1. Palin paid herself to stay at home

Sarah Palin is being trumpeted as a fiscal conservative. And it's true to a certain extent. She did cut funding for a program that helps teen moms get back on their feet. But as the Washington Post revealed today, Palin may not be a paragon of fiscal restraint after all. The Post reports that Palin paid herself a per diem allowance (money that's supposed to cover expenses accrued while traveling on state business) for the 312 days she spent in her home in Wasilla during her 19 months in office.

The Post also states that travel expenses for her husband and kids totaled $43,490.

According to former Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles, this is hardly par for the course in Alaska:

"I gave a direction to all my commissioners if they were ever in their house, whether it was Juneau or elsewhere, they were not to get a per diem because, clearly, it is and it looks like a scam -- you pay yourself to live at home,"

Furthermore:

... the policy was not to reimburse for family travel on commercial airlines, because there is no direct public benefit to schlepping kids around the state.

As Jane Hamsher at FireDogLake writes:

Palin and her husband both make six-figure incomes. They don't need to be chiseling the state for this money to live, and she sure isn't entitled to be running on fiscal responsibility when she's pocketing cash in a way that has a history of being regarded in Alaska as a "scam."

Why McCain's Plans Would Only Add to Americans' Economic Pain

McCain's main economic promises are cutting taxes, creating jobs and balancing the budget (aka removing pork). All commendable, except when you consider the details. His policies would result in a higher deficit, a lower dollar, more jobs leaving the country, and a reduction in Social Security, Medicare, education and other entitlement programs.

Let's start with tax cuts. The "pro-growth" plan on his Web site centers on corporate taxes, which he would cut from 35 percent to 25 percent to "help American companies compete and keep jobs from going overseas."
But his cuts won't actually be tied to job creation. Already, corporations don't pay a lot of taxes, and that hasn't kept jobs from heading east. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid zero federal taxes during the past decade. Almost three-quarters of all foreign corporations between 1998 and 2005 didn't, either.

Citizens pay the bulk of the $2.5 trillion federal tax revenue. Our income taxes contributed 43 percent of it and Social Security taxes 37 percent. Corporate taxes only accounted for 13 percent. If McCain was truly a "reformer" bent on "fighting" for the citizens, he'd go after the $20 billion of executive compensation sliding through loopholes, or the $100 billion of annual offshore tax dodges. Instead, American citizens effectively wind up subsidizing this.

As for jobs, McCain said, "We're going to help workers who've lost a job that won't come back find a new one that won't go away." He didn't specify how, even though the unemployment rate of 6.1 percent is a five-year high, and we have lost more than 600,000 jobs this year.
When he talks about jobs going overseas, McCain means China. Between 2001 and 2007, 2.3 million jobs were lost or displaced (two-thirds of those jobs came from the manufacturing sector, the rest from the tech sector), as the trade deficit with China tripled. He didn't say how he would change that. In his acceptance speech, McCain pretended to acknowledge the pain of voters -- in swing states. "Bill and Sue Nebe from Farmington Hills, Michigan... lost their real estate investments in the bad housing market. Bill got a temporary job after he was out of work for seven months. Sue works three jobs to help pay the bills."

Maybe their votes matter, but implementing McCain's health plan won't help them. McCain believes that competition will improve health insurance quality and lower prices and that "families should be able to purchase health insurance nationwide, across state lines."
His plan extends the carrot of a direct refundable $2,500 tax credit for individuals and $5,000 for families to offset the cost of insurance. Which sounds peachy, except that the average family cost of health insurance is $12,000 (up from $7,600 in 2001.) Plus, families won't be getting that $5,000 directly; the money would be sent straight to insurance companies, which would make them very happy.

Of course, you can't get the credit if you don't have health insurance to begin with. Opening insurance companies to interstate competition will result in a strategy similar to that of credit card companies: Health insurance providers will consolidate through mergers and relocate to the states where they can charge the most and pay the least taxes, negating the potential positive effects of competition. This will not bring down the cost of insurance any more than it has brought down credit card rates and fees.

