You Only Have To Fool Enough of the People...

The magic Palin brings to the McCain campaign is her remarkable ability to lie about pretty much everything. Apparently, Matt Drudge dredged up a January interview where Obama describes how carbon emission "cap and trade" works, and now Palin's hard at work lying about it:

• Lie: "You hear Barack Obama talking about bankrupting the coal industry" - Truth: You hear Obama state, "this notion of 'no coal', I think is an illusion" given its huge role in powering the U.S. and even greater role in powering China. He raises the question of how we can use coal without creating greenhouse gases. He observes that under a cap and trade system, if cleaner methods of producing coal energy are not developed, new coal power plants will not be economically viable. It's the person who ignores the carbon tax and builds a dirty coal plant who goes bankrupt, not the coal industry.

  Obviously, under any cap and trade system, sources of energy that produce high levels of carbon emission may lose their viability - that's the point of cap and trade - so the coal industry's focus needs to be on developing cleaner energy technology.

• Lie: "John McCain and I, we will not let that happen to the coal industry." - Truth: John McCain also supports a strong "cap and trade" system for carbon emissions, and if he's telling the truth about that his policies will produce exactly the same outcome as Obama's.

• Lie: Palin's demand to know why the video was "withheld from the electorate" suggesting a conspiracy by the media - Truth: "audio of the interview has been available on the web site of the San Francisco Chronicle since mid-January, when Obama made the comments in an interview with the newspaper's editorial board."

They say that when you've got nothin', you've got nothin' to lose. And I guess, when you've given up your honor, you've got nothin'.