Earlier today, Trish wrote about the GOP’s concerted efforts to revise a 2004 campaign tactic and characterize Barack Obama as a flipflopper. On MSNBC’s “Countdown” last week, in anticipation of this new line of attack, Keith Olbermann went looking for instances in which John McCain had flipflopped and found 30 instances in which he’d done 180-degree reversals on a wide range of important issues.
Here’s the transcript:
Want to make a statement about your lack of faith? Have I got the t-shirts and hats and crap for you.
Hexed Clothing, which you will have to do a search on MySpace to find, offers a variety of apparel with slogans guaranteed to get you tossed out of Young Life camp, including:
Although the 24-year-old founder, who lives in nearby Jacksonville, lists Taurus as his zodiac sign on his MySpace page, he makes a good point in a recent article in Folio Weekly.
“It’s definitely more to make atheist people happy than to make Christians unhappy, but people hate it. They hate it. There’s a Jesus fish on every car in this parking lot, and that’s completely fine, but then I’ll get a message saying, ‘You’re shoving your beliefs in people’s faces!'”
I know what I’m getting you all for Christmas.
Republicans, lacking any other strategy, are determined to recycle the one that might have won them the election in 2004.* Sen. Joe Lieberman led the charge on ABC’s This Week, calling Sen. Barack Obama a flip-flopper so many times I wanted to slap him on the back to make his needle jump forward.
Lieberman listed every position Obama has spoken about recently as ones where he flip-flopped in order to pander to voters, even his stand on the death penalty for child rapists. But as Andrew Sullivan and anyone who read The Audacity of Hope knows, Obama, the father of two young girls, has always favored the death penalty in such cases and said so clearly in that book.
“While the evidence tells me that the death penalty does little to deter crime, I believe there are some crimes–mass murder, the rape and murder of a child–so heinous, so beyond the pale, that the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage by meting out the ultimate punishment.”
But it was the attempt to hang the flip-flopper label on Obama about Iraq that really made Lieberman appear ridiculous. With former Army Ranger Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) calmly noting that Obama is departing not in the least from previous promises to end the American occupation of Iraq, wide shots showed Lieberman huffing and puffing and fairly rolling his eyes. When it was his turn to speak, he almost shouted his flip-flop rhubarb. Then George Stephanopoulos asked Lieberman a very good question. Why, if Obama’s position is now truly the same (and therefore correct) as McCain’s, as Lieberman insisted, should people vote for McCain? I thought Lieberman might lose it.
But Obama’s position is not the same as McCain’s. It’s the same as Obama’s and it has been from the get-go.
En route to a speech in St Louis…the Senator told reporters on his plane that the news cycle his comments caused was perplexing.
“I was a little puzzled by the frenzy that I set off by what I thought was a pretty innocuous statement, which is that I am absolutely committed to ending the war,†he said.
Obama reiterated his commitment to his withdraw plan again. “I will call my joint chiefs of staff and give them an assignment and that is to end the war,†he said. “I think what’s important is to understand the difference between strategy and tactics. I have always believed that our invasion of Iraq was a strategic blunder.â€
He continued, “The tactics of how we ensure our troops are safe as we pull out, how we execute the withdrawal. Those are things that are all based on facts and conditions, and you know I’m not somebody who, unlike George Bush, is willing to ignore facts on the basis of my preconceived notions…”
Sen. Obama — who plans a trip to Iraq this month — took issue with reporters who “finely calibrated†his statements, and specific words, on his Iraq War plan. “I wasn’t saying anything that I hadn’t said before,†Obama said.
“I don’t think in anyway it is inconsistent with prior statements and doesn’t change my strategic view that this war has to end and that I am going to end it as president,” he repeated again.
If only that would end the flip-flop charges. But the Republicans have nothing else — at least not yet — so they’re going to see if they can manipulate us again like they did last time. I’m tired of it already.
* If you believe they won in 2004 despite evidence to the contrary in Ohio.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has declared that his government has defeated terrorism in Iraq.
What this means is that surge is a success only in the sense that flooding the zone with security has tamped down violence and — here is the real point — neutralized Iraq as a domestic political issue in the presidential campaign.
“They were intending to besiege Baghdad and control it. But, thanks to the will of the tribes, security forces, army and all Iraqis, we defeated them,” al-Maliki declared, referring to recent government operations against Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias.
Violence in Iraq is said to be at its lowest level in four years, a factor that is attributed to the surge of U.S. forces into the country.
So if the surge has been so successful, can we bring U.S. troops out of Iraq and leave internal national security to al-Maliki and the Iraqi military?
Of course not. We’re sending more troops to Iraq. Late in June, the Pentagon was said to be preparing to send in another 30,000 troops to Iraq in about six months to replace troops currently there in order to maintain 15 brigades in country.
What this means is that the surge is a success only in the sense that flooding the zone with security has tamped down violence and — here is the real point — neutralized Iraq as a domestic political issue in the presidential campaign.
Underlying the “success,” however, the morass of internecine religious conflicts, intrigue and power struggles is far from resolved and will undoubtedly raise its ugly head again when U.S. troops come out, if they ever do.
Pundits say that Trump’s $5,000 midterm bribe was an overreach,
And they agree that if lies were a crime, he’d be impeached.
Despite all the dividend promises he’s made,
The fact is, not one has ever been paid,
So even before the midterms, he already owes us $8,000* each.
*$5000 stimulus checks via “DOGE dividend”; $2000 stimulus checks via a “tariff dividend”; $1000-plus checks via “savings” from expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies
