Now That's Cheesy!

So if a political candidate is at a photo-op event in public (say a cheese steak shop in Philly) and one of the guys in line to get his cheese steak asks Palin "What about the Pakistan situation? What's going' on over there. And Waziristan?" and Palin can only spit out "We're all together to, uh, stop the bad guys from coming in. And Waziristan, yeah, things are, uh the economy is blowin' up over there" this is, according to both McCain and Palin, "Gotcha Journalism."

Really?

So now the general public (which has no prior knowledge that Palin would be there) are "gotcha journalists" trying to trip her up.

Palin knows less about world affairs than some random schmuck ordering a cheese steak and we are expected to believe she is a viable candidate?
President Palin. America is lost. God save us.

The Bailout Must Go Forward-- Sans Section 8

For some reason I did not have my usual knee-jerk, negative reaction (that I have when anyone from the Bush Administration opens their mouth) when I heard about the $700 Billion bailout. I didn’t really know what to think about it one way or the other; is it a good idea or a bad one? It would be nice to believe that I was reserving judgment because I wanted more facts about the plan, but I think the truth is that I just didn’t grasp the scope and necessity of the bailout. Fortunately I caught Steven Pearlstein on Hardball.

Steven Pearlstein writes about business and the economy for The Washington Post. His journalism career includes editing roles at The Post and Inc. magazine. He was founding publisher and editor of The Boston Observer, a monthly journal of liberal opinion. He got his start in journalism reporting for two New Hampshire newspapers -- the Concord Monitor and the Foster's Daily Democrat. Pearlstein has also worked as a television news reporter and a congressional staffer. Pearlstein was honored with the Pulitzer Prize for commentary for his columns about mounting problems in the financial markets.

Pearlstein made a very, very convincing argument as to why this bailout MUST happen, and happen within the next week or so. The gist of Pearlstein’s argument is that this bailout isn’t so much a bailout of the greedy Wall Street idiots as it is a bailout of our entire American economy. Yes the $700 Billion is going to go to buy “bad” debt from Wall Street, but in reality taking the bad debt off the books allows Wall Street and the other banks to get their balance sheets in a much healthier position that will enable them to stave off failures (which would destroy the economy) AND more importantly start the flow of capital again so that we don’t disrupt business and economic health in our country and around the world.

Getting money flowing again into businesses and other investments is the only way that America can survive this economic crisis. The only way to get the money moving is to stabilize Wall Street and the Banking Industry. If we don’t we will see businesses collapse, job losses, capital will dry up, and we all will be in a really, really bad place.

The $700 billion bailout also gives the taxpayers (through the Govt) ownership and shares in most of these companies, so there is a good chance the $700 Billion will not just go down the drain. The bad debt that we are going to buy could even go up in value. Think of it as buying into a very risky deal that may or may not go up in value.

Pearlstein figures the most likely scenario is that we will either lose or gain about $200 Billion on our $700 Billion bailout. So, on the downside we could lose about $200 Billion of that $700 Billion, but the downside of NOT doing the bailout is not a recession but an absolute depression. It may suck, but not doing it will be even worse.

I am appalled by Section 8 of the Paulson proposal which gives the Secretary of the Treasury (Paulson) complete personal discretion as to how the $700 Billion is used and that his decisions cannot be reviewed or challenged in any court or by any administrative agency. That means not even the slightest bit of oversight. None at all. That’s absolutely ridiculous and it must be removed in the final version of the bailout.

Yes, once again the Bush Administration has gotten us into a situation where it’s going to cost us a fortune and nobody really wants to do it, but it’s too late now to do nothing at all.

McCain's Keating Five Comes Back to Bite Him in the Ass: "You're a Liar"

The $700 Billion Wall Street bailout debacle should remind you (and McCain) of something. McCain's proposed "fix" is basically a rehash of the Resolution Trust Corporation that came about because of the S&L disaster in which McCain was a central figure. The RTC was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush and poured $400 billion into hundreds of faltering savings and loan institutions in the late 1980's and early 1990's. About $3 billion was used to bailout Charles Keating's Lincoln Financial. McCain was investigated by the Senate when he interceded with federal regulators on Keating's behalf.

