McCain's Earmark Lie

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-15-2008
McCain's Earmark Lie
175
Mon, 09-15-2008 - 9:19pm
The full story:


Daily Kos

McCain's Earmark Lie: Palin actually grubs $1 mil/day as Gov. by Kagro X

Mon Sep 15, 2008 at 03:00:11 PM PDT

The Wall Street Journal:




Last week, Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain said his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, hadn't sought earmarks or special-interest spending from Congress, presenting her as a fiscal conservative. But state records show Gov. Palin has asked U.S. taxpayers to fund $453 million in specific Alaska projects over the past two years.



It's been 652 days since Earmark Queen Sarah Palin took office as Governor of Alaska.



In that time, she's hustled for $453,000,000 in federal lipstick pork.



That's $694,785.28 a day. Six hundred ninetey-four thousand, seven hundred and eight five dollars and twenty-eight cents. Every day. Even Sundays!



Palin was grubbing six hundred ninetey-four thousand, seven hundred and eight five dollars and twenty-eight cents out of the federal trough on the very day when John McCain looked America in the eye and said she was taking zero.



And she took it again today, too.



And she took it on every one of the 312 nights she spent at home and billed the Alaskan taxpayers for it.



So why say it's a million dollars a day? Well, first, let me show you what Slick Sarah Palin is telling people:




On the campaign trail, Gov. Palin has repeatedly attacked Sen. Obama on earmarks. "Our opponent has requested nearly one billion dollars in earmarks in three years. That's about a million for every working day," she said at a rally in Albuquerque, N.M.



Ohhhh, this feels like it's going to get embarrassing in a second....



And, behold! Look what "The Math" says!



It is difficult to compare Sen. Obama's earmark record with Gov. Palin's -- their states differ in size, for instance, and the two candidates play different roles in the process. But using the same calculation that the McCain campaign uses, the total amount of earmarked dollars divided by the number of working days while each held office (assuming a five-day workweek, every week, for both), Gov. Palin sought $980,000 per workday, compared with roughly $893,000 for Sen. Obama.



Not only is Palin taking much more, but oh my word if the million dollar figure doesn't actually fit her sooooo much better than the person she's trying to use it against! What a surprise!



So that's almost a million dollars a day, whether she showed up at the office or not. A million bucks, plus $60 in her pocket for defrosting one of her own mooseburgers for lunch.



And really, Palin must be asking herself, why not chisel the Alaska state government a little bit? After all:




The state's earmark requests stand out in part because its state government is among the wealthiest in the U.S. Flush with oil and gas royalties, it doesn't impose income or sales taxes. In fact, money flows the other way: Every man, woman and child this year got a check for $3,200.



Gosh, but they're such rugged individualists up there! They're gonna launch themselves into orbit with those bootstraps, don'tcha know?



A million dollars a day. From you and me. Plus $3,200 in the bank for each one of 'em. And $60 in Sarah's pocket for every lunch at home. (Like every working mom, of course!)



It's the new fiscal responsibility, in John McCain's seven house-owning, $5 million middle class living world!





But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence.....truth is considered profane, and only illusion sacred. Sacredness

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iVillage Member
Registered: 09-09-2008
Fri, 09-19-2008 - 4:21am

*** I hope you aren't saying Obama hasn't been personally attacked?! He has been attacked personally, much more, and more viciously than Palin has.

He's been attacked on his appearance? His parenting? That he shouldn't be running because he has kids? Not as far as I've seen, but if you'll provide links...

*** I hate personal attacks on anyone, but please don't imply Palin's been attacked more than Obama.

Loads more.

*** With the exception of the number of children he has, he has been attacked on those same issues, plus many, many more.

Links?

*** The feminists despise her, for her views on issues.

They despise her because she opposes killing children for convenience...how sweet of them.

*** It comes back down to issues rather than gender.

Your right...being a working mother is one of the pivotal issues facing the country these days.

*** They, and many non-feminist women, see her as a threat to women's rights. She would take us back 100 years, if she could!

Right, women wouldn't want to lose the right to kill their children if they're inconvenient, now would we? I know...let's attack the family and parenting of the women who's never done anything, in all her years of service, to take away a...LOL!..."mother's" right to kill.

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-09-2008
Fri, 09-19-2008 - 4:59am

<<< Odd that black folks don’t have the same reaction when an inexperienced community organizer is running for President. I guess you don’t have to “pay your dues’ if you’re a (black) man.

*** Boy, have you swallowed the RNC propaganda hook, line and sinker!!

Reality is like that.

*** The RNC is trying to make "community organizer" sound like a piece of cake...not true.

I posted an article detailing what a “community organizer” really is…go back and dig it up. It ain’t someone who works in soup kitchens and helps poor children…it’s a cut-throat “politician” working at the grass-roots level…and after three years, Obama was a failure…so naturally he went into politics.

