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The annual Operation Support Our Troops - Illinois “Rockin’” Concert is coming up this weekend at Cantigny Park in Wheaton. If you’re free Saturday afternoon and eve donate and stop by to see Beatles cover band American English and Gary Sinise’s Lt. Dan Band.
OSOT-IL has been doing these concerts annually for the last several years and as with other groups dedicated to helping our troops and their families that I’ve highlighted like SALUTE the money or goods you donate will go to a good cause because the OSOT-IL concert is run by grassroots volunteers right here in Illinois and the money and items donated go to supporting our GIs and their families. (Contrast that to the “Freedom Concerts” promoted by Sean Hannity and Ollie North which appear to have a very large portion of the donations going to Hannity and North’s salaries, etc. instead of to our troops.)
Cantigny’s beautiful, we’ll hopefully have good weather and the bands can jam. Enjoy!
Donate: Operation Support Our Troops-Illinois
Get a Ticket: OSOT-IL Rockin’ Concert, Saturday, July 19
According to a press release sent out today, Daniel Biss has now outraised incumbent State Representative Beth Coulson for the third consecutive reporting period. Not only that, but he is cruising past her on several fronts that voters tend to look at when it comes to campaign fundraising. That same release provides these stats:
The reports from the first half of 2008 shows Biss outperformed Coulson by 60 percent in total money raised, more than two-to-one in money raised from individual receipts, more than three-to-one in money raised from within the 17th District, and nearly 50 percent in money raised in low dollar contributions.
Coulson did outperform Biss when it came to PAC contributions - nearly one-third of Coulson’s money came from Political Action Committees compared to Biss’s ten percent.
What jumps out at me is the 3 to 1 in-district rate since donors in-district also tend to be voters.
Mr. Biss is putting in the hard work it takes to run a campaign and stay rooted to his neighbors and community. This, in turn, bodes well for the 17th district should those folks elect him as their new State Rep this autumn.
Progress Illinois has also taken note of Mr. Biss’ work ethic.
Update: The Biss campaign now has the full press release online (PDF).
Welcome to ‘Inside Baseball’ (or should I say ‘Inside the Boxing Ring’)
So now pointing out facts which dispel Mr. Dienhart’s lies are considered “personal attacks” and “diatribes” and “lies” in and of themselves…
No wonder Sen. Obama’s suggestion that we Americans ought to ignore these distractions and instead focus on actually solving the weighty matters before us has led him to a consistent and evermore substantial lead over Sen. McCain since the Democratic nomination process ended.
And little wonder too that Mr. Dienhart’s own updates and comments have devolved into the very things he and his supporters claim of my fact-based presentations: diatribes full of personal attacks on my integrity and lies about both what I’ve written and what Sen. Obama has said.
This is really, really inside baseball and concerns Mr. Dienhart’s repeated slams against me (see his Update 2) in his increasingly salacious posts making claims about non-existent Obama “flips” on Iraq.
Just clearing the air a bit…
As if his first post in this debate wasn’t fibbing enough, George Dienhart has updated his most recent, very carefully parsed post and — again — cherry-picks out only the parts which fit his narrow, bizarro alternate reality all while continuing to falsely claim that somehow my pointing out facts which negate his fibs are “lies” in and of themselves.
Does Mr. Dienhart not know how to read the entire proposal Sen. Obama originally put forth in January of 2007? Does he not understand that taking only a few bullet points out of my own posts (post 1 and post 2) debunking his junk while ignoring the conclusions thereof doesn’t make his fibs any more true than before?
Sadly for his readers, this appears to be the case.
Perhaps Mr. Dienhart will bother to actually link to these posts and quotes of which he whines instead of cherry-picking a few lines from them as he fabricates his misinformation.
Only then would his readers be able to judge for themselves who is referring to fact-based info — such as the actual contents of Obama’s plan from 2007 which included references to the residual forces Mr. Dienhart now lies about being a “flip” — and who is, quite frankly, acting like an irritable troll by clipping quotes in convenient places.
Then again, in his partisan fog, perhaps Mr. Dienhart really thinks that Obama is somehow flipping his consistent positions simply because he’s not repeating every single line item of every single policy proposal every single time he mentions said proposals during 30 second debate points and soundbyte interviews… (Of course if he did do that then partisan Obama-haters would start complaining that Obama is overanalytical and elitist… Oh, wait, they’re saying that too. Hard to believe, I know.)
That said, the hypocritical Mr. Dienhart may want to discontinue crying about “partisan talking points”. Everything I’ve linked to was pre-existing information which I simply (and all too easily) referred to shine the light of truth on Mr. Dienhart’s lies.
On the other hand, several points Mr. Dienhart makes come straight from GOP talking points. Here’s but one example… Mr. Dienhart quotes something from what he calls a “Democrat” National Committee meeting (not sure what that is since the actual meeting on that day was the Democratic National Committee).
So right off the bat we know he’s using a unique misspelling. A quick Google search including that typo reveals that Mr. Dienhart pulled “his” talking point from an equally half-witted July 5th Republican talking point memo PDF hosted at GOP.com. GOP.com is, of course, the website of the Republican National Committee (or is it the “Republic” National Committee?).
In attempting to defend his lies about Sen. Obama, Illinois Review whiner George Dienhart continues to parse the finest of lines and blatantly make up baloney. He complains that my earlier post pointing out the facts behind his fibs claiming Sen. Obama has somehow “flipped” his Iraq position missed his intended point and that I should get reading lessons. It seems he needs to look in the mirror.