McCain says he will cut government spending, but the three top items of government spending are defense, social programs and interest on our debt. Since 2001, defense spending has risen from $376 billion to $587 billion. The debt owed by the U.S. government has nearly doubled, from $5.7 trillion in 2001 to almost $10 trillion (PDF). Interest on that debt is $401 billion per year, the third-largest line item in the federal budget. Foreign governments hold a record $4.1 trillion of it.
He has promised to balance the budget by 2013. But, since he's not cutting defense and can't control our interest payments, and if he cuts corporate taxes further, debt and debt payments will rise, as they have during the past eight years, that leaves other entitlement spending on the chopping block.
Sure enough, his strategy for "reforming" Social Security, in shades of Bush, is propping it up with personal accounts. He has already voted to use the Social Security surplus to fund his corporate tax reductions. He will also "reduce the growth" of (read: cut) Medicare spending, at a time when 1.85 million Americans go bankrupt each year due to medical bills alone.

As for education, "the civil rights issue of this century," his plan for doubling the child tax exemption from $3,500 to $7,000 will surely help millions of American families, but they won't be able to afford college tuition, which has increased by 70 percent since 2001. It doesn't bode well that he voted against $5 billion for grants to local educational agencies and against shifting $11 billion from corporate tax loopholes to education.

McCain's policies would benefit corporations by reducing the tax burden they already shirk, ignore the need for regulation in the banking industry, and inject cash into an overcharging health insurance industry. He would fund this by subtracting from Social Security, Medicare, education and other entitlement programs. That's the only way the math works. The end result would be a federal government more in the hole to foreign governments, and a citizenship on shakier economic ground than it already is. For those reasons, we can not afford to elect John McCain.

Almost All Americans' Wages are Plummeting

Today, the Wall Street Journal reports the sobering news that, since 2000, real wages have fallen for every educational group in America except folks with professional degrees (doctors, lawyers, and the like). All other groups, even those with master's degrees and Ph.D.'s, saw declining wages over this period. The WSJ piece is based on recently released Census data (you can find the most recent Census Bureau report on income and earnings here).
In recent years, the college earnings premium has decreased substantially. As the Journal points out:
In 1975, for instance, workers with college degrees earned 60% more per year on average than workers with high-school diplomas only, according to the 2006 Economic Report of the President.
Workers with a college degree saw their earnings premium grow steadily over the next quarter century, and by 2000 their average earnings were roughly double what workers with a high-school diploma made. Over the next four years the trend reversed: By 2004, workers with a college diploma only were earning about 80% more than high-school grads, on average.
The Journal article identifies globalization (including the outsourcing of both blue- and white-collar jobs) and rising health costs as possible causes for the decline in wages. One reason workers' wages aren't keeping up with inflation is that health care costs have risen dramatically in recent years, so employers are shelling out more for health coverage, and less in wages.
For most Americans, these data paint a fairly bleak picture of their economic prospects. About the only good thing I can say about this is that, given this economic climate, I find it almost impossible to believe that the Republicans triumph this November. The seven-year period during which wages have been in freefall just happen to be seven years in which a Republican was president and Republicans, for the most part, controlled Congress. There's no way in hell that the Republicans should be able to get away with this. If, in spite of everything, they end up winning this fall, it will be the con job of the century.

