8/21/08

Extremist Irony Alert

I can hear the bigoted right wingnuts already... "Them damned foreigners coming here and stealing our jobs! Stealing our gold too!"
Olympic Gold and The Taste of Bittersweet Irony

Henry Cejudo, son of undocumented Mexican immigrants, wins Olympic freestyle wrestling title at 121 pounds.

...snip...

Oh what bittersweet irony it is. Congratulations Henry Cejudo, you deserve to bask in the glory of your hard earned win.
Congratulations to Henry Cejudo. I am certain you have made your entire family proud. And I wish you the best in your future pursuits.
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8/20/08

More unHoly Lies From John and Cindy McCain

We have firmly established that John McCain lied over and over again at the Forum on Faith, But now news comes out that The McCain campaign has been caught lying concerning meeting with Mother Theresa:

The Christian Science Monitor reports that Cindy McCain was caught lying about meeting Mother Teresa:

The latest embellishments come from the McCain camp. Cindy McCain has repeatedly referred to herself as an “only child.” This week came news that she actually has two half sisters, although apparently she had very little contact with them.

The McCain campaign had also put out the story that Mother Teresa “convinced” Cindy to bring home two orphans from Bangladesh in 1991.

Mrs. McCain, it turns out, never met Mother Teresa on that trip. (Once contacted by the Monitor, the campaign revised the story on its website.)

...snip...

The media picked up the theme. A story earlier this year on ABC’s “Good Morning America” stated, “With Mother Teresa’s encouragement she brought her fourth child, Bridget, home.” An April 2008 Wall Street Journal profile states that Mother Teresa “implored” Cindy to bring the girls to the United States. Other articles say Cindy did it “at the behest” of Mother Teresa.

But a source who was with McCain on that 1991 trip, and who asked that his name not be used because of prior legal dealings with the McCain family, says that Mother Teresa was not at the orphanage when Cindy decided to bring the two girls home.

A McCain source acknowledged that Cindy McCain did not meet Mother Teresa during the 1991 trip to Bangladesh but said McCain did meet her later on, although the source could not say when or where. The campaign has since reworded the reference to the adoption on its website.

GOP campaign messages are always worded very carefully with specific messaging intents. This was not simply a mistake that is just wiped away with rewording... It is another lie that the McCain campaign tested and floated in the media because McCain wants to win more than he wants to be honest.

The truth is that elite, filthy-rich snobs like the McCains don't mind lying to you if it gets them the power they want.

And, clearly, both John and Cindy McCain don't mind trampling on the grave of a modern day hero of biblical proportions to attain that money and power.

To elitists like John and Cindy McCain, the only things that are truly sacred are money and power:

The media never, ever put the adoption in the same time frame as Cindy's drug addiction, the Keating Five scandal and John McCain's upcoming 1992 senate campaign but I did.

Let's take a look at the facts.

Sometime in 1991 after the devastating April 29th cyclone in Bangladesh, Cindy McCain spent a month there with her charity, the American Voluntary Medical Team (AVMT). Impulsively, she decided to take two sick infant girls she found in Mother Teresa's orphanage back to the United States with her for medical treatment. One baby had a cleft palate and the other had a heart condition.

The McCains adopted the baby with the cleft palate and named her Bridget. The other baby was adopted by Wes Gullett, Senator McCain's administrative assistant, who named the baby "Nikki". Gullett, after managing McCain's 1992 campaign, went on to become Arizona governor Fife Symington's chief of staff, a spot he wouldn't have gotten without help from a grateful John McCain.

By 1991, Cindy had been addicted to narcotics for at least two years. She stole drugs from her charity and forged prescriptions for four to five hundred pills at a time. Cindy has blamed her drug addiction on two back surgeries and stress from Keating Five scandal. (She was the bookkeeper who "lost" the cancelled checks for thousands of dollars in Keating-related expenses.)

Cindy was also the mother of three young children whose father, the senator, was seldom at home. Neither was she.

...snip...

Insight into Cindy McCain's penchant for self-promotion comes from entries in Tom Gosinski's private journal published in the Phoenix News in 1994. From September 1991 to January 1993 when he was fired, Tom Gosinski was the AMVT's director of government and international affair. He was the one who alerted the DEA about Cindy forging [prescriptions] and he filed a wrongful termination lawsuit which caused Cindy's drug addiction to become public knowledge.

