Sarah Palin: Pathological liar

Palin and McCain wouldn't recognize the truth if it came up behind them and hit them in the head with a cinderblock. Continuing the fine tradition of Bush, they lie without compunction in the face of the public record. They lie when they don't have to. Well, actually they do have to because the public record is so damning. But getting to Palin's latest trip to the land of flat out falsehoods, she recently offered her "trade experience" with Russia, in addition to her proximity to the country, as proof of her foreign policy creds. Of course, she never conducted any trade talks with Russia or anyone else.

Ms. Palin does not appear to have made any trade missions since taking office, and former state officials said the state’s trade staff had been reduced under her watch.

Alaska has also sharply reduced its role in the Northern Forum, an association of state and regional governments from countries including Canada, Russia, Japan and China that works on common issues in northern regions like economic development, flooding and global warming.

Under Mr. Murkowski, Ms. Palin’s predecessor, the state sent senior administration officials to the forum’s meetings and contributed $60,000 to $100,000 to the forum each year, according to the forum’s executive director, Priscilla Wohl.

Under Ms. Palin, the state has reduced its spending to the base-level membership dues, $15,000, and the administration has not attended any forum meetings, including one last fall in Russia.

“Had she participated, in the last 18 months she would have met ambassadors, governors, heads of the European Union’s programs, of United Nations programs,” Ms. Wohl said.

I expect this will come up in the debate tonight and I'm betting Palin will repeat this lie. I'll be interested in seeing if the moderators challenge her on it. I'm betting they won't.

Moving on, in a friendly little interview with chief neo-wingnut Hugh Hewitt, Ms. Palin praised union provided health care coverage.

"We’ve gone through periods of our life here with paying out of pocket for health coverage until Todd and I both landed a couple of good union jobs," Palin explained to conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt. "Early on in our marriage, we didn’t have health insurance, and we had to either make the choice of paying out of pocket for catastrophic coverage or just crossing our fingers, hoping that nobody would get hurt, nobody would get sick."

Politico remarks that it's "unclear what union job Palin had." They queried the campaign and to my knowledge there has been no response. A small lie perhaps, but one more to add to a very long list. A rather odd talking point besides, since as Tula points out, McCain has a long record of voting against unions on nearly every issue.

Then again, everything about the deceitful duo is extremely odd. [graphic via]

[More posts daily at The Newshoggers and The Detroit News.]