Reporters continue to timidly equivocate over the McCain campaign's dishonesty about Sarah Palin's record. Two lies in particular stand out because they are central to the "fellow maverick" rationale for Palin's candidacy: her purported opposition to "The Bridge to Nowhere" and the fabrication that she "sold the governor's jet on Ebay."

A week ago, the Washington Post's Michael Dobbs purported to "fact check" Palin's claim regarding "The Bridge To Nowhere." He begins with this exact quote:

told Congress, 'Thanks, but no thanks,' on that bridge to nowhere."

Dobbs then concludes that the statement is "half-true" because "Palin did make the final call to kill plans for the bridge, but by the time she did it was no longer a politically viable project." Well that's not the claim Palin made. Palin claimed she "told Congress 'Thanks, but no thanks,' on that bridge to nowhere," a far more specific assertion than simply having "killed the bridge." But the important point of the story, as Bob Somerby points out, is that Palin told Congress nothing. Nada. Zip. Bubkus. ZERO. Palin didn't tell Congress anything at all, and in no sense is the statement "I told Congress thanks but no thanks" even remotely true -- it's not half true, it's just completely false.

In "fact-checking" Palin's claim, Dobbs forgets to actually evaluate the veracity of the original statement, divining an interpretation of what Palin meant rather than what she actually said. This is generally, how "fact-checking" this claim has been approached. By not challenging what Somerby points out is the most compelling part of the story, they allow the lie to continue being repeated. The media has shown such a reluctance to identify this whopper as a lie that the McCain campaign has cut a commercial touting this massive fabrication as part of Palin's "maverick" credentials.

This has continued with other demonstrably false claims made by the McCain campaign, most notably that Palin "sold the governor's jet on Ebay." Palin herself has taken pains to avoid saying she "sold" the plane, but these subtleties escape her running mate. She put it up on Ebay, it didn't sell, and they had to sell it at a loss (the dominant theme of Palin's lies is that every single one seems to cost taxpayers millions). Nevertheless, the McCain campaign has continued to repeat the lie. On Friday, when CNN's Campbell Brown confronted Bay Buchanan with the McCain campaign's dishonesty, Buchanan pitched a fit. But when Brown asked for Paul Begala's opinion, Begala, allegedly a liberal, said this (emphasis mine):

BEGALA: No, I will say, it's actually something Bay and I agree on. We're both press bashers irrespective of what the campaigns want. I think the corporate media has fallen in love with this woman and has given her rock star status and need to give her a much thorough review of her record. In defense of governor Palin, I think that the eBay thing with the plane is within the acceptable bounds of hyperbole.

Begala thinks outright lies are within "acceptable bounds of hyperbole" and that Palin's record should be "reviewed" but not in a manner that challenges her most outrageous claims.

The press shouldn't require any motivation to confront politicians on bogus claims. But is it any surprise that they fail to do so when the so-called opposition is willing to give them a pass rather than hammering them on their flagrant dishonesty?

--A. Serwer

The second part of Bob Woodward's book-excerpt is full of fascinating nuggets of information; in particular, that generals on the ground in Iraq opposed the surge:

The president was not listening to [General George] Casey's boss, Gen. John P. Abizaid at Central Command, anymore, either.

"Yeah, I know," the president said to Abizaid at a National Security Council session in December, "you're going to tell me you're against the surge."

Yes, Abizaid replied, and then presented his argument that U.S. forces needed to get out of Iraq in order to win.

"The U.S. presence helps to keep a lid on," Bush responded. There were other benefits. A surge would "also help here at home, since for many the measure of success is reduction in violence," Bush said. "And it'll help [Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-] Maliki to get control of the situation. A heavier presence will buy time for his government."

Now, we've seen that the heavier presence has not bought time for the government to do much of anything -- the political situation continues to be tenuous. Admittedly, Maliki looks like he's trying to set himself up as a political strongman, but that might not be quite what Bush had in mind. What's interesting is that this is the same Bush who said, "Troop levels will be decided by our commanders on the ground, not by political figures in Washington, D.C." Hmmm. And this is the same subject that John McCain has used to attack Barack Obama, saying, "First, he opposed the surge and confidently predicted that it would fail. Then he tried to prevent funding for the troops who carried out the surge. Not content to merely predict failure in Iraq, my opponent tried to legislate failure."

Were Abizaid and Casey trying to fail? Or maybe they understood the limits of military force in Iraq. It's clear that the COIN strategy that General Petraeus brought to Iraq when he replaced Casey as commander is a better way to fight in Iraq, but once again the question should be asked: What does victory look like? And how does military force get us there? McCain hasn't answered those questions.

