Palin has come under fire in recent days for misleadingly saying she told Congress “thanks but no thanks,” refusing an earmark for a bridge to a sparsely inhabited island in her home state. Independent groups and media fact-checkers have said Palin advocated for the federal earmark before opposing it, only ended after Congress had essentially killed it, and kept the $223 million for the appropriation after the project was killed.

Palin had cut the refrain from her speech during her three-day visit to Alaska. But she came back to it today, citing it as an example of earmark reform she and McCain would push for in the White House.

“I told Congress thanks but no thanks to that Bridge to Nowhere — that if our state wanted to build that bridge, we would build it ourselves,” she said.

Palin did not deviate much from the speech she had given the last two weeks on the road with McCain. She reiterated a line that she put the governor’s luxury jet on eBay. While accurate, the jet wasn’t sold on eBay.

Gibson Questioning Palin about the Bridge to Nowhere on ABC just 1 day earlier:

Great editorial :

There were several creepy subtexts at work here. The first was the choice of Truman. Most 20th-century vice presidents and presidents in both parties hailed from small towns, but she just happened to alight on a Democrat who ascended to the presidency when an ailing president died in office. Just as striking was the unnamed writer she quoted. He was identified by Thomas Frank in The Wall Street Journal as the now largely forgotten but once powerful right-wing Hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler.

He goes on to say:

The same gang that once fueled Internet rumors and media feeding frenzies over the Clintons’ private lives now express pious outrage when the same fate befalls the Palins.

And:

They want the bar for admission to the White House to be placed so low that legitimate scrutiny and criticism of Palin’s qualifications, record and family values can all be placed off limits.

And most importantly:

How do you run against that flashy flimflam? You don’t. Karl Rove for once gave the Democrats a real tip rather than a bum steer when he wrote last week that if Obama wants to win, “he needs to remember he’s running against John McCain for president,” not Palin for vice president. Obama should keep stepping up the blitz on McCain’s flip-flops, confusion, ignorance and blurriness on major issues (from education to an exit date from Iraq), rather than her gaffes and résumé. If he focuses voters on the 2008 McCain, the Palin question will take care of itself.

We Did Well!

This election is still about the fierce urgency of change before it’s too late. But in framing this debate, it isn’t enough for Obama to keep presenting McCain as simply a third Bush term. Any invocation of the despised president — like Iraq — invites voters to stop listening. Meanwhile, before our eyes, McCain is turning over the keys to his administration to ideologues and a running mate to Bush’s right.

As Republicans know best, fear does work. If Obama is to convey just what’s at stake, he must slice through the campaign’s lipstick jungle and show Americans the real perils that lie around the bend.

from: Rich: Palin-Whatshisname

For all of the McCain’s attempts (lies) at selling her as a reformer, they’re increasingly coming up short in wake of the facts.

“The trigger-happy John McCain has indeed found a soul mate. Trigger squared.”

If Sarah had been reading about the world she feels so confident about leading rather than just parroting by rote what Randy Scheunemann and the neocons around McCain drilled into her last week — Drill, baby, drill! — she might have realized that as heinous as Russia’s behavior toward Georgia was, it was not completely unprovoked. The State Department has let it be known that it warned McCain’s friend, Misha, the hotheaded president of Georgia, not to send troops in to crush the rebellion in two breakaway states.

And she might not have had to clench her jaw and play for time when Gibson raised the Bush doctrine, the wacko preemption philosophy that so utterly changed the world.

The really scary part of the Palin interview was how much she seemed like W. in 2000, and not just the way she pronounced nu-cue-lar. She had the same flimsy but tenacious adeptness at saying nothing, the same generalities and platitudes, the same restrained resentment at being pressed to be specific, as though specific is the province of silly eggheads, not people who clear brush at the ranch or shoot moose on the tundra.

Wrapping up with:

Being quick on the trigger might be good in moose hunting, but in dealing with Putin, a little knowledge might come in handy.

Dowd: Palin vs. Thinking

From Wikipedia:

The Alaskan Independence Party is a political party in the U.S. state of Alaska that advocates a state vote which includes several options, including increased state autonomy, territorial status, becoming a separate nation or commonwealth state, and, failing that, for increased Alaskan control of Alaskan land, gun rights, privatization, home schooling, and reduction of governmental intrusion in the private lives of its citizens with adherence to the founding documents of the United States. The party has appeared on the ballot in Alaska in all state elections since 1970.[citation needed]

At other times, party members have also proposed that the state explore the possibility of joining Canada. Other members have expressed opposition to joining Canada in its present form but are open to the possibility of joining an independent Western Canadian state comprising the Yukon and Northwest Territories. Neither of these scenarios form part of the party’s current platform.[citation needed]

At the national level, the party is affiliated with the conservative Constitution Party.[2]