Readers should know Mr. Deinhart is so enamored with me he once called my office just to check on my whereabouts. I suppose he probably made the trip from beautiful Bull Valley one day and knows all about my ugly green kitchen countertops (a la conservative stalker extraordinaire Michelle Malkin) and he probably even looked up my DMV records and knows all about that junky old green Mazda Protege I got rid of years ago (my first new car, ah memories).
–
First, the Dienhart parsing…
Here’s what he originally wrote:
[...] The latest flip was on the war. It seems that Obama will not pull the troops out . Liberals can now collectively whine about how this isn’t a flip. All done now? Here is the quote from Sen. Obama.
“I have put forward a plan that will get our troops out by the end of 2009. We already saw today reports that the Iraqi minister suggests that we’re going to be in there at least until 2018, a decade-long commitment. Currently, we are spending $9 to $10 billion a month. The notion is that we are going to sustain that at the same time as we’re neglecting what we see happening in Afghanistan right now, where you have a luxury hotel in Kabul blown up by militants and the situation continues to worsen.”
Notice that first sentence? “I have put forward a plan that will get our troops out by the end of 2009.” What did Sen. Obama say in his recent Op/Ed piece in the New York Times? “’We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 - two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces.”
I’ll leave the bizarre, yet historically correct reference to Mesopotamia alone for the moment. Let’s call this what it is- a flip. Oh, and lets just be honest about what he is proposing- the same “residual force” that John McCain was crucified on earlier in the campaign. [...]
(emphasis added for clarity)
Now, my post called Dienhart out on the “Notice that first sentence” bit… not the “Oh, and” bit which took up a much smaller portion of his post.
Again, there is no “flip” here.
Obama’s Plan for Iraq is the same 16 month strategy he first proposed as binding legisltion in the Senate in January 2007.
- January 2007 (when it was first introduced) + Obama’s 16 Month Strategic Redeployment = March 2008
- January 2008 (when Obama again mentioned it in a Dem debate) + Obama’s 16 Month Strategic Redeployment = March 2009
- January 2009 (when the next president is sworn in) + Obama’s 16 Month Strategic Redeployment (should it be Obama who is elected) = March 2010
…In other words, the Obama Plan for Iraq is exactly the same. The only thing changing is the timing and the obstructionist Republicans — from the filibustering Senate GOP to the veto-ready Republican president — are the ones causing the delays in implementation.
Heck, even the Iraqi leadership is now essentially agreeing with Obama on the concept of a strategic timetable.
But, Dienhart’s second post goes on and on about how he wasn’t really talking about the timing (despite what he wrote about 2009 vs 2010). No, instead he now says he was really emphasizing the last few sentences so ignore all the other stuff. To wit, he now writes:
“Ahh, that’s not what the piece was addressed. Quite clearly, I stated that the flip occurred when Obama went from advocating a total pullout from Iraq to leaving behind sixty thousand troops as a “reaction force”.”
As I demonstrated above, Mr. Dienhart wrote about the 2009 vs 2010 timing for the majority of that first diatribe and didn’t really get into discussing the point about residual forces until after he says “Oh, and…”
Bizarre, but it leads to…
–
Second, the Dienhart baloney…
Mr. Dienhart originally wrote, “It seems that Obama will not pull the troops out” and “Oh, and lets just be honest about what he is proposing- the same “residual force” that John McCain was crucified on earlier in the campaign.” (Again, emphasis added.)
This too is not a flip, despite Mr. Dienhart’s deepest partisan wishes.
You see, from the get-go Sen. Obama has said the same thing about having a limited number of troops in country after the strategic redeployment of the combat brigades. Surely Mr. Dienhart, as a military man himself, knows the difference in forces. Obama has never said he would pull out every single GI (our embassies are guarded by Marines after all, would Mr. Dienhart complain about that too?) but that we do need to focus on redeploying the bulk of our battle forces, a point on which the majority of Americans agree with him.
Recall that Sen. Obama first introduced his plan to the Senate in January of 2007. From his Senate website, dated January 30, 2007:
“The plan allows for a limited number of U.S. troops to remain as basic force protection, to engage in counter-terrorism, and to continue the training of Iraqi security forces. If the Iraqis are successful in meeting the thirteen benchmarks for progress laid out by the Bush Administration, this plan also allows for the temporary suspension of the redeployment, provided Congress agrees that the benchmarks have been met and that the suspension is in the national security interest of the United States.”
In other words, there is no “flip” and Dienhart flops again.
Perhaps it is Mr. Dienhart who needs that reading lesson. Or, perhaps he’d like that thinking lesson instead since both his first and second post merely mimic the bogus and hollow yelps of “Flip!” from other partisan conservatives.
–
And some miscellany…
By the by, Dienhart complains that the trackback on the original posts appeared twice. Horrors.
I hadn’t realized the trackback popped up twice on the original Dienhart screed. I’m not sure why that would’ve happened other than I was thinking about posting an update about other cons writing about non-flips so I stopped in on that post’s edit feature later in the day (I ended up not doing the update). I suppose those darn Internets may have taken that as a double-post.
If I could fix the quirk to soothe Mr. Dienhart’s poor feelings I would but really it’s nothing he should worry his pretty little head about though.
As for why I write about Illinois Review contributors… they keep posting malarkey and rational folks like me will keep debunking it. If the Reviewers don’t like that, it’s well within their means to stop writing their spurious essays and start writing honestly. (It’s funny how the non-Ill Review peeps I debunk have the same complaints, as if I’m hurting their egos instead of pointing out facts. Go figure.)