--Tim Fernholz

From our September print issue: Eli Sanders on how Mark and Tom Udall are changing the face of the Democratic Party in the Mountain West:

Tom Udall is standing at a rural gas station in New Mexico. He's tall like his cousin Mark but with a rounder face and a lot more brown than gray atop his head. Sagebrush and sun-baked earth recede into the distance behind him, and he's walking toward the camera with a gait that suggests he might have just ridden up to the pumps on a horse. As he walks, he explains to the viewers at home what he intends to do about high gas prices.

Here's what you don't hear Tom Udall say in this campaign commercial: "more drilling." His opponent, the oilman and former congressman, Steve Pearce, is more than happy to utter such words, but Tom Udall plays a different set of cards. "First, stop hedge-fund speculators from driving up the price of oil," he says. "Get oil companies to build new clean refineries in the U.S. to increase supply, or take away their tax breaks. And get serious about alternative energy." He sounds tough-minded and sure of himself, and he sounds angry about the price of gas, but he's channeling that anger toward faceless businessmen manipulating the energy market (read: Republicans).

That an aspiring Mountain West senator is addressing the energy issue in this way is notable and indicative of the changing issue matrix in the region. It's a complicated shift, but to broadly summarize: As economic and environmental issues have come to the fore in recent years, social issues have receded in importance in voters' minds. At the same time, as the Iraq War and other unpopular strategies backed by Republicans have sapped confidence in the Republican Party's ability to lead, more people have become interested in hearing Democratic solutions.

Read the rest of the article here.

--The Editors

During the recent war, the Russian Black Sea Fleet successfully carried out several operations, including the delivery of troops to an Abkhaz port, the destruction of Georgian ships, and the blockade of Georgian ports. In the weeks since the war ended, NATO has deployed substantial capabilities to the Black Sea, including American, German, and Spanish warships. Along with the Turkish, Rumanian, and Bulgarian ships already present, this deployment has served to give NATO overwhelming preponderance over Russian forces in the area.

So what is Russia to do? The answer, apparently, is to send the Navy to Venezuela. Reports are a bit sketchy at this point, but the plan seems to be for several (four surface ships, possibly with two submarines) to make a port call in Venezuela in mid-November, and to carry out maneuvers with the Venezuelan Navy. The flagship of the Russian task force, according to one source, will be the nuclear-powered battlecruiser RFS Pyotr Velikiy. Pyotr Velikiy is most memorable for an incident four years ago in which a Russian Navy admiral declared her liable "to explode at any moment."

Explosive nuclear battlecruisers aside, this seems to indicate that the Russians are not intending to pursue a strategy of quick reconciliation with the United States in the wake of the Georgia-Russia conflict. Rather, the Russians seem to be taking steps calculated to irritate the U.S., even in parts of the world where Russia has no strategic interest. I find this quite odd; Russia got what it wanted out of the war, and should at this point be in consolidation mode.

--Robert Farley

Yesterday's Washington Post op-ed page dedicated itself, at least in two pieces, to what at first glance would be a difficult task: explaining how John McCain and Barack Obama are, in fact, the same. First, David Broder:

The good news is that Obama and McCain, for different reasons, have about as good a prospect of achieving that change as any two politicians you could find.

Why? Because Obama has an exceptional mind and represents a new generation of Americans. John McCain because he is good at personal relationships (huh?) and "disdains partisanship and searches for the national interest, wherever he can find it." Mmhmm. Now, David Ignatius:

Best of all, these four people are each, in different ways, American rebels. They have all made their way challenging conventional wisdom, telling off the know-it-alls, making a place for themselves and their ideas. They all retained their individuality in a political culture that tends to grind down candidates until they are palpable phonies. That didn't happen with these four -- whatever you think of them, they are who they claim to be.

Well, no, not really. For instance, Sarah Palin regularly lies about fighting against earmarks when, in fact, she was in favor of them for a long time. John McCain used to try to hold himself above the partisan fray but now follows typical Bush-Rove attack politics and offers policy positions that either endorse or amplify those of the Bush administration. Seriously, neither one of these articles explains why McCain is such a change agent, they just sort of take it as a given, though anyone who has done some second-order thinking about his platform can tell you he isn't. Simply repeating "maverick" over and over again does not make you a maverick. As a journalist, I can make a list of Things That Will Change (TM) if Barack Obama is elected. Even on my most charitable days, I cannot do the same for John McCain. Even these two authors who disagree with me and think that John McCain will offer some change, however, are unable to specify what that would be.