McCain met Keating in 1982 when McCain ran for Congress. McCain began accepting offers from Keating to fly McCain's family on Keating's corporate plane to Keating's house in the Bahamas at Cat Caye. McCain did not pay for most of the trips until years later, when the matter became public.

Keating, meanwhile, complained regularly to McCain that a proposed regulation would hurt his business. Known as the "direct investment" rule, it limited the amount that S&L's could invest from their assets. In 1985, after having "heard frequently from Charlie on the matter," McCain decided that Keating's complaints "were sound enough to warrant our assistance." So McCain cosponsored a resolution sought by Keating, but it was too late to postpone the regulation.

By then, Keating was one of McCain's most important benefactors; McCain received $112,000 in campaign donations from Keating and his Lincoln associates, mostly between 1982 and 1986.

On Oct. 8, 1989, The Arizona Republic revealed that McCain's wife and her father had invested $359,100 in a Keating shopping center in April 1986, a year before McCain met with the regulators.

When the story broke, McCain did nothing to help himself.

"You're a liar," McCain said when a Republic reporter asked him about the business relationship between his wife and Keating.

"That's the spouse's involvement, you idiot," McCain said later in the same conversation. "You do understand English, don't you?"

He also belittled reporters when they asked about his wife's ties to Keating.

"It's up to you to find that out, kids."

Why is it that all these financial crises (Great Depression, S&L Scandal, Black Monday 1987, Credit Crunch 2008) happen when the Republican Party is in charge?

And let's not forget about McCain's son, Andrew. I wrote about Andrew McCain back in July.
Andrew K. McCain, son of John McCain, has resigned two high posts in the banking industry.

Andrew McCain stepped down from the boards of Silver State Bancorp and Silver State Bank of southern Nevada for "personal reasons". Uh-huh, like he doesn't want to be dragged down with a failing bank that the American Taxpayers will have to bail out.
Families lost $20 million in the Silver State failure (becuase they had over the FDIC insured $100,000).

Liar Liar Pants on Fire

This just makes me SICK. It is one thing to make attack ads that twist the truth and take comments out of context, but it is an entirely despicable and new trash tactic to now make attack ads based solely on what you think the other party will eventually have to do in the future, regardless of what that party has said it would do. Keep with me here.

In light of the attacks ads that McCain has been running with flat out falsehoods and lies there have been many, many news organizations (AP, McClatchy, CNN, Wash Post) that have contacted the McCain campaign to ask why certain ads have absolutely no truth to them. The McCain campaign response to these inquiries--the McCain campaign argues in its documentation for these attack ads that, whatever Obama says he would do, he will eventually be forced to break his promises and, for example raise taxes more broadly to pay for his promised spending programs or that.

Read that again. McCain says that regardless of what Obama says he will do, “WE THINK he will not do that and that he will do XYZ instead and that XYZ is what we say it is. That is ludicrous, that is pure opinion on McCain’s part, there is no fact in what McCain thinks Obama will do, but McCain’s attack ads don't say that. Instead, the ads simply put forward the McCain camp's OPINION as a FACT, and the ads fail to alert viewers that the claims are based on what the McCain campaign THINKS MIGHT happen in the future. Passing off your own opinion of what you think someone might do is not a fact, and to present your opinion in an ad and claim it to be someone’s actions is beyond despicable. Even Karl Rove has stated that McCain’s ads are untruthful.

This “my opinion of what someone will do regardless of what the truth is” has worked so well for the McCain campaign that the campaign has gotten other allies to use the same anti-logic in their attack ads on Obama.

The NRA is circulating printed material and running TV ads making utterly false claims that Obama plans to ban firearms for home defense, ban possession and manufacture of handguns, close 90 percent of gun shops and ban hunting ammunition. That is complete BS.

Much of what the NRA passes off as Obama's "10 Point Plan to 'Change' the Second Amendment" is actually contrary to what he has said throughout his campaign: that he "respects the constitutional rights of Americans to bear arms" and "will protect the rights of hunters and other law-abiding Americans to purchase, own, transport, and use guns."

The NRA, however, simply dismisses Obama's stated position as "rhetoric" and substitutes its own interpretation of his record as a secret "plan." Said an NRA spokesman: "We believe our facts."

Read that again. "We believe our facts." What facts? How is the NRA interpretation of what Obama said, especially when that interpretation is completely opposite “facts”! This is totally absurd.