I get that Mr. Dienhart apparently loathes what Sen. Obama has proposed and all the values for which he stands. But does he really need to continue to make up such claptrap? Apparently doing so, just like calling random people just to check in on them, fulfills some sort of desire for him.
To each their own.
PS: Mr. Dienhart may consider the 63% of Americans who say the Iraq War was not worth it as “anti-war” (ABC News Poll, 7/10-13, 2008). But, really, most of us rational Americans are simply anti-lying our way into war and, more importantly, anti-bungled war. Same goes for Democrats or Republicans who worm their way into needless wars — they both tend to get clobbered at the ballot box.
He says the pain is in his neck, but it’s apparently really just a brain cramp from cherry-picking those darn facts.
In his too-cute-by-half post “Flip!” George Dienhart squeals that Sen. Obama has somehow “flipped” on strategic withdrawal from Iraq. The problem for George is that he pulls a quote from January 2008 and removes all context of time from it.
Why does the timing matter? Because Sen. Obama said at the January 15, 2008 Democratic debate in Las Vegas: “I have put forward a plan that will get our troops out by the end of 2009.” (The full quote, which to his credit George picked up directly, is half-way through this debate transcript.)
The Obama Plan on Iraq is based on redeploying one to two brigades out of Iraq every month, which would take about 16 months to get the bulk of our forces out…
Makes sense: 16 months from January 2008 would be in 2009.
George now whines that Obama has flipped because he is — get this — still saying his plan would take about 16 months.
Where’s the flip?
George has to make it up by gurgling that Obama is now stating the redeployment wouldn’t be complete until 2010. That year, 2010, is of course 16 months after Obama would be sworn into the Presidency if he is elected. In fact, his actual plan was introduced to the Senate in early 2007 — with 16 months actually falling in March of 2008 at that point — and was unfortunately DOA given the obstructionist Senate Republicans’ 24/7 filibustering. I wonder why George didn’t get the brilliant idea to make up baloney about that date.
Sen. Obama’s 16 month strategy is still a 16 month strategy — the Republicans’ obstinance keeps pushing the actual implementation date further away.
Why is the Obama Plan on Iraq important and just what is so “strategic” about it? Just read the news reports about Afghanistan and what Obama has to say about concentrating on the real war on terror (in Afghanistan against the Taliban) and focusing on the real culprits behind 9/11 (Osama bin Forgotten and al Qaida).
Now consider that George’s cherry-picked essay is designed to denigrate Obama’s common sense foreign policy and, more importantly, military policy while also essentially promoting John McCain’s presidential ambitions and his desire to stay in Iraq for 100 years or more. (And yes, McCain did say he’d like our troops to stay for 50… 100… 1,000… even a million years after peace has broken out — as if the Taliban and al Qaida did not exist and we had endless numbers of GIs.)
Is this sort of cherry-picked partisan proselytizing what John McCain’s economic adviser (and architect of the current mortgage crisis with his Gramm Act) Phil Gramm had in mind when he complained Americans are whiners? Did he mean to reference criers like George who have to cherry-pick facts and ignore context in order to promote their alternate realities?
Sadly for George his post “Flip!” is nothing but a flop.
I posted the entire Declaration of Independence a year ago, some 11 score and more years after a group of wise men first wrote it using quill and parchment… In this election year, the 8th year of a controversial presidency many believe has set too many ill precedents and reverted back to several of the methods used by that other infamous George from the 1770s, this particular passage seems just as appropriate now as ever:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
— That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
And, of course, there are those grievance against King George III which also still resonate… In 2008, we people of these United States are dealing with the fall out from the current George: the suspension of habeus corpus, the illegal domestic spying, the Big Brother information gathering on all of us (not just “targets”), and even the treasonous publicizing of undercover American spies. Here’s what John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and the others had to say of that earlier George:
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Fran Eaton, Illinois Review’s editor, picks up on a speculative post by fellow conservative partisan and her “good friend” Joyce Morrison in a feebly attempt to “debunk” global warming.
You see, oceanographers discovered a series of underwater volcanoes 2 1/2 miles below the Arctic Ocean. They are so deep in fact that these cracks in the earth don’t behave like their counterparts on land because the herculean water pressure distorts lava and gas bubbles and even prevents steam from forming.
Now, one who doesn’t know much about vulcanology and oceanography might leave it to scientists to describe the processes at work here. And indeed, the researchers studying these deep-sea volcanoes depict an alien world of oddly shaped stones and shards of glass-like rock.
To her credit, Ms. Eaton does indeed briefly quote the Science Daily article written about the study.
But she and her good friend Ms. Morrison then jump to a completely illogical and unfounded conclusion that isn’t even mentioned in the article at all: that these few volcanoes, 2 1/2 miles under the ocean surface, might have something to do with the melting polar ice cap.
Is carbon dioxide released in a volcanic eruption? Sure. Just as it has been throughout the earth’s history — but the recent global warming temp spike has happened much more quickly than anything found in any geologic record. Thus it is illogical to think that one volcano (or even three, as in this case) would be the cause for the sudden worldwide jump in temperature seen in the past century-plus.
Is lava hot? You bet. Scientists studying volcanoes have died because magma has burned them to death. It’s real hot stuff. But is the lava produced by three volcanoes which are located 2 1/2 miles underwater going to be hot enough to melt polar ice from Russia to Alaska to Canada to Greenland? No, it’s not — for the same reason that the underwater volcanoes near Hawaii don’t raise the air temperature on those tropical islands. It’s just too deep.
