The Washington Post “fact checks” four statements, one by each member of the presidential tickets during their convention speeches. And by “fact check”, I mean “equivocate uncontrollably”.
Sarah Palin lied about her “opposition” to the Bridge to Nowhere. John McCain got a basic fact about a world crisis wrong, and has repeatedly.
Barack Obama’s programs are paid for by estimated savings, subject to tweaks and world events. Joe Biden said that McCain voted with Bush based on last year’s figure rather than his lifetime figure, which is slightly smaller.
These are the equivalent statements - one ticket fundamentally misrepresents facts in order to create a false narrative about their joint candidacy, the other uses figures of verifiable factual origin that, if you use different figures, are potentially not the right ones if you’re making an argument that you’re probably not making.
Next up: how John McCain spent two years organizing his retreat community to get a Vanilla Coke fountain - was he a better community organizer than Obama?
Chris Matthews just remarked that the crowd is applauding his rebuke of the GOP. Which explains why they were entirely silent when he rebuked the party or talked about any non-doctrinaire position. Much like last night, I don’t think that they watched the same speech that actual people did. Actually, they probably just watched The Last Starfighter and went “Pew! Pew!” the entire time while hiding behind couches and throwing pretend neutron-grenades.
I can’t particularly blame the media here, the simple pack animals that they tend to act as. What McCain did was issue a challenge - he threw out someone virtually untouched by any investigative reporting whatsoever to potentially be next in line for the presidency, and then appeared to do the sort of vetting you’d do for your pottery teacher rather than the Vice President of the United States. Here’s an example of the “tough” reporting that’s bringing the McCain campaign to their simpering knees:
It’s not so much that the media is asking really hard or terrible questions, it’s that the campaign is too incompetent and disorganized to answer them. The unending stream of Palin bullshit keeps coming out because the woman’s life is apparently built out of a series of ridiculous and terrible decisions culminating in her accepting the most sparsely attended acceptance speech since the last Constitution Party convention.
The reason that the McCain campaign is getting raked over the coals is that they made the dumbest decision possible in the worst way possible, and after 40 years of being able to convince everyone covering their party that to criticize Republicans was to criticize America, nobody’s having it.
McCain/Palin ‘08: We Fucked Up. And A Palin Probably Did Steal Your Car, Sorry.
John McCain appears to be a little bit testy these days. Time Magazine gets to step into the dusty confines of the press area on the Amazing Flying Straight Talk Express, and gets a face full of grizzled obstinance for their trouble.
There’s a theme that recurs in your books and your speeches, both about putting country first but also about honor. I wonder if you could define honor for us?
Read it in my books.
I’ve read your books.
No, I’m not going to define it.
But honor in politics?
I defined it in five books. Read my books.
[Your] campaign today is more disciplined, more traditional, more aggressive. From your point of view, why the change?
I will do as much as we possibly can do to provide as much access to the press as possible.
But beyond the press, sir, just in terms of ...
I think we’re running a fine campaign, and this is where we are.
Do you miss the old way of doing it?
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
It would be irresponsible not to ask…is John McCain Kodos? It not only sounds like he had no desire to do the interview, but that he’s utterly unfamiliar with the concept of conversation between two human beings beyond the snippets he caught watching from his spaceship. He sounds addled and angry, burdened by the simplest of questions. If John “I Drink Patriotism And Piss Honor” McCain can’t define the basic concept of his campaign beyond “go read my books, kid”, he not only has problem but - dare I say? - sounds like a prima donna professional athlete who can’t be bothered to sign an autograph or even say “Go Team” without cash in his hand and an endorsement deal on the table.
CNN’s been talking since Obama was officially nominated about how Obama is the first black major-party candidate, yadda yadda yadda.
So, the highest ranking African American elected official in the country steps on stage…and CNN cuts away.
Then they come back to cover a seven-minute musical number by Melissa Etheridge replete with shots of teary-eyed delegates.
Wolf Blitzer then tells us that CNN is dedicated to covering more than just the speeches. I assume in the same way that ESPN is dedicated to covering more than just the House of Commons by not fucking doing it at all.
Lilly Ledbetter just gave a good speech at the Democratic Convention talking about equal pay and the distinction between Obama (good) and McCain (evil) on the issue.
