Sarah Palin Pregnant in April 2008 and other stuff from FactCheck

School Funding Misleads
An Obama ad plays fast and loose with McCain's voting record on education and proposals as a presidential candidate..

Belittling Palin?
A McCain-Palin TV ad accuses Obama of being "disrespectful" of Palin, but it distorts quotes to make the case.

Energetically Wrong
Palin says Alaska supplies 20 percent of U.S. energy. Not true. Not even close.

Corsi's Dull Hatchet
Jerome Corsi's "The Obama Nation" is a mishmash of unsupported conjecture, half-truths, logical fallacies and outright falsehoods.

Ask FactCheck: Is McCain unable to use a computer because of war injuries?
He can type. But using a keyboard for long periods is uncomfortable for him. He says he’s been an “illiterate” on a computer. But he says now he’s learning to use the Internet.

The Wire: More on Palin’s False Energy Claim

The Wire: That’s ‘Former Lobbyist’ to You

The Wire: Muting the Mommy Melodrama
Muting the Mommy Melodrama
The Internet is abuzz with the rumor that Palin’s youngest child, Trig, is not actually her son but her grandson, born to her teenage daughter Bristol and adopted by Palin to cover up the scandal. Aside from a DNA test, it’s unlikely we’ll convince the hard-core conspiracy theorists and skeptics that this rumor is totally false (it could be argued that not even a DNA test would suffice for some). But this photo, which has been making its way around the Web, shows a very pregnant Palin alongside CBS’ KTVA 11 reporter Andrea Gusty:
click for larger view
We spoke with Gusty, who sent us this copy of the photo, and she told us she was surprised the photo had made it onto the Internet. “I was under the impression that nobody had it except for me.” When we asked her if the photo circulating online had been altered in any way, she said there was “no photoshopping,” and that the photo was taken during a live interview with Palin in mid-April 2008, at the end of the state Legislature’s regular session. “About a week after that picture was taken, [Palin] actually gave birth to Trig,” Gusty told FactCheck.org. “I actually did an interview with her about two or three days after she had given birth. And that’s when she and Todd introduced the baby to the world.” The Palins formally announced the birth of their fifth child on April 18.
Aside from the photo, the rumor is also contradicted by Palin’s recent announcement of Bristol’s (confirmable) pregnancy. If Bristol is in fact five months pregnant – and again, we’re not obstetricians either – then she couldn’t be 5-month-old Trig’s mother.
–Emi Kolawole and Jess Henig
Update: We have added the original photo, which was sent to us by Andrea Gusty. For a larger view please click on the photograph.

McCain's video release, September 18, 2008. Yea Lying Again

"Obama has no background in economics. Who advises him? The Post says it's Franklin Raines, for "advice on mortgage and housing policy." Shocking. Under Raines, Fannie Mae committed "extensive financial fraud." Raines made millions. Fannie Mae collapsed. Taxpayers? Stuck with the bill."

An already nasty presidential election campaign is getting nastier. The meltdown on Wall Street has touched off frantic attempts by both the McCain and Obama camps to secure political advantage and indulge in guilt by association. Over the past 24 hours, both campaigns have issued video press releases (let's not call them ads until they actually air somewhere) attempting to show that the other side's javascript:void(0)"advisers" are somehow responsible for the crisis. The latest McCain attack is particularly dubious.
The Facts
The McCain video attempts to link Obama to Franklin Raines, the former CEO of the bankrupt mortgage giant, Fannie Mae, who also happens to be African American. It then shows a photograph of an elderly white woman taxpayer who has supposedly been "stuck with the bill" as a result of the "extensive financial fraud" at Fannie Mae.
The Obama campaign last night issued a statement by Raines insisting, "I am not an advisor to Barack Obama, nor have I provided his campaign with advice on housing or economic matters." Obama spokesman Bill Burton went a little further, telling me in an e-mail that the campaign had "neither sought nor received" advice from Raines "on any matter."
So what evidence does the McCain campaign have for the supposed Obama-Raines connection? It is pretty flimsy, but it is not made up completely out of whole cloth. McCain spokesman Brian Rogers points to three items in the Washington Post in July and August. It turns out that the three items (including an editorial) all rely on the same single conversation, between Raines and a Washington Post business reporter, Anita Huslin, who wrote a profile of the discredited Fannie Mae boss that appeared on July 16. The profile reported that Raines, who retired from Fannie Mae four years ago, had "taken calls from Barack Obama's presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters."
Since this has now become a campaign issue, I asked Huslin to provide the exact circumstances of the quote. She explained that she was chatting with Raines during the photo shoot, and asked "if he was engaged at all with the Democrats' quest for the White House. He said that he had gotten a couple of calls from the Obama campaign. I asked him about what, and he said 'oh, general housing, economy issues.' ('Not mortgage/foreclosure meltdown or Fannie-specific,' I asked, and he said 'no.')"
By Raines's own account, he took a couple of calls from someone on the Obama campaign, and they had some general discussions about economic issues. I have asked both Raines and the Obama people for more details on these calls and will let you know if I receive a reply.
The Pinocchio Test
The McCain campaign is clearly exaggerating wildly in attempting to depict Franklin Raines as a close adviser to Obama on "housing and mortgage policy." If we are to believe Raines, he did have a couple of telephone conversations with someone in the Obama campaign. But that hardly makes him an adviser to the candidate himself -- and certainly not in the way depicted in the McCain video release.

