Take a look at this video and PLEASE please send it to ten people you know:

We have GOT to get the word out on the web of deceit that John McCain and Co. are spinning. Send this to moms, dads, undecideds, Hillary
supporters, your kid's teacher, the doctor, dentist, your next-door-neighbor, your college roommate, your ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend (at least the ones you still talk to), your grandmother in Florida (yes, Florida IS winnable!)...you get the idea.

Forwarded from a friend -- read it and weep, and then go out and do something about it. We cannot let the Republicans lie their way into the White House AGAIN.

If you're a minority and you're selected for a job over more qualified
candidates you're a "token hire." If you're a conservative and you're
selected for a job over more qualified candidates you're a "game
changer."

Black teen pregnancies? A "crisis" in black America. White teen
pregnancies? A "blessed event."

If you grow up in Hawaii you're "exotic." Grow up in Alaska eating
mooseburgers, you're the quintessential "American story."
Similarly, if you name you kid Barack you're "unpatriotic." Name your
kid Track, you're "colorful."

If you're a Democrat and you make a VP pick without fully vetting the
individual you're "reckless." A Republican who doesn't fully vet is a
"maverick."

If you spend 3 years as a community organizer growing your organization
from a staff of 1 to 13 and your budget from $70,000 to $400,000, then
become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a
voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new African Amerian
voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, then spend
nearly 8 more years as a State Senator representing a district with over
750,000 people, becoming chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human
Services committee, then spend nearly 4 years in the United States
Senate representing a state of nearly 13 million people, sponsoring 131
bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works
and Veteran's Affairs committees, you are woefully inexperienced.

If you spend 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a
town with less than 7,000 people, then spend 20 months as the governor
of a state with 650,000 people, then you've got the most executive
experience of anyone on either ticket, are the Commander in Chief of the
Alaska military and are well qualified to lead the nation should you be
called upon to do so because your state is the closest state to Russia.

If you are a Democratic male candidate who is popular with millions of
people you are an "arrogant celebrity". If you are a popular Republican
female candidate you are "energizing the base".

If you are a younger male candidate who thinks for himself and makes his
own decisions you are "presumptuous". If you are an older male candidate
who makes last minute decisions you refuse to explain, you are a "shoot
from the hip" maverick.

If you are a candidate with a Harvard law degree you are "an elitist-out
of touch" with the real America. if you are a legacy (dad and granddad
were admirals) graduate of Anapolis, with multiple disciplinary
infractions you are a hero.

If you manage a multi-million dollar nationwide campaign, you are an
"empty suit". If you are a part time mayor of a town of 7000 people, you
are an "experienced executive".

If you go to a south side Chicago church, your beliefs are "extremist".
If you believe in creationism and don't believe global warming is man
made, you are "strongly principled".

If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your
disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a
Christian. If you have been married to the same woman with whom you've
been wed to for 19 years and raising 2 beautiful daughters with, you're
"risky".

If you're a black single mother of 4 who waits for 22 hours after her
water breaks to seek medical attention, you're an irresponsible parent,
endangering the life of your unborn child. But if you're a white married
mother who waits 22 hours, you're spunky.

If you're a 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton, the right-wing press calls you
"First dog." If you're a 17-year old pregnant unwed daughter of a
Republican, the right-wing press calls you "beautiful" and "courageous."

If you teach abstinence only in sex education, you get teen parents. If
you teach responsible age appropriate sex education, including the
proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

The U.S. unemployment rate is now at 6.1%.

John McCain says he doesn't know as much about the economy as he should. John McCain's economic adviser, former Republican Congressman Phil Gramm, says we are in a "mental recession" and are "a nation of whiners."

Barack Obama made a number of concrete proposals to lift the economy out of recession in his recent acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.

Why is this election even close? It's time for ALL Americans to get to work on behalf of Barack Obama.

