Gov. Palin and the Fib from Outer Space

Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska continues to repeat the claim that she opposed the so-called "Bridge to Nowhere" pork-barrel project.

In her first public appearance as the running mate of Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, Palin made this claim with gusto, saying that she "told Congress thanks, but no thanks" on that project. The truth is, frankly, the opposite of that. As a candidate for governor, and then after she was elected, Palin was a forceful advocate for pork in general and for that bridge in particular. What she actually "told Congress" was more along the lines of "pleasepleaseplease, oh, pleeeeease, gimme, gimme."

Eventually, after Palin and Alaska's congressional delegation secured the funding for the project, it began to attract lots of negative publicity. The Bridge to Nowhere became a national symbol, an icon of corrupt, feeding-trough politics. That killed the project. As the political winds changed direction, so did Palin. She pulled a 180 and abruptly began trying to position herself as an opponent of the project. Not such an opponent, mind you, that she didn't take the money and run. Alaska kept the pork-barrel earmark for the Bridge to Nowhere, Palin just spent it on something else.

So Palin's line in that initial national speech wasn't true, but it went over well with the crowd. So she stuck with it. She's used some variation of that "Thanks, but no thanks" falsehood just about every time she's spoken in public over the past week and a half. She's even begun to embellish the story.

What I find most interesting about this particular lie is that Sarah Palin is, famously, an evangelical Christian. Evangelical Christians aren't supposed to tell lies.

I'm of course not suggesting that we live up to this standard all or even most of the time. But the existence of that standard is undeniable. Nor am I suggesting that this particular moral rule is in any way unique to evangelical Christians. It's pretty universal, actually. Everyone agrees, in principle, that Good People tell the truth and that telling lies leads to becoming a Bad Person.

Yet we evangelical Christians are a famously moralistic bunch. We're the "values voters," don't you know, putting individual morality front and center at every opportunity. So it's a bit odd to be introduced to a new national figure and to learn, simultaneously, that she is both proudly evangelical and, just as proudly, a habitual liar.

Gov. Palin is also, of course, a parent. As an evangelical Christian parent she is no doubt familiar with Veggie Tales. The predicament she has created for herself over the past two weeks reminds me of that classic Veggie Tales episode, "Larry-Boy and the Fib from Outer Space."

In that story, you'll recall, Junior Asparagus tells a small lie about breaking his father's plate. The small lie begins to grow, as small lies tend to do. The longer Junior Asparagus refuses to tell the truth, the stronger and larger the lie becomes, until finally it turns into the gigantic Fib from Outer Space, stomping through Bumblyburg like Godzilla.

That's pretty much the situation Palin has put herself in. She created this lie in her first speech and she's been feeding it ever since and now it's out of control. I doubt even Larry-Boy could save her at this point.

Yet the really interesting thing about Palin's predicament is that she doesn't seem to think that it is a predicament. She doesn't seem to think that the transparent lies she keeps repeating about her record are in any way wrong.

What's more, her biggest supporters -- evangelical Christian voters -- don't seem to have a problem with this either. They'll half-heartedly pretend that she isn't lying, pointing fingers at the hostile "media" and claiming that Lenny broke the plate. But they don't really seem to care whether this duplicitous defense of duplicity holds water because they don't really care whether or not Palin is lying. Not as long as the lie works.

These voters don't care that Palin supported the Bridge to Nowhere. And they don't care if she's lying now when she says she didn't. This election, for them, isn't about earmarks, or fiscal responsibility, or political reform, or Iraq, terror, taxes, torture, corruption, education, gas prices, health care or the environment. It's about abortion. And winning that fight is, to them, worth swallowing a thousand lies.

Moral certainty in defense of dishonesty is corrosive, but I fear this is an example of something larger and worse: the desire for moral certainty in defense of dishonesty.

Comments

[pat greene]

I think this ties in with your P&G hoax post nicely.

I despair of this country.

