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Even the conservative Wall Street Journal points out Palin's lies on the bridge to nowhere claim. "Despite significant evidence to the contrary, the McCain campaign continues to assert that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told the federal government 'thanks but no thanks' to the now-famous bridge to an island in her home state. But Gov. Palin's claim comes with a serious caveat. She endorsed the multimillion dollar project during her gubernatorial race in 2006. And while she did take part in stopping the project after it became a national scandal, she did not return the federal money. She just allocated it elsewhere."
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Palin is caught in yet another lie, as it turns out she never visited Iraq last year. "Obama aides described the revisions to Palin's account as part of a growing pattern of deception. 'The McCain campaign said Governor Palin opposed the Bridge to Nowhere, but now we know she supported it. They said she didn't seek earmarks, but now we know she hired a lobbyist to get millions in pork for her town and her state. They said she visited Iraq, but today we learned that she only stopped at the border. Americans are starting to wonder, is there anything the McCain campaign isn't lying about?'" Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor asked in a statement e-mailed to reporters."
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"The McCain-Palin campaign seems to think that a statement becomes true simply by dint of repetition. A TV advertisement repeats the dubious claim that vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin "stopped" the nation's most infamous symbol of pork-barrel spending. It's been pretty clearly established by now that the "bridge to nowhere" was going nowhere at all before the Alaska governor formally signed the death warrant in September 2007…. It would be more accurate to say that she finally bowed to fiscal reality and congressional politics after a year as governor, and killed off a project that had become a national joke."
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"John McCain is trying to claim that black is white when he argues that his running mate, Sarah Palin, has not accepted earmarks as Governor of Alaska. While it is true that she has sought fewer earmarks than her predecessor, Governor Frank Murkowski, Alaska still leads the nation in terms of per capita spending on earmarks, according to Citizens Against Government Waste."
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"But a visit to this former mining supply post 40 miles north of Anchorage shows the extent to which Palin's mayoralty was also defined by what it did not include. The universe of the mayor of Wasilla is sharply circumscribed even by the standards of small towns, which limited Palin's exposure to issues such as health care, social services, the environment and education. Palin limited her duties further by hiring a deputy administrator to handle much of the town's day-to-day management. Her top achievement as mayor was the construction of an ice rink, a project that landed in the courts and cost the city more than expected. Arriving in office, Palin herself played down the demands of the job in response to residents who worried that her move to oust veteran officials would leave the town in the lurch. 'It's not rocket science," Palin said, according to the town newspaper, the Frontiersman. "It's $6 million and 53 employees.'"
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Herbert: "While watching the Sarah Palin interview with Charlie Gibson Thursday night, and the coverage of the Palin phenomenon in general, I’ve gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U.S., but that it might actually prevail. How is it that this woman could have been selected to be the vice presidential candidate on a major party ticket? How is it that so much of the mainstream media has dropped all pretense of seriousness to hop aboard the bandwagon and go along for the giddy ride? For those who haven’t noticed, we’re electing a president and vice president, not selecting a winner on 'American Idol.'"
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The Times highlights the vindictive ambitiousness of Palin, the friends she's hired, and the political and personal enemies she's punished using her political power. And she's being held up as an example of ethical behavior? Only on Bizarro Earth.
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"If [McCain] seriously thought this first-term governor — with less than two years in office — was qualified to be president, if necessary, at such a dangerous time, it raises profound questions about his judgment. If the choice was, as we suspect, a tactical move, then it was shockingly irresponsible."
