My, God, What A Liar! Where’s The Straight Talk??

False McCain Claim: “My health care plan will make it easier for more Americans to find and keep good health care insurance.”

Facts: McCain’s Health Care Plan Does Little to Reduce the Ranks of America’s Uninsured and Would Erode the Employer-Based System

Under McCain’s Plan, Health Insurance Benefits Would be Taxed For The First Time, Resulting In A $3.6 Trillion Tax Increase On Working Families. McCain’s health care plan would eliminate the payroll deduction on health care benefits, which would have the effect of raising taxes on working families by $3.6 trillion. [New York Times, 5/1/08]

McCain’s Plan Undermines The Employer-Based Health Care System And Will Lead To Workers Losing Coverage. McCain’s health care plan would begin to dismantle the employer-based health care system, removing the incentives employers have to provide health care coverage, resulting in employees losing their health care. [New York Times, 4/30/08;Washington Post, 4/30/08]

The Health Care Tax Credit McCain Offers Would Cover Less Than Half The Cost Of An Average Health Care Plan. The McCain health plan would give families a $5,000 tax credit to purchase health insurance. However, in 2007, the average family health insurance plan cost $12,000 – more than double the value of McCain’s health care tax credit. ["Employer Health Benefits 2007 Annual Survey," Kaiser Family Foundation, 9/11/07; "'Call To Action' On Health Care Reform," John McCain 2008 press release, 4/29/08; Wall Street Journal, 10/11/07]

McCain’s Health Care Plan Does Little to Help America’s Uninsured. McCain’s plan does not focus on “reducing the ranks of the uninsured,” of which there are about 47 million, or one in seven Americans. According to the New York Times, “The McCain campaign has no estimate of how many of America’s 47 million uninsured would likely gain coverage under its plan.” It “has been estimated to reduce the number of uninsured in the U.Sby three to nine million.” [Wall Street Journal, 10/11/2007, 4/30/2008; New York Times, 3/2/2008]

McCain’s Erosion Of Employer System Would Take Away Millions of Americans’ Insurance.According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, “158 million people nationally” had “employer-sponsored health insurance” in 2007. McCain’s elimination of the employer tax incentive to provide coverage would put these 158 million Americans’ coverage in jeopardy. According to an analysis conducted by the Center For American Progress, “business owners would no longer need to cover their workers to get tax benefits for their own coverageThe entire employer health insurance system could unravel, ending this as an option for Americans who prefer it.” In addition, the McCain plan “would not require insurers to provide health coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.” [Kaiser Family Foundation, "Employer Health Benefits 2007 Annual Survey; Center For American Progress Action Fund, "Analysis of McCain's Health Care Announcement," 4/29/2008; New York Times Political Blog, "The Caucus," 4/29/2008,

Oil Companies:

False McCain Attack: "Both parties and Senator Obama passed another corporate welfare bill for oil companies."

The Facts: Energy Bill Actually Raised Taxes on Oil and Gas Industry, McCain Supports Tax Breaks for Big Oil

AP Fact Check: Congressional Research Service Showed That The Energy Bill Actually Raised Taxes On The Oil And Gas Industry. The AP reported, "Clinton is on shakier ground when attacking Obama for supporting "Dick Cheney's energy bill," and not just because it's a stretch to assign the vice president name - red meat to Democrats - to the legislation. The 2005 act that she describes as packed with billions of dollars in oil industry breaks actually raised taxes on the oil and gas industry by about $300 million over 11 years, according to the Congressional Research Service. The nonpartisan analysis found $2.6 billion in tax cuts for the oil and gas industry and $2.9 billion in tax increases. The bulk of tax breaks went to other sources of energy, including alternative fuels favored by both Clinton and Obama." [AP, 2/15/08]

McCain’s Tax Plan Will Cut Taxes For Oil Companies by Nearly $4 Billion – Including $1.2 Billion for Exxon. A study by the Center for American Progress Action Fund noted that the corporate tax rate cut included in the McCain tax plan “would deliver a $3.8 billion tax cut to the five largest American oil companies” – ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Valero Energy, and Marathon. According to their analysis ofExxon’s financial statements, the company would receive a tax savings of $1.2 billion under the McCain plan. ["The McCain Plan to Cut Oil CompanyTaxes by Nearly $4 Billion," Center for American Progress Action Fund, 3/27/08]

McCain Spokesman: McCain Opposes A Bipartisan Compromise to Expand Domestic Oil Production Because of Provisions that Would End Tax Breaks for Oil Companies. ”A spokesman for Sen. McCain said that while he ‘applauds the bipartisan effort,’ he wouldn’t support the proposal because ‘he cannot and will not support legislation that raises taxes.’” [Wall Street Journal,8/2/08] ###

Trade

False McCain Attack: ”I will open new markets to our goods and services. My opponent will close them.”

