The Delaware "News Journal" wonders how the least wealthy senator, Joe Biden, who is worth $2 million, can afford a house valued at $2.5 million:

Though he's considered one of the least wealthy senators -- his net worth dwarfed by several multimillionaire attorneys and entrepreneurs -- Biden is a wealthy man by ordinary standards -- worth about $2 million but perhaps hundreds of thousand dollars more, a News Journal analysis found.

Like many Americans, Biden's house is his most valuable asset.

First elected to the Senate 36 years ago, the former lawyer lives off Barley Mill Road in Greenville -- northern Delaware's priciest area -- on a four-acre lakefront estate in a 7,000-square-foot custom home. Biden also owns a smaller carriage house on his property, where his widowed mother lives.

Local real estate agents said the Biden property is worth at least $2.5 million -- $1.8 million more than the couple owes. In addition, his latest Senate financial disclosure -- which lists assets and liabilities in wide ranges -- shows that Biden's net worth, excluding real estate holdings and mortgage debt, is between $381,000 and minus $55,000.

Biden and his wife, Jill, an English instructor at Delaware Technical & Community College, have combined salaries of $265,500 this year. Between 2005 and 2007, Biden also received a total of $225,000 in advances for his autobiography, "Promises to Keep."

More here: http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008809060343

 

A reader post linking to the allegations by the virtually unknown "LA Progressive", whose circulation is so low that I can't even find the data in google, that Sarah Palin once said of Obama and Hillary "So Sambo beat the bitch," and that she refers to Alaskans as "Artic Arabs" and "f**ing monkeys" rests on the following sourcing:

*Allegation: Palin said of Obama and Clinton: "Sambo beat the bitch."
Place of occurrence: "a restaurant" (no name provided).
Source: A waitress whose name is said to be "Lucille", who feels compelled to hide her last name.

*Allegation: She calls Alaskans "Artic Arabs"
Source: "People who know her."


*Allegation: She refers to Alaskans as "f**ing Eskimos."
Source: "A number of Alaskans interviewed for this article."

*Allegation: She is vindictive and mean.
Source: "Alaskans interviewed for this article"

Note that the only named source is the one who makes an credible allegation, specifically the one accusing her of outsting a librarian and having her opponents in her "list of enemies." The gist of this one allegation is known from respectable newspapers and media outlets to be true.

But the rest of the allegations are so thinly sourced that it's impossible not to conclude they're garbage.

The criteria to recommend diaries here seems to be: "If it makes you hope the allegations are true because they would hurt a rival, recommend it!"

Would you recommend an entry linking to a guy named "Peter" who claims Obama once admitted to being a Muslim?

Aren't we better than that?

According to The Smoking Gun, a fact-based website, the 98 divorce filing pertaining to Todd Palin's friend Scott Richter's divorce makes no mention of Sarah Palin. Richter is victim of suggestions by lefty blogs that he's recently had sex with Sarah Palin.

The Palins are only mentioned in the confidentiality request made by Richter, in which he argues that reporters pursing the Palins' rumors might get a hold of his address and other sensitive information.

The Smoking Gun did not post the 98 page document (only the confidentiality filing), but this is an opportunity for the Daily Kos' anonymous diarists in question to obtain a copy of said document and confirm or deny if in fact they have been smearing Palin all along.

This is worth noting:

A new Survey USA poll among voters in the state of Washington --conducted on September 2-- has found that,

"When we asked Washington voters who they thought the Media was rooting for, 52% said Barack Obama…while only 8% feel the Media is rooting for John McCain.  35% think the Media is trying to be fair to both of them."

This is significant for two reasons:

1) Washington is a blue state, so imagine what the opinion would be in America as a whole, and

2) Blogs such as this one always whine that the media loves McCain.

Why do so many people fail to see what you claim to see?

In its online edition, the National Enquirer makes no mention of Sarah Palin's infidelity charges. See their front page.

The opposite was true during the Edwards' scandal, where they directly accused of having a "love child" and having an affair with Rielle Hunter.

They have lost (and settled for) lawsuits in the past, for instance, when they lied about the Gary Condit issue.

They lied about Cameron Diaz cheating.

They have been right in numerous occasions, but this time their sources seem to be disgruntled relatives of Sarah Palin's sister's husband who abused her.

Independent fact-checking website Politifact.com concludes Rudy Giuliani's recent claim that Sarah Palin has more executive experience than Barack Obama and Joe Biden is true.

Even taking for granted Obama's claim that campaigning qualifies as executive experience, Palin ends up having a more prolific executive career.