LATEST INSANITY UPDATE:
A new McCain-Palin ad says that "McCain and his congressional allies led" on the financial crisis while Obama was "mum." That's simply not true:
1.Obama has in fact made several statements about the crisis on Wall Street in recent days, delivering his most specific remarks on Sept. 22 on how government regulations should be changed, a full day before McCain’s lying ad was released.
2.McCain gave his most detailed speech on a response to the crisis on Sept. 19, a few days before Obama did. Obama, however, had been pushing for what he called a “21st century regulatory system” back in March.
3.The "mum" quote is from a Sept. 20 Washington Times story, which went on to say Obama did "not to divulge details of his recovery plan ... fearing it would stir Wall Street jitters." The ad falsely says that Obama stayed quiet because "no one knows what to do."
4.The ad ends by saying: "More taxes. No leadership. A risk your family can’t afford." Actually, most "families" would pay less taxes under Obama's tax plan. An independent analysis shows 95.5 percent of households with children would get a tax cut under his tax proposals.

$13 Billion in Iraq Aid Wasted Or Stolen, Ex-Investigator Says

HOORAY, MORE MONEY DOWN THE DRAIN

REPRINTED FROM THE WASHINGTON POST

$13 Billion in Iraq Aid Wasted Or Stolen, Ex-Investigator Says
By Dana Hedgpeth Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, September 23, 2008
A former Iraqi official estimated yesterday that more than $13 billion meant for reconstruction projects in Iraq was wasted or stolen through elaborate fraud schemes.

Salam Adhoob, a former chief investigator for Iraq's Commission on Public Integrity, told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, an arm of the Democratic caucus, that an Iraqi auditing bureau "could not properly account for" the money.

While many of the projects audited "were not needed -- and many were never built," he said, "this very real fact remains: Billions of American dollars that paid for these projects are now gone."

He said a report that went to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other top Iraqi officials was never published because "nobody cares" about investigating such cases. Many investigators, he said, feared for their safety because 32 of his co-workers have been murdered.

Adhoob said he reported the abuses to the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an agency charged by Congress with helping to root out cases of waste, fraud and abuse in the nearly $50 billion U.S. reconstruction effort. SIGIR spokeswoman Kristine Belisle said her agency continues to "actively follow up" on Adhoob's information, but she would not discuss ongoing investigations.

Adhoob was one of three Iraqi men who testified before the Democratic panel yesterday. Abbas S. Mehdi, a former Iraqi official who held a cabinet-level post, told of widespread corruption. And an Iraqi American who for five years has been a senior adviser to Defense and State department officials in Iraq testified in silhouette by video from an undisclosed location because, he said, he feared for his safety. In a modified voice, he said Iraqi government officials worked with al-Qaeda terrorists at the Baiji refinery to steal oil to sell on the black market.

Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), who chairs the committee, said that "taxpayers have been bled dry with massive misuse of public dollars."

"It is all pretty sobering," he added later. "Our country cannot continue to be blind or oblivious to what is happening."

Adhoob, who worked for three years at the Iraqi agency and oversaw 200 investigators and other employees, said he had a "firsthand, up-close look at corruption" and eventually had to flee the country because of death threats. He said his agency -- the Commission on Public Integrity, which U.S. government officials say is the equivalent of the FBI -- estimates that an additional $9 billion in U.S. funds was lost because of corruption and waste. Because the $13 billion figure came from the Iraqi auditing bureau and the $9 billion figure came from Adhoob's agency, Dorgan's staff members said there could be some overlap.

Adhoob's agency has been accused of pursuing investigations against political rivals.

In one scheme described by Adhoob, Iraqi Defense Ministry officials helped set up two front companies that were to buy airplanes, armored vehicles, guns and other equipment with $1.7 billion in U.S. funds. The companies were paid, but in some cases they delivered only "a small percentage" of the equipment that had been ordered and, in one case, delivered bulletproof vests that were defective and could not be used.

The companies also overcharged for military helicopters and tried to deliver aircraft that were more than 25 years old, he said. Instead of demanding the money back, Adhoob said, the Defense Ministry renegotiated with the companies for "a series of mobile toilets and kitchens -- which have never been delivered."

