Palin got her numbers wrong on troop levels when she said that troops were now down to "pre-surge" levels. The surge was announced in January 2007, at which point there were 132,000 troops in Iraq according to the Brookings Institute Iraq Index. As of September 2008, that number was 146,000. President Bush recently announced that another 8,000 would be coming home by February of next year. But that would still be 6,000 more than when the surge began.

I was really surprised when she said that, as I figured I would have read some news articles about our troop levels in Iraq having fallen below surge levels. Also, why is she bragging about this if the surge was such an unmitigated positive thing?  Maybe because the American people overwhelmingly want to get moving out of Iraq?

From The New Republic:

Palin's final quote was from Ronald Reagan, warning that without vigilance, "you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children's children, what it once was like in America when men were free."

In fact, Reagan was not warning about a general lack of vigilance about freedom, he was warning what would happen if Medicare was enacted.

Yeah, Medicare has destroyed our freedom, let's get rid of it. How many of you are all for that? :)

about McCain supposedly being a "maverick." In reality, McCain votes 90% of the time with Bush.  Also, according to Project Vote Smart, McCain received an 80% rating by the American Conservative Union in 2007...

This time in a fundraising letter from Sarah Palin after last night's debate:

The Obama-Biden Democrats and their allies are exploiting loopholes in Ohio election laws that we fear may result in unqualified voters casting ballots. They're also hoping our voters will be so confused, that they will throw up their hands in frustration and stay at home instead of voting.

Yeah, let's see any proof on THAT one. Right, there isn't any. Lie.

By definition if a person votes for McCain-Palin he or she already is confused.  Why would it be necessary for "Obama-Biden Democrats" to further confuse them?

On a serious note, the McCain-Palin email is extremely disingenuous.  The legal challenges on things like student voting, the GOP's foreclosure voter caginging ("lose your house, lose your vote" program in Michigan) -- are all about preventing the GOP from confusing legitimate, legal, qualified voters.

Based on the GOP's legal and not-so legal actions in the voting rights area, the real problem that they have aren't "loopholes" so much as "amendments to the Constitution" as in the 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th, and 26th amendments.  

I was surprised that Palin returned to the theme that paying taxes "isn't patriotic."  That theme must be testing out pretty well in focus groups or something, because she keeps saying and saying it.

Here's the full exchange:

IFILL: OK, our time is up here. We've got to move to the next question. Sen. Biden, we want to talk about taxes, let's talk about taxes. You proposed raising taxes on people who earn over $250,000 a year. The question for you is, why is that not class warfare and the same question for you, Gov. Palin, is you have proposed a tax employer health benefits which some studies say would actually throw five million more people onto the roles of the uninsured. I want to know why that isn't taking things out on the poor, starting with you, Sen. Biden.

BIDEN: Well Gwen, where I come from, it's called fairness, just simple fairness. The middle class is struggling. The middle class under John McCain's tax proposal, 100 million families, middle class families, households to be precise, they got not a single change, they got not a single break in taxes. No one making less than $250,000 under Barack Obama's plan will see one single penny of their tax raised whether it's their capital gains tax, their income tax, investment tax, any tax. And 95 percent of the people in the United States of America making less than $150,000 will get a tax break.

Now, that seems to me to be simple fairness. The economic engine of America is middle class. It's the people listening to this broadcast. When you do well, America does well. Even the wealthy do well. This is not punitive. John wants to add $300 million, billion in new tax cuts per year for corporate America and the very wealthy while giving virtually nothing to the middle class. We have a different value set. The middle class is the economic engine. It's fair. They deserve the tax breaks, not the super wealthy who are doing pretty well. They don't need any more tax breaks. And by the way, they'll pay no more than they did under Ronald Reagan.

IFILL: Governor?

PALIN: I do take issue with some of the principle there with that redistribution of wealth principle that seems to be espoused by you. But when you talk about Barack's plan to tax increase affecting only those making $250,000 a year or more, you're forgetting millions of small businesses that are going to fit into that category. So they're going to be the ones paying higher taxes thus resulting in fewer jobs being created and less productivity.

