Tuesday, October 7, 2008

I'm sure everyone has heard that Sarah Palin is turning political rallies into lynch mobs in Florida, so I won't go into it, although Gerry has a couple posts on the issue. It conjures up some of my worst fears about the Republican party, but I don't want to be accused of jumping the gun, so I'll let them be for now. She's also attacking Obama for his support of the troops, which is utterly absurd:
See our opponent voted to cut off funding for our troops even after saying that he would never do so.

(Boos.)

And he said that our troops in Afghanistan are just quote, "raiding villages and killing civilians."

(Boos.)

And that's not what our brave men and women in uniform are doing in Afghanistan. The U.S. military is fighting terrorism and protecting us and our values.
What happened is pretty clear: Obama voted against the troop funding bill without a timetable, McCain voted against the troop funding bill with a time table. In other words, they both voted to cut funding for the war (not for "troops"), but the issue was the timeline, not the funding. But to claim that McCain loves the troops is thoroughly dishonest and disgusting. The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America just released its congressional scorecard and gave McCain a "D." Like most associations and unions, the IAVA does not use particularly subjective criteria to make its assessments (e.g., "What do our members think of McCain?"). They simply assess how often the candidate, compared to other candidates, voted yes on IAVA issues. Think Progress has more.

Update: Obama got a B, which is not up there with Jim Webb (A+), but it's much better than his "I love the troops" opponent.

Update: The report card does not award F's, which means that McCain got the lowest grade possible.

Update Update: The report card does reward F's. If one were present at all or almost all of the IAVA votes and voted no on every single issue, one would get an F (there are two total).

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