Okay, this tracking of contradictions and hypocrisy in the last few days of the campaign is beginning to verge on OCD.

They don't care whether they contradict themselves factually, because they're not trying to appeal to people who are more than dimly, marginally, very occasionally aware of any facts relative to politics, or governance, or history.

They are aiming at the truly undecided voters, who historically are extremely poorly informed, make up their minds only at the last minute because they begin paying attention only at the last minute, and therefore do so on the basis only of fleeting impressions gathered from snippets of information at the last minute.

Thus, the message is, Sarah Palin and John McCain are trustworthy. Period. It's like a picture of them with the word "trust" underneath it. The rest of the message is meaningless background noise.

(And by the way, as one who is spending way too much time on the blogs this weekend, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with OCD. Just observing...)

I am a whole lot more interested in this one--Obama/Biden promises no tax increases to anyone making less than $250,000 a year...

then it went to $200,000.

then to $150,000...and now

to $120,000...

How low will it go?!! How high will your taxes be?!!

Obama/Biden promises no tax increases to anyone making less than $250,000 a year...

And indeed nothing that either Obama or Biden has ever said contradicts that promise. I won't bother explaining your confusion to you because I am busy and I feel relatively certain that you are not really interested in understanding Obama's proposed tax policy any way. I just hope you feel content that you have done your little bit to try and sow confusion no matter how impotent the effort was. Good luck with that.

@DF:

They have never wavered from $250,000 as the point at which income taxes will not increase. However, from $200,000 to $250,000, taxes will not decrease, either, which is where that number came from — Obama promised a tax cut for those making $200,000 or less. I have never seen the $150,000 number before, care to cite? The $120,000 was how Governor Bill Richardson personally defined what makes a family middle class — how that changes Obama's longstanding tax policy I have no clue — care to explain?

I am a whole lot more interested in this one--Obama/Biden promises no tax increases to anyone making less than $250,000 a year...
then it went to $200,000.
then to $150,000...and now
to $120,000...

How low will it go?!! How high will your taxes be?!!

Links? Sources? Or just your word?

And she was not found to have broken any ethics rules, either!

The voters stupid enough to spout off whatever DF is spouting don't make anything near $120,000.

In fairness, I did hear Biden use the figure 150K in a speech excerpted last week on CNN. I assume it was a slip (more understandable and less interesting than McCain's "my fellow prisoners") because I have not heard it since. As far as I can tell the 250K boundary has never been revised.

However, no amount of factual evidence can persuade anyone who really thinks that dinosaurs lived with humans or the Ark really is hiding somewhere up on Mt. Ararat.

Links? Sources? Or just your word?

Trust me msmolly, you're wasting your time. The quotes that right wing imbeciles have been distorting to try to make this point don't even come close to making the point they are trying desperately to make. They are so ridiculously stupid that it hurts sometimes.

Yesterday Steve did a post called This is CNN, talking about a special called "Election Countdown: View from the Right". I watched so you don't have to. Well, sort of. There was nothing about the right that I saw. Just an anti-Obama whinefest. The only conclusion I can draw is that the Republican Party is no longer a party of ideas.

I suspect the only thought the McCain campaign has given to the deficit is how to talk about it, how to use it to sell McCain, and how to avoid the need to come up with ideas.

Has anyone noticed that Palin almost always has a hard time admitting any thing that smacks of uncertainty or regret or internal conflict? Anything human? Anything that reminds us she is like all of us, trying hard to do the right thing, struggling to reach for her values? Anything that suggests she is even aware of this sort of push/pull that goes on?

I see in Palin a very very false sense of simple bravado, of absolutely no self-reflection, no empathy, no substantive thought.

I mean--okay-- I understand, she needs to keep up a strong and brave front. But it's beyond that. She seems so unreal...like when she recently told a female interviewer from ABC that there is absolutely nothing she feels she loses out on by attempting to be a good mom while also running for V.P. Even after the interviewer conceded (and gave Palin an 'in') that she herself for example misses reading time with her kids on nights she has to work late...

Palin refused to go there. She responded with such indifference to this question: coldly, flatly and defensively--insisting that everything was just perfect, that she has family to help and so forth...

I felt she missed the point. She missed a huge opportunity thrown her to show everyone (working moms especially) that she is human and naturally has difficult choices to make--she refuses time and again to concede even in the slightest, for fear that somehow that makes her 'weak'.

But this was not just an isolated instance of NO HUMILITY, NO REFLECTION. It was one of many. We're talking patterns here--like when she flatly lied that there was nothing "AT ALL" found wrong ethically with what she did in Troopergate. And when she told Katie Couric she reads all the newspapers, yet refused to name a single one...How she spins essentially everything into a bizarre 180 of what is truly so.

My two cents: She is a woman who does not know herself. Worse yet, she's afraid of herself, it seems. Afraid to be real--for just one minute. I can't imagine the energy it takes to be someone so "ON" like that.

And I can't imagine what it must cost not only her, but her family.

And I can't imagine the cost for all of us to have a Vice President like that.

Steve Benen made an embarrassing grammatical error when he wrote "John McCain and her". "Her" is an object as in "you gave it to her." "She" is a pronoun. Doesn't anyone know how to speak English these days?

Now a promise like that, you can trust that John McCain and I will promise just the opposite somewhere else.

Sounds to me like the campaign just isn't sending her the new talking points...

So the good news is that McCain and Palin will be able to keep half their promises, thereby immediately improving dramatically on the percentage accomplished by Bush and Cheney.
(/snark)

"“There’s three things to remember: claim everything, explain nothing, deny everything,� recalled Prescott Bush as to how politics was explained to him by Clare Booth Luce, congresswoman and wife of fellow Bonesman and magazine magnate, Henry Luce."

From the web.

I'd like to see just one pundit ask a Republican Talking Head about this--just print out the list and ask them what they think this says about the message the McCain campaign is giving.

You've given so many other great examples of how utterly disorganized, confused and incoherent this campaign has been--perhaps a book on the subject when this is all over would be interesting. Or a good long essay...

And it's so amazing they think they can just say it and the past will mean nothing, that they can keep changing their mind again and again and it doesn't make a difference...they're everywhere and as a result no-where..

For the record, I believe Joe Biden threw out the $150,000 as an example of "middle class" people who would get a tax break, it wasn't necessarily a cut off.
Here's what he actually said:

"What we're saying is, that $87 billion tax break doesn't need to go to people making an average of $1.4 million. It should go to middle-class people, people who make $150,000 a year."

As jbb noted, I believe some confusion comes from who gets a tax break (beyond the Bush tax cut)and who has their tax level remain the same (neither a tax increase, nor a decrease.

Anyway, this is off topic as we are really focusing on the disgusting hypocrisy that is the McLiar/Phony ticket.