This is the stupidest election ever:
Days before the anniversary of September 11, on the same morning that John McCain and Barack Obama released a joint statement pledging to avoid politics in light of the anniversary of the terrorist attacks, McCain’s campaign accused Democrats of throwing away 12,000 American flags.
“The campaign says the flags were recovered from Invesco Field after the Democrats concluded their convention there,” Fox News reported, “and they are going to be used as part of the warm-up ceremonies before McCain takes the stage” for a rally in Colorado Springs, Col.
But according to a senior official involved in organizing the Democratic convention, the McCain camp is simply lying about the flags.
“All of the flags at Invesco were picked up and put in bags and into storage, along with the unused flags and campaign signs. The flags were going to be donated, and the signs were going to be sent out to be used elsewhere,” the official said, speaking anonymously since he was not authorized to talk to the press.
So an unnamed vendor comes across a bag of American flags at Invesco Field. Rather than alerting someone, said vendor instead steals the flags and gives them to the McCain campaign. Which makes John McCain guilty of receiving stolen property, as far as I can tell.
Incidentally, proof that these flags were found in a dumpster? None.
Which is why I’m going to link to this quote by Sarah Palin:
“So Sambo beat the bitch!”
This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama’s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.
According to Lucille, the waitress serving her table at the time and who asked that her last name not be used, Gov. Palin was eating lunch with five or six people when the subject of the Democrat’s primary battle came up. The governor, seemingly not caring that people at nearby tables would likely hear her, uttered the slur and then laughed loudly as her meal mates joined in appreciatively.
“It was kind of disgusting,” Lucille, who is part Aboriginal, said in a phone interview after admitting that she is frightened of being discovered telling folks in the “lower 48” about life near the North Pole.
Yes, it’s only sourced to one semi-anonymous source. But at least we have a first name. Given that the McCain campaign won’t even give us that on Flaggate, I figure this is fair game. Besides, Palin can certainly knock that statement down at her next press conference, if she ever emerges from hiding. You might think that by sequestering your vice presidential candidate in Juneau, away from the media, you might just be providing prima facie evidence that whatever her ability to give a speech, Sarah Palin isn’t ready for prime time. But that’s crazy talk, I’m sure.
“Yes, it’s only sourced to one semi-anonymous source. But at least we have a first name. Given that the McCain campaign won’t even give us that on Flaggate, I figure this is fair game. ”
:(
I don’t buy it. To be appointed dog-catcher in Juneau, you’d need more tact than that. That’s too many -isms packed into such a short sentence.
I think the flag story is legit. I think the flags were removed from the garbage – there are plenty of photos floating around the Internet showing flags in what are plainly garbage bags full of crap. Photoshopped? Sure, it’s possible. But I doubt it.
If the flags were stolen, then the McCain camp has (at minimum) received stolen property, and may also be in on a couple of conspiracy charges. I don’t know how much miniature flags retail for, but this is felony theft at minimum. So I’ll be looking for the police report filed by the Obama campaign anytime now. Police stations are open on the weekend, right? One of Obama’s 25,000 staffers – the ones that make him a qualified executive – can probably find the time to call up Denver PD. Since police reports are public records, they will then appear on the web about eight seconds after being filed, given the interest in the campaign and the allegations.
“War Hero Turns to Crime” is a pretty compelling storyline. Don’t think we’ll be missing out on that one.
Unless, of course, the story is pretty much as it has been reported, and the Obama camp’s anonymous spokesperson is just furiously spinning with BS about a theft.
As for your latest baseless Palin smear, please, keep it up. Every time a leftist blogger posts more odious, unsourced crapola, an angel gets his wings. Or another independent voter gets sick of the putrescence coming from Obama’s camp, and decides to pull the lever for McCain. One of those, at any rate. Either way, Karl asked me to tell you, “thanks, and good job.”
Unreliable source? Maybe…
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/214283.php
Robert, I usually can understand where you’re coming from but your staunch defenses of Palin just completely mystify me. You don’t seem THAT radically right wing
You must be new here.
