Cracka,* please*!! (Nothing, just wanted to use that…)
The NV decide, for whatever evil reason, to release John McCain. He refuses. So, they couldn’t release him anyway? How was he going to stop them?
They weren’t going to release him unless he made statements that would have got him court martialed…or at least, would have got someone who wasn’t an admiral’s son court martialed. They very well may not have released him if he agreed - I don’t think anyone did, so I can’t guess. Yes, if they were just wanting to release him, no questions asked, they could have, but that wasn’t their intention.
There was nothing dishonorable about McCain’s service. Squealing to stop torture does not make him less than a man.
What makes McCain less than a man is the way he betrayed his first wife by divorcing her when she was very ill and by sucking up to GWB after GWB trashed his family in the 2000 race. That makes him worthy of the ninth circle of hell. Voting to authorize torture after himself being tortured and having spent years opposing torture in part because of his own torture shows lack of character.
So what?
If it works, people should use it. Obama should distance himself from these people, but the Swiftboating should continue, if effective. The only measure by which it should be decided whether this should continue is whether it is effective in making sure McCain loses the election.
You can’t fight by the rules with a group that hits below the belt. You will get beaten up.
I recall writing something along these lines a little while back.
McCain’s reason for running - Inferiority Complex
I read quite a bit about John McCain, and it occurred to me that there was something sinister about the man. Folks like him are bullies, come from homes where they were pampered and spoiled. They usually graduate to feeling quite entitled. Leopards do not lose their spots.
All one has to look at is the way he’s campaigning now. For John McCain, it has never truly been “Country First.” Read his own words, follow his actions, his treatment of his ex-wife, his interactions with colleagues, and the lies he’s willing to tell in order to get elected POTUS, and you will see that it has always been about John McCain and what the man wants for himself.
I had always taken it at face value that his captors specifically offered him a trip out and that he denied it because others were still there. But if he said no like everyone else that makes it way less laudable.
Anywho, the man is a trainwreck, and hopefully he’ll fail utterly in his life’s goal of becoming POTUS.
I made it to page 9 before I was too disgusted to read further. I had suspected he was that sort of a man. Even if half the things in that article are untrue, the rest are certainly damning.
The thing is, they ring true. We’ve all met someone like that. And pretty much all of us have disliked that person. I don’t know about everyone else, but I go out of my way to avoid people like that. It is like putting your head in the mouth of a lion, it may sell tickets, but you damn sure better never forget it is a lion.
I could not disagree more. The mature, respectable, honorable thing to do is play by the rules even when your opponent doesn’t. Haven’t you ever heard an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind? Even though I’m voting for Obama I will be very disappointed if/when the Democrats take both elected branches of government and people here continue to laud them for the exact same things they’ve frothed at the mouth and gnashed their teeth about the Republicans doing for the last 8 years. I’m dealing with all the hypocrisy around here right now by telling myself it’s election season and people aren’t behaving normally, but if it continues next year and sentiment like yours, Polerius, becomes the norm, I can’t see myself wanting any part of it. Right is right and wrong is wrong no matter what letter is in parentheses beside your name. The partisanship here just flabbergasts me.
Any statement criticizing McCain for actions not taken when he was a POW are bullshit.
Any statement criticizing McCain for actions taken or not taken when he was in Congress are fair game.
Happily, Cisco, I’ll submit that, unless Obama is an Oscar-worthy actor and the grossest hypocrite ever, he seems genuinely disinclined to go in that direction. He might yet do a little dirty politicking in the next month or so, as a token that he won’t be Dukakis’ed or Kerry’d out of an election, but I get the sense that he really doesn’t enjoy going negative, unlike McCain who gets this stupid little grin and giggle going whenever he says anything mean, hurtful or malicious about his opponent. Once he’s elected, I don’t think he’ll have any reason to behave in a way that he finds personally distasteful.
Sure it does, at least the way I was raised. But I have also admitted, in these pages, that, under the same circumstances, I would either sing like a canary or, more likely because I’m self-destructive, do something stupid that got me shot. I sorta respect McCain for taking more than I would, but compared with some of his fellows he acted like a lowlife man.
