Hey, That’s My Name

4,144

Data courtesy of the Washington Post.

Two of my favorite people to listen to on the issue of veterans and how McCain didn’t address those issues in his speech Thursday night.

The RNC speeches seem to be following a theme, in which they talk about how terrible things are without mentioning George Bush or the Republican congress that was in power until less than two years ago. Here’s a little perspective on who’s actually had the power in the last few decades:

Lost in this litany of complaint is that the Republicans have controlled the White House for 20 of the past 28 years, have appointed seven of the nine sitting Supreme Court justices, and ran the House with an iron hand (well, to be precise, Tom DeLay’s hammer) for a dozen years until 2007. And, yes, by the way, the editorial page of the Washington Post was initially supportive of the Iraq war.

[From McCain's big running-mate rollout | Salon News]

I know they’re not allowed to use the the word “lie” in the mainstream media, because we’re apparently not supposed call a spade a spade. This certainly wasn’t the only lie included in the speeches at the RNC last night. There were plenty and most of them have been debunked several times earlier in the campaign (like that Obama’s going to raise taxes on the normal folk and that Sarah Palin didn’t keep the money for the Bridge to Nowhere), but this gem from the Governor of Arkansas has shiny, pretty numbers to prove how much of a lie it really was.

Mike Huckabee made the claim that Palin got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States.

For the record, Joe Biden got 79,754 total votes in the Democratic primaries.

As of the 2000 census, the population of Wasilla was 5,469. It has been reported at currently more than 9,000.

That would mean, conservatively, the entire town of Wasilla would have had to have had a 100% turnout for nine years at 9,000 to top Biden’s primary numbers.

[From FACT CHECK: Biden, almost 80,000 votes - First Read - msnbc.com]

According to Wikipedia, Palin received 909 votes in her 1999 run for the Mayor of Wasilla. That’s about 1% of the number of votes Joe Biden got for President. (And let’s not even talk about how many votes he’s gotten in his many runs for senator in Delaware or even his 1970 run for County Councilman.)

And yet they had this woman stand in front of a crowd on Friday and talk about how anti-earmark she is. I wonder if she’s going to talk about that again tonight. Knowing how the GOP generally treats facts, she probably will.

Three times in recent years, McCain’s catalogs of “objectionable” spending have included earmarks for this small Alaska town, requested by its mayor at the time — Sarah Palin.

…

This year, Palin, who has been governor for nearly 22 months, defended earmarking as a vital part of the legislative system. “The federal budget, in its various manifestations, is incredibly important to us, and congressional earmarks are one aspect of this relationship,” she wrote in a newspaper column.

In 2001, McCain’s list of spending that had been approved without the normal budget scrutiny included a $500,000 earmark for a public transportation project in Wasilla. The Arizona senator targeted $1 million in a 2002 spending bill for an emergency communications center in town — one that local law enforcement has said is redundant and creates confusion.

McCain also criticized $450,000 set aside for an agricultural processing facility in Wasilla that was requested during Palin’s tenure as mayor and cleared Congress soon after she left office in 2002. The funding was provided to help direct locally grown produce to schools, prisons and other government institutions, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog group.

Wasilla received $11.9 million in earmarks from 2000 to 2003. The results of this spending are very apparent today. (The town also benefited from $15 million in federal funds to promote regional rail transportation.)

…

Wasilla had received few if any earmarks before Palin became mayor. She actively sought federal funds — a campaign that began to pay off only after she hired a lobbyist with close ties to Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who long controlled federal spending as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. He made funneling money to Alaska his hallmark.

…

This year she submitted to Congress a list of Alaska projects worth $197.8 million, including $2 million to research crab productivity in the Bering Sea and $7.4 million to improve runway lighting at eight Alaska airports. A spokesman said she cut the original list of 54 projects to 31.

[From McCain had criticized earmarks from Palin -- chicagotribune.com]