Pakistani tribesmen organize private armies to fight Taliban

After weeks of fighting between the Pakistan Army and militants, the declaration of a month-long cease-fire may give the Taliban time to regroup.
Pakistan's Taliban might be getting stronger, wreaking havoc along the country's border with Afghanistan, but they are also growing wildly unpopular, inciting their own tribesmen to turn against them.
In the latest of a series of incidents, a lashkar, or private army comprised of Pakistani tribesmen, torched the houses of Taliban commanders in Bajaur, near the Afghan border, vowing to fight them until they are expelled, the Daily Times, a Pakistani newspaper, reports.

Tribesmen in Bajaur Agency's Salarzai tehsil on Sunday formed a private army (lashkar) of around 30,000 people against the local Taliban. A local jirga decided to form the lashkar in the wake of the increasing presence of the local Taliban in the area. The lashkar torched 14 houses, including the house of a local Taliban commander. Tribal elder Malik Munsib Khan, who heads the lashkar, said tribesmen would continue their struggle until the Taliban were expelled from the area, adding that anyone found sheltering Taliban militants would be fined one million [rupees] and his house would be torched. The tribesmen also torched two important centres of the Taliban in the area and gained control of most of the tehsil.

Dawn, another English-language daily in Pakistan, cited the lashkar at a much lower number.

The tribe has raised a lashkar of more than 4,000 volunteers. Malik Munasib Khan, who is leading uprising against the militants, said that the houses destroyed by the volunteers included one of militant leader Naimatullah, who had occupied several government schools and converted them into seminaries.

The development comes in the midst of the Pakistan Army's bombardment campaign, which has been unfolding for weeks in the tribal agency of Bajaur, a militant stronghold where some top commanders of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, including Osama bin Laden, are believed to be hiding. The bombardment, which has left some 400 militants dead according to The New York Times, highlights the rising power of the Taliban some seven years after they were first ousted from power in Afghanistan. But it also showcases why the Taliban are highly unpopular: Some 200,000 people have been displaced because of fighting, while dozens of citizens have been killed in clashes between the militants and military.
The Bajaur lashkar might be the largest of its kind, but it is not the only such force to have turned against the Taliban, according to recent reports. The News, a leading Pakistani daily, reported two weeks ago that several such lashkars have arisen throughout the North West Frontier Province, where the Taliban are increasing their hold.

In an unprecedented development, an armed lashkar in Buner district recently hunted down and killed six militants allegedly involved in killing cops in Kingargali. The operation shows that the people of Buner, Dir Upper and Dir Lower have stood up against the Taliban militants sneaking into these hitherto peaceful areas after Bajaur and Swat military operations.
A grand jirga of the elders of Maidan area in Lower Dir district's headquarters, Timergara, asked more than 150 foreign fighters and their tribal Taliban supporters to leave the area or face strong action from the local people.
A similar jirga in Barawal, a town of Dir Upper district, sharing border with Afghanistan, warned the militants to stay away from the area or they would take up arms against them.
The Buner incident took place on Khel Mountain in Shalbandai when hundreds of local people picked up arms, locally called 'Appa,' on information of the presence of the Taliban militants, who had brutally killed eight policemen in Kingargali last Friday.
The armed lashkar of 200 locals threw a cordon around the militants and asked them to surrender but the Taliban challenged it. The official sources told The News that the militants' refusal triggered a gunfight and they hurled hand grenades at the lashkar, prompting a retaliatory action from local armed men, which resulted in the killing of all the six militants.

Khalid Aziz, a Pakistani security expert, writes on his blog A Voice from Peshawar that these are important developments.

Today, the tribesmen are holding jirgas in Salarzai and other places against the militants. They have forced the militants to evacuate their areas since they are accused of bringing pain to the residents of Bajaur.... Thus a situation has arisen where the ascendency of the radicals has seen challenges for the first time by the communities with only marginal government assistance.

It is unclear what impact, if any, the lashkars will have on the fighting. But many fear that they will lose backing and momentum now that the central government has called for a one-month cease-fire with the militants in observance of Ramadan, the Muslim month of religious fasting, reports The New York Times.

On Saturday night, the Pakistani government declared a cease-fire in the area for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins here on Wednesday.
The cease-fire prompted concerns that whatever gains had been made against militants in the region would be squandered. Khalid Aziz, a former chief secretary of the North-West Frontier Province, said the Taliban would use the opportunity to regroup.
"Some communities have risen up against the militants, and the government has to capitalize on this, has to prop them up," he said. "They haven't done it."

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