The republican machine is grinding on all cylinders to try and get people to forget that the republicans have had the white house for the last 8 years with 6 of those years also having a republican majority in the house and senate.

They want you to forget all of that and believe that John McCain who was part of that regime and who voted with george Bush 95% of the time is the right person to fix the mess the republicans have gotten this country into.

Now they even have the NRA willing to lie for them;

NRA Targets Obama
September 22, 2008
It falsely claims in mailers and TV ads that Obama plans to ban handguns, hunting ammo and use of a gun for home defense.
Summary
A National Rifle Association advertising campaign distorts Obama’s position on gun control beyond recognition.

The NRA is circulating printed material and running TV ads making unsubstantiated claims that Obama plans to ban use of firearms for home defense, ban possession and manufacture of handguns, close 90 percent of gun shops and ban hunting ammunition.

Much of what the NRA passes off as Obama’s “10 Point Plan to ‘Change’ the Second Amendment” is actually contrary to what he has said throughout his campaign: that he “respects the constitutional rights of Americans to bear arms” and “will protect the rights of hunters and other law-abiding Americans to purchase, own, transport, and use guns.”

The NRA, however, simply dismisses Obama’s stated position as “rhetoric” and substitutes its own interpretation of his record as a secret “plan.” Said an NRA spokesman: “We believe our facts.”

Perhaps so, but believing something doesn’t make it so. And we find the NRA has cherry-picked, twisted and misrepresented Obama’s record to come up with a bogus “plan.”

So basically, no matter what Obama actually says, they are going to twist it and tryu to convince people he said something different. That is called bearing false witness for those who read the bible. This is the party christians are supposed to support?

Here is one instance where Katie Couric got John McCain. And, in the process she got Sarah Palin too. This is a case where the media shoots two Republican birds with one stone cold “Gotcha!” And the “Gotcha!” was in fact a non-Gotcha moment.

Republicans are notorious for trying to spend the news in their favor. The perception is that the media is out to get them so they go after Republican politicians more than Democratic ones or liberals. There may be some truth to that in certain ways, but just because working journalists tend to lean to the left does not mean that they never do a good job of reporting the actual news or in asking the right questions. Even bad journalists have their good moments.

Katie Couric, in an interview with John McCain and Sarah Palin, asked about Palin’s comment about going into Pakistan with troops, an idea that John McCain has seemingly said he was against, but that Barack Obama has said he might consider. So is Sarah Palin more in line with Obama than McCain on that issue? I thought it was a legitimate question. Watch the interview:

John McCain does not do a good job of hiding his discomfort. Nor does Sarah Palin. It is clear that these two are clueless on the impact that Palin’s comment will have on voters. McCain is still stuck on pandering to the base, but Republicans will not win by sticking to their base. This election will be decided by independent and non-partisan voters. Democrats get that; Republicans, and John McCain, don’t.

It looks like another Gotcha! moment for John McCain, only the Gotcha! wasn’t quite the Gotcha! he was expecting and hoping for.

The National Review Online offers a suggestion to John McCain and Republican operatives. They should have targeted Sarah Palin’s media blitz toward talk radio and the blogosphere, where the base hangs out. Good suggestion, only now it’s too late.

The thinking is this: The broader media will give Sarah Palin a wider reach in audience. That’s the Republican thinking. The National Review believes that’s more of a hindrance than a help since her message doesn’t exactly sit with voters who don’t shoot moose, wear pistols to hockey games, and wear matching lipstick with her pet pig. I think The National Review has a point. Here’s the Republican takeaway - next time.

Ordinarily, the GOP doesn’t need pointers running a smooth campaign. Their plan has been the same since the Nixon Parade. Donald Henry Segretti was the man behind the re-elect Nixon campaign and was notorious for his slash-and-burn tactics, which worked. He was a master and Karl Rove was his eager protege.

Karl Rove’s drive to make G.W. Bush a “war president” largely succeeded. But the back draft has been a huge decline in Bush’s popularity. That hasn’t stopped John McCain’s campaign managers from using the same dirty tactics. This time they won’t work as a better organized Democratic Party political machine is in place to elect someone who actually has some electability. If the McCain political machine had capitalized on Palin’s strength by positioning her in friendly territory to discuss her hot topics with her base then the mainstream media would be forced to use the soundbites from those interviews, giving Palin a larger appeal to a broader audience. As it is, the broader audience will see her as she really is and not how the GOP wants her to be seen. The lesson to learn for the GOP is to take this suggestion into the next election cycle. Politics is about to get dirtier.

The Atlantic celebrity blogger Andrew Sullivan says this about Sarah Palin:

The days when Republicanism meant actual responsibility and judgment and experience and realism have been replaced by gimmicks, pure politics, Fox fem-bots, and constant, random gambling with the most dangerous things imaginable.

He’s got a good point. Watching the John McCain “Straight Talk Express” run off the track in the center ring of the media circus is frightening. Sarah Palin, perhaps the least experienced vice president in American history, has catapulted herself to expert status in diplomatic relations, even positioning herself above multi-degreed Henry Kissinger himself. She called him naive. Actually, I believe the exact words were “beyond naive.”

Kissinger may be a lot of things, but I don’t think he’s naive. If anyone is naive it’s Sarah Palin. And she could be just a heartbeat away from the presidency. I mean, how much more ridiculous can this get?

First, there were the Swiftboaters, bad mouthing John Kerry like a playground bully in an upper middle class neighborhood. Then there was Ann Coulter.

Or maybe Ann Coulter was further down on the evolutionary scale - I don’t remember.