*** I hate the way the RNC, guided by Rove, like to unjustly belittle and trivialize people. Swiftboating at it's dirtiest!

But beating up on a girl is ok with you…LOL! Sorry…credibility lost.

*** Obviously, you aren't from IL. Obama has paid his dues every bit as much as Palin. He is NOT inexperienced. He was in the IL Senate for ten years prior to being elected to the Senate!

Nice propaganda, but he was a community organizer with no accomplishments for three years, a state Senator with no accomplishments for eight years and a US Senator for 143 days with no accomplishments. He sure sounds qualified to be President…sorry, a “Democrat” President. Boy, you guys picked a winner. LOL!

*** Palin was mayor of a one horse town, and only had power over the library! Every other department was out of her control. Her only action, was to try to get the librarian fired for not removing books SHE didn't approve of!!

Um…lies.

*** Then she's been governor for less than two years, in a state that has a population less than 1/3 that of Chicago!

And yet she’s managed to accomplish ten times more than Barry every did in any of his failed positions with her 11.2 BILLION dollar budget and 80% approval rating. LOL!

*** Careful, your prejudice is showing! Obama has not been given anything because he's a "black man"! That's insulting, an untrue!

Except that a certain number of spots on the Harvard Law Review are allocated as part of “Affirmative Action.” Hmmm…I wonder how many blacks there were on the law review at the time Barry was there?

*** He has worked hard, to get where he is. He has earned everything he has gotten.

Yes, he’s quite the community organizer…and he’s earned every failure he’s accomplished. LOL!

*** In your slanderous comments, remember he was a law professor at a prestigious university.

Actually, he was a “senior lecturer.”

*** If nothing else, he should be admired for coming from a poor single parent home, to graduating with honors from Harvard. Unlike McCain, who came from money, and didn't have to scrimp and save to go to school!

Obama’s grandparents sent him to the best schools…he never “pulled himself up by his bootstraps.” He’s a fraud…a sham…a charlatan with a silly slogan.

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-09-2008
Fri, 09-19-2008 - 5:04am

<<< We really aren't swayed by empty slogans and rhetoric like "hope and change" as so many liberals are.

*** Really?! LMAO!!! Then why has McCain stolen it from Obama? Every other word out of his mouth is "change"!! McCain never said anything about change, until he realized Obama was onto what intelligent people want...change!

If the people were intelligent, they would have demanded to know what "change" they were "hoping" for...but the libs didn't. Obama doesn't have a record of "change"...no record of "crossing the aisle"...nothing but "by the book" old style tax and spend Democrat same old, same old. The reason that McCain and Palin can steal Obama's "change" thunder is because they actually have a record of bi-partisanship...of bucking the system...of REAL change...not the BS Obama is selling to the ignorant masses.

*** Yep, maybe you aren't buying McCain's stolen rhetoric, but he thinks it's important. Too funny!!!! I guess you're swayed by the thought of four more years, and a brash, opinionated female taking away more of your rights!!

My rights are just fine...it's my money I'm worried Barry will take away for his socialist programs. Barry...OUT! Hehe.

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-09-2008
Fri, 09-19-2008 - 5:12am

<<< ((Gosh, can you imagine if she had close friends who were racists, America-haters and terrorists like Obama does? LOL!))

*** Poor, 75 guy, Sarah's friends ARE far worse than racists, and ultimate America-haters, because they want to NOT be part of America anymore. That is more UNAmerican than criticizing past deeds of Americans. The only reason that she and Todd are not dues paying members is because she knew that it would look bad to be linked to seditionists when she ran for public office.

Sorry, but being friends with terrorists who attacked America and racists who hate America trump whatever is rattling around in your kool-aid filled imagination. But I’m sure you convinced a few wackos who were hanging on the fringe. Go Palin!

*** And the most shocking thing is that the leader of AIP called for members to behave just like terrorists and "infiltrate" the gov't and change laws to help Alaska separate from the union. Conspiracy theory revealed.

I think that call went to Bill Ayres, you know…Barry’s friend…the terrorist. LOL!

*** She's always talking about "small" gov't. Yeah, right. That means leave my state alone so I can shoot all of the moose and wolves that I want. lol.

Slightly better than…”I’ve never been proud of my country.” LOL!

*** So, 75 guy, Sarah will make Nancy Hart look like Betty Crocker. lol.

That’s fine with me…as long as she doesn’t hang out with racists, America-haters, terrorists and an “angry black woman.” LOL!

