Yesterday we flagged the AP's Jennifer Loven's 'analysis' piece flogging the McCain/RNC spin on Obama's run to the center. Well, as every crack communication operation knows, message repetition is the key to success. And so today we have another 'analysis' piece, this time by the AP's Steven Hurst. And it's practically the same piece. Hurst and Loven actually both use the identical quote from RNC spinmeister Alex Conant.

Says Conant: ""There appears to be no issue that Barack Obama is not willing to reverse himself on for the sake of political expedience."

The identical quote appears in both pieces. If the pieces weren't bylined I think I might have assumed one was a rewrite of the other. But they actually appear to be two completely original articles, just mouthing the identical McCain/RNC line.

It seems like we might have a case of persistent Solomonism at the AP, even though the master himself is now two jobs on. This is really going to bear watching.

For a few new projects we're going to be working on, we're looking for some good freelance researchers/writers. So if you're a freelancer or have a job that allows you to do some freelancing, and you've ever been interested in working with TPM, send us an email with the subject headline "TPM Research," with an introduction and resume.

To be clear, this not for a full-time job (though it could lead to one) and at the moment it's not for a specific project. But we'd like to have people's names on file to reach out to to help on particular stories.

When I read Jennifer Loven's AP piece on Obama, which I flagged in the post below, it made my eyes bleed so bad I hardly knew where to start in cataloguing the awfulness. But TPM Reader CO points out a good place to start.

We've seen many examples over the last couple days of reporters egregiously lapping up the McCain camp's nonsensical spin about Obama flip-flopping on Iraq. But some reporters can get spun so thoroughly that they actually retrospectively rearrange the facts of the campaign to accommodate the McCain camp's spin. Change the facts to suit the spin, as it were.

So here you have Jennifer Loven, a veteran journalist with one of the plum spots in the profession writing this sentence (emphasis added) ...

His problem is that his change in emphasis to flexibility from a hard-nosed end-the-war stance -- including his recent position that withdrawing combat troops could take as long as 16 months -- will now be heard loud and clear by an anti-war camp that may have ignored it before.

Sort of depends on the meaning of 'recent' because I think I've heard the 16 months line for some time. And, sure enough, from October 2007 ...

There is no military solution in Iraq, and there never was. I will begin to remove our troops from Iraq immediately. I will remove one or two brigades a month, and get all of our combat troops out of Iraq within 16 months.

If I'm not mistaken he has said this numerous times since.

Please. There's always, repositioning by both sides gearing up for the general. So let's note those. And I guess there's no stopping gullible reporters from getting jonesed up by each sides' spinners to find subtle shifts where there aren't any. But let's not get so bamboozled that we actually start making stuff up. Okay?

Associated Press officially endorses McCain.

(ed.note: Well, pretty much.)

Late Update: Some recent fun AP-McCain moments (during the courtship phase) ...

McCain's moderators, the AP's Ron Fournier and Liz Sidoti, greeted McCain with a box of Dunkin' Donuts. "We spend quite a bit of time with you on the back of the Straight Talk Express asking you questions, and what we've decided to do today was invite everyone else along on the ride," Sidoti explained. "We even brought you your favorite treat."

McCain opened the offering. "Oh, yes, with sprinkles!" he said.

Sidoti passed him a cup. "A little coffee with a little cream and a little sugar," she said.

While the barbeques are getting underway and the fireworks are being prepared, a Happy 4th of July from TPM. Organize and vote. Do it for your country.

Says TPM Reader BH ...

I agree with the points of your "Please, please, reporters with brains" entry, but I think you might need to be included in the group of reporters/bloggers/etc. that is following the McCain script. As usual, there will basically be two responses to this story - both favorable to McCain. The first will be the hoards of dutiful reporters parroting whatever interpretation McCain feeds them. The second will be the righteously indignant Obama defenders with all their nuanced facts decrying his innocence. So, what we get is a strong and offensive position versus a correct, but overly cerebral and defensive argument. Strategy versus tactics? Come on - the wingnuts must laugh their asses off every time they see this script play out.

