It is only a matter of time before Barack Obama is seen driving with a baby on his lap, or releases a home-made sex tape. And, just like Britney and Paris, Obama wants to raise your taxes!
He’s John McCain, and he approved that message.
John McCain, who has long sought to portray himself as an independent-thinking maverick, is flip-flopping and hemming and hawing and referring to countries that don’t exist and backtracking and triangulating and…
Well, just read Matthew Yglesias here.
And he links to this and this.
McCain’s campaign is looking more pathetic all the time. And yet, polls suggest he could win.
(Yeah, yeah. Polls at this time of year often mean virtually nothing. But the fact that it is even close is ridiculously depressing, isn’t it?)
We live in an age of information, we are told.
Indeed.
I just looked at CNN.com. As I am writing this post, under “Latest News,” the site lists twenty news stories. Some of them are rather important. However, among the twenty stories that CNN considers important enough to label “Latest News,” one also finds the following eight headlines (my comments in italics):
“Singer Winehouse admitted to hospital” (Wouldn’t it be easier to report when something bad doesn’t happen to Amy?)
“Space-tourism mothership unveiled” (O…K…)
“Man deposits millions, one tattered bill at a time” (WTF?)
“Moustache pulls batter out of slump” (Giambi’s porn ’stache is hideous. Is it news?)
“Huge shark caught with bait, hoisted” (Let me see if I understand this - someone went fishing, used some bait, caught something, and hoisted it up? Holy sh*t!)
“Are you a millionaire in the making?” (Incidentally, no. But can anyone consider this “news?” Is CNN suddenly a sweepstakes? Is Ed McMahon lurking on the website somewhere?)
“Honey, I cheated with your checkbook” (Write your own joke here).
“Beer marathoners run, drink, vomit” (“CNN.com readers read, think, vomit”).
“Cop on desk duty after decking cyclist” (Dear cop: please visit editors of CNN.com and get busy).
There you have it. “Latest News.”
Obama’s European tour and the unrealistic expectations that it’s creating on the continent:
He came, he saw, he sprinked us with stardust
The Guardian
Obama on tour: three special relationships in one day
The Independent
L’appel d’Obama aux Européens: “Aidez-nous”
Le Monde
Adoration All Round as Obama Meets Sarkozy in the City of Love
Deutsche Welle
Obamamania grips Europe
The Economist
Today, we bring you a study in contrasts.
A clip from Obama’s Berlin speech:
And now, a selection of words from our President. (It is worth hanging around through the introduction and watching to the end, as there are some sublime works of performance art contained within):
Feel free to laugh or cry. Maybe a little of both.
Scheisse!
From the McCain website, Tucker Bounds (no, really) on Obama’s speech in Berlin:
“While Barack Obama took a premature victory lap today in the heart of Berlin, proclaiming himself a ‘citizen of the world,’ John McCain continued to make his case to the American citizens who will decide this election. Barack Obama offered eloquent praise for this country, but the contrast is clear. John McCain has dedicated his life to serving, improving, and protecting America. Barack Obama spent an afternoon talking about it.”
Sigh.
Is our political culture really this ridiculous? Are there really people who think it makes you a bad American if you consider yourself a citizen of the world? Are we this childish? Can I come up with even more smart-ass rhetorical questions?
It is worth pointing out that one of McCain’s heroes (and, like McCain, a guy who ran for president when he was well over a million years old) used the same phrase in 1982 at the United Nations:
I speak today as both a citizen of the United States and of the world. I come with the heartfelt wishes of my people for peace, bearing honest proposals and looking for genuine progress.
That was Ronald Reagan. The guy who McCain called “that most eloquent, visionary, and steadfast apostle of freedom.”
John McCain says he knows “how to win wars.” And, heck - I guess that would be a rather handy thing to know if you plan on fighting wars.
From The Trail:
“I know how to win wars. I know how to win wars,” McCain told the audience at a town hall in Albuquerque. “And if I’m elected President, I will turn around the war in Afghanistan, just as we have turned around the war in Iraq, with a comprehensive strategy for victory, I know how to do that.”
