about was designed to teach kids how to avoid sexual predators. I don't know if McCain is going for the pro-rapist vote or what, but it would sure fit a pattern:

I shit you not. This article doesn't mention her by name, but check the dateline: Palin was mayor of Wasilla.

That means that under her leadership,

the Wasilla police department [did] charge the victims of sexual assault for the tests.

That police chief was Charlie Fannon, Palin's appointee. One can only assume that she supported Wasilla's policy of billing rape victims for their own rape kits--the kits police and hospitals use to collect evidence after a rape--not only because Fannon was her appointee, but also because this was four years into her tenure as mayor and because, let's be honest: in a town of that size, the mayor doesn't get to plead ignorance of policies or public statements of her own chief of police.

The entire ad is ridiculous, actually. It cites articles that describe McCain as far worse on education policy than Obama. But to try and fearmonger to parents that their kindergardeners would be taught sex education when the bill in question would protect kids from sex predators is about the most shameful situation in this entire election cycle.

Here's the Obama campaign's response:

"It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls - a position that his friend Mitt Romney also holds. Last week, John McCain told Time magazine he couldn't define what honor was. Now we know why," said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

But again, until the media fits this into a well-worn narrative of McCain being a compulsive liar, which is patently the case, he will not be punished for these actions. He is appearing as dishonorable as anyone to ever chase the White House. That is an objective truth, and it needs to be reflected in the coverage.

UPDATE: I know that there are about 8 of us that desire this, but Obama's speech on education, actually an articulated and comprehensive policy instead of 30 seconds' worth of soundbites, is here.