It's all smoke and mirrors baby!

"Do as I say, not as I do"
This seems to be the unofficial slogan of the McCain/Palin ticket and I suspect it will be how they run the country should they be elected.
Let's start with John McCain-
YouTube has recently been pulling ads posted by the McCain campaign for copyright infringement. The ad I am thinking of is the ad about Sarah Palin that uses a clip of Katie Couric on CBS saying:
“One of the great lessons of that campaign is the continued and accepted role of sexism in American life..."
-except Katie was talking about Hillary Clinton- not Sarah Palin.
This disturbs me a great deal for a few reasons first and foremost being that the McCain camp has absolutely no qualms about completely misrepresenting the views of a highly visible journalist on a national network to spin their message. Why couldn't they just create their own discussion on sexism in America if they wanted to address the issue? Why resort to manipulating Couric's words to create a false sense of a real discussion?
CBS contacted YouTube and requested the video be removed due to copyright infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and under that law YouTube has 10-14 days to review the content and see if there is an infringement. YouTube's standard practice is to remove first, review later as a CYA measure to avoid lawsuits. From an article in The Register:

YouTube routinely removes content based on the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown provisions, which grants safe harbor to web sites that promptly remove content if someone alleges it infringes on their copyrights.

McCain's camp is calling it unfair and biased (even though YouTube has removed a few Obama videos too...) and is even petitioning YouTube to leave the videos up until a review of the claims is finalized even though it is in the best interest of YouTube to remove the videos promptly.
And oh yeah, John McCain voted for the DMCA. So he was all for the law until it worked against him and now he wants YouTube to bend the rules for him. Nice.

On to robocalling-


So, it's ok to use negative robocalling as long as the information is 'true'- misleading is different- right?
Well what about the information in the robocalls Bush used against McCain in 2000? From The New York Times:

In the 2000 South Carolina primary, one of the most notorious smear campaigns in recent American politics peddled distortions and lies about him, among them that Mr. McCain’s current wife, Cindy, was a drug addict and that the couple’s daughter Bridget, adopted from Mother Teresa's orphanage in Bangladesh, was a black child Mr. McCain had fathered out of wedlock.

The line about his daughter is just a flat out racist lie but, um, the part about Cindy being a drug addict is technically true, right John? So how is your attack robo call so much better than the ones used against you 8 years ago? The wording of McCain's call against Obama suggests that Obama is currently working along side a current terrorist.

So I am left with a frustrated feeling of "Why in hell do I have to spend my time filtering out what is true from what is half true and what are outright lies from the McCain camp when there are high stake real issues that should be being discussed?" Why- because McCain knows that some lazy Americans just don't care enough to find out what the truth is and it's enough to just feed them political fast food and never address the real issues.

As for Palin, she seems to live in a dream world of her own making.
The Troopergaet report found that she was guilty of ethics violations when she fired Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan. But what does she say about it?

Palin said Saturday that she did "nothing unlawful or unethical" in removing Monegan from his position. As Palin left the Pittsburgh Westin Hotel this morning to board her campaign bus, a pool reporter yelled out, "Governor, did you abuse your power?" Palin paused as she boarded the bus and responded, "No, and if you read the report you'll see that there was nothing unlawful or unethical about replacing a cabinet member. You gotta read the report, sir."

Really? Sarah, did YOU read the report?
And then we've got Sarah Plain the self proclaimed fiscal conservative who spent thousands of tax payer dollars on travel and lodging for her kids and giving herself a per diem to live in her own house.

As Anchorage Daily News columnist Michael Carey states in this interview on Fresh Air (minute 20 or so) we are entering the land of "Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?"