OK. I just want to know how he knows this. How did he learn how to win wars? I think it’s a good question.
Is it from his service in the Vietnam War? Because we didn’t win that one.
Just hours after getting hit-and-run by the McCain campaign, Bob Novak became the author of his own:
Syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak was cited by police after he hit a pedestrian with his black Corvette in downtown Washington, D.C., Wednesday morning.
A Politico reporter saw Novak in the front of a police car with a citation in his hand; a WJLA-TV crew and reporter saw Novak as well. The pedestrian, a 66-year-old male, was hospitalized at George Washington University Hospital with minor injuries according to DC Fire and EMS. Novak was later released by police and drove away from the scene.
“I didn’t know I hit him. I feel terrible,” a shaken Novak told reporters from Politico and WJLA as he was returning to his car. “He’s not dead, that’s the main thing.”
But don’t feel too bad for the Novakula, there’s more to the story:
As he traveled east on K. Street, crossing 18th, [a cyclist named David Bono] said a “black Corvette convertible with top closed plowed into the guy. The guy is sort of splayed onto the windshield.”
Bono said the pedestrian, who was crossing the street on a “Walk” signal and was in the crosswalk, rolled off the windshield and then Novak made a right into the service lane of K Street. “The car is speeding away. What’s going through my mind is, you just can’t hit a pedestrian and drive away,” Bono said.
He chased Novak half a block down K St., finally caught up with him and then put his bike in front of the car to block him and called 911. Traffic immediately backed up, horns blared, and commuters finally went into reverse to allow Novak to pull over.
Bono said that throughout, Novak “keeps trying to get away. He keeps trying to go.” He said he vaguely recognized the longtime political reporter and columnist as a Washington celebrity but could not precisely place him.
Finally, Novak put his head out the window of his car and motioned him over. Bono said he told him that you can’t hit a pedestrian and just drive away. He said Novak responded: “I didn’t see him there.”
A concierge at 1700 K Street said that she saw a bicyclist yelling and walked outside to see what the commotion was about.
“This guy hit somebody and he won’t stop so I’m going to stay here until the police come,” Aleta Petty quoted Bono as saying, as he stood in K Street, blocking traffic.
Bob, I call “bullshit.”
Feeling the pain of high gas prices? Looking for someone to blame? Feeling screwed by the oil companies?
The McCain campaign shows us who the real villain is here
(The chanting is a nice touch, no?)
I assume we can expect new McCain ads that will expose Obama’s other evil doings:
-Losing buttons off of your shirts at the dry cleaner? Obama did it.
-Obama forces movie theaters to grind their popcorn salt into that bizarre dust-like substance.
-That endless stream of Dane Cook ads during last year’s World Series? Barack directed them.
-Cats and dogs used to get along fine before Obama turned them against each other.
-Those new pants making you look fat? Barack’s fault.
-Obama is the guy who came up with all of those irritating names for everything at Starbucks.
In an age of unrealistically over-the-top, super-villain corruption, it is reassuring to know that the McCain campaign has been linked to good, old-fashioned cash-for-influence corruption:
John McCain’s senior foreign policy adviser is a close business associate of Stephen Payne, the lobbyist caught on tape offering access to top administration officials in exchange for donations to the Bush Library.
This is explosive news because Payne’s company’s entire business model is international influence peddling in exchange for oil and gas leases from politically unstable and dictatorial regimes.
McCain’s senior foreign policy and national security adviser, Randy Scheunemann, is listed as a member of Worldwide Strategic Energy’s executive team in a pre-prospectus obtained by Majikthise.
Much more from Lindsay Beyerstein here.
John McCain’s stance on the war in Iraq just got bitchslapped by . . . the leader of Iraq:
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told a German magazine he supported prospective U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s proposal that U.S. troops should leave Iraq within 16 months.
