win the spin

Dubya and his media minions are trying to spin the debate, making the "global test" the test of loyalty under the Bush crime syndicate. What we need to do it hit back and remind the press that this is yet another example of Dubya's "selective hearing" that he finds so effective in insulating himself from reality:

Here's what Kerry said:

No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America.

But if and when you do it, Jim [Lehrer, the debate moderator], you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.

Kerry called it the "global test" but he could just as easily called it the "laugh test" -- if it weren't so damn serious.

What did Kerry mean by it? He meant that if we go to war, we damn well sure should have some legitimate reasons for doing so. Is that so hard to swallow?

You would think after all the lame excuses Dubya has cooked up for his private vendetta (aluminum tubes, yellowcake ore, mobile bio labs, drone planes to fly around the world) all now proven false, that the press corps wouldn't have such a hard time intuiting what Kerry was trying to say. But then Kerry is only making common sense... something that is not so common after all.