Why cede the offensive position? The offensive rebuttal is to first completely ignore the way McCain framed the position and then just flip it around - "why does McCain so desperately want to convince the public that his Iraq policy is just like Obama's?" Because the public long ago figured out that he was stuck carrying Bush's turd and McCain damn well knows his campaign is swirling the drain along with it. What's more to be said than "John McCain would LOVE to convince the public that he and Obama don't differ in their Iraq policy - why is that? Because McCain and Bush got us into this Iraq nightmare and the public knows that Obama will get us out." Repeat after me - McCain and Bush got us into this Iraq nightmare and Obama will get us out. Repeat. Repeat.

I spent most of today in bed with some kind of nasty cold. So I only caught up on any news this evening. And I must confess to being little short of astounded by the avalanche of press BS I'm reading on Barack Obama's position on Iraq.

The McCain camp seems to have a lot of reporters eating out of its hands since many journalists don't appear to grasp the basic distinction between strategy and tactics. I've even had normally sensible journalist colleagues forwarding me RNC press releases like they're passing on the revealed truth. McCain's campaign actually put out a statement claiming that Obama "has now adopted John McCain's position that we cannot risk the progress we have made in Iraq by beginning to withdraw our troops immediately without concern for conditions on the ground."

I've watched this campaign unfold pretty closely. And I've listened to Obama's position on Iraq. He's been very clear through this year and last on the distinction between strategy and tactics. Presidents set the strategy -- which in this context means the goal or the policy. And if the policy is a military one, a President will consult closely with his military advisors on the tactics used to execute the policy.

This is an elementary distinction the current occupant in the White House has continually tried to confuse by claiming that his policies are driven and constrained by the advice he's given by his commanders on the ground. There's nothing odd or contradictory about Obama saying that he'll change the policy to one of withdrawal of American combat troops from Iraq with a specific timetable but that he will consult with his military advisors about how best to execute that policy.

For the McCain campaign to put out a memo to reporters claiming that Obama has adopted McCain's policy only shows that his advisors believe that a sizable percentage of the political press is made up of incorrigible morons. And it's hard to disagree with the judgment.

The simple truth is that this campaign offers a very clear cut choice on Iraq. One candidate believes that the US occupation of Iraq is the solution; the other thinks it's the problem. John McCain supports the permanent deployment of US troops in Iraq. That is why his hundred years remark isn't some gotcha line. It's a clear statement of his policy. Obama supports a deliberate and orderly withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. It's a completely different view of America's role in the world and future in the Middle East. Reporters who can't grasp what Obama is saying seem simply to have been permanently befuddled by George W. Bush's game-playing over delegating policy to commanders.

There's no question Barack Obama has shifted his position on FISA. But I'm hearing more and more that Obama has clearly shifted his position on Iraq. I've been a bit under the weather the last few days. So maybe I've missed something. But can anyone show me any evidence that this is really true? I know the McCain campaign is saying it? And I know bleating, game-playing neocons are saying it. But now that I'm seeing network talking heads saying it, can I see some evidence beyond the fact that the idea is getting pitched by the McCain campaign? Many thanks ...

The Fourth can't come soon enough, says TPM Reader JP ...

Before we all torpedo the best candidate we have had in 30+ years over this FISA thing, be aware of the two facts: (1) there is a long-established government contractor immunity doctrine in American law & what the telecoms did after 9-11 in obeying government demands for compliance is right in stride with that doctrine, and (2) in any event, the federal government is likely required to indemnify the telcos for any judgment or settlement they'd have to pay. Is this really the make-or-break litmus-test the netroots is clamoring for? No way. Is this just another example of liberals eating their own? You betcha. Pop open a brew, chill out, enjoy the 4th and then get back to the task of electing this guy president.

Equality of Opportunity, what a concept.

Did John McCain say he didn't know much about economics or not? In today's episode of TPMtv, we go to the tape ...

High-res version at Veracifier.com.