[Kristina]

I also despair. I am thinking of moving abroad if McCain wins.....

[Kirala]

There IS a cure, the same one there was for Junior: tell the truth. Really, as deep as the Republican party has gone off the deep end, it only has to do three things to earn my respect right back: 1) acknowledge its wrongdoing, 2) apologize, and 3) work toward returning to honorable politics and admirable goals.

Or at least as much as any political organization can be honorable and admirable.

As it is... well, if they start breaking out in song about how it's really the fault of the alien Cow-Snatchers, I'll know it's time to flee Bumblyburg.

"It's bin Laden's fault, he broke the state - we tried to stop him
But he just had to demonstrate why we should pop in
To fight whatever war we please
And beat up on some Iraqis
It's bin Laden's fault, he broke the state, it's true!
And that's the tale I have to tell to you..."

[cjmr's husband]

...and Larry Boy's initials are...

[MM]

*sits back, waits for someone to speak in the defense of truthiness*

[Doctor Science]

As I wrote in the "False Witnesses" thread, I've been reading The Devil in Dover, which is about the Dover, PA, intelligent design trial. The author of the book is a journalist from Dover whose father was a fundamentalist preacher. She was deeply shocked and upset when she realized that the Christian ID-promoters were willing to lie to the judge's face. She writes:

That spring and summer, I ranted to my father about the school board's deception. He listened with a blank expression. He asked, well, which one is the good side? I understood what he was asking: Which side professed to be on the side of God?

I confess I don't understand what's going on here, why the RTCs emphasize truth-telling as a principle so much when they treat it so casually much of the time. It's not like their attitude toward sexual transgressions -- those you have to renounce and beg forgiveness for when they're exposed. They seem to feel shame about breaking their rules about sex, but no sense of shame about lying at all.

[Lila]

Apparently you can't lie to Nazis, but lying to liberals (or your own supporters) is just fine.

[David]

I know a lot of people thinking of moving abroad if McCain wins... basically everyone who made similar noises four years ago, except this time I think more of them are really serious...

If you go, don't forget to submit absentee votes, or things really will get ugly.

I agree with the majority of Fred's analysis, but I think it oversimplifies. Because it isn't just that people are willing to accept a known lie for the anti-abortion cause. That would be enough to get people to overlook the lie, but people aren't overlooking it, they're proud of it. When she tells it again, people cheer. These sorts of True Believer symptoms may have some (or most) of their roots in the abortion issue, but it's not as simple as a rational trade-off (lies versus abortion), or it would be less disconcerting. If someone honestly said "Well, that's a lie and I don't know why she keeps telling it, but I still feel like it's more important to support a pro-life politician," I would fervently disagree, but it would be an honest disagreement. The way things are now, she can pull a Bush and just keep repeating it until it's true (or until the New York Times resorts to "Some critics allege that Palin previously pursued the bridge funding, but a spokesman for the McCain campaign said..."), and there isn't even any real acknowledgement that it's happening...

[Naked Bunny with a Whip]

Lying for Jesus rarely seems to bring any sort of scorn or penalties, in my experience, nor does it ever seem to cause any sort of shame in the liar when called to task for it.

[Jonathon Duerig]

I find that I must disagree with both this post and the P & G post on the same theme. The propagation of these falsehoods is due neither to malice nor stupidity. Understanding the cause of the viral idea is found when you look at which beliefs spread in a community and which ones do not. If you look at evangelicals, campaigns that talk about how corrupt secular America has become spread like wildfire while counter-efforts fizzle. The same thing tends to happen in regard to teenagers and smoking.

The difference is in the willingness to lie. The difference is how well a belief fits with what a person already knows. A teenager knows that the popular kids smoke, so they are unlikely to pay much attention to posters which proclaim the opposite. If you tell a teenager that if they smoke, they will be cool, it is not too hard to accept. They will require a lot more evidence to accept that smokers are losers.