The number of years of executive experience for Palin is 8, whereas the number for the Demcocrats stands at zero.

I would add that Obama and Biden have more legislative experience, but the Vice President and President are executive branch jobs, although the VP in an extraordinary situation would cast a tie-breaking vote in congress.

So yeah, guys, Wasilla has 5,500 people. But the city Obama or Biden led doesn't even exist.

Same goes for Alaska's hundreds of thousands as opposed to the states where these Democrats have served as governors.

Taking this step shouldn't be a difficult task for the owners of this website.

Also, look at the readers' post and see how many duplicate threads there are: too many. We also need the ability to delete threads or edit them for the first 5 minutes or so after hitting the submit button, as it's done in other civilized blogs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9lXDIBLluM

That's some judgment, huh?

The blog Patterico.com contrasts two statements made by Andrew Sullivan (conservative-turned-Obama-supporter) with regards to digging into a person's private life for political purposes:

Andrew Sullivan, May 31, 2001 (discussing attacks on his gay sex life):

 I think a fair assessment of these tactics would be blackmail and intimidation. I ignored them as I have learned to ignore most such threats over the years. <b>To answer them is to give legitimacy to the very premises of their argument: that the most intensely personal details of someone’s private life can and should be used for political purposes. The truth is: no-one’s legal, consensual, adult private life should be plundered and exposed for political purposes.</b></p>
<p><b>I ignored the requests for comment because there was nothing to comment on.</b> . . . I was asked to confirm a story presented anonymously, the only salient details of which I believed to be untrue. <b>Why should I answer?</b></p>

Andrew Sullivan, September 1, 2008:

Why not kill this rumor with Palin’s medical records? A 43 year old woman’s pregnancy with a Downs Syndrome child would have been intensely monitored, and the records must be a mile long. Just release them, ok? If necessary in a closed room for reporters, just as with McCain. And we can all breathe a sigh of relief and move on.</a>

Hypocrite.

The New York Times' Frank Rich's latest column was built on two premises:

1) That due to their obsession with Hillary Clinton, pundits were flat wrong in predicting the convention would resemble a war scene, with Clinton unleashing her supporters against Obama.

2) That the media sweats the small stuff, as he made clear in one of his passages: "As obama said, As Obama said, this is a big election. We will only begin to confront the magnitude of our choice when and if we stop being distracted by small, let alone utterly fictitious, things."

But doesn't this sound to you like a perfect description of Maureen Dowd's work? In a recent piece, for instance, Dowd did precisely what Rich condemns: inventing an utterly ficticious mini-novel in which the Clintons and John McCain conspired to destroy Barack Obama:

Dowd (8-19-08):

 “Our toast to The One,” they say in unison, “is that he’s toast.”

“Obama should have picked you, Hillary,” John McCain tells her. “It isn’t fair, my friend. But it just makes it easier for me to whup him.”

“Don’t worry, John, I’ve put it behind me,” Hillary replies. “I’m looking toward the future now, a future that looks very bright, once we send Twig Legs back to the back bench.”

They chortle with delight.

Now transport yourself to August 13th:

Hillary's orchestrating a play within the play in Denver. Just as Hamlet used the device to show that his stepfather murdered his father, Hillary will try to show the Democrats they chose the wrong savior.

Compare her cynicism to Rich's approving recap of Hillary's convention speech:

But it was never in either Clinton’s interest to sabotage Obama. Hillary Clinton’s Tuesday speech, arguably the best of her career, was as much about her own desire to reconcile with the alienated Obama Democrats she might need someday as it was about releasing her supporters to Obama. The Clintons never do stop thinking about tomorrow.

Of course, Frank Rich loves his job too much to mention Dowd by name, but it's hard not to conclude by reading his column that it was an unintentional dig at the Queen of Mean.

A new Zogby Interactive poll, the first one conducted completely after John McCain's VP announcement, finds that the McCain/Palin ticket and the Obama/Biden ticket are statistically tied.

Other recent polls such as Rasmussen and Gallup have been conducted before and after the choice.

http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews1547.html

The Daily Kos has a diary claiming that Sarah Palin's baby "Trig" is actually her teenage daughter's creation.

The evidence in the diary is strong.

At some point, photographs of a pregnant public figure such as a governor have to surface showing her big belly, because pregnant women do not have flat stomachs.

In addition, her daughter was given sick leave from school for 5-8 due to "mononucleosis", as the official story goes, even though mononucleosis is a disease that in its worst scenario lasts 3 months.

Let's keep an eye on the story.