However, you wouldn’t know it by watching CNN, because they had to talk to Bob Casey about attacking McCain and what Hillary Clinton was going to do, and then cover the wacky dance party on the floor.
It’s amazing how they’ve spent 12 hours today discussing how the Democrats approach older white female voters and then blatantly ignore the older white female voter discussing a core feminist issue. Or wait, it’s not amazing at all. What the fuck am I talking about? I’m drunk off of the AWESOME DANCE TUNEZ.
John McCain takes Ambien, which can, in incredibly rare cases, result in sleep-doing-things.
ABC News wrote a three-page article detailing how, as long as McCain doesn’t overdose, down his Ambien during a drinking binge or otherwise act like a fucking idiot, it shouldn’t result in him waking up with the front fender of his Lexus through the front window of his local Au Bon Pain. Seriously, just take the week off, reporters. We obviously don’t need you for anything important if you’re now filing “things that have an infinitesimal chance of happening” dispatches.
It kind of ruins the whole “HD” thing by making the person on stage small in the middle of the screen and the surrounding them with useless, repetitive graphics like an audience noise meter, a rotating schedule of things that happened five hours ago, and a second schedule at the bottom of the screen to supplement the other, crappier schedule on the right.
The noise meter also just seems to be an arbitrary series of bars that light up for no apparent reason.
[Mark Halperin]
I think having the Obama and Robinson families on stage could actually backfire. They just seem so nice and human that people are going to be sure to respond to them with suspicion and disbelief. Michelle really needs to just burn an American flag to head off the McCain attacks on her character this speech would otherwise prompt.
[/Mark Halperin]
UPDATE: So, the problem with the Democratic Convention, according to CNN, is that over the course of a four-day convention with distinct themes on each day, they haven’t yet sold Obama personally, gone on the attack, outlined each of his policies and fixed all the rifts in the party after the first six hours. I think they actually do think he’s the Messiah.
UPDATE TWO: David Gergen is getting as close as he possibly can to blowing his shit over the fact that Democrats had the audacity to bore the nation with shit they didn’t care about when absolutely nobody was watching them do it. Note that David Gergen blowing his shit sounds exactly like David Gergen being mildly bemused or David Gergen returning a library book.
Former Republican speechwriter and CNN talking head Amy Holmes is now an “independent conservative”, despite having been a “Republican consultant” at every point that I can remember up to today.
The New York Times joins the “stop telling us what you’re going to do, start telling us how you’re going to do it, and don’t bother us with any of that ‘policy’ crap” train.
Senator Barack Obama goes into the Democratic convention in Denver with a clear challenge: to match the soaring oratory that brought him to this moment in history with a strong and detailed explanation of how he will address the country’s many dire problems.
Such as, for instance, a 59-page policy book and hundreds of bullet-points for easy summary purposes, as well as the past 19 or so months of policy speeches and debates he’s had.
Americans need to hear how he plans to halt the economy’s frightening downward spiral and help millions who have lost their jobs, homes and hopes while also preparing our children to compete in a globalized world. That will mean putting some flesh on the position statements that fill his Web site, and setting priorities.
So…do you want a numbered list? Let’s take a random Obama proposal on the foreclosure crisis:
Mark Halperin sucks so hard he makes outer space…look like it doesn’t suck as much.
Between him and Mike Allen, someone really needs to reveal how you become a nonsense-streaming political observer who’s wrong 90% of the time and repeating what’s on Drudge the other 10%. Is it the constant use of ellipses to approximate the up-to-the-minuteness of printing poorly verified rumors?
Why doesn’t McCain just go ahead and name Lieberman his Veep now, since the Connecticut senator has now declared his 2006 vote against SCOTUS nominee Samuel Alito was wrong. George Will spoke to Holy Joe’s office and said this on This Week:
WILL: Well, I called Lieberman’s office this week and said, “why did your man vote against Alito?” And they said, “he was wrong, now he likes Alito.”
STEPHANOPOLOUS: Did they really say he was wrong? That the vote was wrong?
WILL: He said that now that having seen Alito in action.
As Think Progress noted, one of Joe Lieberman’s reasons for opposing Alito was because of the nominee’s views on equal opportunity and discrimination in the workplace.
For example, in civil rights cases, Judge Alito has repeatedly established a very high bar, an unusually high bar, for entrance to our Courts for people who believed they’ve been denied equal opportunity and fair treatment based on race or gender.