At any rate, leave it to the soft money peddlers to set things straight. Talking heads. Pundits. Bill O’Reilly. None of them have anything on the hockey moms. If you really want to know what kind of hockey mom Sarah Palin really was, you’ve got to watch this video. Sure, it may be somewhat sensationalized, but you’ve got to hand it to these women. They’ve got guts.

Lipstick, my ass!

Finally, we’ve got an evangelical public figure with as much brains as balls. Frank Schaeffer is on the road calling Sarah Palin a “lipstick fascist” and makes some very strong arguments that the Republican Party is using the same tactics that the Nazi Party used in Germany to usher Hitler and the Third Reich into power. Is he being too harsh?

I don’t think he is. While I think there are still sufficient checks and balances in the system (for the time being) to prevent an all-out fascist takeover, I do believe that we’ve been on the slow track to fascism for the better part of a century. It’s only been recently, just in the last 20 years, that a major political party has been so brazen as to blatantly advocate fascist policies in America. The Bush Administration has taken that brazenness to a new level. Frank Schaeffer is absolutely correct that if McCain and Palin win then the next four years will see America slide further and deeper into labor camps.

President Bush took First Lady Laura Bush on a date to Gettysburg, accompanied by Karen Hughes, Karl Rove, and Alberto Gonzales.

But the very next day, Saturday, White House National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley started bashing Bob Woodward’s new book “The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008″. I can hardly wait to get my hands on the book myself as the first two Woodward books on Bush’s war in Iraq were excellent. The first one was a positive look at Bush’s run-up to the war. Now that Woodward has turned critical, however, the spinmeisters are back pedaling.

I love how the president himself handles this interview. Essentially, his defense is, “Uh, uhm, well, uh, let’s see ….” In other words, all this hemming and hawing is getting us nowhere and President Bush has yet, after nearly 8 years of failure, to take any responsibility for his losing policies. Should we ever expect him to?

I was reluctant to watch the big speech last night. I didn’t watch Obama’s. I didn’t watch Palin’s. Why should I have watched John McCain’s?

I’m glad I did. I have a few thoughts about it.

First, John McCain’s personal story of courage and commitment is inspiring. His bravery as a POW during Vietnam should inspire every American. But I have never believed that heroic exploits on the battlefield qualify one for public office. If so then we should have elected John Kerry when we had the chance despite what the Swiftboaters have to say.

I don’t agree with those who say that McCain’s speech was unsubstantive. I believe it was. He is not polished, he is not suave, he is not smooth in his delivery. But he is charismatic. You can tell that there is some sort of gray matter between those ears, unlike the empty vacuum you’ll find in our current Pinocchio.

Until now, we have not had a real chance to hear John McCain speak directly from his heart. All we’ve heard are media soundbites and McCain’s responses to distracting issues.

We’ve mostly heard his voice filtered through the screen doors of PR hacks and marketing gurus.

McCain’s speech last night was somewhat inspiring, but disheartening. It was inspiring because I’d like to believe that he will go to Washington and “clean it up.” I’d like to believe that he will end the corruption and restore respect to the Oval Office. I’d like to. But I can’t.

You see, like many Americans, I’m tired of being lied to. I’m fed up with politicians who promise great things and then never deliver. Politicians like G.W. Bush.

I was a Bush supporter when he ran in 2000. He wasn’t perfect, but I considered him better than the alternative. I was wrong. We have eight years that prove it. And the sad fact of the matter is, when John McCain proclaimed near the end of his speech that the Republican Party has strayed from its own principles, nothing could have been more true. Except that John McCain, who spent most of his speech trying to convince us that he will usher in change, has backed Bush 95% of the time.

I find it difficult to believe that a man who opposes a person’s right of choice with regard to Internet gambling can claim to support freedom. I find it difficult to believe that a man who believes that winning in Iraq is the most important thing in the world can claim to support Republican principles. I find it hard to believe that a man who denies homosexuals the same rights afforded to other Americans can claim to be against justices that “legislate from the bench.” It seems that John McCain has no problem with a president who legislates from his easy chair, and that’s my problem with him.

John McCain still speaks as a maverick, but underneath all that gristle is a man seething with the hot lava of party restraint. Until last night he has restrained himself from being too bold and that’s to the detriment of every American. If you vote for John McCain, you are voting for the same party that endangered America’s security and spent most of his time training new terrorists in Iraq. John McCain wants to continue that mission.

I have no doubt that McCain will be a better commander-in-chief than George W. Bush. But there is more to the presidency than fighting wars. We cannot be too linear in our thinking about the qualifications of the office. John McCain may be a great man and a great American, but the verdict is still out as to whether that will translate into a great presidency.

This is interesting reading. I’ve heard the part about Sarah Palin firing her ex-brother-in-law before. But some of this other stuff - the scandals and the special favors - is new to me. What’s particularly interesting is the stuff about how Republicans in Alaska don’t like her and that she has a history of turning on those who are most loyal to her. Hmmmm…

The nickname “Sarah Barracuda” is interesting. It means she’s aggressive. But aggressive at what? Reading this little tidbit makes me think she’s the female version of Dick Cheney.

But of course it’s small town politics, which can get nasty. Should local reporters who reported on local politicians go national when those politicians are picked for national posts? I think they have to. How else is the world going to know about them? The flip side is, voters have to take some of this with a grain of salt as local reporters can be as biased as Dan Rather. But if any of this is true then who does Sarah Palin think she is?

I mean, this is just plain stupid. Rush Limbaugh and caller to his show virtually tickle each other’s pickle. Of course, they’re brain beat by the fact that a black guy won the Democratic ticket, and I think they’re afraid he might actually win. So what do they do? They slobber all over themselves.

Hey, I have a novel idea. Rush, how about some meat to those thoughts?