Adhoob said some of the investigations conducted by his agency and others uncovered "ghost projects" that never existed or instances in which Iraqi and U.S. contractors did poor-quality work. In one case, $24.4 million was spent on an electricity project in Nineveh province but an oversight agency found that it "existed only on paper."

Investigations by Iraqi oversight agencies also found that some of the money sent to the Defense Ministry was diverted to al-Qaeda in Iraq, Adhoob said, and deposited into banks in Jordan and elsewhere.

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

BONUS NEWS:
Fury at $2.5bn bonus for Lehman's New York staff

Up to 10,000 staff at the New York office of the bankrupt investment bank Lehman Brothers will share a bonus pool set aside for them that is worth $2.5bn (£1.4bn), Barclays Bank, which is buying the business, confirmed last night.

The revelation sparked fury among the workers' former colleagues, Lehman's 5,000 staff based in London, who currently have no idea how long they will go on receiving even their basic salaries, let alone any bonus payments. It also prompted a renewed backlash over the compensation culture in global finance, with critics claiming that many bankers receive pay and rewards that bore no relation to the job they had done.

McCain gets Alzheimer’s, I mean Confused. Again.

In light of the recent financial market crisis and $800 Billion of taxpayer money that the Bush Administration has transferred to Big Corporations to bail them out of making stupid, greedy decisions in an unregulated economy (breath) John McCain said that if he were president he would fire SEC Chairman Chris Cox for his “betrayal of trust.” There’s only one problem. The president cannot fire the chair of an independent regulatory commission. Having been part of the Washington Establishment for the last 25 years one would think that McCain would know this.

But one would also expect McCain to know the difference between Sunnis, Shi’ites, and al Qaeda. He doesn’t:

McCain Confuses Shiites And Sunnis on Tue Mar 18 2008.

McCain Confuses Iran/al Qaeda Link In Speech Marking 5th Anniversary of Iraqi Invasion on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008

McCain blunders on Iraq again: Confuses Iraqi cleric with Prime Minister on ceasefire deal -Sunday April 6, 2008

McCain Confuses al Qaeda in Iraq with Shi’ites. AGAIN on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008.

Voters would also think that McCain would know who Gen. David Petraeus was and what his role was. Not so. Speaking Monday at the April 2008 annual meeting of the Associated Press, McCain was asked if elected would he shift combat troops from Iraq to Afghanistan to intensify the search for Osama bin Laden.

“I would not do that unless Gen. Petraeus said that he felt that the situation called for that,” McCain said, referring to the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

Petraeus, however, made clear in testimony before four congressional committees, including the Senate Armed Services Committee on which McCain is the ranking Republican, that he has nothing to do with the decision. Petraeus said the decision about whether troops could be shifted from Iraq to Afghanistan was not his responsibility because his portfolio is limited to the multi-national force in Iraq.

Well maybe McCain knows the difference between Sudan and Somalia? Nope.
John McCain misspoke and confused his African countries while talking to reporters June 30, 2008 on the Straight Talk Express today. This time, he was bailed out not by Joe Lieberman, but by his close aide Mark Salter. “How can we bring pressure on the government of Somalia?” McCain asked, which prompted Mark Salter to correct him. “Sudan,” Salter said. “Sudan,” McCain repeated.

Lose Your Home, Lose Your Vote

If you are one of the 5 million Americans in a home that is in foreclosure is it fair that you lose not only your home but also you Right to Vote? Well if you fall for lies and dirty tactics you will lose both.

You have been kicked around enough already. Know your Voting Rights and don’t let dirty and illegal tricks at polling places this November keep you from electing the people who can help you recover and punish those who have caused your suffering.

According to Former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Donald L. Fowler, a member of the NoVoterLeftBehind.net board of advisors, "You don't lose your right to vote when you lose your home. I have been studying and fighting Republican voter suppression tactics for 30 years now and, no matter what the GOP is saying today to the news media, the truth is that they won't be able to resist using a combination of fake stories, targeted mailings, physical intimidation and other sleazy tactics to discourage the maximum number of home foreclosure victims from voting."

4 VOTING RIGHTS TIPS FOR HOME FORECLOSURE VICTIMS
NoVoterLeftBehind.net is emphasizing four things every American going through foreclosure needs to know about their vote:

1) Voting is an inalienable right that you can't lose due to an inability to meet mortgage payments. If any Republican tries to tell you differently, don't listen to him or her!

