By David Swanson

I get the impression that a great many people are upset by all the news about McCain-Palin supporters who believe Obama is an Arab, a Muslim, a terrorist, and a baby killer. I find it the most encouraging thing that's happened in eight years.

Why? Because these sorts of lies and fear-mongering are nothing new. What's new is that the U.S. corporate media is covering them. The most unaccountable, antidemocratic communications cartel outside of China has decided to cover in a major way a story it has brushed aside since September 12, 2001.

By Lloyd Hart

You may have noticed over the last week the word acorn or to be more
exact A.C.O.R.N. which stands for the Association of Community
Organizations for Reform Now. I personally have known about this group
for many years and nearly fell off my couch when I began to hear the
accusations coming out of the McCain campaign that poor black people
(A.C.O.R.N.) held a gun to Congress's head (cause black people, you
know, they can get guns. (wink) ) and forced it to pass a law that
forced rich white guys to stop redlining minority neighborhoods and to
stop predatory lending practices in minority neighborhoods - a
deliberate practice of banks not providing equal access to credit
products like loans and mortgages at the same fare market value in
terms of interest rates that the white folks recieved who were forced
into the terrible exodus of white flight when they had to relocate to
the suburbs when they were afraid their children might have sex with

By Joel McNally, Capital Times

One Bush administration cover story for going to war in Iraq to provide hundreds of billions of dollars in no-bid contracts for Halliburton and other corporate cronies was that it was to spread democracy in the Mideast.

Meanwhile, the president's party continues to battle the spread of democracy in the Midwest.

With less than a month to go before the election, the collateral damage from Republican efforts to fight the spread of democracy continues to pile up.

The latest victims are convicted felons who are looking to get jobs to support themselves and their families without resorting to crime.

A Republican National Committee official has attacked voter registration groups in Wisconsin for employing convicted felons. The party's chief lawyer said the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) hired seven convicted felons to register voters.

By David Swanson

According to an Associated Press story on Friday, more than a half-million people have toured the creationism museum in Kentucky since it opened in May 2007. However, at least one of those people was there to make fun of it with a video camera.

In fact, a lot of what Bill Maher's new film, "Religulous", does is make fun of people. But by no means does Maher single out fringe religious believers. He interviews one of the few top scientists in the world who believes, a priest at the Vatican who believes, and plenty of random typical believers in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Maher's conclusion: these people (including the vast majority of Americans) are all enablers of neurologically disordered killers who are going to destroy the planet.

ACORN President Maude Hurd released the following statement today in response to the McCain campaign's new ad claiming that, among other things, ACORN is responsible for the mortgage crisis:

”For almost a decade, ACORN, a community organization of 400,000 families in neighborhoods across the country, has been fighting against the predatory lending practices that have robbed our members of their homes, destabilized neighborhoods, and roiled the global economy.”

“In his newest ad, John McCain’s campaign bizarrely claims, “ACORN forced banks to issue risky home loans, the same types of loans that caused the financial crisis we're in today.” Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, ACORN has worked successfully to help working class families get good home loans on fair terms from legitimate banks and has fought vigorously against predatory lenders who have ripped off families in our communities. These predatory loans caused the crisis.”

Go here.

By Judith Bell, President of PolicyLink, www.policylink.org

Judith BellWe started noticing the trend last week. Traffic on our website was spiking dramatically, with nearly half of all our hits landing on one specific page, entitled: “What is the Community Reinvestment Act?”

Could it be that in these increasingly dire economic times, Americans are looking for examples of successful, pragmatic solutions to encourage responsible homeownership and promote equality and justice? Sadly, not quite.

It turns out our Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) page was linked in a scathing video blaming the CRA for the housing crisis – the basic argument being that the CRA forced banks to loan to all people and, therefore, precipitated the subprime crisis and irresponsible people getting loans they couldn’t afford.

Palin's Talent Scout
by Scott Horton

No wonder Bill Kristol has remained so positive about her while other neocons have fled. He helped push her to the veep ticket-and won out against Karl Rove.

In June 2007, a cruise liner sponsored by the political journal The Weekly Standard set anchor in Ju neau, Alaska. Editors and guests of the publication were then treated to a reception with Governor Sarah Palin. It was a moment of discovery to equal Hernando Cortez's landing at Veracruz. A writer for London's Daily Telegraph interviewed one of the participants in the Juneau junket about the meeting with Palin:

"She's bright and she's a blank page. She's going places and it's worth going there with her." Asked if he sees her as a "project," the former official said: "Your word, not mine, but I wouldn't disagree with the sentiment."

By David Swanson

The McCain-Palin campaign is running an advertisement "accusing " Barack Obama of once training ACORN members in Chicago. Obama should be proud of that. I've done it myself and am proud of it. I trained Chicago ACORN members in how to talk to the media about the wonderful work they do.

What sort of work? Chicago ACORN has worked to improve local schools, reducing class sizes, providing teachers with mentors and assistants. Chicago ACORN has worked to prevent predatory lending and reform predatory lending corporations, the opposite of what ACORN is accused of in the right-wing myth that blames Wall Street's troubles on Wall Street's victims. Chicago ACORN and its partner, Service Employees International Union Local 880, have worked to raise wages and working conditions for everyone -- yes, including all immigrants; there's no other way to do it. And ACORN has done work we should all appreciate in registering citizens to vote.

By David Swanson

Of the hundreds of corporate and independent media outlets that falsely claimed this week that ABC News had broken a story about NSA spying that I broke at AfterDowningStreet over a year ago, only the guys at McClatchy (formerly Knight Ridder, the same people who have done better reporting on Iraq than any other corporate journalists) have had the decency to put out a correction, and only the Sacramento Bee has posted (though probably not printed) it:

By David Swanson

While supporters of McCain and Palin generally appear to be a lily white mob of vicious imbeciles who shout things like Sit Down Boy! and Keep the White House white!, one black man, a radio host from Milwaukee whom I had never heard of before, James T. Harris, was given the microphone at a John McCain event and proceeded to lay the biggest wettest kiss possible on McCain's flabby white butt, after which McCain struggled to produce a coherent response.

By David Swanson

1. WMD Lies

By David Swanson

I think that's a fair question. When Rood worked for TPMMuckraker he complained to CBS News about the life of a blogger.

When he got hired by the Disney Corporation (ABC News) he begin tackling such tasks as burying a story of war lies and war crimes in order to blog about phone sex.

Now he's added a followup to the original story that still fails to note that I blogged the full story over a year ago, and still fails to tell most of the story.