Newsweek: Judge warned Palin about "emotional child abuse"

Gee, what interesting timing for McCain to attack Obama over the welfare of little children. McCain and Palin knew this story was coming - Newsweek contacted them for comment - and I think they they launched the "education" ad and the latest "you're all sexists!" attack in an effort to divert attention from this story. It's pretty damning, and makes Palin look kind of nasty - barracuda nasty, and not in the way McCain had hoped the public would see her, I suspect. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that neither the Obama nor the Bidens have ever had a judge warn them about potential child abuse. Sarah Palin is increasingly not looking the poster child for Republican family values.

Newsweek

An Anchorage judge three years ago warned Sarah Palin and members of her family to stop "disparaging" the reputation of Alaska State Trooper Michael Wooten, who at the time was undergoing a bitter separation and divorce from Palin's sister Molly.

Allegations that Palin, her husband Todd, and at least one top gubernatorial aide continued to vilify Wooten—after Palin became Alaska's governor and pressured state police officials to take action against him—are at the center of "Troopergate," a political and ethical controversy which has embroiled Palin's administration and is currently the subject of an official inquiry by a special investigator hired by the state legislature.

Court records obtained by NEWSWEEK show that during the course of divorce hearings three years ago, Judge John Suddock heard testimony from an official of the Alaska State Troopers' union about how Sarah Palin—then a private citizen—and members of her family, including her father and daughter, lodged up to a dozen complaints against Wooten with the state police. The union official told the judge that he had never before been asked to appear as a divorce-case witness, that the union believed family complaints against Wooten were "not job-related," and that Wooten was being "harassed" by Palin and other family members.

Court documents show that Judge Suddock was disturbed by the alleged attacks by Palin and her family members on Wooten's behavior and character. "Disparaging will not be tolerated—it is a form of child abuse," the judge told a settlement hearing in October 2005, according to typed notes of the proceedings. The judge added: "Relatives cannot disparage either. If occurs [sic] the parent needs to set boundaries for their relatives."....

"It is the mother's [Hackett's] responsibility to set boundaries for her relatives and insure [sic] they respect them, and the disparagement by either parent, or their surrogates is emotional child abuse," Judge Suddock wrote....

Initially, Palin indicated she would cooperate with the investigation. But more recently, a lawyer hired by the state to represent her in the case asked the Alaska Attorney General to request that a state personnel board conduct its own special-counsel inquiry and demanded that the state legislature back off.

Read the rest of this post...

McCain: Obama called me a fish (I'm not kidding)

This is surrounding McCain's latest claim of "sexism," accusing the phrase "lipstick on a pig" of being sexist when used by Obama but not being sexist when used by McCain. Oh, and for anyone who's counting, the McCain campaign did in fact invoke John McCain's former POW status in relation to lipstick and pigs. Yes, they did. :-)

And even better, the McCain people today accused Obama of calling McCain "a fish." Seriously. No word on whether McCain took the fish to be a herring (losing his bearings), a snapper (temper temper), a cod (rhymes with cad) or perhaps something more exotic like a mahi-mahi (no, that's the kind of fish McCain would accuse Obama of being).

If I may paraphrase Jake, John McCain thinks some pigs are more equal than others (and for the McCain camp, that's not a reference to Palin or McCain, it's a reference to "Animal Farm" (that is, unless Sarah Palin banned it)). It was hard to excerpt Jake, but here's a portion:

Why should anyone believe McCain didn't mean it about Hillary Clinton, but Obama meant it about Palin?

And yet, the inaugural conference call of what the McCain-Palin campaign is calling the "Palin Truth Squad" addressed Obama's remark.

And interestingly, the Truth Squad call was full of half-truths and statements that weren't true at all.

Speaking on behalf of the McCain campaign, former Massachusetts Gov. Jane Swift tonight flatly stated that Obama had called Palin a pig.

"[T]he formation of the Palin Truth Squad couldn't have happened too soon, as we saw when Sen. Obama in Lebanon, Va., this evening uttered what I can only deem to be disgraceful comments comparing our vice presidential nominee Gov. Palin to a pig," Swift said.

"Sen. Obama owes Gov. Palin an apology," she said.

Asked why she was so confident Obama was "comparing" Palin to a pig, she said Palin was the only one of the four candidates on both parties' tickets who wears lipstick.

