Fact Check On Obama's Keating Ad: True

CNN: The Statement: The campaign for Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama on Monday, Oct. 6, unveiled a Web site noting that Republican opponent Sen. John McCain played a key role in the Senate's "Keating Five" scandal of the 1980s. "McCain intervened on behalf of Charles Keating with federal regulators tasked with preventing banking fraud, and championed legislation to delay regulation of the savings and loan industry — actions that allowed Keating to continue his fraud at an incredible cost to taxpayers," the site says.

Get the facts!
The Facts: Keating was sentenced to prison and required to pay more than $1 billion in civil penalties after being convicted on fraud, racketeering and conspiracy charges centered around his running of Lincoln Savings and Loan, which he bought in 1984. On April 14, 1989, Lincoln was seized by the government at an eventual taxpayer cost of $3.4 billion, then the most expensive thrift bailout in history. Lincoln and Keating became national symbols of the savings-and-loans collapse of the '80s — much as lending firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have symbolized the current financial meltdown.
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The Verdict: True. McCain did push to delay regulations that would have cracked down on savings-and-loans practices and intervened on Keating's behalf, although he was cleared of wrongdoing in the "Keating Five" case.

McCain's Everyday Lies

This is how the Dishonorable One now runs his campaign. Lie, lie, lie and hope that it gets through as truth.

TNR: But what happened after that was even more unusual, and possibly without precedent: McCain's supporters simply suggested that the truth or falsity of their statements didn't matter. McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said this to Politico about the increased media scrutiny of the campaign's factual claims: "We're running a campaign to win. And we're not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it." Republican strategist John Feehery made the point even more bluntly, telling The Washington Post: "The more The New York Times and The Washington Post go after Sarah Palin, the better off she is, because there's a bigger truth out there, and the bigger truths are: She's new, she's popular in Alaska, and she is an insurgent." Then, he added, "As long as those are out there, these little facts don't really matter." It lays it all out and is a must read.

Fundamentally It's the Fundamental Workers

This is fundamentally funny. 
Lying his way to the White House

McCain Gets Testy On Morning Joe

McCain tries to intimidate reporter and then defends his ad lies.

McCain's Lies Catching Up With Him

WaPo: I am one of the journalists accused over the years of being in the tank for McCain. Guilty. Those doing the accusing usually attributed my feelings to McCain being accessible. This is the journalist-as-puppy school of thought: Give us a treat, and we will leap into a politician's lap.

Not so. What impressed me most about McCain was the effect he had on his audiences, particularly young people. When he talked about service to a cause greater than oneself, he struck a chord. He expressed his message in words, but he packaged it in the McCain story -- that man, beaten to a pulp, who chose honor over freedom. This had nothing to do with access. It had to do with integrity.

McCain has soiled all that. His opportunistic and irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his political heir -- the person in whose hands he would leave the country -- is a form of personal treason, a betrayal of all he once stood for. Palin, no matter what her other attributes, is shockingly unprepared to become president. McCain knows that. He means to win, which is all right; he means to win at all costs, which is not.

Here's another from E.J. Dionne at WaPo:

But the captains of John McCain's campaign figured they might wring one more election victory out of the culture war. They ridiculed Barack Obama as the celebrity candidate loved by Europeans -- the right always consigns Europe to the elitist camp -- and harped on his unfortunate comments, ripped out of context, about "bitter" voters who "cling to guns or religion."

For good measure, McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. A religious and proudly gun-toting mom, Palin has turned expertise itself into a badge of elitism, proclaiming pleasure in her lack of a "big, fat résumé" that "shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment."
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For some time, McCain's strategists figured they could deflect attention from the big issues by turning Palin into a country-and-western celebrity and launching so many ill-founded attacks on Obama that the truth would never catch up. The McCain strategists' approach reflected a low opinion of average voters, and some Obama supporters began worrying that their opinion might be right.

But those so-called average voters understand the difference between low- and high-stakes elections. They develop a reasonably good sense of who is telling the truth and who is not. And though it sometimes takes a while -- and a shock like this week's economic news -- these voters almost always turn on politicians who manipulate cultural symbols as a way to escape the consequences of their policies. read more.

McCain In it To Win It

Politics First.

Politico: Current campaign aides and other Republicans who’ve closely watched the race, however, have a very different response to the media elites and good-government scolds: We don’t care what you think.

McCain seems to have made a choice that many politicians succumb to but that he had always promised to avoid — he appears ready to do whatever it takes to win, even it if soils his reputation.

“We recognize it’s not going to be 2000 again,” McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said, alluding to the media’s swooning coverage of McCain’s ill-fated crusade against then-Gov. George W. Bush and the GOP establishment. “But he lost then. We’re running a campaign to win. And we’re not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it.”

Rogers, who hung tough with McCain through the dark days of the primary and has lived through every high and low of this turbulent and unpredictable race, argues that they tried to run a high-ground campaign and sought to keep the candidate in front of the media in the fashion he enjoys. His point: No one paid any attention.

McCain's Bold Lies New Lows in Politics

After Palin's interview last night, I guess we know why the McCain camp needs to lie. Kudos to Charlie Gibson for asking some tough questions.

NYT: Dishonesty is nothing new in politics. I spent much of 2000 — my first year at The Times — trying to alert readers to the blatant dishonesty of the Bush campaign’s claims about taxes, spending and Social Security.

But I can’t think of any precedent, at least in America, for the blizzard of lies since the Republican convention. The Bush campaign’s lies in 2000 were artful — you needed some grasp of arithmetic to realize that you were being conned. This year, however, the McCain campaign keeps making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute, and repeating these assertions over and over again.

Take the case of the Bridge to Nowhere, which supposedly gives Ms. Palin credentials as a reformer. Well, when campaigning for governor, Ms. Palin didn’t say “no thanks” — she was all for the bridge, even though it had already become a national scandal, insisting that she would “not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that’s so negative.”

McCain Approves This Message

Obama on Countdown Sept. 8

Part 2

Maddow: McCain Liar Lies Lying

McCain Tax Lies Fact Check Video

Here's more:

MSNBC: But when it comes to promises, it's worth pointing out that, according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center's analysis of both candidates' proposed plans, Obama would cut taxes for those making in the range of $38,000 to $66,000 three to almost eight times more than McCain would.

Under Obama's plan, according to the center, by 2009, those making $37,595 would see an average increase in their income of 3.6%, or a tax cut of $892; those making an average of $66,354 would see an increase in their income of 2.4%, or a tax cut of $1,042.

Here's a side by side comparison.