Senator Sanders Unfiltered: Lies, Fibs and Anti-Reformers

I couldn't have said it better than Senator Sanders. My fear is that not enough people are getting this message, and too many are only getting the lies from FOX and the Sarah Palins.

What is the Point of Having a Constitution?

Military Eavesdropped on Journalists & NGOs in Iraq

And finally, much of the news media is catching up on a story Democracy Now! covered five months ago. On May 13, former Military Intelligence Sergeant Adrienne Kinne appeared on the program and talked about how she was personally ordered to eavesdrop on Americans working for news organizations and NGOs in Iraq.

Adrienne Kinne: “Over the course of my time, as we slowly began to identify phone numbers and who belonged to what, one thing that gave me grave concern was that, as we identified phone numbers, we started to find more and more and more numbers that belonged not to any organizations affiliated with terrorism or with military—with militaries of Iraq or Afghanistan or elsewhere, but with humanitarian aid organizations, non-governmental organizations, who include the International Red Cross, Red Crescent, Doctors Without Borders, a whole host of humanitarian aid organizations. And it also included journalists.”

Last night, Adrienne Kinne and another military linguist appeared on this ABC News report.

Brian Ross, ABC News: “This is the first time any of the actual intercept operators, the people who listen in and record phone calls on behalf of US intelligence agencies, the first time any of them has come forward. President Bush says they only listen to Americans if it involves al-Qaeda. These two say, ‘Not true.’”

During her interview in May on Democracy Now!, Adrienne Kinne also revealed that she saw secret US military documents that listed the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad as a possible target, even though it was filled with journalists. In 2003, the US military shelled the hotel, killing two journalists: Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk and Jose Couso, a cameraman for the Spanish television network Telecinco. The military has maintained the shelling was accidental.

Adrienne Kinne: “One of the instances was the fact that we were listening to journalists who were staying in the Palestine Hotel. And I remember that, specifically because during the buildup to Shock and Awe, which people in my unit were really disturbingly excited about, we were given a list of potential targets in Baghdad, and the Palestine Hotel was listed as a potential target. And I remember this specifically, because, putting one and one together, that there were journalists staying at the Palestine Hotel and this hotel was listed as a potential target, I went to my officer in charge, and I told him that there are journalists staying at this hotel who think they’re safe, and yet we have this hotel listed as a potential target, and somehow the dots are not being connected here, and shouldn’t we make an effort to make sure that the right people know the situation? And unfortunately, my officer in charge, similarly to any time I raised concerns about things that we were collecting or intelligence that we were reporting, basically told me that it was not my job to analyze, it was my job to collect and pass on information, and that someone, somewhere higher up the chain, knew what they were doing.”

To Lie is Patriotic

I asked and someone built it. A websites collecting the many lies from McSame & the Hockey Mom. It is truly amazing. Staggering. How can these two get away with this?

I guess when we live in a country where your leaders blatently lie to the citizens about WMD and then engage the people in a war that took the lives of over 4,000 of our soldiers (4,180 to date actually), hundreds of thousands of Iraq civilian lives (maybe over a million) and billions of our tax dollars (not to mention torture, ignoring the constitution, etc.), politicians realize they can do anything.

Here are a few from Pinocchio Polititics (all of these statements have links to back them at the website):

McCain tried to reform Fannie Mae

ACTUALLY: McCain only supported *a report* on Fannie/Freddie corruption. Meanwhile, his staff lobbied for deregulation of both.

Obama will raise your taxes.

ACTUALLY: Obama's tax plan lowers taxes for 95% of middle class families.

McCain “never asked for a single earmark.”

ACTUALLY: McCain hauled in pork for Arizona -- most recently a $10 million academic center to honor the Justice Rehnquist.

Obama voted against funding the troops.

ACTUALLY: Obama voted to fund the troops 10 times. Both McCain & Obama have voted against funding when attached to larger bills they opposed.

Palin “vetoed millions of earmarks.”

ACTUALLY: Governors can’t veto earmarks; this year alone, Palin pushed for $197 million in earmarks.

