Joe the Plumber: Social Security is a Joke

Gergen: Reagan administration enacted 'redistribution' of wealth

Gergen: Reagan administration enacted 'redistribution' of wealth

David Edwards and Muriel Kane

Senator John McCain has been attempting to appeal to voters lately by attacking Barack Obama over his plans to reduce taxes for the middle class while increasing them on the wealthiest Americans.

Political analyst David Gergen believes the Democrats ought to fight back harder than they have against these claims that Obama is a "socialist" and suggests they start by pointing out that the most esteemed Republican presidents, such as Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, were also supporters of what McCain decries as "income redistribution."

In a speech set for Monday, McCain asserts, "Senator Obama is running to be Redistributionist in Chief. I'm running to be Commander in Chief. Senator Obama is running to spread the wealth. I'm running to create more wealth. Senator Obama is running to punish the successful. I'm running to make everyone successful."

When asked by CNN's Anderson Cooper whether McCain's attacks are working, Gergen replied, "They may be making some modest progress with it. We do see some evidence of McCain coming up a point or two here and there. I don't think it's anywhere near close enough to win an election."

However, Gergen added that "more importantly, I don't think the Democrats have really answered it appropriately."

Gergen suggested that the Democrats should invoke the example of Teddy Roosevelt, who was both a Republican and one of the greatest advocates of progressive taxation in the years immediately preceding the enactment of the current income tax.

Gergen also noted that the Reagan administration was responsible for enacting the Earned Income Tax Credit, an extremely successful redistribution program which returns money to the working poor.

"Sometimes they get so carried away that they don't realize the realities of what we've been going through," Gergen added. Apparently referring to McCain's promises to "create more wealth," he explained that "the wealth over the last 30 years has been redistributed -- it's been redistributed upwards. As we grow, the top one percent's getting a disproportionate share."

"Everything McCain does seems scattershot," concluded correspondent John King. "You needed to start a long time ago and build your case, not just throw these things out."

CNN has a complete transcript here.

This video is from CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, broadcast October 27, 2008.

Barack Obama delivers his closing argument in Canton, OH

Barack Obama delivers his closing argument in Canton, OH

By SilentPatriot Monday Oct 27, 2008 4:00pm

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Senator Obama in Canton, OH, today speaking about what's at stake in this election and why we can't afford four more years of the same old politics that pits Democrats against Republicans, rich against poor, black against white.

In one week, we can choose an economy that rewards work and creates new jobs and fuels prosperity from the bottom-up.

In one week, we can choose to invest in health care for our families, and education for our kids, and renewable energy for our future.

In one week, we can choose hope over fear, unity over division, the promise of change over the power of the status quo.

In one week, we can come together as one nation, and one people, and once more choose our better history.

That’s what’s at stake. That’s what we’re fighting for. And if in this last week, you will knock on some doors for me, and make some calls for me, and talk to your neighbors, and convince your friends; if you will stand with me, and fight with me, and give me your vote, then I promise you this – we will not just win Ohio, we will not just win this election, but together, we will change this country andwe will change the world.

Full remarks below the fold:

Continue reading »

Olbermann

Countdown: Palin Wants To Help Special Needs Kids By Doing Away With Science

By Nicole Belle Saturday Oct 25, 2008 9:00am

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Oh, the gaffe-a-minute, never-vet-any-campaign-speech joy of the McCain campaign. Sarah Palin debuted both a new set of glasses and a new talking point about the way that the McCain/Palin administration will be smarter about the way government funds important programs:

Where does a lot of that earmark money end up anyway? [snip] You've heard about some of these pet projects they really don't make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.

Apparently, Palin isn't aware of the kind of research done with fruit flies. Pharyngula:

This idiot woman, this blind, shortsighted ignoramus, this pretentious clod, mocks basic research and the international research community. You damn well better believe that there is research going on in animal models — what does she expect, that scientists should mutagenize human mothers and chop up baby brains for this work? — and countries like France and Germany and England and Canada and China and India and others are all respected participants in these efforts.

