Since the 2000 election, John McCain has been the golden boy of the Washington press corps. They travel with hin. They laugh at his jokes. They insert the word "maverick" into every story about him. They eat him up with a spoon.
Well... this ain't the year 2000 John McCain.
The current version is forgetful, stammering, and really, scary angry ... a LOT. And there's evidence that the major media reporters who used to dote on him, are changing their tone, perhaps fearing a future Saturday Night Live parody about offering the old boy a pillow...? Case in point, the conference call on which McCain surrogates tried to cover for McCain's latest gaffe on Iraq, as reported by the HuffPo's Sam Stein:
...Reminded that troops in Iraq currently number 155,000, well above the pre-surge level of 130,000, McCain refused to acknowledge on Friday that he had misspoke.
"I said we had drawn down," the Senator declared during a press conference (watch video). "I said we have drawn down and we have drawn down three of the five brigades. We have drawn down three of the five brigades. We have drawn down the marines. The rest will be home the end of July. That's just facts, the facts as I stated them."
But that isn't what he stated. On Thursday, in fact, he made a very specific measurement as to the extent of troop reductions.
"I can tell you that it [the mission in Iraq] is succeeding," said McCain. "I can look you in the eye and tell you it's succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-surge levels."
And that was just the beginning. McCain's gaffe had already been exacerbated during a conference call earlier in the day, when aides to the Arizona Republican insisted that he had not misspoke, even while McCain surrogate Sen. Jon Kyl acknowledged on the same call that he had: "What he said was not entirely accurate. OK. So what?"
The campaign aides also ridiculed reporters for even caring about the topic. "It is the essence of semantics," foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann said. "We are having this call about a verb tense and if you choose to write a story about Sen. McCain's use of a verb tense you need to hold Senator Obama to that exact same standard."
All of which, of course, simply piqued the interest of reporters. Michael Dobbs of the Washington Post pointed out that, contrary to the McCain campaign's tone, word choice does, in fact, matter. "If Bush had said 'the mission will be accomplished' as opposed to 'mission accomplished' -- those are two completely different things with completely different meanings."
An increasingly irritated Scheunemann responded: "If you're going to start fact-checking verb tenses, we're going to make sure we start monitoring verb tenses a lot more closely than we have in this campaign."
Later in the call, a reporter questioned whether McCain's verbal error was a sign that the Senator's age was affecting his memory and understanding.
"In every campaign, when you want to change the subject you try to pick a little thing that you can pick on and try to change the subject," replied Senator Jon Kyl, a McCain supporter. "I don't think this has anything to do with age."...
Now, if only MSNBC would replay HIS pastor videos over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again... or at least ask his boy Joe Lieberman why he's still hanging out with John "Hitler was an agent of God" Hagee...
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dim done
done = request.form("done")
if done = "" then
done = "No"
%>
Tell a friend
<%
Else
if request.form("done") = "Yes" then
'sets variables
dim email, sendmail
email = request.form("email")
Set sendmail = Server.CreateObject("CDONTS.NewMail")
'put the webmaster address here
sendmail.From = "webmaster@aspbasics.com"
'The mail is sent to the address entered in the previous page.
sendmail.To = email
'Enter the subject of your mail here
sendmail.Subject = "Check out this website"
'send a specific page or send a site url
dim url
'url = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
url = "http://www.aspbasics.net"
'This is the content of the message.
sendmail.Body = "Site recommendation from a friend!" & _
vbCrlf & vbCrlf & "A friend has sent you this email and thought you would should check out this site." & _
vbCrlf & url & vbCrlf
'this sets mail priority.... 0=low 1=normal 2=high
sendmail.Importance = 1
sendmail.Send 'Send the email!
response.redirect Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
'Response.write ("Sent to ") & email
End if
End if
%>
"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
