HuffPo's Seth Colter Walls found a gem of a quote -- John McCain talking about the Anbar Awakening on January 5, 2007...before Bush announced the surge.
Too often the light at the tunnel has turned out to be a train, but I really believe -- I really believe that there's a strong possibility that you may see a very substantial change in Anbar province due to this new changes in our relationships with the sheiks in the region.
As you know, McCain's CBS whopper was that these relationships (the Anbar Awakening) did not begin until the surge started. But they actually began in 2006, and now, thanks to the fact that I happened to have video of the event Walls referenced (go figure), we've got a YouTube clip of John McCain making that very point himself, in his own words -- before there ever was a surge.
Update: Despite getting two hundred diggs in just a few hours, this video never made it to digg's home page. Turns out it was buried, presumably by McCainiacs. Please redigg with the new link that has been set up and spread the word if you can -- let's stop this McCain censorship.
Over the past few days I've been working on a longish video focusing on John McCain and the War in Iraq. I don't think I'll be finished with it until tomorrow or Wednesday, but in the meantime I've created a preview trailer focusing on 2002 and McCain's pre-war support for the invasion of Iraq.
You may have seen some of the video in this clip, but most of it will probably be stuff you haven't seen before. The music -- Radiohead's "Meeting in the Aisle" is from its Airbag/How Am I Driving EP. (I'm planning on using different music for the full video, which will extend through 2008.)
Gotta' love Chuck! Here he is making the point that the trip so far is a huge win for Obama, and that even in his "CENTCOM clarification" Maliki used the word "timetable," reinforcing Obama's message on ending the war. According to Todd, this all points to the economy returning as the central issue of the campaign.
According to FEC reports filed yesterday, John McCain has already raised at $62.5 million in private funds that can be used for his general election campaign -- even though he's already committed to accepting public funding for the general.
Moreover, based on my own analysis, of that $62.5 million, three-quarters -- $46.3 million -- comes from a total of 1,803 wealthy individuals who made five figure contributions averaging $25,664 each.
So not only is John McCain blatantly violating his public financing pledge, but he's doing it in grand style, raising money in increments of up to $70,000 per donor -- more than thirty times the amount a donor can give to Barack Obama's general election campaign.
How is this all possible? How has most of the media missed the story? Allow me to explain.
Over at The Corner, a reader asks Jonah Goldberg about John McCain's banishment of Phil Gramm to Belarus.
Jonah:
I don't mean to single you out, but there isn't a "group" email for the Corner as I'm aware of, so I'm writing you.
Anyway, the Corner's silence on yesterday's Phil Gramm remarks is deafening. Here it is 24 hours into a pretty-decent sized story (I don't know how you sign into AOL mail, but I saw it listed as one of the top news stories when I signed in through the web), and not even one comment on his "whiner" remarks? I expected at least a Larry Kudlow defense or something.
Goldberg's response suggests he isn't pleased by the situation, but indicates a willingness to accept it as a political necessity. "This," he writes, "is just another example of why I've always wanted Phil Gramm to be president of the United States and why that can never, ever, happen."
John McCain now says he disagrees with Phil Gramm's statement that America is in a "mental recession" -- but his campaign initially defended Gramm, and the video record shows McCain himself shares the same view.
Earlier today, a reporter asked John McCain how he planned to keep his promise to balance the budget by 2013. McCain's explanation (video and full statement after jump):
QUESTION: Senator McCain, on Monday your campaign put out a policy paper talking about your desire to balance the budget at the end of a first term in office. Can you talk about how you're going to achieve that?
MCCAIN: Sure. Through revenue and economic growth, by keeping taxes low, by reforming Social Security and Medicare, by making sure that we provide jobs and opportunities for all Americans, by free trade, by increasing economic activity, by creating jobs.
That's right -- McCain is pledging to cut the deficit and balance the budget in part "by reforming Social Security" -- a program that he described on Monday as "an absolute disgrace."
