Just a little reminder from Berlin ....

This is what "proud to be an American" looks like in the 21st Century.

Via TPM, John McCain surrogate Nancy Pfotenhauer:

"Barack Obama and his supporters can try to litigate what came first or what was crucial, but that's really an attempt to undermine the significance and the impact of the American troops and their sacrifice and their effort."

How fucking insulting to our troops, that getting history straight about how and why they're fighting can undercut their efforts. As if they're infantile hot-house flowers that wilt in the bright light of fact. Ugh.

I likes me some war, my friends, my friends.

Via Politico:

UPDATE: Just over an hour after finalizing plans to visit an oil rig tomorrow, the McCain campaign has cancelled the visit.

"The meeting with Governor Jindal has been postponed and we are cancelling the trip to the rig due to weather," said spokesman MIchael Goldfarb.

McCain will now fly from Pennsylvania to Ohio.  He had originally planned to fly tonight from Pennsylvania to New Orleans to be staged there for morning departure to the rig.

The campaign declined to comment any further about the quick decision to spike the trip other than to cite the weather.

Of course, we could take the McCain campaign at its word (ha!), and assume the cancellation is due to Hurricane Dolly.

Then again, it could be attributable to the unfortunate timing of an oil rig photo op in the Gulf region on top of this semi-breaking news:

(CNN)  -- The U.S. Coast Guard has closed 29 miles of the Mississippi River from New Orleans southward after a tanker and a barge collided, spilling more than 400,000 gallons of fuel oil into the river.

The river, a major shipping route between the Midwest and Gulf of Mexico, could be closed for days during the cleanup, the Coast Guard said Wednesday.

Or the back-handed slap delivered by Bobby Jindal today, long touted as a possible VP candidate for McCain:

Wednesday morning, Jindal made perhaps his strongest statement yet regarding running for Vice President.  Appearing on "FOX and Friends", Jindal said "I'm not going to be the vice presidential nominee or vice president."

Or maybe McCain decided to just stop fighting the media juggernaut surrounding Obama's overseas trip and lay low for a while. At this point, not saying anything or doing anything seems to be the wisest campaign strategy going, given his recent newsmaking.

Seriously painful, arguably pathetic:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Barack Obama is not the only presidential candidate who will be front-and-center in Berlin this Thursday. Well, sort of.

In the latest effort to counter-program Obama’s tour of Europe and the Middle East, the Republican National Committee will air radio ads promoting John McCain’s candidacy in three different Berlins: Berlin, New Hampshire; Berlin, Pennsylvania; and Berlin, Wisconsin.

Why don't McCain's campaign people just give Obama his week, let their candidate rest up, and come up with some brilliant PR moves next week when Obama's settled back in at home? Every day reveals more desperation, whining and stupid "pay attention to me!" gimmicks. This can't be helping the undecideds move his way, can it?

Katie Couric in a speech before the National Press Club, September 2007:

Couric took Rather to task for his reporting. "There were things in there that were quite egregious in terms of how it was reported," she said. "And sloppy work is sloppy work...They did not dot their I’s and cross their T’s when it came to that story...And our job is to get [it] right."

It's hard to figure out whose credibility is sinking faster: John McCain, who's apparently as unaware of recent history as he is of geography, or CBS, who covers up his ignorance for him.

First, a short primer:

2006----> The Anbar Awakening, in which Sunni tribes unite to resist Al Qaida.

2007----> Bush's troop surge

Enter Katie Couric, interviewing John McCain yesterday:

Couric Senator McCain, Sen. Obama says, while the increased number of U.S. troops contributed to increased security in Iraq, he also credits the Sunni awakening and the Shiite government going after militias. And says that there might have been improved security even without the surge. What's your response to that?

McCain: I don't know how you respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened. Colonel McFarlane (phonetic) was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that's just a matter of history.

Well, it's just a matter of history if you live life in reverse, I guess. And yes, it's tough indeed to figure out how to respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened, Senator McCain. But CBS figured out how to do it: just cut the inconveniently false portion out, as Keith Olbermann caught CBS doing last night.

Here's some masterful evidence presented by masterp2323:

Remember this is the same Katie Couric who confessed in the 2007 speech to the National Press Club to feeling "uncomfortable," and that somebody--certainly not her, but somebody with ... oh ... say ... a national media platform--ought to do something about the inevitable march to war back in 2003:

And I remember feeling, when I was anchoring The Today Show, this inevitable march towards war and kind of feeling like, ‘Will anybody put the brakes on this? And is this being properly challenged by the right people?’