The Facts: When Obama Negotiate Trade Deals, It Will Be With American Workers in Mind; McCain Supported Deals That Cost Americans Jobs

Obama Said That While “We’re Not Going To Draw A Moat” Around The US, Trade Deals Had To Be Negotiated With American Workers In Mind.

“The AP reported, “Obama said he supports the foreign trade deal, which is especially important to labor and U.S. manufacturers. He said active trading is a key way to keep the United States competitive. ‘We’re not going to draw a moat around the United States’ economy. If we do that, then China is still trading, India is still going to be trading,’ said Obama, who voted against the recent Central American Free Trade Agreement and opposes the pending trade deal with South Korea. ‘I think that NAFTA and CAFTA did not reflect the interests of American workers but reflected the interests of the stock owners on Wall Street, because they did not contain the sorts of labor provisions and environmental provisions that should have been embedded and should have been enforceable in those agreements,’ he said.” [AP, 10/10/07]

McCain Supported NAFTA, Which Contributed to Loss of a Million American Jobs, And CAFTA. John McCain supported both the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). The Economic Policy Institute has estimated that NAFTA contributed to the loss of 1 million American jobs since it took effect in 1994. [Vote 395, HR 3450, 61-38, 11/20/93; Vote 170, S.1307, 54-45, 6/30/05; "Revisiting NAFTA; Still not working for North America's workers," The Economic Policy Institute,9/28/06]

McCain: I Am The Biggest Free Marketer And Free Trader. ”Well, obviously we should make sure that every nation respects human rights, and we should advocate that and try to enforce it. But I will open every market in the world to Iowa’s agricultural products. I’m the biggest free marketer and free trader that you will ever see.” [GOP Debate, 12/12/07]

McCain Praised NAFTA But Admitted That People Are “Gonna Lose Jobs.” ”I know NAFTA was a good idea. It’s created millions of jobs and it has helped the economies of all three nations. All you have to do is go to Detroit and see the thousands of trucks lined up every day or go to our southern border. There have been winners and losers and that’s the problem but free trade is something I think is vital to the future of America. As a free trader, I will open up every market in the world to Iowa agricultural products. Have people lost jobs? Yes, they have. And they’re gonna lose jobs although the overall gain in jobs is gonna be pretty impressive.” [Des Moines Register, 11/27/07]

McCain: I Don’t Care How Many Jobs You Outsource. Responding to a question about the economy during an appearance on Hardball, McCain said, “If we start seeing what a lot of us expect, and that is a strong economy cannot go forever without picking up jobs. I don’t care how many of them you outsource, then I think the president is going to be helped by that.” [MSNBC, "Hardball," 2/25/04]

McCain Acknowledges Trade Agreements Have Cost America Jobs, Still Believes Agreements Have “Been Very Successful.”“McCain has said the trade pacts have been a net positive. ‘Overall, the free-trade agreements have been very successful, and I can prove that with economic data on job creation,’ McCain said in an interview Monday with the Journal Sentinel. But he added, ‘It has left people behind, and we must give those people and others opportunities.’” [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 4/16/08]

Taxes

McCain’s False Attacks: “I will keep taxes low and cut them where I can. My opponent will raise them.”

The Facts: Obama Will Cut Taxes, McCain Will Raise Them — David Leonhardt of The New York Times Wrote That, “For Most People, Obama Is The Tax Cutter In This Campaign.”

Leonhardt wrote that, ” The Tax Policy Center, a research group run by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, has done the most detailed analysis of the Obama and McCain tax plans, and it has published a series of fascinating tables. For the bottom 80 percent of the population — those households making $118,000 or less — McCain’s various tax cuts would mean a net savings of about $200 a year on average. Obama’s proposals would bring $900 a year in savings. So for most people, Obama is the tax cutter in this campaign.” [The New York Times, 8/24/08]

Analysts Say That Obama’s Tax Cut Plan “Offers Three Times The Break For Middle Class Families Than Proposals” Of McCain. ”The tax cut plan of Democratic nominee to be Barack Obama offers three times the break for middle class families than proposals of likely Republican nominee John McCain, according to analysts working for a left-leaning think tank. Families making between $37,595 and $66,354 of annual income with Obama would get an average tax cut of $1,042 per family while McCain’s tax cut for this group would be $319, the report states.” [Nashua Telegraph, 6/12/08]

Under Obama’s Plan The Middle Of The Middle Class Would See Taxes Cut By $1,042 A Year; McCain’s Tax Plan Would Give Them Only A $319 Tax Cut. According to the non partisan Tax Policy Center’s computations, “under Mr. Obama’s plan, the middle of the middle class, or those earning $37,595 to $66,354, would see taxes cut by $1,042 a year. Under Mr. McCain’s plan, taxes for people in that category would also fall, but by $319; the largest chunk of the benefits would go to those making $2.8 million a year or more.” [New York Times, 6/13/08]