The linked post is full of unsourced quotes and innuendo (apart from the Kilkenny references, which, while solid, are all from one person, which we would call anecdotal material if we didn’t want to believe it). It’s nowhere near what I would call responsible journalism.
It happens that I do want to believe anything bad that can be dug up about Palin, but I want it to be real and verified, preferably caught on tape, so that any mind that’s even slightly ajar will have to credit it. And, trust me, if there’s anything there it will come out, if only because the Enquirer will make someone an offer they can’t refuse, whereupon the media swarm will descend and give no one any peace until the evidence sees the light of day.
(It wouldn’t surprise me unduly if the Obama campaign were even now sitting on such evidence, biding its time, knowing that it’ll stand a much better chance of affecting the outcome if it’s released just before the election. Of course two can play at that game.)
The flag thing is just silly. If we base our votes on stuff like this we deserve the government we get. Sadly, that’s usually the way it goes.
I am very right wing by Alas standards, Molly.
But why do you have to be right-wing, left-wing, or any wing, to not want to see someone lied about and slandered?
It’s more that you (and RonF) treat any attack on Palin, no matter how well-sourced and backed up with facts, as ‘outrageous!’
I mean, you’ve objected to her being called a liar, although she repeated the bridge to nowhere lie again yesterday … which makes her not just a liar, but a willful, knowledgeable, repeated liar. The same thing is true of her attempts to paint herself as anti-earmark, which have been debunked several times over. Meanwhile, over on the library censorship thread, RonF is inventing ever more baroque reasons that ‘IOKIYAR’, similarly unsupported by facts or evidence.
It would be one thing if you were arguing against the ‘Sarah/Bristol Baby Swap’ nonsense … sure, that’s bullshit, but also nobody here is claiming it’s not. You’re treating legitimate factual criticisms as if they’re far-out and unreasonable.
That’s what the objection is.
—Myca
Um, no. First off, I’m not Ron, so don’t tar me with the Ron brush, and don’t tar him with the Robert brush. Thanks.
The things where you have well-sourced criticisms, I have agreed with. Specifically, bridge to nowhere. I also believe that the library thing was a mistake.
The things that I have slammed Jeff on are the postings where he has made claims which have been demonstrated to be untrue – claims that the founder of this blog have acknowledged to be untrue – but has persisted in making them.
Specifically, that Palin was a Buchanan supporter. This is a LIE; she was on the Steve Forbes campaign that year. Everyone in the political universe, except for the hyperpartisan left, has come to recognize this.
Specifically, that Palin was a member of the AIP. This is a LIE; her husband was a member, and who cares, but Palin herself simply showed the party hospitality in her official capacity as mayor of the city where they were meeting. Everyone in the political universe, except for the hyperpartisan left, has come to recognize this.
And now, that Palin was spotted in a restaurant making racist and sexist slurs, sourced to nobody and published in a highly partisan blog. Hey, I heard a cabdriver in Denver say that he saw Obama beating up homeless men and slapping street prostitutes around because they wouldn’t blow him for $2. The cabdriver’s name was Norm, and he’s afraid to come forward. There, I just provided a story with exactly the same level of sourcing as the “Sambo vs. Bitch” smear that Jeff is promulgating.
That’s the kind of crap I object to, and have objected to, and will continue to object to. Read the posts, and you will find me acknowledging the legitimate stories and arguing against the bogus crap. You will find Jeff treating the bogus crap and the legitimate stories as being exactly the same.
Yes, and with more sourcing than the flag story.
Are you able to understand why that’s a problem?
—Myca
The biggest problem I have with Palin is that she opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest. How can anyone suggest that the goverment force women to have babies when they don’t want to! At the same time she favors the killing of wolves in Alaska so that hunters will have more carribou. I guess she is “pro life” only when it applies to humans.
I understand why poorly sourced stories are problematic. Do you understand why multiply sourced stories are better?