There is going to be an election in two short months. The press owes its readers a distinction between the two candidates, rather than an article predicated on some non-existent fantasy land where this election doesn't matter at all, because these readers are going to have to make a choice on November 4. They ought to be doing their job.

--Tim Fernholz

P.S. As long as I'm doing Sunday op-eds, Maureen Dowd should not have a Times column.

Due to the presence of a whopping two outspoken liberals on the network, conservatives love to argue that MSNBC leans left as far as Fox leans right. Except MSNBC simply hosts a couple of liberals, rather than having actually devoted itself to furthering conservative causes. During the conventions, Fox hosted the likes of Karl Rove and Laura Ingraham balanced out by Brit Hume, Sean Hannity and Carl Cameron (who still struggles with the idea that the South lost the Civil War) Fox's conservatism is deliberate, MSNBC's liberalism is occasional. It's hard to imagine Fox for example, taking a step like this, because they'd have to drop most of their talent:

MSNBC is removing Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews as the anchors of live political events, bowing to growing criticism that they are too opinionated to be seen as neutral in the heat of the presidential campaign.

[...]

The move, confirmed by spokesmen for both networks, follows increasingly loud complaints about Olbermann's anchor role at the Democratic and Republican conventions. Olbermann, who regularly assails President Bush and GOP nominee John McCain on his "Countdown" program, was effusive in praising the acceptance speech of Democratic nominee Barack Obama. He drew flak Thursday when the Republicans played a video that included a tribute to the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, saying that if the networks had done that, "we would be rightly eviscerated at all quarters, perhaps by the Republican Party itself, for exploiting the memories of the dead, and perhaps even for trying to evoke that pain again. If you reacted to that videotape the way I did, I apologize."

Matthews' onetime praise of Obama's Iowa speech has hardly become the norm. He is also prone to questioning Obama's "normalness" given that Obama is *black*. Or so I hear.

Fox has never been scandalized by its conservative leanings, despite many embarrassing incidents of misreported stories. Despite the rise of liberal alternative media, conservatives still succeed at "working the ref" so that anything approaching objective reporting is seen as representing "liberal bias," making any actual liberal analysis beyond the pale. The temper tantrums thrown by Republican political operatives when reporters ask them basic questions about their claims points to how completely deferential they expect reporters to be. As far as they're concerned, the media isn't there to inform the public, it's there to repeat their spin. So naturally, they complain when the networks do anything else. When conservatives complain about unfair coverage, the allegedly liberal media actually listens.

--A.Serwer

• John McCain's acceptance speech last night drew 500,000 more viewers than Barack Obama's, 38.9 to 38.4 million, although pundit reactions -- right and left -- to the speech could probably be best described in the aggregate as "competent." In addition, as Daniel notes below, the source of the hideous green lawn behind McCain's head during one portion was Walter Reed Middle School, featured in such film classics as License to Drive. Greg Sargent of TPM, who originally scooped this, also observes that the same school was featured in a backdrop for fictional West Wing Democratic candidate Matt Santos. I think we're several steps beyond mere art imitating life.
• Think Progress has a word analysis of every speech given at the Republican National Convention, confirming the impression that the event was strong on partisan red meat, and light on policy, and apparently oblivious to the fact that it was put on by the party in power for the past eight years. George Bush, to cite one conspicuous example, was mentioned just once, by Mitt Romney on Wednesday night.
• The McCain campaign is making sure Sarah Palin is kept out of the media spotlight until she's "ready" and "comfortable." Clearly this is to prevent any Quayle-esque gaffes on Palin's part, which is understandable given her thin record of clear policy positions, but look at one of the "experts" who are coaching her, according to the Washington Post: Joe Lieberman. Actually, having Holy Joe coach Palin for her debate with Joe Biden is probably the next best thing to a debate between Biden and Lieberman himself.
• Speaking of debates, Nate Silver makes an excellent point regarding the timing of the conventions and the debates. "It is possible that the Republicans' one big win [uniting their base] will outweigh the Democrats' two [uniting their base and hammering home "it's the economy, stupid"]. But they've essentially chosen to concede the domestic policy argument -- which is exceptionally dangerous because the last major event of the campaign is the October 15 debate at Hofstra University, a debate which is focused entirely on domestic policy."
• Political science to the rescue! Andrew Gelman observes that it is hardly uncommon for governors of small states to be more popular than those in large states.
• The DNC's first general election ad, slated to run in Michigan, will be a nearly half-million dollar buy. The ad, a refrain on McCain as "more of the same," can be viewed here.
• The Obama campaign is dispatching Hillary Clinton, Janet Napolitano and Kathleen Sebelius to Florida Monday as a surrogates, the NY Times reports, although the campaign denies this is strictly to counter the GOP's sudden interest in gender equality.
• I'm going to refrain from referencing any more polls until Monday, when the convention/VP mania dust has settled, but it's worth noting that the Palin pick might actually have helped embattled incumbent senator Ted Stevens in Alaska, as he has closed a 17-point gap between him and Democratic challenger Mark Begich to just three points, according to the Anchorage Press.
• Third party watch: Ron Paul is making "a major announcement next week in Washington at the National Press Club" according to Reason's Dave Weigel.
• Finally, I'm not sure what is more disturbing: that the RNC used fake soldiers in one of their ads or that 2,500 ballots have gone missing in Palm Beach, Florida.
  

