Palin and McCain Caught Lying About Sex, Money, and Iraq

For the sake of diplomacy, let’s say that the McCain campaign cannot stop obfuscating. This is semantics for the McCain campaign has mangled facts into wads of bullshit, which it is desperately flinging at the Obama campaign. Here are three recent McCain lies obfuscations.

First Sarah Palin claimed she blocked the Bridge to Nowhere. Last week, however, Charlie Gibson noted that Palin had so fervently supported the initiative, that she was photographed wearing a T-shirt saying “Nowhere Alaska” with the zipcode, to which Palin said she was simply wearing shirt “with the zipcode of the community that was asking for the bridge.” Oh right, because Alaskan town T-shirts are such a big trend.

The Associated Press has reported:

As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a "bridge to nowhere."

Palin has also claimed that as governor of Alaska she travelled to Ireland, Germany, Kuwait, and Iraq (including a military outpost) to meet with members of the Alaska National Guard. Now, she has been forced to backtrack, her aides admitting that the Iraq trip may have been a stretch of the truth.

The Boston Globe reported:

Following her selection last month as John McCain's running mate, aides said Palin had traveled to Ireland, Germany, Kuwait, and Iraq to meet with members of the Alaska National Guard. During that trip she was said to have visited a "military outpost" inside Iraq. The campaign has since repeated that Palin's foreign travel included an excursion into the Iraq battle zone.

But in response to queries about the details of her trip, campaign aides and National Guard officials in Alaska said by telephone yesterday that she did not venture beyond the Kuwait-Iraq border when she visited Khabari Alawazem Crossing, also known as "K-Crossing," on July 25, 2007.

Asked to clarify where she traveled in Iraq, Palin's spokeswoman, Maria Comella, confirmed that "She visited a military outpost on the other side of the Kuwait-Iraq border."

It was the second such clarification in as many weeks of the itinerary of what Palin has called "the trip of a lifetime." Earlier, the campaign acknowledged that Palin made only a refueling stop in Ireland.

Obviously Palin is trying to bump up her street cred, but this whole Iraq shtick seems a bit like people from Jersey claiming they grew up in New York City.

Of course these are mere fibs compared to how McCain upped the ante on getting down and dirty, asserting that Barack Obama had supported teaching sex-ed to kindergartners, when Obama voted for a bill requiring the state of Illinois to provide warnings to young children against sexual predators.

If we as a country wish to continue down the path we’ve led of lying leadership a la George W. “M.D.” Bush, then McCain’s the man for the job. For a guy that raves of his campaign finance reform ethics, he is showing himself to be pretty bankrupt in the honesty department.

You can check out the new CountTheLies webpage for more, since you known McCain will keep 'em coming.