One thing's become crystal clear: Couric isn't one of the "right people." And sloppy work is sloppy work. And oh, yeah. Someone once said it's your job to get it right.

(Hat tips to Daily Kos diarist rogereaton and Think Progress for publicizing this story.)

It's time for some straight talk, my friends. My base has deserted me, falling for the new, fresh and vastly more interesting face in town. And I'm pissy. And I want to whine about it. Endlessly. All over the Google and the Internets.

Here's my latest:

Sooooo ... what's up?

Via Reuters:

After a meeting with former President George H.W. Bush, McCain was asked whether it was conceivable for U.S. troops to be fully pulled out of Iraq in about two years.

"I think they could be largely withdrawn," the Arizona senator replied, citing the success of the "surge" strategy of increasing U.S. troop levels in increasing security in the country.

"As I've said, we have succeeded. This strategy is not (just) succeeding, we have succeeded. And of course as we all know it has to be based on conditions on the ground."

McCain said U.S. military success had made it possible for troops to return. "When you win wars, troops come home. And we are winning," he said.

In fact, confused McCain surrogate Heather Wilson in a conference call seemed to claim her man might do Obama even better, bringing the troops home in less than 16 months--but she back-pedaled a bit on that later in the call, with McCain foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann returning to serious vagueness under eager questioning.

But as we all know, when Obama says it, he's wrong, McCain is right, and hey, look over there, gas prices are high because of Obama and please ignore the fact that I'm making shit up!

And now rumors are starting that Obama's tour of the war region is so chewing up media attention that the McCain campaign is flirting with the idea of naming its vice presidential choice this week in order to steal some of Obama's thunder. (The best commentary spotted thus far on McCain VP choices has got to be Josh Marshall's observation about Fred Thompson: "But a combined age of 140 during the first year of office is probably unconstitutional.")

Guess that taunting of Obama for not visiting Iraq isn't quite working out as expected, eh? Of all the observers of Obama's tour thus far, few capture the blockheadedness of the McCain camp's urging the Democratic presidential candidate's taking of this trip quite as well as Dave Weigel at Reason:

I don't see any of this redounding to the benefit of John McCain. McCain's goading Obama to make this trip stands tall and proud as one of the dumbest blunders of the campaign. He couldn't have helped the Democrat more if he'd challenged him to a slam dunk contest.

John McCain campaign memo to reporters, March 12, 2008:

Overheated rhetoric and personal attacks on our opponents distract from the big differences between John McCain's vision for the future of our nation and the Democrats'. This campaign is about John McCain: his vision, leadership, experience, courage, service to his country and ability to lead as commander in chief from day one.

Throughout his life John McCain has held himself to the highest standards and he will continue to run a respectful campaign based on the issues.

John McCain today:

I had the courage and the judgment to say that I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Senator Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.

Yep, because nothing says "respectful campaign" like accusing your rival of hoping America loses a war in order to serve his personal ambition.

Time for a little straight-talkin' open thread, my friends.

The John McCain campaign seems to be picking arguments with reality today on a couple of different fronts and losing badly.

First, there's the fact that the candidate with all the reputed serious credentials in national security doesn't know his geography well enough to distinguish between Iraq and Afghanistan, as discussed in AZDem's recommended diary.

Then there's the McCain campaign's delusional insistence on a conference call today that the Obama campaign is misrepresenting Iraqi Prime Minister al Maliki's remarks about endorsing the Democratic candidate's call for a timetable on withdrawing troops from Iraq.

In a conference called just now with reporters, McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann responded to a question about Malik's comments by citing "the reaction from the Iraqi government, which made it clear that there were apparently some translation problems in the quote, that's not the position of the prime minister."

"I certainly can't believe that the Obama campaign would take a quote that's already been clarified out of context, and try to hang their Iraq policy on that," Scheunemann later added.

The problem here is twofold. First, the New York Times has provided its own independent translation that proved Maliki said precisely what he was reported to have said:

But the interpreter for the interview works for Mr. Maliki’s office, not the magazine. And in an audio recording of Mr. Maliki’s interview that Der Spiegel provided to The New York Times, Mr. Maliki seemed to state a clear affinity for Mr. Obama’s position, bringing it up on his own in an answer to a general question on troop presence.