Washington Post: McCain’s Approach To Taxes Is Far More Costly Than Obama’s. ”There is a serious debate to be had in this presidential campaign about the fundamentally different tax policies of Barack Obama and John McCain. Then there is the phony, misleading and at times outright dishonest debate that the McCain campaign has been waging — most recently with a television ad. The two candidates have very different positions on taxes. Mr. Obama wants to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans and cut them substantially for low- and middle-income taxpayers. He would cut taxes for more households, and by a larger amount, than Mr. McCain, who would give the greatest benefits to wealthy households and corporations. The McCain campaign insists on completely misrepresenting Mr. Obama’s plan. The country can’t afford the tax cuts either man is promising, although Mr. McCain’s approach is by far the more costly. We don’t expect either side to admit that. But neither side should get to outright lie about its opponent’s positions, either.” [Editorial, Washington Post, 8/31/08]

ABC Headline: McCain Health Credit Could Morph Into Tax Hike. McCain’s “health-care plan would replace the existing tax exclusion for employer-sponsored coverage with a refundable tax credit for all Americans. The tax change is intended to create a more equitable system that provides everyone — including those who do not receive their health coverage from their employer — with the same tax advantage. And since it is refundable, it would provide a cash benefit to those who earn too little to pay federal income taxes. But if the cost of health care continues to outpace inflation in the economy at large, McCain’s health credit would morph into a tax hike for those who currently receive a tax exclusion for employer-sponsored coverage, according to a study released Wednesday by the liberal Center for American Progress.” [ABC News, 7/2/08] McCain’s Health Care Plan Would Raises Taxes On Families By $1,169 In 2013. According to a report by the Center for American Progress, the tax credit in McCain’s health care plan would fall behind rising health premiums and would raise taxes for the average family by $1,169 in 2013. ["John McCain's Radical Prescription for Health Care," Center for American Progress Action Fund, 7/2//08]

McCain’s Campaign “Acknowledged” That His Health Care Plan “Would Have The Effect Of Increasing Tax Payments For Some Workers.” ”Though Senator John McCain has promised to not raise taxes, his campaign acknowledged Wednesday that the health plan he outlined this week would have the effect of increasing tax payments for some workers, primarily those with high incomes and expensive health plans. The campaign cannot yet project how many taxpayers might see their taxes go up, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Mr. McCain’s top domestic policy adviser. But Mr. Holtz-Eakin said in an interview that for some, Mr. McCain’s health care tax credits would not be large enough to compensate for his proposal to eliminate the tax breaks afforded to workers with employer-provided health benefits. To end the disadvantage to those who do not buy insurance through employers, Mr. McCain proposes to eliminate the exclusion of health benefits from taxable income. In exchange, he would provide refundable tax credits of $2,500 to single people and of $5,000 to families, with the goal of stoking competition in the individual insurance market. The elimination of the exclusion would generate $3.6 trillion over 10 years, according to the McCain campaign, and that money would pay for the tax credits.” [New York Times, 5/1/08] ###

Worker Training

False McCain Attack: “For workers in industries that have been hard hit, we’ll help make up part of the difference in wages between their old job and a temporary, lower paid one while they receive retraining that will help them find secure new employment at a decent wage.”

The Facts: McCain Has Repeatedly Opposed Vital Training for Workers in Hard-Hit Industries

McCain Opposed $1 Million In Job Training Programs For Young People. In 2003, McCain sponsored an amendment to delete several provisions from the war supplemental spending bill, including $1 million for the Jobs for America’s Graduates school-to-work program for at-risk young people for Training Employment Services. [2003 Senate Vote #118, 4/3/2003, McCain: Y]

McCain Voted Against a Pilot Program to Provide Low-Interest Loans to Workers in Job Training or Assistance Programs. In 2002, McCain voted to kill an amendment requiring the Labor Department to establish a pilot program providing low-interest loans to workers in job training or job assistance programs to enable workers to continue making their mortgage payments. (CQ) McCain: Y [2002 Senate Vote #119, 5/21/2002]

McCain Voted Against Providing Additional $4.1 Million For Job Training And Other Domestic Programs. In 1992, McCain voted against transferring $4.1 billion from defense to domestic programs, including Head Start, child immunization programs and the Job Corps program. (CQ) McCain: N [1992 Senate Vote #208, 9/16/1992, McCain: N]

McCain Voted Against Providing $1 Billion In Economic Assistance, Including Job Training. In 1992, McCain voted against providing $1 billion for various programs designed to help those struggling economically, including job training funding. [1992 Senate Vote #146, 7/2/1992, McCain: Y]

Link.

Sarah Palin Is Not Liberated, She Is Not A Feminist, She Is A Tool Of Men

 

I say so and, more or less, so does Gloria Steinem.

 

Me, I don’t understand what’s so liberated about taking orders because one believes one’s role is to take orders from men.

But then, modern conservatism is so Orwellian…. Slavery is freedom….