Finally, logic would dictate that if these volcanoes were causing the Arctic ice to melt, then the Antarctic ice would not be melting due to a lack of magic volcanoes. Sadly for this myopic partisan duo of conservativedom, the Antarctic ice is also melting quite rapidly — with entire sheets of ice breaking off the southern continent and floating away to melt. (Such vast quantities of freshwater suddenly melting into saltwater are very likely to disrupt ocean patterns which have stabilized the global climate for millenia, mind you, but far be it from this dynamic duo to care about such things when there’s a funky partisan yarn to spin.)
Maybe Fran and Joyce read that creative Science Daily headline (”Fire Under Arctic Ice: Volcanoes Have Been Blowing Their Tops In The Deep“) and got all hot and bothered thinking they had found the cure for what ails their fellow partisan ostriches who just need to find that one last miracle shred of infopimping that can be twisted just so in order to convince the rest of the globe that reality isn’t really real…
Sadly, they have failed in that regard.
Over the weekend, former NATO Commander Gen. Wesley Clark (Ret.), a Barack Obama supporter, was discussing Sen. John McCain’s qualifications (or lack thereof) for office on CBS’ Sunday morning news show.
Bob Schieffer: Well you, you went so far as to say that you thought John McCain was, quote, and these are your words, “untested and untried,” And I must say I, I had to read that twice, because you’re talking about somebody who was a prisoner of war. He was a squadron commander of the largest squadron in the Navy. He’s been on the Senate Armed Services Committee for lo these many years. How can you say that John McCain is un- untested and untried? General?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Because in the matters of national security policy making, it’s a matter of understanding risk. It’s a matter of gauging your opponents, and it’s a matter of being held accountable. John McCain’s never done any of that in his official positions. I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in Armed Forces as a prisoner of war. He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn’t held executive responsibility. That large squadron in Air- in the Navy that he commanded, it wasn’t a wartime squadron. He hasn’t been there and ordered the bombs to fall. He hasn’t seen what it’s like when diplomats come in and say, ‘I don’t know whether we’re going to be able to get this point through or not. Do you want to take the risk? What about your reputation? How do we handle it-’
Bob Schieffer: Well-
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: ‘ -it publicly.’ He hasn’t made those calls, Bob.
[...]
Bob Schieffer: I have to say, Barack Obama has not had any of those experiences either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down. I mean-
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be President.
Unfortunately, in their race to find the lowest common denominator and most sensationalist soap opera soundbite, the media (at the bidding of the faux outraged McCain Campaign [video]) has seen fit to only repeat the very last sentence which, clearly from the entire context, was set up by that most liberal (not) of networks, CBS.
And while the quote, “I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be President,” is technically accurate (note the Republicans said the same of President John F. Kennedy’s boat in WWII) it is “inartful” as Sen. Obama noted in today’s Quote of the Day. (Keep in mind that while Sen. McCain had been shot down and held as a POW, Gen. Clark was carried off the Vietnam battlefield on a stretcher. He’s no stranger to the crucible of combat.)
You see, on Monday Sen. Obama made a speech in which he said that no one should denigrate anyone’s military service. Many folks naturally took that as a repudiation of Gen. Clark’s comments from the day before.
Turns out that that Obama phrase has been part of the working draft of that speech for about two months. So unless Sen. Obama can look into the future, it was simply coincidence that he said that just after Gen. Clark’s off-the-cuff response to CBS’ Bob Schieffer.
And so on to the Quote of the Day, wherein Sen. Obama reminds us that the kerfuffle over Sen. McCain’s military service means little in the face of McCain’s lack of judgment and pandering to the political winds on the key issues facing we Americans. After being asked again about the Clark remarks:
“I guess my question is why, given all the vast numbers of things that we’ve got to work on, that that would be a top priority of mine?” he said. “I think that, you know, right now we’re here to talk about how we can make sure that kids in Zanesville and across Ohio get the kind of support that they need and communities that are impoverished can start to rebuild. I’m happy to have all sorts of conversations about how we deal with Iraq and what happens with Iran, but the fact that somebody on a cable show or on a news show like Gen. Clark said something that was inartful about Sen. McCain I don’t think is probably the thing that is keeping Ohioans up at night.”
While it may be giving McCain’s lobbyist campaign staffers and lying swiftboat backers a touch of insomnia, it’s probably not the thing keeping most other Americans up at night either.
(h/t Bob Sackamento)
Is it ok to produce a graphic that is reminiscent of the presidential seal or isn’t it?
Partisan conservatives like those mocking birds at Illinois Review, among many other nattering nabobs, are downright apoplectic that Obama’s graphic design team came up with a graphic that looks kinda sorta like a presidential seal. (Of course, the Obama campaign had been using an engraved image of an eagle for a while before this non-issue was raised anyway. Why didn’t cons gripe about it before? Must’ve been a slow news weekend.)
Problem is, plenty of Republicans have done the exact same thing — producing graphics that mimic the presidential seal and the seals of other branches of government. In fact, Republicans from local replacement candidate Martin Ozinga to presumptive presidential nominee John McCain have also been mimicking Obama’s other graphics so it’s abundantly clear that conservatives used to be ok with echoing earlier design work.
So which is it? Either it’s ok for all candidates to ‘borrow’ graphic design or it isn’t. Conservative partisans can’t whitewash and ignore instances of their candidates parroting designs but then go bonkers when the presidential front-runner (who also happens to be a Dem) does it.
Which is it, con whiners? Or are the cons perhaps really just upset because McCain didn’t think of it first instead of borrowing a chiseled star from graphics related to the US military?
