Ah, the cost-effectiveness of subcontracting IT to the lowest bidder.. was it arranged by Mitt?

Wow, it looks like they vet their pictures about as well as they vet their VP picks. I sure hope when they campaign in Florida, neither of them says they enjoy water sports.

Off-topic, but Andrew Sullivan is reporting that Todd Palin's ex-business partner has filed an emergency motion to seal his divorce papers. Who cares, right? Well, he's the guy Sarah Palin allegedly had an affair with.

I'm sympathetic to the guy, and I don't blame him for wanting to seal the records, because there will be personal stuff in there -- such as net worth at the time of the divorce -- that -- if it were me -- I wouldn't want broadcast around the world.

Still, it has the potential to be very entertaining.

I'm sure the GOP will tell us that they just wanted to showcase middle America and that liberals are showing that they have a natural elite bias against small Alaskan towns, former POWs, pregnant teens, and elementary schools.

End result: many minutes of McCain in front of a green or blue screen, giving video satirists plenty of material to work with.
It sorta made sense from the audience point of view but obviously, nobody thought about how it would look on TV.
If it was supposed to convey the town hall metaphor, it failed.

LOL! They can't tell the difference between a middle school and Walter Reed Medical Center??

How patriotic. Maybe they were funding the middle school all along, which could explain why the Medical Center went to ruins.

Thanks for looking out for us Republicans!

Just screams competence, doesn't it?

If they can't tell a military hospital from a middle school, how will they be able to keep world leaders straight?

McCain: I'd like to welcome Vladimir Putin to the White House...

Visitor: Uhh, Mr. President? My name is Stan Putin, owner of Blue Bell Dry Cleaners in Canton, Ohio...

McCain: Oh.

Come on, folks. Is this really that big of a deal? So some IT douche (I can call him a douche since I'm an IT person too :D) stupidly put the wrong building up as a backdrop...why is this McCain's fault (assuming this is what happened)? Does he need to micro manage down to that level of details?

I think focusing this much on it comes across as being rather juvenile. Note: I'm not a GOP troll. I'm with Obama all the way.

I really only started reading Sullivan at the beginning of this primary season, so I never knew the pro-Bush version that you hated so much. But I do love this version.

Somehow I got into my head the refrain from the song Yellow Submarine... Sea of Green Sea of Green...

This has to be one of the greatest of all time disasters of any political convention I've ever seen (since 68).

They're all for service and veterans and all that but don't take the time to know what Walter Reed looks like?

And when they finally got the graphic down off the screen they went with nothing at all... I guess to match the creativity of the speech itself.

McCain nailed it last night - several times right into his political coffin.

The more-patriotic-than-thou campaign cannot even recognize Walter Reed Medical Center, even when they attempt to use the wounded troops as a photo-op.

The same speech....lmao she is reading it off a script...yeh the urban legend that she "surged" through the teleprompter...somehwere Pinocchio giggled. Mccain is making this all about alin wow bad, bad bad tactic. Easy to refute, just HS simple "John Mccain wants us all to vote for Sara Palin, why?" "The answer is easy a Man running for president has nothing but much as he wants it to be Sara Palin isnt running for President, he is>"

That was a perfect comment. Thanks for the laugh!

let's assume for the sake of discussion that McCain actually intended to use the Walter Reed Medical Center as the background prop for his acceptance speech

if so, doesn't that sort of violate the spirit (if not the letter) of the Hatch Act?

(the Hatch Act basically says thou shall not use Federal facilities for conducting partisan activities)?

but I doubt anyone will pursue that issue (especially given that Bush is also getting a pass on delivering his video speech direct from the White House)

apparently, it's okay for McCain and Bush to ignore the Hatch Act but not VP Gore (who got roasted for making fund raising calls from the wrong room and/or using the wrong phone)

Well that explains where all the funding went...

...would the REAL Walter Reed please stand up?

Just like McCain's two Johnny's , there's apparently more than one Walter Reed building out there on the internets..

They need to get their toobz straight!

Imcompetence is so blatantly systemic in the Republicn party, how could anyone want to vote for one of them?

I agree, they vetted this slide show about as well as they vetted Palin.

Apparently only Bush's base was fooled again;
http://www.pollster.com/blogs/omero_the_palin_effect_prelimi.php

McCain: "Middle School? No wonder I didn't see any wounded veterans on my last visit."

Mediocrity, incompetence redux. but who can tell the difference? McCain 894/899, with his soul mate-went to 5 colleges to get one degree but will say exactly what she is told without bating an eye.

Heck of a job George McCain!

I doubt the McCain camp even recognized there was a problem. First of all, why would they bring up the Walter Reed hospital anyway? To remind everyone how the chickenhawks sent kids off to war and then cut funding for them when they come home. Sheesh.

McCain's vp selection process:
http://tinyurl.com/5zr47h

I haven't been able to track back to the page where I read it, but it turns out that Todd Palin is often referred to as the "shadow governor". He apparently has his hands in the day-to-day nitty gritty of his spouse's administration, despite being a private citizen. His former business partner found out that Todd had viewed his records, (which he had released for divorce proceedings), and passed the information along for political purposes.

The rush to re-seal the records is as much a response to Mr. Palin's crude political indiscretions as anything else.

ABC News is straight-out lying on this story. Here's the link: (Sorry if it isn't formatted right) Article

Here's the lie in the article:

A little Googling reveals that the photo appears to be the exterior of Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, California.

I call bullsh*t! You can't use Google to find what an image is. You can find an image of "Walter Reed school/hospital/whatever", but you can't show Google a picture of a building and ask "what is it?"

They're plagiarizing from TPM without attribution. And they know it.