What Obama Needs to Do in the Final Sixty Days

Avoiding President Palin
Democrats around the country have been growing increasingly anxious over the last week, and for good reason. If there was a clear message from Denver, it was reflected in the remarks of virtually every commentator on television after Obama's magnificent speech: "Wow, Obama can throw a punch." He needed to indict the Bush administration and the Republican Party for what they have done to the country, and he needed to show that he can be powerful, not just eloquent and inspiring. If there was another message, it was the power of narrative. Over and over we heard comments like, "Wow, what a great story"--referring both to the stories Michele and Barack Obama told about themselves and the stories Bo and Joe Biden told about Obama's vice presidential nominee, which drew a visible tear from the eyes of Michele--which itself addressed the story Republicans were trying to tell about her, that she is a cold, hard, angry black woman (the same story they told about Hillary Clinton when she was first lady, with the racial twist to make it more incendiary).
It was not just the "liberal media elite" who responded to a week in which Democrats finally told a sustained, coherent, narrative about how the Bush administration and the Republican Party had pillaged our economy and left the country increasingly alone and unsafe in the world (although they left out some crucial details Americans should have heard about, like the extraordinary rendition of innocent people to torture chambers in the Middle East), about how McCain represents the same failed ideology of the Bush years, and about who Barack Obama really is and how he intends to lead. By the end of the convention, Obama had opened up an 8-point lead in the Gallup Polls, a stark contrast to the two-point deficit with which he began the convention after three months of failing to offer any narrative at all and doggedly refusing to go after McCain while McCain was using him as a punching bag, hitting him with one narrative after another (Obama is a celebrity, an elitist, an uppity guy who is too big for his breeches, a tax and spend liberal, someone who doesn't put country first, someone who doesn't share "our" values, not one of "us").
But the political panorama can change rapidly, and this one did the moment the convention ended and the Obama campaign decided to resume shooting scenes from its sequel to the Kerry campaign, "President Palin's Revenge" (which itself was a bad remake of "Dukakis, Tanks but No Tanks"). They already had all the footage they needed from the summer: no real narrative about their candidate, no narrative about their opponent, refusal to answer attacks, weak performances in televised interviews, poor use of surrogates on television (if they were even present), changing positions in ways that undercut the candidate's narrative of authenticity, and an disquietingly poor performance on Rick Warren's pseudo-debate with McCain. This was stock Democratic footage.
So after a week of Republicans mocking the Democrats, deriding everyone who isn't one of them (especially the dark-skinned, exotic Obama) as un-American, anti-life, elitist, hostile to "small town values," and narcissistic or subversive (putting himself, something, or some group--perhaps black people?--other than "Country First"), McCain has now opened a 4-point lead in the Gallup Polls among registered voters. That's not even factoring in McCain's advantage among "likely voters," which is higher; or the percent of voters who accurately guess the race of the person on the other end of the phone when the pollster calls and adjust their response if she sounds black, or the additional percent who would vote for a black man in public (as they did in Democratic caucuses) but whose unconscious (and increasingly conscious) prejudices emerge when they vote in private, often taking forms such as, "I just don't know Obama," "Something about him makes me uneasy," "I'm not sure I can trust him," "I think he's really a Muslim," or "He must have stuck with that Reverend Wright all those years for a reason."
Fortunately these numbers are volatile, and the Obama campaign seems to have decided that it's time to run an offense again at least part of the time (with a new ad debuting yesterday in swing states attacking McCain's "maverick" status). With all the factors going for Democrats this year (their generic lead over Republicans after 8 years of mismanagement and malfeasance remains in the double digits) and the more charismatic candidate, the polls should shift back again, at least to parity.
But McCain shouldn't have gotten a 10-point bump from his uncivil convention, and this election shouldn't be close. What happened in one short week was both completely predictable and completely avoidable. Just hours after a Democratic Convention that reignited Democratic enthusiasm and started to swing those swing voters who just weren't sure about Obama, the Obama campaign had forgotten everything it should have learned from its success of Denver--most importantly that you never drop your gloves, and that you never let the other side control the narratives--and had returned to the same failed strategies that gave us Presidents Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry, strategies Democratic consultants have passed from generation to generation like a family heirloom laced with hemlock.