(And so much for the tattered, faded myth of “liberal” media seeing as how this non-issue seems to be all they can talk about, now that they’ve stopped overanalyzing Michelle Obama’s pantyhose, or lack thereof…)
(h/t Mark Nickolas)
This one’s for you Rich Miller…
Unfortunately for Mark Kirk, when he makes statements over the airwaves they get heard by the public at large. Yesterday, he appeared on conservative radio’s WLS-AM and got caught telling a few whoppers, while apparently being caught up in the partisan vapors.
Progress Illinois recorded the conversation for posterity and noted that Rep. Kirk was infopimping the already debunked “China is drilling off the coast of Cuba” lie that was all the conservative-partisans’ rage last week as the cons tried to push for drilling off the coast of the tourist-dependent Sunshine State. (They ought to talk to the president’s younger brother about why he, smartly, wouldn’t let the rigs drill off his state’s sun-filled shores).
This Cuba lie was so easily and so quickly debunked that even Vice President and former Big Oil CEO Dick Cheney had to eat his words within days. Apparently, Congressman Kirk didn’t get the memo to stop lying.
Now, why a guy who claims to believe in a clean environment and went to town for photo op after photo op when BP Amoco wanted to dump poison in our Lake Michigan drinking water would be advocating for drilling off Florida’s beaches is unclear and not the least bit hypocritical. If he can work to find Federal dollars for solar panels at schools, he ought to also be able to work for alternative fuels instead of mimicking the drill-drill-drill lemmings.
A bit later in that same radio program, Progress Illinois also noted that Mark Kirk repeated the oft-heard ‘mistake’ that seems to plague conservative-partisans: swapping the names of “Osama” and “Obama”.
Rep. Kirk did rightly apologize publicly and to Sen. Obama as soon as the ‘error’ was pointed out, but even worse is the fact that he was bald-faced lying while talking about Obama’s stated positions on Osama bin Laden. To wit (via PI):
DON WADE: In fact, yesterday in a conference call, Barack Obama’s advisers were asked, “If Osama bin Laden were caught, should he get to challenge his detention in U.S. courts?” And the advisers said that — should that right to challenge detention that they get at Gitmo based on the Supreme Court ruling, should that be applied to bin Laden? — and Obama’s advisers said, “Yes.”
KIRK: Yeah, and I would much rather have a policy where if we see Obama there’s a shoot-on-sight order.
That, unfortunately, was only half of what the Obama camp has discussed regarding bin Laden.
The rest of the story actually comes pretty close to precisely what Kirk was advocating. From Nedra Pickler of the AP:
“First of all, I think there is an executive order out on Osama bin Laden’s head,” the Illinois senator said at a news conference. “And if I’m president, and we have the opportunity to capture him, we may not be able to capture him alive.”
Obama’s campaign said he was referring to a classified Memorandum of Notification that President Clinton approved in 1998 - revealed in the 9/11 Commission report - that would allow the CIA to kill bin Laden if capture weren’t feasible.
Obama said he wouldn’t discuss what approach he would take to bring bin Laden to justice if he were apprehended. But he said the Nuremberg trials for the prosecution of Nazi leaders are an inspiration because the victors acted to advance universal principles and set a tone for the creation of an international order.
“What would be important would be for us to do it in a way that allows the entire world to understand the murderous acts that he’s engaged in and not to make him into a martyr, and to assure that the United States government is abiding by basic conventions that would strengthen our hand in the broader battle against terrorism,” Obama said.
It’s unfortunate that the WLS hosts were so ill-informed but hopefully this is clear enough for Rep. Kirk and he’ll stop repeating his fibs and half-truths.
Or does Mark Kirk not believe in Truth, Justice and the American Way?
Adam over at Progress Illinois catches Rep. Mark Kirk bending facts, and toeing the Republican line, while trying to explain his vote against unemployed folks.
Bottom line, Rep. Kirk (and his chief, minority leader John Boehner) are claiming that somebody could subvert the intent of this legislation to try and collect unemployment checks after only working for two weeks. While technically that’s possible, as Adam explains such a person would also have to subsist for nearly 9 months on “income” far below the poverty level.
In other words, they’d have to work at not working, and live off literally a few dollars a month to do it. Yet this is Rep. Kirk’s excuse for voting against unemployed Americans. That’s not what I call being a moderate or standing up for Main Street.
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Full disclosure: I’ve met Rep. Kirk on occasion. He’s a nice enough fellow but I clearly disagree with several of his positions and his record in Congress. I have volunteered for his challenger Dan Seals in the past and may do so again in the future.
Sen. Barack Obama got down and dirty to pitch in for a bit of moral support as Quincy, Illinois fights back floodwaters, filling not just one or two sandbags but a whole slew of them. He also gave a pep talk to the scores of volunteers working through the pain of their aching arms and backs to do what they can. Several folks have noticed too that for the past many days front and center on his campaign website is a large graphic encouraging folks to do what they can — donate, volunteer, etc.
Isn’t that what people who claim to be “conservative” always say people should do: volunteer to help each other instead of relying on government to “bail them out”… donate their own money at an amount they choose rather than investing tax dollars since “it’s your money”…
So why is it that Sen. Obama is the only candidate doing these things?
Sen. John McCain has been hopping from campaign fundraiser to campaign fundraiser in California (”west coast values”) and will soon head to more in Texas. He has a tiny graphic buried on his campaign’s homepage (at least it’s there) but instead of an immediate, boots on the ground response he’s off wining and dining GOP big-wigs. In a way, it fits the McCain pattern — he has routinely voted against relief and responsibility for Gulf Coast victims of Katrina.
We already knows what happens when a president doesn’t have a clear grasp on a natural disaster; and by their actions large and small our nominees are letting us know which one will change from that legacy and which one will merely continue it.
Natural disasters shouldn’t be a political issue, but how candidates and incumbents respond to them is.
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Donate if you aren’t able to volunteer. Or, consider other ways to help too.
Who knew that the document our Founding Fathers wrote and ratified back in the 1780s has a “September 10th mindset” even though it has somehow, someway managed to see our great nation through more than two centuries of growth, progress, wars, peace, economic depressions and boom times.
Apparently, Sen. McCain knew. And he’s part of a dwindling nattering nabob of conservative negativity who doesn’t like their fictional “September 10th mindset” … or our Constitution, apparently.
[bumped]
Rich Miller published the snailmail address for a relief fund created to assist those caught in the Wabash River flooding in central Illinois. Help if you can.
The latest info-pimped non-issue to be drummed up as a “scandal” by the conservative partisans involves Sen. Obama’s birth certificate; which the campaign released today.
It’s a pretty standard form and reveals no new information.
But why the cons would run around yelping “he won’t release his birth certificate” is unclear when it’s such an asinine demand that his campaign probably didn’t consider anyone could be so asinine as to invent such a non-issue in the first place… And these con partisans then created a slew of blatantly false rumors as to why he wouldn’t meet their demands to see the document on top of that.
Maybe these Jerry Fletchers need to remove their tin foil hats and stop drinking that kool-aid.
What’s next, terrorist pineapples?
…And now that the bar has been lowered further by these hyper-partisan cons when will John Sidney McCain III release his birth certificate from the Panama Canal Zone?
Apparently this fellow named Larry Temple thinks that some regular ol’ workaday dad from the suburbs, who plays catch with his kids and grows veggies in his backyard, is “radical”.
Or maybe he thinks that whole “all men created equal” stuff that our country is founded on is “radical”….
Or maybe he’s just confused. And unsure. And insecure. 
What is clear, however, is that Larry hasn’t figured out that fighting for fairness and standing up for justice, equality and honest-to-goodness, pure-as-sunshine love is actually the right thing to do — hardly “radical.”
That said, I wonder if Larry goes to gay bars with Petey LaBarbera and Dave Smith to help with “research”.
Perhaps Larry would give folks the honor of explaining why guys such as himself so loathe people that are in love with each other that they’re willing to denounce and discriminate against them — and hypocritically call their anti-family stance “family values”.
Regardless, thanks for the compliment and the link, Larry.
I wrote on Sunday about another of the lies Sen. Lindsey Graham told America during his “This Week” appearance on ABC.
Sen. Graham’s bit was ostensibly to talk up John McCain but in reality he ended up mostly muddying waters and blurring lines. In the process, he told the whopper I noted last Sunday about McCain’s campaign not being full of lobbyists when the fact is not only are there lobbyists working at the highest levels of Camp McCain but they even do their lobbying from the back of his Straight(ish) Talk Express and are clearly influencing his policy statements, both foreign and domestic.
But enough about the Mac team’s attempts at smoke and mirrors on lobbyists.
Sen. Graham, of course, lied about other stuff too. To wit, on the heels of the discussion of McCain’s cozy association with lobbyists came this whiney subject-changer in the form of a weak try at guilt-by-association:
“John McCain didn’t borrow money from a guy going to jail to build his house.”
- Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) discussing Barack Obama on Sunday’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulous.”
Neither did any other presidential candidate, including front-runner Barack Obama.
Eric Zorn of the Tribune describes 8 basic points as he tries to set Sen. Graham, and the record, straight on Rezko. In short:
1. The deal could have gone down without Rezko. …
2. The Obamas did not get a special discount on the house. …the sellers have confirmed that the sale price was the result of routine real estate negotiations and was the best offer they received on the house.
3. The sellers rejected two lower bids from the Obamas. …
4. The Rezkos did not pay an inflated price for the vacant lot. …
5. The Obamas did not get a special discount from the Rezkos when they later purchased a one-sixth strip of the vacant lot to enlarge their yard. …
6. The Obamas did not receive or borrow any money from the Rezkos to buy their house. …
7. Obama hasn’t done any political or personal favors for Rezko since this saga began. …
8. The reason Obama is nevertheless correct in describing his actions here as “boneheaded” is that Rezko is and was a sleazeball.
ArchPundit has a ton more details in his series on Tony Rezko for anyone who’s actually interested in the truth.
If all the Republicans have on Sen. Obama are lies (which would fit an emerging pattern of other lies)… what does that mean for the McCain campaign?
The setup from a Newsweek interview with Republican presidential nominee John McCain:
Q: Want to back up a little bit and talk about press coverage. One of the things that you mentioned in your speech in New Orleans was that you felt that the media hadn’t recognized or had overlooked some of the attributes that Hillary Clinton had brought to the race. And I wondered—
MCCAIN: I did not [say that]—that was in prepared remarks, and I did not [say it]—I’m not in the business of commenting on the press and their coverage or not coverage…I can’t change any of the coverage that I know of except to just campaign as hard as I can and try to seek the approval of the majority of my fellow citizens.
It is something that the American people will judge, and I won’t complain about it and I won’t praise it. I will just run my campaign and hope that the American people will make a judgment.
