And She's Mean, Too :(

Who would have guessed that Sarah Palin is such a beee-otch? She sure proved it last night with a speech full of lies, hyperbole, attacks and sheer hate-filled talk. Where to start? In case you missed it - here it is in all of it's hate-fueled glory. It was set-up by a string of other lie-filled speeches by Mittens Romney, Mike Huckleberry, and Rudi "Noun-verb-9/11" Ghouliani. By the time Palin took the stage the audience had worked themselves into a frenzy of attack mode, ready to hear all of the lies and hate without any expectation of substance or a real discussion of issues that face Americans today.

I couldn't figure out what Mittens Romney was going on about - his theme seemed to be it's all the fault of the "liberals" completely ignorant of the fact that liberals haven't been in charge for the past eight years. What the hell was Mitt Romney talking about? It hasn't been liberals who have raised the national debt, spending money like drunken sailors. George W. Bush & Dick Cheney are certainly no liberals. It wasn't liberals who bowed down to special interests at the expense of the people. Liberals are not the party that gave tax breaks to the richest 1% of the population, while screwing the other 99%. Liberals are not to blame for the debacle that is Iraq, nor was it liberals who have ignored all the environmental laws and allowed our world to get dirtier and dirtier. Liberals were not the ones behind giving medical care over to health insurance and pharmaceutical companies so that even if a family has insurance - they still may be overwhelmed by medical bills, get behind in payments, and lose their house or their job (and thereby losing what little health insurance they had). Liberals didn't enshrine oil and gas companies and the huge, growing world of privatization to enrich themselves and their country club cronies with millions and millions (in some cases even billions) of dollars (Allow me to name just of few of the corporations and their boards and CEOs that were greatly enriched during the reign of Bush/Cheney: Kellogg, Brown & Root, Halliburton, ExxonMobile, BP, Chevron, Shell, Smith Barney, Citigroup, Enron, and the bail out of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). Liberals generally did not support the passage of FISA or the strong expansion of surveillance powers by the executive branch of government.None of these are problems created by liberals, they are all the legacy of the GOP, the party that has been in charge for the past eight years, the party that it is time to retire in November.

Mike Huckleberry gave his homespun sob story about his trailer park upbringing, followed by Rudi "Noun-verb-9/11" Ghouliani who had nothing substantive to say about any issue that matters to anybody.

Here is some fact checking from Palin's speech (along with a few other whoppers spoken by the greasers who warmed up the crowd) last night:

PALIN: "There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform _ not even in the state senate."

THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.

PALIN: "The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars."

THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama's plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain's plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded.Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families. He also would raise income taxes, capital gains and dividend taxes on the wealthiest. He would raise payroll taxes on taxpayers with incomes above $250,000, and he would raise corporate taxes. Small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year would see taxes rise.

MCCAIN: "She's been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply ... She's responsible for 20 percent of the nation's energy supply. I'm entertained by the comparison and I hope we can keep making that comparison that running a political campaign is somehow comparable to being the executive of the largest state in America," he said in an interview with ABC News' Charles Gibson.

THE FACTS: McCain's phrasing exaggerates both claims. Palin is governor of a state that ranks second nationally in crude oil production, but she's no more "responsible" for that resource than President Bush was when he was governor of Texas, another oil-producing state. In fact, her primary power is the ability to tax oil, which she did in concert with the Alaska Legislature. And where Alaska is the largest state in America, McCain could as easily have called it the 47th largest state _ by population.

MCCAIN: "She's the commander of the Alaska National Guard. ... She has been in charge, and she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities," he said on ABC.

THE FACTS: While governors are in charge of their state guard units, that authority ends whenever those units are called to actual military service. When guard units are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, for example, they assume those duties under "federal status," which means they report to the Defense Department, not their governors. Alaska's national guard units have a total of about 4,200 personnel, among the smallest of state guard organizations.

FORMER ARKANSAS GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE: Palin "got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States."

THE FACTS: A whopper. Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 mayor's election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries.

From Huffington Post's Jim Kuhnhenn along with AP's Writer Jim Drinkard.

Here are a few more corrections from Gov. Sarah Palin's remarks to the Republican National Convention about her record in which she stretched the truth:

GAS PIPELINE

PALIN: "I fought to bring about the largest private-sector infrastructure project in North American history. And when that deal was struck, we began a nearly forty billion dollar natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence. That pipeline, when the last section is laid and its valves are opened, will lead America one step farther away from dependence on dangerous foreign powers that do not have our interests at heart.

THE FACTS: Palin implies that construction has begun on a major natural gas pipeline from the top of Alaska into Canada. That is not correct. In fact, no building has begun and actual construction is years away, if it ever happens. This summer the Alaska Legislature, at Palin's request, passed a bill under which the state will issue a "license" to a Canadian energy company, TransCanada Corp., and pay it up to $500 million as an incentive to someday build this enormous project, which Alaska politicians have long sought with little success. The license is not a construction contract, and federal energy regulators have not yet approved the project. Palin also puts the price tag for the project at $40 billion, an exaggeration. This is roughly $10 billion more than most cost estimates industry players and consultants have made to date.

EARMARKS

PALIN: "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending ... and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere."

THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation, although she has cut, by more than half, the amount the state sought from Washington this year. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to Gravina Island, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a "bridge to nowhere."

From the Daily News reporter Wesley Loy and the Associated Press.

Read more about Mrs. Palin in the Alaska Daily News - I Have Known Sarah Since 1992...