The Palin War on Decency

Palin proudly advertises her membership in the national pro-life group Feminists for Life, which discourages abortion by addressing "the root causes that drive women to abortion—primarily lack of practical resources and support." No woman should have to choose between her career, education, and child, Palin told the Anchorage Daily News while running for governor back in 2006, arguing for more family-friendly environments. The question is, how often has her record backed up her rhetoric on issues of interest to families?
Not much, it turns out. Restrictions on abortion in Alaska have actually been loosened during her tenure. Last November, the Alaska Supreme Court rejected a 1997 law requiring girls younger than 16 to obtain parental consent before getting an abortion. Palin slammed the ruling as "outrageous" and had her attorney general file for a rehearing, but it was promptly denied.
Meanwhile, both this year and last year, she has used her line-item veto to slash state funds for programs providing precisely the kinds of resources Feminists for Life supports for at-risk mothers on the fence about abortion. She cut by 20 percent the funding for Covenant House Alaska, a state-supported program that includes a transitional home where new teenage mothers can spend up to 18 months learning money management and parenting skills. Critics have jumped all over that decision, arguing that the decision looks especially bad in light of the news that Palin's 17-year-old daughter has since become pregnant.
Palin has also voided funds for two other similar programs during her tenure as governor. One, the WIC (Women, Infants, Children) Program, would have provided breast pumps and nutrition support to low-income rural women, for a total cost of $15,480. Another, the Cook Inlet Housing Authority's student housing and daycare facility project, would have built a childcare facility and family-style housing units for students pursuing vocational education in Anchorage, most of whom come from rural areas.
Even Palin's commitment to pro-life legislation has been questioned back home. In April, the governor denied the state legislature's request for extra debates on two controversial anti-abortion bills, one requiring minors to obtain parental consent before having abortions and another outlawing partial-birth abortion except to save the life of the mother. After state senators failed to reach agreement, the chamber's president tried to attach them to the agenda of a special legislative session being held on Palin's top legislative priority: a new natural gas pipeline. Palin demurred. "Alaskans know I am pro-life and have never wavered in my belief in the sanctity of every human life," she said in a statement. "These issues are so important they shouldn't be diluted with oil and gas deliberations."
Palin's office indicated that those issues were next on the governor's agenda, referring requests for further comment on Palin's record to the McCain campaign, which did not return phone calls. If pro-life activists in Alaska are unhappy with Palin for not doing more, they don't show it. Alaska Right to Life director Karen Lewis, who has known Palin for a decade and calls her a "superhero" on the issue, blamed the legislative failures on a political squabble between the governor and state Senate President Lyda Green. When recent cancer survivor Lyda Green publicly was called a “cancer bitch” that did Governor Palin, nicknamed “Sarah Barracuda”, burst into a roar of laughter a minute later repeated, she reacted again with the same joy of approval.
Liberal advocates on women's health issues have been more vocal. They say Palin raised expectations in 2007, when she attended a summit organized by The Alliance for Reproductive Justice, a group affiliated with Planned Parenthood. According to one attendee quoted on the Planned Parenthood Web site, "we had not planned on meeting Gov. Palin, so that was a surprise. She took the time to talk with us about her own experiences as a working mother, and relayed her support for women's health."
But early hopes have been dashed by a lack of follow-through, these activists say; Palin has taken a laissez-faire approach to the issues they discussed, including children's health care, domestic violence shelters, sex education and breastfeeding in the workplace.

In Alaska, there's no shortage of work for a concerned politician to do. The state's domestic violence and sexual assault rates are over twice as high as the national average. More women are murdered by men there than in any other state in the country. Alaska also has the highest Chlamydia rate in the nation, with 681.8 cases per every 100,000 people (the national average is 347.8 per 100,000). Activists point to a dire shortage in funding for domestic violence shelters, which have waiting lists despite the fact that the state boasts a $7 billion budget surplus. Amnesty International joined the chorus in April 2007, slamming both federal and state authorities for creating "a maze of tribal, state and federal jurisdictions" that effectively allowed sexual assailants impunity.
In response, Palin has requested—and secured—a $436,000 increase in state funding for the public safety department's Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. The year before, too, she'd bumped up funding by another $300,000. But Clover Simon, head of Planned Parenthood Alaska, and Geran Tarr, a former state legislative aide who heads up the affiliated Alliance for Reproductive Justice, point to the overflowing shelters and say much more is needed. And Alaska might be able to afford it, given the council's total budget of nearly $11.5 million.
Could Palin have done more? Her critics agree that the natural gas pipeline project has monopolized the governor's political energy for the past two years, leaving little for the social issues she champions. At the same time, Right to Life Executive Director Karen Lewis points to achievements outside the legislative arena, such as judicial appointments, to buttress her faith in Palin as a pro-life leader. Likewise, in Alaska Right to Life's newsletter, former president Bob Bird commended her for "asking for public support in her efforts to reshape the judiciary." In her time as governor, Palin has appointed one Supreme Court justice and 10 lower-court judges.
But some critics think Palin has cynically hyped her personal story for political gain—a move that helps mask a flimsy record of accomplishment on the social issues that matter most to the GOP's religious conservative base. "This is what always happens in politics, and what I expect they will do in her run for vice president. She'll be going into churches and meeting with those types of groups and saying what they want to hear," says Tarr. "Her priority was the gas line. And that's fine that that was her priority, but she can't go ahead and claim to be active on women's and children's issues too."