But it is not just about pure evidence. No amount of evidence produces a view of the world. When a person accepts new evidence, they come up with a synthetic viewpoint which combines their previous understanding but also explains what they see before them now. If the two positions seem irreconcilable, they will stick with what they know and write the new evidence off as a mystery. They will consider your arguments or photocopies less convincing than their years of experience which has brought them to their current understanding.

Your persuasion fails not because the other side was being disingenuous, but because the only evidence that somebody will ever find convincing is that which they can integrate into their own point of view without shifting it too much.

There are also emotional aspects. When you tell somebody that they are flat out wrong and it was silly to believe it in the first place, they become defensive. At that point they care more about winning than about truth and you have lost in any attempt to convince them.

While I sympathize deeply with your frustration, I cannot accept the same conclusions.

-D

[Jonathon Duerig]

I meant 'The difference is not in the willingness to lie.' in my previous post. Sorry about the ambiguity.

-D

[Mumphrey]

Sometimes I wonder if these people even know what the truth is. I think to them, the truth is whatever they want it to be or need it to be.
A guy named Bob Altmeyer has written a book about his many years of studying right-wing authoritarian personalities at a college in Canada, and he's put it out on Sen. Stevens's intertubes for anybody to read for free. It explains a lot. I can kind of understand people like this a little better. I don't like them any better, but I can understand them a little better.
Here's the link:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

[Hawker Hurricane]

Yet another case of "Lying for the Greater Good"(tm) that the Neo-Platonists love.

[Technomad]

Of course, the other side never, ever, ever lies, do they? They sold us "affirmative action" by pinky-swearing, cross their hearts and hope to die, stick a needle in their eye, that it wasn't a quota program...and, lo and behold, it immediately turned into one!

I'm not wild about the Bridge to Nowhere, but it's like the money that Sen. Byrd has pumped into West Virginia: As poor as that part of the world is, if Washington DC must waste money, why not direct it to the poorer parts of the country that could really use it?

[Ecks]

I put this on an old thread, but I think it was deaded already.

So here in further news, it seems that the state of Alaska had to bust Wasilla for requiring women to pay for their own forensic rape tests. Snopes doesn't say anything about this one, so I'm assuming it's true. If McCain wins this election they're going to have to invent a new word that goes below "despair."

[Ecks]

oh, sorry, I should add that this was in 1990. Guess who was mayor then.

[hapax]

HH: Yet another case of "Lying for the Greater Good"(tm) that the Neo-Platonists love.

Bwuh? As far as I know, I'm the only Neo-Platonist around here, and I don't recall ever endorsing any such thing.

Of course, this post has curst me with deadly earworm of The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything. Which, now that I think of it, might make an excellent theme song for the McCain campain.

[David K. M. Klaus]

Using Occam's Razor as a guide, it's very simple.

Truth is irrelevant -- she cares about power.

[Doctor Science]

If you go to Altemeyer's site (in Mumphrey's comment) you can read his book "Authoritarianism". Chapter 5 includes a discussion of what he calls "double high authoriatians": social dominators who are also right-wing authoritarians. Palin fits the description *perfectly*, and she scares the living daylights out of me.

Ecks: unfortunately, making rape victims pay for evidence-gathering is not Sarah Palin's unique idea. It is apparently common practice in North Carolina and Tennessee, at minimum.

[Mnemosyne]

As poor as that part of the world is, if Washington DC must waste money, why not direct it to the poorer parts of the country that could really use it?

You mean other than the fact that Alaska receives massive payments for the oil that's pumped from there and has a $5 billion budget surplus? And the fact that despite that budget surplus they still get more federal dollars per capita than any other state?

And that's not a link to some crazy leftist magazine -- it's a link to Reason.

[Jim]

Congratulations, Technomad. The first tu quoque argument of the thread wins pie!

[Mnemosyne]

Of course, this post has curst me with deadly earworm of The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything. Which, now that I think of it, might make an excellent theme song for the McCain campaign.

