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Blunderov
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Making Flippy Floppy
« on: 2006-10-26 04:25:05 » |
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[Blunderov] I wonder what "it's important to capture the dynamism of the efforts that have been ongoing to try to make Iraq more secure, and therefore, enhance the clarification -- or the greater precision" actually means?
Making Flippy Floppy*; if they say you are flopping then you point out that, in actual fact, you wuz flipping... and so on. Whee. What fun. Extra points for waggling lips with index finger and making a noise like "bwub a bwub a dub" live on national TV.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200610240019
How many times will the White House drop "stay the course" before the media notice it has purported to drop it before?
Summary: In covering Tony Snow's comments that President Bush has "stopped using" the phrase "stay the course" to describe the administration's strategy in Iraq, the media simply noted that Bush and other White House officials have used the phrase as recently as October 11 but failed to note that Snow's comments mark the second time that the White House has reportedly rejected "stay the course" as a characterization of the administration's strategy in Iraq.
During an October 23 press briefing, White House press secretary Tony Snow announced that President Bush has "stopped using" the phrase "stay the course" when talking about the Iraq war "[b]ecause it left the wrong impression about what was going on." In covering Snow's comments, however, the media simply noted that Bush and other White House officials have used the phrase as recently as October 11. None of these media outlets noted that Snow's October 23 comments mark the second time that the White House has reportedly rejected "stay the course" as a characterization of the administration's strategy in Iraq, even as Bush continued to use it.
As Media Matters for America noted, the Bush administration began using "stay the course" not long after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. It was the oft-repeated mantra of Bush's 2004 re-election campaign, and its use by the administration continued throughout 2005 and 2006.
Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman appears to be the first GOP official to suggest that the White House had disavowed the term "stay the course." On the August 13 broadcast of NBC's Meet the Press, Mehlman told guest host and NBC News chief White House correspondent David Gregory: "The choice in this election is not between 'stay the course' and 'cut and run,' it's between 'win by adapting' and 'cut and run.' "
As Media Matters noted, the media followed Mehlman's lead, despite the fact that Bush and Snow used "stay the course" several times during the month of August. On the August 27 broadcast of Meet the Press, Kate O'Beirne, Washington editor of the conservative National Review, claimed that the Bush administration is "changing" its rhetoric from "stay the course" to "adapt for victory." On the August 30 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, guest host and MSNBC chief Washington correspondent Norah O'Donnell left unchallenged Mehlman's claim that "I don't think our approach is stay the course. ... Our approach is to adapt and win." Notwithstanding Mehlman's assertion, as Think Progress noted, Bush said on August 30, "We will stay the course." As Media Matters previously noted, on August 31, The Washington Post reported that "[m]any Democrats accuse the president of advocating 'stay the course' in Iraq, but the White House rejects the phrase and regularly emphasizes that it is adapting tactics to changing circumstances." Media Matters noted then that, notwithstanding the White House's reported claims to having rejected the phrase, Bush was still using it.
On the September 18 broadcast of NBC's Today, co-host Meredith Vieira asked first lady Laura Bush, during an interview, what she says to Republican candidates who ask her about the Iraq war. Mrs. Bush responded: "Well, I say exactly what the president says, that we need to stay the course; that it's really in our interest as Americans to make sure Iraq can build a stable democracy." As noted above, President Bush used "stay the course" again during an October 11 press conference but described the term as being "about a quarter right," saying, "Stay the course means keep doing what you're doing. My attitude is: Don't do what you're doing if it's not working -- change. Stay the course also means: Don't leave before the job is done. And that's -- we're going to get the job done in Iraq. And it's important that we do get the job done in Iraq."
Notwithstanding Bush's continued use of "stay the course," even as the media were reporting he had abandoned it, Bush told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos on the October 22 broadcast of This Week that his administration has "never been stay the course" on Iraq. As Media Matters noted, Stephanopoulos failed to challenge Bush's clearly false claim. The next day, on CBS' The Early Show, White House senior adviser Dan Bartlett claimed that the Bush administration's Iraq policy has "never been a 'stay the course' strategy." Co-host Hannah Storm also failed to challenge this claim.
At his October 23 press briefing, Snow was pressed on the administration's position on "stay the course" and claimed that Bush has "stopped using it":
REPORTER: Is there a change in the administration's "stay the course" policy? Bartlett this morning said that wasn't ever the policy.