The flag story is considerably better sourced, because it is multiply sourced. We have the original anonymous flag-remover – in and of him or herself, not much of a source – its like a neighborhood lady who says she thinks she saw the guys at 123 Fake Street hauling a dead body into the garage, worthless as evidence in and of itself, but enough to get the cops to check out the property. We have a spokesman from the Invesco Field organization, saying where the flags were found and removed from. We have the McCain camp’s report of where it got the flags and pictures of them handing them out. We have the Obama campaign acknowledging implicitly that these were their flags, and arguing over what their disposition had been. (The equivalent, in the Sambo story, of Sarah Palin coming out and saying “I didn’t call him a Sambo, I called him a n*****!”) We have oodles of pictures of flags in the garbage, flags next to the garbage, bundles of flags in garbage bags.
Maybe some of those sources are unreliable. Maybe the photos are photoshopped. Maybe the Obama’s anonymous spokesman – they have yet to come out with an OFFICIAL response to the story, btw, which is a huge red flag that they want to keep it on the qt because there’s some substance to the original report – has been misinformed. Maybe the McCain camp is lying. Maybe the Invesco Field spokesperson is lying. It’s hard to be 100% sure – which is why, btw, an HONEST reporter includes all the sources in their stories, including the ones who say “no, this didn’t happen this way.”
But we’ve sourced the crap out of the flag story, and if it turns out to not be true, or completely true, or something in between, then we will know who lied.
Oh, correction: the Democrats have made an official response. Last time I had looked, those quotes were from unnamed sources. They’re pretty weak tea, though – no denial that the flags were left at Invesco, no denial that these were their flags, just attacks on the McCain camp for making it a political issue. This is from the blog of the reporter who first broke the story, David Harsanyi of the Denver Post.
I must have been off about Robert. I knew he was right wing by Alas standards, but I wasn’t aware he was as conservative as I’ve been told
Those aren’t bags of garbage with flags in them, they are bags of flags.
That is important, because it speaks to motive.
The Republicheads are presumably accusing the Dems of intentionally chucking the flags, i.e. treating them like garbage.
Looking at Robert’s link, they sure as hell don’t LOOK like garbage. Why, if someone was presumably considering the flags to be garbage, would they have spent hours collecting the flags–and just the flags–and rolling them up neatly, before placing them in bags? It’s not as if there was no other garbage, one assumes.
Now, someone apparently forgot them. Bad move, bad timing, mostly because it gives McCain something to gloat about. But there is a huge difference between forgetting something and deliberately chucking it.
Molly, it depends on your point of view. By Amp’s standards, I’m probably right around Genghis Khan on the left-right scale. In the American electorate, I’m probably at about the 75th percentile of rightwardness. I’ve voted for Democrats in living memory ;)
That’s not intended as a slam on Amp, it’s just the nature of political perception. I’d put Amp at about the 10th or 15th percentile of rightwardness, but in some circles where I also hang out, he’d be considered so hard left that there’s nothing further left that could exist. From Maine, Catalina Island and LA look to be the same place.
Sailorman, some of the photos are neatly stacked rows of flags. Others are flags stuck in with the pizza boxes and discarded ‘Obama’ signs. I agree that it’s unlikely an order came down from Obama: “Throw those flags away! And then find me some Bibles to desecrate!”
But I also think that the way a campaign does things can be a signal of their underlying values, and that does have electoral significance and resonance.
But I also think that the way a campaign does things can be a signal of their underlying values, and that does have electoral significance and resonance.
What is done with miniature American flags on sticks is a signal of underlying values of a campaign? I remember in the weeks after 9/11, when everybody was flying mini-flags on their cars and the first rains came. Thousands upon thousands of shredded & filthy mini-flags all over the road. I guess Oregonians hate America. Or at least aren’t particularly patriotic.
Do you have every mini-flag you’ve ever been handed at rallies, etc. stored safely in protective bags in your home?
Yeah, this on the same level as the Palin Sambo story.