--Mori Dinauer

We've heard a lot about how Sarah Palin's nomination will affect the national race, but looking down the ticket, you have to wonder how choosing Palin, who is radically anti-choice -- radical because she makes no exception for incest or rape -- will affect the chances of pro-choice Republicans running for house seats.

One example in IL-10 is Rep. Mark Kirk, who is nominally pro-choice, but was "encouraged" by the Palin pick. One of his constituents, Karen Fujisawa, sent a letter to Kirk [PDF] criticizing his support for Palin, which came in the wake of his recent vote against a House bill supporting pay equity for women.

I spoke with Karen this afternoon. Prior to this election, she considered herself an independent and voted for the occasional Republican. She now plans on voting Democratic. "Watching someone I was introduced to as a moderate, for him to come out and give a warm welcome to [someone who] stands for everything women have fought against, I was appalled," she said.

Kirk's opponent, Dan Seals, has been running a competitive enough race to find himself on the DCCC's Red-to-Blue program. His communications director, Elisabeth Smith, told me that though they didn't have plans to make Kirk's support for Palin a major issue, it was "one more reason for Dan to cite about why Mark Kirk is out-of-touch with his district."

Similarly, in Connecticut's fourth district, moderate Republican Rep. Chris Shays has come out in favor of Palin. Michael Sachse, a spokesperson for Jim Himes, Shay's Democratic opponent, told me that "This nomination is a sop to the social conservatives, and it makes the national ticket more conservative, thus more out of step with voters in this district. When Chris Shays rallies to her defense, it shows that while the ticket is out of step with Connecticut, [Shays] is in lock-step with the ticket. The politics of Palin specifically obviously affect a range of issues, not just women's issues, high on that list, but also environmental issues."

Though it won't be clear for some time how effective it will be for down-ballot Dems to tie their opponents to Palin's brand of conservativsm, it will be hard for those Republicans to continue to claim they are moderates. No wonder, then, that that the moderate Republican is a dying breed, and that the New England variety could become extinct in this election season.

--Tim Fernholz

If you're in D.C., come out this Sunday at 1 p.m. to Politics and Prose where occasional TAP contributor Kevin Mattson will be reading from his new book Rebels All!: A Short History of the Conservative Mind in Postwar America.

--The Editors

Clive Crook, in the Financial Times, conjures up an alternate Republican reality:

Not for the first time, it occurred to me that McCain’s biggest mistake in this campaign has been in failing to develop a market-friendly proposal for universal health care. Mitt Romney did it in Massachusetts so do not tell me a Republican cannot go there. That plus Palin would have given him a shot at the base and at independents too. It would have cemented his appeal to middle America, which is much preoccupied with the worsening failure of the US health care system.

Sorry to be the one who has to tell you, sir, but a Republican cannot go there. Mitt Romney may have signed such a bill as governor of a Democratic-dominated state, but as a presidential candidate, he ran from it as far and as fast as he could and made no pretense of supporting universal health care.

So, there's no such thing as a national Republican Party that supports universal health care. Is there such a thing as a "market-friendly approach to universal health care"? Sure, it's called "the Obama plan." Or "the Clinton plan." Both retain all the structures of the private insurance market and rely on market incentives and price signals to control costs and expand access.

This is the dual chimera of thoughtful conservatives like Crook: First, a belief that there is some sort of conservative or "market-friendly" policy out there that is different from and more appealing than that supported by liberals. And, second, a belief that the Republican Party would support such policies if they only knew about them. McCain has been a particular beneficiary of belief in these imaginary policies supported by an imaginary party.

-- Mark Schmitt.