SNOW: No, the policy -- because the idea of "stay the course" is you've done one thing, you kick back, and wait for it. And this has always been a dynamic policy that is aimed at moving forward at all times on a number of fronts, and that would include the international diplomatic front. After all, the Iraq compact is something we worked out with the Iraqis before visiting the prime minister in Baghdad earlier this year.
So, what you have is not "stay the course," but, in fact, a study in constant motion by the administration and by the Iraqi government, and, frankly, also by the enemy, because there are constant shifts, and you constantly have to adjust to what the other side is doing.
I think you also see much more aggressive efforts on the part of the Iraqi government because the prime minister understands the importance -- the vital importance of reconciliation. The third reconciliation conference will be taking place next -- is it next week, week after next? -- on the 4th. He is working on the reconciliation front. There has been considerable -- and continues to be -- action on the economic front. And obviously, we're continuing to cooperate in security. That is not a "stay the course" policy.
[...]
REPORTER: Tony, it seems what you have is not "stay the course." Has anybody told the president he should stop calling it "stay the course" then?
SNOW: I don't think he's used that term in a while.
REPORTER: Oh, yes, he has. Repeatedly.
SNOW: When?
REPORTER: Well, in August, because I wrote a story saying he didn't use it and I was quite sternly corrected.
SNOW: No, he stopped using it.
REPORTER: Why would he stop using it?
SNOW: Because it left the wrong impression about what was going on. And it allowed critics to say, well, here's an administration that's just embarked upon a policy and not looking at what the situation is, when, in fact, it's just the opposite. The president is determined not to leave Iraq short of victory, but he also understands that it's important to capture the dynamism of the efforts that have been ongoing to try to make Iraq more secure, and therefore, enhance the clarification -- or the greater precision.
REPORTER: Is the president responsible for the fact people think it's "stay the course" since he's, in fact, described it that way himself?
SNOW: No.
Following this latest repudiation of "stay the course" by Bush, Bartlett, and Snow, various media outlets simply reported their statements, or that the administration has used the phrase extensively in the past -- failing to note that the White House had purportedly already rejected the terminology once, even as the president continued to use it. The New York Times reported on October 24 that Bush used the term on August 31 but "has not repeated it for some time," ignoring his use of it on October 11. The Associated Press simply reported that Snow said Bush "stopped using" the phrase, as did the October 23 broadcasts of ABC's World News with Charles Gibson and NBC's Nightly News.
*Thanks of course, to Talking Heads and the song of that name.
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Blunderov
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Re:Making Flippy Floppy
« Reply #1 on: 2006-10-26 11:58:01 » |
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[Blunderov] I seem to recall Phony Blair attempting to reframe the WOT(me worry?) as "The War on Islamic Reactionary Extremism". Somehow it never took.
And now. The long awaited Making Flippy Floppy master class part two: how to flap your lips in public like prehensile rubber dinner plates. Tony Snow shows how it is done.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/10/25/tony-snow-miscounts-bush_n_32506.html
Tony Snow Miscounts: Bush Said "Stay The Course" 29 Times, Not 8...
Crooks and Liars | Posted October 25, 2006 11:06 PM
READ MORE: George W. Bush, Fox News
From crooksandliars.com
From Countdown With Keith Olbermann:
You have probably forgotten this, it stuck about as well as did "the New Coke"...
But just last year, the Pentagon tried to change the language. We were no longer fighting a "War on Terror" -- we were fighting a "Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism".
But despite Donald Rumsfeld's endless repetition of his new phrase, the effort failed because the Commander-in-Chief refused to call the "Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism" anything but "The War on Terror".
Now in our fourth story on the Countdown -- that message miscommunication is happening in reverse.
On Monday, the White House "fired" the under-producing catch-phrase "stay the course".
And apparently nobody told the Secretary of Defense.
The problem becomes when you can't make adjustments, even about the language of making adjustments.
The White House Press Secretary is now revising his revisionist history on the phrase and still coming up short. First saying that the President never said "stay the course" then yesterday, saying this to Fox News:
Well sure, to be fair, the President did say "Stay the Course" eight times.
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Blunderov
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Re:Making Flippy Floppy
« Reply #2 on: 2006-11-02 04:45:12 » |
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[Blunderov] More making Flippy Floppy.