And FWIW, the Palin “Sambo” story is questionable at best, and most likely made up out of wholecloth. But so is the flag story. If we’re going to spend our time discussing this stupid, idiotic story instead of actual things like, say, the nation’s largest mortgage lenders being nationalized, then we deserve McCain-Palin and the decline and fall of the American Republic that will accelerate on their watch.
Robert, are you saying that Obama should personally have been involved in being extra-special-certain that thousands of low end American flags were devotedly preserved? And do you apply that same scrutiny to Republicans?
Come on: no flags at a single republican rally, ever? And what, in the last few years of rallies, they all have been delicately preserved and reused?
That’s just itching for a story, it is. Though perhaps not, since it give credence to the insanity that “the flag” is something that requires physical protection (unless it is on a “made in USA” box, an album cover, a jacket, a letter, a stamp, or a Republican.)
How many tiny flags get thrown out every july 4?
You are listing more than a bit off the ways, here.
And what, in the last few years of rallies, they all have been delicately preserved and reused?
Don’t be silly. You can’t preserve them all — Republicans burn their American flags as the US Flag Code requires.
Absolutely!
Which is why I pay attention to the repeated and deliberate attempts by the McCain campaign to deceive the American public. It indicates pretty clearly exactly what they would do if elected.
—Myca
I’ll bet dollars to donuts that in the next few weeks someone finds evidence that a Republican even did about the same thing.
Actually, that is a flat out lie. The code doesn’t “require” ANYTHING. Legally “should” has about as much weight as “if you feel like it.”
And to the degree that the code tell you what someone thinks you “should do,” it requires only “dignified” destruction, not burning per se.
I will grant that the most dignified manner would be to place each flag in a hand carved oaken box chased with gold filigree; to ceremonially lead it on a caisson, accompanied by fife and drum, to a special pyre containing wood from each state of the union; to speechify solemnly while anointing the flag with scented oils; and then to burn it while citizens wail, cry, and smear their faces with ashes.
In this modern age, however, “burn” means “incinerate.” Something tells me–correct me if I’m wrong, please–that Washington D.C. does not routinely hold flag destruction bonfires. They take the flags places and stick ’em in incinerators, I bet.
And do you want to take bets on how they get there? Trash bags, probably.
This is getting ridiculous.
Seriously? Has the news reporting stooped to this? Whinging about the disposal of flags? Oh well, it’s not like the US has any real issues to face right now.
I have found that after events like this the people involved take the flags home as souvenirs, so the organization handing them out doesn’t have a disposal (or “store these until the next time”) problem. The flags found helter-skelter in garbage bags with other trash were clearly discarded. Bags with only flags in them were probably never handed out in the first place.
I do wonder about the mentality of people who would take a flag in the first place and then toss it in the trash (or on a chair on the the floor to be picked up and put in the trash). Even in the case of bags filled with neatly rolled flags, however, to then leave and leave them in garbage bags invites whoever is handling cleanup to dispose of them like common trash. So someone or some group is guilty of very poor judgement.
It’s a proper point that we’ve got lots more things to worry about than this. But like it or not a lot of people will take a cue from this as regarding the attitudes of Democrats towards their country as a whole. And no, Sen. Obama isn’t responsible for this. I’m sure that when he saw these pictures he smacked his head and thought “WTF?!”
I’m in the business of teaching kids respect for the American flag; how to raise it, how to lower it, etc. Flag retirement is one part of that. The U.S. Flag Code does say that flags no longer suitable for display should be disposed of with dignity, “preferably by burning”, which is why all the (ridiculous) anti-flag burning laws carve out exemptions for this. BTW, I’m not shy about expressing my opinion of such laws around the Scouts or their parents.
I have taken part in a number of flag retirement ceremonies of various sorts, from being limited to a few kids at a Troop meeting to being part of the close of a camp-wide campfire with 300 people present. There are a lot of myths surrounding who can or cannot do what with a flag and what you must or must not do. Overall Sailorman is right; the law makes suggestions but “dignified” means different things to different people. So if someone tries to tell you that you have to burn it, or that you should bury it due to all the controversy about flag burning, or that only the military/Boy Scouts/VFW can dispose of flags, or that it has to be done in private, etc., etc., feel free to politely demur. They’re full of it.
