A Victory -- Flip Flops and more talking points

Good news today... the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) will monitor the elections this November... although they're not supposed to report on the fairness of the voting process, they will report on any problems and shortcomings. And although this is not the United Nations, a win is a win.

Also today, Atrios is showing some of the new talking points 'telephoning' it's way through the mainstream conservative media... Karl Rove believes that by patronizing John Kerry's service as unusually short, that it will paint him as ... what ... a veteran? Isn't four months in Vietnam and a 'hot war' long enough, as far as I'm concerned one day in the muck/shit is a long time.

Also, the Bush campaign decided to drop their poorly thought out maxim, "Turning the Corner." Why did they do this? Because we aren't turning the corner in many of the ways the President purports:

"When it comes to spreading the peace, we're turning a corner, and we're not turning back," he said the next day in Canton, Ohio.

This is a golden opportunity for Kerry to rip what Bush says. A comeback for this release would be something like: If you call preemptively invading a sovereign country without the backing of much of the International community turning the corner... if turning the corner of spreading peace is an infinite war based on lies and ulterior motives, then yes, we're not turning back.

One Bush aide told CNN that the "turning the corner" debate exposes disagreement inside the campaign over how the president should frame his message, given that times are still tough.

Here are some other links about this stuff today:
Atrios 1
Atrios 2
Digby 1
Digby 2