Rotating Mask Illusion
http://www.planetperplex.com/en/img.php?id=79
is the koan for today.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=134136
Republican Flip-floppers
Tom Engelhardt
Remember back in 2004 when delegates at the Republican presidential convention waved those flip-flop sandals and Republican crowds throughout the campaign then chanted with delight, "flip-flop, flip-flop," mocking, in part, John Kerry's I-voted-for-it-before-I-voted-against it Iraq CV. At the time, Democrats were vociferously claiming that Kerry's "resolute" opponent was, in fact, the Flip-Flopper-in-Chief, but they could never make the charge stick, while Republicans had the times of their political lives with those "whichever way the wind blows" windsurfing ads.
Two years have passed. Another election season is more than upon us and, though no Democratic-sponsored waffle ads are out there, nor are Democrats waving beach footwear or shouting flip-flop mantras, the fact is top Republicans have been performing Olympic-level flips and flops recently. George W. Bush, for example, suddenly cut-and-ran from his signature Iraq phrase: stay the course. Our steadfast president turned chameleon in the face of politically terrifying polling figures on the Iraq War, congressional performance, and himself. In Florida, visiting a company that produces devices to detect roadside bombs, no longer was he the plodding "stay the course" guy of the last year. Instead, he was suddenly a maestro of "change," a darting, dashing Wile E. Coyote of a president, zipping off a cliff while saying things like: "We're constantly changing. The enemy changes, and we change. The enemy adapts to our strategies and tactics, and we adapt to theirs. We're constantly changing to defeat this enemy." Change or flip flop?
Or take Tennessee's Bill Frist, Republican Senate majority leader. As the political season was just heating up in June, even before the President and his advisors launched their seven-speech terrorism and Iraq August/September assault on the Democrats, Frist was already leading the political charge with his election issue of choice. He was standing in the Senate "slamming" Democrats and thundering: "This amendment effectively calls on the United States to cut and run from Iraq. Let me be clear: retreat is not a solution. Our national security requires us to follow through on our commitments."
Like the president, deep into September he was still excoriating the Democrats not just for their positions on the Iraq War, but for their "surrender" policies in the war on terror. As he put it in a PBS interview with Jim Lehrer on September 14th:
"I'd say, ‘Wake up, Harry Reid. Wake up, Harry Reid…' I think that [the president] has got it right, that we're not going to do what Harry Reid wants to do, and that is surrender, to wave a white flag, to cut and run at a time when we're being threatened… as we all saw just three or four weeks ago, in a plot from Britain that was going to send 10 airplanes over here."
He then characterized the Democratic Party as a group "who basically belittle in many ways this war on terror, who do want to wave this white flag and surrender."
This was to be the election program of the Republican Party that would be resolutely repeated over and over until… uh, but then those polls started pouring in and the course got a little bumpy to stay on. Recently, according to Washington Post reporters Peter Slevin and Michael Powell, Frist offered the following succinct advice to congressional candidates: "The challenge is to get Americans to focus on pocketbook issues, and not on the Iraq and terror issue."
Call it waving the white flag or cutting and running, if you want… or, if the occasion moves you, why not just start up that chant: flip-flop, flip-flop...
COMMENTS
Mr Englehardt answered his own question...
WHY can't the Dems start yelling about "flip-flops"?
Because...when Kerry was getting hit on flip-flops, they called it "nuance" and "growing in office" and "altering views under altering circumstances".
In other words, exactly what the Republicans are saying now. So...how do the Dems, who defended Kerry's flip-flops (whether they were or not), start yelling about Republican flip-flops, without showing themselves as hypocritical as the Repubs are on the issue of "flip-flops"?
Posted by MASK 10/30/2006 @ 09:12am |
[Blunderov] Spoilsport. Its so much more fun with the boot on the other foot. Still, if this comment presages a new movement towards Decency in Republican Politics I suppose I could be persuaded to restrain my unseemly glee. Probably I'm safe on this score though, given the recent Repug distortions of the botched Kerry joke which has caused so much righteous indignation. Sauce for the goose is still sauce for the gander.
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Blunderov
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Re:Making Flippy Floppy
« Reply #3 on: 2006-11-04 05:24:44 » |
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[Blunderov] Making Flippy Floppy : Master Class part 3.
The Lieberman stance. In this technique students should attempt to visualise Doris the mule wrapping her lips around a nice fresh toffee-apple.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.phpaz=view_all&address=385x2659
Connecticut Senate: Anti-War Joe Lieberman "No one wants the war in Iraq to end more than I do."
(video)
You won't believe the stuff Joe says in this press event:
"No one wants more war."
"None of us wants more war. Certainly not me."
"We all want to end the war in Iraq."
