Yes, I promised to post this yesterday, but the Washington Redskins were on television, it was my oldest kid’s birthday, I had to do an interview with Fox News, and, well, the dog ate my homework. Okay, that last excuse was bogus. But after fact-checking the entire debate transcript between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, I had this compulsion to simply make something up. They sure did. After going through the transcript, consulting numerous public records and, examining other journalistic fact-checking efforts, I can now report to you confidently that the next vice president of the United States—whoever that turns out to be—is going to be a fabulist. The true explanation of why it took so long to post? Too many specious claims to run down. It’s too much for one post, actually, so I’ll do Governor Palin today, and Senator Biden tomorrow.

Not counting minor gaffes such as calling her opponent “Senator O’Biden,” or referring to the top U.S. military officer in Afghanistan (General David McKiernan) as “General McClellan,” here are most of SARAH PALIN’S bloopers, whoppers, exaggerations or prevarications.

Assertion: “As mayor, every year I was in office I did reduce taxes.”

Reality: During Palin's tenure, the operating budget of Wasilla, Alaska increased 35 percent. As the Los Angeles Times reported, the Palin administration did lower the tax burden on city residents, but made up the difference by increasing the sales tax from 2 percent to 2 ½ percent. This strategy spread the pain beyond Wasilla’s city limits. But it was a tax increase.

Assertion: “Barack Obama even supported increasing taxes as late as last year for those families making only $42,000 a year. That’s a lot of middle income average American families to increase taxes on them.”

Reality: As the indispensable Factcheck.org has shown in its deconstruction of the Palin-Biden debate, this statement of the governor's had several things wrong with it: Actually, Obama voted (on March 14, 2008, and not “last year”) for a non-binding congressional budget resolution calling for reinstating the 28 percent tax bracket. The Bush administration-sponsored tax cuts, passed in 2001, cut that level to 25 percent. Factcheck.org has done the math, and this would not affect “families” making as little as $42,000 a year. It could hit an individual in that income range, but a family of four would have to make at least $90,000 to be impacted.

Assertion: “He (John McCain) is proposing a $5,000 tax credit for families so that they can get out there and they can purchase their own health care coverage. That’s a smart thing to do. That’s budget-neutral. That doesn’t cost the government anything ...”

Reality: A five grand annual tax credit for health care may be fine public policy (or not). Unless the laws of mathematics are repealed, however, it cannot be “budget-neutral.” It’s a tax credit, meaning, by definition, that fewer dollars would flow into the U.S. Treasury if it were enacted. The Tax Policy Foundation has the numbers.

Assertion: “But when you talk about Barack’s plan to (impose a) tax increase affecting only those making $250,000 a year or more, you’re forgetting millions of small businesses that are going to fit into that category. So they’re going to be the ones paying higher taxes thus resulting in fewer jobs being created and less productivity.”

Reality: Palin's running mate has repeatedly said that Obama’s proposed tax increases would touch “23 million small business owners.” This wildly inflated number is derived from a misleading U.S. Chamber of Commerce press release. Palin didn't repeat it, but her "millions" is still too high. The actual number of “small business owners” who’d see a tax increase is probably a couple hundred thousand, many of whom are lawyers, accountants and others with tax-sheltering partnerships. Brooks Jackson of Factcheck.org, did an analysis of that claim, which you can read here.

Assertion: “We need to look back, even two years ago, and we need to be appreciative of John McCain’s call for reform with Fannie Mae, with Freddie Mac, with the mortgage-lenders, too, who were starting to really kind of rear that head of abuse.”

Reality: It’s true that two years ago, McCain signed on to legislation to rein in those profligate, government-sanctioned lending institutions. What Palin did not mention is that McCain waited a year to sign onto the bill, that the legislation in Congress went nowhere, and that by 2006, it was too late to stem the red tide of bad loans anyway.

Assertion: “Senator Biden, you would remember that, in that energy plan that Obama voted for—that’s what gave those oil companies those big tax breaks. Your running mate voted for that.”

Reality: Hillary Clinton employed this line of attack against Obama in the primaries; McCain has used it too. So Palin is the third to trot it out. It's misleading. The energy legislation in question, which was enacted in 2005, did give some tax breaks to energy companies, while stripping away others. But the Congressional Research Service estimates that, on balance, the new law has resulted in slightly higher tax burdens for the oil sector.

Assertion: “We’re building a nearly $40 billion gas pipeline, which is North America’s largest and most expensive infrastructure project ever, to flow those sources of energy into hungry markets.”

Reality: The proposed 1,700-mile pipeline is on the drawing board, as it has been for decades, but Governor Palin implied it was being built now. That isn’t true—and it might never be. The project is at least a decade away, and $40 billion is a much higher estimate than the Canadian company that proposes to build it is using. Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post, looked at this claim in detail.

Assertion: “You had supported John McCain’s military strategies pretty adamantly until this race.”

Reality: The truth of this assertion depends, I suppose, on when Palin dates the beginning of the 2008 presidential race. Biden opposed the surge in Iraq, and though he voted for the Iraq war resolution in 2002, has been looking for a way out of that conflict for three years—in contrast to McCain, who still touts the possibility, and necessity, of victory.

Assertion: “And with the surge that has worked we’re now down to pre-surge numbers in Iraq. That’s where we can be. We can start putting more troops in Afghanistan as we also work with our NATO allies who are there strengthening us and we need to grow our military.

Reality: President Bush announced the “surge” policy in January 2007 at a time some 132,000 American troops were on the ground in Iraq. Although a significant drawdown has begun, there are now about 146,000 troops in-country. The president recently announced that 8,000 more will be home by February, but Palin was jumping the gun.

Tomorrow: JOE BIDEN’S many fibs, inventions, half-truths, and verbal flights of fancy: