The Statement: Republican vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin said Saturday, October 4, that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is "someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

Get the facts!

The Facts: In making the charge at a fund-raising event in Englewood, Colorado, and a rally in Carson, California, Palin was referring at least in part to William Ayers, a 1960s radical. In both appearances, Palin cited a front-page article in Saturday's New York Times detailing the working relationship between Obama and Ayers.

In the 1960s, Ayers was a founding member of the radical Weather Underground group that carried out a string of bombings of federal buildings, including the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, in protest against the Vietnam War. The now-defunct group was labeled a "domestic terrorist group" by the FBI, and Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn — also a Weather Underground member — spent 10 years as fugitives in the 1970s. Federal charges against them were dropped due to FBI misconduct in gathering evidence against them, and they resurfaced in 1980. Both Ayers and Dohrn ultimately became university professors in Chicago, with Ayers, 63, now an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Obama's Chicago home is in the same neighborhood where Ayers and Dohrn live. Beginning in 1995, Ayers and Obama worked with the non-profit Chicago Annenberg Challenge on a huge school improvement project. The Annenberg Challenge was for cities to compete for $50 million grants to improve public education. Ayers fought to bring the grant to Chicago, and Obama was recruited onto the board. Also from 1999 through 2001 both were board members on the Woods Fund, a charitable foundation that gave money to various causes, including the Trinity United Church that Obama attended and Northwestern University Law Schools' Children and Family Justice Center, where Dohrn worked.

CNN's review of project records found nothing to suggest anything inappropriate in the volunteer projects in which the two men were involved.

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told CNN that after meeting Obama through the Annenberg project, Ayers hosted a campaign event for him that same year when then-Illinois state Sen. Alice Palmer, who planned to run for Congress, introduced the young community organizer as her chosen successor. LaBolt also said the two have not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Obama came to the U.S. Senate in 2005 and last met more than a year ago when they encountered each other on the street in their Hyde Park neighborhood.

The extent of Obama's relationship with Ayers came up during the Democratic presidential primaries earlier this year, and Obama explained it by saying, "This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood … the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago — when I was 8 years old — somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense."

The New York Times article cited by Palin concluded that "the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers." Other publications, including the Washington Post, Time magazine, the Chicago Sun-Times, The New Yorker and The New Republic, have said that their reporting doesn't support the idea that Obama and Ayers had a close relationship.

The McCain campaign did not respond Saturday to a request for elaboration on Palin's use of the plural "terrorists."

Verdict: False. There is no indication that Ayers and Obama are now "palling around," or that they have had an ongoing relationship in the past three years. Also, there is nothing to suggest that Ayers is now involved in terrorist activity or that other Obama associates are.

Filed under: Barack Obama • Fact Check • Sarah Palin

I new article posted to cnn.com entitled, "Bailout talks implode, economy's fate in peril", is suggestive of the talks imploding. However, it is conceivable to me that it is not the talks that are imploding, but rather the Republican Party that is imploding before our very eyes.

They can see that everything they have run on since President Reagan, less government; de-regulation; supply-side economics; and last but not least the trickle down theory, is the root cause of our current economic mess. The question for them is not how they save our economy, but how do they save their Party?

Popular opinion is solidly behind the Democratic Congress with demanding that the bail-out of our financial market meet the conditions of regulation and oversight; mortgage assistance for people whose mortgages are in trouble; scrutiny over the amount of the bail-out; and language to stop any "golden parachute" payments going to the CEO's of the organizations involved within the bail-out.

Now what has made the news is that the ranking Republican member of the House Banking Committee, Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), has conceded that he does not have authorization to speak for his colleagues. This is a very troubling assertion, but it also shines a bright light into the vast darkness that is the current Republican Party.

It appears that committee appointments mean nothing to the House Republican Leadership, and that every issue must be approved by leadership, albeit minority leadership, in order to be recognized by all Republicans in the House. This is the House Republican modus operandi that equals their Senate counterpart's use of the filibuster.

