Is Sarah a Socialist?

If Sen. John McCain is so against "spreading the wealth" then I wonder if during a McCain administration he would get rid of things like the GI Bill, the mortgage interest deduction, and stop giving some states more than their share of federal spending.

Would a McCain administration mean what it says about socialism and no longer allow citizens of states like Alaska to pay only $4.8 billion in taxes while receiving $9.2 billion in federal government spending? Talk about socialism and spreading the wealth! Does the Alaska Governor know about this?

Surely the citizens of Massachusetts (who pay $63 billion in taxes yet only receive $55.8 billion in spending) might appreciate Alaska sending their money back to them. Maybe Gov. Palin could work on stopping that unfortunate socialism before her term ends. One of her first tasks could be to return the $260 odd millions Alaska got for that bridge to nowhere that Palin claims she said "No thanks" to.

Gov. Palin has never shown a real interest in news (she couldn't even name the Exxon Valdez Supreme Court case involving Alaska) so perhaps she has no idea that Alaska is a socialist state. According to the Tax Foundation Alaska taxpayers receive more federal funding per dollar of federal taxes paid compared to the average state. Per dollar of Federal tax collected in 2005, Alaska citizens received approximately $1.84 in the way of federal spending.

In addition Alaska citizens share the wealth from royalties from the oil in the state. Should they really be "sharing the wealth"?

So does Gov. Palin know about all of this? Is Sarah a socialist? Maybe the press should ask her. Right, like that will happen. Elizabeth Hasselbeck says the media is sexist for attacking Gov. Palin. In reality the media is sexist for its lack of real questioning of her and her policies.

Despite a few limited interviews she hasn't been seriously questioned, which explains why she continued to claim that she said "No thanks" to the bridge. While this was pointed out, no one was willing to pull a Letterman and truly question her on it.

So will the media "grow a pair" and actually ask Sarah if she is a socialist? Don't hold your breath.

How Dare You Treat Me Like We Treat You!

Based on the whining by the McCain campaign and conservatives they are not happy with the media and Democrats commenting on the types of stories that the GOP used to feast over.

One only has to look at the commotion made over John Edwards' $400 haircut paid for by his campaign and the $150,000 the Republican Party paid to dress up Gov. Sarah Palin.

To Republicans discussing $150,000 is bad because there is so many other things going on, yet they had no plans laughing about the $400 haircut or John Kerry's windsurfing. So focusing on windsurfing is of the utmost importance but talking about $150,000 is bad journalism.

Unfortunately the GOP excels at this type of double standard. If the Democratic Party spent $150,000 on Barrack Obama's clothing would Elizabeth Hasselback be criticizing him?

But the GOP thrives on double standards. Over and over this year the McCain team has made dubious claims that probably win votes because the media won't go after McCain. But to those on the right, the media's role is not to report the news but to promote conservative news, just like Fox News.

Just look at the "Joe the Plumber" story. Originally a YouTube story that went mainstream when McCain pedaled his story during a debate. To conservatives, actually checking out the story was awful. Finding out that there were a lot of holes in his story and, if anything, the story supported Obama.

Yet the mere fact that the media uncovered that Joe would do better under a Obama administration was horrible to the McCain and their crowds who took in the story, hook line and sinker.

The morale of the story? Republicans expect and demand special, and unequal, treatment.

What Took So Long?

Apparently the biggest line of Wednesday's presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama was when McCain's all but said "I know President Bush, I am a friend of President Bush, and Senator, I am no President Bush."

While McCain phrased the line a little differently, his intent was to distance himself, the current GOP nominee, from the current GOP leader, which somehow is supposed to be a good thing. After all, who wants to be compared to the leader of your party?

While throwing the current leader of his party under the bus may have comforted millions who have seen their country suffer under the potentially worst president in American history, one has to wonder why it took McCain so long to figure out Bush was a dud.

If anything the American people should be upset at McCain for his efforts on the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign. If McCain were truly a "Maverick" and willing to go against his party he would have supported John Kerry. Instead he worked hard to elect possibly the worst president in American history.

For that reason alone, Obama's comparison of Bush and McCain is worthy. Also if the McCain campaign wants to complain about people Obama "pals" around with, the Obama campaign should point out that it is far more truthful to say that McCain pals around with Bush than Obama pals around with William Ayers.

Perhaps this year voters are actually going beyond cheap applause lines and look at the facts and that is why Obama currently has such a large lead. McCain's over the top accusations are not sticking, and in what probably was actually the best line of the night, Obama noted that it has gotten to the point where even Fox News is now disputing McCain's claims and Obama added "that doesn't happen very often when it comes to accusations about me."

While conservatives may have been energized by McCain's attacks, early post debate polling showed it didn't play well with the American public. CNN and CBS polls both showed the public thought Obama won the debate, giving the Democrats a clean sweep of the debates. It's so bad that after the debate McCain could be heard telling Obama what a good job he did.

Maybe even John McCain has figured out Obama is better than four more years of the same. Why did it take so long?