From Gosinki's journal:

August 14, 1992: Work started off at a relatively normal pace this morning. And then--Kathy received a call from Royal Norman at Ch 3 regarding a possible AVMT trip to Somalia. Before Kathy informed me of her conversation with Royal she told Cindy and Cindy jumped all over the issue. Now Cindy wants to airlift a load of supplies to Somalia and use Ch 3 to get the coverage she so desperately goes after. I think the whole idea is crazy as we have so much to do with the Navajos but Cindy seems intent on making it happen.

August 28, 1992: Work has been crazy--Cindy decided we should take a load of supplies to the Miami area to assist in the Hurricane Andrew relief efforts. It would be simple to complete the task if Cindy would not interfere with the rest of us doing our jobs, however, she is constantly stirring things up.

We are also contemplating a trip to Somalia--Mark Salter in John McCain's Washington office has stated that the State Department and the Department of Defense believe it is not safe to travel to Somalia or the northern regions of Kenya. Cindy insists that we are going to go on the trip and that it may be wise for us to pack guns.

She is absolutely crazy--I don't know how to load a gun let alone shoot one. . . .

September 2, 1992: This past week at AVMT has certainly been a challenge. All of us that work for Cindy have been asked to put in extended hours at night and on the weekend and have not even received a thank you. Cindy is the most demanding and thankless person I have ever met.

September 3, 1992: Work is crazy as usual. The trip to Florida on Monday is on schedule--we are now traveling as a cleanup crew in blue hospital scrubs. I questioned wearing scrubs but Cindy insisted that the 'visual' is important, so--we are going to rummage through the rubble of Hurricane Andrew in scrubs. [Cindy wear blue scrubs in the campaign photo I linked to above. - Mrs P.]

Whatever . . . Per Mrs. McCain the AVMT schedule for the next couple of weeks is as follows: Miami cleanup from September 7 through September 11; Navajo Nation parade September 12; and depart for Somalia on September 13. Cindy must think that we have a staff of 20 as she has certainly not sat down, looked at a calendar and rationally thought about what she is suggesting we accomplish. . . .

September 29, 1992: Regardless of what happens with Cindy McCain, it is time for me to get out of AVMT. I have so little respect for Cindy and her objectives--she has made AVMT a media event--that even under the best of circumstances I do not think this organization merits existence. . . .

January 11, 1993: . . . It is evident to me that AVMT is in serious need of an organizational change. . . . Our shot gun approach to providing medical care has minimal impact when a focused approach on a specific area or type of care could significantly impact the target constituency. . . .

Reading Gosinski's journal, I am becoming more convinced that the AMVT was a vanity operation set up to promote the McCains' image. Really, what could a tiny little operation do in a couple of weeks in Miami? Or Somalia, for that matter? The AVMT's 990s filed with the IRS, if available, could give us an idea about the size of the operation and how money was spent.

In his journal, Gosinski also gives us a glimpse into the backstory of Cindy's drug addiction:

October 2, 1992: Well, it is done. Last night Jim and Smitty [Cindy's parents]confronted Cindy regarding her dependency to prescription drugs and she admitted to her addiction. I understand that she told the Hensleys her addiction was rooted in her unhappiness--her marriage--and that she took the pills to mask her depression. The Hensleys told Cindy they knew she had a problem because of her severe mood swings and her change in character. They also said her meanness towards others was not excusable and must stop. . . .

To this day, Cindy claims that her husband had no idea about her drug addiction until she fessed up.

As far as I know, one question about Cindy's drug addiction has never been satisfactorily answered. Was she treated for addiction in 1991 and 1992 or did she lie to the DEA investigators?

From the Phoenix News:

Although she told reporters she went into a residential drug treatment program earlier this year, she told investigators she had treatment during 1991 and 1992. Whom did she lie to--investigators or reporters?

Cindy McCain probably lied to both the reporters and the investigators... Lying is the McCain way.
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Lost $2,300,000,000,000.00? Bush Loose Change

Questions from September 10th, 2001 that nobody ever got around to answering:

How did the Pentagon lose 2.3 TRILLION dollars?