"She is the only one of the four candidates for president, or the only vice presidential candidate who wears lipstick," Swift said. "I mean, it seemed to me a very gendered comment."

But, Swift added, if "as part of his apology Sen. Obama wants to say, no, he was calling Sen. McCain -- who is a true hero in our country -- a pig, then I suppose we could wait en masse for an apology to that, as well."

It was pointed out to Swift that, after the line about the pig, Obama had said, "You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called 'change,' it's still gonna stink after eight years."

Swift then suggested that Obama was calling McCain a fish.

"I have a fourth-grader and two second-graders at home," she said. "I would not teach them that this is sort of a high-minded debate on policy issues when they are calling people rotten old fish or a pig. In fact, it sounds a lot like some of the least intelligent debates on the playground sound like at our elementary school."

A reporter then reminded Swift that in December, McCain was asked about criticisms coming his way from then-opponent Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass., and McCain replied, "Never get into a wrestling match with a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it."

Was McCain calling Romney a pig? a reporter asked Swift.

Of course not, Swift said.

It seems to me we should have one rule. If Obama was calling Palin a pig, then McCain was calling Hillary Clinton one. If McCain wasn't, then Obama wasn't.

Read the rest of this post...

McCain backed abolishing the Department of Education

Who needs the Department of Education when we can all just send our kids to the John McCain School for Under-qualified Vice Presidential Candidates? I hear they have a great two-week crash course on the history of everything. Read the rest of this post...

McCain campaign makes Palin's plane the "No Talk Express"

This is about John McCain and his judgment.

McCain picked a running mate who is not allowed to talk to the media because she doesn't know anything. That's the person McCain thinks is most qualified to be President:

John McCain took a risk in picking little-known Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as a running mate, but now the campaign's playing it safer. She's sticking to a greatest hits version of her convention speech on the campaign trail and steering clear of questions until she's comfortable enough for a hand-picked interviewer later this week.

More than 40 million people tuned in last week to listen to the speech from Palin, the 44-year-old first-term governor whom McCain announced as his surprise vice presidential pick just days before. Since then, that basic script is all anyone has heard from her publicly, and her only interaction with the media was a brief conversation with a small group of reporters on her plane Monday _ off the record at her handlers' insistence.

Associated Press reporters were not on the plane, but an aide told the journalists on board that all Palin flights would be off the record unless the media were told otherwise. At least one reporter objected. Two people on the flight said the Palins greeted the media and they chatted about who had been to Alaska, but little else was said.

Only one reporter objected? Wow. The press corps really are being played for fools by their old pal, John McCain. Read the rest of this post...

Local Alaska TV network: Palin is a liar

A local TV news report in Alaska says McCain's VP, Sarah Palin, is a liar. She wasn't opposed to the Bridge to Nowhere and she wasn't against earmarks. She's claimed both, repeatedly. She's a liar. And McCain is a liar for approving of her statements and introducing her each and every time she lies, even though he now knows she's lying. (H/t Josh Marshall.)

Read the rest of this post...

John McCain called Hillary Clinton "a pig"

Well, he did if you believe McCain's latest lie - that Obama's use of the "lipstick on a pig" expression is now sexist - then when McCain used the same "lipstick on a pig" expression to deride Hillary Clinton's proposals McCain was, under his own logic, calling Hillary Clinton a pig too.

I want to know when John McCain is going to apologize to the women of American for calling Hillary Clinton a pig. That's the question every reporter needs to ask McCain now. Why did McCain call Hillary Clinton a pig.

Then again, John McCain is familiar with sexism. He once joked that Chelsea Clinton was "ugly." (I guess kids aren't so off-limits after all to McCain.) Then there's the time that McCain joked about a woman being raped and enjoying it so much she wanted to be raped again. So yes, let's have a debate about John McCain and sexism. I hope every reporter is going to be asking McCain about why sexist jokes about other people's kids are okay, and why jokes about rape are okay. Since McCain is now so big on women.

Oh, one more thing. Can you still be America's greatest defender of women if you cheat on your first wife and call your second wife the c-word?

Read the rest of this post...