Quick first impressions: Obama spent more time trying to impress Warren (or to put another away) not offend Warren while McCain seemingly ignored Warren and decided he was talking to folks watching on TV. The McCain way of handling this forum is usually the winning way. Obama may have had more authentic moments but McCain was impressively on message.
McCain pretty much spent an hour using various keywords to trigger bits of his stump speech. He was very direct and very concise…in response to some other question. It’s like a parody scene - answer more quickly! More on message! I know she asked you what you’d like to drink with her meal - you tell her about your Social Security plan and you do it now!
In other evidence that our journalistic system is screwed up beyond recognition, Deborah Howell is back for the third straight week arguing that McCain needs more stories in the Washington Post, because weeks of stories evaluating Obama’s presumptuousness are grossly unfair to John McCain.
I predict this election will be called at the first debate when the moderator asks how we deal with our growing indebtedness to China. Obama will give a 90-second answer on trade, diplomacy, environmental regulations and American innovation. John McCain will answer “yes”.
(NOTE: But John McCain will take gay money—in fact, he took $2300 from the owner of the #1 online man-on-man cruising site. Read about that here. Will he give it back? Will the squishy-in-love-with-McCain MSM even cover this? Do pigs fly?)
As John McCain mulls over his short list, which includes Joe Lieberman, Tom Ridge, Tim Pawlenty, and Mitt Romney, he was asked about whether the pro-choice positions held by Holy Joe and Ridge (and Romney at one time) would be a problem for him.
“I think that the pro-life position is one of the important aspects or fundamentals of the Republican Party,” McCain said. “And I also feel that—and I’m not trying to equivocate here—that Americans want us to work together. You know, Tom Ridge is one of the great leaders and he happens to be pro-choice. And I don’t think that that would necessarily rule Tom Ridge out.”
McCain’s comments came in response to a question about comments he made to several reporters during the Republican primary season. During that exchange, McCain was asked whether New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg would make a good running mate. McCain offered strong words of praise for Bloomberg but said that Bloomberg’s position on abortion—he is also pro-choice—would make it difficult to choose him as a vice presidential candidate.
So what was the Arizona senator’s problem with Bloomberg, given McCain’s been getting pressure from the religious wingnut faction?
“I think it’s a fundamental tenet of our party to be pro-life but that does not mean we exclude people from our party that are pro-choice. We just have a—albeit strong—but just it’s a disagreement. And I think Ridge is a great example of that. Far more so than Bloomberg, because Bloomberg is pro-gay rights, pro, you know, a number of other issues.”
So Log Cabin folks, how do you like being sh*t on by John McCain yet again?
You’ve got to feel for the LCRs (ok, maybe not)—every time an opportunity arises to “educate gay and lesbian voters about Sen. McCain” to tell us why LGBTs should cast a ballot for him, he goes and takes a big public dump on them.
Does anyone know when Harry Reid, ineffectual Senate Majority Leader, became a “darling of the left”?
As the leader of Senate Democrats looking to expand their majority in November, Harry Reid has become a darling of the left, bashing President Bush, confabbing with liberal bloggers and relishing his role as a national target for conservative ad campaigns.
This is actually a pretty endemic phenomenon among media discussions of who the left loves. Excluding any and all liberals from discussing anything more important than Youtube videos tends to lead to random decisions of who the “left” adores, what the “left” believes and how the “left” will respond to things, driven mainly by what’s mentioned on the front page of Daily Kos and/or what Wolf Blitzer stumbles on to while flirting with Jack Cafferty.
It virtually never happens with the right, largely because Tony Perkins and Pat Buchanan have camped out near the Slushie machine in back and can be suited up and on air within 75 seconds, no matter the topic or the show, because multimillionaire radical conservatives are closer to the mainstream of America than any Democrat who didn’t work in the Clinton Administration. It was awfully awkward when that Lockdown special got taken over by a three-minute rant by Amanda Carpenter discussing the evils of socialized medicine, but it was awfully entertaining when she got tackled by the fine men of the Macon, GA Police Department.
John McCain appears to be a little bit testy 
(NOTE: But John McCain will take gay money—in fact, he took $2300 from the owner of the #1 online man-on-man cruising site. Read about that 
Does anyone know when Harry Reid, ineffectual Senate Majority Leader, became