POW!!!

Asshole

Country First!!!

WOW.

Wonder how surviving family of the lost receive this display?

I heard the good Senator this morning on the “wireless.” He truly sounded like a defeated man, bitter and angry.

Hi Christy,

The Rolling Stone account of a shameless, self-serving, opportunist seems a more likely forerunner to the McCain we see today than his contrived persona as a “man of honor.”

It gets even worse. And Rolling Stone goes over every article with a passle of lawyers, so you know there was likely more on the cutting room floor than made it to print. This is absolutely brutal journalism.

My goodness, though, he was a handsome young man. Who’d a thunk?

Uh oh, this reporter is going to have to sit in the MoDo section next time he travels.

I was waiting for him to tell Steve Inskeep to, “go fuck yourself, you little jerk.”

He bore a superficial resemblance to Bogart.

After reading this I’m gonna have to back away from my stance of not attacking McSFB’s service. This is one narcissistic son of a bitch. Eat shit and die, motherfucker.

There are many dealbreakers for me in the McCain campaign but the two that stand out the most for me are:

Denying POW families access to records
and
picking Sarah Palin
who
charges rape victims for rape kits
and
approves of shooting wolves and bears from helicopters for no apparent reason.

OK OK the phil gramm thing too. It’s really hard to choose but I think I have it narrowed down.

Let ‘er rip, SD. Your service apparently means nothing to McFraud.

No Crony Left Behind.
Fellow Soldiers be Damned.

Wait until you read the whole fricking article. I knew a lot of the broader brush details on some of this, but the reporter’s sourcing with quotes from people who were, at one point or another, close with McCain is excruciating. And I cannot believe he fucking went on leave while the ship limped back to port for repairs. Unless his CO ordered him off the ship lest there be a fricking riot, I cannot think of any justification for not helping clean up your own damned mess…accident notwithstanding, you don’t leave your shipmates to clean up your shit.

How tragic that his beauty is only skin deep. If there truly was an honorable soul of a man underneath that rugged exterior, he might have been President long ago-perhaps we never would have gotten Bush II.

He represents the worst type of service. Admiral’s son who receives a commission he doesn’t deserve. Conducts himself in a manner that needlessly places others at risk while only concerning himself only with how events will impact his future ambitions.

This is absolutely brutal journalism.

Thanks for highlighting this. Journalism is supposed to be tough and not be a cocktail weenie wankfest, and this seems like a fair article to me. If more journalists simply did their jobs at the most base level, people like Shrub, McInsane, and Failin wouldn’t ever get within 15% in any poll or election.

Instead, we’re subjected to this nonsense, which I found just now while checking Yahoo’s frontpage to see how they’re covering the Q-polls today, which is a very big story IMHO:

Obama Backers Worry His Race Will Hurt Him in `Middletown, USA’

http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomb.....xigyurgtei

Wasn’t that story idea old by about Feburary? Still trotting it out even on a day where Obama shows huge gains in very important states.

The more one learn’s about McCain’s past, the more his campaign makes sense. He was always an egomaniac with no concern for anybody else.

OT - congress has broken for their weekly lunch meeting of their caucuses. back at 2:15pm for debate on the sellout bailout. vote is scheduled for sometime after sundown, probably around 9pm.

FWIW, Zogby had a poll out this week on racial issues. Expect more to come on that. No idea for whom — whether they were doing it independently or if it was candidate or party commissioned, but it was all about race, immigration, and attitudes toward difference.

I don’t know if I want to read it. I’m so fuckin’ angry now I can’t see straight, much less think straight.

I gotta tell ya, until recently I thought he deserved enormous credit for his behavior as a POW. I still think he was very heroic but his recent behavior makes me wonder why the Pentagon has sealed the vast majority of his file concerning that time. He uses the, “I was a POW” dodge as a crutch everytime his real character as a two faced, liar is revealed. Crooks and Liars has a video of him being asked if he has received taxpayer funded medical benefits for his entire adult life. He evades the question (which he calls a “statement”) and then makes reference to not having any medical care for a while, followed by a wink. Yeah, you got em Johnny, sorry you were asked such a revealing question.

Letterman may have touched on the best method to deal with this. Every time you are gonna nail him you start out with “this guy was a real hero that’s why it’s so disappointing to have to say, “X”.

A-yup.

Whoa boy. John-boy’s bearings are really getting off. Someone call Traitor Joe-stat!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....30868.html

My goodness, though, he was a handsome young man. Who’d a thunk?

They said the same thing about Methuselah.

Shameless self promoters often rise to the upper levels of business or government. The astounding thing about McCain is how he has managed to cultivate an enduring public image so at odds with his actual character. Despite his philandering, corruption, cronyism, etc., a large number of people still falsely believe that he possesses integrity.

More from the Rolling Stone article — because this is really what we need:

The myth of John McCain hinges on two transformations — from pampered flyboy to selfless patriot, and from Keating crony to incorruptible reformer — that simply never happened. But there is one serious conversion that has taken root in McCain: his transformation from a cautious realist on foreign policy into a reckless cheerleader of neoconservatism.

“He’s going to be Bush on steroids,” says Johns, the retired brigadier general who has known McCain since their days at the National War College. “His hawkish views now are very dangerous. He puts military at the top of foreign policy rather than diplomacy, just like George Bush does. He and other neoconservatives are dedicated to converting the world to democracy and free markets, and they want to do it through the barrel of a gun.”

Rule #1 in shipboard fire training: you go to your assigned GQ stations and you stay there until orders are altered, you are ordered to stand down, or until you see some task that needs doing that has not been taken by someone else—but only if your station–and the mission–can survive your absence.
Shipboard fire is the same as taking enemy fire and we were trained to the nth degree on what to do.
It paid off on my ship when about 1am everything went silent. A ship is loud, all the time, motors and fans make the whole ship hum with noise. Within about three minutes of the sudden silence, I’d say 80% of everyone on board was up and manning their GQ stations. I remember being in the radio room on my headphones before the GQ alarm went off with the “fire in the engine room, this is not a drill” message.
Mission first, not preen for the press and seek personal advantage or to find a safe place. It only takes a few sailors with that attitude and the ship goes down.

That’s why I know McCain is no hero. I was one of those working those two days, and for me it continued a few more days, on the Forrestal. I saw him and he angered me then.’

McCain is no hero, I know because I was with him.

Dave
Viet Vet

And didn’t he, like, crash 4 fighter planes or something? Isn’t that a 30-40 million dollar loss to his account? Plus he wasn’t s’posed ta be shot down, ya know.

MODERATOR:
Please remove my comment at #25. It appears the idea that McCain’s “wet start” was a cause of the Forrestal disaster has been discredited. For rather a long time.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa

FunnyDiva

We need a “Diary” on the of topic of Sacrifices by Public Servants. McCain had to worry about his ambitions. The Boner was driven to tears by the partisanship.

But that is nothing compared to Hank Panky Paulson. Of course he made great financial sacrifices when leaving Goldman Sachs. What people do not realize is that Paulson has had a dreadful summer. Their weekends have been ruined and may continue to be ruined.

The downfall of Bear Stearns sent Paulson and his colleagues into crisis mode—a mode they have yet to exit. For Paulson and his team at the Treasury Department, the summer was a string of ruined weekends

I read the first three pages so far. Christy’s right. It’s fricking brutal. But it’s validating to read as well. the people quoted are not kind to mcfraud and it might give you “permission” as a fellow soldier to feel the same freedom to express your feelings, if you know what I’m trying to say.

I have to qualify everything i say today because I know I’m pretty jacked up about the Bailout Olympics.

It’ll be terrifying when he has the public meltdown. Not if. When.

Yes. Creating a public reputation completely at odds with who he really is is probably his greatest accomplishment.

McCain has many similarities to W. Being the grandson of an admiral while in Annapolis and then the son of an admiral when his dad made his stars is just as privileged a life as bush had - maybe even more privileged in the very closed community of the US Navy.

One of my colonels had a run in with him in ‘Nam that wasn’t very pretty and if you look at the distribution of medals to the POW s, his was in the middle tier - hardly on the exceptionally heroic side. Then his great career in the pentagon where his primary duty was to squire senators around the world (with a filled bag of money for incidentals).

McCain is a phony and will be a lot worse that bush if elected - hopefully the American people have gotten smarter than in 2000 and 2004, but I am not sure listening to some of my repug buddies.

I’m still reading the Rolling Stone article but the concept of “failing upward” in this comparison of McCain and Bush struck me.

Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers’ powerful friends, both failed upward.

Five.
they called him the Reverse Ace because he destroyed planes from his own side, not enemy planes.

FunnyD

OT - congress has broken for their weekly lunch meeting of their caucuses. back at 2:15pm for debate on the sellout bailout. vote is scheduled for sometime after sundown, probably around 9pm.

I’m guessing this is a concession to the vampires among them. Oh, and this also keeps it keeps the actual vote off the evening news and there will be no one in their offices to answer all the angry phone calls.

So to recap, Senators vote to bailout their big donors and avoid the wrath of their constituents. This is what they call a win-win situation.

The difference is that Bush only pretended to serve in the military when it was his time.

vaguely on topic - at least the “Reckless, hotheaded craptastic abandon” part. this morning our senate has been debating h.r.7081, to agree to selling india nuclear technology even though it has not signed on to the NPT.

i expect this to seal the deal on conflict with pakistan. and it won’t make negotiations with iran any easier either.

don’t know that anyone can clean up the mess that’s going to cause. :(

I thought that section was really striking, too — and as you read through the whole article (it’s long! He’s done a LOT of crap!), you keep getting struck, over and over again, how other people get left to clean up his messes. To pay for his messes.

There’s a quote later in the article talking about Keating and how he left people without their life savings without even looking back at what his failure to stand up and do the right thing caused. Just brutal stuff.

The Vietnam era politicians, Clintons, Bush, Kerry, Gore and McCain are all deeply flawed individuals for various and some overlapping reasons. The Vietnam War for various reasons emasculated their (my) generation but one overriding fact is common to all these individuals: personal crass ambition with no real purpose other than petty corporate style advancement. There is no incidental purpose to their ambitions. They merely seek personal advancement with no wisdom. FDR spent many years in Warm Springs, Georgia coming into contact with real poverty on a daily basis long before he became a national politician. Obama became a community organizer after being President of the Harvard Law Review. So make the move away from the Vietnam era generation, blame it on the Vietnam War or anything but it is time to move away from these people and elect a new generation into power.

I cannot believe he fucking went on leave while the ship limped back to port for repairs

this is what I have trouble with, there is NO way his co gave him leave without some ball crushing from overhead

and how could that possibly happen in such a short period of time?

I am not getting this

probably shouldn’t be laughing, but i can’t help it.

not vampires - religious holiday that ends at sundown.

btw, if folks wouldn’t mind giving this a digg, I’d really appreciate it. This particular passage was so at odds with the PR McCain spew that I thought it was worth pushing forward — because it really does show a side of him the media rarely lets on even exists.

The truth can be brutal and ugly. Especially if one is brutal and ugly onesownself.

FunnyDiva

I participate in a number of Zogby polls and the racial poll was one of them. No information was given about who commissioned it or why.

Re McCain the pilot. He was not entitled to be a flyboy. Slots for the services and specialties are given out according to USNA rank. No one with McCain’s rank gets to fly jets….unless I guess your dad and grandad are 4 stars I guess. Incredible stretch even so.

Also, no one with his previous flight record would still have been cleared to fly by the time he got to the Forrestal.

And the last point. it’s SOP in a case like the Forrestal for a pilot in McCain’s position to taxi his plane over the side to help avoid more explosions. Whether or not he wetstarted his plane, we’ll never know.

He breached standing orders by leaving his plane….and the entire crew knew that.

Utterly unfit for command.

His superiors in the Navy knew it; can the American people make the same wise decision next month? Let’s hope so.

I was thinking he looked excatly like dvptt bakula

OT

I have no idea if Bible Spice really believes this, but she remains true to the fundie script:

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/.....ay-choice/

Ward Connerly is a client of Zogby’s

My dad was in the army during the Vietnam era. All of my older uncles and my grandpa on my dad’s side were in various branches of service in WWII — including one uncle who died a little over a year ago who floated on an oil barrel watching his shipmates get picked off by sharks after his ship was destroyed before he was rescued. None of them talked much about their service unless you got them really tipsy at a family reunion or something.

But the one thing they all stressed to me as a kid growing up is that you never, ever leave your family or your mates behind. Ever. You have to be in it together, stick together, or you have nothing because leaving someone else behind means you are either a coward or a selfish prick. One of my uncles, in particular, was very vehement about loyalty and doing your duty to your family and community and those to whom you have made commitments, and it stuck with me as a kid.

When I read this passage in the Rolling Stone piece, is stuck out like a glaring neon sign.

Dugg, thanks so much for pointing us to the RS article, Christy.

Afternoon Christy,

Quite a read, McCain is still the same rich bully he was as an eight year old kid. It’s a shame he lost those 64 years.

FWIW:
McCain is not considered part of the Vietnam (Boomer) generaiton although he served there.