Sarah Palin's Strange eBay Exaggeration

John McCain, fibbing his way through an introduction of Palin in Cedarsburg, Wisconsin, advances the falsehood: "You know what i enjoyed the most? She took the luxury jet that was acquired by her predecessor and sold it on eBay -- made a profit."
Watch the video

Politicians lie. They all do. The ones we have running all will lie, and if you're not choked with pure idealism you'll admit it. In fact, if you're jaded enough, you might even come to accept it, even respect it when it's done well. The concept isn't perplexing, especially when a deftly placed, glibly drawn half-truth can get yourself out of a dead-end argument.

What is perplexing, however, are unnecessary lies. Silly falsehoods, said for no apparent reason, on topics that the world would have totally avoided had you not lied about it in the first place. One strange Sarah Palin falsehood, which she acclaimed as truth yesterday and the campaign reaffirmed tonight in video was that she successfully auctioned a private jet she deemed unnecessary for the State of Alaska to maintain on eBay. It's a strange falsehood because, in the first place, really, who cares? Moreover, it's bizarre because eBay founder Meg Whitman works for the McCain campaign! She's right there! In the building! And surely she can explain to Palin that she is getting that weird bit of biography wrong.

Via Radar, the facts are these:

After going unsold for months, the jet was put into the hands of Turbo North Aviation, an Anchorage aircraft broker, which put an asking price of $2.45 million on the nearly $2.7 million jet. It quickly sold to Alaska businessman Larry Reynolds for $2.1 million ($31,000 of which went to Turbo Aviation). Today the Westwind II jet spends its days ushering wealthy hunters around Alaska and Russia.

So why on earth would Palin lie about this, knowing that it would bring scrutiny to this story, and knowing that the scrutiny would reveal that a) the auction wasn't successful, b) she lost the State of Alaska's money on the deal, and c) the state's valuable resource had basically become a luxury for wealthy elites? I have no idea! But whatever! It's definitely not the worst lie she's ever told.
.

Sarah Palin RNC Convention Speech

The Video

Mr. Chairman, delegates, and fellow citizens: I am honored to be considered for the nomination for Vice President of the United States...
I accept the call to help our nominee for president to serve and defend America.
I accept the challenge of a tough fight in this election... against confident opponents ... at a crucial hour for our country.
And I accept the privilege of serving with a man who has come through much harder missions ... and met far graver challenges ... and knows how tough fights are won - the next president of the United States, John S. McCain.
It was just a year ago when all the experts in Washington counted out our nominee because he refused to hedge his commitment to the security of the country he loves.
With their usual certitude, they told us that all was lost - there was no hope for this candidate who said that he would rather lose an election than see his country lose a war.
But the pollsters and pundits overlooked just one thing when they wrote him off.
They overlooked the caliber of the man himself - the determination, resolve, and sheer guts of Senator John McCain. The voters knew better.
And maybe that's because they realize there is a time for politics and a time for leadership ... a time to campaign and a time to put our country first.
Our nominee for president is a true profile in courage, and people like that are hard to come by.
He's a man who wore the uniform of this country for 22 years, and refused to break faith with those troops in Iraq who have now brought victory within sight.
And as the mother of one of those troops, that is exactly the kind of man I want as commander in chief. I'm just one of many moms who'll say an extra prayer each night for our sons and daughters going into harm's way.
Our son Track is 19.
And one week from tomorrow - September 11th - he'll deploy to Iraq with the Army infantry in the service of his country.
My nephew Kasey also enlisted, and serves on a carrier in the Persian Gulf.
My family is proud of both of them and of all the fine men and women serving the country in uniform. Track is the eldest of our five children.
In our family, it's two boys and three girls in between - my strong and kind-hearted daughters Bristol, Willow, and Piper.
And in April, my husband Todd and I welcomed our littlest one into the world, a perfectly beautiful baby boy named Trig. From the inside, no family ever seems typical.
That's how it is with us.
Our family has the same ups and downs as any other ... the same challenges and the same joys.
Sometimes even the greatest joys bring challenge.
And children with special needs inspire a special love.
To the families of special-needs children all across this country, I have a message: For years, you sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters.
I pledge to you that if we are elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House. Todd is a story all by himself.
He's a lifelong commercial fisherman ... a production operator in the oil fields of Alaska's North Slope ... a proud member of the United Steel Workers' Union ... and world champion snow machine racer.
Throw in his Yup'ik Eskimo ancestry, and it all makes for quite a package.
We met in high school, and two decades and five children later he's still my guy. My Mom and Dad both worked at the elementary school in our small town.
And among the many things I owe them is one simple lesson: that this is America, and every woman can walk through every door of opportunity.
My parents are here tonight, and I am so proud to be the daughter of Chuck and Sally Heath. Long ago, a young farmer and habber-dasher from Missouri followed an unlikely path to the vice presidency.
A writer observed: "We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity." I know just the kind of people that writer had in mind when he praised Harry Truman.
I grew up with those people.
They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America ... who grow our food, run our factories, and fight our wars.
They love their country, in good times and bad, and they're always proud of America. I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town.
I was just your average hockey mom, and signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids' public education better.
When I ran for city council, I didn't need focus groups and voter profiles because I knew those voters, and knew their families, too.
Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown.
And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves.