Funny, I keep getting "Endangered Love" aka "Barbara Manatee."

[God bless the Patriarchy]

Liberal panic gives me a red-state-sized woody.

[LL]

In my experience/observation, most self-described religious people are not better than the rest of us, they just think they are. And because of that, they think that anything they do is OK. It's not bad when they do it, whatever it is. Child molesting, lying, stealing, being an asshole, etc. It automatically becomes OK when the "righteous" do it. Don't ask me how the hell they justify it beyond that, esp. when many of these same types bitch about "moral relativism" when perpetrated by others, but as usual, those criticisms don't apply to them. Religion for these people is like a magical cloak they wrap around themselves that makes all their actions right simply because they are the ones doing it. I guess that's how they look at themselves in the mirror every morning and don't feel deep shame at their hypocrisy.

Either that, or they really are not believers, they simply pretend to believe in order to, as above, cover their repellent actions with the holy imprimatur of their "faith."

What I don't understand is how other people don't see this. It's not like I'm the smartest person on earth. I like to think I'm pretty smart, but I'm not arrogant enough to think I'm smarter than every other human. So why do so many people think that people who claim deep religious faith/belief are better than the rest of us, more worthy of leadership (for example, the presidency)? When someone (anyone, not just a candidate for political office) goes on about how deep and abiding their faith is, when they frequently and extravagantly reference Jesus or God or Allah or whatever, I am immediately suspicious of that person. And I almost always see that suspicion verified, usually sooner rather than later. I find frequent and vocal declarations of religious devotion downright creepy as a result. I always assume it's a cover for something really bad, I just don't know what it is yet.

[Ecks]

Dr. Science, you have me reconsidering my opposition to nuclear warfare. Perhaps a special exemption could be made for their use on certain legislatures...

Technomad, I don't think there was anything particularly wrong with her lobbying to get the bridge money. It's a state governor's job to wheedle for as much special treatment as they can get. I'm mad that she is now prancing around explaining to all the world that you should vote for her because she turned down that money, because she's oh so opposed to pork and waste. It makes it considerably worse that millions of Americans are being taken in by her lie hook line and sinker (even if it is just cuz they want to), and this is moving us dramatically closer to another 4-8 years of brazenly corrupt, proudly incompetent kleptocrats looting the health, wealth, prosperity, social, moral, and political capital of 300 million people.

[Ecks]

Liberal panic gives me a red-state-sized woody.

I had no idea the red states were so small.

[Ecks]

I dunno LL. I think most of us do this on some level. Things just aren't quite so bad when *I* do them. "Well stealing is bad, obviously, I wouldn't steal, but this guy is a jerk so he deserves the score leveling on him, and anyway he just left this lying around quite carelessly so obviously he doesn't value it that much. And I'd like it, so it's really a good thing that I would have it. [grab]. Soo! Moving on! What's on TV?" This sort of thing just takes on a slightly different flavour when inlaid with a superficial veneer of religion.

[Reynard]

What I find most interesting about this particular lie is that Sarah Palin is, famously, an evangelical Christian. Evangelical Christians aren't supposed to tell lies.

"It is an act of virtue to deceive and lie, when by such means the interests of the Church might be promoted" - Bishop Eusebius 260-339

'Nuff said?

[rm]

I had no idea the red states were so small.

They just look big on the map -- they stuff their pants with empty acreage.

-----------------------------

LL, when W was running the first time, and for all the years he was popular, his ineptitude and unqualified-ness were seen by Fundies as proof that he was deserving of leadership, because only God could have raised up such an ordinary, humble man (like Moses, who thought he didn't speak well enough to lead the Israelites). W played this to the hilt; every screw-up worked in his favor by proving further that he had only been put in the Presidency by God's providence.