Those 911 truthers out there sometimes make some really good points beyond just conspiracy theories. Think about it:



$2,300,000,000,000.00
lost by the Pentagon in 1 year alone and neither Donald Rumsfeld nor George Bush have ever accounted for that money. And that was before Congress started handing over even more money to these lying, corrupt, incompetent and criminal fools in the Bush administration to fund never-ending illegal invasions and occupations.

And not only does John McCain want to continue on this failed path... John McCain wants to draft your kids into this fiscally irresponsible, militarily disastrous, warmongering cluster fuck.

Today at a townhall meeting, an audience member praised Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) for his vow to “follow bin Laden to the gates of hell.” After a long question about veterans’ care, the questioner said she believed we needed to reinstate the draft, to which McCain seemed to readily agree:

QUESTIONER: If we don’t reenact the draft, I don’t think we’ll have anyone to chase Bin Laden to the gates of hell.

[Appaluse]

MCCAIN: Ma’am, let me say that I don’t disagree with anything you said.

Let us be clear on what John McCain says:
And , now, for the second time he has said he would like to draft your kids for his continued neocon warmongering administration.
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Rachel Maddow Rocks the News World!

#3 story on Countdown's Blog the Newshole:

The Maddow Show: A website called "The Progressive Puppy" calls it the quote, "single smartest move ever made by a television network." 'The Nation' already identified her in these terms: "Everything about her radiates competence and a deft, bright careerism." And at the website Daily Kos, there was, upon the news late this afternoon, posted this poem: "For Unto Us, a Star is Born. "A Gift is Given. "And she shall be: Wonderful, Confident, the Mighty Women, the Everlasting Progressive, the Princess of News." In our third story on the Countdown: but around these parts, with all due modesty, I think I've summed it up best: we just call her "Next!"
We hope to continue to see some of the sharpest and brightest opinions to grace that network's cast of part time pundits coming forth from Rachel Maddow on a full time basis.

MSNBC has just doubled its credibility as a real news source.

(Hat tip BuzzFlash)
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CT State Official Involved In Middletown Hit-And-Run Investigation

Via the Hartford Courant:
State Official Involved In Middletown Hit-And-Run Investigation

Law enforcement sources said that a witness has identified a vehicle traced back to Thomas F. White, director of operations for the department's Court Support Services Division, as being involved in Saturday afternoon's accident. The boy was hit while walking his bicycle across an intersection at Cross Street and Knowles Avenue.

The boy saw a car coming toward him and held up one hand but was hit and run over, a police source said. The boy was taken to Hartford Hospital with severe internal injuries. His condition could not be determined Wednesday morning.

A witness described the vehicle that left the scene and gave police a license plate number that helped police link the car to White, according to police sources.

Middlesex State's Attorney Timothy Liston had no comment other than the investigation is ongoing and, so far, the Courant has not reached Mr. White for comment.

Just some conjecture here, but there would be some serious irony (not to make light of the 9 year old child's injuries) in this if it turns out alcohol was involved in this incident based on Thomas White's duties listed at Connecticut's Court Support Services Division website:

Operations- Thomas F. White,Director -
Tel: 721-2110; Fax: 258-8976

  • Adult Probation & Bail Services
  • Residential Services
  • Alcohol Education
  • DNA Project
  • Interstate Compact
  • Program & Services
Needless to say, there is always the possibility that somebody else was behind the wheel of the car at the time.
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8/19/08

Yank The Disgruntled Republican Vote From McCain

Politics in the Zero's catches some interesting work in Virginia where a break off group from the Greens have put together a Rep. Ron Paul and New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg ticket:
Important. This is not the national Green Party but a splinter group that left the Green Party and allied themselves with the Independence Party in what no doubt was a spectacular frenzy of bad feelings and nasty schisms. However, they got way over the needed 10,000 sigs to put Bloomberg on the ballot, certainly quite an accomplishment.

However, did they do that via volunteers or are they bankrolled to the point where they can afford paid signature gatherers? If so, who are the donors?

HMMM? An antiwar right wing libertarian coupled with a more fiscally sane version of a republican party conservative than the GOP has to offer anywhere on any ticket?

