Not only does John McCain have at least 10 properties he can’t remember, but he also owns a parking lot in Phoenix Arizona worth between $1.4 and $2.4 million. That’s over $1 million more than the average American home!

It’s no wonder McCain has said time and time again that the “fundamentals of the economy are strong.”  He’s living in the land of affluence, and has no concept of just how terrible our economy has become under President Bush.  According to the U.S. Census, 37.3 million people were living in poverty in 2007.  45.7 million (15.3 percent of the population) don’t have health insurance—a staggering number that has risen by 6 million since Bush took office in 2001.  And yet McCain extols Bush’s economy and proposes his own policies that would sink our country further into debt.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said that when it comes to the economy,

“I think John McCain is wrong. He doesn’t even know how many homes he has. … We’ve seen the McCain position as just a continuation of the Bush Administration. It’s President Bush’s policies that got us into the mess that we have now. And it’s not only a short term crisis, it’s long term and it has to be addressed. Workers are having a tough time. The wage inequality that’s out there is unbelievable, and health care and retirement security are threatened. Those are some of the reasons that we’re not supporting John McCain.” Read the rest of this entry »

By Isaac Fitzgerald and Tana Ganeva, AlterNet. Posted September 3, 2008.

More skeletons come out of Palin’s closet.

Since the McCain campaign apparently didn’t even bother Googling Sarah Palin before picking her to join the Republican ticket, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to compile some important — and terrifying — revelations about Palin.

Yesterday AlterNet ran a piece titled “Top Ten Most Disturbing Facts and Impressions of Sarah Palin.” And in only 24 hours, almost as many exaggerations, misrepresentations and outright lies have reared their ugly heads. If you already read yesterday’s piece, here’s the next installment: Read the rest of this entry »

VP VETTING

McCain Says Vetting Process Was Thorough

Republican presidential candidate John McCain says he’s satisfied that Sarah Palin’s background was properly checked out before the Alaska governor joined the Republican ticket.

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 3, 2008; Page A01

ST. PAUL, Minn., Sept. 2 — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was not subjected to a lengthy in-person background interview with the head of Sen. John McCain‘s vice presidential vetting team until last Wednesday in Arizona, the day before McCain asked her to be his running mate, and she did not disclose the fact that her 17-year-old daughter was pregnant until that meeting, two knowledgeable McCain officials acknowledged Tuesday.
Palin was one of two finalists in the vice presidential sweepstakes who were interviewed last week by former White House counsel Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr., just days before McCain introduced her to the nation as his choice. The other finalist was Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. One of the officials said Culvahouse was chasing down last-minute information about Pawlenty at the request of the campaign as late as last Thursday, the day McCain offered the job to Palin and she accepted.
The new details of the selection process provide a fuller picture of how and when McCain made his decision. Despite the late interview of the little-known Palin, senior McCain advisers said Tuesday night that she was chosen only after a lengthy and deliberative process that included the same background investigation given to others on McCain’s shortlist and considerable debate among the candidate’s inner circle about all his choices.
McCain did not speak face to face with Palin until Thursday morning, at his retreat in Sedona, Ariz. He also talked to her by telephone the previous Sunday. McCain had spoken with all of the others on his shortlist over the course of a selection process that went on for several months, but he was least familiar personally with the person he finally chose.
Palin flew to Arizona last Wednesday and met with senior McCain advisers Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter that night in Flagstaff. What had not been known previously was that she had met earlier the same day with Culvahouse.
McCain advisers said they had gathered extensive information about Palin before that meeting, including details of an ongoing investigation in Alaska involving her firing of the state’s public safety commissioner. Details of her life and her record as governor that have since emerged in media accounts were discovered during that process, they said. Read the rest of this entry »

By Eugene Robinson

Tuesday, September 2, 2008; Page A15

The Washington Post

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Has anyone noticed that Sarah Palin‘s central claim to political fame is a fraud? She represents herself as a fiscal conservative who abhors pork-barrel projects and said no thanks to the “Bridge to Nowhere” — a $398 million span that would have linked Ketchikan, Alaska, to its airport across the Tongass Narrows. But as mayor of Wasilla (pop. 9,780), she hired a Washington lobbyist to bring home the bacon. And as a candidate for governor just two years ago, she supported both the Ketchikan bridge and the congressional earmark that would have paid most of its cost.

I know, we’re not supposed to pay attention to such inconvenient details. We’re supposed to be dazzled by how unaffected she is, how plain-spoken, how “genuine.”

Indeed, if you don’t get hung up on her actual record, Palin simply is who she is. It’s not her fault that she’s a former Miss Wasilla with a campy “Northern Exposure” vibe, doctrinaire social-conservative views and no discernible qualifications for being vice president. It’s undeniable that people in Alaska apparently like her well enough, though they seem to have been even more shocked than the rest of us when she was named to the Republican ticket. In any event, she’s not the one who created this farcical situation.

We learned last week that John McCain is not who he is — not, at least, who he claims to be. The steady, straight-talking, country-first statesman his campaign has been selling is a fictional character. The real McCain is either alarmingly cynical or dangerously reckless.

You will recall that McCain gave the same prime criterion for choosing a running mate that every presidential candidate gives: someone who is ready to step in as president if, heaven forbid, the need arises. Barack Obama echoed those words before picking Joe Biden, who is about as prepared as a vice presidential candidate could ever be. Read the rest of this entry »

By Richard Cohen

Tuesday, September 2, 2008; Page A15

Washington Post

One of the great sights of American political life — a YouTube moment if ever there was one — was to see the doughboy face of Newt Gingrich as he extolled the virtues of Sarah Palin, a sitcom of a vice presidential choice and a disaster movie if she moves up to the presidency: “She’s the first journalist ever to be nominated, I think, for the president or vice president, and she was a sportscaster on local television,” Gingrich said on the “Today” show. “So she has a lot of interesting background. And she has a lot of experience. Remember that, when people worry about how inexperienced she is, for two years she’s been in charge of the Alaska National Guard.”

It’s a pity Gingrich was not around when the Roman Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, better known by his nickname Caligula, reputedly named Incitatus as a consul and a priest. Incitatus was his horse.

John McCain‘s selection of Palin, which I first viewed with horror, could now be seen in a different light. Based on various television interviews over the Labor Day weekend — and a careful reading of the transcripts — it is possible that this is McCain’s attempt to make fools of his fellow Republicans. He has succeeded beyond all expectations.

Gingrich’s point about Palin being commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard has been echoed throughout the GOP. In fact, even Cindy McCain pointed out — rightly enough — that Alaska is across the Bering Strait from Russia and so Palin, by deduction, has been on the front lines of the Cold War . . . had it not ended in 1989. Read the rest of this entry »