Yes, scientists work on fruit flies. Some of the most powerful tools in genetics and molecular biology are available in fruit flies, and these are animals that are particularly amenable to experimentation. Molecular genetics has revealed that humans share key molecules, the basic developmental toolkit, with all other animals, thanks to our shared evolutionary heritage (something else the wackaloon from Wasilla denies), and that we can use these other organisms to probe the fundamental mechanisms that underlie core processes in the formation of the nervous system — precisely the phenomena Palin claims are so important.

In fact, irony of all ironies, fruit fly research has actually aided in understanding a genetic component or predisposition towards autism.

Greenspan Shrugged

Greenspan Shrugged

By Nicole Belle Friday Oct 24, 2008 7:00am

Former Fed Chairman destroys Randian "free market" principles in 16 seconds.

I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organizations, specifically banks and others, was such as they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders.

Well, exactly. You said one cotton-pickin', bailout-belying mouthful. Use this as evidence the next time someone brings up "Atlas Shrugged" as the best way to save the economy. Dean Baker thinks he misses the point:

What would Ayn Rand expect to happen? On the one hand we have the hot shot executives, on the other hand the schmucks who own stock in these banks. Would Ayn Rand expect that the executives would put aside their ambition, their lust for success, their greed, in order to benefit shareholders who are too dumb to even know what a credit default swap is?

Not for a second; Ayn Rand would watch the Wall Street big boys run roughshod over their shareholders' interests and be applauding them every step of the way. That is how the game is played. If Greenspan didn't think the Wall Street crew would rip off their shareholders for every last penny, then he was not a worthy disciple of Ayn Rand.

Meanwhile, the Bush Treasury Department redacts more bailout contracts.

Former Bush aide voting for Obama

Former Bush aide voting for Obama

Posted: October 23, 2008 2145 GMT

Watch McCllellan on D.L. Hughley Breaks the News.

Monumental Barack Obama

'Crushing defeat' for Bush in Iraq

POLITICS: Final Text of Iraq Pact Reveals a U.S. Debacle
Analysis by Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Oct 22 (IPS) - The final draft of the U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces agreement on the U.S. military presence represents an even more crushing defeat for the policy of the George W. Bush administration than previously thought, the final text reveals.

The final draft, dated Oct. 13, not only imposes unambiguous deadlines for withdrawal of U.S. combat troops by 2011 but makes it extremely unlikely that a U.S. non-combat presence will be allowed to remain in Iraq for training and support purposes beyond the 2011 deadline for withdrawal of all U.S. combat forces.

Furthermore, Shiite opposition to the pact as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty makes the prospects for passage of even this agreement by the Iraqi parliament doubtful. Pro-government Shiite parties, the top Shiite clerical body in the country, and a powerful movement led by nationalist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr that recently mobilised hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in protest against the pact, are all calling for its defeat.

At an Iraqi cabinet meeting Tuesday, ministers raised objections to the final draft, and a government spokesman said that the agreement would not submit it to the parliament in its current form. But Secretary of Defence Robert Gates told three news agencies Tuesday that the door was "pretty far closed" on further negotiations.

In the absence of an agreement approved by the Iraqi parliament, U.S. troops in Iraq will probably be confined to their bases once the United Nations mandate expires Dec. 31.

The clearest sign of the dramatically reduced U.S. negotiating power in the final draft is the willingness of the United States to give up extraterritorial jurisdiction over U.S. contractors and their employees and over U.S. troops in the case of "major and intentional crimes" that occur outside bases and while off duty. The United States has never allowed a foreign country to have jurisdiction over its troops in any previous status of forces agreement.

But even that concession is not enough to satisfy anti-occupation sentiments across all Shiite political parties. Sunni politicians hold less decisive views on the pact, and Kurds are supportive.

Bush administration policymakers did not imagine when the negotiations began formally last March that its bargaining position on the issue of the U.S. military presence could have turned out to be so weak in relation with its own "client" regime in Baghdad.

