(crossposted at dkos)
Last night I burned the midnight/5am oil and got these three new/expanded articles up on palintruth.org.

Sarah Palin's "Alaskanomics"
A lengthy examination of the reality behind Palin's claims to have been a fiscally responsible "maverick reformer". The framework of this article came from a great dkos diary yesterday by MaximusNYC, which I later fleshed out and expanded.

Is John McCain a "maverick"?
Discusses briefly some of the many ways in which John McCain has talked a good game of being different from Bush, but in the end has done almost everything Bush has wanted him to. Some good video clips included.

more links after the fold

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http://www.palintruth.org/

I started putting this site together Saturday morning, and just by posting about it online a couple times it got several thousand pageviews over the weekend, but there is still so much more that it needs if it's going to help in the fight to push back against the growing Palin myth.

If anyone has time to help me with compiling sources and writing short articles (not just about Palin, but also about McCain and Obama), I could really use it. This information needs to be as complete and thorough as possible, and as soon as possible. I'm overwhelmed at work, but I don't want to neglect what I think can be an important tool in this election.

Second, I'm not up to speed on CSS, and I can't seem to fix the lists on the left side of the page. I built the site using Joomla and templates, and this template doesn't have styles for lists. I'd like to at least have the bullets flush left instead of indented. I've tried what I thought would work in the CSS, but the level of div embedding (or something else) seems to be tripping me up. If anyone can help me figure out that style sheet issue, again I'd really be grateful.

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I just can't help myself from spreading the word about this masterful article I just read.  If any of you have ever scratched your head wondering who the heck Taylor Marsh is and why she is given a mouthpiece, read on.

First of all, the article discusses Taylor Marsh's claim that she is an author. As it turns out:

My Year in Smut is THE Taylor Marsh book. I don't mean it's the best. I mean it's the only one. I mention that because she likes to occasionally mention her status as an author. Her background as an author and her "research" for the book create a kind of implied credibility. They probably shouldn't.

When your research is actually your job working for a porn site that's an issue. When you're book is printed by AuthorHouse, that's another issue.

AuthorHouse, previously known as 1st Books, served as publisher for My Year in Smut. Do you know what it takes to get AuthorHouse to print your book? Do you need a good literary agent who can sell them on your manuscript? Do you need a track record as an author? Do you need a knockout manuscript they just can't resist? No. No, you don't. You need a check. Or a major credit card.

AuthorHouse is a self-publishing vanity press. You pay them, they print your book. That's about it. I could take my four-year-old's assorted scribblings and Crayola pieces and transform them into a coffee table book, complete with glowing reviews of each drawing written in the tone of a serious art critic. I could do that for around $500. Would that make John Brown's daugher a serious artist? Not really, huh?

 

Next, to Taylor Marsh's claim that she is a "radio host":

Taylor Marsh is a radio host. She says so. Everyone says so. It's all over the fucking place. However, you probably haven't heard her in your car on the radio while commuting to work or going to the store. You see, Taylor Marsh isn't on the radio. No one has actually paid her for being on the radio at any time, based on what I can find.

Taylor Marsh has a website that looks like it belongs to a radio show host. It's illusion. She's a podcaster. She records a show like the ones they actually broadcast on the radio and makes it available for download.

There is something inherently silly about calling yourself a radio host and garnering credibility as a media figure from it when all you're really doing is taking a few calls from ass-kissing blog readers and converting results into MP3 format. That isn't a radio show.

Radio shows are broadcast. Radio shows, in most cases, have advertisers. Babbling into a $15 Radio Shack microphone in your basement and uploading the results to your website isn't running a radio show. Sorry, it just isn't. You are not a radio host if you do that. You're a podcaster.

But she DID have a radio show at one time, right? Well, sort of. I can understand the confusion. Occasionally she mentions wanting to find a "new home" for her radio show and she discusses her status as a screwed-over radio host when she makes crazily shallow comments about the Fairness Doctrine. Clearly, she had a radio show. Right?

Here's the deal. In 2002, Taylor Marsh went to Las Vegas and became a radio host... Sort of. Judy Proffer (Magpye Media) and Marsh came up with the cash to buy time on KLAV, a Las Vegas AM radio station. That's right. They bought time.

KLVA is to radio what Author House is to publishing. If you can't really get a job on a real radio station, you can go to KLVA and buy blocks of time. They give you the studio, provide production assistance, and you're on the air! Instant radio host status. If you'd like to become a talk radio host tomorrow, call your local AM vanity station and offer them some cash. That's all it takes. You can stutter. You can whine. You can say outrageously stupid things. You can be boring. It's on your dime. I could put my four-year-old in front of a mic and have her sing variations on "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" for two hours a day and, voila!, she'd have a claim equivalent to Taylor's as a "radio host".

