The two presidential campaigns had declared a truce for the anniversary of 9/11. Traditional campaigning, especially of the negative sort, was supposed to be put on hold. But John McCain's campaign, it's now clear, broke that truce -- and did so with an ad that nonpartisan watchdog FactCheck.org calls "particularly egregious" for its distortions.

According to The non-partisan factcheck.org

The McCain-Palin campaign has released a new TV ad that distorts quotes from the Obama campaign. It takes words out of context to make it sound as though the Democratic ticket is belittling Palin:

• The ad says "they said she was doing 'what she was told.' " But the Obama adviser who's being quoted didn't accuse Palin of meekly following orders. What he actually said is that she made a false claim about Obama's legislative record and added, "maybe that's what she was told."

• It says "they lashed out at Sarah Palin; dismissed her as 'good looking,' " But "they" didn't lash out at all. Obama – who is the one pictured – didn't say anything like that. The only one the McCain campaign quotes is Obama's running mate, Biden, and he actually offered the remark as a compliment. Biden said the "obvious" difference between Palin and himself is "she's good looking."

• The ad says Obama was "disrespectful" when he accused Palin of "lying" about her record. But the truth is Palin's claim to have "said no" to the "bridge to nowhere" is indeed a dubious one, as we and many have pointed out.

If they lie, they steal.

Uhk-ummm, I mean making a "clarification".

WASHINGTON - Sarah Palin's visit to Iraq in 2007 consisted of a brief stop at a border crossing between Iraq and Kuwait, the vice presidential candidate's campaign said yesterday, in the second official revision of her only trip outside North America.

Following her selection last month as John McCain's running mate, aides said Palin had traveled to Ireland, Germany, Kuwait, and Iraq to meet with members of the Alaska National Guard. During that trip she was said to have visited a "military outpost" inside Iraq. The campaign has since repeated that Palin's foreign travel included an excursion into the Iraq battle zone.

But in response to queries about the details of her trip, campaign aides and National Guard officials in Alaska said by telephone yesterday that she did not venture beyond the Kuwait-Iraq border when she visited Khabari Alawazem Crossing, also known as "K-Crossing," on July 25, 2007.

Asked to clarify where she traveled in Iraq, Palin's spokeswoman, Maria Comella, confirmed that "She visited a military outpost on the other side of the Kuwait-Iraq border."

It was the second such clarification in as many weeks of the itinerary of what Palin has called "the trip of a lifetime." Earlier, the campaign acknowledged that Palin made only a refueling stop in Ireland.

In her interview with ABC News Thursday night, Palin did not mention Iraq in describing the visit, saying only that she went to Kuwait and Germany to meet with US forces.

Let us count.

• Charging rape victims $300 or more for the rape kits the police use to gather evidence
• Refusing to admit she ever supported the "bridge to nowhere" during her campaign to be governor
• Saying she was against pork earmarks when she asked for more per capita than any other governor in the USA
• During the ABC interview "When Gibson noted she had requested funding to study the mating habits of crabs and other small-bore projects that typically draw John McCain's ire, Palin said the specific requests had come through universities and other public entities. She also said they weren't worked out by lobbyists behind closed doors.."[SOURCE: Yahoo | 12 September 2008] -- notice she admits that its not always big bad lobbyists stealing the people's money for selfish special interests.
• She said she did not personally get involved in trying to fire the ex-husband state trooper of her sister; then the emails surfaced.

In other words, when Republicans deny and say something isn't true -- that means it is not only true, but it's also probably much worse than you realize.

If they lie, they steal.

Lipstick on a pig. Lipstick on a pig. Lipstick on a pig.

The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.

“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed....

“You can’t challenge people without a factual basis for doing so,” said J. Gerald Hebert, a former voting rights litigator for the U.S. Justice Department who now runs the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington D.C.-based public-interest law firm. “I don’t think a foreclosure notice is sufficient basis for a challenge, because people often remain in their homes after foreclosure begins and sometimes are able to negotiate and refinance.”

Here is the Republican tactic. Challenge as many voters as possible by using various lists. Force the challenged voters to vote on provisional ballots that won't get counted. During the 2004 presidential elections: in Ohio, more than 300,000 provisional ballots were thrown away before ever being counted. In Colorado, more than 100,000 ... in New Mexico, more than 50,000.