"I want to bring our troops home."
"All of us want the war In Iraq to end. No one wants the war in Iraq to end more than I do."
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Blunderov
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Re:Making Flippy Floppy
« Reply #5 on: 2008-11-10 17:43:37 » |
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[Blunderov] A bridge too far for Joe "Flipper the Dolphin" Lieberman. Bye Joe. It was real.
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/carpenter/234
Joe Lieberman: The Unforgiven
Submitted by pmcarpenter on Mon, 11/10/2008 - 6:14am. P.M. Carpenter
THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter
The New York Times had a brief but valuable overview yesterday of this year's graduating class of what you might call miraculously reformed extremists -- those recidivist dunderheads who throughout the presidential campaign landed eager blows well below Barack Obama's belt, yet are now the very models of bipartisanship, brotherly love, moderation and understanding.
They're the political Jimmy Swaggarts of 2008. They had their inadmissible fun; now it's time for you to forgive and forget.
In most cases I'd have it no other way -- not because I'm some fountain of Christian charity, but only because that's how political grown-ups do it. In valedictorian Joe Lieberman's case, however, I'll make an exception.
Because Lieberman crossed from mere, eager dunderhead status to premeditated traitor. There's just no other way to put it.
Here, for instance, is a representative line from how Lieberman himself so indelicately put it time and again on the campaign trial, while traveling with the enemy: The presidential contest, he would say, was "between one candidate, John McCain, who has always put the country first … and one candidate who has not."
Even without those last, six little words, Lieberman had committed the unforgivable. He wasn't content, as a Democrat, or independent Democrat, or whatever the hell he calls himself these days, to say he harbored serious foreign policy disagreements with his quasiparty's candidate and then leave it at that.
There's even legitimate question as to Joe's political affair having come from "principle," as he liked to insist ad nauseam. Rather, it is plenty reasonable to conjecture that his fling was mostly just payback -- perhaps, even, nothing but. In Joe's morally twisted world, his party had done him wrong in 2006, so now he'd flaunt some reciprocal indiscretions publicly. That'll show 'em.
Furthermore, as the Times notes, as a featured speaker at the Republican National Convention -- yes, hard as it is to imagine, the Republican National Convention -- Lieberman thrilled in defaming Obama (entirely out of context, naturally) before millions of viewers for having "vot[ed] to cut off funding for our troops on the ground."
Why of course. What else would a flag lapel-pin hating, pledge-of-allegiance despising, madrassa-attending, fist-bumping friend of our nation's foes do? Why, that Democrat doesn't just put country second: he puts our enemies first. This, from the Democratic vice-presidential candidate of 2000.
Fast forward to the electorally inevitable. Now, says a spokesman for the principled senator, "it’s genuinely time to find unity and move forward behind the new president."
Wait a minute. What did I miss? Get behind a president who refuses to put country first? That's principled? It seems to me that now, more than ever, would be the time to stand vigorously opposed to such a man.
But forget that, because it gets even better -- and by that, I mean it got downright Swaggartesque. Which is to say, on the heels of Obama's decisive victory, Lieberman issued a statement in praise of "his historic and impressive" accomplishment, adding, with teardrops falling gently on the fax machine, I'm sure, that "the American people are a people of extraordinary fairness."
Once again, Joe was talking out of his ass, and sideways. What he really meant was: I sure hope Harry Reid proves himself a man of unwarranted fairness, because there's no doubt about it, I committed the unforgivable: I struck at the king and failed to kill him.
Thankfully, it doesn't quite sound like Harry plans on being "extraordinary" this year. Recently on CNN he said, "Joe Lieberman has done something that I think was improper, wrong, and I’d like -- if we weren’t on television, I’d use a stronger word of describing what he did." No need, Harry.
So go ahead. Kick his two-faced butt out of the caucus, Harry. It seems to me that Republicans have more use for a socially liberal neoconservative than do Democrats for a traitorous warmonger.
The Times piece incorporated other rehabilitating dunderheads whose rhetorical extremes got the better of them, such as the exotically deranged Michele Bachmann and some lady from Alaska. And to them I'd say, No problem. You may be nuts, but you were only doing what you thought was your partisan duty.
But as for you, Crazy Joe? Good riddance. Or at least I hope that's what Harry finally says.
Please respond to P.M.'s commentary by leaving comments below and sharing them with the BuzzFlash community. For personal questions or comments you can contact him at fifthcolumnistmail@gmail.com
THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter
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