Does someone who says of Sarah Palin, "the governor is someone I admired as a future star of the party before she was chosen" sound like an undecided independent? Unless you live in Alaska, would you really be aware of Palin or refer to the GOP as "the party" unless you were already a Republican partisan? Just sayin'. Here are two other focus groups who watched Palin's speech Wednesday with a slightly different result.

--Tim Fernholz

While Rick Davis and John McCain simply hope women will vote for Sarah Palin, the Democrats are trying to force McCain to actually take a stand on women's issues.

Democrats have hammered Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) this summer over his vote against legislation pushing equal pay for women and men. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act will get a second act in September, as Democrats seek to remind voters that McCain opposed it, according to an e-mail from the Democratic Senate message center. It lists "[e]qual pay legislation" as among the issues the Senate will take up in September.

The Fair Pay Act expands the amount of time available for women to file discrimination claims after our conservative Supreme Court ruled that discrimination is okay as long as you can hide it for 180 days. My understanding is that this bill is the same as the Paycheck Fairness Act passed in the House this summer, which also addressed discrimination but set aside funds for salary negotiation training for woman as well as pushed the EEOC to better "collect and disseminate wage information based on gender," so that it is easier for workers to find out if they've been discriminated against.

Rudy Giuliani hit Obama this week for voting "present" in the Illinois Senate, which was actually a legislative strategy designed to blunt the effectiveness of state Senate Republicans in trapping Democrats in uncomfortable positions on wedge issues. McCain on the other hand, rarely shows up in the Senate to vote. Last time he had a tough decision to make on this bill, he just wasn't there. If voting "present" says something bad about Obama's leadership abilities, what are we to make of McCain not showing up at all?

--A. Serwer

So what was with that whole green background during McCain's speech last night? Josh Marshall's readers at TPM found that the background was the lawn of one Walter Reed Middle School in Los Angeles' North Hollywood neighborhood which further raises the question 'Was it supposed to be Walter Reed Hospital?' The middle school's name may just be a coincidence since the school has made cameos in both tv shows and movies including:

• Head of the Class


• Growing Pains


• 7th Heaven


• CSI


• Malcom in the Middle


• Transformers


• Joe Dirt


• License to Drive


• The Shaggy Dog


• Little Big Men


• Accepted


• Tell Me You Love Me
  

Maybe the McCain Campaign meant to show the Middle School to get the hollywood tv and film producer vote...?

--Daniel Strauss

In October of 1955, when John McCain was angry, frustrated and newly 19, the movie “Rebel Without A Cause” – a film about angry and frustrated newly-19-year-olds, among others -- was put into general release. It starred, in his most memorable role, the young James Dean as an anguished adolescent repulsed by the world of grown-up rules, conventions and hypocrisies, but with no idea whatever as to what to do about them.

And if there was one movie star who personified patriarchal rectitude in ‘50s America as iconically as Dean personified adolescent rebellion, it was Spencer Tracy -- white-thatched, authoritative, tough, decent in one film after another. While Dean was floundering in the grown-up world, Tracy was the movies’ ultimate adult – presiding over the last big-city machine in The Last Hurrah and personifying justice itself as the judge in Judgment at Nuremberg.

MORE...

Founding Editor Bob Kuttner is joining us on TAPPED with commentary about his new book, Obama's Challenge: America's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency, and on economic issues in the campaign.

On Thursday, John McCain pledged to end partisan rancor. On Wednesday, his running mate, Sarah Palin, and the rest of his crew did everything possible to stir it up. This will evidently be the nice-cop/bad cop act through the campaign.

As if to rain on McCain’s parade, the August unemployment rate hit 6.1 percent, the Labor Department just announced. That’s the highest rate since 1993, except for a brief spike in the summer of 2003. Drilling down into the report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the news only gets worse. Monthly job losses were 84,000 in August, worse than expected. The number of long term unemployed rose by twice that number, to a total of more than 1.8 million.

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The Republican National Convention wasn't so much a celebration of America as it was a superficial celebration of war and, even then, only in the service of self-aggrandizement. The Republican Party was too busy with blood and iron speeches to tell the difference between Walter Reed Army Hospital and Walter Reed Middle School in Hollywood, California. It was a perfect metaphor for a party that fought to prevent veterans from receiving full benefits and then tried to take credit for them afterwards. The party of war had a great deal to say about the surge, but nothing -- literally nothing -- to say about the war in Afghanistan, where American servicemen are still fighting and dying.I guess it just doesn't have the political cache of the surge.