If any further support is needed, AP put a story out on the wire just a couple of hours ago that additionally refutes the "out of context" claim that the McCain conference call flaks continue to try to sell:

Iraq's government spokesman is hopeful that U.S. combat forces could be out of the country by 2010.

Ali al-Dabbagh made the comments following a meeting in Baghdad on Monday between Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama, who arrived in Iraq earlier in the day.

So Obama and al-Maliki are indeed on the same page, while McCain is struggling to find Iraq's borders on the map. So it goes.

What You Missed on Sunday Kos ....

• In what Mark Danner has called "the vaguely depressing spectacle of a great many very intelligent people struggling very hard to make themselves stupid," mcjoan reflected on the role of the elite press in foreign policy--and particularly in the Iraq  debacle--in War Pundits. Her essay was prompted by preparation for a Netroots Nation panel on which she'll serve with Danner, Greg Mitchell and moderator Ari Melber of The Nation.
• Plutonium Page penned a masterful essay in which the personal, the political and the professional all converged at the Hanford Nuclear Site in The Environmental Cost of the Cold War.
• SusanG reviewed Arianna Huffington's lively Right Is Wrong.
• DemFromCT discussed the fight against complacency in the public health sector--and in the public--in H5N1 and the Long War Against the Flu.

Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe
By Arianna Huffington
Alfred A. Knopf
New York: 2008
400 pages, $24.95

"There's going to be other wars," John McCain said in January 2008. "We will never surrender but there will be other wars." And, shockingly, the idea did not seem to fill him with unbearable sadness. In fact, he seemed like a grizzled football coach at the tail end of a long career, finally about to get a shot at coaching the Super Bowl.

It's tempting to slide into thinking some pundits' personalities loom larger than their actual output, and Arianna Huffington, I confess, is one of those for me. Her stage presence, her accent, her command of the microphone when put on the spot, all dazzle and make it easy to forget she writes--and blogs--as the basis of her current success. With Right Is Wrong, however, her ability to cut to the chase and make her case in print shines through as she gallops readers through all the ways and on all the topics on which the right has been ... well ... wrong during the Bush ascendancy.

Needless to say, it is not a pretty picture. Iraq, the economy, privacy rights ... Daily Kos readers know the drill. What Huffington does though is pull the strands together--or take them apart at times--to examine how it all is of one piece. She does this with writing that snaps, crackles and pops , and a goodly dose of humor. I never thought I'd say revisiting the dreary record of the Bush years could be a romp, but here you have it: It's a romp, with lots of indignation and direct-hit metaphors. Take, for example, the latter part of a chart she inserts when discussing the Bush's love of sloganeering:

2006. NEW WAY FORWARD

2007. SURGE TO VICTORY

2008. A NEW WAY BACKWARD

        A FASTER NEW WAY BACKWARD
        HOLY SHIT, LET'S GET OUT OF HERE

2009. A NEW WAY OF FORGETTING IT EVER HAPPENED

2010. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

2011. THE NEW GATHERING THREAT

Huffington has a real gift for marrying indignation and dark humor--it's one of the secrets of her success, if you look closely. She's a zippy and entertaining writer who stands out in a field in which the dreary and ponderous often gain more renown, and I've often thought she's underrated because she's often the most accessible. Right Is Wrong is a case in point--this is the ideal book to buy and pass on to undecideds you know, or people who aren't as immersed in the day-to-day shenanigans of the Bush administration as your average blog reader. There is an assumption throughout that readers are at least loosely aware of current events (the full blow-by-blow of the Plame outing, for example, is not provided, but just the mere outline), and that's what is needed to clarify the situation is equal doses parody, documentation and electric editorializing. It's an amusing batch she whips up, that's for sure.

Take, for example, her bull's eye take on the media, and one of its most revered scions in particular:

So how come Woodward, supposedly the preeminent investigative reporter of our time, missed the biggest story of our time-—a story that was taking place right under his nose?

Some would say it was because he was carrying water for the Bushies. I disagree. I think it's because he's the dumb blonde of American journalism, so awed by his proximity to power that he buys watever he's being sold.

I doubt I'll ever listen to Woodward on Larry King Live again without a neon sign flashing in my mind: Dumb blonde. Dumb blonde.