In an interview with Der Spiegel released on Saturday, Maliki said he wanted U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible.
“U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.”
I’m not really sure how McCain wriggles out of this one. If you disagree with the democratically-elected leadership of Iraq you end up looking like the imperial overlord. But if you change your position, now you’re a deceitful flip-flopper who caved in on the defining issue of your campaign. Good luck with that.
Remember when George Bush addressed the Israeli Knesset on the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel and mocked Barack Obama’s idea that we should engage our enemies in dialog? You know, the speech where he said this:
Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.” We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.
Guess what!
The Bush administration has now decided that they will send one of our highest ranking diplomats to “participate in international talks with Iran this weekend”:
President George W. Bush has authorized the most significant U.S. diplomatic contact with Iran since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, sending the U.S. State Department’s third-ranking official to Geneva for a meeting this weekend on Iran’s nuclear program, administration officials said.
The decision appeared to bend, if not exactly break, the administration’s insistence that it would not negotiate with Iran over its nuclear programs unless it first suspended uranium enrichment.
I’m going with “break.”
If he was ever on it, Governor Sanford may have just stumbled his way right off the Republican veep shortlist:
Ooops.
Well, with Mark Sanford looking like a bit of a confused tosser, perhaps the McCain campaign should opt for the best available remaining Sanford:
Grady, Aunt Esther, and Lamont were unavailable for comment.
Wheeeeee! I’m popping open a cold EuroBud in celebration of a really big number. Ahhh, freedom never tasted so good.
Who do those Europeans think they are, pretending to show us Americans how to brew beer? Hop pellets, rice…ginseng, guarana. B-to-the-E doggg, it’s what fine brewing is all about:
BE is Budweiser’s newest entry in a long line of innovative beers. This remarkable new product combines beer with caffeine, ginseng and guarana giving you a new malt beverage with a variety of ingredients.
BE has a bold and bracing beer taste with lightly sweet/tart tones, and a “wow” factor in the finish. Created for those contemporary adults who are looking for the latest flavors and variety of mixtures to keep up with their fast paced and highly social lifestyles, BE takes beer to the next level.
It’s different. It’s exciting. It’s beer with something extra!
How’d that work out?
Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc. will reformulate its alcoholic energy drinks to remove caffeine and other stimulants they contain as part of a nationwide legal settlement, it announced Thursday.
An investigation by attorneys general of 11 states found the largest U.S. brewer was marketing its caffeinated alcoholic beverages to minors and misrepresenting the drinks’ health benefits, New York state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said.
Though the company agreed to make changes, it insisted its Tilt and Bud Extra drinks were not marketed to minors.
Any more questions about how the King of Beers became the Belgian biatch? Europe is kicking our ass, admit it.
This actually explains a lot about Dick Cheney and the administration’s response to 9/11. Seems like he lives in a state of constant, pathological fear:
In the days after 9/11, when fears of another terrorist strike were at their peak, Vice President Dick Cheney was convinced that he had been subjected to a lethal dose of anthrax, according to a new book.
White House insiders from that white-knuckle time told author Jane Mayer, who authored “The Dark Side, The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals,” that the scare contributed to Cheney’s insistence on hard-line tactics for fighting terror.
Mayer, a writer for the New Yorker, claims that the vice president became the driving force in pushing for tougher interrogation tactics that critics charge went over the legal line and constitute torture.
In the days after the horror of 9/11, the country seemed to be under assault from many sides, with anthrax letters showing up in Congress and newsrooms.
On Oct. 18, 2001, a White House alarm went off indicating that sensors had detected dangerous levels of radioactive, chemical or biological agents. According to Mayer, anyone who had entered the White House situation room, including Cheney, had been exposed.
“They thought Cheney was already lethally infected,” said a former administration officer who had kept the White House secret until now, according to the book.[. . .]
Miraculously, he survived.
But in the days after the incident, Cheney was taking no chances. Eleven days later, Cheney insisted on leaving the White House and retreating to one of his “secure, undisclosed locations,” the book claims.