The Face Of America, GOP-Style

Raw Story:

Among the party’s 2,380 delegates gathered in St. Paul only 36 are African Americans and very few other visible minorities were to be found on the convention floor.

This is the first time in 40 years that there has been such a weak representation of minorities at a major political party convention, according to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who did not appear at the convention, is like a tree hiding in the forest of the Republican landscape.

For the past six years there has not been a single black Republican governor, senator or representative in the US Congress.

Blacks comprise 12.4 percent of the US population while 14.8 percent are Hispanics, according to the most recent census data.

Liars And The People Who Love Them And Their Lies

Robert Parry:

The Republican ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin has been dubbed “Maverick Squared,” with much of the U.S. news media hailing the pair as reformers who are above partisanship and eager to challenge corrupt Washington.

Beyond that, Sen. McCain presented himself in his Thursday night acceptance speech as a grandfatherly figure who loves peace and would only go to war reluctantly to protect America’s vital interests.

However, both propositions – McCain-Palin as a reform ticket and John McCain as a man of peace – could only be taken seriously in the up-is-down world that has become American politics.

McCain was a leading – and early – advocate for the neoconservative plan of invading Iraq despite no evidence connecting its government to the 9/11 attacks. He also endorses the neocon concept of a “long war” against Islamic militants and even joked about attacking Iran, singing, “Bomb, bomb Iran.”

Some of his Senate colleagues privately consider McCain an ill-tempered warmonger who would keep the Iraq War going indefinitely and would stoke tensions around the globe. But the press corps offered almost no commentary about McCain’s dark side during the Republican National Convention.

There was near total silence, too, about evidence that McCain – like Palin – is a fake reformer. His support for a few high-profile reform bills became a political necessity in the 1980s after he got caught in a savings-and-loan influence-peddling scheme with Cindy McCain’s business partner, Charles Keating.

Even in recent years while cultivating his reform image, McCain – as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee – has maintained cozy relationships with business lobbyists and, indeed, stocked his campaign staff with many of the insiders he rails against. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Is McCain a Liar?”]

For her part, Palin pitches herself as an enemy of “earmarks” and pork-barrel projects, such as Alaska’s “Bridge to Nowhere.” But, in reality, she hired well-connected Washington lobbyists to secure earmarked funding for her town of Wasilla and pushed for federally financed Alaskan projects, including the controversial bridge.

Chastened Press Corps

However, after a few raps on their knuckles for trying to vet Palin’s record, major U.S. news outlets have fallen into line behind the dual McCain-Palin myths of reform and peace, much as they did in 2000 in helping to sell George W. Bush as a regular-guy, “compassionate” conservative.

With their blinders on, most Big Media pundits saw no disconnect between McCain presiding over a convention marked by a heavy dose of partisan ridicule toward Barack Obama and the Democrats – and then pitching himself as a paragon of bipartisan civility who despises “partisan rancor.”

Though barely noted by the political press corps, the St. Paul, Minnesota, convention was more like the infamous Houston convention in 1992 during which militant right-wing Republicans, led by Pat Buchanan, advocated “cultural wars” against their enemies on the Left.

In St. Paul, the overwhelmingly white convention delegates hooted and booed at almost every mocking reference to Obama, the first African-American nominee of a major party. Plus, there were many reminders of the strategies of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew who won votes by stirring up resentments toward supposed “elitists.”

This week’s high-profile speeches by Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin dripped with ridicule toward Obama, who was repeatedly mocked for his post-college time as a “community organizer” in Chicago, working with church groups to help unemployed steelworkers.

Palin unleashed one of the uglier smears when she suggested that Obama was soft on terrorism because he opposes the use of torture and believes in respecting the U.S. Constitution.

“Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America, and he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights,” Palin said to the delight of the GOP convention delegates, who often broke into chants of “USA, USA” and – regarding the energy issue – “drill, baby, drill.”

Confronted by Palin’s Agnew-like rhetoric attacking the “Washington elites,” the TV pundits fell over themselves to praise her speech as “a home run.” By the end of the convention, major networks were following Republican talking points and making her a “Ms. Smith Goes to Washington.”

McCain picked up on that theme in his Thursday night acceptance speech, declaring: “I can’t wait until I introduce her to Washington.”

However, the evidence is that Palin is already well-acquainted with Washington, having traveled there often in pursuit of earmarked federal money for her town and state.

Bringing Home the Bacon

As mayor of the tiny town of Wasilla, Palin hired the powerful Alaska lobbying firm of Robertson, Monagle & Eastaugh, which had close ties to Republican Rep. Don Young and Sen. Ted Stevens, who is now under indictment for taking illegal gifts. Palin’s Wasilla account was handled by Stevens’s former chief of staff, Steven Silver, one of the firm’s partner.