Or how about throwing away voter ballots because ... they were mistaken for trash.

PALM BEACH COUNTY, FL -- Are the 3,478 missing ballots inside of a landfill?

Were they inadvertently thrown out by elections officials who thought they were trash? NewsChannel 5 has exclusively learned that is the leading theory on officials' minds. We've learned that the ballots in question, likely came from a precinct in Boynton Beach.

They were collected, as all the ballots in the county were, and the put in zippered bank-like bags.

For safety they are then loaded into duffel bags for delivery to the board of elections. We've learned that at this particular precinct elections workers ‘ran out’ of duffel bags, and black plastic garbage bags were instead used.

Our sources tell us a sheriff’s deputy assigned to deliver the ballots shuttled the plastic bag, or bags, with the ballots in them to the Board of Elections and handed them over. His job was done and the ballots were safely delivered.

What happened next is under investigation, but a reliable law enforcement source tells us it is believed the garbage bag was thrown out, mistaken for trash on a very busy night.

From West Palm Beach, of all places ... remember the place of confusing Butterfly ballots of 2000, when thousands of older Jewish voters mistakenly voted for anti-zionist Pat Buchanan because they were confused by the ballots?

The Republican party is a bunch of anti-democratic despots. They have only three principles: lie, cheat, and steal

Click here for the non-partisan FactCheck.org's analysis of the Republican convention speech dishonesty.

In 2006, the Ketchikan Daily News quoted her expressing optimism and support for the bridge at a Ketchikan campaign stop.

Palin, 2006: "People across the nation struggle with the idea of building a bridge because they’ve been under these misperceptions about the bridge and the purpose,” said Palin, who described the link as the Ketchikan area’s potential for expansion and growth. … Palin said Alaska’s congressional delegation worked hard to obtain funding for the bridge as part of a package deal and that she “would not stand in the way of the progress toward that bridge.”

SARAH PALIN makes John McCain look even older than he is. And he seemed more than willing to play that part on Thursday night. By the time he slogged through his nearly 50-minute acceptance speech — longer even than Barack Obama’s — you half- expected some brazen younger Republican (Mitt Romney, perhaps?) to dash onstage to give him a gold watch and the bum’s rush.

Still, attention must be paid. McCain’s address, though largely a repetitive slew of stump-speech lines and worn G.O.P. orthodoxy, reminded us of what we once liked about the guy: his aspirations to bipartisanship, his heroic service in Vietnam, his twinkle. He took his (often inaccurate) swipes at Obama, but, in winning contrast to Palin and Rudy Giuliani, he wasn’t smug or nasty.

The only problem, of course, is that the entire thing was a sham.

...

In his 26 years in Washington, most of it with a Republican in the White House and roughly half of it with Republicans in charge of Congress, he was better at lecturing his party about reform than leading a reform movement. G.O.P. corruption and governmental dysfunction only grew. So did his cynical flip-flops on the most destructive policies of the president who remained nameless Thursday night....

[Governor Sarah Palin] didn’t say “no thanks” to the “Bridge to Nowhere” until after Congress had already abandoned it but given Alaska a blank check for $223 million in taxpayers’ money anyway. Far from rejecting federal pork, she hired lobbyists to secure her town a disproportionate share of earmarks ($1,000 per resident in 2002, 20 times the per capita average in other states). Though McCain claimed “she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities,” she has never issued a single command as head of the Alaska National Guard. As for her “executive experience” as mayor, she told her hometown paper in Wasilla, Alaska, in 1996, the year of her election: “It’s not rocket science. It’s $6 million and 53 employees.” Her much-advertised crusade against officials abusing their office is now compromised by a bipartisan ethics investigation into charges that she did the same.

Click on the source to read the complete article.

“Palin is a conniving, manipulative, a**hole,” someone who thinks these are positive traits in a governor told me, summing up Palin’s tenure in Alaska state and local politics.

“She’s a bigot, a racist, and a liar,” is the more blunt assessment of Arnold Gerstheimer who lived in Alaska until two years ago and is now a businessman in Idaho.

...