After screwing over the Dems by bankrolling the Liebergoons imported from out of state to work Joe neocon Lieberman’s ground campaign in Connecticut, I don’t think that adding Bloomberg to any ticket, never mind one with Ron Paul, is intended to lure in votes from the Democratic party membership or the left in general.
Joe Lieberman hates people who buy elections, but that isn't stopping him from letting billionaire election buyer Michael Bloomberg buy one for him.

Joseph I. Lieberman is deploying a secret weapon in the race’s closing days: a sophisticated operation to identify and turn out voters, courtesy of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City.

The Bloomberg group includes several top-level operatives who played key roles in the mayor’s decisive re-election last year or who are in the administration, and have taken leaves from their jobs to work on Mr. Lieberman’s campaign.

Since Mr. Lieberman lost the Democratic primary in Connecticut to Ned Lamont, they have helped open campaign offices, devised a strategy to reach voters and are corralling enough volunteers to cover 2,800 shifts at more than 700 polling sites on Election Day, Nov. 7.

As a former New Yorker, I can tell you that "coralling enough volunteers" is New Yorkese for "paying the ethically-challenged out of a slush fund."


Lieberman has made himself a marked man - targeted by Dems nationally for obsolescence - and everyone knows Bloomberg helped bankroll, man and co-ordinate his campaign.

Sounds more like something to give disgruntled republicans another option beyond the fiscally irresponsible and warmongeringly insane McCain, a candidate too many GOP voters do not like. I would call that money well spent if some Obama supporters payed the bills. That ticket on every state's ballot could do a lot of damage to the GOP, IMHO.

According to the Huffpo report:

"If it is an issue that a candidate is put forth, we assume that the internal communications have happened. But if we were to receive a letter from Mayor Bloomberg that he doesn't want his name on the ballot, we would have to look into the matter to see why the nominee for a party doesn't want to be that nominee," said Matthew J. Abell, the Assistant Manager at Virginia's State Board of Elections. "It is a free country and if chooses to not have his name on the ballot he has every right to do so."

Campbell acknowledged this possibility and said he would not feel slighted if the mayor, simply by asking for his name to be removed from the ballot, were to undermine months of efforts.

"Yes, Bloomberg must consent to this and it will be up to the Board of Elections," he told the Huffington Post. "But we made a promise and we wanted to keep it and we have."

UPDATE: Bloomberg's spokesman Stu Loeser emails: "He hasn't made any decisions and hasn't had a chance to speak with [party chairman Carey] Campbell yet... But this is a call for post-partisanship that Mayor Bloomberg hopes the major parties will hear."

LATE UPDATE: Turns out Liz Benjamin had this report up for the New York Daily News earlier today. We did our own reporting but she still deserves credit.

LewRockwell.com gives you some more:
The Independent Party of Virginia has collected 70,000 signatures - seven times as many as necessary - to nominate Ron as vice president and Michael Bloomberg as president. The wrong order, of course, but still very neat. Could this ticket actually carry Virginia, and turn a close election over to the House of Representatives? We can only hope. Then McCain can really become a Georgian. Note, unlike in most states, Ron and Mike stay on unless they ask to be taken off. Ron will not ask, and apparently, neither will Mike.
[update] Welcome to BuzzFlash readers... A reader driven news community worthy of everyone's support.

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McCain Campaign and Surrogates Attack Navy Vet


The exposure of another likely plagiarism, this time originally pegged to plagiarizing Solzhenitsyn, by the McCain Campaign has them and their surrogates hypocritically attacking the patriotism of a Navy Veteran:
First of all, I would like to thank the people who have sent their encouragement and kind messages to me. I have been complimented on my "good citizen journalism" and have seen people take my idea and raise it to the level such that it is being talked about in the mainstream media.

Of course, along with the good comes the bad, and I have been called a traitor, a terrorist, un-American, and someone who wants to destroy Christianity. I have been called a "pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons" player who loves to "disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement" by the McCain people. Because of these attacks, I feel that it is necessary to tell a bit about myself, and to highlight what it is that we are really up against in the candidate that is John McCain.