With the help of the lobbying firm and her annual treks to Washington, Palin secured a stunning $27 million in earmarked funds for Wasilla, a town then with about 6,000 residents. Some of Palin’s projects were considered such prime examples of Washington pork that they werecited in anti-earmark reports compiled by Sen. John McCain.

As governor, Palin has continued her pursuit of earmarks for Alaska. The Washington Post reported that last February – only six months before her emergence as a Republican “reformer” – she sent Stevens a 70-page memo outlining almost $200 million of new funding requests, including a $2 million project to research crab productivity in the Bering Sea.

In redefining herself as an enemy of wasteful pork-barrel spending, Palin told the Republican convention that “I’ve championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress thanks, but no thanks, on that ‘Bridge to Nowhere.’”

However, the truth is that she supported the $223 million bridge linking Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and only shifted her position when the price ballooned and it became politically untenable.

In its timidity to challenge Palin’s self-serving accounts, the U.S. news media is following a pattern similar to its readiness to allow McCain to remake himself without much interference from inconvenient evidence to the contrary.

At the convention, while McCain’s experience as a Vietnam War POW was recounted again and again, there was virtually no mention of his serious brush with corruption in the so-called “Keating Five” scandal in the late 1980s.

Charles Keating was a financial wheeler-dealer who in 1987 wanted to frustrate oversight from federal banking regulators who were examining his Lincoln Savings and Loan Association.

At Keating’s urging, McCain wrote letters, introduced bills and pushed a Keating associate for a job on a banking regulatory board. McCain then joined several other senators in two private meetings with federal banking regulators on Keating’s behalf.

Two years later, Lincoln collapsed, costing the U.S. taxpayers $3.4 billion. Keating eventually went to prison and three other senators from the so-called Keating Five saw their political careers ruined.

McCain drew a Senate reprimand for his involvement and later lamented his faulty judgment. “Why didn’t I fully grasp the unusual appearance of such a meeting?” he wrote in his 2002 memoir, Worth the Fighting For.

Getting Off Easy

But some people close to the case thought McCain got off too easy.

Not only was McCain taking donations from Keating and his business circle, getting free rides on Keating’s corporate jet and enjoying joint vacations in the Bahamas – McCain’s second wife, the beer fortune heiress Cindy Hensley, had invested with Keating in an Arizona shopping mall.

In the years that followed, however, McCain not only got out from under the shadow of the Keating Five scandal but found a silver lining in the cloud, transforming the case into a lessons-learned chapter of his personal narrative.

McCain, as born-again reformer, soon was winning over the Washington press corps with his sponsorship of ethics legislation, like the McCain-Feingold bill limiting “soft money” contributions to the political parties.

However, there was still the other side of John McCain as he wielded enormous power from his position as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which helped him solicit campaign donations from corporations doing business before the panel.

On Feb. 21, 2008, the New York Times published an article suggesting that McCain did favors for the clients of telecommunications lobbyist Vicky Iseman, whose close relationship with the senator raised concerns among his staff.

The favors included two letters that McCain wrote in 1999 to the Federal Communications Commission demanding that it act on a long-delayed request by Iseman’s client, Florida-based Paxson Communications, to buy a Pittsburgh television station.

In a furious counter-attack against the Times article, McCain’s campaign issued a point-by-point denial, calling those letters routine correspondence that were handled by staff without McCain meeting either with Paxson or anyone from Iseman’s firm, Alcalde & Fay.

“No representative of Paxson or Alcalde & Fay personally asked Senator McCain to send a letter to the FCC,” his campaign said.

Contrary Evidence

But that turned out not to be true. Newsweek’s investigative reporter Michael Isikoff dug up a sworn deposition from Sept. 25, 2002, in which McCain himself declared that “I was contacted by Mr. Paxson on this issue. … He wanted their [the FCC’s] approval very bad for purposes of his business. I believe that Mr. Paxson had a legitimate complaint.”

Though McCain claimed not to recall whether he had spoken with Paxson’s lobbyist [presumably a reference to Iseman], he added, “I’m sure I spoke to [Paxson],” according to the deposition. [See Newsweek’s Web posting, Feb. 22, 2008]

McCain’s letters to the FCC, which Chairman William Kennard criticized as “highly unusual,” came in the same period when Paxson’s company was ferrying McCain to political events aboard its corporate jet and donating $20,000 to his campaign.

After the Feb. 21 Times article appeared, McCain’s spokesmen confirmed that Iseman accompanied McCain on at least one of those flights from Florida to Washington, though McCain said in the 2002 deposition that “I do not recall” if Paxson’s lobbyist was onboard.

First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, who conducted the deposition in connection with a challenge to the McCain-Feingold law, asked McCain if the benefits that he received from Paxson created “at least an appearance of corruption here?”

“Absolutely,” McCain answered. “I believe that there could possibly be an appearance of corruption because this system has tainted all of us.”

