So Much Incompetance

Well, maybe the Red and White flag symbolism wasn't done on purpose after all. Anyone else wonder what the deal was with showing this behind McCain? I know to us on TV it just looked like the infamous green-screen speech reprise, but this is what the hall saw:

I saw a flash of it, and thought, "What, is that one of McCain's homes?" I was pretty convinced.

It turns out, however, that this is a picture of Walter Reed Middle School, somewhere anonymous in California. Why should a middle school deserve such an honor? The school itself has no idea:

TPM's Kate Klonick just got off the phone with an official at the school who confirmed this. "We didn't know anything about it until it showed up last night," Cathy McLaughlin, the school's office technician, told Klonick. She confirmed that multiple media outlets have been calling and that a statement would be forthcoming from the school.

There was nothing particular in that stretch of McCain's speech that would explain why this particular image was used.

Of course there was no reason to feature some obscure middle school at that point in the speech. Obviously, the remarkable thing about the place is its name. McCain's visuals people were told to get an image of Walter Reed (the military medical center), and they got a Walter Reed, alright.

Of course, the current Republican administration forgot about the troops at Walter Reed, leaving them to moulder in... well, mold. It's fitting that the new batch of Republicans would be equally clueless.