1115.org

The John McCain campaign has repeatedly exhibited what can only be described as a self-destructive streak. They launch a high-profile attack on Obama for something, and it eventually turns out that McCain or Palin did the exact same thing, but to an even greater degree.

Past instances include Palin’s attack on Obama for sponsoring earmarks to the tune of one million dollars a day, and McCain’s repeated attacks on Obama for connections to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

Then, this weekend we had a two-fer. First, Palin aired the thoroughly misconceived and widely reported “palling around with terrorists” smear. And then McCain and Palin’s “Obama voted for tax increases 94 times” came back to bite McCain in his lying, cheating ass.

Here’s Palin, leading with her left:

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Saturday accused Democrat Barack Obama of “palling around with terrorists” because of his association with a former 1960s radical, stepping up the campaign’s effort to portray Obama as unacceptable to American voters.

Palin’s reference was to Bill Ayers, one of the founders of the group the Weather Underground…. The Republican campaign, falling behind Obama in polls, plans to make attacks on Obama’s character a centerpiece of presidential candidate John McCain’s message with a month remaining before Election Day.

Palin told a group of donors at a private airport, “Our opponent … is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.” She also said, “This is not a man who sees America as you see America and as I see America.”

And here’s Palin taking it on the chin:

Sarah Palin attacked Obama’s patriotism today over his association with former Weatherman Bill Ayers — a move that makes it perfectly legitimate to raise questions about the Palins’ associations with a group founded by an Alaska secessionist who once professed his “hatred for the American government” and cursed our “damn flag.”

In Colorado today, Palin seized on the big front-page New York Times story about Ayers and Obama, which concludes that the two men “do not appear to have been close,” to launch her most vicious attack yet on the Illinois Senator — a harbinger of what’s to come.

“This is not a man who sees America as you and I do — as the greatest force for good in the world,” Palin said. “This is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country.”

If Palin is going to say this, it is now perfectly legitimate to point out that she repeatedly courted a secessionist group founded by someone who openly professed hatred of the American government, cursed our flag, and wanted to secede from the Union. Sarah’s husband, Todd Palin, was a member of this group, which continues to venerate that founder to this day, for years.

As you already know, the group is the Alaska Independence Party, which sees as its ultimate goal seceding from the union. Todd was a member, with a brief exception, from 1995 until 2002, according to the Division of Elections in Alaska.

And though Sarah Palin herself was apparently not a member of this group, there’s no doubt that she repeatedly courted this secessionist organization over the years. In 1994, Palin attended the group’s annual convention, according to witnesses who spoke to ABC News‘ Jake Tapper. The McCain campaign has confirmed she visited the group’s 2000 convention, and she addressed its convention this year, as an incumbent governor whose oath of office includes upholding the Constitution of the United States.

So Obama was tarred and feathered by Palin for having a casual acquaintance with someone who was a violent radical forty years ago, someone who was an Enemy of America. And she somehow clean forgot the fact that she herself continues to be literally in bed with someone who embraced sedition and secession as short a time ago as 2002. And it’s not just that she’s — pardon my French — f*cking around with traitors. This only-recently-ex-secessionist is one of her closest advisers, practically an unelected co-governor.

And Palin, in any case, is not a woman who sees America as you see America and as I see America. She, like many other Alaskans, proudly sees America as alien, as Outside.

John McCain has repeated his claim that “Obama voted for tax increases 94 times” ad infinitum, since it’s part of his stump speech. Palin obediently recited it from her cheat-sheets in last week’s vice-presidential debate. Three separate times. And they have been trumpeting this claim despite the fact that the claim has been thoroughly debunked. You don’t get to 94 times without some very sharp accounting practices indeed, not to mention double-counting.

And it never occurred to the rocket scientists who do the thinking for the McCain campaign, that at some point someone was surely going to take their tax-increase-counting technology, and apply it to John McCain, just for fun? It never occurred to them to first check what such a mischief-monger might find? (And these are the people who are recommending that we should trust them to run the country?)

Well, the Obama campaign went ahead and took John McCain’s tax-increase-counting technology, and applied it to John McCain. And they’ve been rude enough to put out the results as a web video. Said results must have made for some pretty purple language over at McCain campaign HQ:

The Obama campaign continues hammering McCain on his bogus line of argument about taxes, this time with a new web video that illustrates that by the very same standard that McCain applies to Obama, McCain has voted for 477 tax increases — far more than the 94 he accuses Obama of having supported.
[…]
The ad also points out that during the same period of time that McCain accuses Obama of 94 tax increases, he voted (by his own standards) for 105 increases.

Who would have guessed? John McCain, the tax increase king of 2008! And he’s been hiding his light under a bushel all this time.