The brilliant linguist George Lakoff wrote the following essay illustrating why the Democrats best take the Republican selection of Sarah Palin, however misguided, with great seriousness. Spread this cautionary tale far and wide:

The Palin Choice and the Reality of the Political Mind
by George Lakoff

This election matters because of realities-the realities of global warming, the economy, the Middle East, nuclear proliferation, civil liberties, species extinction, poverty here and around the world, and on and on. Such realities are what make this election so very crucial, and how to deal with them is the substance of the Democratic platform (PDF).

Election campaigns matter because who gets elected can change reality. But election campaigns are primarily about the realities of voters' minds, which depend on how the candidates and the external realities are cognitively framed. They can be framed honestly or deceptively, effectively or clumsily. And they are always framed from the perspective of a worldview.

The Obama campaign has learned this. The Republicans have long known it, and the choice of Sarah Palin as their Vice-Presidential candidate reflects their expert understanding of the political mind and political marketing. Democrats who simply belittle the Palin choice are courting disaster. It must be t aken with the utmost seriousness.

The Democratic responses so far reflect external realities: she is inexperienced, knowing little or nothing about foreign policy or national issues; she is really an anti-feminist, wanting the government to enter women's lives to block abortion, but not wanting the government to guarantee equal pay for equal work, or provide adequate child health coverage, or child care, or early childhood education; she shills for the oil and gas industry on drilling; she denies the scientific truths of global warming and evolution; she misuses her political authority; she opposes sex education and her daughter is pregnant; and, rather than being a maverick, she is on the whole a radical right-wing ideologue.

All true, so far as we can tell.

But such truths may nonetheless be largely irrelevant to this campaign. That is the lesson Democrats must learn. They must learn the reality of the political mind.

The Obama campaign has done this very well so far. The convention events and speeches were orchestrated both to cast light on external realities, traditional political themes, and to focus on values at once classically American and progressive: empathy, responsibility both for oneself and others, and aspiration to make things better both for oneself and the world. Obama did all this masterfully in his nomination speech, while replying to, and undercutting, the main Republican attacks.

But the Palin nomination changes the game. The initial response has been to try to keep the focus on external realities, the "issues," and differences on the issues. But the Palin nomination is not basically about external realities and what Democrats call "issues," but about the symbolic mechanisms of the political mind-the worldviews, frames, metaphors, cultural narratives, and stereotypes. The Republicans can't win on realities. Her job is to speak the language of conservatism, activate the conservative view of the world, and use the advantages that conservatives have in dominating political discourse.

Our national political dialogue is fundamentally metaphorical, with family values at the center of our discourse. There is a reason why Obama and Biden spoke so much about the family, the nurturant family, with caring fathers and the family values that Obama put front and center in his Father's day speech: empathy, responsibility and aspiration. Obama's reference in the nomination speech to "The American Family" was hardly accidental, nor were the references to the Obama and Biden families as living and fulfilling the American Dream. Real nurturance requires strength and toughness, which Obama displayed in body language and voice in his responses to McCain. The strength of the Obama campaign has been the seamless marriage of reality and symbolic thought.

The Republican strength has been mostly symbolic. The McCain campaign is well aware of how Reagan and W won-running on character: values, communicatio n, (apparent) authenticity, trust, and identity - not issues and policies. That is how campaigns work, and symbolism is central.

Conservative family values are strict and apply via metaphorical thought to the nation: good vs. evil, authority, the use of force, toughness and discipline, individual (versus social) responsibility, and tough love. Hence, social programs are immoral because they violate discipline and individual responsibility. Guns and the military show force and discipline. Man is above nature; hence no serious environmentalism. The market is the ultimate financial authority, requiring market discipline. In foreign policy, strength is use of the force. In fundamentalist religion, the Bible is the ultimate authority; hence no gay marriage. Such values are at the heart of radical conservatism. This is how John McCain was raised and how he plans to govern. And it is what he shares with Sarah Palin.