Cheney and other Cabinet members took turns hunkering down in one of several cold war era bunkers built to survive a nuclear attack. The bunkers, deep underground, were crammed with communications gear and Cheney would stay in what was dubbed the “The Commander in Chief’s Suite,” Mayer writes.
When vice president wasn’t in the bunker, Mayer claims that “a sense of constant danger followed Cheney everywhere.” The route was altered daily during the veep’s commute to his above-ground office. On the back seat next to him would be a duffel bag stuffed with a gas mask and biochemical survival suit. And a doctor nearly always traveled with him, “The Dark Side” claims.
Of course, Cheney and Rumsfeld share a deep history of delusion, paranoid ideation, persecution complexes, and a variety of unreasonable fears.
Update:
Andrew Sullivan is out today with a chilling piece on Cheney: “Vice President For Torture.”
In the situation room
There was a toy world
And a flight costume
and a picture of–
It’s Goodnight Bush! Sweet Dreams…
The New York Times and Washington Post present the following set of stomach-churning facts gleaned from investigative journalist, Jane Mayer:
- “Red Cross investigators concluded last year in a secret report that the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation methods for high-level Qaeda prisoners constituted torture and could make the Bush administration officials who approved them guilty of war crimes.”
- “A CIA analyst warned the Bush administration in 2002 that up to a third of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay may have been imprisoned by mistake, but White House officials ignored the finding and insisted that all were ‘enemy combatants’ subject to indefinite incarceration.”
- “[A] top aide to Vice President Cheney shrugged off the report and squashed proposals for a quick review of the detainees’ cases . . .’There will be no review,’ the book quotes Cheney staff director David Addington as saying. ‘The president has determined that they are ALL enemy combatants. We are not going to revisit it.’”
- “[T]he [CIA] analyst estimated that a full third of the camp’s detainees were there by mistake. When told of those findings, the top military commander at Guantanamo at the time, Major Gen. Michael Dunlavey, not only agreed with the assessment but suggested that an even higher percentage of detentions — up to half — were in error. Later, an academic study by Seton Hall University Law School concluded that 55 percent of detainees had never engaged in hostile acts against the United States, and only 8 percent had any association with al-Qaeda.”
- [T]he International Committee of the Red Cross declared in the report, given to the C.I.A. last year, that the methods used on Abu Zubaydah, the first major Qaeda figure the United States captured, were ‘categorically’ torture, which is illegal under both American and international law”.
- “[T]he Red Cross document ‘warned that the abuse constituted war crimes, placing the highest officials in the U.S. government in jeopardy of being prosecuted.’”
Constitutional law professor, and former NSA lawyer, Jonathan Turley, throws in his two cents:
John McCain’s recent attack on Barack Obama just got shot down:
In a statement criticizing Obama’s positions on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the organization claiming credit for the missile launches, McCain wrote, “This is the same organization that I voted to condemn as a terrorist organization when an amendment was on the floor of the United States Senate. Senator Obama refused to vote.”
The problem with the critique? McCain also missed that vote on the Kyl-Lieberman amendment on September 26, 2007. Records show that Obama was in New Hampshire and McCain was in New York instead of being in the Senate chamber for the vote in question.
And this line of attack is not really the best idea for McCain since he’s the most MIA senator in the entire 110th Congress, missing more than 60 percent of the votes cast.
Oh, I’m just getting warmed up Berlusconi today. His latest scandal centers around a series of recorded telephone conversations that show just how hard he’s willing to work to secure policy positions for topless models. This man’s sacrifice is truly mind boggling; why he’s the Jesus Christ of Politics! In response to the incriminating transcripts, Berlusconi did what any self-respecting unreconstructed fascist would do: try to make government accountability illegal. So in America, wiretapping expands while in Italy, it becomes more limited. Excuse me for a moment while I laugh and cry at the same time.
Problem is, the cat is already out the bag on this one, and it is a non-stop quote machine.