McCain's speech didn't want for similar contradictions. McCain had all the empathy in the world for people who lost money in real estate investments, and none for those who actually lost their homes. McCain extolled Americans to service, listing alternatives to the military such as "become a teacher. Enter the ministry. Run for public office. Feed a hungry child. Teach an illiterate adult to read. Comfort the afflicted. Defend the rights of the oppressed." But if you do choose to serve your country in ways other than going to war, you will be mocked for not having any "scars" and maligned as though the people you serve aren't worth helping. McCain called education "the civil rights issue of this century," even as his wife promised the country that McCain "would not break with our heritage."

McCain said "I’m not running for president because I think I’m blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need," except his plan for fixing Washington rests entirely on his personal application of his mighty will. Most of the speech, rather than an political agenda, consisted of yet another rendition of McCain's experience as a POW, which we've never heard about before. As Hilzoy put it, one candidate said he would change Washington after being there for more than two decades by "deploying the force of his character in its general direction," and the other gave "specifics about what, exactly, he planned to do, while reminding us not just that our country was great, but why." For all the descriptions of a cult of personality surrounding Obama, all that was missing from the RNC last night was the sacrificial virgin. The tasteless use of 9/11 footage would have to suffice. One hopes, for the GOP's sake, that no one remembers who was actually president when the planes hit the towers.

McCain's weak attempts at empathy and understanding fell flat, and his call to serve a cause "greater than self," by process of elimination guided by the GOP's own rhetoric, leaves only one: McCain himself.

--A. Serwer

Family visitation and work commitments meant that I didn't see any speeches at the GOP convention last night; I can't say I was terribly disappointed. Nonetheless, I did look at some transcripts and clips. We could do this all day, but consider the density of lies and nonsense packed into this sentence from McCain:

[Obama's] plan will force small businesses to cut jobs, reduce wages, and force families into a government-run health care system where a bureaucrat...

(AUDIENCE BOOS)

... where a bureaucrat stands between you and your doctor.

There are a couple of obvious lies here: Obama's plan specifically exempts small businesses from contribution requirements, and he's not proposing British-style socialized medicine. But what really kills me is the idea that in the current American system no "bureaucrat" will stand between you and your health care. I hate to break this to McCain -- whose immense wealth and government benefits mean he doesn't have to deal with this -- but private insurance companies all invest in large bureaucracies whose primary purpose is to stand between you and your doctor.

--Scott Lemieux

Unemployment has risen to 6.1 percent, a five year high. In the story, Jared Bernstein observes that this is now, whether you like it or not, officially a recession. I thought it might be instructive to compare the press releases of our two presidential campaigns.

McCain:

We must prepare every worker for the jobs of tomorrow. We will use our community colleges to help train people for new opportunities in their communities. As President, I will enact a Jobs for America economic plan that creates jobs, helps small businesses, expands opportunities and opens markets to American goods. Washington must stand beside the American people, not in their way. .... Sadly there are those who believe that to grow this economy we must raise taxes, impose costly new mandates and isolate America from the global economy. When our economy is hurting, the last thing we should do is raise taxes as Barack Obama plans to do and has done. The American people cannot afford a Barack Obama presidency."

Obama:

John McCain may believe that the fundamentals of our economy are ‘strong,’ but the working men and women I meet every day are working harder for less, the typical working age family’s income is down $2,000 since George Bush took office, and their purchasing power is as low as it’s been in a decade. John McCain’s answer is more of the same: $200 billion in tax cuts to big corporations and oil companies, and not one dime of tax relief to more than 100 million middle-class families. If I am President, I will cut taxes for 95% of all working families and provide an immediate $50 billion to struggling states so that they don’t have to cut back on health care and education and can rebuild roads and schools. That’s the change working families need right now,” said Senator Barack Obama.

Read these and ask, "Which candidate has a more specific answer to these problems, and doesn't wave around vague platitudes?" and "Which candidate honestly characterized the other's plan?" The results may surprise you.

Or not.

--Tim Fernholz

Mark Schmitt writes that John McCain’s speech last night faltered because it attempted to use one man’s biography to do the work normally done by an entire party's platform and ideology:

Last week we watched the national convention of the Democratic Party. This week we witnessed the national convention of John McCain.

And that, I realized while trying to pay attention to McCain’s speech tonight, is the real source of difference between the two weeks and the two finales. It’s not just that McCain’s speech was poorly written (Mark Salter, who is more than a speechwriter but really gave McCain his voice, must have been busy with Sarah Palin’s speech), delivered awkwardly to a geriatric Caucasian crowd, and punctuated with smiles and thumbs-up at all the wrong places. It wasn’t the Kodak Carousel slideshow running behind him. It wasn’t just that even the grace notes were graceless: After declaring of Barack Obama and his supporters, “We honor their achievement” (What achievement? Oh, the whole first-black thing!), he hollered, “but make no mistake my friends, we’re the ones who are going to win!” Not, we’re the ones with the best ideas or the ones who can best end the war and restore prosperity, just we’re-gonna-win.

