West, Donavon West

Republican politicians are notorious for their ease at telling lies. And Pinocchio Politics is taking on those lies that are coming from the McCain campaign. After all, the same people from George Bush’s 2000 campaign who smeared John McCain only eight years ago are now his allies.

They also offer a Pinocchio “nose growing kit” that you can download, print and wear to McCain/Palin events.

From Michael Seitzman. It’s a couple of weeks old now, but still worth a chuckle.

I’ve enjoyed Paul Reiser’s work since I first saw him in his movie debut Diner. I actually liked watching Mad About You until the show jumped the shark and they had a baby.

Paul is now an infrequent contributor on the political blog comedy site 23/6. Read his words of wisdom in this excerpt from his brilliant post Yeah--You and Whose Army?

So everyone's talking about the nasty spike of nastiness in the presidential race--a spike brilliantly orchestrated by the Republican machinery--and Republican John McCain takes a moment to point out that even this is Barack Obama's fault.

Y'see, all the crap being thrown at Obama--the fear-mongering, the half-truths, the full lies--all the character assassination hurling Obama's way, is in fact, his own doing.

"I think the tone of this whole campaign would have been very different if Senator Obama had accepted my request for us to appear in town hall meetings all over America," the Senator from Arizona tells us.

Am I just losing my friggin' mind? Seriously. I keep looking around the room to see if I'm living in some suddenly altered state where everything we know is now called the opposite, and nobody notices. Or can stop it.

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Palin and the circus she's brought to town is designed to distract the country from one big truth: the havoc that George Bush and the Republican Party have wrought, and that John McCain is committed to continuing.

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Now that’s just funny:

In the face of demonstrable, provable, incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, McCain and Palin continue to assert that Gov. Palin opposed the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere." They do so in their speeches and ads, and their supporters say so on television until their pants are on fire.

source: Paul Begala

Jon Stewart hits Karl Rove, Bill O'Reilly, Dick Morris on Sarah Palin Hypocrisy. Watch the video from Wednesday night’s "The Daily Show”. If you are a Republican, watch this and then just try and defend it.

When conservative columnist Peggy Noonan was asked if Palin was the most qualified woman the Republicans could nominate, she responded:

"The most qualified? No. I think they went for this, excuse me, political bullshit about narratives. Every time the Republicans do that, because that's not where they live and that's not what they're good at, they blow it."

Former John McCain campaign manager Mike Murphy characterized the choices as "cynical" and "gimmicky."

Read the full article and watch the video on the Huffington Post.

In honor of the GOP Convention this week in St Paul, I present this classic Time magazine cover from 2006 (left) and my McCain 2008 parody (right - click to enlarge).

Here is Jo Ann Davidson nominating Sarah Pawlenty for Vice President. Oops! Not even the Republicans know who she is! :)

Hey Jo Ann, it’s Sarah Palin.

video:

The Alaskan Independence Party (AIP) is a political organization that promotes Alaska’s secession from the United States. It was founded by Joe Vogler who said, "I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions". He also said, "[T]he fires of Hell are glaciers compared to my hate for the American government".

The AIP says that Gov. Sarah Palin used to be a member of the party. In fact, just this year she recorded a video for the party’s convention saying “your party plays an important role in this state’s politics” and “keep up the good work”.

Watch the video:

For more on this check out this article on Daily KOS and this from ABC news.

*** Update ***

Earlier reports that Sarah Palin was not a member of the AIP are not true. However, Sarah’s husband Todd Palin was in 1995 and 2000.

One of the Republican talking points is that McCain VP choice Sarah Palin’s opposition to a $223 million “bridge to nowhere” as a prime credential for the vice presidential nomination. "As governor, I've stood up to the old politics-as-usual, to the special interests, to the lobbyists, the big oil companies, and the good-ol'-boy network," she said.

But it turns out that as mayor of Wasilla AK, Palin hired a lobbyist to secure almost $27 million in federal earmarks. Not bad for a town of only 6,700 residents. I don’t think anyone would care that much if it weren’t for the hypocrisy (McCain crusades against earmarks). He introduced Palin as a politician ”with an outstanding reputation for standing up to special interests and entrenched bureaucracies -- someone who has fought against corruption and the failed policies of the past, someone who's stopped government from wasting taxpayers' money.”

Any now it appears as though Palin was for the bridge before she was against it. While campaigning for governor in 2006 Palin ran on a build-the-bridge platform, telling Ketchikan residents (the island where the bridge was to connect) that she felt their pain when politicians called them "nowhere". Oops!

It would appear that because of McCain’s zeal to choose a woman as VP (in order to poach the disenfranchised Hillary supporters), the vetting process on Palin was little more than a couple of Google searches.

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was chosen by John McCain today to be his Vice presidential running mate. Before serving less than 2 years as Governor of Alaska, her political experience consists primarily as being the mayor of Wasilla, AK with a population of a little over 5,000 (or 15,000 if you include moose).

Ms. Palin was obviously chosen by McCain as part of his continuing strategy to poach militant “never give up, never surrender” Hillary supporters away from Obama and the Democrats. Good luck with that. Instead of running on what are quality traits of their own, Republicans have always run on putting down the traits of others. They are basically a bunch of naysayers running on lies, fear and division.

If “President McCain” were to, I don’t know, pass away in his sleep from old age, can we really hand the keys to our nuclear arsenal to a mayor of a town of 5000 people?

Tonight on Race to the White House, Pat Buchanan said that McCain honored Palin by selecting her as his VP. That’s one way to put it. I would have used the word exploited.

The Democrats have turned out the lights and packed up the stage in Denver. And now its the Republican’s turn. Watch next week as they hold their national convention in Minneapolis – St. Paul. It probably won’t be the 80,000 people jammed into a stadium excitement that Barack Obama provided, but I’m sure a few people will show up to hear Mr. Congeniality speak. Don’t be fooled. McCain is a celebrity too, but more along the lines of Eric Estrada.

This is a multimedia response to a comment on my earlier post.

The Comment Reads:

Fear mongering or just pointing out a fact that should be brought up. This is a real concern to many people...as it should be, as you want the leader of your country to be able to handle the job. Hillary makes a great point in the commercial, good for McCain on using her, one of the Dems leaders questioning their candidate. I would have done the same!

Have you looked at Obama's resume? He had one job for 8 years as an "assistant lawyer" the people I trust the least are lawyers. He couldn't get a job as a middle manager in any company let alone a top CEO position as the job as President most likely resembles.

Poor, Poor Obama.... As of Today: 8/26/08
- Behind in the polls
- No bump in polls with Biden announcement (never happened before)
- Lost 3 points when DNC started (never happened before)
- Although Hillary's speech was very good and well presented, she only said she would support Obama over McCain. Never stated he would be a good president or he was "ready" to be president, in fact she did not make any praise of Obama at all, she did however praise Biden and Michelle.

The Obama campaign kind of reminds me of a multi-level marketing sales person trying to sell you something; sounds great when you are in the room with the entire cheering crowd, but as soon as you get in your car you "know" it was not right and cannot be delivered.

I love the idea John Lennon had "imagine" but not realistic, a very naive' way to look at life...

My Special Comment Response:

Hillary had a loosing argument on inexperience which is why she lost (or more factually, why Obama won). McCain using Hillary in his commercial is just plain slimy, a typical and expected Republican tactic. And what is with the totally out of place, spliced together montage in the middle with all of the missiles being launched? I’m sure the commercial storyboards said something like “insert stock fear video footage here”.

So Hillary didn’t “praise” Obama enough? She lost to him and is understandably bitter. But she would rather suck it up and put on a pretty face for Obama than see McCain continue the Cheney administration’s failed policies (oh sorry, Bush administration). Are you saying that it’s OK for folks like McCain hating Limbaugh to come around, but it’s not OK for Hillary to do the same?

