The local news in Alaska is willing to play it more straight about Palin’s Bridge lie than the prestige networks in the lower 48 …

LATimes, Afraid to call a lie a lie.

Sometimes when you’ve got a liar as big as Sarah Palin on the line only a timeline will really do justice to her fibbing ways.

So a lot of you have written in to ask: Okay, she says she said ‘Thanks. But no thanks’ to the Bridge to Nowhere. But how exactly did it all come out? What’s the order of events? Well, briefly, it went like this.

Actually, Congress put the kibosh on the Bridge to Nowhere back in November 2005. Since Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) was then head of the Senate Appropriations Committee he was able to force a compromise in which the earmark for the bridge was killed but Alaska got to hold on to the money — some $442 million of federal tax dollars.

Fast forward to November 2006. That’s when Sarah Palin was running as a staunch supporter of the Bridge to Nowhere — that is, after the feds had themselves already said ‘No Thanks.’

In 2006, the Democrats took over both houses of Congress. So by the time Palin got into office it was clear that not only was the first Bridge earmark killed but that Congress was not going to be ponying up any more money. That meant that Alaska was going to have to pick up the tab all on its own. So since she couldn’t pay for it with the federal pork barrel, in September 2007, Palin officially halted the project which was then a state project since Congress had said ‘Thanks. But no thanks’ two years earlier.

She couldn’t say ‘No Thanks’ because Congress had already said ‘Forget It’.

Still with me?

So the money Palin sent back to Washington? Well, she didn’t. She kept the money for other bridges and roads in Alaska.

So, to boil it all down, Congress pulled the plug on the Bridge to Nowhere in 2005. Palin was still for it in 2006. And when she finally ended the project because Congress had cut off funding, instead of saying ‘No Thanks’ she actually said ‘Thanks!’ because instead of sending the money back to Washington she kept it all in Juneau.

Next question?

Late Update: From TPM Reader JF …

Good summary of the Bridge to Nowhere fiasco but it’s even worse:

From the Anchorage Daily News:

Alaska “is continuing to build a road on Gravina Island to an empty beach where the bridge would have gone — because federal money for the access road, unlike the bridge money, would have otherwise been returned to the federal government.”

The state is building a road to a bridge that doesn’t even exist for $24M. Who’s paying for it? You and me.

We are beyond the ridiculous here. It’s utterly surreal.

A new SurveyUSA poll of North Carolina puts McCain up 20 points, compared to 4 points a month ago.

We’ll be talking more about this. But as I said yesterday, a lot of press outlets are now willing to say flat out that Sarah Palin is lying through her teeth on her Bridge to Nowhere fib. But quite a few are still holding on with the Palin says she did, Obama campaign says she didn’t hooey. So if you see really egregious examples, particularly on tv, drop us a line and let us know. It’s amazing how many news organizations see it as part of their responsibility to make themselves complicit in these lies. So we’d like to put together some examples.

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin continues to repeat the claim that she told Congress “Thanks, but no thanks,” for the notorious “Bridge to Nowhere” project. Apparently Sarah didn’t get the memo: her claim has been thoroughly debunked by the media …

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

Yesterday we posted this video (see below) chronicling Gov. Palin’s big lie about stopping the Bridge to Nowhere. Quick viral videos, though, move very quickly. So we’ve now prepared this annotated guide to each statement and answer cited in the video — including transcripts, at length selections of video and more. So if you weren’t satisfied with the sound bite lie you can now have the at length version too.