They were confident of being able to legitimise a U.S. presence in Iraq for decades after the fighting had ended, just as they did in South Korea. Secretary of Defence Robert Gates had declared in June 2007 that U.S. troops would be in Iraq "for a protracted period of time".

The secret U.S. draft handed to Iraqi officials Mar. 7 put no limit on either the number of U.S. troops in Iraq or the duration of their presence or their activities. It would have authorised U.S. forces to "conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain certain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security", according to an Apr. 8 article in The Guardian quoting from a leaked copy of the draft.

When Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki demanded a timetable for complete U.S. withdrawal in early July, the White House insisted that it would not accept such a timetable and that any decision on withdrawal "will be conditions based". It was even hoping to avoid a requirement for complete withdrawal in the agreement, as reflected in false claims to media Jul. 17 that Bush and Maliki had agreed on the objective of "further reduction of U.S. combat forces from Iraq" rather than complete withdrawal.

By early August, however, Bush had already reduced its negotiating aims. The U.S. draft dated Aug. 6, which was translated and posted on the internet by Iraqi activist Raed Jarrar, demanded the inclusion of either "targeted times" or "time targets" to refer to the dates for withdrawal of U.S. forces from all cities, town and villages and for complete combat troop withdrawal from Iraq, suggesting that they were not deadlines.

When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Baghdad Aug. 21, the United States accepted for the first time a firm date of 2011 for complete withdrawal, giving up the demand for ambiguous such terms. However, the Aug. 6 draft included a provision that the U.S. could ask Iraq to "extend" the date for complete withdrawal of combat troops, based on mutual review of "progress" in achieving the withdrawal.

Because it had not yet been removed from the text, U.S. officials continued to claim to reporters that the date was "conditions-based", as Karen DeYoung reported in the Washington Post Aug. 22.

The administration also continued to hope for approval of a residual force. U.S. officials told DeYoung the deal would leave "tens of thousands of U.S. troops inside Iraq in supporting roles...for an unspecified time". That hope was based on a paragraph of the Aug. 6 draft providing that the Iraqi government could request such a force, with the joint committee for operations and coordination determining the "tasks and level of the troops..."

But the Oct. 13 final draft, a translation of which was posted by Raed Jarrar on his website Oct. 20, reveals that the Bush administration has been forced to give up its aims of softening the deadline for withdrawal and of a residual non-combat force in the country. Unlike the Aug. 6 draft, the final text treats any extension of that date as a modification of the agreement, which could be done only "in accordance to constitutional procedures in both countries".

That is an obvious reference to approval by the Iraqi parliament.

Given the present level of opposition to the agreement within the Shiite community, that provision offers scant hope of a residual U.S. non-combat force in Iraq after 2011.

Another signal of Iraqi intentions is a provision of the final draft limiting the duration of the agreement to three years -- a date coinciding with the deadline for complete withdrawal from Iraq. The date can be extended only by a decision made by the "constitutional procedures in both countries".

The final draft confirms the language of the Aug. 6 draft requiring that all U.S. military operations be subject to the approval of the Iraqi government and coordinated with Iraqi authorities through a joint U.S.-Iraqi committee.

The negotiating text had already established by Aug. 6 that U.S. troops could not detain anyone in the country without a "warrant issued by the specialised Iraqi authorities in accordance with Iraqi law" and required that the detainees be turned over to Iraqi authorities within 24 hours. The Oct. 13 "final draft" goes even further, requiring that any detention by the United States, apart from its own personnel, must be "based on an Iraqi decision".

The collapse of the Bush administration's ambitious plan for a long-term U.S. presence in Iraq highlights the degree of unreality that has prevailed among top U.S. officials in both Washington and Baghdad on Iraqi politics. They continued to see the Maliki regime as a client which would cooperate with U.S. aims even after it was clear that Maliki's agenda was sharply at odds with that of the United States.

They also refused to take seriously the opposition to such a presence even among the Shiite clerics who had tolerated it in order to obtain Shiite control over state power.

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.