No, the notable difference, not just in the speeches but in the entirety of the two conventions, was that it is McCain who stands alone. He is the one whose platform is his own personal melodrama, the moment of doubt and pain after which, “I was never the same again. I wasn’t my own man anymore. I was my country’s.” He’s the one whose introductory video declared that he “was chosen for this moment,” and “the stars are aligned” for his victory. Who’s the messiah, now?

--The Editors

MORE...

I didn't watch McCain's speech live, but catching it now, the observation that it was a bit lackluster seems accurate. He certainly didn't do anything to distinguish himself from George W. Bush on any single item of policy; if he has a different agenda, he certainly didn't identify it. Two lines on health care stuck out at me:

We believe in a ... culture of life. ...Government that doesn't make your choices for you, but works to make sure you have more choices to make for yourself.

Unless you're a woman. Then you do not get to make choices for yourself. On Obama's health care plan:

His plan will ... force families into a government run health care system where a bureaucrat stands between you and your doctor.

Whereas McCain's plan will force women into a health care system where ... the government stands between you and your doctor. On to energy:

Senator Obama thinks we can achieve energy independence without more drilling and without more nuclear power. But Americans know better than that.

I should hope they do. Obama signed onto a compromise bill this summer that would allow domestic drilling while providing ambitious funding to other energy programs. McCain the Maverick refused to sign on. In fact, McCain missed the last eight votes.

Here's the problem with McCain trying to claim he represents change and reform: He can't give a single example of what that would entail. My friends, that's not change you can believe in.

--Tim Fernholz

There has been growing attention on Sarah Palin's church background, the dominionist worldview reflected in some of her statements and those of her pastors, and an apparent affection between churches she attends and organizations like Jews for Jesus and Christians United for Israel.

According to the Christian Zionist group The Jerusalem Connection International (whose leader, James Hutchens, broke this year with John Hagee's Christians United for Israel over Hagee's book that backpedaled on the imperative to convert Jews to Christianity), Palin, accompanied by Joe Lieberman, convened this week with representatives of the the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and met with their approval. Of special note for The Jerusalem Connection is that the evangelical Palin, who also received the blessing of Rabbi Yossi Greenberg, the Alaska emissary for the Hassidic Chabad sect, keeps an Israeli flag in her office:

The Jerusalem Connection had this to add about Palin:

Sarah Palin is the liberal's worst nightmare. The Medianite's attacks on her have been and will no doubt continue to be vicious. Let's face it, they are desparate to see her defeated. Therefore God's people must undergird her in prayer -- for God's protection, for wisdom, discernment and uncommon courage. She is indeed a "Game Changer." As a matter of fact the elections here in the United States and in Israel will also be "game changers," regardless of who wins. Pray that the change that occurs will be more closely aligned with God's Word, especially regarding Israel.

"More closely aligned with God's Word." Meaning more closely aligned with the Christian Zionist apocalyptic vision for the Middle East than the Bush Administration has been.

--Sarah Posner

The term "enemy combatant" is an awkward one, made even more complex because its definition has shifted over time. In the early days in the war on terror, it meant individuals who had attacked the United States. Over time, though, it began to include a broader range -- from individuals who had been involved in direct assaults on the U.S. to those who were accused only of providing material aid. "It's a term that allows the government to fill that category with whoever they want," says Michael Ratner of the New-York-based legal Center for Constitutional Rights. He was speaking at a panel discussion entitled "The Enemy Combatants Papers: American Justice, the Courts, and the War on Terror," in New York on Wednesday at an event hosted by NYU Law School's Center on Law and Security.

One of the other panelists, Joshua Dratel, who is co-editor of a new book The Enemy Combatant Papers, puts it more simply: "It's a backward definition," he says. "The people who are at Guantanamo are enemy combatants. And the moment you leave Guantanamo, you are no longer an enemy combatant."

Regardless of what they are called, the vast majority of the 255 individuals who being held in Guantanamo's confines are probably not guilty of crimes they have supposedly been accused of, says Ratner. "If we ever got to a trail, I think ninety percent of these people will be out," he says. There was, however, disagreement among the panelists, who also included Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, about whether and when trials will take place and prisoners will be released. Romero says he believes Guantanamo will still be open a year from now. "There isn't a domestic constituency to shut it down," he says. Meanwhile, Karen J. Greenberg, co-editor of The Enemy Combatant Papers and executive director of the Center on Law and Security, seems to think the prison will soon be shuttered, though she is not optimistic about the future. "We'll get what we want – they'll close it," she says. "And even worse will happen."