 

So, what do you think? Are her claims to being an "author" and "radio host" misleading?

Not to make too much hay of this but I think there are two notable points to the below story from ABC News:

In Montana, Clinton Invokes Suffragette Icon, Botches Suffragette History

On Sunday in Montana, which will hold its primary on June 3, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, invoked a legendary state icon, former Rep. Jeannette Rankin, R-Mont., the first woman ever elected to Congress.

"Remember, Jeannette Rankin was elected before women could vote,"Clinton told a crowd in a Missoula airplane hangar. "So who says men don't vote for a woman?"

But Clinton's description of Rankin's election is rather free from the constraints of historical fact -- Montana as a state gave women the right to vote in 1914 and even as a mere territory had given women the right to vote in 1887.

Check out this classic New York Times story from the year Rankin was elected, November 5, 1916, in which she is described as "a handsome and vigorous woman, with a wealth of red hair," and noting the states that allowed women the right to vote as of 1916: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.

Anyone could mess up a fact like this. But it's also true that those whose hearts contain special space for suffragette history will no doubt be disappointed by Clinton not knowing some of this basic history.

Several suffragette historians on the web -- Cliopatra, and others HERE and HERE have corrected Clinton's error, some expressing chagrin that she would get this wrong, others pointing out that Rankin was a pacifist, voting against going to war in World Wars I and II, and would doubtless take issue with Clinton's October 2002 war vote. (Though, c'mon, guys -- Rankin was clearly on the wrong side of history on those votes, my historian friends...let's not take this too far.)

 

My thoughts:

1.  We can argue about the merits about Clinton continually playing the gender card with speeches like this but, if the situation were reversed and Obama got up on the stump and trumpeted the first black this and the first black that, don't you think people on this site would be all over it?

2.  Although certainly not to the level of Tuzla or anything, doesn't Clinton need a better staff of fact checkers?

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Jake Tapper of ABC today summarized the evidence regarding Obama's "no oil money" claim, a claim being made in the critical state of Pennsylvania.  The referees have ruled -- Obama is being deceptive.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/ 2008/04/obamas-oil-slic.html

When my family back in Pennsylvania turns on the TV these days, they may see this Barack Obama TV ad where he's standing in a gas station saying the following:

"Since the gas lines of the '70s, Democrats and Republicans have talked about energy independence, but nothing's changed -- except now Exxon's making $40 billion a year, and we're paying $3.50 for gas.
I'm Barack Obama. I don't take money from oil companies or Washington lobbyists, and I won't let them block change anymore. *

Factcheck.org today takes a look at Obama's claim to not take money from oil companies and concludes that the statement  "misleading" since according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics Obama has taken more than $213,000 from individuals (and their spouses) who work for companies in the oil and gas industry -- not to mention that two of Obama's top fundraisers are top executives at oil companies"

It is literally true that Obama doesn't take money from oil companies. No federal candidate does -- corporations have been banned from direct contributions since 1907.

The Obama campaign points out that the senator doesn't take money from PACs or from lobbyists. Factcheck.org calls that a "distinction without very much of a practical difference. Political action committee funds are pooled contributions from a company's or an organization's individual employees or members; corporate lobbyists often have a big say as to where a PAC's donations go. But a PAC can give no more than $5,000 per candidate, per election. We're not sure how a $5,000 contribution from, say, Chevron's PAC would have more influence on a candidate than, for example, the $9,500 Obama has received from Chevron employees giving money individually."

(Sen. Hillary Clinton has taken $306,000 in donations from people in the oil and gas industry, incidentally.)

So is it all just a lot of gas?

see also: http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/ obamas_oil_spill.html

Yes, Hillary takes money from the industry, but she doesn't make misrepresentations about it.  If you look at both candidates, you will see that employees and corporate bigwigs of lots of companies and industries contribute to both candidates.

So why did Obama feel he needed to misrepresent the facts?  Maybe it's what happened to Hillary on Bosnia -- stretching and stretching until it becomes, well, a lie.

Both candidates lie.  Both candidates are human.  Neither is perfect.  So whether you're looking for a messiah or a female goddess, come down to earth.

It will be interesting to see if pro-Obama blogs that flogged the Bosnia story, e.g., Americablog, even cover this story.

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