I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities. I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening.

We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.
As for my running mate, you can be certain that wherever he goes, and whoever is listening, John McCain is the same man. I'm not a member of the permanent political establishment…
And I've learned quickly, these past few days, that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.
But here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion - I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country. Americans expect us to go to Washington for the right reasons, and not just to mingle with the right people.
Politics isn't just a game of clashing parties and competing interests.
The right reason is to challenge the status quo, to serve the common good, and to leave this nation better than we found it.
No one expects us to agree on everything.
But we are expected to govern with integrity, good will, clear convictions, and ... a servant's heart.
I pledge to all Americans that I will carry myself in this spirit as vice president of the United States. This was the spirit that brought me to the governor's office, when I took on the old politics as usual in Juneau ... when I stood up to the special interests, the lobbyists, big oil companies, and the good-ol' boys network.
Sudden and relentless reform never sits well with entrenched interests and power brokers. That's why true reform is so hard to achieve.
But with the support of the citizens of Alaska, we shook things up.
And in short order we put the government of our state back on the side of the people.
I came to office promising major ethics reform, to end the culture of self-dealing. And today, that ethics reform is the law.
While I was at it, I got rid of a few things in the governor's office that I didn't believe our citizens should have to pay for.
That luxury jet was over the top. I put it on eBay.
I also drive myself to work.
And I thought we could muddle through without the governor's personal chef - although I've got to admit that sometimes my kids sure miss her. I came to office promising to control spending - by request if possible and by veto if necessary.
Senator McCain also promises to use the power of veto in defense of the public interest - and as a chief executive, I can assure you it works.
Our state budget is under control.
We have a surplus.
And I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending: nearly half a billion dollars in vetoes.
I suspended the state fuel tax, and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress.
I told the Congress "thanks, but no thanks," for that Bridge to Nowhere.
If our state wanted a bridge, we'd build it ourselves. When oil and gas prices went up dramatically, and filled up the state treasury, I sent a large share of that revenue back where it belonged - directly to the people of Alaska.
And despite fierce opposition from oil company lobbyists, who kind of liked things the way they were, we broke their monopoly on power and resources.
As governor, I insisted on competition and basic fairness to end their control of our state and return it to the people.
I fought to bring about the largest private-sector infrastructure project in North American history.
And when that deal was struck, we began a nearly forty billion dollar natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence.
That pipeline, when the last section is laid and its valves are opened, will lead America one step farther away from dependence on dangerous foreign powers that do not have our interests at heart.
The stakes for our nation could not be higher.
When a hurricane strikes in the Gulf of Mexico, this country should not be so dependent on imported oil that we are forced to draw from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
And families cannot throw away more and more of their paychecks on gas and heating oil.
With Russia wanting to control a vital pipeline in the Caucasus, and to divide and intimidate our European allies by using energy as a weapon, we cannot leave ourselves at the mercy of foreign suppliers.
To confront the threat that Iran might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of world energy supplies ... or that terrorists might strike again at the Abqaiq facility in Saudi Arabia ... or that Venezuela might shut off its oil deliveries ... we Americans need to produce more of our own oil and gas.
And take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of Alaska: we've got lots of both.
Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America's energy problems - as if we all didn't know that already.
But the fact that drilling won't solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all.
Starting in January, in a McCain-Palin administration, we're going to lay more pipelines ... build more new-clear plants ... create jobs with clean coal ... and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal, and other alternative sources.
We need American energy resources, brought to you by American ingenuity, and produced by American workers. I've noticed a pattern with our opponent.
Maybe you have, too.

