McCain was talking about earmarks and corruption.

“We’ve had a ‘Bridge to Nowhere,’ a $233-million bridge in Alaska, which I’m happy to say this governor stood up against.”

Of course, it is well-documented that there is far more to that story than McCain  indicated.

An Op-Ed in the Austin [Texas] Statesman-Journal dates Palin’s last use of the “Thanks, but no thanks for that Bridge to Nowhere” line in early September a week after the Republican National Convention — and well after it became clear that Palin didn’t really say “no thanks” to the project.

Apparently, the McCain campaign believes the American public’s collective memory only extends back a few weeks.

Did Barack Obama really call Sarah Palin a pig, as a John McCain ad leads people to believe?

‘‘No,’’ McCain said Monday.

The Republican presidential nominee defended the ad anyway, saying Obama ‘‘chooses his words very carefully.’’

The implication: Obama was slyly up to something when he said McCain’s call for change in Washington is ‘‘lipstick on a pig,’’ days after Palin made a lipstick joke at the Republican convention.

‘‘He’s very eloquent,’’ McCain told The Associated Press and Florida newspapers in an interview, and ‘‘it was the wrong thing to say.’’

If Obama did not call Palin a pig, why would the McCain campaign embark on such a cynical effort to convince voters that he did?

McCain said of Obama’s comment: ‘‘I didn’t like it. So we respond. I think the American people will judge as to whether he and others have treated Governor Palin fairly or not.’’ But he said he won’t let attacks go unanswered.

So that’s how McCain rolls: say something he doesn’t like and find yourself the target of vicious, lying attack ads that feign political correctness and completely distort your comments — and he’ll deny they’re lies until even Karl Rove has to call out of bounds. That’s an interesting definition of honorable you’ve got there, senator.

Also in the interview, McCain deflects a question on whether Palin requested $200 million in earmarks this year and cuts off one about the “Bridge to Nowhere.” Who wants to start placing bets on when McCain stops giving any interviews at all?

Palin stops short of specifically saying she initially supported the project, but criticizes the abuse of earmark process as an “embarrassment.”

GIBSON: You have said continually, since he chose you as his vice-presidential nominee, that I said to Congress, thanks but not thanks. If we’re going to build that bridge, we’ll build it ourselves.

PALIN: Right.

GIBSON: But it’s now pretty clearly documented: you supported that bridge before you opposed it. You were wearing a t-shirt in the 2006 campaign, showed your support for the Bridge to Nowhere.

PALIN: I was wearing a t-shirt with the zip code of the community that was asking for that bridge. Not all the people in that community even were asking for a $400 million or $300 million bridge.

GIBSON: But you turned against it after Congress had basically pulled the plug on it; after it became apparent that the state was going to have to pay for it, not the Congress; and after it became a national embarrassment to the state of Alaska. So do you want to revise and extend your remarks.

PALIN: It has always been an embarrassment that abuse of the ear form — earmark process has been accepted in Congress. And that’s what John McCain has fought. And that’s what I joined him in fighting. It’s been an embarrassment, not just Alaska’s projects. But McCain gives example after example after example. I mean, every state has their embarrassment.

However, she then seems to say that not all earmarks are bad — what matters is the process by which they are acquired.

GIBSON: Governor, this year, requested $3.2 million for researching the genetics of harbor seals, money to study the mating habits of crabs. Isn’t that exactly the kind of thing that John McCain is objecting to?

PALIN: Those requests, through our research divisions and fish and game and our wildlife departments and our universities, those research requests did come through that system, but wanting it to be in the light of day, not behind closed doors, with lobbyists making deals with Congress to stick things in there under the public radar.

That’s the abuse that we’re going to stop. That’s what John McCain has promised over and over for these years and that’s what I’m joining him, also, saying, you’re right, the abuse of earmarks, it’s un-American, it’s undemocratic. And it’s not going to be accepted in a McCain-Palin administration. Earmark abuse will stop.

I actually agree with her here. As I’ve written before, earmarks pay for a lot of good things, and some are very wasteful. However, McCain seems to have abandoned the distinction between earmarks that are added to appropriations bills “in the light of day” and those that are done “behind closed doors.” Instead, he rails against all earmarks — just today, rather than drawing this distinction, he made the indefensible claim that Palin has never requested an earmark as governor on “The View.”

Of course, it’s harder to sell a nuanced argument to voters than a blanket anti-earmark policy. But a nuanced argument is far better than an outright lie.

First, is the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” in Alaska. Second, is a $3-million study of grizzly bear DNA in Montana. When he mentions the latter, he often jokes, “I don’t know if it was a paternity issue or a criminal issue.” What he doesn’t say is that he  voted for the 2003 omnibus appropriations bill that contained this earmark.

