I saw the moon last night. Can I be an astronaut now?

It's disturbing that Gov. Palin's 'truth issues' are getting to be a regular occurrence. And by 'truth issues', I'm not saying she's lying, exactly, but that she has a habit of stretching the truth to its furthest limits and (I have to assume) hoping it doesn't snap back and hit her in the face.

Maybe if she hadn't sold the plane on e-bay, which she actually didn't, she might be able to see Russia from Alaskan airspace, because you can't see it from the mainland, despite what Gov. Palin suggests.

Even Cindy got the memo. Alaska, as most fifth graders can tell you, is close to Russia.

OK, technically, you can see Russia from Alaska in that there are two small islands, one Russian and one American, that are about two and a half miles from each other. But I don't think that's what her remark suggested. The closest point between mainland Alaska and mainland Russia is 55 miles. At sea level, a person of average height can see about three miles. Even on a clear day, you wouldn't be able to see one country from the other unless you're a really tall person sitting on top of a mountain, and even then, it would have to be a decent size mountain. Granted, there are some really big ones in Alaska, but they're a few hundred miles from the closest point to Russia, so I'm guessing they wouldn't be much help.

I'm pretty lousy at math, but here's the formula for line of sight calculation for those who aren't. My guess is that the answer to the Alaska-Russia visibility quiz is 'nope'.

SquareRoot(height above surface / 0.5736) = distance to horizon

Even if you could see it on a clear day with some elevation and a nice pair of binoculars, Gov. Palin didn't have a passport until last year, so she's obviously never been to Russia, yet she's trying to make us think she has some insight into Russian foreign policy because you can see an unpopulated Russian island from an Alaskan island with 147 residents. She probably learned more about Ireland on her visit to the Shannon Airport duty free shop than she learned about Russia by pretending she could see it from her desk in Juneau. Sounds like she managed to pick up a bit of the blarney along with whatever other tax-free goodies she found during the re-fueling stop.

The truth is that Boston is closer to Moscow than Juneau is, so according to the Palin theory of foreign policy (and some guy on an AOL message board), Gov. Patrick should probably feel slighted that his friend Barack didn't choose him as a running mate, given his proximity to the Russian seat of power. We could have done the whole campaign with MapQuest and Google Earth, and had the debates via an internet chat, where they seem to understand geography a little better than the Republican candidates.

But Ms. Palin's problems with the truth aren't the biggest concern with a McCain-Palin ticket.

I honestly don't think either Palin or 'Bomb, bomb Iran' McCain have a clue about diplomacy. What's worse, I don't think they want to. Despite the fact that we can barely sustain the conflicts we already have going in Iraq and Afghanistan, the pair is just itching to find someone else to pick a fight with. The question is which hornets nest they want to thwack first, Russia or Iran.

GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn't we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?

PALIN: Perhaps so.

You can tell she passed her 'Neocon for Dummies' crash course on foreign policy.

Political analyst Norman J. Ornstein declared: “A combination of utter inexperience and utter arrogance is about the worst possible combination I can imagine. Not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is would be bad enough, but saying unequivocally that Georgia should be in NATO–meaning we would now perhaps be in a state of war with Russia–and then without a beat saying that military action should be the last resort–shows a series of knowledge and logic gaps that ought to shake every foreign policy specialist, liberal or conservative.”

You know, they say you can see Cuba from Key West, too. It's about 90 miles away, and the truth is, you really can't. Which is a shame, because according to the Palin policy, that would help solve that pesky Castro problem. Maybe that's why McCain had Charlie Crist on the short list. Tallahassee is only 518 miles from Havana, so he's probably got a plan to fix that one already. It's right next door, after all.

Image Wikimedia Commons