Over the last couple days we've been telling you about this DC outfit called BMW Direct. They are a direct mail shop. And from what we can tell they have a two-tiered business model.

First, they've got a few bonafide Republican elected officials who they raise money for by the normal rules of direct mail fundraising business. But then they've got a bunch of potemkin candidates for whom they raise insane gobs of money, almost all of which they keep for themselves.

Good work if you can get it.

The biggest moneymaker in this latter category -- though there's some competition -- seems to be Deborah Honeycutt (R-GA) who's running in the 13th district of Georgia. In 2006 Honeycutt lost to incumbent David Scott (D-GA) by an impressive 38 points. And since in this cycle her campaign has managed to spend only a measly $16,695 in Georgia, you might figure for round two against Scott, Honeycutt is just dialing it in.

But quite the contrary.

Look at her FEC filings and you find that Honeycutt is one of the biggest players in the 2008 cycle. With the help of BMW Direct she's managed to raise an astounding $1.7 million.

To give you some perspective, high-profile netroots-backed Darcy Burner raised only $1.37 million over the same period -- and that's a very impressive total.

So where's all the money going? Well, of that $1.7 million, $1.5 million went to BMW Direct and various affiliated companies. So we've been wanting to find out how happy Honeycutt was with BMW Direct raising insane amounts of money for her around the contrary which she gets virtually none of.

Well, it turns out they're pretty psyched.

Andrew Tilghman got a hold of Honeycutt's volunteer campaign manager Michael Murphy who says, "We've been very pleased with them. BMW Direct has been able to help us raise resources and tap into a thirst in the country for the principles and platforms that she stands on."

How about Honeycutt's campaign getting next to none of the money raised for them? "I just work with the resources we have ... All I can say is we've been very pleased with BMW Direct."

Do I just have issues, or does this ad (which Google is currently running on some of our pages) contain an element of cognitive dissonance?

Part me is hoping, trying to find some argument that explains why Washington Post didn't muff this Obama home loan story as badly as they seem to have.

But I think I'm destined to be disappointed.

Obama's Axelrod administers a gentle smackdown to CNN's John Roberts ...

Obama-denial-of-fist-bump story turns out to be bogus.

I think we've now got the tell on the ouster of Rick Davis at the McCain campaign.

It's not just that Davis is being replaced by Steve Schmidt as campaign manager. They are reportedly also scrapping their system of 11 largely autonomous regional managers to run the campaign, an approach to running a national campaign that I do not believe has ever been tried before.

That sounds a lot like they're scrapping the whole operation and starting again from square one, thus squandering the huge advantage they got by sealing up the nomination months in advance of the Democrats.

No doubt, they'll talk about retooling and logical evolutions. But this sounds much more like scrapping the whole org chart and starting from scratch.

Late Update: The Trib discusses what appears to be another key part of this. The McCain hands getting their walking papers to make room for Rove's crew to take over.

We have some scary, awful news to report; but happily a story that appears set to have a happy ending.

Brian Beutler, a friend of ours here and known to many of you for his progressive blogging and journalism, was shot early this morning in Washington, DC, in what appears to have been a botched mugging. The wounds were serious. But surgery was successful and he's now recovering in a DC hospital. He's expected to make a full recovery. Greg Sargent has the story.

The Politico is reporting that chief McCainster Rick Davis is being kicked up stairs and replaced by Steve Schmidt as the guy in charge of day-to-day operations -- i.e., the campaign manager. There's a lot of unclarity, even in the article, about just what's up. So we'll be bringing you more shortly.

David Brooks gets his facts wrong on Obama's tax proposal.

Our new Coffee House editor Lila Shapiro has asked the TPM staff to share our summer reading lists here at TPMCafe's Coffee House blog. And I must confess that while I frequently fantasize that I'm going to read more Nabokov or any other sort of highbrow literature, I almost always end up spending whatever free time I have reading history. And that usually spending some span of months digging into one era before getting my fill of it and moving on to another.

At the moment I'm reading a series of books on World War I and World War II, mainly the first -- not so much the wars proper, but the periods leading up to them and what factors pushed the countries to war.