The McCain campaign has sought to portray Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as McCain’s pork-fighting ” soul mate” — an image that seems to grow shakier by the day. It is now well-documented that she was an ardent supporter of the “Bridge to Nowhere” before she was against it.

Now, Politico’s Ben Smith has found an ironic item in Palin’s nearly $200-million worth of earmark requests from earlier this year: millions of dollars to study harbor seal DNA:

Some on Alaska’s list are the kind of uncontroversial projects that make most earmarks hard to cut — even if it’s difficult to see their importance to the nation, rather than the state: construction of Alaska National Guard facilities, for instance, to stop drug abuse, and to improve a crime database.

Many others, though, are of exactly the sort that McCain has made a career of mocking—like animal research.

“We’re not going to spend $3 million of your tax dollars to study the DNA of bears in Montana,” McCain has said during this year’s campaign, referring to a study he’s mocked for years of whether grizzlies need to keep their status as an endangered species.

Palin, meanwhile, has requested $3.2 million to be spent in part researching the “genetics of harbor seals,” in one of the state’s many requests for federal funding of research into Alaska’s fauna.

Big deal. Everybody knows grizzly bear DNA is basically useless –but harbor seal DNA! That has literally millions of practical applications.

In case the irony is lost on you, TPM dug up an old McCain campaign ad that drives it home:

At some point, a rational person would have to assume McCain might be forced to explain how his campaign can continue to push the “Palin-as-earmark-foe” meme when her past actions are so at odds with McCain’s — as well as her own — rhetoric.

But the McCain campaign finds itself in a tight spot: it has already settled into the narrative it wants to drive between now and November — McCain and Palin are a team of maverick reformers — but opponents have a mountain of ammunition to challenge that narrative, with more seeming to emerge daily.

McCain can’t — or won’t — come out and admit that the image it projects is a sham. All he can do is pretend the ammunition doesn’t exist and hope regular people who don’t follow the news as closely as, say, reporters and political junkies, don’t notice.

This is clearly the strategy, as demonstrated by the fact that Palin continues to claim that she said “thanks, but no thanks” to the “Bridge to Nowhere,” after news outlets have been steadily reporting this is false for more than a week now.

The big question is: Will voters punish McCain for being dishonest?

In this second straight week of Palin-Palooza, fanned by the McCain campaign’s gender bender and a nation riveted by Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s rapid ascent, the Obama campaign is now tightening its focus on the Republican vice presidential candidate.

On Wednesday afternoon, Obama’s aides announced the formation of an “Alaska Mythbusters” rapid response team that promises to “set the record straight” about Palin. The mythbusters include former Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles and Ketchikan Mayor Bob Weinstein — of “Bridge to Nowhere” fame.

On a media conference call, Knowles tore into Palin’s ethics, noting that the GOP-controlled legislature took the unusual step of investigating Palin on a “very serious charge” of whether she interfered with a case based on a “personal vendetta” to extract punishment against a citizen. (See “The Reform Candidate,” by TWI’s Laura McGann.)

Gov. Sarah Palin became an instant political celebrity and pop cultural icon after joining the G.O.P. ticket.

Then Weinstein reiterated how Palin supported the Bridge to Nowhere, as numerous news outlets have reported — a history that Palin lied about again this week.

Riding on Obama’s traveling press bus through Virginia this afternoon, as reporters listened to a 30-minute call assailing Palin and traded lipstick jokes, there’s no denying that Palin remains the story.

Even if Obama shifts the focus from manufactured Palin controversies to legitimate questions about her record, she is still the center of attention. Despite speculation that Obama would frame the race as all about McCain, once the convention buzz died down, he has clearly decided Palin must be diminished before she can be ignored.

It is the first time Obama has used that line, which was well received by the union-heavy crowd of more than 300 people, according to the Flint Fire Dept.

Obama singled out Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as a false prophet of change, tweaking her for being for the “Bridge to Nowhere” before she was against it.

“You can’t just make stuff up!” he told the largely middle-aged crowd. “You can’t just reinvent yourself,” he added, arguing that the GOP ticket cannot offer change when it promises the same Republican policies on taxes, health care, education, ethics and rebuilding American infrastructure.

MI Gov. Granholm has been stumping for Obama.

Obama spoke while standing in front of three large hybrid sport utility vehicles — he told voters  an Obama administration would build cars in Flint, not Japan — and beneath a giant American flag. He took some questions from the friendly crowd, discussing military spending, Fannie Mae, Social Security and economic challenges. Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm and Congressman John Conyers accompanied Obama, but did not speak at the event.