Gore and Kerry both volunteered to serve in Vietnam.

Clinton manipulated the system but admitted he manipulated the system and in the end, declared himself 1A and took his chances on the lottery. And “won” by not having to serve.

Bush pulled strings to get into the guard at the time guard rosters were full. He wound up AWOL and never completed the limited service required for a guard member at the time.

Yeah, they all showed a lot of ambition and foresight in planning everything that they did all right.

OT, but an oddity re; the ’sub-prime mess’
Questions
‘When did they take the $8 billion cash out?’
And; ‘Where, and to whom did it go?’
‘ PricewaterhouseCoopers, Lehman’s bankruptcy administrator in the U.K., where its European prime brokerage was based, doesn’t know how much money is at stake. PwC said last month it’s trying to recoup about $8 billion in cash that Lehman’s parent company allegedly withdrew from its European unit before the collapse. It will take weeks, if not longer, to sort out the mess, according to PwC.’
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/.....refer=home

McCain definitely is conditioned to feel that he can get away with lots of bad hurtful stuff

John McCain is an example of gene pool dilution. His father and grandfather, both named John S. McCain, distinguished themselves in WWII, (although I believe the grandfather was considered to be the better tactician) as did a great uncle who served in the Army in WWI.

This John S. McCain has struggled to live up to these men all his life. Unfortunately for him, and for us, he simply doesn’t have it in him. In desperation he has turned to pranks when younger and to influential friends with questionable ethics when older. His courage during captivity partially redeems his deficient achievements and character - but only partially.

This need to equal or exceed his relatives’ achievements may explain both his sense of entitlement to have and his increasingly desperate efforts to win the presidency.

Christy, your uncle. The Indianopolis?

In fact, his wounds were attended to only after the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a Navy admiral. What has never been disclosed is the manner in which they found out: McCain told them. According to Dramesi, one of the few POWs who remained silent under years of torture, McCain tried to justify his behavior while they were still prisoners. “I had to tell them,” he insisted to Dramesi, “or I would have died in bed.”

Dramesi says he has no desire to dishonor McCain’s service, but he believes that celebrating the downed pilot’s behavior as heroic — “he wasn’t exceptional one way or the other” — has a corrosive effect on military discipline. “This business of my country before my life?” Dramesi says. “Well, he had that opportunity and failed miserably. If it really were country first, John McCain would probably be walking around without one or two arms or legs — or he’d be dead.”

Should be Indianapolis.

One of my personal favorite parts of the Rolling Stone article is where McCain’s mom goes to the commandant of the Naval Academy to intervene so that her baby boy doesn’t get kicked out of Annapolis. Nope, no special treatment there…

I have no idea if this has been posted (my apologies if it has) but this is McCain’s meeting with the Des Moines Editorial Board.

The clips are broken down into segments but of utmost interest is the clip “straight talk” and the palin clip but watch the whole dismal clip if you are up to it

In this picture, Bogey was older than the picture of young McCain, younger than McCain today but take a look and I think you’ll see a resemblance.

Obama became a community organizer after being President of the Harvard Law Review.

i thought it was the other way around? that obama was a community organizer first but didn’t like it or wasn’t very good at it and quit to go to harvard law school. do i have that wrong? christy has reason not to trust the author of the piece where i read that.

Seems a fav Repub talking point now is that Biden got as many deferments as Cheney. Anyone know the details of this? Biden is right between McInsane and Gore in age.

He was on the Corry. I talked a little about it here…

so how does mccain get leave after this catastrophe?

this part of the story needs to be examined

Attaturk had a YouTube up of some of those clips early this morning. McCain is just such an arrogant ass, oozing “how dare you question me.” Ugh.

Aircrew are not regular ship’s company, so I would doubt they would have had an assigned fire station. Not being a carrier or Airedale type, I cannot speak with authority, but I know our aircrew was never assigned any duties associated with security or damage control. They were just a Temporary Assigned Duty contingent.

Of course, in a conflagration like the Forestall, everyone would be expected to pitch in, especially after so many of the designated DC teams had been casualties.

-Old Tin Can Sailor

did you see the pic of scott bakula?

star of quantum leap, to me they are a closer match then bogey

Thanks, Christy. I’ll read the responses for ‘the ship in the Pacific.’