Most of my interest is just characterological. I've been on history kicks like this for my whole adult life. And at this point I just figure it's a permanent condition. But reading these books -- or in several cases rereading them -- has helped me work through, though not in any particularly linear or direct way, my thoughts about the Bush years and the last two decades, going back to the end of the Cold War.

Normally, anything so recent as the 20th century doesn't quite do it for me in the history department. But this is an exception.

Read more »

In today's episode of TPMtv, the very best of MSM hyperventilation about Wes Clark's non-demeaning comments about John McCain ...

High-res version at Veracifier.com.

Oy. Word to the wise. If you're a high profile officeholder running for reelection, don't let your webmasters post links on your site to gay-themed (as in making fun of gays) fratboy youtube videos.

More in a moment.

Storied CIA vet Milt Bearden ...

The administration's claims of having "saved thousands of Americans" can be dismissed out of hand because credible evidence has never been offered -- not even an authoritative leak of any major terrorist operation interdicted based on information gathered from these interrogations in the past seven years. All the public gets is repeated references to Jose Padilla, the Lakawanna Six, the Liberty Seven and the Library Tower operation in Los Angeles. If those slapstick episodes are the true character of the threat, then maybe we'll be okay after all.

When challenged on the lack of a game-changing example of a derailed operation, administration officials usually say that the need to protect sources and methods prevents revealing just how enhanced interrogation techniques have saved so many thousands of Americans. But it is irresponsible for any administration not to tell a credible story that would convince critics at home and abroad that this torture has served some useful purpose.

Read the rest of Bearden's article here in the Washington Independent.

I'd missed Lanny Davis. He just showed up on Fox to be outraged about Wes Clark.

McCain says Jim Webb should stop criticizing him too -- says Obama's behind it.

Last night I told you about BMW Direct, the DC political consultancy that appears to split their time between fundraising for actual GOP elected officeholders, who are mainly white, and raising money for what appear to be phantom candidates, who also seem to be disproportionately African-American, that never gets spent on the candidates' races but rather gets plowed back into BMW Direct. Now it turns out that a few months ago, Roll Call (sub. req.) found them operating a similar scheme with some called Freedom's Defense Fund.

Since 2004, BMW has raised $1.1 million for Freedom's Defense Fund. But, perhaps explaining why Freedom is so down on its luck these days, a mere $50,000 was actually given to candidates -- which is after all, the main point of a PAC.

Sometimes when I keep on an issue like the Clark/McCain brouhaha, readers will write in and say things like, "It's a losing issue." "Drop it." "It isn't helping Obama." And so forth. But that's not our issue. I leave it to the campaigns to manage the press cycle. We have a different set of priorities. And in this case I want to come back to Clark's comments because I've heard from a number of people saying that it's clear Clark was denigrating McCain's service or heroism because he referred not to his time as a POW or as someone who endured torture, but rather as someone who got "shot down." By pointing to this specifically Clark was denigrating McCain's service or more specifically his skills as a pilot.

But that doesn't make any sense if you're one of the people who've actually watched the interview because the words are actually chosen by Bob Schieffer, host of Face the Nation.

Clark is in midst of arguing that McCain has never been in a position of executive authority in wartime. And then they have this back and forth ...

As you can see, Schieffer says 'getting shot down' as one of McCain's qualifications and Clark says he doesn't think that's a qualification for being president.

Now, do I think this analysis of what was actually said is going to change the popular impression of what happened at this point? Not really. The conventional wisdom has already congealed. But as long as we're on the durable and ascertainable ground of what was actually said, I don't think there's really any question. Clark's point was unassailable. And to say he was attacking McCain's service -- as opposed to saying it didn't necessarily make him the better candidate for president -- is clearly not the case.

McCain confuses Sudan and Somalia.