“The GOP is kind of like organized crime up here,” an insurance agent in Anchorage who knows the Palin family, explained. “It’s corrupt and arrogant. They’re all rich because they do private sweetheart deals with the oil companies, and they can destroy anyone. And they will, if they have to.”

“Once Palin became mayor,” he continued, “She became part of that inner circle.”

...

According to Kilkenny and others in Wasilla as well as Juneau, Palin reduced progressive property taxes for businesses while mayor and increased a regressive sales tax which even hits necessities such as food. The tax cuts she promoted in her St. Paul speech actually benefited large corporate property owners far more than they benefited residents. Indeed, Kilkenny insists that many Wasilla home owners actually saw their tax bill skyrocket to make up for the shortfall. Two other Wasillian’s with whom I spoke said property taxes on their modest, three bedroom homes rose during the Palin regime.

To an outsider, it would seem hard to do, but an oil-rich town with zero debt on the day she was inaugurated mayor was left saddled with $22 million of debt by the time she moved away to become governor – especially since nothing was spent on things such as improving the city’s infrastructure or building a much-needed sewage treatment plant. So what did Mayor Palin spend the taxpayer’s money on, if not fixing streets and scrubbing sewage?

For starters, she remodelled her office. Several times over, as a matter of fact.

Then Palin spent $1 million on an unnecessary, new park that no one other than the contractors and Palin seemed to want. Next, Sarah doled out more than $15 million of taxpayer money for a sports complex that she shoved through even though the city did not own clear title to the land; now, seven years later, the matter is still in litigation and lawyer fees are said to be close to at least half of the original estimated price of the facility.

She also worked hard to get voters approval of a $5.5 million bond proposal for roads that could have been built without borrowing. Anchorage may not be the center of the financial universe but, like good Republicans everywhere, Sarah Palin knows how to please Alaskan bankers and bond dealers.

For good measure, she turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots.

You'll have to read the article yourself. It's from the LA Progressive, by Charley James, and the quotes are from real people who have real stories to tell.

A "reformer" my ass.

Key Alaska allies of John McCain are trying to derail a politically charged investigation into Gov. Sarah Palin's firing of her public safety commissioner in order to prevent a so-called "October surprise" that would produce embarrassing information about the vice presidential candidate on the eve of the election.

In a move endorsed by the McCain campaign Friday, John Coghill, the GOP chairman of the state House Rules Committee, wrote a letter seeking a meeting of Alaska's bipartisan Legislative Council in order to remove the Democratic state senator in charge of the so-called "troopergate" investigation.

Did Palin fire public safety commissioner Walter Monnegan when he refused to fire a state trooper Mike Wooten on the orders of Governor Palin? Mike Wooten was in a bitter divorce with Palin's sister, in which Palin herself stood outside the couple's window to write down what was said during one of the couples raging fights.

Palin was for the "bridge to nowhere" initially, and in fact made public statements about how insulting the phrase "bridge to nowhere" is the local Alaskans. But then when it became seen as an example of pork-barrel politics, she changed her position over-night and came out against the "bridge to nowhere" -- to the point of actually using the phrase herself, the very same phrase that was supposed to be insulting to local Alaskans.

She was on the committee to re-elect Ted Stevens, and was a very vocally active member of the campaign team. But then Senator Ted Stevens became embroiled in a federal corruption sting investigation, and Palin quickly removed herself from the Ted Stevens committee, while still keeping members of the Stevens team on her staff.

Palin is just a female face-lift for the lobbyist driven, moribund John McCain presidential race. The words "middle class" and "health-care" were not said once in the speeches of both Palin and McCain at the Rethuglican public relations convention.

Accordinginly, asPaul Krugman correctly points out

Can the vice-presidential candidate of a party that has controlled the White House, Congress or both for 26 of the past 28 years, a party that, Borg-like, assimilated much of the D.C. lobbying industry into itself — until Congress changed hands, high-paying lobbying jobs were reserved for loyal Republicans — really portray herself as running against the “Washington elite”?

Yes, they can.

... What struck me as I watched the convention speeches, however, is how much of the anger on the right is based not on the claim that Democrats have done bad things, but on the perception — generally based on no evidence whatsoever — that Democrats look down their noses at regular people....