(END/2008)

GOP admits plan to use foreclosure list to challenge voters

GOP admits plan to use foreclosure list to challenge voters

In a startling concession, the Republican Party has admitted to participating in an illegal scheme to use foreclosure lists to challenge predominantly Democratic voters in Michigan on Election Day.

An announcement by the Michigan Democratic Party of the settlement of a suit brought last month by the Democratic Party and the Obama campaign states, "The settlement acknowledges the existence of an illegal scheme by the Republicans to use mortgage foreclosure lists to deny foreclosure victims their right to vote. This settlement has the force of law behind it and ensures that Republicans cannot disenfranchise families facing foreclosure."

Early in September, a progressive-leaning website in Michigan had reported that the Republican Party in Macomb County was planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to prevent the former owners from voting. The plan was seen as likely to disproportionately affect African-Americans, who more often receive subprime loans.

The Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee immediately announced they would file a federal lawsuit to prevent challenges based on foreclosure lists alone. It is that suit which has now been settled. At the same time, Macomb County GOP Chairman James Carabelli threatened to sue the Michigan Messenger over the story, saying they had "made it up."

CNN reviewed the situation on Monday morning, prior to the announcement of the settlement, and found that the Democrats had no doubt there was a deliberate attempt at disenfranchisement. Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Mark Brewer told CNN, "They made that political calculation that by and large they don't want those people voting, because they think they're going to vote for Barack Obama."

Reporter Eartha Jane Melzer, who wrote the original story for the Michigan Messenger, said she was standing by it. "I spoke with Carabelli myself and I have total confidence in what he told me," she stated. "I have clear notes of our conversation."

Carabelli did not return CNN's calls, and the state GOP declined to be interviewed.

CNN emphasized that anybody who has lost their house still has the right to vote wherever they are currently living, or even at their former address if the eviction occurred less than 60 days prior to Election Day. Despite this, Democrats fear that Republicans plan to challenge voters based on discrepancies in addresses.

This video is from CNN's American Morning, broadcast October 20, 2008.




Download video via RawReplay.com

McCain linked to group in Iran-Contra affair

WASHINGTON -- Republican Sen. John McCain served on the advisory board to the U.S. chapter of an international group linked to ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America in the 1980s.

The U.S. Council for World Freedom also aided rebels trying to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua. That landed the group in the middle of the Iran-Contra affair and in legal trouble with the Internal Revenue Service, which revoked the charitable organization's tax exemption.

The council created by retired Army Maj. Gen. John Singlaub was the U.S. chapter of the World Anti-Communist League, an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America. After setting up the U.S. council, Singlaub served as the international league's chairman.

McCain's tie to Singlaub's council is undergoing renewed scrutiny after his presidential campaign criticized Barack Obama for his link to William Ayers, a former radical who engaged in violent acts 40 years ago. Over the weekend, Democratic operative Paul Begala said on ABC's "This Week" that this "guilt by association" tactic could backfire on the McCain campaign by renewing discussion of McCain's service on the board of the U.S. Council for World Freedom, "an ultraconservative right-wing group."

In two interviews with The Associated Press in August and September, Singlaub said McCain became associated with the organization in the early 1980s as McCain launched his political career. McCain was elected to the House in 1982.

Singlaub said McCain was a supporter but not an active member.

"McCain was a new guy on the block learning the ropes," Singlaub said. "I think I met him in the Washington area when he was just a new congressman. We had McCain on the board to make him feel like he wasn't left out. It looks good to have names on a letterhead who are well-known and appreciated.

"I don't recall talking to McCain at all on the work of the group," Singlaub said.

McCain has said he resigned from the council in 1984 and asked in 1986 to have his name removed from the group's letterhead.

"I didn't know whether (the group's activity) was legal or illegal, but I didn't think I wanted to be associated with them," McCain said in a 1986 newspaper interview.

Singlaub does not recall any McCain resignation in 1984 or May 1986. Nor does Joyce Downey, who oversaw the group's day-to-day activities.

"That's a surprise to me," Singlaub said. "This is the first time I've ever heard that. There may have been someone in his office communicating with our office."

