Yeah, isn't that funny?  A politically incorrect a.shole for once
isn't on your team.  Aw, shucks.

And the Republican lies continue to multiply:

By CHARLES BABINGTON, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 11 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The "Straight Talk Express" has detoured into
doublespeak.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain, a self-proclaimed tell-it-
like-it-is maverick, keeps saying his running mate, Sarah Palin,
killed the federally funded Bridge to Nowhere when, in fact, she
pulled her support only after the project became a political
embarrassment. He said Friday that Palin never asked for money for
lawmakers' pet projects as Alaska governor, even though she has sought
nearly $200 million in earmarks this year. He says Obama would raise
nearly everyone's taxes, when independent groups say 80 percent of
families would get tax cuts instead.

Even in a political culture accustomed to truth-stretching, McCain's
skirting of facts has stood out this week. It has infuriated and
flustered Obama's campaign, and campaign pros are watching to see how
much voters disregard news reports noting factual holes in the claims.

McCain's persistence in pushing dubious claims is all the more notable
because many political insiders consider him one of the greatest
living victims of underhanded campaigning. Locked in a tight race with
George W. Bush for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000,
McCain was rocked in South Carolina by a whisper campaign claiming he
had fathered an illegitimate black child and was mentally unstable.

Shaken by the experience, McCain denounced less-than-truthful
campaigning. Vowing to live up to his "straight talk" motto, he
apologized for his reluctance to criticize the flying of the
Confederate flag at South Carolina's state Capitol in a bid for votes.
When the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attacked the military
record of Democrat and fellow Navy officer John Kerry in 2004, McCain
called the ads "dishonest and dishonorable."

Now, top aides to McCain include Steve Schmidt, who has close ties to
Karl Rove, Bush's premier political adviser in 2000.

Politicians usually modify or drop claims when a string of newspaper
and TV news accounts concludes they are untrue or greatly exaggerated.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, for example, conceded she had not come
under sniper fire in Bosnia after a batch of debunking articles
subjected her to scorn during her primary contest against Obama.

But McCain and his running mate Palin, the Alaska governor, were
defiant this week in the face of similar reports. Day after day she
said she had told Congress "no thanks" to the so-called Bridge to
Nowhere, a rural Alaska project that was abandoned when critics
challenged its costs and usefulness. For nearly a week, major news
outlets had documented that Palin supported the bridge when running
for governor in 2006, noting that she turned against it only after it
became an object of ridicule in Alaska and a symbol of Congress's out-
of-control earmarking.

The McCain-Palin campaign made at least three other aggressive claims
this week that omitted key details or made dubious assumptions to
criticize Obama. It equated lawmakers' requests for money for special
projects with corruption, even though Palin has sought millions of
dollars in such "earmarks" this year.

It produced an Internet ad implying that Obama had called Palin a pig
when he used a familiar phrase, which McCain also has used, about
putting "lipstick on a pig" to try to make a bad situation look
better. McCain supporters said Obama was slyly alluding to Palin's
description of herself as a pit bull in lipstick, but there was
nothing in his remarks to support the claim. Obama accused the GOP
campaign of "lies and phony outrage."

The lipstick wars were fully engaged when the McCain campaign produced
another ad saying Obama favored "comprehensive sex education" for
kindergartners. The charge triggered the sort of headlines becoming
increasingly common in major newspapers and wire services monitoring
the factual content of political ads and speeches.

"Ad on Sex Education Distorts Obama Policy," was the headline on a New
York Times article Thursday. "McCain's 'Education' Spot is Dishonest,
Deceptive," The Washington Post's "Fact Checker" article said.

Major news outlets have written such fact-checking articles for years.
"But in the last two election cycles, the very notion that the facts
matter seems to be under assault," said Michael X. Delli Carpini, an
authority on political ads at the University of Pennsylvania's
Annenberg School for Communication. "Candidates and their consultants
seem to have learned that as long as you don't back down from your
charges or claims, they will stick in the minds of voters regardless
of their accuracy or at a minimum, what the truth is will remain
murky, a matter of opinion rather than fact."

With Palin giving McCain's campaign a boost in the polls, Obama
supporters are nervously watching to see what impact the latest claims
will have. Surveys already show that most people believe Obama would
raise their taxes — a regular McCain claim — even though independent
groups such as the Tax Policy Center concluded that four out of five
U.S. households would receive tax cuts under his proposals.

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds defended the campaign's statements. "We
include factual backup in every one of our TV spots," he said
Thursday.

Obama, of course, has made exaggerated or questionable assertions as
well. Earlier this year, for instance, he repeated a claim that more
black men are in prison than in college, after news accounts refuted
it. He also used a McCain remark about having troops in Iraq for "100
years" to exaggerate McCain's proposals for being fully engaged
militarily in that country.

In general, however, Obama has been quicker to react to news accounts
challenging his accuracy. Faced with skeptical reports this year, for
instance, he stopped saying he "worked his way" through college, and
instead credited hard work and scholarships.

Dan Schnur, a former McCain aide who now teaches politics at the
University of Southern California, said McCain and Obama learned they
must stretch the truth "when staying on the high road didn't work out
to their benefit."

McCain, he said, "tried it his way. He had a poverty tour and nobody
covered it. He had a national service tour, and everybody made fun of
it. He proposed these joint town halls" with Obama, "and nothing come
of it. Through the spring and early summer, that approach didn't work.
You can't blame him for taking a step back and reassessing."

___

EDITOR'S NOTE — Charles Babington covers national politics for The
Associated Press.