I made this video which cuts down Palin's debate performance to just it's folksy, silly, sometimes lost, wonderfulness. I hope you enjoy it. Note the run in the middle where she gets rather suggestive for a bit, and the number of times she says "also".

I think when you look at it like this, people were too quick to give her credit for being coherent the whole time.

(crossposted to dkos)

The following lengthy article is posted in full at palintruth.org. I see Palin's (and McCain's) failure to support paying for rape kits as the point of the sword for separating them both from the majority of women voters, so I wanted to compile something that discussed that issue in the larger picture of how both of them have treated women's issues throughout their careers. I have also added two other new articles and some other features to the site, please skip to the end of this diary for more info on that. As always, if anyone has suggestions for facts that can be added to help this article, or if anyone catches an error, I would love the help. Being your own editor/proofreader/fact checker can be hard when you're trying to keep up with people who lie this fast.

Claim:
Naming Sarah Palin as his running mate shows that McCain is sensitive to women's issues
Truth:
John McCain has a record of often voting against funding to help abused women or rape victims
While Sarah Palin was Mayor of Wassila, AK, the city charged rape victims for testing that would help catch their assailants
As Governor, Sarah Palin vetoed funding for shelters for single teenage mothers

(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

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.

Senator Clinton has earned great respect for her tenacity and courage. The media often overlooked how compassionately she spoke to the concerns and dreams of millions of Americans, and she deserves a lot more appreciation than she sometimes received. As the father of three daughters, I owe her a debt for inspiring millions of women to believe there is no opportunity in this great country beyond their reach. I am proud to call her my friend. Pundits and party elders have declared that Senator Obama will be my opponent.

Wow, that paragraph could have been written by any of the Clinton supporters on this site, or even hillaryclinton.com, right? Hell, I bet McCain actually sent one of his younger assistants out on the "intertubes" to get his talking points, to make sure he hit on every hot button issues that has Clinton supporters upset right now. But let's just see how much love McCain was giving Hillary not so long ago...

Everyone has been discussing the issue of whether Hillary should be VP--how it could help the chances of winning in November--or else whether she can force Obama to accept her as VP by threatening to withhold her endorsement and thus see some of her supporters to migrate to McCain. Some people are saying, "she has earned it!" or others, "No way!"

I think that the real issue is none of the things we have been debating. She can't force Obama to make her VP if he doesn't want to. First of all, even if she had the leverage to do it, there would be no secret how it happened, and once it became public knowledge, it would make him look weak--the winner, forced to accept the loser's terms of surrender, does not look strong. Beyond that, though, HE WON. He has earned the right to pick his VP.

So here's how Hillary could be VP: Start by admitting that Obama won.

I'd like to see the hands of all the people who stood up to loudly proclaim in 2002 (or was it 2001) that it was unfair for people to criticize George W. Bush's use of the term "crusade" when referring to the "war on terror". Please provide a link to where you said this online.

OK, those people who raised their hands and have proven they actually did defend Bush, you are allowed to defend Hillary Clinton's repeated offhand uses of the words "assassinated" or "assassination" in the context of discussing a primary campaign in which the Democrats will either be nominating the first African American with a real chance of being President, or else nominating the one person in the United States who is most singularly hated by the most extreme of the right-wing gun nuts. (If you've never seen the underground ads for Hillary Clinton range targets, trust me they do exist).

So, remove any thought of Obama being offended, and tell me how her use of that term in the context of staying in the race longer is any less incompetent than Bush telling the Muslim world we're on a "crusade" against them. Based on Hillary's on "3am" test, I would say this statement has disqualified her from being President.