Even David Gergen on CNN tonight said John McCain's campaign ads are false. He says the media is beginning to pushback against Palin and McCain and it may spread to the public.

CNN also had a long review of McCain's ads with reporter Randi Kaye and Factcheck.org. The upshot:

• Sex education ad: false Obama was trying to get kids to learn about recognizing improper touching.

• The Bridge to Nowhere: Palin never told Congress "no thanks", Congress had already killed it.

• Earmarks: McCain lied on The View today and said Palin didn't ask for earmarks while Governor. This year alone she asked for 197 million. She vetoed some earmarks but also asked for others.

• Palin claims Alaska produces 20% of the energy produced in US. It's 3.5%. It matters because they are using this in a claim that Palin is some kind of energy expert.

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I'm watching Weeds. It's the best season yet. Tonight the DEA questions Nancy. And Nancy is outed as a cooperator. It's the final episode of the season.

What are you watching or doing?

Update: I just noticed we wrote 25 posts today. Hope some of you will scroll down and to the next page to read them.

This is an open thread.

Sen. John McCain's campaign today announced Gov. Sarah Palin will not meet with the investigators in TrooperGate. Previously she said she welcomed the investigation and would cooperate.

The fired public safety official, Walter Monegan, is speaking out.

"She's not telling the truth when she told ABC neither she nor her husband pressured me to fire Trooper Wooten," said Walt Monegan, the Alaskan official whose dismissal by Sarah Palin is the focus of a state investigation known as "Troopergate". "And she's not telling the truth to the media about her reasons for firing me."

He'll be on Rachel Maddow's show tonight. (Update below the fold)

CNN's Randi Kaye had a great taped segment on Campabell Brown's show tonight with FactCheck.Org on Palin's distortion of her record and accomplishments. I'm going to try and find a video of it, it was one of the most comprehensive exposing of the untruths I've seen yet. Hopefully they may replay it.

How much is 500 points?

The 504-point fall is the Dow's sixth-largest point drop ever and was the biggest loss for the Dow since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

What's next?

Even as investors digested the historic news surrounding Lehman and Merrill Lynch, some were raising concerns about how it could spill over into other parts of the economy. There will be renewed pressure on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates tomorrow at its scheduled meeting, economists said.

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The FBI crime report released today (referenced here with respect to marijuana) also shows a drop in violent crime. And, contrary to the notion often expressed by crime warriors that there is less crime because more offenders are locked up, this Justice Policy Institute factsheet (pdf) shows the opposite: Areas with lower incarceration rates experienced greater crime reductions.

The number of violent offenses reported to law enforcement fell 1.4 percent in 2007. Both violent and property crimes fell in three of the four regions of the country. Only the southern region experienced an increase in these two categories.

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Sam Stein reports:

During a conference call with national female supporters on Monday, Barack Obama and his aides outlined a comprehensive strategy to target female supporters who could be on the fence between his and John McCain's candidacies. The plan included intense focus on McCain's opposition to equal pay legislation, which aides to Obama believe resonates beyond female voters; sending out prominent female surrogates to serve as political "ambassadors"; limiting focus on Gov. Sarah Palin in favor of McCain himself; and breaking through the media's propensity to focus on conflicts and gaffes.

There were several issues on which the campaign suggested these pseudo-surrogates focus. Equal pay, opposition to choice, and the economy were some of them -- Sarah Palin was not. "I know we are getting a little distracted by discussion about Sarah Palin, but I think it is important for all of us to focus on Sen. McCain," said Dana Singiser, a strategist for Obama. . . . "Whether we are talking about jobs or health care or gas prices, this is what women voters and really all voters are concerned about."

(Emphasis supplied.) Amen.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

The Bush Adminstration's Drug Czar John Walters said on C-Span last week (video here) that it's a lie that 800,000 Americans were arrested for pot last year. He said folks would have better luck finding a “unicorn” in jail for pot.

NORML has the statistics:

Police arrested a record 872,721 persons for marijuana violations in 2007, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Report released today. This is the largest total number of annual arrests for cannabis ever recorded by the FBI. Cannabis arrests now comprise nearly 47.5 percent of all drug arrests in the United States.