Or consider her skewering of David Gergen, who remarked, "While the benchmarks may seem like sort of a Washington game, in some ways, they're a very important prelude to the United States beginning to look for a way to disengage." Clear the way, folks, Arianna's whipped out a pair of sardonic knives:

A prelude to beginning to look for a way to disengage? In other words, let's wait six more months to see how things are going, the, if this latest in a long line of unmet benchmarks also goes unmet, we can begin to commence to initiate the starting of thinking about the mulling over of the consideration of a possible path that could, in time, lead us to begin to commence to start looking for a means that could, with any luck, result in America beginning to commence to start withdrawing from Iraq. Eventually.

Or the wry, painful observation that "We may yet reach a point where the only sector of scientific inquiry that is safe from the anti-science mobs on the Right is weapons research."

She also fires off some cunning analysis too, as she reviews the Bush administration's sanction of torture. Many critics have cited the need for revenge, or desperation for results, or general depravity or the desire to carve out more authoritarian territory for the unitary executive. While acknowledging that these other motives probably are play, Huffington makes an additional argument seemingly self-evident in its simplicity:

But there's also a way in which torture is a by-product of the well-known Bush laziness: the 9-5 workday, the long summer vacations, the impatience with detail. Torture is trying to get intelligence on the cheap.

The one oddity in the book--which can be skipped, obviously--is that each chapter closes with a kind of recap summary of the section's material that settles into a far duller and more prosaic voice (I suspect an editor urged this upon author). These closings are headed:Why the Right Was Wrong About [fill in the blank: Iraq, the economy, health care, etc.]. Huffington has a kind of giddy zest in her writing, particularly evident in book length, and these tacked-on afterthought summations appear to be an attempt to rein her in and make her less brash and more serious. This is not a good idea. She is at her best when running unhampered, and praise the heavens she's on our side and is the bigger-than-life personality--and writer-- that she is.

Coming Up on Sunday Kos ....

• Has H5N1 gone away as a threat to humans and poultry... and North America? Not exactly. DemFromCT will take a look at some recent opinion suggesting we are going to be stuck with the risk for a long time to come.
• SusanG will review Arianna Huffington's Right is Wrong.
• DHinMI will reflect on Fannie, Freddie, the economy and the election.
• One of last gates activists are going to crash is the one guarding the ivory tower of our foreign policy establishment. To do it, we're going to have to get past The Villagers who guard it. mcjoan will ponder how to breach their defenses.
• Think the Cold War ended? Think again. Plutonium Page will take us on a tour of one of the most contaminated nuclear sites on Earth... right here in the United States.

Coming Up on Sunday Kos ....

• Has H5N1 gone away as a threat to humans and poultry... and North America? Not exactly. DemFromCT will take a look at some recent opinion suggesting we are going to be stuck with the risk for a long time to come.
• SusanG will review Arianna Huffington's Right is Wrong.
• One of last gates activists are going to crash is the one guarding the ivory tower of our foreign policy establishment. To do it, we're going to have to get past The Villagers who guard it. mcjoan will ponder how to breach their defenses.
• Think the Cold War ended? Think again. Plutonium Page will take us on a tour of one of the most contaminated nuclear sites on Earth... right here in the United States.

Pay attention closely, little grasshoppers.

This is what you do when you care enough about an issue to pose and bluster about it....

Immediate Release
July 9, 2008 Contact: Press Office
703-650-5550

Statement by John McCain on Senate Medicare Vote

ARLINGTON, VA -- U.S. Senator John McCain issued the following statement on today's Medicare vote by the United States Senate:

"Doctors are the heart of our health care system, and it is essential that they receive the funding needed to ensure quality care for our seniors. I fully support that aspect of this bill. However, Congressional leaders have once again decided to put partisan positioning over the well being of millions of our seniors. We should not hold our doctors and seniors hostage to political gamesmanship and political votes. While this bill does meet our obligation to provide proper reimbursements to Medicare physicians, it also rolls back important reforms, increases drug premiums, and places 2.3 million seniors at risk of losing the private health care coverage of their choice."

... but not quite enough to be bothered to show up and vote on it.

In Republican World, once you've issued a taxpayer-funded sanctimonious press release, you've done your job. In fact, if you're the only one who missed the vote--when even a colleague recovering from brain surgery shows up--you get extra points in political gamesmanship!

Here endeth the lesson.