The Boston Globe had a great article yesterday about an outfit called BMW Direct Inc. whose business seems to be finding nonsense Republican candidates in hopeless races, raising tons of money for their hopeless campaigns and then funneling all the money back to themselves and sundry contractors and cronies. In 2006, they raised more than $700,000 for Charles Morse's run against Barney Frank in which Morse managed to get only 145 votes in the Republican primary. 96% of that money went back into BMW Direct's coffers and sundry affiliated contractors.

The Globe piece focused on the 2006 races. But today we looked at what BMW Direct is up to in 2008. Pretty much the same thing, it turns out.

In 2006, Deborah Honeycutt (R) ran against Rep. David Scott (D-GA) and lost by 38 points. This year she's trying again. And as in 2006, what she lacks in votes she makes up for in extraordinarily successful fundraising. During the first quarter of 2008, Deborah Honeycutt managed to raise $500,000 -- which would be a decent haul even for a real candidate. So far this cycle she's raised $1.7 million and spent $1.5 million of it. And of that $16,695 has been spent in Georgia. The rest of course got gobbled up by BMW Direct.

It's not clear to me from our reporting or the Globe's whether these candidacies actually exist in any real sense (as in the person actually independently came up with the idea of running for office, however hopeless the odds) or whether BMW creates them. (If you're interested, you can check out Honeycutt's Wikipedia bio, which I have a sneaking suspicion may also tie back in some way to BMW Direct: "Deborah Travis Honeycutt, previously a political unknown, exploded on the congressional campaign scene during the 2006 election cycle." ... ed.note: Alas, editors at Wikipedia have already deep-sixed this sentence since this post first went up and generally pruned it of socket-puppet-like nonsense.) The company's client list does include a handful of actual officeholders -- like Van Hilleary Robin Hayes, David Vitter and Jim Ryun. But most seem more of the Honeycutt variety. In any case, whichever comes first, candidate or BMW, BMW's approach seems to be to find these ersatz candidacies and then harvest the money of right-wing dupes around the country which can then be siphoned back to BMW, its contractors and affiliated companies.

On one level, I guess this is the kind of muck that Democrats should like since in addition to all the other fundraising challenges Republicans have this year they also have to contend with money siphoned off by BMW Direct that otherwise might have gone to buoying up actual Republican candidates. But it really is distressing that outfits like this are allowed to bamboozle people out of their money and face no consequences at all.

Late Update: TPM Readers NA and CS both note, very cleverly and aptly, that this is pretty much the plot line from The Producers.

Not backing down ...

A number of readers have either suggested or explained that what the Obama camp is trying to do is have its cake and eat it too, make sounds of disapproval, such as President Bush did in 2004 with respect to the Swift Boaters, while still gaining advantage from them.

Perhaps. But that's not what I'm seeing.

I've also seen suggestions that Obama must either reject Clark's comments or vehemently restate them. But that's nonsense. There's nothing to be gained for the candidate to be critical of McCain in this regard. He can keep repeating his praise for McCain's service and time as a POW, which he should do and is not in conflict in any way with anything that Clark said.

What his campaign should not be doing is lending its imprimatur to the proposition that because McCain saw combat in Vietnam and suffered as a POW that he has the judgment to be an effective president.

Late Update: As an example, TPM Reader SS writes ...

Am I the only one who thinks that the Obama campaign is winning big here and that the media is being played badly? The conversation has begun - "it's out there" as they say - does McCain's record as a (not-very-good) fighter jock and POW more than thirty years ago in some way qualify him to be Commander-in-Chief? At the same time, Obama "rejects the statement" and "honors and respects Senator McCain's service." How is Obama hurt by this? How is McCain? And now we can let the bloviators compare this honest question to what was done to John Kerry. Remember how Kerry's record was fair game because he brought it up and Bush and Rove pretended like they had nothing to do with the SBVT? Obama seems to have learned the new rules. As a friend of mine likes to say, if I were having any more fun, I'd have to be twins.

As I say above, if they're on this, great. Experience has taught me not to take it for granted.

CNN's Rick Sanchez: Clark, "dissing, some might say swift-boating, John McCain's military record" ...