But I agree that how he treated his wife made him a maggot.
Funniest line in the article: “In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot.”
ETA: And I’m also happy to admit that Obama is a much better man than I. F’rinstance, I loves me some schadenfreude, while stick-up-his-ass Barry has too much class to admit it.
Not every complaint against the Right for the last 8 years has been against Bush. You’ve got congress, courts, cabinet, columnists, bloggers, pundits, email glurge, special interest groups, message board posters, etc., who can all participate in the big fecal fiesta of politics. I’m actually not very worried about Obama himself. That doesn’t mean I’ll agree with 100% of his positions just like I wouldn’t dream of agreeing with 100% of the positions of Bush or Clinton or even Thomas Jefferson. I’m my own person with my own unique set of positions. Party lapdogs on both sides have sold that part of their soul.
No mistake, this is a hatchet job. Every single event taken as negatively as possible. Some are objectively horrible. (The way he treated his first wife, for example.)
Some, I think, are purposeful misreads of jokes. (I’ll take my field and go home.)
I don’t think it’s swiftboating. That would imply some organized group trying to attack McCain. This is one reporter writing a heavily slanted article.
I did read the whole thing, and much of it is objectively factual… but horribly slanted.
Yes, it’s an article about his recklessness and dishonesty, so it does focus on those aspects of his life. I’m sure if it included the good things he did, it would be at least a couple of pages longer.
Barry is too much the politician to admit it. I like it too until I start thinking about.
I was raised not to be a rat too, but I’ve never been tortured, and I’m prepared to give him a complete pass on that.
I didn’t think much of the article except that it gathered all of the dirt in one spot. The last crack about Bush being a better pilot is a prime example. By all accounts Bush was a terrible pilot.
And how McCain treated his wife is despicable, but not nearly as bad as cozying up to Bush after Bush slammed his family. I can understand how a man divorcing his wife gets emotionally all wrapped up in it and selfish, and had he not abandoned the defense of his family I might have seen it that way. But how could he possibly have rationalized hugging Bush after what Bush did to his family is quite beyond my petty imagination.
What I find most surprising is:
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Rolling Stone was still being published
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Anyone considers them a credible source of anything
Easy. He needs to be President.
He needs to cozy up to Bush because in essence George bush is like one of his college friends he got to take his exams.
The plank he’s running on isn’t original, it is George Bush’s plank, policies and ideologies.
John McCain is having such a hard time of it with Obama because he simply trying to run on ideas that are not his. Much of his life, he’s never truly applied himself hard to earn much of what he has got except those things that require his ability to coerce others. His College mates, his many girlfriends, his commanding officers, his Senate colleagues, etc. and when he couldn’t get them to do what he wants, they became his enemies who he felt deserved threats or the silent treatment.
This who John McCain is.
He pulled a stunt to go off to Washington to work on the Bailout Bill, but had no original ides of his own. It was reported by many that when George Bush turned over the discussion to the 2 nominees, Barack Obama spoke and gave his ideas about what he thought should happen. John McCain passed. A critical time in the future of the country he said he wanted to work for, he passed. It turns out that the Bill he ended up endorsing is the Bill others worked on and produced, full of rotten ass pork and earmarks. The man who railed hard against pork and earmarks endorses same, pretty much because he had no ideas of his own.
That is John McSame.
Which of the quotes come from people you do not find credible?
I’m not questioning whether the article is accurately quoting anyone. Whether those people are being accurate in their yarn spinning maybe something else all together…
Maybe there is a reason this article only appears in Rolling Stone
No it’s not. The Swiftboaters were bought and paid for lying assholes who knew nothing about Kerry’s service. Furthermore, Kerry did not use his service mythos like the Hammer of Heroism to beat critics into submission. If the article is accurate this is a valid line of attack against a man who *humbly *offers his heroism as the main reason to vote for him.
Furthermore his story about telling them he wouldn’t go home unless the other guys went is a lot like Palin’s thanks but no thanks story regarding the bridge to nowhere. Neither one is true. He had absolutely no control over when he left.