Palin's propensity for lying continues

The "Christian" governor of Alaska, placed in that office with the help of prayers by an African pentecostal witch doctor, just cannot stop lying about her political opponent, Barack Obama.

In State College, Pennsylvania, she dropped the "palling around with terrorists" bit to take up a new lie. She told her adoring crowd that in 2001 Obama said that the Supreme Court's "failure to take up the redistribution of wealth" was "a great tragedy."

That is not true!


Here's the real story:

Between 1998 and 2002, Obama made three appearances on a talk show called Odyssey, produced by Chicago Public Radio. According to Kris Broughton at Open Salon, the producer of the show, Josh Andrews, said that "Obama participated in discussions on the evolution of the right to vote, the politics of electoral redistricting, and the uneasy relationship between slavery and the constitution in early America."

Palin's reference derives from excerpts of a discussion on January 18, 2001. Here's what Obama actually said:

"You know, if you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples, so that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order - as long as I could pay for it I'd be okay.

"But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical.

"It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers and the Constitution, at least as it has been interpreted, and the Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can't do to you, says what the federal government can't do to you, but it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.

"And that hasn't shifted, and one of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court focused. I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change, and in some ways we still suffer from that."

There is much more to this interview which you can read here.


What is immediately obvious and significant is that, in fact, Obama does NOT say that the Supreme Court's failure to consider the redistribution of wealth is a tragedy. In other words, to repeat myself, PALIN IS LYING!

Now, it's possible she read that interview and couldn't understand it. She's not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. The interview in question shows Obama to be a careful and nuanced thinker who has actually thought through some of the important questions of our time. It has become quite obvious that Palin doesn't even know what those questions are!

But I think she's just reading stuff the McCain nasties have written for her. She's the attack dog, remember. McCain uses her so he doesn't have to get his hands quite so dirty.