John McCain's weird obsession with sex

UPDATE: Statement from the Obama campaign:

"It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls – a position that his friend Mitt Romney also holds. Last week, John McCain told Time magazine he couldn't define what honor was. Now we know why," said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

A week after John McCain leaked the news of Sarah Palin's daughter's unwed pregnancy to Reuters, today we have McCain running ads accusing Obama of wanting to teach sex education to 6 year olds (you'll be surprised to hear that McCain is lying - more on that further down). McCain is desperate to change the topic from Sarah Palin's daily lies, and the fact that everyone is wise to her hiding out because she's not ready to be VP. So McCain is going incendiary in order to hopefully get the media to stop focusing on how he's lost his maverick status, in addition to losing control of his campaign.

First off, McCain is lying again - though no surprise there, every day has been a new lie (well, an old lie) about how much Sarah Palin opposed earmarks and the Bridge to Nowhere (she welcomed both). And interestingly, McCain is taking a page from loony Republican Alan Keyes, who also accused Obama of the same thing back in 2004. Obama's response at the time, during the Illinois Senate debate on 10/21/04, was that he was interested in protecting kids from sexual abuse - something McCain seems oddly opposed to:

"Actually, that wasn't what I had in mind. We have a existing law that mandates sex education in the schools. We want to make sure that it's medically accurate and age-appropriate. Now, I'll give you an example, because I have a six-year-old daughter and a three-year-old daughter, and one of the things my wife and I talked to our daughter about is the possibility of somebody touching them inappropriately, and what that might mean. And that was included specifically in the law, so that kindergarteners are able to exercise some possible protection against abuse, because I have family members as well as friends who suffered abuse at that age. So, that's the kind of stuff that I was talking about in that piece of legislation."

So, McCain is opposed to stopping the sexual predation of children?

Putting aside the irony of McCain last week leaking news of Palin's daughter's unmarried, underage pregnancy, and this week railing against sex education, does McCain really want to start lecturing people about sexual morality? Really? And McCain thinks Sarah Palin is going to take the high ground on issues concerning pre-marital sex and the proper education of our children to avoid pregnancy? Really?

Ironically, Massachusetts under Mitt Romney permitted sex education to be taught pre-kindergarten, and Mitt Romney himself approves of age-appropriate sex education. I wonder what Alaska rules permit.

In any case, it's clear that McCain is Karl Rove - the transformation is complete. Mccain is going to get as sleazy as he needs to in order to take down Obama. Perhaps now Senator Obama will finally, and completely, take the gloves off. We can start with McCain's repeated statements that he didn't love America until the age of 31. (And yes, we know, McCain was a tortured POW. But it's not clear what that has to do with him not really loving America the first three decades of his life, before he was a POW. I can't name one person I know who doesn't really love America. McCain's admission sounds patriotic, but at its core it's a bit odd). Then let's have a full discussion about John McCain's role in the Keating Five scandal and his cheating on his first wife (the latter definitely deals with sexual morality). And if McCain really wants to have a sleazy discussion about who has the best interest of children at heart, all I'm going to say is that the Obama's never stole drugs from sick children in order to feed their drug addiction. Show of hands - how many McCains can say that?

And oh yeah. Where is Vicki Iseman? Read the rest of this post...

USA Today: McCain/Palin are lying

USA Today:

It's the claim that Palin "stopped the 'Bridge to Nowhere' " that sparked the dispute. The reference is to a proposed bridge to a remote Alaskan community that would have cost the U.S. government more than $200 million. Palin has said repeatedly that she told the federal government: "Thanks, but no thanks."

As a candidate for governor, however, Palin supported the bridge.

"We need to come to the defense of southeast Alaska when proposals are on the table, like the bridge, and not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that's so negative," Palin said in August 2006, according to the Ketchikan Daily News.

The non-partisan FactCheck.org has called Palin's claim that she blocked the project "a bridge too far."

Read the rest of this post...

Video shows Sarah Palin heartily endorsing the Bridge to Nowhere and congressional earmarks for Alaska

So, basically, she's a liar for standing up in front of the American people, every single day, and saying that she was opposed to the Bridge to Nowhere (she wasn't), and that she opposed efforts of Alaska's congressional delegation to get pork for the state through earmarks (she didn't). Josh Marshall spliced together several videos of Sarah Palin supporting both the bridge and the earmarks. She's a liar. Why would McCain pick someone like this? (Because he caved to the religious right.) Why would McCain approve of his campaign repeatedly lying about facts that are already well established? (Because he doesn't think media has the backbone to call him on it.) Does McCain even know what his own campaign is doing any more?