First, there’s the case of Mara Carfagna, the current minister for Equal Opportunity. This headline pretty much sums up her situation: Carfagna denies pleasuring Berlusconi. Even better is this long piece from the Guardian:
For more than a week now, Rome has been alive with rumours that police in Naples, working on yet another investigation of Berlusconi for alleged corruption, taped sexually explicit discussions between the prime minister and his 32-year-old equal opportunities minister, Mara Carfagna, a former topless model. The tapes were reportedly made while investigators were probing the relationship between Berlusconi and the head of drama at RAI, Italy’s equivalent of the BBC.
Moving on, it’s the case of the journalist Virginia Sanjust di Teulada, that has the most, ahem, legs. What happened here?
As for Sanjust di Teulada, the intelligence officer’s wife, her role remains mysterious. According to Armati’s version, set out in documents submitted to the Rome court and summarised this week in the daily La Repubblica, the flowers his wife received were the prelude to a lunch the next day at the prime minister’s office and a gift of a diamond bracelet. The intelligence officer claims it was the start of a intense romance from which he initially benefited…
Contacted by a journalist from Corriere della Sera, she replied with a refined ambiguity worthy of a character in a Pirandello drama. “The truth,” mused Virginia Sanjust di Teulada, “is always - but in this case particularly - impossible to explain in words.”
Courts in Naples and in Rome are currently sifting through over 250 hours of transcripts. Stay tuned.
The Italian left Bush Administration pulled no punches during the recent G8 conference on climate change, setting the record straight once and for all on the record of Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (born 1936) is one of the most controversial leaders in the history of a country known for governmental corruption and vice. Primarily a businessman with massive holdings and influence in international media, he is regarded by many as a political dilettante who gained his high office only through use of his considerable influence on the national media.
Oops! Picture the scenario. Intern X is charged with circulating a short biography of G8 leaders for a White House press release. Like any other red blooded 21st century American scholar, she hops online and nabs the first thing that looks authoritative, cuts and pastes, and voilà, the job is done.
Hated by many but respected by all at least for his bella figura (personal style) and the sheer force of his will, Berlusconi has parlayed his business acumen and influence into a personal empire that has resulted in Italy’s longest–running government ever and in his becoming the country’s wealthiest man. Bursting onto the scene with no political experience in 1993, he campaigned—using his vast network of media holdings—on a promise to purge the notoriously lackadaisical Italian government of corruption. He won appointment to the office of prime minister in 1994. However, he and his fellow Forza Italia Party leaders soon found themselves accused of the very corruption he had vowed to eradicate.
This is an extremely sloppy mistake for an administration that has been so disciplined in distributing its version of reality. Did someone at the White House forget that Berlusconi and Bush are good personal friends that go way back? Ah, who can forget the good times they had together after September 11, 2001? But why, oh why do they always leave the best parts out?
He released a CD in 2003 of Neopolitan love songs. The prime minister prefers to spend his spare time at his 70–room villa in Sardinia named “Arcore,” whose amenities include a private park, a movie theater, and walls of large–screen televisions.
Bush is just jealous I guess.
Call me old fashioned, but it might be a good policy to actually write the things published under the guise of official government communications. It’s easier to stay on message that way and cuts down on the written apologies, not that it’s necessary to apologize for speaking the truth every now and then.
President George Bush signed off with a defiant farewell over his refusal to accept global climate change targets at his last G8 summit.
As he prepared to fly out from Japan, he told his fellow leaders: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.”
What else can I say? Our president is a dick who thinks that he’s funny. Sure, you argue, Bush gave some ground at the talks, agreeing for the first time to reduce greenhouse emissions by 50% by 2050 after extracting signatures from China and India. But these targets are well below those set by Kyoto protocol and such emissions are still on the rise worldwide and in the U.S.
Yeah, things are looking up, good times ahead. We’re finally headed in the right direction and the G8 is showing the kind of leadership necessary to get the job done:
One day, in particular, he said, was “gloriously incoherent.” At a meeting in the morning, participants focused on finding ways to reduce gas prices, he said, while a session that afternoon focused on raising them through caps or taxes on fossil fuels.