The paragraph right before the quote I pulled has some backstory on another pilot who was in a plane 4 back from McCain, who jumped out of the cockpit and into the floor below, and led a team for fighting the fire belowdecks that likely saved a good portion of the ship and contained a lot of the damage. The contrast between Hope’s behavior and McCain’s was really stark.

This would be a great topic. Would you write it at Oxdown?

Clinton never declared himself 1-A. You should know that. Only his SSB could do that

He never volunteered to be 1-A and if he had not gamed the system out of being 1-A he would likely have been drafted long before the first lottery.

It appears that Biden did receive five deferments prior to eventually being declared medically exempt.

The big difference? Biden wasn’t and hasn’t been out there talking about how wonderful the Vietnam War was while using the deferments to avoid serving (like Cheney) or joining the guard to avoid the war while supporting it (like Bush and Dan Quayle).

In other words, Biden was not a hypocrite.

I’m afraid to read it. . .

My father-in-law also served in the navy in WWI and in the Marines in Korea. He drove landing craft as a kid during WWII in the Pacific theater in some of the worst fighting. He doesn’t really talk much about his service, either, but I know some of what he was involved with from Mr. ReddHedd. (Who isn’t here at the moment to ask what ships he was on in WWII, sorry, I’m just no help today….)

Yeah, too bad Obama isn’t very at community organizing. Just think where his campaign would be right now if he only liked or was good at community organizing.

Yeah, I didn’t see as much resemblance. Eye of the beholder, I guess. More important, Bogey OR Bakula would be a better president than McCain despite the former being deceased for the past fifty years.

This story makes a matriarch expression I noticed the night of his acceptance speech a bit more clear…

It is amazing. Brace yourself, you might have to take it in installments.

…isn’t very GOOD at…

It’s infuriating. Be forewarned. But it’s mainly about McCain’s penchant for self-promotion, getting ahead, helping his moneyed pals, chasing tail, and generally making messes other people clean up for him. But there are definitely some infuriating parts that I did not know about him. The above was one.

It is the other way around but not because he didn’t like it, rather he had taken a break between undergrad and law study

No,no, it’s okay. No problem. I skimmed the comments and didn’t see an answer but had a nice flashback on those heady post-primary/Lamont days. (And Raven was a pistol, even then.)

Do you know the McCain campaign staff basically muzzled his mom through the whole RNC convention? They had staffers assigned to shuttle her from one place to the next and make sure she didn’t talk with the press. It was really weird. I’ll see if I can find a link to something I read on that…

Whether he declared himself 1A or the SSb did it for him, the end result was he was 1A when the lottery came in and he was not selected.

He manipulated the system just as many of us manipulated the system to avoid serving in that war. I used an ROTC scholarship to avoid being drafted (since my number was 6, it worked). I then wound up flunking out to avoid being commissioned. After flunking out, the Army could have pulled me in to serve out my commitment but gave me a discharge instead.

I wound up enlisting in the AF and using the old GI bill to finish my degree.

I gamed the system. I admit it. So did Clinton. He admits it. Why is it a bad thing to admit gaming the system to avoid serving during that war?

How did one get 5 deferments out of curiosity? Always thought it had to do with connections, or really good at finding excuses like Lush “Butt Pimple” Limpballz. 5 seems like a lot.

You are correct that he did community organizing before law school but he also did it after law school, organizing voter registration in Chicago.

I said this before and maybe I am missing something but strings had to be pulled for mccain to get leave after this event

Aha — I knew I remembered reading something about that — here you go…no wonder she was looking so put out on occasion when they panned to her in the audience.

True heroes, your dad, granddad and uncles. I’m sure they’re immensely proud of you.

FunnyD

off to read the RS article.

is that obama or axelrod?

[McCain] wanted to study at the National War College — but military brass turned him down as underqualified.

wow.

that makes more sense to me than any other explanation i’ve heard. thanks.

IIRC, it would be one per year for each year of college/law school until he was declared medically exempt..

Sadly, most of them have passed away at this point. My granddad and dad are still here, and they both find my political verve amusing, if nothing else. *g*

this bit made me spit my soda laughing;

In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot.

more than welcome

Hilarious example of muzzling Grandma by Meghan McInsane in this Max Blumenthal video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-kNQ36A6_k
(1:24 mark)

Grandma starts to talk and Meghan waves her off. Grandma seems pissed.

Why is it bad? Because it is dishonest. I do not pass judgment on your decisions. You did what you did. But the Vietnam War forced a lot of people to compromise their values to save their own asses and, now when I remember those who were drafted, went and died in Vietnam and did not want to