I suppose you recall, of course . . . what I'm saying is that it was by design, and it proceeded from cultural values that are internally consistent, however wrong and dangerous. These values look like pure nonsense to you. They aren't pure nonsense, just purely dysfunctional and irrational.

That same way of thinking is helping Palin now -- your "facts" are, I'm sure they think, made up lies that the liberal media is using to attack this good Christian, who is standing firm. The more shameless she becomes in her lies, the more that will prove that these are not lies but a courageous rebuttal to an overwhelmingly powerful media enemy.

Of course, the other side never, ever, ever lies, do they? They sold us "affirmative action" by pinky-swearing, cross their hearts and hope to die, stick a needle in their eye, that it wasn't a quota program...and, lo and behold, it immediately turned into one!

1. Disagreeing with a politician about a program (i.e., the politician thinks affirmative action isn't the same as quotas, you think it is) isn't the same as the politician lying to you. I disagree with Palin about, say, abstinence-only sex ed, in fact I don't think it's really sex ed at all, but I don't think she's lying when she says it's the best kind of sex ed program. I'm sure she believes that.

2. This is a whole other level of dishonesty. This isn't political equivocating; it's bald-faced lying without remorse. This is like a politician responding to your concerns about affirmative action by swearing up and down that she didn't vote for the affirmative action program, when in fact she did. And then, when the truth gets out, claiming that the media is trying to smear her.

[Bugmaster]

Bwuh? As far as I know, I'm the only Neo-Platonist around here, and I don't recall ever endorsing any such thing.

I would like to go on record as saying that, while I consider all Neo-Platonists I've met to be utterly wrong, occasionally confused, and, in one instance, stuck in some sort of a mental loop, I've never known them to engage in rampant lying. I respect them all the more for it, hapax included.

[Praline]

I am thinking of moving abroad if McCain wins

It won't help you. America's policies send shock waves through the rest of the world. I live in the UK, and Bush has managed to plough our economy along with yours; food prices are already rising out of control and we're heading for a depression.

Considering America was founded on 'No taxation without representation', the way it screws up its supposed allies' economies while claiming the right to act however it darn well pleases makes me feel pretty pissy. And worried about earning enough money to live on.

You can run, but you can't hide. Why else are so many foreigners on this board getting mad about the policies of a nation they don't inhabit? It's not because America is so darned special, it's because America has power over us. I don't hang around on boards that discuss Canadian or Jamaican politics, because those policies don't affect my way of life. America affects all of us. Stay in there and use your vote.

As to the evangelical lying thing, I really don't see anything surprising about it. Some people are greedy, lying hypocrites. If they happen to be Evangelical Christians, then they're being hypocritical about Evangelical principles; if they're atheist, they're being hypocritical about a secular code of honour. Nobody's supposed to lie, but some people in every belief system lie freely because no set of principles is betrayal-proof. Someone unprincipled is going to betray whatever principles they profess to hold, and Evangelicalism is no exception.

In fact, it probably contains a bigger proportion of liars right now, because it's a politically useful thing to profess. Politically useful positions attract unprincipled people, because they are, y'know, useful. The greener the grass, the more snakes slither in.

[cjmr]

hapax: Of course, this post has curst me with deadly earworm of "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything."

mnemosyne: Funny, I keep getting "Endangered Love" aka "Barbara Manatee."

Oh, thanks SOOO much! Yes, my brain can handle one earworm in each ear.

*runs away screaming*

[yankee, damnedyankee, and statistics]

I had no idea the red states were so small.

Ecks wins an internet, with a side of tubes and a slice of Bridge to Nowhere pie, all served up by Alaska Senator Ted Stevens.

[Tonio]

It's about abortion. And winning that fight is, to them, worth swallowing a thousand lies.

It's more than just abortion. It's about sex in entertainment and evolution in schools and homosexuality and stem-cell research. It's the desire not just for moral certainty but for certainty in everything. Molly Ivins was right about fundamentalism being driven by fear. She attributed it to economic uncertanity, but I suggest this goes much deeper. I've often suggested that the fear was a reaction to the social changes of the 1960s and 1970s, but I wonder if there's more at work here.