The most discouraging aspect of the statements out of Japan, for many experts, was seeing the persistent gap between what science is saying about global warming and what countries are doing.
Speaking with one voice…out of both sides of the mouth. Now, that’s funny.
Today the FISA bill passed and every meaningful amendment designed to protect our civil liberties was defeated.
A Democratically-controlled Congress just aided in the cover-up of at least 30 federal crimes committed by George Bush and Dick Cheney.
As an added bonus, we no longer have a meaningful 4th Amendment to the Constitution or any protection against government intrusion into our “private” communications:
UPDATE:
The ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation vow to challenge the FISA bill on the basis that it is an unconstitutional violation of the 4th Amendment and that it further usurps the Judicial branch of government.
Good luck.
Need some proof of just how thoroughly the Legislative branch has been emasculated? Read no further:
From the AP:
WASHINGTON—The next time the president goes to war, Congress should be consulted and vote on whether it agrees, according to a bipartisan study group chaired by former secretaries of state James Baker III and Warren Christopher.
Is it just me, or has nobody in Congress read the Constitution?
The Congress shall have power to . . .
To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;
To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;
To provide and maintain a navy;
To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;
To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
From the AP:
LITTLE ROCK, Ark.—Crowds in Arkansas came for the lure of cage fighting and $1 beer, but police say what they got instead was men ripping each others’ clothes off and kissing — a stunt suspected of being orchestrated by Sacha Baron Cohen of “Borat” fame.
It seems that George Bush has had a taste for torture for quite some time. In 1967, the New York Times reported the following story about the DKE fraternity at Yale:
NEW HAVEN, Nov. 7–A Yale fraternity accused by the student newspaper of burning its initiates with a brand will have its fate decided Friday by student fraternity leaders.
The fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon, could face the temporary closure of its house and a $1,000 fine resulting from alleged violations of rules previously passed by the Inter-Fraternity Council, which consists of Yale’s five fraternity presidents.
The charges against Delta Kappa Epsilon were made last Friday in a Yale Daily News article that accused campus fraternities of carrying on “sadistic and obscene” initiation procedures.
The charge that has caused the most controversy on the Yale campus is that Delta Kappa Epsilon applied a “hot branding iron” to the small of the back of its 40 new members in ceremonies two weeks ago. A photograph showing a scab in the shape of the Greek letter Delta, approximately a half inch wide, appeared with the article.
A former president of Delta said that the branding is done with a hot coathanger. But the former president, George Bush, a Yale senior, said that the resulting wound is “only a cigarette burn.”
Only a few steps from here and you’re telling the American people that “we don’t torture” and that the grievous crimes of Gitmo are just “hazing pranks from some fraternity.”
Maybe someone should have gotten little George some help.
Robert Kennedy hit one out of the park today.
Citing their free speech rights, three tour guides in Philadelphia filed a lawsuit this week challenging an ordinance that will require them to pass a history test and get a license. Mayor Michael Nutter signed the measure into law in April amid concern that some guides were perpetuating gross inaccuracies, including the false claims that Benjamin Franklin had 69 illegitimate children and that Betsy Ross, a three-time widow, killed her husbands. But the three guides, Ann Boulais, Michael Tait and Josh Silver, backed by a public-interest law firm, argue that the city has gone too far. The tests will be required beginning in October.
Lee Greenwood is famous for his 4th of July masterpiece, “God Bless the U.S.A.” One thing has always bothered me about it. It’s this line:
And I’m proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free.
What the hell does this mean? Does Lee Greenwood actually live on another American citizen? Or has Lee so confused the land he loves with himself that they are cognitively inseparable for him?
If so, hats off, Lee Greenwood — your patriotism runneth over.
[Updated Below]
I believe it was Emerson who wrote that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
Yesterday, our nation’s media showed why they think Emerson is full of shit.
