Kerry Tales, Part XLIV--Fact-checkers Needed, Stat!

When talking health care, Senator Kerry frequently mentions the experiences of Mary Ann Knowles to illustrate the supposed flaws of the current system. Ms. Knowles has not had it easy, as Kerry explained in early July.

On the campaign trail, I met John and Mary Ann Knowles. John lost his job a year and a half ago, and Mary Ann has breast cancer. And even while she underwent chemotherapy, she still had to go to work every day -- just to hang onto their health insurance.

Knowles was freatured in Kerry's Spanish-language press release back in November 2003, joined Kerry onstage at campaign events, and she and her husband John appeared in a Kerry campaign commercial. Most recently, Ms. Knowles was a (Kerry) delegate to the Democratic convention and Kerry's acceptance speech cited Ms. Knowles as one for whom "Help is on the way":

What does it mean when Mary Ann Knowles, a woman with breast cancer I met in New Hampshire, had to keep working day after day right through her chemotherapy, no matter how sick she felt, because she was terrified of losing her family's health insurance.

It's an effective performance, and Ms. Knowles deserves both our sympathy and support.

Just one problem: John and Mary Ann Knowles aren't victims of America's ineffective healthcare system. Who says so? John and Mary Ann Knowles, according to Sunday's Manchester Union Leader:

[W]hile the Knowles couple, by any measure, has had a rough go of it lately, John Knowles told the New Hampshire Sunday News a different story last week. He said Mary Ann could have taken disability leave without losing health insurance, although her pay would have been cut somewhat. She did not take time off, he said, but that was to conserve her sick days, not to protect her insurance. They both say she has good health coverage. . .

The couple, however, readily praises Mary Ann's employer-provided insurance package. . . 'Her coverage is very good,' John Knowles confirmed on Friday, adding, 'It's not something that is a problem with her employer.'

So, Senator, what's that again about healthcare?

Diplomat George Ball once said "Nostalgia is a seductive liar." Ball, an Undersecretary of State between 1962 and 1966 and persistent critic of American escalation in Vietnam, was arguing against assuming prior policies necessarily work twice--in international relations, there are no "do-overs." The 16th Century French essayist Montaigne advised that "he who has not a good memory should never take upon him the trade of lying." John Kerry's the worst of both: his judgment depends on an imagined past. And as the falsehoods multiply, America's risk intensifies. A commenter on Washington Dispatch observed: "Being a serial liar is a serious crime, if you want to be CIC of the US military."

Kerry's fables are too frequent to forgive. Kerry's not just a liar, he's a lunatic.

More

Donald Sensing's on the trail!

Still More:

The Union-Leader ran a follow-up on August 15:

The newspaper asked Kerry campaign adviser Judy Reardon if she had confirmed the details of the Knowles’ story, and she replied, “When a woman has a mastectomy and goes through therapy, I don’t need to double-check on her.” What a blow-off.

And what deja vu. Hadn’t we been here before? The Democratic Presidential candidate calling the nation’s attention to a particular American with health problems, twisting the facts, making up a few new ones, using this myth to propel his own policy proposals, and then blowing off the lie once it’s discovered?

It’s deja vu because John Kerry is slowly becoming the reincarnation of Al Gore.

In 2000, Al Gore pulled this very same stunt in Florida. With his well-established willful disregard for truth, Gore claimed that his mother-in-law was paying more for Lodine, a prescription arthritis drug, than he was for his dog’s Lodine prescription. That fact, he claimed, justified his $253 billion drug plan.

But as The Boston Globe and Washington Times discovered, Gore fabricated the cost of the drug, had no idea whether his mother-in-law paid for it out of pocket or whether her insurance covered it, and made up the dosages so the comparative costs looked ridiculous.

When confronted with Gore’s fictitious account, Gore spokesman Jano Cabrera responded, “The only one who’s inventing facts here are the Bush campaign. The facts are that Miss Aitcheson is prescribed Lodine.”

Confirming that Democrats still don't know what the meaning of "is" is.