Is It Over?

Has the 2008 presidential election effectively been decided? This morning Real Clear Politics, which tracks polls from all sources, moved Virginia from the "Toss Up" category to "Leaning" toward Sen. Barack Obama, pushing his estimated total of solid and leaning states to 277, seven more than the 270 required to win the Presidency.

Based on their reviews, Obama has solid support in states with 221 electoral votes and now with Virgina, has states leaning toward him with 56 electoral votes. So the question is, will the five Obama leaning states (Washington, New Mexico, Virginia, Michigan and Wisconsin) remain leaning or will they move back to toss up, bringing the campaign back to life?

Even if one of the states move back to toss up, the situation is dire for McCain. If you change the toss up states based on the current polls, Obama would finish with 364 electoral votes and McCain would have 174.

With Virginia now leaning toward Obama McCain is faced with the prospect of winning all tossup states and taking back some Obama states, not an easy prospect and probably the reason he going back on the attack.

McCain Blinks

Did Sen. John McCain walk to the edge of the political abyss Tuesday night and turn back? After watching the presidential debate one has to wonder.

Gone Tuesday night were the ridiculous claims that Sen. Obama pals around with a terrorist; gone were the "who is this guy"; and gone was any mention of his running mate, Sarah "Slimes" Palin. Instead McCain ended up spending a lot of his time talking about another Democratic senator (Lieberman).

While McCain declined to get out of the gutter for a night he did make the comment of the night, pointing to Obama saying "that one," raising questions about just how happy McCain is faced with the prospect of the only way of winning was to go ugly.

With that vision McCain blinked and pulled back from attacking. Some commentators said that the format of the debate prevented him from using personal attacks against Obama.

Dishonesty & Dishonor - or Sarah Slimes

If there is any doubt left regarding that John McCain would do anything or say anything to become president, that doubt was removed on Monday as he unleashed his pit bull to bring their dishonesty to a new level.

Perhaps unwilling to do the heavy lying himself, and perhaps much too busy watching the Dow drop 800 points at one point, he sent Sarah "Slimes" Palin out to criticize someone Obama met and worked with a few times.

Never mind that the relationship McCain had with Phil Gramm was much more odious and destructive for the American economy, McCain has looked at the polls and figured out he is going to lose big time unless he can get the people to stop thinking about issues and focus on the trivial.

The ironic thing is that McCain was the victim in 2000 of ugly and untrue campaigning by (p)resident Bush and one might think McCain would not do onto others as he would wish them to do onto him. Instead he probably was told "either you go dirty or you lose."

And so McCain, he of the "I'd rather lose an election than lose a war" has apparently decided to change his message to "I'd rather lose my honor than lose this election."

Exposing the Gimmick?

Chris Matthews once famously and disgustingly said former Vice President Al Gore would lick the bathroom floor to be president.

Tonight, with the Vice Presidential candidate debate, we will find out if Matthews should have been speaking about John McCain.

Viewers will get to see if Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is the next chapter of George "all hat and no cattle" W. Bush. To many, McCain's choice of Sarah Palin was little more than a gimmick designed to attract women and conservatives voters and the Washington Post is reporting polling is now showing that the people are turning against the gimmick.

Any doubt of this was on display during the recent interviews with CBS's Katie Couric where Palin embarrassed herself, John McCain, the Republican Party, conservatives, and America through her inability to name any Supreme Court cases she disagreed with other than Roe vs. Wade, the inability to name newspapers or magazines she read, or the rambling and incoherent answer she gave regarding why Alaska's proximity to Russia gave her foreign policy experience.

Amazingly, Palin couldn't even remember Exxon v. Baker, which for most people wouldn't be a surprise except it involved Alaska and the Exxon Valdez and Palin criticized the ruling earlier this year. Perhaps her excuse is that someone in her office just put her name on a release.

What must foreign countries think of her, and us, that we would potentially entrust the most powerful position in the world to someone without experience, knowledge or interest in events? We tried that in 2000 and the results have been disastrous. Do we really want to try it again?

Faced with a potential disaster tonight conservatives have tried lowering the bar for success by Palin to the point where if she doesn't embarrass herself it will be a success. But with even that lower bar conservatives have decided they need to "work the referee" in order to protect Palin by alleging that moderator Gwen Ifill of PBS is biased because she is working on a book titled "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama."

FOX News is asking whether Ifill can be "fair and balanced" in the debate. Truthfully, given the nature of conservatives Ifill should have seen this coming as nothing is ever fair in their world unless they are given an advantage, but for FOX to be questioning whether someone is fair and balanced is like a loan shark criticizing interest rates on credit cards.

In the end the questions don't matter, Palin will give a number of snappy, mean spirited responses which the public will either fall for or decide her story has become tiresome. At best Republicans can hope Sen. Joe Biden makes a mistake to hide her performance or that concern about conservative complaints that Biden attaced Palin makes him pull his punches in the debate.

We shall see.