The truth, according to the Washington Press Corps(e), is that politicians show that they are big-minded and serious by never, EVER, changing their views–no matter what.
In a press conference Barack Obama stated that he would continue to “refine” his policy about Iraq as he traveled to the embattled country and met with our commanders on the ground.
How is a reporter supposed to respond when a politician uses a word like “refine” in a sentence? By doing the only thing you know how to do, of course: manufacture fake controversies.
Take the AP story, for instance, which was titled “Obama opens door to altering his Iraq policy”:
Democrat Barack Obama opened the door Thursday to altering his plan to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq in 16 months based on what he hears from military commanders during his upcoming trip there.
The Washington Post’s headline was “Obama Softens on Iraq Withdrawal Timeline”
And Mike Allen, of The Politico:
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Thursday backed off his firm promise to withdraw combat forces from Iraq immediately and instead said he could “refine” his plan after his trip to Baghdad later this month. [. . .]
Obama later said at a second news conference he still intends to stick to the timeline.
Nice work, Mike, you hack. Really going out of your way to construct a “flip-flopper” narrative.
Refining something, to our nation’s media, apparently means something akin to “reject,” “alter,” or “change.” But not according to the dictionary. There I find that “refine” can mean the following:
- S: (v) polish, refine, fine-tune, down (improve or perfect by pruning or polishing) “refine one’s style of writing”
- S: (v) complicate, refine, rarify, elaborate (make more complex, intricate, or richer) “refine a design or pattern”
- S: (v) refine (treat or prepare so as to put in a usable condition) “refine paper stock”; “refine pig iron”; “refine oil”
- S: (v) refine, rectify (reduce to a fine, unmixed, or pure state; separate from extraneous matter or cleanse from impurities) “refine sugar”
- S: (v) refine (attenuate or reduce in vigor, strength, or validity by polishing or purifying) “many valuable nutrients are refined out of the foods in our modern diet”
- S: (v) refine (make more precise or increase the discriminatory powers of) “refine a method of analysis”; “refine the constant in the equation”
Two points about all this.
First, I think that this dust-up is absurd solely on the basis of the language Obama used. To “refine” something does not mean to fundamentally “alter” or “change” it. If anything, refining something suggests a process whereby something becomes more concentrated, more itself — free from impurities or mistakes. Essentially, Obama is saying that he wants to end the war better.
Secondly, this event is evidence of the pathetic “gotcha” school of journalism where the objective is to expose a candidate as a “flip-flopper.” God knows there is plenty of self-serving equivocation, waffling, and politically expedient reversal going on in Washington. And these things should be exposed for what they are. But we must also acknowledge that a “change of mind” based on the consultation of authorities and the study of new evidence is actually an indication of a sane, healthy intellect–not a suggestion of duplicity or dishonesty.
To our journalists and the preposterous commentator clowns who construct our media narratives, only a “flip-flopper” would state that they intend to thoughtfully consider evidence and take great care when making decisions about things like war and the lives of soldiers. And a “flip-flopper” is incapable of being a good president.
I suppose this means that the platonic ideal of the American president is someone like George Bush who gets an idea in his head and stubbornly refuses to alter course regardless of facts, evidence, objective data, polls, and the opinions of learned professionals. That kind of consistency takes character. And integrity. Better to be ruled by your “gut” than by your mind.
Way to go, media elites!
UPDATE I:
Not to be outdone, NPR issues this ingenious statement:
Democrat Barack Obama says he is not shifting his policy on troop withdrawals from Iraq, just hours after he said he was open to “refining” his policy.
Oh, snap! NPR, you just busted Obama wearing five pairs of flip-flops! Previously, Obama said he was committed to ending the war, but now he’s completely “refined” his policy and will probably keep our soldiers there for 100 years. McCain wins!
“Open to ‘refining’ his policy” is the equivalent of saying that Barack Obama is “open to perfecting his policy” on Iraq. Shock! Gasp!
