Monday, September 22, 2008

More Lies from Karen Keiser and the Democrats

In our last post we noted how the Senate Democrats have been propping up the campaign of recently convicted criminal Fred Walser. Indeed, now they've given him another $10,000 in cash, so that the Senate Democrats alone have contributed 39 percent of all of his total cash and in-kind contributions, almost $36,000 (with other Democratic Party committees, it goes up to almost $39,000, 42 percent).

And that's not even including the cost of their lying mailer about Senator Val Stevens, which despicably accused her of "condoning or excusing domestic violence" and "blaming the victim." We proved conclusively that Stevens said no such thing. Everyone can view the video and listen to the audio. There's simply no doubt that the Democrats are lying on behalf of Fred Walser (himself convicted of lying).

Now they're at it again. This time the lie is similar, saying Senator Stevens "compared domestic violence to PMS." It's the same basic lie, the only real difference being that this one makes even less sense, even given the misquote of Stevens. That they keep changing their misinterpretation of Stevens' words is a pretty telling indication that they don't even care about the truth.



On this piece they add in some additional lies, such as that she "supports banning all forms of birth control." Of course none of the other claims are backed up with any sources at all, because no sources exist to back up their lies. Then again, providing sourcing didn't stop them from lying about domestic abuse, either (and even then they couldn't get the date right, claiming their misquote was from a hearing on January 4, 2008, before the legislature was even in session).

It seems that Senator Karen Keiser and her Senate Democratic Campaign Committee have completely lost it. The majority of Democratic Senators can't want to see their money and their name going to waste by supporting a criminal like Fred Walser, let alone being used to spread terrible lies about a Republican colleague.

It's a generally accepted aphorism that "politics ain't beanbag." But one would hope an organization called "The Democratic Party" would, generally speaking, adhere to truth, because democracy only works when people have the facts. Obviously, Senator Karen Keiser and the SDCC couldn't care less about a well-informed electorate, if the truth won't help them win.

A side note: the cost of the mailings is unknown, because "Better Future for Washington," the PAC the Democrats created four weeks ago, reports no expenditures so far, which appears to be a PDC violation, as it is supposed to be reported within 24 hours of being mailed, and it was mailed last week.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Senate Democrats Tell Vile Lies (This Time, Instead of Fred Walser Himself)

That Fred Walser, Democratic candidate for the 39th District Senate seat, tells many lies has been well-documented. He even told a bald-faced lie about his opponent, Senator Val Stevens, in a direct mail piece.

A new mailer has gone out against Stevens, this time paid for by the Washington State Senate Democrats' soft money committee, the Roosevelt Fund, and this lie was even worse, accusing Stevens of "condoning or excusing domestic violence" and "blaming the victim."

The quote they provide doesn't even come close to backing up their claims: she said, "I don't want to confuse the domestic violence issue with women who, excuse me gentlemen, have PMS... I know there are points in time when women can get out of control." But she wasn't talking about people who have been abused. The Senate Democrats are lying.



You can listen to her comments in context (starting around 55:45; there's no transcript, just video and audio) for yourself.

A public health nurse testified that "domestic violence is a very hard thing to measure; we have no statistics that we collect statewide that gives us a true incidence of how often this is happening." So, the nurse noted, GroupHealth researchers took a random sample of women in their HMO population in the Greater Puget Sound region, and called them by telephone, and 44 percent of them said they had been the victim of domestic abuse.

Senator Stevens went on to question the methodology of the study, by noting that women might say on an unsolicited, random telephone call that they were the victim of domestic violence, even if they were not.

Stevens said that women, in a random telephone survey, can "have PMS" which results in them saying they were the victim of domestic abuse, even if it never actually happened. But the Senate Democrats claim she was saying that women can "have PMS" which results in them being abused.

The Senate Democrats are telling vile and despicable lies, and the proof of this is clear.

It might be surprising that the Senate Democrats would send out such a shameless lie, until we realize that they have given Walser -- a convicted criminal who is currently under a suspended one-year jail sentence -- over $25,000, about one-third of Walser's total received contributions.

And that's not even including this expensive mail piece, so it's clear that the Senate Democrats are propping up this campaign of a convicted criminal with a proven record, not just recently, but over many years, of covering up, inventing allegations against his political enemies, protecting his friends at great cost to taxpayers and to the integrity of our public institutions, and, of course, lying. A lot.

And this time the Senate Democrats are lying on his behalf. And why not? Whatever lies they tell pale in comparison to Walser's crimes; since they've already dumped tens of thousands of dollars into his campaign, what have they got to lose by lying?