Challenge: Name one attack on Palin that is better than this.

[Vattel]

From www.dailyhowler.com

"PALIN DOES IT AGAIN: As a politician, Sarah Palin is profoundly talented, disturbingly so. But uh-oh–she clearly enjoys telling lies! Last night, in her speech, she did it again! Why is she able to do this:

PALIN (9/3/08): We suspended the state fuel tax and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress, "Thanks, but no thanks," on that Bridge to Nowhere.

(APPLAUSE)

If our state wanted to build a bridge, we were going to build it ourselves.

(APPLAUSE)

That entire passage is a bald-faced deception–a deception which makes Palin a hero. Why did people applaud those statements? Let’s start with a guess: They didn’t know Palin was lying. (In her next breath, she repeated her grossly misleading tale about that jump in state revenues. See THE DAILY HOWLER, 9/2/08.)

Palin wasn’t “slightly exaggerating,” as the hapless New York Times said. She wasn’t “for the bridge before she was against it,” as liberals now enjoy saying. (More on this weak formulation below, in our major post.) In reality, Palin “told Congress” nothing at all about that ballyhooed Bridge to Nowhere. Her statement is deliberately, laughably false. If we’re speaking English today, there’s word for her conduct: She’s lying.

Palin is profoundly talented–and she likes to lie. But why is she able to do that?

In reality, the Congress told her: The depth of Palin’s repeated deception is truly a thing to behold. (Not that you’d know it from reading the press corps–or from listening to Democrats.) In fact, Palin never “told Congress” anything about this famous project; Congress killed the earmark, removing itself from the picture, thirteen months before she took office (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 9/1/08). But the state of Alaska was still considering building the bridge with its own money; Palin only killed this idea in September 2007, in her tenth month in office. Here’s the way she explained her decision, in a much-quoted press release. Note the size of the blatant deception she dumped on the public last night:

PALIN (9/21/07): Ketchikan desires a better way to reach the airport, but the $398 million bridge is not the answer. Despite the work of our congressional delegation, we are about $329 million short of full funding for the bridge project, and it’s clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island. Much of the public’s attitude toward Alaska bridges is based on inaccurate portrayals of the projects here. But we need to focus on what we can do, rather than fight over what has happened.

Why was Palin dumping the project? Because “it’s clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on” it, she said. Quite transparently, Palin wasn’t “telling the Congress” anything. Indeed, it was very much the opposite. The Congress was telling her!

Palin lied again last night, making herself a hero again. This is the third time she’s told this tale. Why is she able to do it?"

[onenote]

1. Watch what they do, not what they say -- that is exactly what we should be emphasizing

[Starbucks Anarchist]

2. This one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Dwzk3g-lB0&feature=related

[Vattel]

3. that's a good one, no doubt

thanks, I hadn't seen that. It's a matter of opinion, but I think the lie about the bridge to no where is so straightforward, so bald-faced, so easy to explain, and so undermining of the image of her that the Repugs are trying to paint, that it's the best weapon we have. Think about it. The earmark for the bridge to nowhere was cancelled a year before she took office and yet she's claiming that she stood up to cngress and refused to build the bridge. And worse still her rationale for not building it is that congress wouldn't pay for it!

[Starbucks Anarchist]

4. Most people won't read all that, though.

But a short video clip of Palin herself asking what a VP does is far more effective.