Palin's Pitbull Earmark Position Continues to Fall Apart

Here is a great clip from July in which Sarah Palin and Ted Stevens are talking about the earmark process and what it means for Alaska.

You will note that Palin is hardly saying that she feels Alaska should avoid earmarks and instead is saying that she merely recognizes that both presidential candidates would be curbing earmarks and she is just reading the handwriting on the wall.

Another McCain Adviser Touts Economic Health

McCain adviser Donald Luskin had a lengthy article up this weekend in which he goes into detail about the great shape of the US Economy.

This was published on Sept. 14 as Lehman, AIG, and Merrill were falling apart.

Perhaps it is easy to overlook that the current administration and its policies have gotten us here in the first place, but to continue to stick there head in the sand causes me to believe the GOP needs to change its logo to an Ostrich instead.

McCain Responsible for Blackberry?

This morning one of John McCain's campaign spokespeople touted McCain as being the man responsible for the Blackberry because of his time as Commerce Committee chairman.

This would seem to fall in line with the Al Gore claim of inventing the internet since both men claim that their chairmanships were the key factor.

In Gore's case his stewardship can be directly connected to the mainstream evolution of the net, since its invention was actually part of government scientific work. However, in the case of Blackberry the problem is the device was actually created in Canada.

Furthermore, the moves that opened the door for the explosion of wireless devices was actually the purview of the Clinton run FCC which auctioned off the spectrum and licenses which allowed the cell phone and data age to take off.

McCain Adviser Created Bank Crisis

A review of the record of John McCain's economic adviser Phil Graham is a clear road map as to who got us in this unfortunate mess:

Phil Graham is the guy who said America is in a "mental recession" and just a bunch of winers is actually the guy who wrote and shoved through the deregulation that got the banking industry in its current mess.

Late in his Senate career, Gramm spearheaded efforts to pass banking reform laws, including the landmark Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, which served to reduce government regulations in existence since the Great Depression separating banking, insurance and brokerage activities.

Critics now point to Gramm and this same legislation as having been pivotal in encouraging the corporate practices that led to the 2008 mortgage crises in America.

Between 1995 and 2000 Gramm, who was the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, received $1,000,914 in campaign contributions from the Securities & Investment industry.

As lobbyist for Swiss bank UBS, Gramm has pressured congress to ease it's restrictions on predatory lending tactics by mortgage brokers. For his efforts, Gramm received $750,000 from UBS in a one year period starting in 2007.