What happens now? It is really quite obvious. We've seen it before. After the media gets hold of this and projects a picture of a static Democratic Congress, then, the House Republicans will reach consensus. We then will be told, lead by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), how they stood together for the American people and solved this economic crisis.

This cheap political grandstanding by the Republican Party is hope only of stopping the implosion of their political affiliation. Call your Congress person, call the media, tell them that this political nonsense must end. It is time to put all Americans first, and end politics as usual.

My Blog

We can now see the meaning to McCain's madness of picking Sarah Palin for his VP. There have been numerous pundits, the latest being Ed Rollins with this beauty click here, in which attempt to keep the Democrats appearing as they are not united by keeping the Hillary Clintonnon-issue an issue.

The republicans, or the MSM for that matter, did not get the the upheaval in which they desired from the democratic convention. Therefore, McCain, in all his ineptitude, decides to try to reignite the flames of despair for the Democratic party with his selection of a female VP with seemingly less (that's debatable) experience than O8ama, and of course the media will assist with this contemptible attempt at fanning this conflgration because it sells air time and news print.

As I've said so many times on this blog. BEWARE THE MEDIA! They care more for their own balance sheet than for our country,or any that live in it.

Here is a link from the Economic Policy Institute with a nice graph that compares income from the 1990's to income from 2000 -2007.  As Joe Biden so poignantly stated, "Barack was Right, and McCain was wrong!"

Last night Hillary Clinton made a very difficult heart warming speech, after winning in the South Dakota primary, in which she congratulated Barack O8ama for his primary success. She then went on to thank a multitude of campaign staff employees, her supporters, etc. Hillary then ended her speech with not knowing what her next move will be.

This statement, which I paraphrased, has been misinterpreted into meaning that she is not conceding. Well, duh!! On the last primary day in which all the votes are not even counted she's supposed to come out and concede? No way! Why should she be forced, or coerced, into conceding by CNN, Fox, MSNBC, or any other MEDIA outlet's schedule?

In the first place, she had 18 million votes, which is about the same as O8ama had, so she must ensure that the voters that voted for her are duly represented by the Democratic party platform agenda. She will ensure that before she concedes Barack will unite with her in creating the Democratic party agenda. Just as John Edwards did before throwing his support behind O8ama. It's just the way it works, and she owes that to her supporters.

Secondly, is the possibility of a political appointment amongst the O8ama administration. She will need to think out how she feels about a potential request from Barack O8ama. That's only natural. How would she fit into his administration and/or is that what she wants to do with her future, not to mention the political capital that she has developed through this campaign.

Lastly, is the fact that she does not need to concede in a negative 'I lost and Barack won' fashion. In my mind she conceded on Tuesday night when she congratulated O8ama and thanked all of her staff and supporters. It has been a long, very long, hard campaign. Give her a break and allow her to assess where she goes from here. All of this talk that she did not concede was generated by the media that is hoping that she will do as Harold Ickes warned and take her fight to Denver.

Beware the media hype because that is precisely what this concession, no concession, story is about.

I often times post some of my poetry and do not know why I did not post this poem because I specifically like what it means about the love that ALL mothers present to their children, and how we children adapt to the will of our mothers without even realizing we are adapting; intuitively! I hope you enjoy this poem!

Mom's Debt You may post a comment on my blog if you desire as we cannot access my PB blog.

(NRSV) For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body--Jews or Greeks, slaves or free--and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot would say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

In reference to Hillary's latest attempt at irrationalization in which she tried to purport that some choose to live in an illusionary world I have this to say. Yep, she's right, we're not going to wave the magic wand and all the lobbyist' will disappear. Especially when the said lobbyist' are in her back pocket.

Oh, that's right, damn, her campaign's broke isn't it? No Mo' lobbyist money there, it's all used up, gone, like the clean air over the Potomac; gone. Using her own money to fund her campaign now, she is. But that Obama, huh, he's the money laundering kingpin of the lobbyist' dreams. Look at all the money he took in last month alone. Ah, yes, now we see why she cried broke last month.

This is all I have to say to Hillary's latest gaffe:

John 20:19-23 (NRSV)

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."