Your lying eyes and ears or one of the more liberal newspapers in this country?

The San Francisco Chronicle tries to make the case that assertions about Barack Obama "palling around" with an unrepentant terrorist and that he's a socialist are "smears" that "still packed a powerful half-life" even after the campaign was over.

I'm not going to re-hash the Ayers stuff, seeing as how everyone who's reading this is likely familiar with it, chapter and verse, but it's interesting (if not surprising) how the Chron went about discussing the "socialist" charge:

After McCain conceded, Jonathan Stonham spoke of how gracious McCain's speech was. Then, as did many others who saw the speech at the Biltmore, he began to process his feelings after the long campaign. As any supporter of a losing candidate would be, he was frustrated, angry, sad and a bit apprehensive of the future.

"I can't believe this guy is going to be president. He's a socialist," said Stonham, a 31-year-old software engineer from Phoenix. "He wants to turn us into a Western European socialist state."

This smear was first voiced by the accidental hero of the GOP, Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, a.k.a. Joe the Plumber. Then Palin picked it up, replacing her previous Obama smear - that he liked to "pal around with" with terrorists like Ayers - a charge disproved by several independent fact-checking organizations. So Palin kept quoting Joe the Plumber calling Obama a socialist, as though the unlicensed plumber's name was Joe the Political Theorist.

Never mind the fact that the writer doesn't bother to cite any of those "independent fact-checking organizations," let's look at the "smear" Sarah Palin "picked..up," shall we?

Now, this guy, Joe (OMG, that's not really his real first name!) the Plumber asked The One, who stopped by Joe's neighborhood for a photo op, a question about His proposed tax policies.

As you'll see if you watch the clip, He talks a lot about those proposed tax policies, mentioning that if Joe (not his first name, mind you, like he's got something to hide) had been making less a few years back, Obama's tax policies would have helped him out then. Had they been in place, they would have helped "Joe" out. By spreading the wealth from someone who finds himself in Joe Samuel's place right about now to someone who wasn't quite in his current position. The position where he's saved enough money to buy the business he's worked hard for. From each according to...Sarah Palin smear!

At this point, does the Chronicle writer take a step back and consider whether or not this is a "smear"? Of course not.  The writer mentions the following...

A real socialist, as Gloria LaRiva, the Party for Socialism and Liberation presidential candidate, told The Chronicle, does not pal around with capitalists - like Warren Buffet, the man at the top of Obama's Transition Economic Advisory Board.

Sure. Because a socialist has never seen a capitalist as a Useful Idiot. Nope.

Posted by: Sean M. at 04:04 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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