When Newsweek went to McCain’s 2008 campaign with the seeming contradictions between the deposition and the denial of the Times article, McCain’s people stuck to their story that the senator had never discussed the FCC issue with Paxson or his lobbyist.

That denial, however, soon crumbled when the Washington Post interviewed Paxson, who said he had talked with McCain in his Washington office several weeks before McCain sent the letters to the FCC.

The broadcast executive also believed that Iseman had helped arrange the meeting and likely was in attendance. “Was Vicki there? Probably,” Paxson said. [Washington Post, Feb. 23, 2008]

A day earlier, the Post also noted the discrepancy between a central tenet of McCain’s campaign – his denunciation of lobbyists and the corrupt revolving-door ways of Washington – and his reliance on lobbyists for his congressional work and his campaign.

“When McCain huddled with his closest advisers at his rustic Arizona cabin last weekend to map out his presidential campaign, virtually every one was part of the Washington lobbying culture he has long decried,”the Post reported on Feb. 22.

Now, however, this troublesome history seems to have been forgotten by a national press corps that McCain once called his “base” and that now is stinging from GOP rebukes for its few efforts to investigate Gov. Palin’s record.

Having reestablished the old status quo – of press favoritism toward McCain – the Republican ticket of McCain-Palin has emerged from St. Paul as “Maverick Squared,” even if a more appropriate title might be “Phonies Squared.”

Letter From Wasilla

Here is a story from the younger pages of John Gourley (going by Johnny at the time)…

My first hunting trip.

All through my smaller years, from a boy through to a man, I have known true Alaskans. People who hunted for a living. By “a living” I should be sure to mean “for survival” or “as a necessity… Something along those lines… It was just a part of life growing up here in Alaska. People hunt, people work, people live, and fish and sleep and work and work and work and so on.

 

One of my earliest memories is also one of the most influential lessons of life in my later years. My first hunting trip.

 

I must have been around 6 or 7 at the time and the setting is Alaskan winter at my childhood home in the small town of Knik. My parents were both dogsled mushers* and we lived in a house powered by generator alone. (*purely out of the adventure and experience. Not necessarily our main form of travel… though there were some points in my life where it became our most available source of transportation.) Our nearest neighbors were a couple of miles away, give or take. This, again, is not needed in this story but only here for you to understand the place in which the story is set… We happened to be sitting in our living room when, outside our massive picture windows, we spot a moose.  I will say, to a young boy, this animal was a giant. I can’t honestly tell you in any way how large it actually was, but to my eyes there was and will be nothing bigger. My family and I were sitting around watching it mill about minding its nature and peeling bark from the young birch trees. After a few moments my father turns to me “Hey Johnny, you want to go hunting? You want to go get a moose?” My mind went running. I had never been hunting before. EVERYONE I knew had been hunting and hunted. They had gone out with their fathers and now it was my turn. I nodded my little head and ran to throw on my snowsuit while my dad went to get his gun.

 

 

 

 

We walked outside in the cold and the snow, him in his bunny boots and winter coat and myself waddling out like a small scale Michelin man to meet our Moose and our dinner for the next few months. I remember the snow being very deep. Realistically, a foot of snow was deep to a small child. For effect and in the spirit of adventure and Alaskan winters I will say it must’ve been the wildest winter I can remember. Meter upon meter of snow. The naked birch trees blending with the white now, leaving little blotches of black and grey at the knots and branches. There was our moose. We had run right into its path. Right where we wanted to be. My father crouches down to my already shrunken size “Are you ready Johnny? Should we get it?” I again nod my head. My father raises the barrel and looks through the scope. We were less than 20 yards away, if that. He pulls his head away from the scope and looks to me again. “Are you sure? Do you want me to shoot it?” This time I am confused. In my mind I am thinking, “Of course I want you to shoot it! We are hunting! This is what we do, isn’t it? My friends have done it and I know you have as well! What are we waiting for?” But again, I nod. The nod was more out of fear of the moose hearing me. Normally I would have spoken my thoughts out loud. At the very least I would have questioned the hesitance. My dad looks through the barrel one last time. He turns off the safety and readies the rifle. He sights the moose and sits there for a moment. All the while I am looking from him to the moose then back to him then back to the moose. I hear the safety come back on and a turn back to see my father lowering the gun and resting it by his side. At this point I am about as confused as a small boy can be. Dad is looking at me and he says, “We’re not going to get it.” I ask him why. What he said has stuck with me throughout my entire life. “Because we don’t need it.” We simply stood up and walked back to the house, leaving the moose to its dinner of baby birch.

 

“Because we don’t need it.” Possibly the best lesson a man like this could have taught me. He moved up to Alaska in 1970, 2 years after he graduated. He lived in the deep woods in the mountains of Chase. He has run one of the most intense races in the world, The Iditarod, he worked as a potato farmer, lived off of 300$ for an entire year out in these woods… This man is as Alaskan as anyone I know. The lesson he handed to me was a respect of the world we live in. A respect for the animals we live with and the people we deal with. He has traveled around the state working in construction. Building homes for the people and buildings for companies and upon entering these small towns for work always insisted we hire within the community and support their way of life and living, despite what these companies felt to be the most economical. He has handed me so much, all of my family, really.