(emphasis added for clarity)
The reality, courtesy of Republican nominee John McCain’s own mouth (video clip):
Senator Clinton has earned great respect for her tenacity and courage. The media often overlooked how compassionately she spoke to the concerns and dreams of millions of Americans and she deserves a lot more appreciation than she sometimes receives.
So… Sen. McCain did say exactly that the “media often overlooked” Sen. Clinton’s attributes.
Oh, and Sen. McCain has also complained plenty about media coverage that he doesn’t like.
So which is it: Is Sen. McCain lying or is he really that forgetful about something he said not even a week ago?
And will the BBQ-fed lapdog media bother noticing?
The flooding throughout the Midwest is bringing the Iraq War right to our front doors…
From a fellow in Iowa:
I am in Mason City. Our levees broke Sunday morning. Flood stage is 7 foot and waters are now at 19 feet. Hundreds of homes and businesses are underwater. The City’s water plant was flooded and the entire city of 30,000 is without potable water. A couple of hours ago the main electric substation flooded and failed and much of the city is without power. People remain in flooded homes. Early tonight I saw people wandering the streets not knowing where to go. There are entrie areas of the city with NO emergency personnel on hand.
NOBODY from the outside has come to help. Our local first responders are exhausted and overwhelmed. Small rural towns downstream tonight are being devasted. Levees everywhere are failing. Calls for help in these small towns have been unmet. Portions of our local guard are in Iraq.
The homeland has been left unprotected and people are suffering horribly.
(emphasis added)
And from further down in that blogpost:
The reason we organize ourselves into communities is to deal with the vagaries of man and nature we can’t effectively handle by ourselves.
Just like the wildfires in California and the bridge collapse in Minneapolis were likely made worse because “tax relief” won the day over public safety, this is the effect of small/no government attitudes and backassward policy priorities.
Nobody’s perfect but anyone should be able to predict that, at some point in time, a river will flood and we ought to be prepared. Each state’s National Guard is supposed to be a part of that preparation. When the Iowa Guard is off in the Middle East instead of at home, Americans are put in harm’s way.
It’s the Iowa National Guard, not the Iraq National Guard.
On this morning’s This Week with George Stephanopolous Senators Lindsey Graham (Bush and McCain supporter) and John Kerry (Obama supporter) decided to tell a little fib and George let it slide…
The topic was lobbyists’ influence and DC status quo. Sen. Kerry correctly pointed out that GOP nominee John McCain’s campaign is full of lobbyists including those who’ve tried to spin away the mortgage crisis because they lobby for the very banks at the heart of the bad loans…
Sen. Graham carried water for McCain and his lobbyist friends everywhere by laughably claiming there are no lobbyists in the McCain camp…
(No wonder some of his ’staff’ could forego pay when his campaign tanked earlier.)
Umm. What?
I must’ve been changing a diaper or getting a jar of pureed pears ready when McCain (who agrees with President Bush that healthcare for kids is bad) said this because I don’t remember this from his speech at the suburban New Orleans ‘high school gym’.
I have to say, I disagree with McCain on giving bottled hot water to babies — thirsty or not. I don’t believe in scalding infants; not my thing.
(Yes, people. He clearly misspoke. It’s a Friday funny.)
Break out the Courvoisier…
The Trib had a front page article today describing how presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain might be able to pick up some women who are former Hillary Clinton supporters. Indeed, there are now groups of former Clinton supporters vowing to back McCain simply out of spite.
That’s too bad because, knowing Sen. McCain’s record on women’s and family issues, it’s a bit difficult to imagine that anyone who had previously supported Hillary Clinton would willingly support McCain.
If the intent is simply to spite the Dems then piching support for Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney I could understand… but John McCain?
The Trib quotes a professor who explains why some may be so persuaded…
“To the extent that McCain can make Obama look like a big risk—make them feel a little leery about the change he might bring about—he might be successful in attracting them,” said Susan Carroll, senior scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “He does have that independent reputation and that reputation of thinking for himself and not necessarily going along with the Republican Party line, which I think a lot of people find appealing.”
Ah, so that’s it. The media-propped myth that Sen. McCain somehow has an “independent” aura and doesn’t toe the Republican party line…
Sure. Once one actually looks at the facts, it’s clear that this “reputation” is not deserved but is instead carefully manicured with a mix of sweet and sour: tasty bbq ribs when the media is good and does something McCain likes but belligerence against the media when they dare tell an unflattering, but true, story.
That’s why he voted with the Bush agenda 95% of the time last year and 100% of the time so far this year. Might independent there.
I’m sure that’s also why McCain decided that Bush’s veto of healthcare for kids was a good idea. Little kids don’t ever get sick or hurt, do they? So what if their moms and dads can’t afford health insurance. It’s not like moms care about their children anyway, right Senator?
John McCain’s “not necessarily going along with the Republican Party line” must also be why he supported his party’s filibuster and eventually sinking of the Lilly Ledbetter Equal Pay Act. The Lilly Ledbetter Act was named after a woman who found out her employer, Goodyear Tire, was paying her less then men. It would’ve rebuffed the recent conservative Supreme Court’s legislation from the bench decision to essentially allow companies to continue paying women less, so long as they don’t get caught. Instead of being concerned about whether or not women were being paid less for doing the same work as men, McCain was instead so concerned about companies being sued that he completely skipped the vote.
Speaking of paying women an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work, McCain also voted against increasing the national minimum wage. What one demographic has far more people at minimum wage than any other? Women. Yet John McCain voted to filibuster an increase in the minimum wage.