"I don't ever remember hearing about his resigning, but I really wasn't worried about that part of our activities, a housekeeping thing," said Singlaub. "If he didn't want to be on the board that's OK. It wasn't as if he had been active participant and we were going to miss his help. He had no active interest. He certainly supported us."

A news article and two documents tie McCain to the council in 1985, a year after he says he resigned. The group's Internal Revenue Service filing in 1985, covering the previous year, lists McCain as a member of the council's advisory board. In October 1985, a States News Service report placed McCain, Rep. Tom Loeffler, R-Texas, and an Arizona congressman at a Washington awards ceremony staged by the council.

On Tuesday, the McCain campaign addressed the resignation by saying the candidate disassociated himself from "one Arizona-based group when questions were raised about its activities."

Taking an opportunity to attack the Obama-Biden ticket, the McCain campaign added that as a House member and later as a senator, McCain fought against communist influence in Central America while Sen. Joe Biden tried to cut off money for anti-communist forces in El Salvador and Nicaragua.

The renewed attention over McCain's association with Singlaub's group comes as his campaign steps up criticism of Obama's dealings with Ayers, now a college professor who co-founded the Weather Underground in the 1960s and years later worked with Obama on the board of an education reform group in Chicago. Ayers held a meet-the-candidate event at his home when Obama first ran for public office in the mid-1990s.

In McCain's case, he was a House member and a board member of Singlaub's council when, as a new congressman, he voted for military assistance to the Nicaraguan Contras, a CIA-organized guerrilla force. In 1984, Congress cut off military assistance to the rebels.

Months before the cutoff, top Reagan administration officials ramped up a secret White House-directed supply network run by national security advisers Robert McFarlane and John Poindexter. The operation's day-to-day activities were handled by National Security Council aide Oliver North, who relied on retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard Secord to carry out the operation. The goal was to keep the Contras operating until Congress could be persuaded to resume CIA funding.

Singlaub's private group became the public front for the secret White House activity.

"It was noted that they were trying to act as suppliers. It was pretty good cover for us," Secord, the field operations chief for the secret effort, said Tuesday in an interview.

The White House-directed network's covert arms shipments, financed in part by the Reagan administration's secret arms sales to Iran, exploded into the Iran-Contra affair in November 1986. The scandal proved to be the undoing of Singlaub's council.

In 1987, the IRS withdrew tax-exempt status from Singlaub's group because of its activities on behalf of the Contras.

Peter Kornbluh, co-author of "The Iran-Contra Scandal: A Declassified History," said the Council on World Freedom was crucial to diverting public attention from the Reagan White House's fundraising for the Contras.

Singlaub and the council publicly urged private support for the Contras, providing what Singlaub later called "a lightning rod" to explain how the rebels sustained themselves despite Congress' cutoff.

In October 1986, the secrecy of North's network unraveled after one of its planes was shot down over Nicaragua. One American crewman, Eugene Hasenfus, was captured by the Nicaraguan government. At first, Reagan administration officials lied by saying that the plane had no connection to the U.S. government and was part of Singlaub's operation.

"I resented it that reporters thought it was my plane. I don't run a sloppy operation," Singlaub told The AP.

In an interview last month, Downey, the full-time employee of Singlaub's council, said she has a clear memory of McCain resigning in 1986, but not earlier.

"It was during the time when the U.S. Council had been wrongly accused of being owners of the Hasenfus plane downed in Nicaragua," said Downey. "A couple of days after that, I was in Washington and called home to get messages from my mother. I returned that call and a staff person wanted to ask for the resignation of Congressman McCain."

When Hasenfus was shot down, McCain was in the final month of his first campaign for the Senate seat he still holds.

McCain's office responded quickly. McCain said he had resigned from the council in 1984. Further, McCain said that in May 1986 he asked the group to remove his name from the letterhead. McCain's office produced two letters from 1984 and 1986 to back his account.

The dates on the resignation letters in 1984 and May 1986 coincided with McCain election campaigns and increasingly critical public scrutiny of the World Anti-Communist League, the umbrella group Singlaub chaired.