"These numbers belie the myth that police do not target and arrest minor cannabis offenders," said NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre, who noted that at current rates, a cannabis consumer is arrested every 37 seconds in America. "This effort is a tremendous waste of criminal justice resources that diverts law enforcement personnel away from focusing on serious and violent crime, including the war on terrorism."

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Salon has an article about Alaska Baptist Minister Howard Bess who says he is frightened by Gov. Sarah Palin's injection of her evangelical views into her governing. He says as Mayor she tried to ban his book about gays from the public library, ban abortion at a local hospital in the valley and get creationists on the school board.

On abortion:

In 1996, evangelical churches mounted a vigorous campaign to take over the local hospital's community board and ban abortion from the valley. When they succeeded, Bess and Dr. Susan Lemagie, a Palmer OB-GYN, fought back, filing suit on behalf of a local woman who had been forced to travel to Seattle for an abortion. The case was finally decided by the Alaska Supreme Court, which ruled that the hospital must provide valley women with the abortion option.

At one point during the hospital battle, passions ran so hot that local antiabortion activists organized a boisterous picket line outside Dr. Lemagie's office, in an unassuming professional building across from Palmer's Little League field. According to Bess and another community activist, among the protesters trying to disrupt the physician's practice that day was Sarah Palin.

On her attempt to get creationists on the school board:

First and foremost, the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act had nothing to do with it. Lehman Brothers' financial free fall resulted from its position in the mortgage backed securities market. As an investment bank, Lehman Brothers followed the lead of Salomon Brothers, that invented the non-Fannie/Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities business:

An ambitious mail-room clerk named Lew Ranieri worked at S[a]lomon Brothers and saw an opportunity in the mid 80s. S[a]lomon Brothers was hiring rocket scientists to create a new breed of mortgage-backed security, a collateralized mortgage obligation (CMO), designed to more accurately predict the prepayment speed of the mortgages backing the bonds they sold. Lucky Lew ran around the country preaching God, motherhood, baseball, and a CMO in every portfolio. Lew convinced the WORLD investment community that the American homeowner was a damn good bet.

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A TalkLeft endorsement: Matthew Abel for District Attorney in Detroit. He's running on the Green Party ticket against current DA Kym Worthy. Abel, whose website is CannibisCounsel, tells the Michigan Concerned Citizen:

Worthy has not prosecuted any Detroit police officer for the killing of a citizen since, as an assistant prosecutor, she prosecuted Larry Budzyn and Walter Nevers for the killing of Malice Green in 1992. During her term, Detroit police officers have committed numerous questionable killings and even public rapes in the guise of cavity searches which have gone unchallenged. The prosecutor is required by law to investigate these killings.

“The prosecutor also needs to be the one to tell the police that we are not condoning illegal searches and traffic stops or issuing bad warrants, that we’re not going to cover up police misconduct,” Abel said.

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The Denver Post has more on Gov. Sarah Palin's campaign event in Colorado today: She repeated her lie about opposing the Bridge to Nowhere and was heckled by a woman in the back who sporadically yelled "You're Not Qualified."

The audience response to the heckler: It turned to her and shouted "U.S.A., U.S.A."

Colorado Rep. Ed Perlmutter, a long-time Obama supporter, has this terrific response to Palin:

"If Governor Palin wants to represent 'change' in Washington," U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Golden, said in a statement, "she could try something like telling the truth about her record of support for the bridge to nowhere or for other pork-barrel earmarks, her outdated and extreme positions on women's issues, her heaping of millions of dollars in debt upon the small town of Wasilla, Alaska, or her abuse of power investigation.

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Here is a portion of the text of Sen. Barack Obama's prepared remarks at his rally today in Grand Junction, CO (received by e-mail, no link.)

This morning we woke up to some very serious and troubling news from Wall Street.

The situation with Lehman Brothers and other financial institutions is the latest in a wave of crises that are generating enormous uncertainty about the future of our financial markets. This turmoil is a major threat to our economy and its ability to create good-paying jobs and help working Americans pay their bills, save for their future, and make their mortgage payments.

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