Palin Thinks First Amendment Is Supposed To Protect Politicians From The Media

Some one needs to make her read the Constitution.

Sarah Palin on the stump today declared that the First Amendment was supposed to protect Political Campaigns from the media. That woman makes my mind boggle. How did she become Governor? Alaska, seriously what were you thinking...

Live From The Couch : News Is Wall To Wall "McCain Campaign Lies"

Every major news outlet tonight is talking about the lies John McCain and Sarah Palin have been saying the last couple weeks. I love it, finally he is getting called out. They are getting mighty upset too, because the reporters know what they are saying is not true, and when they ask him to clarify he (they can't talk to Palin) keeps lying about all of it. So they know its a lie and he won't admit it.

He better start working on another BB-Q. Because it looks like a good portion of the press might not be buying his 'straight talk' anymore, and might not give him the benefit of the doubt(like they have been) and start fact checking his ass more often.
That is great.

John McCain Finally Getting Flack For 'Mistruths'

It seems all the lies might finally be getting McCain-Palin in some trouble. Good read

McCain Barbs Stirring Outcry as Distortions

Senator John McCain visited "The View," where Joy Behar, third from right, said two of his advertisements were "lies."

By MICHAEL COOPER and JIM RUTENBERG

Published: September 13, 2008



Harsh advertisements and negative attacks are a staple of presidential campaigns, but Senator John McCain has drawn an avalanche of criticism this week from Democrats, independent groups and even some Republicans for regularly stretching the truth in attacking Senator Barack Obama's record and positions.

Mr. Obama has also been accused of distortions, but this week Mr. McCain has found himself under particularly heavy fire for a pair of headline-grabbing attacks. First the McCain campaign twisted Mr. Obama's words to suggest that he had compared Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, to a pig after Mr. Obama said, in questioning Mr. McCain's claim to be the change agent in the race, "You can put lipstick on a pig; it's still a pig." (Mr. McCain once used the same expression to describe Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's health plan.)

Then he falsely claimed that Mr. Obama supported "comprehensive sex education" for kindergartners (he supported teaching them to be alert for inappropriate advances from adults).

Those attacks followed weeks in which Mr. McCain repeatedly, and incorrectly, asserted that Mr. Obama would raise taxes on the middle class, even though analysts say he would cut taxes on the middle class more than Mr. McCain would, and misrepresented Mr. Obama's positions on energy and health care.

A McCain advertisement called "Fact Check" was itself found to be "less than honest" by FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan group. The group complained that the McCain campaign had cited its work debunking various Internet rumors about Ms. Palin and implied in the advertisement that the rumors had originated with Mr. Obama.

In an interview Friday on the NY1 cable news channel, a McCain supporter, Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, called "ridiculous" the implication that Mr. Obama's "lipstick on a pig" comment was a reference to Ms. Palin, whom he also defended as coming under unfair attack.

"The last month, for sure," said Don Sipple, a Republican advertising strategist, "I think the predominance of liberty taken with truth and the facts has been more McCain than Obama."

Indeed, in recent days, Mr. McCain has been increasingly called out by news organizations, editorial boards and independent analysts like FactCheck.org. The group, which does not judge whether one candidate is more misleading than another, has cried foul on Mr. McCain more than twice as often since the start of the political conventions as it has on Mr. Obama.

A McCain spokesman, Brian Rogers, said the campaign had evidence for all its claims. "We stand fully by everything that's in our ads," Mr. Rogers said, "and everything that we've been saying we provide detailed backup for - everything. And if you and the Obama campaign want to disagree, that's your call."

Mr. McCain came into the race promoting himself as a truth teller and has long publicly deplored the kinds of negative tactics that helped sink his candidacy in the Republican primaries in 2000. But his strategy now reflects a calculation advisers made this summer - over the strenuous objections of some longtime hands who helped him build his "Straight Talk" image - to shift the campaign more toward disqualifying Mr. Obama in the eyes of voters.

"I think the McCain folks realize if they can get this thing down in the mud, drag Obama into the mud, that's where they have the best advantage to win," said Matthew Dowd, who worked with many top McCain campaign advisers when he was President Bush's chief strategist in the 2004 campaign, but who has since had a falling out with the White House. "If they stay up at 10,000 feet, they don't."

For all the criticism, the offensive seems to be having an impact. It has been widely credited by strategists in both parties with rejuvenating Mr. McCain's campaign and putting Mr. Obama on the defensive since it began early this summer.

Some who have criticized Mr. McCain have accused him of blatant untruths and of failing to correct himself when errors were pointed out.

On Friday on "The View," generally friendly territory for politicians, one co-host, Joy Behar, criticized his new advertisements. "We know that those two ads are untrue," Ms. Behar said. "They are lies. And yet you, at the end of it, say, 'I approve these messages.' Do you really approve them?"