--Tara McKelvey

Kokesh, a passionate Ron Paul supporter, is 26 and a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. He served in Fallujah in 2004, grew up in Santa Fe, and currently lives in Washington, D.C. He has a website.

At the beginning of McCain's speech, Kokesh held up a sign reading, "McCain Votes Against Vets" and yelled, "Ask him why he votes against vets!" I followed as Kokesh was escorted out of the Excel Center by security, handcuffed by local police, and then briefly questioned while security debated whether or not the Secret Service would get involved. They did not. He was then escorted off the premises and allowed to go free. I interviewed him just outside the security gates, where he was greeted happily by antiwar protesters.

Why were you here in the Twin Cities? And how did you get into the Excel Center?

I was here in Minneapolis for the IVAW convention and thought I’d stick around for this.

Well I’ve been a Ron Paul supporter since the beginning of this campaign. Since before this campaign started, actually, I’ve been a fan of Paul. So I’ve got a lot of friends in the Ron Paul crowd. And he’s got a lot of delegates in there. More than the Republican Party is willing to admit. And the fact that I got into there is proof of that. One of Paul’s alternate delegates got me a guest pass.

Were you surprised to be handcuffed? Or are you just relieved you were not arrested or detained longer?

I was actually expecting to get manhandled much sooner. [During the heckling], someone was grabbing my belt and pulling on me. And then someone pulled the sign out of my hands.

Do you feel your protest was effective?

Well I wasn’t so much trying to interrupt the speech as make the point that McCain has a horrible voting record on veterans. What the Republican Party is doing with their take on the war in Iraq is spinning it in such a way that it’s about victory or defeat. But they can’t face up to the fact that you can’t win an occupation. In an occupation, everybody loses. What we’re calling for is an immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces in Iraq.

Who will you vote for in November?

Bob Barr.

--Dana Goldstein

I just got an exclusive interview with the heckler who interrupted McCain's address. His message was that the GOP nominee has voted against support for veterans. His name is Adam Kokesh, he is 26, and he served in Fallujah in 2004. He is a Ron Paul supporter. A friend of Kokesh's who was a Paul alternate delegate provided him with credentials to get into the Excel Center. Kokesh is a member of the group Iraq Veterans Against the War.

I will transcribe the interview and get it up ASAP.

--Dana Goldstein

A major distraction here as McCain accepts the nomination. A heckler with a "McCain Votes Against Vets" sign is screaming "Ask him why he votes against vets!" The crowd tries to drown him out with "USA!" Security is around the man, who is right above me in the stands. They seem to be debating what to do with him.

--Dana Goldstein

The star of the video was McCain's mom, who, it seems, has looked exactly the same since she was 30, and calls her son a "mama's boy."

The theme of the video, though, is destiny. While reminding us of just how horrid McCain's experience in Vietnam was, and how heroically he comported himself, there's no mention at all of a governing record, or a policy prescription for the future. Rather, the argument lies upon the idea of destiny -- that John McCain was born, and fought, and survived improbably to become president of the United States.

--Dana Goldstein

John McCain's three middle-aged kids from his first marriage are up on stage tonight. They are pretty much never seen or heard from.

--Dana Goldstein

Between them, Lindsay Graham and Tom Ridge have delivered a jolt of Sominex to this convention. These guys were vice-presidential options? Delegates are trying to pay attention, trying to be good, but they're getting no help from the podium. Ridge makes Mr. Rogers sound like Huey Long.

--Harold Meyerson

Lindsay Graham just accused Obama of patronizing the troops, not backing the surge, the usual stuff. But it's a lackluster effort, through which delegates are merrily yacking. Graham has the unfortunate habit of fading into inaudibility despite being miked from shoelace to cerebrum. How he does that, I have no idea.

--Harold Meyerson

Here at the Excel Center, we just finished watching a "never again" video about the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, complete with stirring images of New York City. You know, that "cosmopolitan" place filled with "media elites" and "liberals" who don't put "Country First" -- or at least that's what the message was during the previous three days of this convention.

Of course, I'm having the thought I always do when politicians use 9/11 to manipulate people's emotions. New Yorkers -- the people actually targeted by the terrorist attack -- tend not to believe the GOP is the party best suited to keep them safe. Shouldn't that count for something? Or is 9/11 just a lens through which to filter nationalism?

--Dana Goldstein