Wow, for a Religious Conservative and self-proclaimed Christian, Sarah Palin sure doesn’t mind lying — a lot! At a campaign stop here in Colorado today, she actually accused Obama of associating “with terrorists who targeted their own country.” This was no surprise, though, as her attack delivered on the McCain campaign’s announcement that it would step up attacks on the Democratic presidential candidate with just a month left before the November general election.

Obama campaign spokesman Hari Sevugan called Palin’s comments “offensive” and “not surprising given the McCain campaign’s statement this morning that they would be launching Swift Boat-like attacks in hopes of deflecting attention from the nation’s economic ills.”

With Obama rising in polls while the country struggles in the grip of a financial crisis, Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign decided to shift attention away from the troubled economy and onto issues of his opponent’s character, judgment and personal associations, the Washington Post reported.

“We’re going to get a little tougher,” a senior Republican operative said, requesting anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss strategy. “We’ve got to question this guy’s associations. Very soon. There’s no question that we have to change the subject here.”

The Obama camp said the tactic wouldn’t work.

“What’s clear is that John McCain and Sarah Palin would rather spend their time tearing down Barack Obama than laying out a plan to build up our economy,” Sevugan said.

Now for the truth:

Obama’s Chicago, Illinois, home is in the same neighborhood as Bill Ayers, a founder of the radical Weather Underground, which was involved in several bombings in the early 1970s, including the Pentagon and the Capitol, and the two have met several times since Obama’s 1995 campaign for a state Senate seat.

Palin cited an article in Saturday’s New York Times about Obama’s relationship with Ayers, now 63. But that article concluded that “the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called ’somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.’ ”

Several other publications, including the Washington Post, Time magazine, the Chicago Sun-Times, The New Yorker and The National Review, have debunked the idea that Obama and Ayers had a close relationship.

Riot and bomb conspiracy charges against Ayers were dropped in 1974, and he is now a professor of education at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

Obama and Ayers met at meeting for a school reform project in 1995 and again later that year. Then, Ayers hosted an event where then-Illinois state Sen. Alice Palmer, who planned to run for Congress, introduced the young community organizer as her chosen successor, campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said. Both men also served on a charitable board together, he said.

Labolt also said the two have not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Obama came to the U.S. Senate in 2005 and last met more than a year ago when they encountered each other on the street in their Hyde Park neighborhood.

Let me, once and for all, make my stand on this election perfectly clear: I can’t stand McCain, nor Sarah Palin. Their tactics are deplorable. They are both cowards and liars. Yes, I called John McCain a coward. He may not have been 40 years ago, but he is now. He can’t stand on his own merit, nor can he even look his opponent in the eye. Do you trust a man who can’t look you in the eye? What does that usually denote? Dishonesty, that’s what. Plus, as almost every other Republican in America, he is a fear monger. If he can’t get your vote by lying or trying to crucify his opponent’s character, he’ll try to scare you into it. He’s full of shit. And so is Sarah. She needs to go home to Alaska and continue her self-professed good works there and leave the rest of us alone. She’s a little fish trying to swim with the sharks, and she just isn’t good enough — nor smart enough. They’re both disgusting and an embarrassment to the American political arena.

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