Daily Truthiness: Palin Yarn Unraveled

John McCain and Sarah Palin may need to come up with a new campaign slogan.

McCain/Palin; a million little pieces.

During her Veep acceptance speech Wednesday night in St. Paul, Palin bandied rhetoric about her pragmatic approach to tackling government waste.

Now we're left to discern between the simple truth and her dramatic fabrications.

Palin received more than a few yah-you-betchas and copious applause when she told the story of selling a private jet on ebay that her predecessor had purchased with state funds.

Truthiness.

"That luxury jet was over the top," she told the RNC faithful when she accepted the party's vice presidential nomination Wednesday night. "I put it on eBay."

As it turns out, this little Palin yarn was the highlight of John McCain's evening.

"How many saw her speech a couple of nights ago? Wasn't it fabulous?" McCain said Friday during a campaign stop in Wisconsin. "You know what I enjoyed the most? She took the luxury jet that was purchased by her predecessor and sold it on eBay — and made a profit."

Complete and utter rubbish.

As fact would have it, Palin did have the jet listed for auction sale on ebay. There was little interest for a 2-million-dollar jet in the online garage sale community, however, so the plane was sold by an aviation sale broker at a significant financial loss to Alaska.

Palin's predecessor, Frank Murkowski, bought the jet for $2.7 million in 2005. The plane was sold by Palin for $2.1 million after she took office.

That's a net loss of 23%, not including the jets operating costs the state incurred while owning it.

This appears to be another indication that John McCain's grasp - or lack thereof - on simple economics is troubling. The McCain sound economy of great progress and significant strides, of course.

It's The Economy, Stupid - Unemployment Soars

The Labor Department released another gloomy economic report today that shows the highest unemployment figures in five years.

So much for the PTA polling bounce from the RNC.

We're back to reality.

Folks, we're in a recession in a no-doubt-ah-bottit kinda way. Yes, the GNP rose 3.3 percent last quarter, however nearly 80% of economists (which doesn't include Steve Douchey or Hannity(!) and Hannity(!) from Fox News) acknowledge that the barometer of gauging an official economic recession is no longer a simple measurement of two consecutive quarters of negative GNP growth.

The jobless rate jumped to 6.1 percent in August, from 5.7 percent in July. In addition, employers cut payrolls for the eighth month in a row. Job losses in June and July turned out to be much deeper than forecasted. The economy lost a mind-numbing 100,000 jobs in June and another 60,000 in July.

Senator John McCain still feels that our "sound" (quotations all his, I can assure you) economy is making great progress.

Tell that to the hockey mom with a stay-at-home husband (in Alaska known as a Commercial Fisherman) of five children and an adopted baby daddy named Levi.

The Obama campaign needs to jump on this report like James Carville on a bowl of jambalaya.

Daily Irony; An Organized Community

As I witnessed both Rudy Giuliani and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin sarcastically mock Senator Barack Obama's early career experience as a "community organizer" during last nights RNC session, it occurred to me that they were, in fact, validating what many in the electorate despise about our politicians.

Quite simply, community organizing at the grass roots level is the only way that ordinary people are able to communicate and respond to the lackluster job performance of out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies.

Rudy and the Governor were simply mocking the very electorate they were attempting to court.

Governor Palin's speech was littered with spoon-fed sarcasm, delivered with more than adequate condescension. Her slow and deliberate tone, which I imagine was intended for emphasis, came off as patronizing campaign bumper sticker slogans and populist garbage.

It was as if David Spade wrote the speech for her.

Palin's real test will be in the Vice Presidential debate against Senator Joe Biden.

Where there will be no teleprompters.

Strangeways, Here We Come

Circus Freak At Fifty

Former King of Pop and current caricature of a parody of the person he was born to be, Michael Jackson, turned fifty last Friday.

There was a time when Michael Jackson was bigger than all four Beatles combined. Then, his steady succession of personal train wrecks and penchant for young boys rendered his music an inconsequential guilty pleasure.

Happy birthday, Jacko.