No More Years

To honor Tim Russert, who sadly passed away today, here's a clip from an interview with John McCain that he conducted on Meet the Press on June 19, 2005. Thanks for getting to the heart of the matter on this one, Tim:



(hat tip, Crooks & Liars)

McCain Loses to the Turnip, Too

Two men share a microphone...and other things.

See if you can tell McCain and Bush apart at this nifty quiz.

And then find out how much better it would be to vote for a carrot rather than McCain.

A Banner Moment

The AP reports:

The White House said Wednesday that President Bush has paid a price for the "Mission Accomplished" banner that was flown in triumph five years ago but later became a symbol of U.S. misjudgments and mistakes in the long and costly war in Iraq.

Thursday is the fifth anniversary of Bush's dramatic landing in a Navy jet on an aircraft carrier homebound from the war. The USS Abraham Lincoln had launched thousands of airstrikes on Iraq.

[...]

"President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said 'mission accomplished' for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission," White House press secretary Dana Perino said Wednesday.

Perino continued, "It's hard to fit a lot of words on a banner, as the font size has to be large. So you could say it wasn't a mistake in content as much as a graphic design problem." Perino also urged people to think, but not too hard, about how the war is going today and not about bad visuals from the past that they shouldn't waste their time remembering.

She said what is important now is "how the president would describe the fight today. It's been a very tough month in Iraq, but we are taking the fight to the enemy."

As she said those words, a banner behind her read Taking the Fight to the Enemy*. Only those closest to Perino could read the tiny type next to the asterisk at the bottom of the banner: "Over the backs of our dead soldiers, a mere 49 in April alone."

Perino concluded, "Don't worry--five years from today when I'm working for President McCain we'll say how you misunderstood what I said, and that has caused a lot of heartache. But what's important is how the president describes the fight."