It's not because America is so darned special, it's because America has power over us.

Excellent point. David Gergen once lamented that many newer Republican congressmen had not only never been to Europe, but were also proud of that fact. That's more than just us-versus-them tribalism, that's hyperparochialism. If it's true that Palin had never before left Alaska before the campaign, it's worth asking why that is the case.

[Froborr]

Now hang on. Let's not fall into the trap of moral absolutism here. Lying is bad, yes, but sometimes you are stuck with a choice of the lesser evil.

Where Palin's moral fault lies is in the fact that she's not even stopping to consider whether what she's doing might be wrong. She lying glibly, and that's frightening in a would-be leader.

[practicallyevil]

Another outrageous falsehood of Palins is her claim of selling the state plane on e-Bay. She certainly tried to, but it didn't sell at all, because most people cruising e-Bay don't have the hundreds of thousands of dollars to have made the minimum opening bid it was set at and if they did they could probably afford there own plane from a first hand distributer. It was later sold privately at a huge loss.

Ironically she probably could have used her own plane during her most recent pregnancy, if you believe her highly improbable account of how she went into labor, (which I don't). According to Palin her water broke before giving a speech in Texas, instead of going to a hospital immediately, she gave the speech, then took a six hour commercial air line flight back to Alaska, (with a stop over in Seattle, where she didn't seek medical attention either), and a two hour drive to Wasilla, (instead of having her child in Anchorage here the plane landed, which has the best medical facilities in the state mind you), to have her child in a small town hospital with spotty electricity.

Either she is completely crazy, or she lied about it for reasons I don't care to fathom.

[Cowboy Diva]

Froborr,
you don't like the fact she lies well?
What, you would prefer someone bucking to become next-in-line to the leader of the Western world to lie obviously?
I think it would a lot more fun to have people in charge who try to win at both chess and poker, thankyouverymuch.

[elef]

Doctor Science writes:... unfortunately, making rape victims pay for evidence-gathering is not Sarah Palin's unique idea. It is apparently common practice in North Carolina and Tennessee, at minimum.

That also has echoes of the Chinese making the families of execution victims pay for the bullet that killed them.

[indifferent children]

> an internet, with a side of tubes and a slice of Bridge to Nowhere pie, all served up by Alaska Senator Ted Stevens.

That is a dessert that we call "Half-baked Alaska".

[rm]

Cowboy Diva, I've read about Lyndon Johnson. Lyndon Johnson was a friend of someone probably a lot less than six degrees of separation away from my parents. Sarah Palin is no Lyndon Johnson.

(And, good Bondye, would you want another LBJ?????????)

[Froborr]

You know, LBJ sucked at foreign policy and was an autocratic jerk... but his civil rights record is admirable, and the Great Society was a good idea. We could do -- and have done -- a LOT worse than another LBJ.

[Cowboy Diva]

Hey, I am very impressed about what LBJ did in office, especially since I saw (and lived there for a while) where he came from. I brought him up for the leader of the western world quote, which is one of my favorites. I also think him an appropriate person to bring up especially as he was the last vice-president pushed into the presidency with a need to be ready to act (on Day 1!) with an eye to future needs and plans.

As for foreign policy, he left JFK's team for foreign policy essentially unchanged and believed the Pentagon would always tell the truth; this was probably not a good idea.

[Otter]

@ [anonymous coward]

Disagreeing with a politician about a program (i.e., the politician thinks affirmative action isn't the same as quotas, you think it is) isn't the same as the politician lying to you. I disagree with Palin about, say, abstinence-only sex ed, in fact I don't think it's really sex ed at all, but I don't think she's lying when she says it's the best kind of sex ed program. I'm sure she believes that.