To you non-Americans; an overall explanation would be lengthy. Suffice it to say that the American flag is a very potent symbol to Americans regardless of what they may think of the politics of the moment (or perhaps because of them …). There are some specific guidelines as to how to display the flag. Violations of those guidelines, especially when it comes to doing things like burning it, stepping on it, drawing on it, etc., elicits very strong and emotional responses among a lot of people. The appearance that a group of people showed disrespect for a number of flags in turn elicits fairly widespread condemnation of that group.
Jake Squid said:
I remember in the weeks after 9/11, when everybody was flying mini-flags on their cars and the first rains came. Thousands upon thousands of shredded & filthy mini-flags all over the road.
I remember this. I thought that was in poor taste myself. I thought that attaching a flag to a moving vehicle until it got shredded into a rag and as you note possibly ending up torn off the vehicle onto the roadside was a dumb way to show one’s patriotism.
There are a ton of dumb ways to show one’s patriotism, one of which is to play gotcha with unverified (and in many cases unverifiable) gossip, and another of which is to decide someone must be the Antichrist because they tossed their little plastic flag in the trash, or because they didn’t pick through all the trash (yuck!) to recover and properly retire all the little plastic flags. Or to say that people who own or don’t own guns or who espouse or don’t espouse a particular religion, or any religion, are somehow from outer space or in some other way un-American. Or… (slaps self) never mind.
Sorry. Ahem.
Earlier I mentioned the possibility that a mind even slightly ajar could be persuaded by evidence. It’s very hard, speaking only for myself here, to believe that this mind could still support McCain and believe him to be a selfless patriot despite all the glaring evidence to the contrary. This leads to a very nasty wish that something would come to light that would turn a sufficient number of voters against him, such as a video of him pooping on a flag, and a tendency to seize upon any suitable half-baked crackpot rumor like a barracuda on a clownfish. I’m trying to rise above such behavior, but it’s not always easy.
Meanwhile, over on the library censorship thread, RonF is inventing ever more baroque reasons that ‘IOKIYAR’, similarly unsupported by facts or evidence.
Myca, that’s a gross misrepresentation of what I’m talking about over there.
steals the flags and gives them to the McCain campaign.
Hm. Where were those bags actually recovered from? If Law and Order can be believed, trash isn’t something you can steal. If I walk up to your garbage can out on the curb and pull stuff out of it apparently I haven’t stolen a thing.
OTOH, maybe Law and Order can’t be believed. Or these things weren’t not yet in a dumpster. What exactly happened?
Sweet hang-gliding saints, can we get off the flags already? Can we talk about health care, or education, or economic policy, or Social Security, or baseball, or ancient Sumerian verb forms? Something, anything, that’s slightly more relevant to the actual problems facing this actual country and what the candidates actually plan to do about them.
Actually, no, it really isn’t. When pressed on evidence for your bizarre inventions of executive responsibility, you had literally nothing to offer. Your claims were utterly and completely unsupported by fact.
—Myca
With all due respect to you both, maybe any further discussion of what was said in that thread should take place in, well, that thread?
Fair enough, fair enough. Sorry.
—Myca
Hah! I knew you were going to say that, Amp. Quite right.
Lu: I must say that I’m quite sick of all the criticisms of Gov. Palin because she can’t parse ancient Sumerian verb forms. It’s obviously a blatant partisan attack and proves that the Democrats are a bunch of anti-American socialists.
Thank you. That’s better.
I have pictures of Barack Obama blowing his nose on a Sumerian flag.
Oh, that’s old news.
Lu, why do you hate Sumeria?
That would be Sumer. Get your facts straight. You’re just mad because you didn’t get invited to Inanna’s beer party.
Only elitist media liberals call it Sumer. Heartland-dwelling people who love America know its REAL name. Now we know your true loyalties!
“Getting?”