No. He. Didn’t.

He wrote an article that the New York Times said was not newsworthy because it didn’t offer anything new. A two-sentence mention of timetables notwithstanding, he gave no specifics on the subject.

Obama wrote something new.
McCain wrote something he’s said time and time again.

The first is newsworthy.
The second isn’t.

Got it?

BIAS, I say!

And Jay Tea’s response pretty much confirms he made the right call. Write an op-ed outlining an actual plan for Iraq and you might have to spend months of grief actually explaining how you’ll pull it off.

Keep the same old smoke and mirrors while claiming press bias and your idiot base will make excuses for you until Nov 4 and beyond.

Quick, what’s McCain’s most impressive intellectual accomplishment?

Okay, it was a joke.

being Magna Cum Laude doesn’t stop him from having to run to his various hundreds of advisers to find out what position it is he’s supposed to take on an issue.

What’s your evidence for that?

Okay, it was a joke. We know you don’t have any.

You gotta like McCain’s consistency. After a nap, he reverses his position on any subject. Before his nap, he was against regulation. After his nap, he’s for it.

Does it BOTHER you that McCain doesn’t even know his own position on anything?

Why do you think Obama didn’t offer up any kind of plan for Wall Street?

Perhaps because it is a complex situation that does not respond to simple answers of the sort McCain gives, which usually involve buckets of money being given to people who are already rich. Sometimes a major issue doesn’t respond well to shooting from the hip, but anyone who voted for Bush wouldn’t know that.

Perhaps because it is McCain’s policies, written by lobbyists for these very banks, that brought on the disaster.

In the sentence just before stating he won’t lay out timetables, McCain says he expects most of the troops home by end of his first term of office, by 2013.

Given the opportunity to show how this would be done — by 2013, a specific checkpoint on a timetable (!) — McCain would rather play victim and claim press bias.

Seems clear and simple enough to me: McCain wanted to make bold assertions (troops home by end of first term, 2013) but not have to back them up with substance.

It might be good enough for the New York Post, but that’s not saying much

Here we go again. Barack Obama being Magna Cum Laude doesn’t stop him from having to run to his various hundreds of advisers to find out what position it is he’s supposed to take on an issue.

Why do you think Obama didn’t offer up any kind of plan for Wall Street? He had to wait to be told what to say. When the situation in Georgia became an issue he blurted out some kind of nonsense that rank amateurs like him spout and then a few days later his advisers told him what to say (after they pilfered most of it from McCain) and he completely changed his tune. How about that surge in Iraq? He was so utterly wrong on that one and has to basically be mugged by Bill O’Reilly to finally concede that it worked and even then he has to say it like everybody was surprised that it worked.

Graduating Magna Cum Laude doesn’t fill a suit and Obama’s is empty to the core.

So we’re to take it, Jay Tea, that McCain is incapable of just including a sentence that says his plan would not involve timetables? Or are you suggesting that if he wrote an articulate article that laid out his plan for achieving victory but made no mention of timetables that the NYT would still refuse to publish it? Or perhaps you believe McCain just isn’t intelligent enough to realize he the Time’s list wasn’t a 6th grade assignment and he didn’t have to include every item listed?

McCain DID write such an article, submitted it to the Times, and THEN they wrote their note. McCain then submitted the same article to several other media, and it was published in places like the New York Post. Here are the paragraphs where McCain explicitly rejects timetables:

As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields (such as Afghanistan) without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I’ve said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.

But I’ve also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground – not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Sen. Obama.

Again, the New York Times rejection note:

It would also have to lay out a clear plan for achieving victory — with troops levels, timetables and measures for compelling the Iraqis to cooperate.

Emphasis added for the clue-impaired.

Once again, in black and white:

- McCain writes a piece that specifically rejects the use of timetables in Iraq as part of his overall Iraq policy.

- The Times rejects his piece and specifically cites his noninclusion of timetables as the reason his piece is rejected.

There you go. So clear, so simple, even a Strowbridge could follow it.

If, of course, that Strowbridge could ever bring himself to admit that he was wrong and I was right — an admission that he is not capable of, regardless of overwhelming proof.

J.

If you had to guess, JT, which one would you expect to be able to write a coherent article?

