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Top Spin, awarded from time to time, goes to the politician who most brazenly distorts the truth on a political subject. To qualify for the Award, the distortion must benefit the politician and disadvantage the people he/she is sworn to serve.

June 2, 2012

This week’s Top Spin Award goes to Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate, Elizabeth Warren, who is campaigning to unseat Republican Senator Scott Brown in the fall. Warren suffers from an especially severe case of special interest-itis. For decades, she’s claimed to be a Native American or, as Harvard Law School puts it, a woman “of color”. Until this week, Candidate Warren tried to duck the issue, which merely fanned the flames of controversy.

The Harvard Law Professor turned candidate apparently made the ancestry claim to secure tenure at the country’s most prestigious law school in the early ‘90’s. Warren’s grant of tenure helped quell a faculty and student body uprising over the lack of faculty diversity. She also claimed Native American status years earlier while a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Finally, this week she admitted making the claims – hardly needed – and defended them by stating that her Cherokee heritage is a matter of “family lore”. Which might work if she weren’t a law professor. But, her legal scholarship makes the family lore justification as disingenuous as a belief in the Easter Bunny and Santa Clause is for other adults.

And the Cherokee Nation is not amused. Tribal members have attempted to question Warren on her ancestry. She refuses to talk to them. She’s now trying to block further inquiry by stating that “family” is off limits. Anything to avoid confessing to the lie she’s benefitted from most of her adult life.

In 2011 Brown also claimed to be the “first nursing mother” to take the Bar exam in the State of New Jersey. Of course, such a claim is impossible to prove. What Warren lacks in honesty she more than makes up for in chutzpah. If she wins in the fall, getting ahead by using false credentials should put her in good standing as a politician.

April 15, 2011

This week’s Top Spin Award goes to President Barak Obama and a host of Democrats for flip-flopping on raising the Country’s debt limit. Obama, House Democrat Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and a bunch of others voted against raising the limit in 2006. But, that was when George W. was in the White House. Today, they’re not only for increasing it, but handily criticize Republicans who oppose it as “profoundly irresponsible.”

In an attempt to appear other than the rank politician he is, Hoyer tries to glorify his 180 with claims of protecting the poor. According to Steny, he voted against raising the debt limit to protest the Bush tax cuts for the “rich”. Now, of course, he’s all about raising the debt limit, this time to spend more to save the poor. You can always find Hoyer hiding behind the poor to shield himself against scrutiny of his actions. He’s a lot like terrorists who use civilians as human shields to discourage military strikes against them.

As for Obama, he admits his earlier vote against increasing the debt limit was a mistake. His excuse is more of the “if I’d known then what I know now” variety. His mea culpa today labels Senator Obama as stupid, or lazy, or just another nay-saying obstructionist because the bottom line issues haven’t changed. It also has more than a tinge of, “things are always different when it’s my ox that’s getting gored”.

Our best hope in all this is that people will tire of the bald faced political motivations of our so-called leaders. Better choices can be made the next time.

January 10, 2011

This week’s Top Spin Award goes to Congressman Robert Brady, D-Pa, for trying to spin a tragedy into a significant reduction of Free Speech rights. Brady intends to propose a bill that would make some of Sarah Palin’s website ads illegal, under the pretext that they incite violence.

The Congressman is attempting to capitalize on the shooting in Arizona on Saturday. There, Jared Loughner, a certifiable whack job, killed 6 people and wounded 14 others at an informal meet-and-greet-your-congressman. His target was Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz, on whom Loughner had been fixated for the past three years. As of this writing, she lies in critical condition in a Tucson hospital after sustaining a point-blank shot to the head. Her chances of survival are iffy.

Loughner has no discernible political affiliation and the shootings were not politically motivated. According to his own written records and the statements of acquaintances, his resentment against the Congresswoman began in 2007 at an earlier meet-and-greet. Three years ago, Loughner asked Giffords a question about the effectiveness of words, which he believed she ignored.

Now Robert Brady seeks to curtail words, claiming the political right and its alleged violent dogma motivated Loughner to act. There is no truth to Brady’s assertions, of course. Apparently, the chance to fire his guns at the political opposition was just too tempting.

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