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-16-2008
Fri, 09-19-2008 - 5:29am
Why thank you !
iVillage Member
Registered: 11-08-2003
Fri, 09-19-2008 - 10:43am

Your sarcastic non-answers are noted. I guess when you don't like hearing the truth, it's convenient to use RNC lies and personal attacks. Poor Palin, she's being picked. LOL, contrary to what you say, when it comes to looks, Obama has been picked on much more than she has. Perhaps you have missed all the

 Rose

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-15-2008
Fri, 09-19-2008 - 12:00pm
Yeah. One continues to wonder about such....uh....lopsided treatment of such things, eh?

Ah, well....at least they're not CLs anymore, so any such continued lopsided pronouncements no longer have even the faintest tint of board-approval (or DIS-approval) to them.




Edited 9/19/2008 3:24 pm ET by mooseburger_mcbush


But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence.....truth is considered profane, and only illusion sacred. Sacredness
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-15-2008
Fri, 09-19-2008 - 12:03pm
We really aren't swayed by empty slogans and rhetoric like "hope and change" as so many liberals are.


BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

In fact, isn't the new, re-tooled Mooseburger/McBush slogan now officially: "No We Can't!"


But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence.....truth is considered profane, and only illusion sacred. Sacredness
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-15-2008
Fri, 09-19-2008 - 12:09pm
There's that lack of separation and church again. Someone joked about a Sarah doll that when you pull the string she repeats these nuggets of goodness. lol.


Yep - title: "Caribou Barbie." Comes complete with one-fifth of a degree from five different colleges, the Book of 1001 Nut-Cake Baby Names (my favorite?: "slug"), and says eight different phrases (and ONLY eight) when you pull her string ("I told Congress thanks, but no thanks, on that bridge to nowhere," "Earmark math is HARD!," and six more!). Get yours while they last. Or, wait until after November 4th, when they will be steeply discounted, LOL. ;o)


But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence.....truth is considered profane, and only illusion sacred. Sacredness
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-15-2008
Fri, 09-19-2008 - 12:37pm
Aww, you're quite welcome, broccoli - even though I'm responding to Nurse Livingston. I do it as a sort of public service. When Nurse Livingston dangles a piece of low-hanging fruit out there like "librul dictionary".....and then quotes something out of the ACTUAL dictionary or thesaurus, I get the not-so-unique (in that it happens pretty regularly) pleasure of pointing out that when I say things like "hang on, let me get my Conservatarian-to-English Dictionary, though it may sound like I'm merely being snarky, I'm actually not: someone like you and I (and in fact most of the educated first world), who has grown up with...you know....Roget and Webster and stuff....will have a disorienting time initially, trying to figure out what words mean in this brave new fact-free frontier-'o'-wingnuttery where opinion is as valuable as fact and words mean whatever you need them to mean at any given moment. It's a little odd to hear someone blithely assert that something doesn't mean what the dictionary SAYS it means.....and it's positively jarring when someone else points that fact out to them, only to see them turn right back around and RE-ASSERT that they were correct in the first place. A normal human reaction to such a thing is to experience disorientation, perhaps coupled with the desire to wonder aloud if one mightn't be on Candid Camera.

But make no mistake; it's a fascinating thing, to observe the Lesser American Wingnut in his natural habitat - fascinating, but disorienting. And it's never the same: what they called "black" last week may very well be "white" this week....or "taupe" or "cerulean" or "moss" or "aubergine," for that matter. You just never know. The only thing I've been able to notice consistently in my studies of this fascinating species is that one could power a small city with the energy they spend avoiding reality. It's a truly majestic thing to behold first-hand the expenditure of power which goes to maintaining the notion (to pick just one example at random) that socialism has failed everywhere it's ever been tried (and that Europe, apparently, does not exist), or that there is an old dude in the sky who watches everything you do, every second of every day, and who has a lengthy and often very specific list of things he does not want you to do; a list for which the repeated and/or unapologetic breaking of any of its dictums will cause the old man in the sky to send you after you're dead to a place of fire and torment and torture and misery for the rest of time itself......but HE loves you very much. Or that (on a less metaphysical level) thirty years of de-regulation of the banking and insurance industries did NOT lead directly to the collapse of Bear Stearns, WaMu (wait a week or two, LOL), Lehman, Morgan Stanley, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.....

I guess what I'm saying is: enjoy your studies, but remember to handle the subject with care, and to take frequent breaks to spend time in reality, away from your observation of conservatarians. Researchers have learned, over time, that prolonged exposure without breaks is akin to that of spending too much time observing a cult: one becomes susceptible to cult-indoctrination. If you find yourself thinking, for example, that Newt Gingrich is an upstanding defender of family values but Bill Clinton is an amoral sleazeball, or that Reagan never used "Grecian Formula," or that "trickle down" sounds more like a sensible economic theory than like someone taking a whiz on you, purposefully, you're exhibiting danger signs. Take a break.


Edited 9/19/2008 12:38 pm ET by mooseburger_mcbush


But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence.....truth is considered profane, and only illusion sacred. Sacredness

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