 

 

 “Because we don’t need it.” My mother, Jennifer Gourley, is much the same. While my father was away working she would take care of our dogs and run the house. She would fix the generator when it would break down. She took us to baseball and hockey and gymnastics. She took on foster kids that needed help. Gave them good meals and a family setting. She volunteered as a firefighter when there were forest fires threatening the areas. When Big Lake and Knik were being evacuated. She has since, in the most recent years become a fire fighter, an ambulance driver, a rescue technician, part of the dive rescue team, and Willows firefighter of the year. She is a part of her community.

 

“Because we don’t need it” was something that has been taught to me every day of my life through these amazing people and to watch Sarah Palin get so much attention based on what? 2 years as Governor of the State of Alaska? Or is it based on her time as the mayor of Wasilla? The town of 5,000 at the time. 

“Because we don’t need it.”

We don’t need drilling in some of our most beautiful and untouched land. We need to work towards options. We should be investing and working towards clean fuels. We don’t need to be draining our planet of every last drop before moving on to the next. Sarah Palin disagrees

We needed votes to add the polar bear to the endangered species list. (I know, I know, that polar bear rug would really bring the room together!).  Sarah Palin disagreed

We don’t need aerial hunting… Again. We do NOT need this. I don’t know of any true Alaskan that feels it is good sport to shoot an animal from a plane. Sarah Palin disagrees

We don’t need book burners and censors. Sarah Palin pushed to get the librarian of Wasilla fired when certain books were not removed from the public library. Who else in history has banned books?  Not very good company is it?

We don’t need more debts. Palin spent 15 million on a new sports center in the valley, leaving the small town of Wasilla, Alaska in debt to the amount of 22 million. (That’s 22 million more than the debt she took on when taking on this lovely playtime as mayor.) 15 million just for a new sports center.

We don’t need family feuds interfering with duties. I know you feel your ex-brother-in-law was a dick… but trying to get him fired based on this may cause a little trouble. Sarah?

We don’t need another vote against gay marriage. This is just standard every day equal rights being overlooked. Sarah Palin disagrees.

 

We don’t need to overlook global warming. Science can now tell us “Yup. That is happening.” Not my words, that is science speak. Sarah Palin disagrees.

We don’t need a wolf in sheep’s clothing… or a sheep in wolves clothing, depending on how you look at it. She has billed her self as this overly average “hockey mom” and it is just not what I see. I see the sport hunter, the censor, choice taker, the revelations reader, and the high school cheerleader. It is endlessly embarrassing to watch people fall all over this idea. This is not my Alaska. The Alaska I know.

 

What we do need is love and respect for one another and respect for the world we live in.

Link.

Load Of Crap From Faux News

Something I Completely Fabricated

Sarah In Action

Know her from “her” record:

I may be one of the few people in the continental United States who could tell you who Walt Monegan is without having to read a news story or a Wikipedia entry on Sarah Palin.

All you probably know is that Palin, the Alaska governor whom John McCain picked as his vice presidential running mate, is being investigated because of claims that she or others in her administration abused their power or improperly pressured Monegan to fire a state trooper who is Palin’s ex-brother-in-law.

Palin dismissed Monegan from his state public safety commissioner post in July, and has provided several explanations for the dismissal since then. But there has been a consistent and ongoing effort to discredit Monegan and impugn his integrity, and dismiss the case as nothing more than a politically motivated hack job.

I interviewed Monegan for 90 minutes in February 2005 when, as chief of the Anchorage Police Department, he was presiding over a crime prevention program that was revolutionary in terms of treating people with mental illness.

That year, I was one of six people in the nation who received a Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellowship to write about mental health issues. I chose the judicial treatment of mental health as a topic – and mental health experts and police departments throughout the country all gave me similar advice:

“Go to Alaska,” they said, in so many words. “Talk to Walt Monegan.”

As I wrote later, in an April 2005 article for The Record of Bergen County, N.J., many in Alaska suffer from the cold, the constant darkness and the isolation of the state’s mountain towns that are inaccessible by car. The state consistently has had among the highest suicide rates in the nation.

Story continues below 

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Monegan’s department was teaching its officers how to deal with a mental health crisis, and serving as a model for other police departments in the country – such as Memphis – who were doing similar things.

At the time, 10 percent of his 330 officers were “crisis-intervention” trainees who were learning how to speak to, deal with and ultimately handle people with psychiatric disorders. They were attempting to wipe away the “psycho-killer” approach to handling crime scenes that almost always yielded the same results: somebody at the crime scene dies; or somebody gets arrested, then thrown in jail, then released from jail and, ultimately, commits another crime.