Now you said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that's not patriotic. Patriotic is saying, government, you know, you're not always the solution. In fact, too often you're the problem so, government, lessen the tax burden and on our families and get out of the way and let the private sector and our families grow and thrive and prosper. An increased tax formula that Barack Obama is proposing in addition to nearly a trillion dollars in new spending that he's proposing is the backwards way of trying to grow our economy.

Now, it is perfectly acceptable and legal under the tax system to structure your affairs to minimize your tax obligations.  

But what happened to the idea that taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society?  I thought that was engraved in stone on a government building somewhere.  What happened to the idea of shared sacrifice?  In a voluntary tax reporting system, why wouldn't you want to state the paying taxes is patriotic, especially where the taxes support our troops in combat?  

Interesting contrast, Warren Buffett was just interviewed on the Charlie Rose show.  Among other things, he said -- as he has said before -- that he SHOULD be taxed more, and that he has never had it so good.  But he doesn't think it is fair that the lady emptying his wastepaper basked at night is paying the same marginal tax rate as he is.  Why would Buffett say this?  For one thing, it is the truth.  He's also patriotic, and is trying to provide some leadership in a time of crisis.  As Buffett says repeatedly, "the money has to come from somewhere."

http://www.charlierose.com/sho...

Time spent listening to Buffett is far better spent than time listening to Palin.

too is highly questionable.  Something that we could probably add to the "falsehoods" list above.

She and her husband have been able to cash in on her state GOP connections -- they are now millionaires from what I understand.

I thought the exchange on taxes though was instructive.  Biden had a great point too about off-shore tax havens as well.  The implication of Palin's statement is that cheating on taxes -- e.g. NOT paying taxes -- is somehow patriotic.    

Conservative strategists are saying that the only thing that can save the McCain campaign at this point is to start drilling the meme that Democrats are going to raise your taxes. So they are playing this card now.

on 95% of Americans! The Big Lie continues.

on this one!

...Palin, in her 90 minutes on the stage Thursday night, left the firm impression that she is indeed ready to lead the nation -- with an unnerving mixture of platitudes and cute, folksy phrases that poured from her lips even when they bore no relation to the questions asked.

As Sarh Palin might say, "darn right!" :)

At about 1:30 he looks at Gwen with a WTF is she talking about look on his face.

It must have been really hard for him to go through that debate and not be able to grid his heel into her throat.

Courtesy of the intertubes :)

Here's the quote on that:

IFILL: Thank you, Senator.

Now... I want to get -- try to get you both to answer a question that neither of your principals quite answered when my colleague, Jim Lehrer, asked it last week, starting with you, Sen. Biden.

What promises -- given the events of the week, the bailout plan, all of this, what promises have you and your campaigns made to the American people that you're not going to be able to keep?

BIDEN: Well, the one thing we might have to slow down is a commitment we made to double foreign assistance. We'll probably have to slow that down.

We also are going to make sure that we do not go forward with the tax cut proposals of the administration -- of John McCain, the existing one for people making over $250,000, which is $130 billion this year alone.

We're not going to support the $300 billion tax cut that they have for corporate America and the very wealthy. We're not going to support another $4 billion tax cut for ExxonMobil.

And what we're not going to also hold up on, Gwen, is we cannot afford to hold up on providing for incentives for new jobs by an energy policy, creating new jobs.

We cannot slow up on education, because that's the engine that is going to give us the economic growth and competitiveness that we need.

And we are not going to slow up on the whole idea of providing for affordable health care for Americans, none of which, when we get to talk about health care, is as my -- as the governor characterized -- characterized.

The bottom line here is that we are going to, in fact, eliminate those wasteful spending that exist in the budget right now, a number of things I don't have time, because the light is blinking, that I won't be able to mention, but one of which is the $100 billion tax dodge that, in fact, allows people to take their post office box off- shore, avoid taxes.

I call that unpatriotic. I call that unpatriotic.

As Buffett says, the money has to come from somewhere. To me, that sounds like a good place to start.  