Keep in mind that the budget deficit is now more than $400 billion. So the question for John McCain is this: how much of that $400 billion is going to come from his Social Security 'reforms'? And how will voters respond to McCain's new plan?
If you're like me, it can be hard to get fired up about anything John McCain says, but earlier this evening I spent twenty-something minutes watching John McCain's October, 2002 Senate floor speech in favor of launching a preemptive war against Iraq.
Here's a video highlighting key parts of the speech, which you can read here. The video is a bit over seven minutes long, but if you've got time it's worth watching, and sending to a friend. I've also posted some thoughts and essential quotes from the speech below the video.
The New York Times just can't lay off the GOP's Kool-Aid. Take, for example, their story ("In Montana, Obama Tries to Rally Support on Iraq ") about Barack Obama's Fourth of July in Montana:
Mr. Obama’s statements about Iraq on Thursday continued to reverberate. First, he said he might "refine" his plan for withdrawing troops after meeting with military commanders in Iraq this summer. Later, he emphasized his commitment to removing combat troops within 16 months of his taking office.
Wonderful. Pray tell, where might that reverberation be taking place? Oh, I see -- it's reverberating in the very same article:
One day after Mr. Obama said he would consider refining his plan to remove troops from Iraq within 16 months, he offered no timetable for withdrawal as he criticized the Bush administration’s Iraq policy, which he said "has not made us more safe and has fanned anti-American sentiment all around the world."
Was this some detailed policy speech worth of such misguided over-analysis? No. He was speaking at a barbeque -- not the Council on Foreign Relations.
Today's media freakout on "refining" provided some great material to expose the bias and stupidity of many in the MSM.
In this video, I focus on the "reporting" of CNN, which pulled a classic case of: "Obama must respond to these allegations because he's facing questions" without noting that CNN was the outfit that had raised the questions in the first place.
Also, just so you've been warned, I've recently begun narrating some of my videos -- and this is one of them. On the bright side, you can find out that I am after all a real person, and that my name really is Jed.
If you haven't yet had a chance to read mindgeek's diary on the neuroscience of swift-boating, it's worth reading it now.
In the diary, mindgeek delivers a brief overview of the neurological foundations of false beliefs. In short, if a false claim is repeated with enough frequency, over time the brain tends to forget the context which exposed the claim's falsehood, while remembering the claim itself -- in the process, forming a false belief.
(By the way, mindgeek is Sam Wang, a neuroscientist at Princeton University and author of Welcome to Your Brain. And please don't hold it against him that the diary first appeared as an op-ed in The New York Times.)
I'm driving to work, here in Las Vegas. The traffic is bad, mostly on account of the sun, which has has just risen, nearly blinding me and my fellow road warriors. Between my sunglasses and squinting, I can barely make out the road, but I've been down it before, I know where I'm going.
I've got the radio turned on. President McCain is about to give his first press conference after his inauguration earlier in the week. They're saying he's planning on talking about his legislative initiative for the first hundred days, but that's okay.
I mentioned I'm driving; it's expensive. Gas prices are now over five bucks a gallon and going higher. McCain in his inauguration announced a bold new initiative to lower gas prices -- building a long-term base in Iraq, near the border with Iran. He's also fast-tracking his offshore drilling plan.
The McCain campaign pushing back hard against Barack Obama's proposal to close the so-called "Enron loophole," blaming Bill Clinton for having signed into law:
The McCain [campaign] quickly fired back by noting that the Enron Loophole was supported by many Democrats, including ex-President Bill Clinton, and that McCain had long spoken out against it -- and had voted in 2003 to close the loophole.
"The truth is Barack Obama is following John McCain's lead to close a Wall Street loophole that was signed into law by President Bill Clinton," said campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds.
There's a problem with the McCain campaign's response, however. If they are going to attack Bill Clinton for signing the Enron loophole into law, it's only fair to point out that John McCain himself supported its passage in the first place.