2) If you are in the foreclosure process -- but still living in your home -- you still vote where you live. The foreclosure process itself does not bear on your right to vote or where you exercise that right.

3) If you are forced to move due to foreclosure before the voting registration deadline, you should re-register at your new home location. Go to http://novoterleftbehind.net/knowrules.cfm to find your states rules on voter registration.

4) If you move due to foreclosure after the voting registration deadline -- but before the election -- go to vote where you were last registered to vote. Keep in mind the following: You have the right to vote by signing an affirmation (or similar form) if your right to vote is challenged for any reason; and if your name isn't on the registered voter list, you have the right to vote by provisional ballot.

Disenfranchising millions and millions and millions of legal voters is as unAmerican as cheating someone out of the American Dream of owning their own home.

DO NOT FALL FOR IT. IT IS YOUR RIGHT TO VOTE.

Getting to Know the Real Sarah Palin

So Sarah Palin is a Washington Lobbyist-hating, earmark-declining, lipstick-wearing hockey mom?

Are we sure?

As someone famously said “You are entitled to your own Opinions but you are not entitled to your own Facts”. And the facts are that from 1996 to 2002 as Mayor of Wasilla (population about 6,000 and, according to the 2000 Census, 84.56% white) Palin aggressively sought earmarks for Wasilla, going so far as to hire big-time Washington LOBBYISTS to squeeze as much taxpayer money out of Washington as possible. Palin and her hired Lobbyists were so good that they managed to get $600,000 for a bus facility, $1.75 Million for dispatch center equipment, $2.4 Million for water and sewer facilities, and much, much more.

According to Taxpayer’s for Common Sense, in Palin’s last 4 years as Mayor she netted the 6,000 residents of Wasilla a whopping $27 million in earmarks! That $27 million in earmarks includes the money for the Bridge to Nowhere which Palin backed when she was running for governor in 2006, before Palin was against it in 2007 after wasteful spending watchdog groups attacked it! But here’s the kicker--Palin KEPT the money for the Bridge to Nowhere.

This year Alaska had more requests for earmarks per person than any other state. The fact is that Palin asked for $256 Million in earmarks her first year in office and for $195 Million her second year.

Because Palin has such an anemic public service record and she refuses to be interviewed and answer in-depth question, in order to know what she truly stands for we can rely only on her actual past actions rather than her future promises and hype.

Oh, and while Palin was Mayor of Wasilla she forced the rape victims to pay for their own rape kits, which cost as much as $1,000 each. For years, Alaska has had the worst record of any state in rape and in murder of women by men. The rape rate in Alaska is 2.5 times the national average. That's compassionate covservatism!

Osama Bin Laden? No Big Deal

In a Whte House press conference today a reporter asked White House Press Secretary Dana Perino about the Bush administration’s efforts to find Osama bin Laden. Perino interrupted the reporter, claiming bin Laden was not the true “mastermind” of the attacks:

Q But Osama bin Laden is the one that — you keep talking about his lieutenants, and, yes, they are very important, but Osama bin Laden was the mastermind of 9/11 –

PERINO: No, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the mastermind of 9/11, and he’s sitting in jail right now.

Perino is saying that the White House’s failure to catch bin Laden is no big deal because he was not the “mastermind.”

Nice one, George.

Playing Hard to “Get”

Nobody is knocking small-town America or small-town people. There is absolutely nothing wrong with small-town people. What people are concerned about is a Vice Presidential candidate who has only small-town experience, qualification, education, and worldview. People are simply asking that the candidate wanting to be Vice President of the most powerful country in the world have more than the qualifications of just a small-town person, no matter how likable that person may be. The majority of Americans realize that when it comes to world affairs America really does need someone who has a worldview and experience greater than what most mayors hold. Palin doesn’t even know what the VP does. On CNBC she (in)famously asked “What is it exactly that the VP does every day?”

Getting to Know the Real Sarah Palin is not easy. Strangely, the GOP is hiding Palin from the media. Don’t we, the voters, have a right to know what Plain’s positions on everything are? When running for the highest office in the most powerful country in the world you no longer get to keep to yourself. You are required to answer tough questions and tell everyone who you are and what you believe.

Teaching Kids to Fornicate

Planned Parenthood is teaching kids to fornicate, teaching people to have adultery, every kind of bestiality, homosexuality, lesbianism -- everything that the Bible condemns.

- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club television program, April 9, 1991

Really? So I guess that Bristol Palin was a frequent visitor at the Juno Planned Parenthood office?

Radio Caller: Would you tend to think that a family in this position, though, wouldn't you think that there would be a more watchful eye as
a parent to be watching over these kids so this doesn't happen to
them?

RUSH LIMBAUGH: I would certainly hope so, but it's long past time for this to
happen. The parents here are the culprits!

Bill O'Reilly "Now most teens are pinheads in some ways. But here the blame falls primarily on the parents of the girl, who obviously have little control over her..."

Harsh criticism of Bristol Palin and her parents? Hell no. These are comments about Jamie Lynne Spears when she got knocked up.

So what exactly did Loudmouth Limbaugh and Bloviating Bill have to say about the similarly knocked up Bristol Palin?

Bill

Millions of families are dealing with teen pregnancy, and as long as society doesn't have to support the mother, father or baby, it is a personal matter. It's true that some Americans will judge Governor Palin and her family, and she will have a hard time running for vice president if there is much more chaos. For the sake of her and her family, we hope things calm down. This country needs a vibrant policy debate, not a soap opera.

What's at Stake for Our Country

A vote for McCain equals more of Bush, Cheney, and Republican failed government.

A vote for McCain equals more War.

A vote for McCain equals more dead American soldiers.

A vote for McCain equals Billions more spent on War instead of domestic issues.

A vote for McCain equals No universal health care.

A vote for McCain equals a continued collapsing economy.

A vote for McCain equals no help for the housing market.

A vote for McCain equals a further erosion of woman’s rights.

A vote for McCain equals ideologue judges being placed on the Supreme Court for life.

A vote for McCain equals ideologue judges being placed throughout the country.

More Grist for the Mill

In Levi Johnston's MySpace entry, the teenager hints that fatherhood was not in his immediate plans.

Johnston says he is ``in a relationship,'' but on the question about how he feels about children he said: ``I don't want kids.'' He also says his true love is ice hockey.

Here's part of his entry before it was made private: 'I'm a fuckin' redneck who likes to snowboard and ride dirt bikes. But I live to play hockey. I like to go camping and hang out with the boys, do some fishing, shoot some shit and just fuckin' chillin' I guess. Ya fuck with me I'll kick ass.''

Now is that any way for a father/VP son-in-law-to-be to talk? I think not. Where are this kid's manners (and his condoms)?

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24286746-2703,00.html

Hit Me One More Time

NewsMax has a new hit piece out on Obama about a misstatement he made on the George Stephanopoluos' Sunday talk show. On the show Obama said:

"Let's not play games," he said. "What I was suggesting -- you're absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith. And you're absolutely right that that has not come." "My Christian faith," Mr. Obama said quickly.

Then, Sunday night NewsMax sent out a story that said:

He (Obama) then claimed McCain's campaign is working behind the scenes, saying the Islamic talk is "being promulgated on Fox News ... and Republican commentators who are closely allied to these folks."

"What I think is fair to say is that coming out of the Republican camp there have been efforts to suggest that perhaps I'm not who I say I am when it comes to my faith," Obama said, which he described as "my Muslim faith" in apparent verbal gaffe.

Why did the NewsMax article titled Obama's Muslim Past Dogs Campaign not use the actual Obama quote when he acccidentally said "my Muslim faith"? It seems deceitful for the article to be a about that misstatement but then not run the context and the actual quote.

NewsMax is owned by Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp, which is of course FOX News.

Shame on McCain

Now that McCain has secured Sarah Palin as his running mate and both are running as ethics champions and reformers, will they start fixing things by denouncing and correcting all the vicious lies and character assassinations that have been spread about Obama? If McCain and Palin truly are ethical people, as they claim, then McCain and Palin should demand that the truth be told, and they themselves should be the ones to do it.

For instance, they both know that Obama is not a Muslim. They should tell the unfortunate people who have heard and also believe this smear that it is not true at all.

Slightly related to this lie, which may be why some people are so confused is the absolute lie that Obama took his oath of office for the U.S. Senate using the Quran instead of the Bible. The fact is that Obama was sworn in using his family Bible. It was Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim sworn into Congress, who used a Quran—the one that once belonged to Thomas Jefferson!