No, sweetie. The Palin family has tried abstinence-only sex-ed, and it has failed with their own child. From this point forward, she KNOWS it doesn't work, and therefore MUST be lying.

[LL]

RE "LL, when W was running the first time, and for all the years he was popular, his ineptitude and unqualified-ness were seen by Fundies as proof that he was deserving of leadership, because only God could have raised up such an ordinary, humble man (like Moses, who thought he didn't speak well enough to lead the Israelites). W played this to the hilt; every screw-up worked in his favor by proving further that he had only been put in the Presidency by God's providence. I suppose you recall, of course . . . what I'm saying is that it was by design, and it proceeded from cultural values that are internally consistent, however wrong and dangerous. These values look like pure nonsense to you. They aren't pure nonsense, just purely dysfunctional and irrational. That same way of thinking is helping Palin now -- your "facts" are, I'm sure they think, made up lies that the liberal media is using to attack this good Christian, who is standing firm. The more shameless she becomes in her lies, the more that will prove that these are not lies but a courageous rebuttal to an overwhelmingly powerful media enemy."

K, I can buy that (that last sentence, we've all heard that before, the retarded notion that if lots of people oppose/disagree with you, you must be right). I don't think the "values" are nonsense or irrational, however. I assume (and still do, in many cases) that the values are hypocritical and self-serving. Those are values, just values most people don't openly claim. But they don't have to claim them, they're pretty easy to see. Many people seem too eager to give these people the benefit of the doubt that they "mean well," whatever that means. I'm not. I assume they don't "mean well," by the accurate meaning of that term. They say what they say for the same reason everyone says things that are stupid, because they hope to persuade people to support them in their stupidity. This makes Palin not worse than any other politician, but not any better, either. I'm not charitable in my view of most people's motivations and am, sadly, usually proven right in this regard. As far as I can see, religion is just another way people justify repellent actions. I try not to do repellent things myself, but when I do, I don't say "Well, I'm right to do this because ______." I just do it and say "Because I felt like it" or "I'm cranky." I don't claim rightness. Not really a better reason than "Jesus told me to," but not worse, either. The problem I have with religious people who act like assholes is they expect to get a pass because of their religiosity. And too many people give it to them. So we get morons like Bush or this Palin chick.

[Cowboy Diva]

I should probably also state that I think there are a couple problems with Palin lying. It is not that Alaska's governor lies easily, but that the lies are about things for which the truth (and the facts) are in easily accessible public records. This is stupid and assumes your audience is also stupid.
A second problem is very few members of the press are apparently willing to say out loud, "The Governor of Alaska is not telling the truth."

It reminds me of the guy in college who played spades while wearing a pair of mirrored sunglasses allowing his partner across the table to see every one of his cards. Who wants to play against that guy, really?

[damnedyankee]

Lying glibly is not necessarily lying well. In Gov. Palin's case, given that the Bridge to Nowhere story has been repeatedly debunked even in publications generally friendly to the GOP, it's not a lie told well, but rather much like telling Cheney that there's a marsupial on his head.

[Tonio]

The Palin family has tried abstinence-only sex-ed, and it has failed with their own child. From this point forward, she KNOWS it doesn't work, and therefore MUST be lying.

I suspect that she only knows that on an intellectual level and may not grasp it emotionally. Or she might treat abstinence as a faith, believing that her daughter's heart wasn't fully committed to the faith.

[Eric b]

Look, I don't see what the problem is. She's not lying. She was just for the bridge before she was against it.

Oh, wait . . .

[Jeff Weskamp]

Don't forget that Sarah Palin advocates teaching Creationism in schools. And is essentially anti-enviroment.

I absolutely love "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything." I tried to translate it into Koine Greek ("Esmen Hoi Peiratai Hoi Ouden Poiousin...") just for giggles. I got about half-way through.

Other favorites include the Bunny Song, Billy Joe McGuffrey Was a Really Clumsy Kid, and Mr. Lunt's Cheeseburger Song.