I served in the Navy as a Nuclear Plant Operator for over 14 years. I served onboard the USS Texas (CGN-39) in Operation Desert Storm. I served onboard the USS Arkansas (CGN-41) in support of Operation Desert Fox. I was a crewmember of the USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) when airplanes struck the Twin Towers on 9/11, and our ship was the first ship that was flying attack missions into Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. I am a father, a husband, an active member of VoteVets, and I take personally any attack on my character or on my morality.

...snip...

They have used McCain's POW history to create a firewall to shield from all criticism, and as a universal qualifier for all things that pertain to foreign policy or to the military.

Here are some examples:

- Any question of McCain's integrity is instantly an insult to all military personnel and all veterans who have ever served.
- Any opposition to McCain's ideas must be prefaced with a disclaimer honoring his military service.
- Any McCain misstep or gaffe is instantly forgiven because he was once a Prisoner of War, and must be honored as such.
- John McCain's war hero status overrides the Ten Commandments, because according to Sean Hannity, his adultery is erased by the fact that he was imprisoned in Vietnam.

The Legend of John McCainTM has been perpetuated by the Republican party and the Corporate Media to crush all dissent and create a teflon candidate that is beyond reproach.

Previously Brewed in New Milford:

Alexander Solzhenitsyn Or John McCain?

Who are you going to believe?

You read. You watch. You Decide:

Here is a story about Alexander Solzhenitsyn from his times in the Soviet Gulags.

Along with other prisoners, he worked in the fields day after day, in rain and sun, during summer and winter. His life appeared to be nothing more than backbreaking labor and slow starvation. The intense suffering reduced him to a state of despair.

On one particular day, the hopelessness of his situation became too much for him. He saw no reason to continue his struggle, no reason to keep on living. His life made no difference in the world. So he gave up.

Leaving his shovel on the ground, he slowly walked to a crude bench and sat down. He knew that at any moment a guard would order him to stand up, and when he failed to respond, the guard would beat him to death, probably with his own shovel. He had seen it happen to other prisoners.

As he waited, head down, he felt a presence. Slowly he looked up and saw a skinny old prisoner squat down beside him. The man said nothing. Instead, he used a stick to trace in the dirt the sign of the Cross. The man then got back up and returned to his work.

As Solzhenitsyn stared at the Cross drawn in the dirt his entire perspective changed. He knew he was only one man against the all-powerful Soviet empire. Yet he knew there was something greater than the evil he saw in the prison camp, something greater than the Soviet Union. He knew that hope for all people was represented by that simple Cross. Through the power of the Cross, anything was possible.

Solzhenitsyn slowly rose to his feet, picked up his shovel, and went back to work. Outwardly, nothing had changed. Inside, he had received hope.

[From Luke Veronis, "The Sign of the Cross"; Communion, issue 8, Pascha 1997.]

Now watch this John McCain ad:



Does anyone else get the feeling that McCain's old war stories that he rattled on about during the Forum on Faith, and during this campaign, are nothing more than a heaping, steaming pile of BS? Hey! it wouldn't be the only lies John McCain told in that church last night...

Further reading for your homework pleasure:
  1. TomP: Cross in the Dirt, a recap of what we know
  2. Calouste: No "cross in the sand" for McCain in 1973
  3. Throwing Stones: McCain lies, contradicts himself on Cross story


[update] It appears that even the Freepers have known McCain's story was all a lie since way back in 2005:

And McCain had just published his latest book of embellished tales. A Freeper posted the reference to the Cross-in-the-Dirt story, and Freepers accepted it with, lets say, something less than enthusiasm.

http://www.freerepublic.com/...

Among some of the responses are:

Do I sense a run for president coming up? Sorry if I'm too cynical.

Perhaps McCain is making obvious Christian statements to gain support for 2008.
----
Perhaps??? :-)

and of course:

This guy is so full of $hit his eyes are brown. He is a sellout RINO. I would not believe a word he says.

But my jaw hit the floor when I read this:

Hmmmm. Looks like McCain has been reading Solzhenitsyn.
From The Mayor's daily posts at FR's Finest and The Canteen from the devotional "Our Daily Bread" comes Sunday's reading...

World-famous Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was sent to a Siberian prison because he criticized communism. Languishing there under intolerable conditions year after year, he decided to end his life. But suicide, he firmly believed, would be against God's will. He thought it would be better for a guard to shoot him.