Read the rest of this post...

The Alaska paper has some question for Sarah "You're a Sexist!" Palin

The Anchorage Daily News, the big paper in Alaska, has some questions for Sarah Palin, should she ever deign to come out of hiding.

There's no polite way to say it: Sarah Palin has been hiding out from hard questions. It took 10 days from when John McCain announced his pick until the McCain campaign agreed to schedule Palin an unscripted interview with a serious journalist....

• You present yourself as a Republican maverick who took on your own party's corrupt political establishment. In November's election, your party is running an indicted U.S. Senator, Ted Stevens, who is awaiting trial on charges he accepted more than $250,000 of unreported gifts from the state's most powerful lobbyist. Will you vote for his opponent? Will you urge Alaskans to help you change Washington and vote him out of office? If not, why not?

• Sen. Ted Stevens' trial is still pending; he has declined to say whether he would accept a pardon from President Bush before he leaves office Jan. Do Alaska voters deserve an answer to that question before they cast their vote for or against Stevens in November? What is your position on a president pardoning a public official before a jury has ruled on guilt or innocence?...

• Why have you reneged on your earlier pledge to cooperate with the Alaska Legislature's investigation into Troopergate?

• In spring of 2004, the Daily News reported that you cited family considerations in deciding not to try for the U.S. Senate: "How could I be the team mom if I was a U.S. senator?" What was different this time as you decided to run for vice president?...

• If you were a fully qualified vice-presidential candidate from the get-go, why did you wait more than 10 days to face reporters?

• McCain spokesman Rick Davis told Fox News the media didn't show you enough "deference." How much deference do you expect to get from Vladimir Putin or Hugo Chavez?

Wow, asking about Vladimir Putin and presidential pardons - how sexist. Read the rest of this post...

Alaskans: McCain/Palin are lying

Reuters

During her first speech after being named as McCain's surprise pick as a running mate, Palin said she had told Congress "'thanks but no thanks' on that bridge to nowhere."

In the city Ketchikan, the planned site of the so-called "Bridge to Nowhere," political leaders of both parties said the claim was false and a betrayal of their community, because she had supported the bridge and the earmark for it secured by Alaska's Congressional delegation during her run for governor.

The bridge, a span from the city to Gravina Island, home to only a few dozen people, secured a $223 million earmark in 2005. The pricey designation raised a furor and critics, including McCain, used the bridge as an example of wasteful federal spending on politicians' pet projects.

When she was running for governor in 2006, Palin said she was insulted by the term "bridge to nowhere," according to Ketchikan Mayor Bob Weinstein, a Democrat, and Mike Elerding, a Republican who was Palin's campaign coordinator in the southeast Alaska city.

"People are learning that she pandered to us by saying, I'm for this' ... and then when she found it was politically advantageous for her nationally, abruptly she starts using the very term that she said was insulting," Weinstein said.

Palin's spokeswoman in Alaska was not immediately available to comment.

Read the rest of this post...

Lieberman has to eat alone

Kicked out of the weekly Democratic Senate Luncheon -- as it should be (Roll Call is sub. req.):

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.) have agreed that Lieberman will no longer attend Democrats’ weekly caucus lunches or the biweekly chairmen’s lunches used to formulate policy, senior Democratic aides said Tuesday.

I'm sure the Senate GOP caucus will welcome pro-choice, pro-gay Lieberman with open arms. They'll probably make him one of their leaders. Yeah. That's what will happen. Read the rest of this post...

More on Sarah Palin's city charging rape victims for their own exams

UPDATE: Link is fixed, sorry about that

Feministing weighs in on the news we reported last night, that when she was mayor of Wasilla, the city charged rape victims for their own forensic exams. Wasilla was unique in Alaska in charging victims, per a press story at the time. And not that the story could get any worse, but apparently the reason they charged rape victims for their own police forensic exams was in order to keep taxes low. Yes, Palin's "tax cutting" policies led to rape victims being charged for their own exams, because low taxes was more important. Read the rest of this post...