In 1983 and 1984 for example, columnist Jack Anderson linked the league's Latin American affiliate to death squad political assassinations.

The Latin American affiliate was kicked out of the league. At the time, Singlaub told the columnist the Latin American affiliate had "knowingly promoted pro-Nazi groups" and was "virulently anti-Semitic."

"That was putting it mildly," Anderson wrote in a Sept. 11, 1984, column on alleged death squad murders, an article that appeared two months before the U.S. election day.

Two weeks after Anderson's column, a letter from McCain addressed to Singlaub asks that the congressman's name be taken off the board because he didn't have time for the council.

Singlaub told AP that "certainly by 1984," he had purged the World Anti-Communist League of extremists. Singlaub complains that American news media wrote that the league hadn't gotten rid of extremist elements and tried to tarnish the league's credibility, "making something evil out of fighting communism."

By PETE YOST

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON -- Republican Sen. John McCain served on the advisory board to the U.S. chapter of an international group linked to ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America in the 1980s.

The U.S. Council for World Freedom also aided rebels trying to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua. That landed the group in the middle of the Iran-Contra affair and in legal trouble with the Internal Revenue Service, which revoked the charitable organization's tax exemption.

The council created by retired Army Maj. Gen. John Singlaub was the U.S. chapter of the World Anti-Communist League, an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America. After setting up the U.S. council, Singlaub served as the international league's chairman.

Gore Calls for Civil Disobedience to Halt Coal Plants

Gore Calls for Civil Disobedience to Halt Coal Plants and Climate Change

Denounces "Clean Coal" as "Nonexistent"

Last year in two different print publications, The New York Times and Rolling Stone, former Vice-President and Nobel Prize Winner Al Gore called for young people to commit civil disobedience to halt new coal fired power plants and climate change.

Voicing his opinion at the Clinton Global Initiative, Gore said for the first time in public that we are at a point in our world’s history, and in need of such immediate action, that if you are a young person it’s time for civil disobedience.

Sitting on a panel with Queen Rania of Jordon, the CEO of Coca-Cola and Bono, moderated by Clinton himself, Gore further denounced “Clean Coal” technology as “nonexistent” and called lifting the moratorium on coal shale mining “Insanity.”

Last week, almost a dozen activists with Rainforest Action Network, Blue Ridge Earth First!, Rising Tide, and SDS were arrested after blockading Dominion Resources’ new coal-fired power plant construction site in St. Paul Virginia.

Gore has called for rings of young people to stop bulldozers from building these climate polluting behemoths, the climate movement is taking him at his word.

Palin failed to pay taxes on her per diem payments

Palin failed to pay taxes on her per diem payments

In an overview of Sarah Palin's tax returns for 2006 and 2007, which she has finally released, the Associated Press reports that Palin neglected to pay the taxes due on $17,000 she received in per diem payments as Governor of Alaska. A McCain campaign official claims, falsely, that Palin owed no taxes on those payments.

Sarah Palin makes $125,000 a year as Alaska governor. Plus, since she took the job in December 2006, she hasn't paid taxes on the more than $17,000 she received in controversial per diem payments for working out of the family's lakeside home in Wasilla...

Regarding the per diem dispute, [McCain-Palin spokeswoman Maria] Comella said Juneau is the governor's home base and therefore whenever she works elsewhere, she is entitled to charge the state. Comella contended the per diem payments are not taxable.

[Former IRS commissioner Sheldon] Cohen said it was fine for the state of Alaska to determine it was okay to reimburse Palin to work out of her home, but the state's decision didn't mean those benefits were not taxable by the federal government. "One has nothing to do with the other," said Cohen.

It's very clear that taxes were due on these per diems. This is tax evasion by Sarah Palin, pure and simple. It doesn't quite rise to the level of Richard Nixon's utter failure to pay any taxes for a few years while he was president. But what a standard to be flirting with.