And to continue the theme of lies, if you heard that Barack Obama attended a madrassa as a child growing up in Indonesia you have been lied to. During the time he spent in Indonesia Obama attended a public school that did not focus on religion. On January 22, 2008 CNN went to the school and aired a lengthy report debunking the story.

Shame on McCain, one of McCain’s own ads repeats the false claim that Obama is “the most liberal member of the Senate.” In fact, that ranking comes only from the ultra-Right Wing magazine the National Journal which looked at only some of the Senate votes, not ALL of the Senate votes. A more accurate independent study by political science professors Keith Poole and Jeff Lewis that used every non-unanimous vote cast in the Senate in 2007 to determine relative ideology -- in other words, not a subjective assessment of which votes are "key" -- placed Obama in a tie for the ranking of 10th most liberal senator.

Please, if you are on the fence about who to vote for or you have decided your vote based on these lies, for the sake of Democracy and this country do not take my word as the truth (although it is). Go and do the research yourselves. Electing the president is too important a task to do on faulty information based on lies and political smears. There about 20 more lies (yes, really) but I don’t have room to put them all here.

Five Things We Learned about Sarah Palin Last Night

Lesson One: Palin is FOR windfall taxes. Palin awarded each and every Alaskan an extra $1,200 on top of the $2,200 that they already get from oils and gas(Palin’s family receives over $22,000).

Lesson Two: Although Palin said in her speech that she would be an advocate for Special Needs Children, the fact is she CUT MONEY TO SPECIAL NEEDS CHILDREN in Alaska by 62%. The Annual budget for 2007, which preceded Gov. Palin was $8,265,300.
http://www.gov.state.ak.us/...
The Annual budget for 2008, enacted by Gov. Palin is $3,156,000.
http://www.gov.state.ak.us/...
The Annual budget for 2009, enacted by Gov. Palin is $3,156,000.
http://www.gov.state.ak.us/...
This is a cut in special needs services to children in Alaska of 5,109,300 , or 62%.
So, as the Alaska State Budget description states, "Without the supplementary services the child’s needs would not be met by the local school district in most cases."

Lesson Three: Palin was FOR the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against the Bridge to Nowhere.
The Anchorage Daily News interviewed Palin during her 2006 campaign for governor. At the time, federal funding for the bridge had been stripped by Congress. The Daily News asked if she was in favor of continuing state funding for the project. "Yes,” she responded, noting specifically her desire to renew Congressional support:
"Yes. I would like to see Alaska’s infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now–while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist."

That assistance never materialized. When Palin finally canceled the $400 million project, Palin lamented the fact that Congress was not more forthcoming with federal funding. She said in a statement at the time:
"Despite the work of our congressional delegation, we are about $329 million short of full funding for the bridge project, and it’s clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island."

Lesson Four: Palin is FOR Earmarks from the United Stated Congress.
Palin’s documented record on requesting earmarks is:
In her second term as Wasilla mayor she got a total of $27 million in federal earmarks for a town of fewer than 9,000 people.
As governor she requested $254 million in earmarks last year and $197 million in earmarks this year. As a Seattle Times story notes, that’s more per capita than requested by any other state in the union:
“Palin’s requests to Congress came at a time of huge federal deficits while Alaska state revenue was soaring due to rising oil prices and a major tax increase on oil production that Palin signed into law in late 2007.
As a result, Alaska this year was in such a money-flushed condition — with no state income tax or sales tax and total state revenues of $10 billion, double the previous year’s — that Palin gained legislative approval for $1,200 cash payments to every Alaskan.”
This, from the candidate who said Wednesday night that she “championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress.”

Lesson Five: Palin has quickly learned how to be part of the Washington Republican Establishment that has given us Eight Years of terrible governance.

Resume Inflating, Part I

How about more coverarage and info on Maj. Gen. Craig Campbell, adjutant general of the Alaska National Guard?

While Maj. Gen. Campbell did say Palin is “extremely responsive and smart” and says she is in charge when it comes to in-state services, such as emergencies and natural disasters, Maj. Gen. Campbell also said that Palin plays no role in national defense activities, even when they involve the Alaska National Guard. The entire operation is under federal control and the governor is not briefed on situations.

She is inflating her resume, big-time.