We've all heard his dramatic speeches before devoted followers.
And there is much to like and admire about our opponent.
But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform - not even in the state senate.
This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word "victory" except when he's talking about his own campaign. But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed ... when the roar of the crowd fades away ... when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot - what exactly is our opponent's plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer is to make government bigger ... take more of your money ... give you more orders from Washington ... and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world. America needs more energy ... our opponent is against producing it.
Victory in Iraq is finally in sight ... he wants to forfeit.
Terrorist states are seeking new-clear weapons without delay ... he wants to meet them without preconditions.
Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America ... he's worried that someone won't read them their rights? Government is too big ... he wants to grow it.
Congress spends too much ... he promises more.
Taxes are too high ... he wants to raise them. His tax increases are the fine print in his economic plan, and let me be specific.
The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes ... raise payroll taxes ... raise investment income taxes ... raise the death tax ... raise business taxes ... and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars. My sister Heather and her husband have just built a service station that's now opened for business - like millions of others who run small businesses.
How are they going to be any better off if taxes go up? Or maybe you're trying to keep your job at a plant in Michigan or Ohio ... or create jobs with clean coal from Pennsylvania or West Virginia ... or keep a small farm in the family right here in Minnesota.
How are you going to be better off if our opponent adds a massive tax burden to the American economy? Here's how I look at the choice Americans face in this election.
In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers.
And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change.
They're the ones whose names appear on laws and landmark reforms, not just on buttons and banners, or on self-designed presidential seals.
Among politicians, there is the idealism of high-flown speechmaking, in which crowds are stirringly summoned to support great things.
And then there is the idealism of those leaders, like John McCain, who actually do great things. They're the ones who are good for more than talk ... the ones we have always been able to count on to serve and defend America. Senator McCain's record of actual achievement and reform helps explain why so many special interests, lobbyists, and comfortable committee chairmen in Congress have fought the prospect of a McCain presidency - from the primary election of 2000 to this very day.
Our nominee doesn't run with the Washington herd.
He's a man who's there to serve his country, and not just his party.
A leader who's not looking for a fight, but is not afraid of one either. Harry Reid, the Majority Leader of the current do-nothing Senate, not long ago summed up his feelings about our nominee.
He said, quote, "I can't stand John McCain." Ladies and gentlemen, perhaps no accolade we hear this week is better proof that we've chosen the right man. Clearly what the Majority Leader was driving at is that he can't stand up to John McCain. That is only one more reason to take the maverick of the Senate and put him in the White House. My fellow citizens, the American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of "personal discovery." This world of threats and dangers is not just a community, and it doesn't just need an organizer.
And though both Senator Obama and Senator Biden have been going on lately about how they are always, quote, "fighting for you," let us face the matter squarely.
There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you ... in places where winning means survival and defeat means death ... and that man is John McCain. In our day, politicians have readily shared much lesser tales of adversity than the nightmare world in which this man, and others equally brave, served and suffered for their country.
It's a long way from the fear and pain and squalor of a six-by-four cell in Hanoi to the Oval Office.
But if Senator McCain is elected president, that is the journey he will have made.
It's the journey of an upright and honorable man - the kind of fellow whose name you will find on war memorials in small towns across this country, only he was among those who came home.
To the most powerful office on earth, he would bring the compassion that comes from having once been powerless ... the wisdom that comes even to the captives, by the grace of God ... the special confidence of those who have seen evil, and seen how evil is overcome. A fellow prisoner of war, a man named Tom Moe of Lancaster, Ohio, recalls looking through a pin-hole in his cell door as Lieutenant Commander John McCain was led down the hallway, by the guards, day after day.
As the story is told, "When McCain shuffled back from torturous interrogations, he would turn toward Moe's door and flash a grin and thumbs up" - as if to say, "We're going to pull through this." My fellow Americans, that is the kind of man America needs to see us through these next four years.
For a season, a gifted speaker can inspire with his words.
For a lifetime, John McCain has inspired with his deeds.
If character is the measure in this election ... and hope the theme ... and change the goal we share, then I ask you to join our cause. Join our cause and help America elect a great man as the next president of the United States.
Thank you all, and may God bless America.