Posted by Michael Tomasky Tuesday September 9 2008 19:28 BST

This is via a great post by Adam Serwer at Tapped. Here's something McCain said yesterday:

"...[D]uring the primary [Obama] told a liberal advocacy group that he'd cut defense spending by tens of billions of dollars. He promised them he would, quote, 'slow our development of future combat systems.'"

Ooh, sounds awful. What kind of terrorist-loving commie Muslim would slow "future combat systems?"

It turns out that future combat systems are really, Guardian rules on capital letters aside, Future Combat System -- that is, a specific thing, a specific procurement program.

Now, guess who else said he was against funding FCS? Yep. Here's the relevant graf from the Wash Post from just a month ago, when McCain budget advisor Doug Holtz-Eakin provided detailed answers to the paper on McCain's budget plan:

-- Balance the budget requires slowing outlay growth to 2.4 percent. The roughly $470 billion dollars (by 2013) in slower spending growth come from reduced deployments abroad ($150 billion; consistent with success in Iraq/Afghanistan that permits deployments to be cut by half -- hopefully more), slower discretionary spending in non-defense and Pentagon procurements ($160 billion; there are lots of procurements -- airborne laser, Globemaster, Future Combat System -- that should be ended and the entire Pentagon budget should be scrubbed) and reductions in mandatory spending ($160 billion) from a mix of excessive agricultural and ethanol subsidies, slower health care cost growth, Medicaid savings from the expansion of private insurance, and other reforms.

End the FCS. He said it. And now, not only is he ignoring that he said it (he and his campaign are the same thing), but he's making FCS sound like the generic entire defense structure of the United States of America!

What kind of "honorable man" is this? Give me a break. Think about this. It's just a deliberate and cunning lie. Add the plural "s" so it sounds like Obama wants to weaken America's defenses, and carry on with the laughter and forgetting.

Can people really just lie so blatantly and never be called on it? I guess we're finding out. You'd think the press would at some point get a little peeved about all this.