My God! We are spending $10 BILLION dollars a month in Iraq because Bush wanted to teach Saddam a lesson for trying to kill his daddy. Doesn’t that make you sick to know that we are borrowing money from China to pay for this war? $10 BILLION dollars a month! Or are you OK with that? The debt on the interest alone is enough to crumble our economy. PLUS Bush/Cheney/McCain is leaving this debt for my unborn son to pay off. And McCain wouldn’t mind if we spend money keeping troops in Iraq forever. We literally can’t afford this war.

Obama is a once a in generation candidate running on what we can be as a nation if we come together and take responsibility for our actions, not on what’s wrong or how we should just get a handout (i.e. not your typical Democrat). Did you read my post on why Obama is not WAY ahead in the polls?  It is white trash ass-holes like these geniuses (above/right), Rush Limbaugh (the douche bag who said that John Edwards cheated on his wife because she wouldn't shut up and John wanted a woman who “did something with her mouth besides talk”) and the back woods Cooters like them who are keeping Obama’s numbers down. Not because they disagree with his policies. No. Simply because he doesn't look like them (i.e. because he is black).

Back in 2000 a smear campaign ran by  “the Bushies” claimed that McCain had fathered a black child out of wedlock (the McCains' dark-skinned daughter who was adopted from Bangladesh), that his wife Cindy was a drug addict, that he was a homosexual, and that he was a "Manchurian Candidate" who was either a traitor or mentally unstable from his North Vietnam POW days. All of a sudden, these same Republicans think McCain is the belle of the ball?

And why is it that we never see McCain’s adapted daughter on the road with him? We see plenty of family pictures with John, the Borg Princess Cindy and the “good looking” blonde white daughter. It’s almost like he is ashamed or embarrassed (which I find hard to believe). Or is it because if he is seen with a non-white daughter, his unforgiving “followers” may not vote for him either.

Candidate McCain is NOTING like the "Maverick" image that Senator McCain earned. He votes 90% of the time with the Republican line of Bush. Candidate McCain is also employing the same people used by Bush to run his campaign. It's the same Republican dirty politics and the "anything is fair as long as we win" mentality that were used against him in 2000 and that America is sick of. Watch the McCain vs McCain video below:

Now let’s talk about McCain’s character. McCain is the kind of guy who yells at you for being on his yard. McCain made the joke at a 1998 Republican Senate fundraiser: "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?" he asked. "Because her father is Janet Reno." Sure, McCain apologized later but still, what a dick. And then there is this one that should really make you wonder. McCain said to his own wife at a 1992 campaign event (as reported in the book The Real McCain): "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you c*nt." That was his public response to her teasing him about his thinning hair. Any who says “trollop” any more? Does McCain also call a gas station a “filling station” and ride around in a “horseless carriage”? (Yes, John McCain is old. Very, very old.)

This is simply a window into McCain's cruel side. A side that knows no other way to solve a problem than by bombing it or “surging it” or some other way where American troops die just to say that we “won”.

So don’t talk to me about “poor Obama”. Candidate John McCain is a joke who will continue to drive this country into the poor house and our brave soldiers into their graves, and at the same time lining his “fat cat” friends’ pockets. Do you remember how many houses you own?

Watch the latest McCain commercial. It features a clip from Hillary Clinton’s famous “3am phone call” ad and even a guest appearance by Hillary herself. It’s yet another fear mongering commercial that the Republicans are so famous for.

Oh BTW, Thanks Hillary.

White House press secretary (and Bush mouthpiece) Dana Perino today issued a statement saying that President Bush and Iraq’s prime minister Nouri al-Maliki agree on a “Time Horizon” for troop withdrawal.

Time Horizon? Oh my freakn’ God! Just call it a Time Line and admit that you were wrong. Bush is an idiot Republicans are big fat liars.