"Actually they are not lies," Mr. McCain said crisply, "and have you seen some of the ads that are running against me?"

Mr. Obama's hands have not always been clean in this regard. He was called out earlier for saying, incorrectly, that Mr. McCain supported a "hundred-year war" in Iraq after Mr. McCain said in January that he would be fine with a hypothetical 100-year American presence in Iraq, as long as Americans were not being injured or killed there.

More recently, Mr. Obama has been criticized for advertisements that have distorted Mr. McCain's record on schools financing and incorrectly accused him of not supporting loan guarantees for the auto industry - a hot topic in Michigan. He has also taken Mr. McCain's repeated comments that American economy is "fundamentally sound" out of context, leaving out the fact that Mr. McCain almost always adds at the same time that he understands that times are tough and "people are hurting."

But sensing an opening in the mounting criticism of Mr. McCain, the Obama campaign released a withering statement after Mr. McCain's appearance on "The View."

"In running the sleaziest campaign since South Carolina in 2000 and standing by completely debunked lies on national television, it's clear that John McCain would rather lose his integrity than lose an election," Hari Sevugan, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said in a statement.

At an event in Dover, N.H., a voter asked Mr. Obama when he would start "fighting back." Mr. Obama, who began his own confrontational advertising campaign Friday, said, "Our ads have been pretty tough, but I just have a different philosophy that I'm going to respond with the truth."

"I'm not going to start making up lies about John McCain," Mr. Obama said.

The McCain advertisements are devised to draw the interest of bloggers and cable news producers - but not necessarily always intended for wide, actual use on television stations - to shift the terms of the debate by questioning Mr. Obama's character and qualifications.

Mr. Sipple, the Republican strategist, voiced concern that Mr. McCain's approach could backfire. "Any campaign that is taking liberty with the truth and does it in a serial manner will end up paying for it in the end," he said. "But it's very unbecoming to a political figure like John McCain whose flag was planted long ago in ground that was about 'straight talk' and integrity."

The campaign has also been selective in its portrayal of Mr. McCain's running mate, Ms. Palin. The campaign's efforts to portray her as the bane of federal earmark spending was complicated by evidence that she had sought a great deal of federal money both as governor of Alaska and as mayor of Wasilla.

Ms. Palin has often told audiences about pulling the plug on the so-called Bridge to Nowhere, an expensive federal project to build a bridge to a sparsely populated Alaskan island that became a symbol of wasteful federal spending. "I told Congress, 'Thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska," she said this week in Virginia.

But her position was more like "please" before it became "no thanks." Ms. Palin supported the bridge project while running for governor, and abandoned it after it became a national scandal and Congress said the state could keep the money for other projects. As a mayor and governor, she hired lobbyists to request millions in federal spending for Alaska. In an ABC News interview on Friday with Charles Gibson, Ms. Palin largely stuck to her version of the events.

Disputed characterizations are not uncommon on the trail. At a campaign stop this week in Missouri, Mr. McCain said that Mr. Obama's plan would "force small businesses to cut jobs and reduce wages and force families into a government-run health care system where a bureaucrat stands between you and your doctor."

Jonathan B. Oberlander, who teaches health policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said that Mr. Obama's plan would not force families into a government-run system. "I would say this is an inaccurate and false characterization of the Obama plan," he said. "I don't use those words lightly."

Sarah Palin Is A Serial Liar

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Palin Cannot Complain About Press Coverage Of Family

Sarah Palin cannot complain about press coverage of her family and daughter when she literally walked them out on the public stage last week. If you don't want discussions and coverage of your daughter, then you don't bring her and her boyfriend on the national stage for all to see.

Don't get me wrong I would much rather see the issues covered. I think contraception education and Palins stand on that should be as far as we take the issue. I must say though if you do not want your family scrutinized, don't bring them out for all the nation to see. Whether it is justified or not, if you introduce them to the nation, they will be scrutinized. If she were a good leader she would of thought of this before hand.

What kind of mother puts her daughter in that situation. She knew the Country would find out. Sounds like her political motivations were greater than doing right by her family. Just my opinion.

Bristol Palin: Poster Child For Contraception Education ?

Sarah Palin believes in abstinence only sex? education. She believes sex education should not involve education on contraceptives. She also believes there should not be a planned parenthood.

So obviously abstinence only education does not work. Sarah Palin's 17 year old daughter Bristol proves that. If she had been taught to use contraception her and her boyfriend might of not gotten themselves in their little predicament. Teenagers will have sex believe that no matter what their beliefs are, leaving them unprepared and uneducated is not the solution.

I say make Bristol Palin the posterchild of how abstinence only education does not work and teenagers need to be taught about contraception during sex education. Also planned parenthood is a very needed service. I don't care what anybody says. It helps many people.