Liar Liar Pants on Fire (well, probably not because the levees had broken)

During his disastrous speech on Tuesday night, Bobby Jindal told the story of Sherriff Harry Lee who, with Jindal's support, went up against the bureaucrats who were preventing rescue efforts from continuing during Hurricane Katrina. It had everything -- stalwart man of the law, give 'em hell attitude, and a congressman right there providing critical support. Well, perhaps not everything.

What has now come out is that it was lacking one rather important element: truth.

Daily Kos and TPMuckraker have done a solid job of debunking this story. It turns out that the conversation Jindal reported took place days after the rescue attempts that were the focus on Jindal's tale. Sherriff Harry Lee did ignore the bureaucrats to get heroic volunteer rescue efforts underway but Jindal? He simply overheard Lee talking about it days later but in the telling, it certainly sounds like Jindal is placing himself at the center of events to burnish his credentials.

Jindal staff are spinning furiously to protect their golden boy. According to Politico:

A spokeswoman for Bobby Jindal says the Louisiana governor didn't imply that an anecdote about battling bureaucrats during Katrina directly involved the governor or took place during the heat of a fight to release rescue boats.

The spokeswoman, Melissa Sellers, said the story Jindal told in his response to Obama actually took place some days later in Lee's office -- though still in Katrina's chaotic aftermath -- as Lee was "recounting" his frustrations with the bureaucracy to someone else on the telephone.

Huh? Really? Because if you look at Jindal's speech, it sure doesn't come across that way:

During Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine. When I walked into his makeshift office I'd never seen him so angry. He was yelling into the phone: 'Well, I'm the Sheriff and if you don't like it you can come and arrest me!' I asked him: 'Sheriff, what's got you so mad?' He told me that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters. The boats were all lined up ready to go -- when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn't go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. I told him, 'Sheriff, that's ridiculous.' And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: 'Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!' Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and start rescuing people.

Hmmm...that certainly sounds like then Congressman Jindal was right in the middle of it.

Of course, we're all used to politicians embellishing stories, recounting the heart-warming or heart-wrenching stories of people who are "composites" of real people or that are just flat out lies (anyone up for landing in Bosnia under sniper fire?). However, being used to it and tolerating it are two different things. There's the old adage: how can you tell a politician is lying? His lips are moving.

It's too bad to all too often it's proven true.

Enough!

OK, I'm officially getting twitchy about the election. The Palin/McCain "Holier than Thou" Tour is gaining momentum and time is running out.

Thankfully, some members of the press are starting to wake up to the fact that Palin's experience and bio is a tissue of exaggerations, fabrications, and outright lies. Forget about the "Bridge to Nowhere." Did you hear that the McCain/Palin Campaign had to admit that, well, no, she didn't actually go into Iraq on her life-changing trip. She visited a border checkpoint. But it's OK, because the checkpoint technically was the the Iraq side of the border. Same way her refueling stop turned into a "visit to Ireland". Ugh.

Don't even get me started on the crapola about international experience because you can see Russia from one of Alaska's outlying islands. As John Dickerson at Slate put it, "This is a travel tip, not an argument for foreign-policy expertise. Because a person can see the moon does not make them qualified to be an astronaut."

Hopefully - and I know I might be asking a lot here - American voters won't buy into this load of steaming Bantha poodoo (that's a message to all you Star Wars fanatics - it's time to take off your stormtrooper costumes and vote against the Dark Side in November! I'll be right there beside you.) But like I said, given the current poll numbers, it's sadly asking a lot.

While I'm feeling a bit better about the ads that the Obama campaign is starting to run that hit back harder, I am still nervous and it's because of one major thing:

Barack Obama is being too damn polite!

I'm not asking for him to lie. I'm not asking for him to smear. What I am asking is for him to stop sounding like a professor and sound like someone who is watching a vicious, nasty, blackhearted creature eat away at his character, his mission, and his chance to truly make a change.

I don't want to hear him compliment his rivals anymore. When have they complimented him in anyway that wasn't actually a subtle (or not-so-subtle) slap?

I don't want to hear him say to George Stephanopolous, when asked about responding to and rebutting the false claims made at the Republican National Convention, say that it's the media's job to review and report on this. Give them something to work with, man!

Last week, Obama and his wife were called "uppity" by Representative Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA). Where's the outrage? How does this yahoo get away with it after only an "aw shucks, I didn't know it was racist" reply that absolutely no one believes? How does this clearly racial slur not become a rallying point for outraged people around the country? If a Democrat had said something equivalent about the Palins...oh, perhaps that they're religious fanatics...the Right and FOX News would be screaming bloody murder. And what do we get from Obama, when Keith Olbermann gave the chance to respond to this clearly racist and vicious slur?

"I am confident that, the American people, once the dust is settled, will ask themselves, do we really want to do the same thing we've been doing for the last eight years, or do we want something new?"

What the hell does that mean?! Millions of Democrats are waiting to see him get righteous, not talk about "when the dust settles"!

In his acceptance speech in Denver, the line he hit the hardest was when he blasted the Republicans and their behavior with the simple, powerful statement of "Enough". But that simple declarative is apparently on hiatus and if it isn't resurrected soon and with sufficient force and power and outrage, the Professor and Senator Biden will be left watching a man who has junked his honor and sold his integrity along with his soul taking the oath of office as president alongside a vice president who terrifies me with her profound lack of competence for the job, her close-mindedness, her lack of curiosity about the world, and her rabid intolerance for beliefs other than her own.

It's not McCain who is the next 4 years of George W. Bush, it's Palin who has the potential to be even worse. And Barack Obama needs to let it be heard around this nation that such a result will not stand and that when it comes to lies, smears, and the politics of fear, that he and we have had ENOUGH.