Finally, it’s also abundantly clear that, after much flippity-floppity dilly-dallying, John McCain finally came out and admitted he’d like to overturn Roe v. Wade. After all, who best to decide what a woman should do than (no, not her and her doctor) some Senator from Arizona? It is quite surprising that supposedly liberal women who were supporting a pro-choice such as Sen. Clinton are now planning to switch gears and work for an anti-choice and anti-privacy candidate like McCain.
So, right here, in the span of just a few paragraphs and a few minutes of research are four pieces of legislation directly affecting women which clearly illustrate McCain’s positions — positions that are decidedly in line with his party and against women.
Unfortunately, this sort of research appears to be too much work for Trib reporters who comment on this stuff on the front page of a national newspaper. (To be fair, the Trib did devote a baker’s dozen words to McCain’s opposition to equal pay and the minimum wage… buried in the second to last paragraph… after Obama supporter Sen. Claire McCaskill [D-Missouri] apparently mentioned it.)
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UPDATE: So-Called Austin Mayor notes that there is likely to be little to worry about. I agree (Clinton Supporters for McCain had all of about 5k members nationwide … If they all lived in Florida 
it might be one thing, but let’s be honest: 5000 people out of the millions who will vote in November is a drop in the bucket.
Still, I find the boiling threats of “but we’ll vote for McCain” to be hokum given how his adherance to the Bush legacy and failed conservative policies is completely antithetical to all the issues for which Sen. (and Pres.) Clinton stand.
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UPDATE 2: London’s Daily Mail newspaper notes that McCain’s own associates consider him to be a womanizer:
‘My marriage ended because John McCain didn’t want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. You know that happens…it just does.’
Some of McCain’s acquaintances are less forgiving, however. They portray the politician as a self-centred womaniser who effectively abandoned his crippled [first] wife to ‘play the field’. They accuse him of finally settling on Cindy, a former rodeo beauty queen, for financial reasons [...]
Ted Sampley, who fought with US Special Forces in Vietnam and is now a leading campaigner for veterans’ rights, said: ‘I have been following John McCain’s career for nearly 20 years. I know him personally. There is something wrong with this guy and let me tell you what it is – deceit.
‘When he came home and saw that Carol was not the beauty he left behind, he started running around on her almost right away. Everybody around him knew it.
‘Eventually he met Cindy and she was young and beautiful and very wealthy. At that point McCain just dumped Carol for something he thought was better.
‘This is a guy who makes such a big deal about his character. He has no character. He is a fake. If there was any character in that first marriage, it all belonged to Carol.’
With leaders like these, why is it that the partisan conservatives keep (falsely) blathering on about “family values”?
Much has been made of Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s willingness to talk to other world leaders, even adversaries.
John McCain, who has been supporting Bush’s Iraq policy of shoot first/ask later, is of the opinion such talk amounts to appeasement. He’s been oddly quiet on that notion since it was revealed in recent weeks that Israel was holding high level talks with long-time opponent Syria, but still. (And, as is turning out to be true with so much of the Bush legacy that McCain hopes to continue, the American people agree with the Obama position, not the McCain stance.)
Even so, one may wonder how such talks may proceed. Obama has described his vision for it by describing Reagan’s talks with Gorbachev and Nixon’s talks with Mao, but sometimes it’s difficult to imagine what it would be…
Wonder no more: Obama gave caucuses-with-Dems-but-endorses-Republicans Senator Joe Lieberman (CT-Connecticut for Lieberman) what has been described as a cordial, but very stern, talking-to on the floor of the Senate the day after Obama secured the likely presidential nomination.
Sure, there was a handshake or two… and a few pats on the back… but it was clear what Sen. Obama expected of his adversary, and the likely consequences of not meeting those expectations.
IlliniPundit thinks he sees a pattern of unfamiliarity…
Sen. Barack Obama yesterday on Tony Rezko: “This isn’t the Tony Rezko I knew…”
Obama on April 29 on Rev. Jeremiah Wright: “the man I saw yesterday was not the man I knew for 20 years.”
Anyone sensing a theme?
First, the same could be asked of straightish talker Sen. McCain’s constant chatter about opposing lobbyists even as he employs scads of them on his campaign staff (some of whom brag about doing their lobbying work while riding on his campaign bus — and I don’t mean telecom lobbyist Vicki Iseman) and even as he mysteriously, and routinely, bends over backwards to help them.
But more importantly, Sen. Obama was not involved in any of the stuff Rezko was charged with (but Gov. Blagojevich and Republicans Bob Kjellander and Bill Cellini allegedly were). So no, Obama wouldn’t have known the guy was running around committing fraud because he wasn’t involved in it, etc.
By the way, Mr. Rezko also raised thousands of dollars for Pres. Bush’s White House run, money which (to my knowledge) was not given back or donated to charity. (That BuzzFlash article is a bit off on its numbers. Rezko co-hosted the 2003 $3.8 million Bush/Cheney fundraiser in Chicago. He didn’t necessarily raise all $3.8 mil by his lonesome. But, the “minimum” amount to qualify as a co-host was $100,000 — and Rezko had given a few grand directly to Bush/Cheney in addition to that 100k over the years.)
And as for Rev. Wright, obviously Sen. Obama has been in Washington serving as our Senator for the past 4 years or so. Before that, he spent a good deal of time in Springfield. It’s not too difficult to imagine that no, he was not sitting in a pew when those 30 seconds of out-of-context, YouTubed tape loops were filmed and thus that, no, he didn’t recognize the National Press Club version of limelight-seeking Rev. Wright…
That is, if one is intellectually honest.