Alaska Produces 20% of US Energy

ACTUALLY : Alaska produces just 3.5%. Neither fact means Palin is qualified.

Hope Someone is Tallying the Lies, I've Lost Track

Sept. 24, 2008 | Salon.com |By Joseph Romm

If this election is about judgment, then John McCain should lose in a landslide. He said of his V.P. pick, "She knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America."

We can judge knowledge by both breadth and depth. Palin lacks both. She said in the ABC interview with Charlie Gibson:

Let me speak specifically about a credential that I do bring to this table, Charlie, and that's with the energy independence that I've been working on for these years as the governor of this state that produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy.

FactCheck.org notes that this is "simply untrue." Instead of "nearly 20 percent," try "under 3 percent." On Sept. 14, Palin corrected that to: "My job has been to oversee nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of oil and gas." In fact, as the Washington Post notes, "according to authoritative EIA [Energy Information Administration] data, Alaska accounted for just 7.4 percent of total U.S. oil and gas production in 2005." The Post gives her its highest (which is to say lowest) rating of "Four Pinocchios" for "continuing to peddle bogus statistics three days after the original error was pointed out by independent fact-checkers."

Just for the record, the statement is not true even if you replace the word "energy" with "oil." Alaska accounts for only about 13 percent of U.S. oil production. But the point is, you can't replace all energy with oil, as much as the "Drill, Baby, Drill" Republicans would like to. Palin made the same exact same overgeneralization in her convention speech, when she said, "To confront the threat that Iran might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of the world's energy supplies ..." Oil, maybe; energy, definitely not.

From Salon.com

Four More Years of Lies

I spent a morning in John McCain's Virginia campaign headquarters ghost-writing letters to the editor for McCain supporters to sign. I even pretended to have a son in Iraq.

"You can be whoever you want to be," says an inviting Phil Tuchman. "You can be a beggar or a millionaire. A mom or a husband. Whatever. You decide!"

The assignment is simple: We are going to write letters to the editor and we are allowed to make up whatever we want -- as long as it adds to the campaign. After today we are supposed to use our free moments at home to create a flow of fictional fan mail for McCain. "Your letters," says Phil Tuchman [ McCain campaign worker], "will be sent to our campaign offices in battle states. Ohio. Pennsylvania. Virginia. New Hampshire. There we'll place them in local newspapers."

Place them? I may be wrong, but I thought that in the USA only a newspaper's editors decided that.

From Salon.com

Should We Be Surprised McCain is Lying?

I'm really not sure what scares me more, the fact that John McCain is lying and distorting truth so much it is tough to keep count, or that I accept it as something Republicans do? After almost eight years of the Bush Administration's lies, I am used to being misled. It is what the US government does. When I hear the Department of Defense claim that they killed thirty suspected Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, I instinctively translate that to mean something more like ninety Afghan civilians, including over fifty children (which was what Afghan officials are claiming happened in a US led air strike in the village of Azizabad last week). Ironically it seems a man named Oliver North is the one in the center of the lies this time. This now Fox News correspondent was indicted and then later pardoned in the 1980s for lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra scandal during on of our past Republican administration under Ronald Reagan.

Why are the left so surprised that McCain is lying? Shouldn't we expect this from these Rove Republicans?

She lies, She's Perfect for President (When Mc$ame Dies)

This from Democrats.com:

It is now thoroughly documented that Sarah Palin supported the $398 million "Bridge to Nowhere" when she ran for Governor in 2006, even though Congress cancelled the earmark in 2005.

She only opposed it in September 2007 after her final efforts to get $329 million more from Congress failed. Yet she kept the partial funding from Congress!
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/675/

So when Palin repeatedly says "I told Congress, 'Thanks, but no thanks' on that bridge to nowhere," she is repeatedly lying.

Palin first lied when she was introduced as McCain's VP choice on August 29. She repeated it on August 31, September 3, September 6, September 8, and September 9. All of these lies are documented:
http://thinkprogress.org/lies-nowhere/

Palin knows the truth, but keeps repeating a lie.

It is long past time for reporters to call Sarah Palin exactly what she is - a serial liar.