As a parent of a 6th grader at Walter Reed Middle School, I probably know more than anyone here. This is a photo of the main building that was built in the 1930's. It is in Studio City, but many still call it North Hollywood which lies on the other side of the Santa Monica Mountains about five miles north of Hollywood proper. North Hollywood is perceived as a bit run down and the school sits in the middle of a middle class to upper middle class enclave of Studio City and Valley Village where the average house price is anywhere from 750K t 900K - and yes that is middle class by L.A. standards.

Until this year, it had a large population stretching from the poorer parts of the valley into Studio City. With new school construction changing the boundaries, it's now on a traditional calendar with a smaller population. It hosts three small learning acadamies which benefit from well off parents who fundraise and underwrite programs like a Latin elective and an eighth grade trip to the East Coast. The school epitomizes the haves and the have nots in L.A. public schools. The poor neighborhood's have difficult learning environments while the well off areas operate in a positive cycle of college-driven students, demanding parents and motivated teachers and administrators. Even within the school, the general ed kids rarely interact with the academy kids. Ironically, it is an example of a high performing public school where quite a few parents could afford to send their kids to a $20,000 a year private school.

Here is this little wrinkle. My wife is a teacher at a feeder elementary school down the street, and she just told me this morning that a McCain relative is enrolled in her school.

Oilbama needsd to stress that he is the one who voted for his buddy Dick Cheney's Big Oil Energy Bill and that McCain voted against it. He needs to stress that he is a much bigger lightweight empty suit than Sarah Palin. He needs to stress that he is the one that is friends with Racists like Rev Wright, Terrorists like William Ayers, and Slumlords like Rezco. He needa to point out that while facing a true American Military hero he did not serve in the Armed Forces and has a bitchy wife that was not proud of America until people started fawning all over her cult leader husband.

Oilbama needsd to stress that he is the one who voted for his buddy Dick Cheney's Big Oil Energy Bill and that McCain voted against it. He needs to stress that he is a much bigger lightweight empty suit than Sarah Palin. He needs to stress that he is the one that is friends with Racists like Rev Wright, Terrorists like William Ayers, and Slumlords like Rezco. He needa to point out that while facing a true American Military hero he did not serve in the Armed Forces and has a bitchy wife that was not proud of America until people started fawning all over her cult leader husband.

And here is another wrinkle. My wife is a teacher at a feeder elementary school right down the street. She told me this morning that a McCain relative is enrolled there.

Oilbama needsd to stress that he is the one who voted for his buddy Dick Cheney's Big Oil Energy Bill and that McCain voted against it. He needs to stress that he is a much bigger lightweight empty suit than Sarah Palin. He needs to stress that he is the one that is friends with Racists like Rev Wright, Terrorists like William Ayers, and Slumlords like Rezco. He needa to point out that while facing a true American Military hero he did not serve in the Armed Forces and has a bitchy wife that was not proud of America until people started fawning all over her cult leader husband.

I'd like to reiterate what DaleD says above: this is not a photo image, it is a video. You can clearly see someone walking up the steps of the school at about 3:48 in McCain's speech. Is there really stock video of this middle school? If not, then someone on the campaign shot the video, and that pretty much shoots down the "IT screwup" story, doesn't it?

I'd like to reiterate what DaleD says above: this is not a photo image, it is a video. You can clearly see someone walking up the steps of the school at about 3:48 in McCain's speech. Is there really stock video of this middle school? If not, then someone on the campaign shot the video, and that pretty much shoots down the "IT screwup" story, doesn't it?

I wonder what the business partners wife has to say about this.

Yes, I am presuming she had the affair (if it occurred) with the husband, but with the republicans/christianists, you never know.

And I thought it was an old folks home.

"This is his full-time job, campaigning to be President."

Not so much, apparently. In fact, he had so much free time on his hands during the convention run-up to the speech, that he was able to actually head out to the airport and personally greet young Levi Johnston, the prospective groom of unmarried, underaged Bristol Palin, and the reported father of her child.

Um, okay: dumb question… Why would you want to draw attention to this inconsistency—or, at least an outcome inconsistent with the longtime public claims of your anointed running mate about abstinence, contraception and pre-marital sexual relations—by dropping everything you're doing to greet the arriving high school dropout and avowed 'kick-ass' character?

These people are beyond redemption. All of them, particularly Senator McCain.

I hate to say it, but that's a Walter Mondale-level fuck-up. I'll never forget on the day Daylight Savings changed, Mondale ended up with an extra hour on his schedule, and the Times ran a front-page photo of him just hanging out out in front of the hotel he was at. Not good,

McCain got lucky. The first version of the picture was a Walter Reade movie theater. So they had to scramble to get a Walter Reed image, and the middle school ("Walter Reed M...") was the best they could do on short notice.

I meant to do that!

This is so funny! After watching the McCain/McSame speech and having Sarah Palin make my skin crawl, I needed a good laugh. These guys can't do anything right. Why are they taken seriously at all?

Has the McCain campaign offered ANY justification as to why they had the Jr. High on the screen?

And better yet, it was used as the backdrop for Jimmy Smits' character's announcement on 'The West Wing!' I love it!

"Tell me now what more do you need
take me to Walter Reed tonight
Baby, I've lost the will for fighting
over everything"
-Michael Penn

Was it a mistake -or just a fake ? How many Americans would have seen or recognize the real Walter Reed Medical Centre?
What the backdrop shows is a beautiful building, lush lawns -perfect place for rehabilitation. So what about all those horrible 'liberal' stories about poor care of vets? See, it just wasn't true!

In case anyone's interested:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Reed

Catch phrase for the Obama/Biden team on the trail.

"We need to support our veterans at Walter Reed ... and we aren't talking about that middle school in North Hollywood."