Palin is the mom in the strict father family, upholding conservative values. Palin is tough: she shoots, skins, and eats caribou. She is disciplined: raising five kids with a major career. She lives her values: she has a Downs-syndrome baby that she refused to abort. She has the image of the ideal conservative mom: pretty, perky, feminine, Bible-toting, and fitting into the ideal conservative family. And she fits the stereotype of America as small-town America. It is Reagan's morning-in-America image. Where Obama thought of capturing the West, she is running for Sweetheart of the West.

And Palin, a member of Feminists For Life, is at the heart of the conservative feminist movement, which Ronee Schreiber has written about in her recent book, Righting Feminism. It is a powerful and growing movement that Democrats have barely paid attention to.

At the same time, Palin is masterful at the Republican game of taking the Democrats' language and reframing it-putting conservative frames to progressive words: Reform, prosperity, peace. She is also masterful at using the progressive narratives: she's from the working class, working her way up from hockey mom and the PTA to Mayor, Governor, and VP candidate. Her husband is a union member. She can say to the conservative populists that she is one of them-all the things that Obama and Biden have been saying. Bottom-up, not top-down.

Yes, the McCain-Palin ticket is weak on the major realities. But it is strong on the symbolic dimension of politics that Republicans are so good at marketing. Just arguing the realities, the issues, the hard truths should be enough in times this bad, but the political mind and its response to symbolism cannot be ignored. The initial Democratic response to Palin - the response based on realities alone - indicates that many Democrats have not learned the lessons of the Reagan and Bush years.

They have not learned the nature of conservative populism. A great many working-class folks are what I call "bi-conceptual," that is, they are split between conservative and progressive modes of thought. Conservative on patriotism and certain social and family issues, which they have been led to see as "moral", progressive in loving the land, living in communities of care, and practical kitchen table issues like mortgages, health care, wages, retirement, and so on.

Conservative theorists won them over in two ways: Inventing and promulgating the idea of "liberal elite" and focusing campaigns on social and family issues. They have been doing this for many years and have changed a lot of brains through repetition. Palin will appeal strongly to conservative populists, attacking Obama and Biden as pointy-headed, tax-and-spend, latte liberals. The tactic is to divert attention from difficult realities to powerful symbolism.

What Democrats have shied away from is a frontal attack on radical conservatism itself as an un-American and harmful ideology. I think Obama is right when he says that America is based on people caring about each other and working together for a better future-empathy, responsibility (both personal and social), and aspiration. These lead to a concept of government based on protection (environmental, consumer, worker, health care, and retirement protection) and empowerment (through infrastructure, public education, the banking system, the stock market, and the courts). Nobody can achieve the American Dream or live an American lifestyle without protection and empowerment by the government.20The alternative, as Obama said in his nomination speech, is being on your own, with no one caring for anybody else, with force as a first resort in foreign affairs, with threatened civil liberties and a right-wing government making your most important decisions for you. That is not what American democracy has ever been about.

What is at stake in this election are our ideals and our view of the future, as well as current realities. The Palin choice brings both front and center. Democrats, being Democrats, will mostly talk about the realities nonstop without paying attention to the dimensions of values and symbolism. Democrats, in addition, need to call an extremist an extremist: to shine a light on the shared anti-democratic ideology of McCain and Palin, the same ideology shared by Bush and Cheney. They share values antithetical to our democracy. That needs to be said loud and clear, if not by the Obama campaign itself, then by the rest of us who share democratic American values.

Our job is to bring external realities together with the reality of the political mind. Don't ignore the cognitive dimension. It is through cultural narratives, metaphors, and frames that we understand and express our ideals.

George Lakoff is the author of The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 20th Century Politics With an 18th Century Brain

Republicans are having a field day pointing out that Alaska Governor and Republican V.P. pick Sarah Palin has more "executive-level experience" than Barack Obama, Joe Biden or John McCain, making her the most qualified of the "gang of four" to be President of the United States. This executive-level experience consists of 20 months as governor of a state with less than 700,000 residents. The GOP is happily pointing out that legislating in the Senate doesn't even compare to running a state.

