Via Conservative Punk. For a change, this one has nothing to do with spending 100 years in Iraq. Team Maverick is irate, for good reason as you’ll see, but what I think we’re watching here is a strategy starting to take shape: Obama’s willing to lie, even this shamelessly, in order to focus media attention on McCain’s weak spots even if he has to absorb some blowback for dishonesty in the process. Lying about what McCain meant vis-a-vis those hundred years of occupation still accomplishes the task of putting Maverick on the defensive and pushing the subject back in front of a suspicious public. So too here, quoting a line out of context to make McCain sound pollyanna-ish about the economy, knowing that it would be challenged and debunked but also knowing that it forces McCain to go out there and reiterate that the Bush economy is in bad shape. Ah well. Two can, and will, play at this game. Coming soon: Maverick accuses Obama of having written some of Wright’s sermons. “No I didn’t! I merely spent 20 years listening to them!”

Update: He’s as pollyanna-ish as McCain is.