Palin's per diems are themselves controversial. She billed the state of Alaska nearly $17,000 for 312 nights she spent at her house in Wasilla. Because the governor has a mansion in Juneau and is supposed to reside and work there (though she is in fact absent far more than she's present in the capital), she may be permitted technically under state regulations to claim a per diem for lodging while she's staying at her own home. But it looks pretty cynical to claim to be a reformer while seeking payments for living at home. That's particularly true since Palin also billed the state to fly her husband and children around the state, to the tune of more than $43,000. Once Palin brought one of her daughters with her at great expense to a Women and Leadership conference in New York City, where they stayed in an extremely luxurious hotel.

Asked Monday about the official policy on charging for children's travel expenses, [Alaska state finance director Kim] Garnero said: "We cover the expenses of anyone who's conducting state business. I can't imagine kids could be doing that."

But [Palin's spokeswoman Sharon] Leighow said many of the hundreds of invitations Palin receives include requests for her to bring her family, placing the definition of "state business" with the party extending the invitation.

The revelations about her per diems suggest that Palin plays fast and loose with rules in order to enrich herself. The same impression is given by the AP's analysis of Palin's tax returns. She and her husband have managed to take so many deductions, some seemingly dubious, that they've avoided paying taxes on much of their income.

For the 2007 tax year, Todd Palin's self-employment brought him $66,893 in gross receipts — $49,893 from fishing and $17,000 from snowmachine racing. But, the returns show, he claimed so many deductions that he reported only $15,513 net profit from the fishing operation and claimed a $9,639 loss from his racing, leaving him with an overall net income of only $5,874.

Those deductions enabled the Palins, who have four dependent children, to enjoy a 15 percent tax rate for 2007 and a rate of less than 10 percent for 2006.

This family, with assets worth between about 1 and 2 million dollars, is not struggling just to get by. Instead, it's working to figure out every angle it can exploit.

I have to say I've been awaiting the day when Palin's tax returns were released, expecting that it would turn out that she'd neglected to pay taxes on her controversial per diems. She did not fail to disappoint.

VP Debate: Biden

VP Debate: Biden - “Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we’ve had probably in American history.”

By: Nicole Belle on Friday, October 3rd, 2008 at 9:00 AM - PDT

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There was a moment in last night’s debate that sent a cold shiver down my spine. That moment was when moderator Gwen Ifill asked Sarah Palin whether she agreed with Dick Cheney’s rather extraordinary claim that the Vice President’s office is outside of the Executive Branch (truthfully, Cheney argued that it was outside the Legislative branch too, apparently occupying some nebulous and untouchable fourth branch of government). Wouldn’t you know? That pitbull with lipstick agrees with Cheney.

Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president’s agenda in that position. Yeah, so I do agree with him that we have a lot of flexibility in there, and we’ll do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation.

The mind shudders at the thought. Thankfully, Joe Biden knew exactly how to respond to someone who admires the least popular Vice President in American history (and if you were watching the debates on CNN, you’d know that those dial pollsters loved his response too):

Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we’ve had probably in American history. The idea he doesn’t realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that’s the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that. [..] The idea he’s part of the Legislative Branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive and look where it has gotten us. It has been very dangerous.

See, Palin, that’s real straight talk.

Transcripts (courtesy of CNN) below the fold

IFILL: Governor, you mentioned a moment ago the constitution might give the vice president more power than it has in the past. Do you believe as Vice President Cheney does, that the Executive Branch does not hold complete sway over the office of the vice presidency, that it it is also a member of the Legislative Branch?

PALIN: Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president’s agenda in that position. Yeah, so I do agree with him that we have a lot of flexibility in there, and we’ll do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation. And it is my executive experience that is partly to be attributed to my pick as V.P. with McCain, not only as a governor, but earlier on as a mayor, as an oil and gas regulator, as a business owner. It is those years of experience on an executive level that will be put to good use in the White House also.

IFILL: Vice President Cheney’s interpretation of the vice presidency?

BIDEN: Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we’ve had probably in American history. The idea he doesn’t realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that’s the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that.

And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there’s a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit.

The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress. The idea he’s part of the Legislative Branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive and look where it has gotten us. It has been very dangerous.