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Obama aims at 'moose shooter'

FLINT, Mich. - Barack Obama broadly accused his Republican rivals of dishonesty yesterday, citing former lobbyists working for John McCain, Sarah Palin's shifting stance on the "Bridge to Nowhere" and their promise to change Washington.

FLINT, Mich. - Barack Obama broadly accused his Republican rivals of dishonesty yesterday, citing former lobbyists working for John McCain, Sarah Palin's shifting stance on the "Bridge to Nowhere" and their promise to change Washington.

With national polls finding the Democratic presidential nominee trailing or in a dead heat with McCain, Obama began the campaign's final eight-week push by criticizing McCain's popular running mate as much as he did the Arizona senator himself.

He said Palin has an interesting biography - "Mother, governor, moose shooter. That's cool," he said - but the election should be about who can change people's lives for the better. He said that won't come from a Republican ticket that almost always supports the same positions as President Bush even though they say they will bring reform.

"I mean, you can't just make stuff up," Obama said of a new McCain ad that says Palin "stopped the Bridge to Nowhere."

"You can't just recreate yourself. You can't just reinvent yourself. The American people aren't stupid."

Obama wouldn't go so far as to say McCain and Palin are lying, even when the audience tried to goad him into it, but he began showing an ad yesterday that did.

"Politicians lying about their records?" an announcer asks over a shot of McCain and Palin boarding a plane. "You don't call that maverick. You call it more of the same."

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds responded to the charges of dishonesty by saying: "Barack Obama should familiarize himself with the honest facts: John McCain and Governor Palin have actually reformed government to root out money in politics and fought wasteful spending - Sen. Obama has not."

Obama's ad was a response to the new McCain commercial called "Original Mavericks" that claims Palin stopped the bridge, a $400 million proposal to connect an island off Alaska with just 50 residents and an airport.

She originally voiced support for it during her campaign for governor, although she was critical of the size, and later abandoned plans for the project. She used the federal dollars for other projects in Alaska.

Obama said McCain's claim that lobbyists will no longer run Washington when he's president "doesn't seem very plausible."

"Sounds pretty good until you discover that seven of his top campaign managers and officials are - guess what? - former corporate lobbyists. So who is he going to tell?

"What they are going to try to do is what they always do, which is attack, go on the negative, distort, mislead, assert," Obama said, as members of his invitation-only audience of 350 began yelling "Lie! Lie!" Obama just cocked his head in response as if to say he wasn't going to go there.

Michigan has supported Democratic presidential candidates in the most recent elections, but it is up for grabs this year and is one of the few blue states Obama could be in danger of losing. And Palin's addition to the GOP ticket has resulted in a bounce in the polls for the Republican ticket. *