So at a public assembly of the prisoners, he sat in a front row, planning to get up and walk toward an exit, compelling a guard to kill him. But to his surprise, another prisoner sat down, blocking his exit. That unknown man leaned over and, to Solzhenitsyn's astonishment, drew a cross on the dirt floor.

Here's a direct link to that response:
http://www.freerepublic.com/...

So... Both the left and the right seem to be in agreement that McCain is full of, ummm? Let's just say McCain has brown eyes, OK?
So far we have established that McCain has had different versions of the story to recount in more recent years - since about the year 2000 - for campaign purposes, a pretty clear indication that McCain can't keep the lies straight:
It's worth noting that pursuing the cross-in-the-dirt evangelical parable as it might have happened to McCain is in no way impugning anyone's war record. No one is disputing in any way what McCain did in Vietnam, his heroism, his sacrifice or any jot and tittle of his combat in arms and time in captivity. What we're curious about is how an urban legend in Christianist circles (attributed to Solzhenitsen but originating, so far as one can tell, in Chuck Colson) reshaped and altered an actual, utterly believable story of rare humanity in a prison camp. And how a campaign not only adopted the improved story but then wielded it in a campaign ad and as a critical message to evangelicals. If that ad is not actually true - and its depiction of the cross in the dirt we know is false (according to McCain, it was done with a sandal; in the ad it is done, as in Colson's account, with a stick) - it's a question of challenging a campaign's veracity, and what can only be called a cynical use of religion. Could the campaign confirm that the ad itself is visually incompatible with the Salter story? Or were they unconcerned with such detail, assuming no one would be foolish enough to question a war hero's unconfirmable anecdote - and eager merely to show the deeper (and true) point that McCain relied on God to survive the unimaginable?

And, clearly, many of the witnesses the right wing have trotted out to provide cover for the plagiarism charges in the last week claiming McCain told them before have been so contradictory in their stories it is laughable.

From May of this year:

“I don’t recall us talking specifically about our faith,” says Orson Swindle, one of McCain’s closest friends and a fellow POW. “We talked about our friends, families, our resistance posture, and that our country didn’t seem to have the will to win.”

Belief in a higher power helped them survive the routine torture and daily indignities, Swindle says. “It would help us endure what we had to endure. But we knew God wasn’t going to come down and wave a magic wand.”

Swindle's recollection today is here.
Spin reactionary right wing thugs. What a joke... His life and faith altering moment was so important that there is no recount in his earlier recounts of Christmas stories:
I just want to point out that there's a chapter specifically devoted to three Christmases of McCain's captivity in The Nightingale's Song, Robert Timberg's critically acclaimed 1995 book, which helped put McCain on the map as a political celebrity -- and the cross story does not appear. Nor does it appear anywhere else in the book.

The chapter is titled "'Tis the Season to Be Jolly." It says that on Christmas Eve 1968, a guard tried to compel McCain to attend a church service that was being staged for the benefit of visiting photographers. McCain decided "to ruin the picture," letting out a series of curses ("'Fu-u-u-u-ck you, you son of a bitch!' shouted McCain, hoisting a one-finger salute whenever a camera pointed in his direction"). There's certainly no mention of a cross in the sand in this account.

On Christmas Eve 1969, we're then told, McCain had a civil conversation with the Cat, the one guard he's said in other accounts was considerate to him a guard called the Cat (see Calouste's correction in comments) -- but again there's no mention of a cross in the sand. (Timberg tells us that McCain and the Cat discussed the Cat's tie clip and cigarette lighter, as well as McCain's decision not to accept early release.)

On Christmas 1970, Timberg writes, McCain was transferred to a cell with his friend Bud Day -- "the perfect Christmas present" because he'd just spent two and a half years in solitary. Again, no cross.

(The chapter also includes an account of the car accident in which McCain's first wife, whom he later divorced, was seriously injured. The accident took place on Christmas Eve 1969.)

Never mind that his rock solid faith was so affirmed by all of his experiences as a POW that as soon as he got home he cheated on his first wife repeatedly... Before divorcing her.