Why is Palin building a road to connect to the Bridge to Nowhere she claims she opposes?

I'd heard about the "Road to Nowhere" but hadn't made the connection. Palin, who supported the Bridge to Nowhere just two years ago, is still building a road that is meant to connect to the bridge - the bridge she now claims is unnecessary pork.

The state, however, never gave back any of the money that was originally earmarked for the Gravina Island bridge, said Weinstein and Elerding.

In fact, the Palin administration has spent "tens of millions of dollars" in federal funds to start building a road on Gravina Island that is supposed to link up to the yet-to-be-built bridge, Weinstein said.

"She said 'thanks but no thanks,' but they kept the money," said Elerding about her applause line.

Oh yeah, and Palin kept every dime of the federal money that was appropriated for the Bridge to Nowhere. Every single freaking dime. So she's not only for pork, she's for 100% welfare hand-outs, no strings attached. At least pork is earmarked for specific wasteful projects. Palin prefers when you just hand her your federal tax dollars, in wheelbarrows, and let her decide how to waste it. Read the rest of this post...

Quietly, Obama Campaign Calls In The Cavalry

That's nice.

[A]fter of year of telling donors not to contribute to 527 groups, of encouraging strategists not to form them and of suggesting that outside messaging efforts would not be welcome in Obama's Democratic Party, Obama's strategists have changed their approach.

An Obama adviser privy to the campaign's internal thinking on the matter says that,with less than two months before the election and with the realization that Republicans have achieved financial parity with Democrats, they hope that Democratic allies -- what another campaign aide termed "the cavalry" -- will come to Obama's aid.

One way the campaign could help the cavalary is to buy real blog ads. Not cheap Google ads, but real ads. The kind of ads the campaign is already buying on Mark Halperin's site, for example (and we doubt he's the cavalry they have in mind), and the kind of ads they spend $5m on during the Superbowl.

There's a practical reason that the Obama campaign (and the Democratic party) should be spending real money on blog advertising. Many bloggers, myself included, work full-time on our blogs. Our advertising revenue is our salary, 100% of our salary. When advertising goes down, like it has with the recent economic downturn, and like it did when the 527 got dismantled earlier this year (they were going to buy a lot of blog ads), that forces us, like anyone who is self-employed, to make up our salary elsewhere, by consulting and working on other projects, in order to pay the rent, pay the Saudis, etc. Rather than spending this fall working on boring consulting projects, the cavalry would prefer to have more time to help Obama. Perhaps the Obama campaign, and the Democratic Party, can help us do just that. Read the rest of this post...

WSJ: McCain/Palin lied

Even the Wall Street Journal is calling out McCain and Palin on their lies about the Bridge to Nowhere:

Despite significant evidence to the contrary, the McCain campaign continues to assert that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told the federal government "thanks but no thanks" to the now-famous bridge to an island in her home state.

The McCain campaign released a television advertisement Monday morning titled "Original Mavericks." The narrator of the 30-second spot boasts about the pair: "He fights pork-barrel spending. She stopped the Bridge to Nowhere."

Gov. Palin, who John McCain named as his running mate less than two weeks ago, quickly adopted a stump line bragging about her opposition to the pork-barrel project Sen. McCain routinely decries.

But Gov. Palin's claim comes with a serious caveat. She endorsed the multimillion dollar project during her gubernatorial race in 2006. And while she did take part in stopping the project after it became a national scandal, she did not return the federal money. She just allocated it elsewhere.

Silly Wall Street Journal. Don't they know that facts are sexist? Read the rest of this post...

FOX News calls MSNBC's Rachel Maddow "Lesbian Air America host"

I wonder how Shepard Smith feels about this.

Read the rest of this post...

Palin lied again today about killing Bridge to Nowhere (she was actually for it)

Palin again today read the same speech she's been reading every day, and outright lied about her support of the Bridge to Nowhere.

How many days in a row do McCain and Palin have to lie about her position on earmarks - she was for the Bridge to Nowhere, but every single day on the stump she outright lies and says she was against it - how many days in a row do Palin and McCain have to treat the media and the voters like chumps before someone in the media calls her on this? I'm not talking doing a single story on it, I'm talking making the only question you ask the McCain campaign "why are you guys lying?" The fact that McCain has chosen to outright lie, repeatedly, to the press and public, says something larger about him and his campaign. It's very Bush-Cheney of him, very Karl Rove of him, to insist that he's just gonna keep lying, to hell with the fact checkers. People need to call him on this. It's not what a maverick would do. But it is what the new, cynical John McCain would do. A man who no longer seems in control of his own campaign, or worse, has finally signed off on the very style of campaigning he once railed against. Read the rest of this post...