Obama’s speech focused on populist economics, and he repeatedly linked ending the war in Iraq to renewing the U.S. economy.

Now, the Obama campaign is circulating a photograph of Palin literally bragging about her support for the bridge, with a note titled “I supported the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’ and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt.”

Here’s the picture worth a thousand fact-checks:

It’s from Palin’s 2006 campaign, explains an Obama aide, where “she’s proudly posing with a T-shirt that reads, ‘NOWHERE ALASKA 99901.’”

Now, from a distance, the entire fight over the bridge earmark could look silly, compared to bigger problems facing the country.

Obama is arguing, however, that the McCain campaign’s blatant lies, about issues small and large, reveal the GOP nominee’s approach to governance.

It is indeed striking that McCain picked this fight, touting his running mate’s “reform” record not through spin, or selective biography, but by flatly lying about her recent actions.

Rebutting a new Republican ad — which TWI’s Matt DeLong reports here — chief Obama spokesperson Bill Burton blasted McCain for lying about an earmark issue after multiple corrections from the press:

Despite being discredited over and over again by numerous news organizations, the McCain campaign continues to repeat the lie that Sarah Palin stopped the Bridge to Nowhere.

That’s unusually strong for the Obama campaign — which regularly describes McCain’s questionable remarks as “dishonest” or “spin.”

Even this press release, for example, was still titled “Response to New and Dishonest McCain Ad,” rather than, say, “McCain is Lying Again.” I emailed Burton to ask whether this is the first time he has directly accused the McCain campaign of lying, and will report back with any response.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (Lauren Victoria Burke, wdcpix.com)

The ties that bind Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the GOP vice-presidential nominee, to her state’s infamous “Bridges to Nowhere” just keep getting tighter.

Steven W. Silver, a Washington lobbyist who began representing the small town of Wasilla during Palin’s tenure as mayor, is also lobbying for construction of a controversial bridge linking Anchorage to the borough housing Wasilla, according to lobbying disclosure records.

That proposed span — dubbed “Don Young’s Way” after Alaska’s lone House member — gained notoriety in 2005, when Young and Sen. Ted Stevens (R) fought to earmark hundreds of millions of federal dollars for it and another controversial bridge connecting Ketchikan, Alaska (pop. 7,300), to an island airport. Both became symbols of wasteful federal spending, and were widely ridiculed as “Bridges to Nowhere.”

Palin, the recent surprise pick as Sen. John McCain’s running mate, has forged the image of a reformer dedicated to reining in federal spending. While she originally supported the federal money for the bridges, she has been touting her more-recent opposition to the Ketchikan earmark as evidence that she’s a business-as-unusual politician — a message that’s evolved into a prominent campaign issue this year.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

On Wednesday, Palin told the GOP faithful gathered in Minneapolis for the Republican National Convention, “I told the Congress ‘thanks but no thanks’ for that ‘Bridge to Nowhere.’ If our state wanted a bridge, we’d build it ourselves.”

She was talking about the Ketchikan span.

But she hasn’t come out against “Don Young’s Way.” In fact, the Palin administration has plans to hire an outside contractor to estimate what the project would cost, according to a June report from The Anchorage Daily News. The contractor alone is expected to run the state $200,000, the report said. The bridge itself has been tagged at between $450 million and $1.5 billion.

The Daily News reported:

The agency charged with coming up with a bridge plan — the Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority — recently estimated the span would cost $667 million if construction begins next year. The authority, which made the estimate in response to a request from the governor’s office, said that figure could increase to $824 million by 2015.

[…]

Randy Ruaro, a special assistant to Gov. Sarah Palin, said the administration, even in the face of the recent lengthy report from the bridge authority, was having trouble getting an accurate picture of everything that is involved in the project, of the timing of the phases, and of the costs. He said the independent estimate is expected to answer those questions.

With Palin remaining receptive to “Don Young’s Way,” Sen Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, has seen an opening. Thursday his office pounced, sending an email blast to reporters proclaiming, “Palin only announced opposition to one ‘Bridge to Nowhere,’ still supports the other one.”

Silver, the former chief of staff to the now-indicted Stevens, began lobbying Congress on behalf of Wasilla in 2000. With Silver’s help, the town secured nearly $27 million in federal earmarks while Palin was mayor, according to an analysis done by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog group.

Beginning in the middle of 2004, Silver has also represented the Knik Arm Bridge & Toll Authority, created in 2003 to facilitate the bridge construction. The contract has proved a handsome one. Since that date, Silver’s firm — Robertson, Monagle & Eastbaugh — has taken in roughly $200,000 from the Knik Arm group.