Sunday, September 7, 2008

McCain Campaign steals flags from Obama -- Is McCain running out of MONEY?

UPDATE; I've gotten several off-blog comments, so let me state for the record. No, I don't really believe McCain is running out of money. I was just parodying the right wing that would have spread a viral email about Obama making an equally outrageous claim.  See the comments section for another point I make about the liklihood this is really rooted in an innocent misunderstanding, although the republicans ran with it presenting rumors and innuendos as fact. Apparently McCain does not have the good graces to apologize.

Just when you think John McCain and Sarah Palin can't sink any lower, a report surfaces that McCain's campaign STOLE thousands of American flags from the Obama campaign after the DNC in Denver. Nicole Pitney on HuffingtonPost reports:

UPDATE II: Another statement from the Democratic National Convention Committee: "Stories circulating about flags at the Democratic National Convention are false. We distributed more than 125,000 American made flags at the Convention - the flags removed from Invesco field were intended for other events and taken without permission. It's disappointing that someone would take American flags without authorization and then falsely describe how they were being used. We have the utmost respect for the American flag, and it's sad to see them being used for a cheap political stunt." [emphasis mine]



You can see that the flags were carefully rolled up and stored for future use.

The clock is ticking while the country waits for McCain to not only return the flags that he stole from Obama, but also to issue an apology and provide an explanation about why the McCain camp put out slanderous press reports falsely clamiing the flags were "rescued" from the garbage, when, in fact, the flags were stolen. Even if it was a misunderstanding, McCain should be a man, fess up and acknowledge that his guard dogs overstepped the rhetoric and went waaay over the line!


And while we wait, maybe McCain can also explain why he used FAKE SOLDIERS and STAGED A SOLDIER'S FUNERAL in a video for the RNC! As reported by CBS news:

CBS News found that the footage of the ‘funeral’ and soldiers is what is called ‘stock’ footage. The soldiers were actors and the funeral scene was from a one-day film shoot, produced in June. No real soldiers were used during production.


At least one veterans group finds this offensive and questions the authenticity of other parts of the RNC video:

“What it does reveal is a serious lack of understanding and a lack of personal connection to the military,” said Paul Rieckhoff, Executive Director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

Rieckhoff, who is at the convention with a contingent of veterans added that a video tribute to Medal of Honor winner Michael Monsoor, a Navy Seal killed in Iraq, shown on Tuesday night, used combat video that appeared to him and several other veterans of the Iraq war to have been staged.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well it's obvious that Obama was not using them! HA!

UliPele said...

How could Obama use them? They were STOLEN -- remember?

postingonblogs said...

"McCain should be a man"

No fooling! As far as I can tell, he's a handmaiden to the Washington elite!

Sandy Gholston said...

Sounds like a cheap McCain stunt to get publicity from their ministers of propaganda at Fox News.

UliPele said...

Thanks for the comment! I obviously was using hyperbole in the original post. Nobody knows what really happened. I can imagine a much more innocent scenario on both ends ... something like this:

DNC worker #1: Darn! We're out of boxes, and we have all these flags left!

DNC worker #2: Well, we have these garbage bags that will at least keep them clean during transport. Let's put them in here.

Enter DNC worker #3, who, seeing sealed garbage bags accidentally places them to be collected with the trash.

Enter Denver Pepsi Center worker who happens to be a McCain supporter. He sees these black garbage bags that aren't what the convention center usually uses (apparently they use clear plastic bags). So he looks inside and finds several hundred (or a couple thousand) flags and immediately jumps to conclusions. OR sees it as a great chance to monopolize on an innocent mistake made by the DNC workers.

Enter McCain campaign worker #1: Hey! This guy said Obama left all these mini American flags in the trash! Let's run with this!

And the rest, as they say, is history.