1115.org

Finally back from my travels, trying to catch up on all the news, the one thing I don’t get is this whole argument about whether or not Sarah Palin is qualified to be president, or even vice-president.

Of course she’s qualified! Haven’t we already seen more than enough evidence that she’s pretty good at what Bush and Cheney excelled at (and ruled by)?

For example, there’s the technically-not-a-lie-ha-ha!:

One of the compelling anecdotes about Sarah Palin is that she auctioned off the Alaska governor’s jet on eBay after taking office — a swift move made by a reformer hoping to clean up the excesses of her predecessor.

But in fact, the jet did not sell on eBay. It was sold to a businessman from Valdez named Larry Reynolds, who paid $2.1 million for the jet, shy of the original $2.7 million purchase price, according to contemporaneous news reports, including a story in the New York Times.
[...]
What happened? It appears that, as promised during her bid for governor in 2006, Palin did try to sell the plane on eBay but that doing so was not as easy as it might have sounded. After putting it up to auction, there was one serious bid, in December 2006, and it fell through. Still, the Westwind II was sold about eight months later, achieving Palin’s goal of ridding the state of a luxury item.

But that hasn’t stopped Palin, or John McCain, from implying — and, on Friday, claiming outright — that Palin did sell the jet on the Internet.
[...]
Palin has been more cautious in her comments. Rather than claiming she sold it on eBay, she gave in her convention remarks a description that was true but, nonetheless, still left the impression she had sold the jet online. “That luxury jet was over the top. I put it on eBay,” Palin said.

McCain, of course, took that not-quite-lie, and embroidered it further into:

“You know what I enjoyed the most? She took the luxury jet that was acquired by her predecessor and sold it on eBay — and made a profit!” McCain declared in Wisconsin at a campaign stop on Friday.

Which is only how it should be. Anything your vice-presidential candidate does, you should be able to do better. And McCain sure isn’t going to let anyone outlie him. There’s that family honor to protect, after all. Not to mention his all-consuming lust to be the outlier-in-chief.

Palin also does a bang-up job with the flat out lie:

“I told the Congress thanks, but no thanks, for that Bridge to Nowhere. If our state wanted a bridge, we’d build it ourselves,” Palin said in her speech (her coming-out speech, last Thursday night).

That lie has been called a lie by sources both likely and unlikely. For the likely, there’s ThinkProgress:

But as Stephanopoulos notes, the claim … that Palin opposed the Bridge to Nowhere is patently false.

In reality, Palin strongly supported the bridge project. During her 2006 run for governor, the Anchorage Daily News interviewed Palin. At the time, federal funding for the bridge had been stripped by Congress. The paper asked if she was in favor of continuing state funding for the project. “Yes,” she responded, noting specifically her desire to renew congressional support:
Yes. I would like to see Alaska’s infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now — while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.

When Palin finally canceled the project in 2007, she expressed regret that Congress had not been more forthcoming with federal funding.

For the truly unlikely, how about Fox News‘ Chris Wallace, of all people?

During her 1.5, 2 years as Governor, Alaska continued to get more federal money for pork-barrel projects per capita than any state in the country and…she supported the Bridge to Nowhere. And it was only after the federal government dropped it out, killed it, the Congress killed it that she then opposed it. And in fact she still got the money for the approach, the ramp to the Bridge to Nowhere.

But what good is a good lie unless you’re also good at repeating it ad infinitum, even after it’s been exposed as a lie? Palin is equal to that presidential challenge as well. She cheerfully repeated the bridge-to-nowhere lie in Albuquerque, NM on Saturday night:

Palin claimed she “championed reform of earmark spending by Congress, and I told the Congress thanks but no thanks on that ‘Bridge to Nowhere,’” she said, ommiting (sic) mention that she’d campaigned for governor supporting the bridge. “If our state wanted a bridge, we’d build it ourselves.”

We need someone like Palin a heartbeat away from the White House. If America needs (for Purposes of National Security) to be lied into another war in the next four years, Obama and Biden aren’t really going be up to that task, are they? Whereas McCain and Palin, that’s putting ourselves in safe hands. They know what it takes. And not only do they know how to deliver it, but they’ve already practiced it enough times to be perfect at it.

That’s why Americans should turn out in droves and vote for McCain-Palin. If we only try hard enough, we can give ourselves four more terms of not just Bush’s bankrupt policies (on Iraq, Afghanistan, TWAT, taxes, the budget deficit, the housing crisis, energy policy) but also the classic Bush style of presidentiality by prevarication.