Mr. Schmidt and Sen. McCain might very well perceive the Times as hostile. I’m preplexed, Mr. Tea, why you think that gives Schmidt a reason to make things up about Mr. McCain’s opponent and expect the Times to print them.

Too rich, Mr. Tea. Shall I recount our history? You bungle facts, even simple ones, regularly and reliably. Your boast is as comical as it is empty.

Interestingly enough, Jay Tea, neither of the paragraphs you quote actually prove your assertion.

The letter from the Times about the op-ed could be read a number of different ways that don’t include the Times demanding that McCain put timetables into this plan before they’ll publish his piece. Indeed, it could be read as a list of specifics that McCain MIGHT include in order to beef up his piece.

As for the paragraph from the other story, what you quote does not include anything about “named sources say that the story is absolutely impossible.” You provided the offending graph, but no link or other evidence to support your claim that it was refuted. You see Jay Tea, when you want to prove something is wrong, you need to post, you know, proof.

I can only reach the conclusion that when you say “There it is, in black and white,” you actually have no idea what that phrase means.

ROFLMAO. Oh Jay Tea, always so good for the irony.

JAY TEA: “Obama doesn’t seem overly interested in negotiating, just getting rid of our weapons and hoping others follow our example.”

OBAMA (10/2/07): “We will not pursue unilateral disarmament.”

JAY TEA: “So he’s progressed from unilateral disarmament to bilateral disarmament.”

You make a claim about Obama’s record and then when that claim is proven wrong, rather than admit the mistake you adapt it to fit into your world view suggesting that it’s Obama who changed his position. Which is also totally wrong.

Jay Tea, one would almost think that your were allergic to the truth.
http://www.oliverwillis.com/2008/09/21/they-really-are-this-stupid/#comments

Yes, they wanted concrete, articulate terms. I notice you keep ignoring that part.

If he wrote something with a timetable that was concrete and articulate, they would have rejected it. If he wrote something without timetables that was concrete and articulate, they would have published it.

“There it is, in black and white, you lying sack of subhuman… ”

Yes, there it is, proof you are a fucking idiot.

I never claimed they didn’t mention it. I said it wasn’t the main trust of the piece. You showing that it was mentioned it hardly evidence that I was wrong.

God fucking damn. Do you not understand the nature of the claim determines the appropriate evidence needed to either confirm or reject the claim.

If I say all cars are red, you just need to show one car that’s blue to prove I’m wrong.

If I say most care are red, you need to do more than show one car that is blue to prove I’m wrong.

Got it?

Unfortunately for Steve, this kind of whining didn’t get inadequate boilerplate un-rejected from the Op-Ed page,

and it didn’t grant Palin a fluff interview on Oprah.

I think we’re seeing the limits of the effectiveness of crying “press bias” here … after a certain of level of lying it just doesn’t carry much credibility any more

So we’re to take it, Jay Tea, that McCain is incapable of just including a sentence that says his plan would not involve timetables? Or are you suggesting that if he wrote an articulate article that laid out his plan for achieving victory but made no mention of timetables that the NYT would still refuse to publish it? Or perhaps you believe McCain just isn’t intelligent enough to realize he the Time’s list wasn’t a 6th grade assignment and he didn’t have to include every item listed?

Well, there’s your problem right there.

Thanks. I needed that piece of hysterical bullshit to get my day started.

It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece. To that end, the article would have to articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq. It would also have to lay out a clear plan for achieving victory — with troops levels, timetables and measures for compelling the Iraqis to cooperate. And it would need to describe the Senator’s Afghanistan strategy, spelling out how it meshes with his Iraq plan.

2nd Paragraph of the Times article on McCain and that lobbyist in question:

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

Unnamed sources make the allegation, named sources say that the story is absolutely impossible — they say that the meetings with McCain over the lobbyist’s presence, that the Times said that they attended — never happened.

There it is, in black and white, you lying sack of subhuman… sorry, started to slip into your mindset there. I really try to avoid that.

So, with just those two examples — I could also add the Times leading the charge to question whether McCain was “American enough” to run for president, due to his birth in Panama while his father was serving in the Navy — I repeat: it is no surprise that the McCain camp is openly recognizing the Times as a hostile entity, and acting accordingly.

J.