AP Points out the GOP Lies....

People it's time to wake up and smell the BS......

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her Republican supporters held
back little Wednesday as they issued dismissive attacks on Barack Obama and
flattering praise on her credentials to be vice president. In some cases, the
reproach and the praise stretched the truth.
Some examples:

PALIN: "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing
wasteful spending ... and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark
spending by Congress. I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge
to Nowhere."

THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a
lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town
totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly
$750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request
in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million
bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that
opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a "bridge to
nowhere."

PALIN: "There is much to like and admire about our
opponent. But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who
has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform _ not even in the
state senate."

THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades in
the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with
Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal
shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional
weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that
accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar
of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was
the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial
profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential
death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform
legislation.

PALIN: "The Democratic nominee for president supports
plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes,
raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the
American people by hundreds of billions of dollars."

THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run
jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that
Obama's plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by
about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain's plan, which cuts
taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income
taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded.

Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly
for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax
Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger
families.

He also would raise income taxes, capital gains and
dividend taxes on the wealthiest. He would raise payroll taxes on taxpayers with
incomes above $250,000, and he would raise corporate taxes. Small businesses
that make more than $250,000 a year would see taxes rise.

MCCAIN: "She's been governor of our largest state, in
charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply ... She's responsible for 20
percent of the nation's energy supply. I'm entertained by the comparison and I
hope we can keep making that comparison that running a political campaign is
somehow comparable to being the executive of the largest state in America," he
said in an interview with ABC News' Charles Gibson.

THE FACTS: McCain's phrasing exaggerates both claims.
Palin is governor of a state that ranks second nationally in crude oil
production, but she's no more "responsible" for that resource than President
Bush was when he was governor of Texas, another oil-producing state. In fact,
her primary power is the ability to tax oil, which she did in concert with the
Alaska Legislature. And where Alaska is the largest state in America, McCain
could as easily have called it the 47th largest state _ by
population.

MCCAIN: "She's the commander of the Alaska National
Guard. ... She has been in charge, and she has had national security as one of
her primary responsibilities," he said on ABC.

THE FACTS: While governors are in charge of their state
guard units, that authority ends whenever those units are called to actual
military service. When guard units are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, for
example, they assume those duties under "federal status," which means they
report to the Defense Department, not their governors. Alaska's national guard
units have a total of about 4,200 personnel, among the smallest of state guard
organizations.

FORMER ARKANSAS GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE: Palin "got more votes
running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of
the United States."

THE FACTS: A whopper. Palin got 616 votes in the 1996
mayor's election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of
1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got
76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the
ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries.

FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOV. MITT ROMNEY: "We need change,
all right _ change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We
have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington _ throw
out the big-government liberals, and elect John McCain and Sarah
Palin."

THE FACTS: A Back-to-the-Future moment. George W. Bush, a
conservative Republican, has been president for nearly eight years. And until
last year, Republicans controlled Congress. Only since January 2007 have
Democrats have been in charge of the House and
Senate.
___
Associated Press Writer Jim Drinkard in Washington
contributed to this report.