To make his case today about why Gen. Clark's comments were out of bounds, the McCain campaign chose an actual member of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth bamboozlement squad. Speaking for the McCain campaign, Col. Bud Day actually defended the SBVT's campaign as "the truth."

We were just chatting here at the office about what's behind the Obama campaign's rapid rejection of Wes Clark's statements. The read from those in touch with the Obama campaign seemed to be that they don't want to get into a conversation that focuses attention on McCain's war record and/or experience.

If that's the case, it's more troubling than it appears on the surface. I can think of a lot of other reasons why they might not want to get into this. Maybe they think it conflicts with the 'new politics' message they're trying to push. Or perhaps they think the wind's at their back or they don't want the subject to be changed.

But if it really is a fear of getting things focused on McCain's war record or experience it really is the kind of mistake Democrats habitually make. Take a look. McCain's entire campaign is about his time as a POW and the claim that his war service makes him uniquely qualified to be the country's commander-in-chief. They're pushing the fact that he's been on the national stage for four decades, whereas Obama's only been there for four years. That is almost the entirety of his campaign. So it's out there. It's already a key focus of this campaign.

John McCain's claim to experience, based in large part on his military service, is a key issue in this campaign. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away.

Did Wes Clark call into question John McCain's war record? Did he say any element of it wasn't true, honorable, anything? Here's ABC News political director Rick Klein guest blogging at Jake Tapper's ABC blog ...

Retired Gen. Wesley Clark went where no Democrat really truly wants to go on Sunday -- calling into question, in surprisingly sharp language, Sen. John McCain's military record.

Obama campaign on Clark ...

"As he's said many times before, Senator Obama honors and respects Senator McCain's service, and of course he rejects yesterday's statement by General Clark," said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

Late Update: McCain just made his comments on this, sort of implicitly buying into the lie that Clark was attacking his military service.

It's not surprising. But it is an example of the fatuous McCain worship that is the bread and butter of the Washington press corps that Wes Clark's comments this weekend on Face the Nation are being called 'swift-boating'. It's almost comical, but not much less than Bob Schieffer's incredulous responses to the fact that Clark had the temerity to argue that McCain's experience as a Navy pilot and a POW don't necessarily mean he'd be a good president.

We have this in today's Sunday Show round up. But I want to show you the Clark interview at length to show what he actually said.

The McCain campaign is now launching an attack with its 'truth squad' about the Clark 'controversy' and pushing Obama to "denounce" Clark, etc. It'll be interesting to watch what happens here. The McCain campaign's angle here is to not to prevent attacks on the integrity of McCain's war record (which Clark explicitly did not do) but to make it off limits for anyone to question that his war-time experience means he has the temperament and experience which make him the better qualified candidate to be president.

The McCain campaign's claim that there's any attack here on McCain's war record is simply a lie -- a simple attempt to fool people. This is an essential point to this entire campaign -- does McCain's military record mean that even the Democrats have to concede the point that he's more qualified to be commander-in-chief of the US armed forces, that his foreign and national security policy judgment is superior to Obama's? It's simply a fact that McCain has a record of really poor judgment on a whole list of key foreign policy and national security questions.

This is one of those moments in the campaign where the nonsense from the chief DC press sachems is so palpable and overwhelming that everyone who cares about this contest needs to jump into the breach and demand that they answer why no one can question whether McCain's war record makes him more qualified to be president and whether he has good foreign policy and national security judgment.

Here's the video ...

Can someone find the outrage?

(ed.note: Please be on the lookout for reporters who refer to this as 'swift-boating' and let us know who and when.)

According to Mike Allen at The Politico, Mitt Romney, our dream veep candidate, is topping McCain's veep short list. The only thing standing in Mitt's way, apparently, is his being such a tool.

Let me try a different approach. If you're living in a media market where you're seeing more Obama ads than McCain ads, can you drop us a line?

Late Update: These reports are, I hope it goes without saying, anecdotal. But the early feedback is revealing. Readers from states around the country report seeing substantially more McCain ads than Obama ads, with three exceptions -- Virginia, Indiana and Montana.