Begala: Time for the media to call McCain/Palin on their lies

Dem strategist Paul Begala this morning on CNN:

PAUL BEGALA, CNN POLITICAL CONTRIBUTOR: Because the press won't do its job, John. I criticized Barack Obama when he hasn't been tough enough. Barack's job is to run against John McCain, right. Don't shoot the monkey when you can shoot for the organ grinder. His job is not to focus on number two but number one. But it is the media's job when a politician flat out lies like she's doing on this bridge to nowhere so call her on it. Or this matter of earmarks where she's attacking Barack Obama for having earmarks, when she was the mayor of little Wasilla, Alaska, 6,000 people, she hired a lobbyist who was connected to Jack Abramoff, who is a criminal and they brought home $27 million in earmarks. She carried so much pork home she got trichinosis. But we in the media are letting her tell lies about her record.

Read the rest of this post...

Bush/McCain economy: Inflation hits "99 Cents Only" stores

Sure, prices are going up for everyone, but don't they know John McCain is a hero and more patriotic than everyone else? It's not really appropriate to talk about inflation or any other economic issue during the campaign because McCain's personal history (outside of his first marriage, Keating Five, Phil Gramm or lack of vetting with Palin) is much more important than any trifling money worries. John McCain doesn't think it's important enough to discuss, so let's just stop all the fuss. Read the rest of this post...

How many ways can reporters say McCain is lying without using the word "lying"?

We went through this with the press corps and the Bush administration. Bush or his lackeys would blatantly lie to the White House press corps. The reporters sitting in the White House press briefing room knew that Bush and his lackeys were lying. But, they never reported on the lies. They did contortions and used code words, but never said it. So, the American people weren't told and Bush got away with it.

Given that Bush's lackeys are running McCain's campaign, it's no surprise the pattern is repeating. McCain has institutionalized lies into his stump speech and his t.v. ads. He's been lying about Obama's tax plan. Now, the lie is about Palin's alleged opposition to the "Bridge to Nowhere." Palin supported the bridge in 2006.

In today's Wall Street Journal, we see the reporters try to tell us McCain is lying -- without saying that he's lying:

The Bridge to Nowhere argument isn't going much of anywhere.

Despite significant evidence to the contrary, the McCain campaign continues to assert that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told the federal government "thanks but no thanks" to the now-famous bridge to an island in her home state.

"Despite significant evidence to the contrary." Hmmm. So, it's not true. That means someone isn't telling the truth. That means someone is lying.

This passage shows just how cocky the McCain crew is about foisting lies on reporters:

Senior adviser Mark Salter pointed to her role in killing the project while in office and allocating the money elsewhere. When pressed further that it was actually Congress that stopped the earmark, Mr. Salter said: "She stopped it, too. She did her part." Mr. Salter added that he welcomed a fight over earmarks with the Obama campaign.

Just lie right to their faces. McCain and his crew think reporters are spineless wimps. They think the American people are stupid.

Fortunately, the Obama campaign has dropped any reticence about calling McCain and his campaign liars. The new ad, released yesterday, calls out the lying. And, again links McCain to Bush, who set the standard for lying:

Read the rest of this post...

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Eight weeks -- 56 days -- til Election Day. It's getting more intense by the hour. And, the Republicans, who have nothing else to offer, are only going to get nastier and uglier.

So, the other night, John put up the email and pictures we received from AMERICAblog reader Jim in New Mexico. Jim was at a restaurant when McCain and Palin walked in. He asked questions of both of them. As far as I can tell, this week, Jim has asked more questions of the GOP ticket than all of the big name political reporters in the traditional media. Good for Jim, but it shows how pathetic the press corps is. They can't even get McCain or Palin on the record. And, the McCain campaign is afraid to let either of them speak to reporters. If they ask questions of the two people who want to lead our nation, the McCain campaign will get mad and be mean to them. Can't have that. ABC's Charlie Gibson will get his chance later this week with Palin, but he had to agree to so many conditions, it makes ABC and Gibson look like tools of the GOP (which is actually what they are). What an embarrassment all around.

