Country second: McCain's dishonesty is the key issue

McCain has lied his way back into the presidential campaign and the issue of his dishonesty is building like a powderkeg:

Washington Post - Does the truth matter anymore?

This is not false naivete: I am genuinely surprised that John McCain and his campaign keep throwing out false charges and making false claims without any qualms. They keep talking about Sarah Palin’s opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere without any embarrassment over the fact that she once supported it. They keep saying that Barack Obama will raise taxes, suggesting he’d raise them on everybody, when Obama’s plan, according to the Tax Policy Institute, would cut taxes for “about 80 percent of households” while “only about 10 percent would owe more.” And as Sebastian Mallaby pointed out in his recent column, Obama would cut taxes for middle-income taxpayers “more aggressively” than McCain would.

And now comes a truly vile McCain ad accusing Obama of supporting legislation to offer "'comprehensive sex education' to kindergartners." The announcer declares: "Learning about sex before learning to read? Barack Obama. Wrong on education. Wrong for your family."

Post, page 1: As Campaign Heats Up, Untruths Can Become Facts Before They're Undone

From the moment Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin declared that she had opposed the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere," critics, the news media and nonpartisan fact checkers have called it a fabrication or, at best, a half-truth.

CBS (top story, evening bulletin):

Its one of those claims that gets so much applause.

"I told Congress 'thanks but no thanks,' to that bridge to nowhere," Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has said over and over on the campaign trail, CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports.

Palin just won't let it go. But the truth is the governor never rebuffed Congress. Here are the facts.Setting The Record: Palin's Earmarks

AP: "A new ad from John McCain's presidential campaign contends his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, "stopped the Bridge to Nowhere." In fact, Palin was for the infamous bridge before she was against it"

Chicago Tribune:

"Is Sen. John McCain against kindergartners being taught the difference between good touching and bad touching to protect children from sexual predators?

Or does the McCain campaign really have such a low opinion of Sen. Barack Obama that it actually believes he wanted to have Illinois kindergartners taught all the titillating details of human sexual anatomy.

There's another possibility, of course, that we are in the spitball phase of the campaign, where the McCain team is willing to send whatever it can Obama's way to see what sticks.

NY Times on the great pipeline:

“And when that deal was struck, we began a nearly $40 billion natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence,” said Ms. Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee. “That pipeline, when the last section is laid and its valves are opened, will lead America one step farther away from dependence on dangerous foreign powers that do not have our interests at heart.”

The reality, however, is far more ambiguous than the impression Ms. Palin has left at the convention and on the campaign trail.

Certainly she proved effective in attracting developers to a project that has eluded Alaska governors for three decades. But an examination of the pipeline project also found that Ms. Palin has overstated both the progress that has been made and the certainty of success.

The pipeline exists only on paper. The first section has yet to be laid, federal approvals are years away and the pipeline will not be completed for at least a decade. In fact, although it is the centerpiece of Ms. Palin’s relatively brief record as governor, the pipeline might never be built, and under a worst-case scenario, the state could lose up to $500 million it committed to defray regulatory and other costs.

And so it goes on. Layer after layer of dishonesty.

And Lipstick on a pig? Here's McCain in December last year:

Mr. McCain also criticized the Democratic plans, but his comments were more in passing and were far less barbed.

But when asked about Mrs. Clinton his speech, he said her proposal was “eerily” similar to the plan she came up with in 1993, when she headed a health care reorganization effort during her husband’s administration. “I think they put some lipstick on a pig,” he said, “but it’s still a pig.”

McCain is no hero. He's a liar and a smearer who will stop at nothing.