The US unlike most countries taxes your worldwide income, both for individuals and corporations.  So, if you make money in Japan, you get taxed on that income (save foreign tax deductions or the foreign income exemption).  Companies, who locate offshore, still pay US income tax.  They just don't pay it on all of their earnings, only those for their US affiliates/operations.  The rules are very complex though (enough so to keep millions of tax accountants employed year round).  It's be so much easier if we just adopted a Gross Receipts Tax for all businesses.  It's just total US revenue times the tax and then you are done.  And there is little opportunity to avoid the tax.  Also, you would just be taxing US business, not worldwide business.

"I'm not one to attribute every man -- activity of man to the changes in the climate."

She should have said:

"I'm not one to attribute changes in the climate to the activity of man."

Garbled at best (and bass ackwards), just like Palin's understanding of energy and environmental issues.

that anthropogenic (of human origin) carbon emissions are responsible for changes in the earth's climate. Period. If you don't understand that, then there's now way you can figure out how to deal with the problem.  Just as if you don't understand how we got into the current economic crisis, you'll never figure out how to fix it.

If it ain't man-made [which it is], then why on earth would you think you can fix it?  That's like saying the earth has shifted off it's axis, and we need to fix it.

In what respect, Charlie?

in one of the newspapers she reads, which as we know is "any of 'em, all of 'em."  

statement in her interview (Couric  I think). Somehow it got burned into her mind in the early stages of cramming, and it stuck.

It was a real surprise last night to hear her say that (and I think she said it twice, but am not sure), because she's said it before more than once.  Surely someone on the team should have noticed that and fixed it--it's a pretty significant juxtaposition!

This is a little off topic, but today's WaPo editorial on last night's debate is such a travesty that it practically announces that the nation's leading political newspaper can't see straight. It's not just that they were unable to praise the good and expose the bad. They didn't offer any insight and opted for a maze of unenlightened garble which leaves readers clueless. They seriously need some adult supervision!

We get the early edition, which only covered the first lines of the debate on the front page. It's obvious that the editorial was written before the debate took place. I guess the staff just didn't have any other topics?

Palin was actually sort of right.  McCain doesn't tell one group one thing then tell another group something else.  He tells the SAME group two things.

The Daily Show picked up on a great example (starts about 1:47).

I like to keep track of what kinds of schedules the candidates are maintaining to get a sense of their endgame strategy.

Obama seems to be putting on the full court press. He has an event in Abington, PA today, another in Newport News, VA tomorrow, and yet another in Asheville, NC on Sunday. In Asheville he will be preparing for next Tuesday's debate.

McCain has nothing--zip, nada, nechevo--on his campaign schedule before the debate next Tuesday. Can his handlers juice him up in time for Tuesday? He has been looking and sounding very feeble and incoherent in the past few days.

Palin has two events scheduled for Florida on Monday, but nothing before then. Those five weeks of memorizing briefing books full of talking point bullets must have taken a lot out of her.

I don't see anything on Biden's schedule at the moment, but he, as well as surrogates like Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton (and, to a degree, a reluctant Bill Clinton) and Wesley Clark have been effectively hitting the stumps in the battleground states, while remaining under that national MSM radar. Where is McCain's surrogate effort? I don't detect much of one. He simply lurches from one Hail Mary stunt to another. The campaign seems to be all tactics, no strategy. What's the next Hail Mary going to be?

One almost gets the impression that Obama's campaign is a race car now running smoothly on all cylinders as it heads toward the finish line. McCain's campaign is undergoing a pit stop and seems to be getting lapped.

To mix yet another sports metaphor, McCain's campaign just doesn't seem to have enough healthy first-stringers to play out the fourth quarter, i.e., October. All they have left is a bunch of RNC (and 527) money to plop on attack ads. One candidate, McCain, seems to be exhausted. The other, Palin, is a third-stringer not yet really ready for the varsity. The rest, including the coaches (Steve Schmidt and Eric Davis), are a bunch of scrubs.

It's fun to watch the Democrats dominate the narrative for a change. It's the tanking economy, stupid: brought to you by the unregulated greed of the Republican Party, the party of Herbert Hoover.

Lowell
On AOL's user-posted news, there is a posting entitled 14 lies by Biden.
You should offset that by posting your summary of 18 lies and misleading statements by Sarah Palin