One of the more popular statements on this issue (judged by Google) was penned by this budding philologist:
Does Barack Obama’s “Refine” Mean the Same Thing As Evolving, or Flip Flopping?
Refine, evolve, changes his mind…..they all mean the same thing…..Flip Flopping.
Can’t you just hear the rustle of the Cheetos bag?
UPDATE II:
This MSNBC write-up is pretty fair.
In a genius political move, John McCain is spending July 4th . . . in Mexico.
Watch the clip of Wes Clark’s statements on John McCain. Then compare it to the media response: a self-feeding loop of evidence-free outrage and effrontery that boggle the mind.
Watching televised news literally makes you stupid.
Some completely unbelievable news from today’s New York Times. The entire harsh interrogation torture regime used at Guantanamo Bay was plagiarized from Red Scare-era documents detailing Communist Chinese interrogation techniques:
The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”
What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.
The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency. [. . .]
The 1957 article from which the chart was copied was entitled “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War” and written by Alfred D. Biderman, a sociologist then working for the Air Force, who died in 2003. Mr. Biderman had interviewed American prisoners returning from North Korea, some of whom had been filmed by their Chinese interrogators confessing to germ warfare and other atrocities.
The article further explains that the “only change made in the chart presented at Guantánamo was to drop its original title: ‘Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance.’”
American Torture.™ Made in China.
As the article is quick to reveal, the position of the US at the time was that the described Chinese practices were torture. Further, it was also clear at the time that such practices do not produce actionable intelligence; rather, they elicit promiscuous confession. In the end, torture does nothing but create an endless, self-justifying loop of hysteria and paranoia.
Perhaps it is time for someone to tell this president “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
Those Irish punks have ruined everything, now Poland :
In a newspaper interview published Tuesday, Mr. Kaczynski said it would “pointless” to sign the Lisbon Treaty in light of the Irish rejection.
Damn, that’s the height of amazing nerve. I’ll bet Sarko’s not happy.
“The European idea is in danger if we don’t protect Europeans,” Mr. Sarkozy said Monday.
What’s the “European idea” you ask? Is it a more moderate, sensible version of the American dream? A collective light bulb hovering over Belgium? What kind of fuel economy does it get? Does it include peeing standing up?
In a surprisingly frank admission, the French foreign minister, Bernard Koucher said the no vote in Ireland illustrated how the European Union had alienated its citizens by conducting politics in a manner they find incomprehensible.
“They understand nothing,” Mr. Kouchner said in comments to journalists in Paris “The institutions interest no one.”
He argued that, in contrast, voters did appreciate that Europe “was not able to respond to the rise in the price of petrol.” As for the jargon in which business in Brussels is conducted, Mr. Kouchner said, “no one understands — including me.”
Conducting politics in a manner they find incomprehensible. Good thing we don’t have that problem here in the greatest and best country God has ever given man on the face of the earth.
While the White House refuses to open official emails from the EPA containing policy recommendations they don’t like, the Pentagon is busy refusing orders from the EPA to clean up toxic chemical spills on several military bases.
The Washington Post reports that chemicals posing “imminent and substantial” dangers to the health of the public and the environment are present in the soil and groundwater at several military installations. The EPA has ordered to Pentagon to add the sites to the Superfund list and begin a clean-up of the affected areas.
Apparently, cleaning up is with the terrorists:
The Pentagon has . . . declined to sign agreements required by law that cover 12 other military sites on the Superfund list of the most polluted places in the country. The contracts would spell out a remediation plan, set schedules, and allow the EPA to oversee the work and assess penalties if milestones are missed.
Experts in the field of environmental law say that this move is extraordinary:
“This is stunning,” said Rena Steinzor, who helped write the Superfund laws as a congressional staffer and now teaches at the University of Maryland Law School and is president of the nonprofit Center for Progressive Reform. “The idea that they would refuse to sign a final order — that is the height of amazing nerve.”
Yes, the “height of amazing nerve.” Pretty much sums up the past 7 years.