Monegan understood this. He was a native Alaskan who, according to his biography, was raised in “bush Alaska” in a town called Nyac, by his maternal grandparents. At that time, according to his biography, Nyac was a gold mining community with a population of 54 people and a one-room schoolhouse. “People used to drive their cars for miles on the frozen ice,” he said.

He was inspired to change the department’s approach, he said, because he was tired of watching the same people – all displaying symptoms of mental disorders – getting arrested over and over, only to end up back in the streets, untreated.

One man, in particular, was involved in a hostage situation that Monegan, as a patrol officer, responded to. Prior to that, his rap sheet involved mostly petty thefts; this time, he was armed and dangerous.

Monegan hoped to talk the man down. But it was too late. By the time he got there, the man took his own life.

“We’ve all watched young guys grow up and die, or they end up in jail,” said Monegan.

Out in front of his department’s efforts was a young, energetic and God-fearing police officer named Wendi Shackelford who arranged my interview with Monegan and, like Palin, considered her faith to be her central inspiration. “I think God is calling me to do this,” she said.

I rode with Shackelford as she drove Anchorage’s ice-ridden streets on a 10-degree February day and watched her deal with the various “crises” that police officers run into every day and go well beyond their job descriptions – but force them to play the role of amateur psychologists because nobody else will.

With Monegan’s backing and encouragement, Shackelford had “assigned” herself to a young man who became delusional. His father gave him money and shelter. But nothing helped – instead, he broke into houses, hoping to find a woman who he thought was being kidnapped.

As a dispatcher’s voice blared over her radio, Shackelford was busy listening on her earpiece as she fielded repeated cellphone calls about the man while navigating Anchorage’s streets.

“He went into another house?” she said. “I knew it was a matter of time…Has he been self-mutilating?”

The officer then made a litany of calls – to psychiatric screeners at the local hospital, to the man’s family and then to the local “mental health court,” where he would find compassion, understanding and options. She ultimately got the man to agree to her plan, and to get treatment.

“I just try to get people to negotiate,” she said. “We don’t get paid extra for this. It’s a matter of the heart.”

Link.

Something To Hold Him To

President McCain at his coronation:

And let me just offer an advance warning to the old, big- spending,

do-nothing, me-first, country-second crowd: Change is coming.

(APPLAUSE)

I’m not — I’m not in the habit of breaking my promises to my country,

and neither is Governor Palin. And when we tell you we’re going to

change Washington and stop leaving our country’s problems for some

unluckier generation to fix, you can count on it.

And we’ve…

(APPLAUSE)

We’ve got a record of doing just that, and the strength, experience,

judgment, and backbone to keep our word to you.

(APPLAUSE)

You well know I’ve been called a maverick, someone who…

(APPLAUSE)

… someone who marches to the beat of his own drum. Sometimes it’s

meant as a compliment; sometimes it’s not. What it really means is I

understand who I work for. I don’t work for a party. I don’t work for

a special interest. I don’t work for myself. I work for you.

(APPLAUSE)

I’ve fought corruption, and it didn’t matter if the culprits were

Democrats or Republicans. They violated their public trust, and they

had to be held accountable.

elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us.

MCCAIN: I’ve fought the big spenders…

(APPLAUSE)

I’ve fought the big spenders in both parties, who waste your money on

things you neither need nor want, and the first big-spending

pork-barrel earmark bill that comes across my desk, I will veto it. I

will make them famous, and you will know their names. You will know

their names.

(APPLAUSE)

We’re not going to allow that while you struggle to buy groceries,

fill your gas tank, and make your mortgage payment. I’ve fought to get

million-dollar checks out of our elections. I’ve fought lobbyists who

stole from Indian tribes. I’ve fought crooked deals in the Pentagon.

I’ve fought tobacco companies and trial lawyers, drug companies and

union bosses.

(APPLAUSE)

I’ve fought for the right strategy and more troops in Iraq when it

wasn’t the popular thing to do.

(APPLAUSE)

***

I fight for the family of Matthew Stanley of Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.

(APPLAUSE)

Matthew died serving our country in Iraq. I wear his bracelet and

think of him every day. I intend to honor their sacrifice by making

sure the country their son loved so well and never returned to remains

safe from its enemies.

(APPLAUSE)

I fight to restore the pride and principles of our party. We were

Lies Of The Wingnuts

Here’s what you need to know to be a wingnut pundit, via Michael Kinsley:

The whole “experience” debate is silly. Under our system of government, there is only one job that gives you both executive and foreign-policy experience, and that’s the one McCain and Obama are running for. Nevertheless, it’s a hardy perennial: If your opponent is a governor, you accuse him or her of lacking foreign-policy experience. If he or she is a member of Congress, you say this person has never run anything. And if, by any chance, your opponent has done both, you say that he or she is a “professional politician.” When Republicans aren’t complaining about someone’s lack of experience, they are calling for term limits.