Thus Mr. Giuliani asserted that Wasilla, Alaska, isn’t “flashy enough” for Mr. Obama, who never said any such thing. And Ms. Palin asserted that Democrats “look down” on small-town mayors — again, without any evidence.

What the G.O.P. is selling, in other words, is the pure politics of resentment; you’re supposed to vote Republican to stick it to an elite that thinks it’s better than you.

Americans are disabled and killed every year due to on the job conditions. More than are killed and disabled per year in Iraq.

The reason OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) came into being was to minimize these on the job conditions and set standards for Employer Safety Regulations.

The Republicans have fought this institution tooth and nail, undermining laws and even ignoring them. Remember when the Bush administration changed the EPA's analysis of the Air Quality after the September 11th WTC implosions, denying that the air was toxic to breath and even editing the EPA report that said so. In the next few years, tens of thousands of New Yorkers began suffering debilitating respiratory ailments. Because the Federal Government refused to accept responsibility, these people had to pay for their health costs out of their own pockets.

Currently the son of corrupt supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (Eugene Scalia) is busy running OSHA standards into the ground. Read about Eugene Scalia here at Source Watch. Also, consult what repealing the OSHA Ergonomics Standard in March 2001 meant by reading this report and also this report ... both are from the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE).

Barry Ritholz posts a little known history of the Republican war on OSHA today.

In 1980, the last year of Jimmy Carter's administration, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) commissioned a series of three 30-minute films about worker safety. These were real pro productions, with Studs Terkel as narrator on two of the productions. In 1981, Reagan appointed 36-year old Florida construction executive Thorne G. Auchter, who proceeded to systematically dismantle the agency. Evidently, the 3 films disturbed Thorne greatly, because OSHA issued a recall, threatening to withold OSHA funds from any organization that did not return their copies of the films, which were promptly destroyed.

But, a few union officials defied the ban and "stole" copies so they weren't able to be returned. Over the years, they would occasionally show them to their troops, using the fact they banned as a way to get them to watch the films, which have important messages about worker rights and workplace safety. But, aside from these bootleg showings, the video disappeared.

What is in these films that disturbed the Republicans so much? Answer: Support of Union involvement in worker safety issues, and the truth of employer unwillingness to improve health & safety standards and foist the expenses of unhealthy worker conditions on the rest of society.

See for yourself.

Jeremy Grantham: The chief investment strategist at GMO, the highly regarded Boston-based manager of institutional and high-net-worth accounts, makes buy and sell decisions with a combination of computerized technical analysis and old-fashioned spadework

Global economic growth is slowing under the weight of increasingly illiquid credit markets and inflationary pressures. Weaker growth slashes corporate earnings, and since stock prices are tied to earnings, the outlook for equities worldwide, as Grantham sees it, is poor to middling...

In Grantham's world view, stocks in both developed and emerging markets are "substantially overpriced," with the possible exception of high-quality blue-chip companies that have strong, defensible global franchises.

"I underestimated in almost every way how badly economic and financial fundamentals would turn out," Grantham wrote shareholders in a July letter. "Events must now be disturbing to everyone, and I for one am officially scared!" One of his biggest fears, he added in an interview, is that "the whole global economy will be weaker than the market expects for quite a considerable time." How long? "I would guess at least two years of sustained disappointment."

...Grantham is particularly uneasy about China, a leading engine of world growth that seems to be sputtering. "I worry on behalf of the global economy at the consequences of China stumbling," he said. Without China's robust demand, he added, "the whole level of global imports and exports would start to drop."

...Grantham points out that many of the world's strongest companies are based in the U.S., which could help the U.S. market's relative performance. Moreover, he said, the weaker global picture will benefit the U.S. dollar, so the American market could turn out to be "a safe haven."

Bob RodriguezThe manager of FPA Capital Fund (FPPTX) and bond-focused sibling FPA New Income Fund (FPNIX) has since June 2003 been on a self-proclaimed "buyer's strike" regarding high-quality bonds with maturities greater than two years.

Rodriguez believed then -- and is even more convinced now -- that longer-term Treasury yields aren't substantial enough to compensate investors for inflation's eroding impact on purchasing power. He wants to get 5% on 10-year Treasurys, which recently yielded 3.8%, before venturing back.

