What on earth is going on at the Associated Press?

Is there a revolt among the stringers against Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier's fawning parroting of John McCain's talking points? Because now there's yet another article that dares to point out the utter horsepuckey that is whatever comes out of the mouth of Sarah Palin.

Here's just one; if I quote more I'll get nasty e-mail from the AP. So you'll have to click over and read the rest yourself:

PALIN: "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending ... and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere."

THE FACTS: 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."

Wow. Another Republican hypocrite. Who'd a thunk it possible?

The cynicism of these Republicans is breathtaking, but not surprising. Not when we have former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, whose tax cuts help cripple the state's budget lo unto this very day and who has been jumping through hoops to justify her party for the last decade, explaining in all seriousness her support for a woman who believes pregnant women lose all of their right to self-determination:

“It’s an important issue. I believe in it. … But on the other hand, we face an economy that is in very bad shape, we have wars in several places, an international situation that is very unstable. We have a host of environmental issues that have got to be addressed – energy being top most amongst those.”

And she thinks Sarah Palin is the right #2 to help address this -- how?

The willingness to sacrifice women's sovereignty over their own bodies on the altar of party unity is appalling enough by itself, but when coupled with the notion that we have to elect a president who has supported the very policies that got us into the mess she herself describes is just insane. But Republicans have become experts of calling blue green and getting away with it. That's how we were attacked by Saudis trained in Afghanistan and retaliated by attacking Iraq. That's how we get working class people supporting policies that shovel cash into the pockets of wealthy CEOs who close the factories and offices in which they work and outsource their jobs to other countries. That's how we have a party that has vociferously decried unmarried sex for a generation, and ends up applauding teen pregnancy at its own convention. That's how one guy who enlisted to fight in Vietnam can be painted as a coward while a guy who didn't even bother to show up for his cushy Texas Air National Guard duty can put on a flightsuit and paint himself as a military stud, and how that same rich kid from Connecticut and Kennebunkport can buy himself a prop house in Texas and paint himself as a regular guy rancher. That's how a man who was one of 600 guys taken captive by the Viet Cong can claim that the same experience he shared with all these other men entitles only him to the presidency.

So I don't know why this continues to surprise me. Perhaps it's the unmitigated chutzpah, the sheer volume of horse manure being spewed this week by these people. As Gail Collins notes today:

The difficulty for the Republican ticket in talking about change and reform and acting like insurgents is that they have been running Washington — the White House and Congress — for most of the last eight years.

Sarah Palin, the vice presidential nominee, was a combative and witty relief at a torpid convention. But it was bizarre hearing the running mate of a 26-year veteran of Congress, a woman who was picked to placate the right-wing elite, mocking “the permanent political establishment in Washington.”

And we couldn’t imagine what Mitt Romney was thinking when he denounced “liberal Washington” and then, at the convention of the party that brought you unimpeded presidential spying, declared: “It’s time for the party of big ideas, not the party of Big Brother!”

You wonder how they say this stuff with a straight face. Unless they really ARE this delusional.