I don’t think it’s worth going to the ramparts about, I just think he’d serve himself better by keeping his stories straight. If a Democrat was this inconsistent about his war stories, the press would crucify him. Republican vets are above reproach with the media, though.
What you’ve seen is skepticism, not speculation. There’s a difference.
You didn’t answer my question.
I doubt you can come up with an advantage to you in claiming you have a houseful of flying monkeys. I sure can’t imagine one. If you were to make that claim, my first questions about your flying monkey problem would try to figure out what, if any, motive you might have to tell an unconfirmable (and unfalsifiable) cock-and-bull story. As soon as it comes out that you will achieve your life’s ambition of becoming the most powerful being in the known universe if lots of people buy into your story, though, that gives you a pretty good motive to tell a whopper, don’t it?
Then you agreed with the vocal skepticism of the Swiftboat Veterans regarding Kerry’s military record? Because I’m not seeing much of a difference between the two except the volume. (Granted, I didn’t pay all that much attention to the SVs charges because it looked like a bunch of hooey.)
Let’s stick to your flying monkeys, please.
I thought I did but then I’m not the best written communicator in the world.
Divining a reason someone might lie about something is in no way proof. Someone could easily say that because Obama has a reason to cover up his Communistic leanings his protestations are therefore a lie (and they’d be stupid to do so.) Without evidence to the contrary I am inclined to believe what McCain and Obama say with the caveat that both are politicians and have enormous pressure to lie.
Sorry, I should use the quote functionality more often. Post #44 was meant for Diogenes.
The Swiftboaters weren’t skeptics, they were liars.
Word. But the sheep populace believed it. I believe that cost us (as a country) more than we will ever know.
I think that McCain is going senile and it is possible that in his jumbled memories he appropriated that one and convinced himself that it was a memory he had.
Impending senility aside, a lot of guys end up being called “The Colonel” in later life, and tell stories about their career that may or may not be true. I’ve never noticed it to be a debilitating character defect.
He first told the story in its current form ten years ago. If he’s been going senile that long, I think it would be more pronounced by now.
Like a lot of disaffected voters, I am bitter, and I cling to D&D and science fiction and living in my mom’s basement.
Hold on, hold on, let me ready my pointin’ finger… Elitist!!! Burn the elitist!!!
Anyway, back on point for a moment, Obama of course can’t attack McCain for stretching the truth (if he did so, which looks likely), but what about Olberman, Stewart, et al.? Will they, and will it have any impact?
Ronald Reagan had a similar experience-he related an incident from WWII-it turned out he was remembering details from a MOVIE he made about a WWII incident. Reagan’s confused memories of this were enough to make him think that it was a real event. I think McCain is doing something similar. Like Al Gore-remembering his being shot at in Vietnam (when the closest he ever was to a battle was in some Saigon bar). 
You guys are all forgetting the simple fact that John McCain was a POW for 5 1/2 years a long time ago. That makes everything sleazy has done since (like cheating on his first wife) totally understandable. This made-up story clearly was a result of PTSD he was suffering a mere 26 years after he was released.
Convince me.
I’m sure that’s impossible.
From Andrew Sullivan’s blog
to which I have only to add: well said.
It’s kind of a typical thing to see prominent Democrats reacting to this like, hey- you are messing with McCain’s strength here- back off. And of course they have been roundly rogered by the successful implementation of such tactics by the very same people who are advising McCain this time.
Part of me is glad that my “side” has the decorum, the reticence, the respect, the restraint -whatever you want to call it- to tut-tut at these character tactics, but the other part of me says, well of course that’s why they lose.
A whisper campaign about McCain’s POW experience, anything calling attention to the way that he flogs it like a hired mule, seems like just the thing right now. Obama can condemn it, and McCain is stuck with the fact that he has the same type of thing deployed against Obama.