Consequently, Rodriguez continues to focus on "caution and capital preservation," as he explained to fund shareholders in a June letter. More than 40% of Capital Fund, for example, is given to short-term government agency and Treasury notes and cash.

"We will not provide long-term capital to borrowers with unsound and unwise business management practices at unattractive real yields," Rodriguez wrote. That includes the U.S. government, he noted. "We require a higher level of compensation -- i.e. more yield, for these potential risks."

John HussmanHussman runs two portfolios: stock-focused Hussman Strategic Growth Fund (HSGFX) and bond- centric Hussman Strategic Total Return Fund (HSTRX) .

"The stock, bond and foreign-exchange markets continue to trade essentially on the theme that the global economy is weakening, but that the U.S. has dodged a recession," Hussman wrote in his weekly market commentary in late August. Investors' consensus is mistaken, Hussman contends. He said the U.S. is mired in recession, and once investors realize that earnings expectations are overblown, stocks will take another major hit.

"The potential downside could be abrupt, leaving little opportunity to make defensive changes after the fact," Hussman wrote.

... Hussman doesn't expect much from stocks. He predicted that U.S. market returns will average 4%-6% annualized over the next decade, primarily due to weaker corporate earnings. Given that slower-growth view, Hussman dumped most of his exposure to the commodity, industrials and precious-metals sectors, which thrive in expansionist periods

Steve LeutholdSteve Leuthold has been called a "superbear" for his extreme pessimism about stocks during the bull run of 1998....Leuthold is a colorful figure, offering targeted portfolios with catchy names like the bear-market Grizzly Short Fund (GRZZX) and the bottom-fishing Undervalued and Unloved Fund (UGLYX) .

Leuthold is convinced that the U.S. economy is in recession. But he points out that the stock market typically bottoms around the midpoint of the downturn. By his reckoning, the economy entered recession toward the end of 2007, and the extensive valuation criteria he uses tell him there's now light at the end of the tunnel.

"The bottom has been made," Leuthold said. "The economy is going to start showing some positive signs sometime in the first half of 2009."

So he's getting in early, loading up on shares of biotechnology and alternative-energy companies in particular, and keeping a modest amount in oil drillers and natural gas producers.

Enthusiastic stock buying sets Leuthold apart, but it's in keeping with his iconoclastic ways.

"I guess I still am a contrarian," he said

Notice how all these investment managers are Old white guys. What they all do is get their hands on billions of dollars of other peoples money and use to it purchase huge stakes in various companies, trying to profit by buying and selling when the stocks go up or down. They can short stocks to make money, by borrowing a stock and selling it, then buying it back at a cheaper price, making money on the difference in prices (since the SELL price minus the BUY BACK price is a positive number).

They can also "hedge" their investments by purchasing various different funds and stocks that tend to historically offset one another. So for instance, if bonds get more attractive in a skittish market, purchasing bonds can protect against possible losses in other types of market investments. Each investment firm has it's own historical research department devising formulas that correlate market effects among the various types of investments, trying to obtain a very small net percentage gain. When you have 1 billion dollars in investments, a 0.1% difference is still 1 million dollars in profit, especially if you are able to do this 20 times throughout the year.

What all this really is however is wealth redistribution, because non of these investments actually goes into building businesses and adding jobs to the labor pool, accept maybe indirectly when their actions keep the interest rates stable. There is also an inherent inflationary effect, because the more money earned by the wealthy classes pushes up the prices of items that wealthy individuals can afford to purchase. Also, loading up debt and skimming the assets on otherwise viable businesses in order to make money on the sale for investors of the financing arrangements is only putting extra expenses on the balance sheets of the businesses operating budgets; or it causes outsourced functions to negotiate downward the compensation that labor and small businesses can earn for doing the outsourced services. Just like the increased pricing of the housing market became driven by the desire of the financiers to sell the underlying investments into asset packages, to the detriment of the home owners who had to actually pay off the loans.

In this way, the "efficiency" of the market is merely a race to bottom. Some company may be able to make a product or do a service cheaper, but they all pay their workers less, externalize all their pollution costs, and might even make products of inferior quality.

This is why these business, market manager types like to use abstruse, vague language when they discuss their designs and plans. They want to keep secret the stratagems by which they suck blood from the real economy, and glorify their shenanigans underneath a layer of scientific banter.