Democracy Has Prevailed.

March 14, 2007

Santorum's Back!

What is it about Republican blowhards being weeks behind the news and/or not getting the simple facts straight?

Recently there was Ruth Ann Dailey's absurdly stubborn refusal to see the reality staring at her in the face - the Speaker Pelosi jet "scandal". Then there's Jack Kelly most every sunday.

Now EX-Senator Man on Dog enters the arena of spin and half truths. Here's the first paragraph:
It is disappointing that Rep. John Murtha, D-Johnstown, is portraying his efforts to cut funding for troops deploying to Iraq as an attempt to fix problems with our military when he previously told the liberal organization MoveOn.org that his real motivation was to ensure that the military "won't be able to continue" with its new Iraq strategy to secure Baghdad.
First off, Murtha wasn't talking with Moveon.org with that now famous interview, but with the one-time similarly named though unconnected Movecongress.org. The interview can be found on this page. The name of the blog may has been changed to "Stand Up Congress" but the URL (if you'll notice) still says "Movecongress.org."

And how do I know that moveon.org and movecongress.org are NOT the same organizations?

Says so here in an article from 2 1/2 weeks ago in the Washington Post. They ran a correction that reads:
A Feb. 25 article incorrectly said that the antiwar Web site MoveCongress.org is affiliated with the liberal activist group MoveOn.org.

Seems that the writers of that article in the Washington Post made the same mistake that our former junior Senator made - only they made it two weeks earlier. And how do I know this? Ariana Huffington pointed out the error so in her criticism of that Washington Post Article the very next day (February 26):

MoveCongress is not, in fact, "affiliated" with MoveOn. Indeed, if the Post reporters had bothered to check out the MoveCongress site, they'd have found a note announcing a name change contest designed to help the fact-check-challenged media avoid any further confusion.
Now that Lil Ricky's working for a big think-tank, doesn't he have anyone to fact-check over there? Doesn't anyone read the Washington Post?

Now from Ricky's column, he writes:
Instead of pursuing victory in Iraq, Rep. Murtha supports a premature U.S. withdrawal that would endanger America.
Uh, Rick? So do a majority of Americans. From CNN:
Nearly six in 10 of those polled want to see U.S. troops leave Iraq either immediately or within a year.
It also turns out that at the time of that Washington Post article, a majority of Americans actually favored Murtha's plan for "creating new rules on troop training and rest time that would limit the number of troops available for duty in Iraq" 58 to 39 percent.

Such meaty deconstruction in just the first few paragraphs! Do I need to continue?

Rick, your problem isn't with Congressman Murtha - whatever the strenghts or weaknesses of his plan. Your problem is with the American People.

But then again, it always has been.

3 comments:

Sherry Pasquarello said...

i was hoping he'd be gone for longer than this.

Anonymous said...

I wonder what L'il Ricky thinks about this statement:

"[The] President . . . is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation's armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy."

..especially when you consider that person who made it was...Rick Santorum (speaking about the Clinton Administration's military actions in the former Yugoslavia).

In the P-G op-ed, Ricky writes:

In an attempt to stop the president's new strategy before it is given a chance to succeed, Rep. Murtha would mortgage our nation's safety and set up our military for a tougher fight.

This is the same Rick Santorum who, back in 1999, voted in favor of an Amendment prohibiting the use of funds for military operations in Yugoslavia

Anonymous said...

Your problem is with the American People.
But then again, it always has been.


Perfectly said. I'm not sure what country would want Rick. This one clearly doesn't!

Piltdown Man