Two Steps Forward!

"People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election."
- Otto von Bismarck

In my opinion, The Washington Post is a pinko-commie rag. If you don't beleive me, check out eyeonthepost.org. It's a huge website devoted entirely to misreporting, exageration and bias in the Washington Post. I don't always agree with their spin, a lot of it is subjective and it's obvious that in some cases they just have an ax to grind, but it's hard to disagree with pieces like '110 examples of Post Misreporting' which addresses some of the more damning allegations made by a former publisher and foreign editor of the Post.

I'm not alone in thinking that the Post leans dramatically to the left, just search for the term 'Washington Post Bias' in Google and you'll get over 2 million hits.

With that said I was surprised to find a number of pieces in their Op-Ed section this week criticizing Barack Obama for his lack of, as Stephen Colbert might say, "truthiness."

Take this piece: 'Always for Less Regulation'? John McCain's record on Wall Street oversight gets some misleading spin from Barack Obama. In it, the Post calls out Senator Obama for the following quote:

When I was warning about the danger ahead on Wall Street months ago because of the lack of oversight, Senator McCain was telling the Wall Street Journal -- and I quote -- 'I'm always for less regulation.'

But instead of the period at the end of Obama's sentance there should have been an ellipsis (...) because Senator McCain went on to say,

...But I am aware of the view that there is a need for government oversight. I think we found this in the subprime lending crisis -- that there are people that game the system and if not outright broke the law, they certainly engaged in unethical conduct which made this problem worse. So I do believe that there is role for oversight."

So either Obama's speechwriters didn't read the whole article or they purposefully chose to ignore the truth for the sake of a juicy soundbyte. But the inaccuracies in his statement don't end there.

McCain's record in relation to fiscal market regulation and corporate oversight McCain is a proven champion of the cause, sometimes to the frustration of his republican allies.

During the 2002 aftermath of Enron, McCain crossed party lines and joined with Carl Levin (D-Michigan) a longtime thorn in the republican party's side, to press for tighter regulation of stock-option accounting against the longstanding wishes of corporate lobbyists.

He pissed a lot of people on either side of the aisle off for that one, especially members of his own party. The folks at National Review called him an outright hypocrite for trying to intervene - they even pointed out that his reelection campaign had received $9,500 from Enron executives - contributions that, in the end, earned McCain's donors no clemency.

In addition to regulation of the private sector, McCain called for greater regulation of government 'businesses' Fannie-Mae and Freddie-Mac... in 2006! He addressed the Senate on May 25, 2006 in support of a bill authored by Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and cosponsored by McCain, Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), and John Sununu (R-NH), the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190. If you want to read the whole speech, check it out. I'll just give you the highlights...

...this week Fannie Mae's regulator reported that the company's quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were "illusions deliberately and systematically created" by the company's senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal... For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac... I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.

As if Obama's exposure on that point weren't damning enough, the Post came back at him the very next day to call him to task on the second part of his quote. Obama kept-up with saying that he'd been warning about the market colapse for months now and then took it a step further, stating,

In January, I outlined a plan to help revive our faltering economy, which formed the basis for a bipartisan stimulus package that passed the Congress.

Wow. That's impressive. Taking credit for the economic stimulus package... when he didn't even bother to vote on the final product... This one turned out to be more a gross exageration than an outright lie, but kudos to the Post for pointing it out.

So a hearty congratulations to the Washington Post for beginning to make ammends for your partisan wa... Wait. What? The Washington Post is criticizing John McCain for airing an ad that uses, as its source, the Washington Post? They're saying that he shouldn't have relied on the reporting of their own paper...

Well, you know what they say... two steps forward...