Republicans seem to forget that George Bush also had a lot of executive-level experience, namely two terms as Governor of Texas, and all that's gotten us is a train wreck of a presidency. So much for executive-level experience.

John McCain likes to joke about the fact that he was near the bottom of his class at the U.S. Naval Academy. Apparently, his dad placed about the same at that prestigious school. Somewhat surprisingly, McCain and his dad took pride in the fact that they were real rabble-rousers in college. Barack Obama, on the other hand, not only did well at Harvard University, he was President of the Harvard Law Review, a huge honor and great responsibility. It's pretty obvious who the smart and sensible one is here.

I don't know about you, but I want a President who is smart. Real smart. And sensible. These are trying times and we face great challenges, not only within our own country but on a global level. We need a President who can reason his way to smart solutions both at home and abroad. Goof-offs need not apply.

John McCain appeared on "Fox News Sunday" this morning and was compelled to answer some surprisingly candid questions from anchor Chris Wallace. Wallace at one point asked McCain about V.P. Pick Sarah Palin's foreign policy experience and Mc Cain responded that Palin had been a member of the PTA!! This is no joke, and it is the most nonsensical response I can imagine. Here's the clip from the Fox interview:

"WALLACE: But Senator, you talked about her years of experience. Ten of those years were as a city councilwoman and mayor of a town of 9,800 people. And in terms of foreign policy, in March of 2007, after — two months after the surge had started, she was asked about it, and she said, “I’ve been focused on state government. I haven’t focused on the war in Iraq.” Understandable for a governor; not understandable for a vice president.

MCCAIN: Well, by the way, also she was a member of the PTA. I think it’s wonderful. But the point is she’s been to Kuwait. She’s been over there. She’s been with her troops. The National Guard that she commands, who had been over there and had the experience. I’m proud of her knowledge of these challenges and issues."

The full transcript from the Fox web site is here:

http://embeds.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/08/31/mccain-talks-palin-on-fox-new...

I'm a member of the PTA, too, but that doesn't qualify ME to be Vice President.

The entire interview is beyond belief. John McCain is exhibiting the worst possible judgment here or, even worse, he is acting as no more than a mouthpiece for his Republican handlers and those in his party hell-bent on keeping the White House at all costs. Sensibility and good policy be damned, the straight talker appears to be saying, as long as it gets him elected President.

It is incumbent upon all Americans to pay close attention to this election. The choice is becoming crystal clear: Barack Obama and Joe Biden are EARNING their way to the White House thanks to sensible policies that truly address the needs of ordinary Americans while John McCain will say and do anything, and I mean ANYTHING, in his quest to become President.

For all the women out there, disaffected Hillary supporters and others, who think that John McCain's choice today of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his Vice Presidential running mate might be something to cheer about: Palin is a gun-totin' (lifelong member of the NRA) former chair of Alaska's Oil and Natural Gas Commission who's chompin' at the bit to drill in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), completely clueless about the need for alternative sources of energy in this country. A former beauty queen and small-town (make that tiny town, pop. 9,000) mayor who has been the governor of a small-population (make that tiny population) state for less than two years. A self-styled pro-life hockey mom who seems to have no qualms about killing Bambi's mom.

This is the person John McCain, who turns 72 today, has chosen to be a heartbeat away from the presidency of the United States of America? Make no mistake, ladies: Sarah Palin is no Hillary Clinton. Next to John McCain, she is our worst nightmare.

As most of us have probably heard by now, John McCain owns ten homes. He doesn't seem to know this, but he really does own ten homes. I'm not sure if they're all in America, in cities or small towns, luxury ski resorts or beach-y rivieras. I do know at least one of them is a sprawling ranch in Sedona, Arizona. The ranch isn't his primary home but he does seem to go there an awful lot.

I don't think John McCain can feel my pain if he owns ten homes. I own one -- well, the bank owns it, they just let me and my family live here. What I need, what most of us need, is a president who GETS the ordinary American's experience: go to work, get paid, help the kids with their homework, save for a rainy day. John McCain is so far out of touch with ordinary Americans, it's scary.