Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Blowhard News for Wednesday.


Chuck Todd: Don’t believe the PUMA hype
Chuck Todd makes an observation Monday night that many of his colleagues fail (or refuse to) acknowledge: That the influence of the PUMA crowd is greatly exaggerated, and the Republicans have their own “PUMA problem” with Ron Paul and his supporters.

“I think what’s happening is we’re in our Denver bubble. There’s 1/3 of the Democratic establishment here who would be big time players had Clinton won, and they can stoke this a little. The McCain campaign is stoking this, releasing this ad. And there is a small core group, but I think they have a louder voice than they do a volume of numbers. So, look, I think we’re gonna look back in a few days and say ‘these PUMAs are really no different than these Ron Paul folks that we’re gonna run into in St. Paul.’”




Romney: McCain earned his homes; Obama didn't — Mitt Romney spoke in Denver today. (Yoon S. Byun / Globe Staff) — DENVER — Former governor Mitt Romney, perhaps continuing his audition to be John McCain's running mate, attacked Barack Obama for making an issue out of McCain's many homes.


Desperately Blaming Biden
The Washington Post yet again manages to produce an op-ed only fit to wrap fish in, as neocon Michael Rubin - ex of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, the Office of the Secretary of Defense as an advisor to Rummie, political adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority and unpaid hack for propaganda articles produced by the Pentagon’s PR firm, the Lincoln Group - blames Joe Biden for eight years of Bush administration foreign policy failure in a desperate attempt to label Biden as “Iran’s favorite Senator”.


Here’s how Rubin’s logic works, as explained by Ilan Goldenberg of Democracy Arsenal:
Rubin makes a convoluted and nonsensical argument that A. Joe Biden supported engagement with the reformist Khatami government of Iran during the late 1990s and first half of this decade. That B. During that time trade between Iran and the EU increased. That C. A National Intelligence Estimate found that Iran had stopped working on its nuclear weapons program in 2003. From this he deduces that it’s Biden’s fault that Iran has moved ahead on its nuclear weapons program because it used increased trade with Europe to fund a nuclear weapons program. What???


… Rubin basically takes a bunch of unrelated facts and uses them to conclude that Iran must have spent 2000 to 2003 working furiously on its nuclear weapons program and that it did it with money from Europe that somehow Joe Biden was responsible for. Yup, putting those rigorous analytical skills that he learned that the Office of Special Plans to work.


Rubin also forgets to mention little details. Like the fact that under this Administration trade with Iran has actually increased ten-fold and is at its highest levels since before the Iranian revolution. Or the fact that the 2007 NIE concluded that Iran did in fact stop working on its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and was still years away from building a bomb.


Rubin then claims that Biden’s vote against Kyl-Lieberman was partisan politics because Biden said that he didn’t trust this Administration. Ummm…. Trying to prevent war with Iran is not exactly a partisan activity. It’s not partisan to fear that an administration that has a track record of escalating conflict and misleading the American public might do it again. That is in fact the exact opposite of partisan if you believe that war with Iran is against America’s interests.




Olbermann on Scarborough’s BS: “Jesus, Joe. Why don’t you get a shovel?”
An open mic caught Keith Olbermann last night telling Joe Scarborough to get a shovel and dig himself out of the horse crap he was dropping all over the airwaves about how confident the McCain campaign must feel right now. And thus a classic moment in live political news coverage was born.


Brooks: ‘Most of the delegates’ at the DNC sound like ‘a North Korean pep rally.’ On the PBS Newshour , New York Times columnist David Brooks opined about the possibility of “unity at the Democratic National convention, claiming that while there are vocal supporters of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) at the convention, “most of the delegates here have been fed these talking points here and they sound like a North Korean pep rally.”

Wallace Defends McCain’s POW Dodge On Houses Gaffe: ‘It’s Not A Talking Point, It’s A Fact’ On the Tonight Show on Monday, host Jay Leno asked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) about his inability to say how many houses he owns. Before giving an answer, McCain turned to an unrelated subject, his years as a prisoner of war: LENO: For $1 million, how many houses do you own? MCCAIN: You know, could I just mention to you Jay, in a moment of seriousness, I spent five and a half years in a prison cell. I didn’t have house. I didn’t have a kitchen table. I didn’t have a table. I didn’t have a chair. And I spent those five and a half years because — not because I wanted to get a house when I got out. … I’m proud of my record of service to this country, and it has nothing to do with houses. It has to do with putting Americans in houses and keeping them in their homes. On Morning Joe today, Mika Brzezinski called it “an awkward moment” and Joe Scarborough said it reflected Maureen Dowd’s point that McCain’s “going to the well a bit too often.” But McCain spokesperson Nicole Wallace disagreed, saying, “it’s not a talking point, it’s a fact.” “It’s not thrown out there in anything other than an explanation,” said Wallace

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