Okay, now do some threading.... Read the rest of this post...

McCain vetting missed another problem: Palin billed Alaska for sleeping in her own home

What a brave and fearless, fiscal reformer. Palin regularly used the "per diem" food expenses of eating at home as well as the travel expenses for the family, including the kids. Heck, why should they pay for anything when the state can foot the bill?

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a "per diem" allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business.

The governor also has charged the state for travel expenses to take her children on official out-of-town missions. And her husband, Todd, has billed the state for expenses and a daily allowance for trips he makes on official business for his wife.

Palin, who earns $125,000 a year, claimed and received $16,951 as her allowance, which officials say was permitted because her official "duty station" is Juneau, according to an analysis of her travel documents by The Washington Post.

The governor's daughters and husband charged the state $43,490 to travel, and many of the trips were between their house in Wasilla and Juneau, the capital city 600 miles away, the documents show.

So again, does anyone want to ask John McCain about the vetting process for Palin? Did he know? Did he even care? What kind of a presidential candidate fails so badly in his first major decision? Read the rest of this post...

OPEC President: oil oversupply in market by end of year

Who else is smelling another increase in prices?

Speaking to reporters on his arrival for Tuesday's OPEC meeting in Vienna, he said there was plenty of oil in the market and the group will discuss the possibility of cutting back.

When asked if the group will decide to cut, he replied: "I don't know, there will be a discussion on that."

"There is plenty of oil in the market, stocks are pretty good," Khelil said. "We're going to have an oversupply by the end of year."

Goldman Sachs still believes oil will be at $130 in the final quarter of 2008 and $140 for the year. Read the rest of this post...

Misery index going up, again

The misery index is a combination of inflation and unemployment and in general, as the two head upwards during an election year, the incumbent party in the White House struggles. Obviously both are rising quickly this year and to date, McCain has managed to avoid discussing the economy and separate himself from Bush. The Clinton campaign hammered away with "it's the economy, stupid" in 1992 to victory and this year it's hard not to be aware of friends, family and neighbors being weighed down by this nasty combination. Read the rest of this post...

McCain and fuzzy videos

A reader writes:

As a photographer it is VERY easy to see that most (if not all) video of John McCain is shot through a filter that blurs the video slightly. Just look at the video on Face the Nation this morning. Even on HD the video is blurry. One of the techniques actresses required as they aged is to photograph through cheesecloth. It blurs out the wrinkles.

There is no question in my mind that McCain is requiring the use of a filter to blur the image... and McCain is almost never photographed from his left.

Both of these techniques are used to minimize his age and the assymetry of his face. It also makes it difficult to see how much makeup is required before his video appearances.

I'd love to see your comments on Americablog and whether anyone has information that McCain's staff requires the use of a filter and photographing from only his right.

Read the rest of this post...

First installment of Freddie/Fannie bailout to arrive soon

What's another $5 billion when we're throwing billions around everywhere and anywhere. The total lack of fiscal discipline during the GOP years is an even larger problem now that we have a financial market that is falling apart, requests from Detroit for a bailout and others in the queue.

The U.S. Treasury expects to purchase $5 billion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage-backed securities within the next month as part of its takeover of the mortgage finance giants.

Senior government officials told reporters in a news briefing the program would be the first taxpayer cash outlays associated with the plan to put Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into a government conservatorship.

Read the rest of this post...

Okay, this one will make you laugh

Apparently, now FOX is a really fair and unbiased network so long as you ignore O'Reilly and Hannity. Uh huh.

Throughout 2008, conservatives have criticized MSNBC's decision to have Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann anchor on election nights, and most recently, the conventions. One complaint I often here is that Fox wouldn't allow O'Reilly or Hannity to anchor news coverage.

LOL, yeah. Like Britt Hume or any of the other GOP clones they put on the air are fair and impartial (terrorist fist-jab anyone?) Give me a break. The entire network is one big GOP propaganda organ - that's the only reason they exist, to support and defend the Republican party. Everyone knows it. Everyone in the media knows it. Who could even write this paragraph with a straight face? Read the rest of this post...