Do you really think anybody is believing a word that comes out of McCain or his campaign anymore?

If McCain's lips are moving... He is lying:
The problem is that in an era where things can easily be verified, “I don’t remember” is sometimes passable and “I never said that” or “I never did that” is unacceptable and easily verifiable.

And that is just off the top of my head and a quick search.

So let’s start calling him what he is. A full on liar. Not only “forgetful”, not only “misinterpreted”, not only “misquoted”, not only mean-spirited and stretching the truth.


And, please remember you insane right wing nuts... That if you really want to address who started all of these plagiarism accusations in the first place: Right wingnut Freepers at the Free Republic. Yeah, that's right... YOUR OWN RIGHT WINGNUT SMEAR CAMPAIGN BUDDIES.

Can we help it if it is pretty darn clear that it is true?

[update] The long trail of this mythology/story on the conservative side of the aisle makes it pretty darned clear that any right wingnut could have cobbled this campaign lie together for McCain:

But it turns out that this episode probably never happened to Solzhenitsyn at all, and according to a Solzhenitsyn biographer it appears nowhere in his published writing. Columbia University professor Michael Scammell, the author of Solzhenitsyn: A Biography, says the episode "never happened," and didn't appear in Solzhenitsyn's book, Gulag Archipelago, either.

This only solves a piece of the mystery, but it's a key piece. It doesn't necessarily rule out the possibility that McCain or his biographer, Mark Salter, picked up the tale that this happened to Solzhenitsyn elsewhere and embellished it for their own purposes.

But it takes one well-trafficked theory off the table: That McCain, a fan of Solzhenitsyn, picked it up straight from his works. More broadly, it also skewers once and for all the cherished right-wing falsehood that this happened to Solzhenitsyn at all.

Of course, it's still possible that McCain or Salter picked this up from the sort of right-wing circles that it first originated in. After all, this tale was bandied about by Chuck Colson and many other wingnuts for years; McCain or Salter could have picked it up from such circles, as the notes from Colson's 1983 book, Loving God, explain:

"The story about Alexander Solzhenitsen and the old man who made the sign of the cross was first told by Solzhenitsyn to a group of Christian leaders and later recounted by Billy Graham in his New Year's telecast, 1977. It has been retold subsequently, most publicly by Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC)."

Those investigating this story have also pointed out that no one can find evidence that McCain referenced this episode until his 1999 book -- it didn't appear anywhere in a lengthy 1973 article McCain wrote about his captivity. It does seem odd that McCain would not have discussed such a pivotal moment until twenty-five years later.

What is becoming clear is that this is just more of the typical GOP and conservative crap that is made up and inserted into the mythology of any campaign or far right wingnut cause that wants to abuse the truth.
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8/18/08

One Of Connecticut's Best...

... Takes a well deserved bow.

Litchfield author and Blogger Andy Thibault gets a little love from the Republican American:
He'll get in your face
Litchfield blogger always eager for a cause

Andy Thibault spends a lot of time in shorts and sandals watching rabbits nibble in his Litchfield backyard. When he feels up to it, he climbs the steep stairs of his Victorian home on a quiet, tree shaded street, turns on the computer and takes on the world.

Muckraking may seem misplaced in such a bucolic setting, but it works just fine for a 55-year-old man trying to recover from stage 3 colon cancer while waging a feisty campaign that could have national significance in the free-speech arena.

Through his news blog, "The Cool Justice Report," Thibault is the prime mover in an effort to challenge the punishment of Avery Doninger, a Lewis S. Mills High School student from Burlington, for critical remarks she made last year on her blog about school administrators.

It is always nice to see one of Connecticut's many great Bloggers get some well deserved respect. Especially a Blogger that - on this I am pretty darned certain - would gladly kick a hornets nest if he thinks it would fix things.

[update] Just a Blogroll edition in an effort to keep the links in the technoratie count of my faves since Blogrolls don't do as much used to anymore:
1percentmoreconscious
New Haven Independent
Politics in the Zeros
Tom Gogola
The Mad Liberal
Presidential Politics
Denis Horgan
Saramerica
Colin McEnroe
CT Smart Growth
CT Working Families
Drinking Liberally in New Milford
Hat City Blog
Cool Justice
CT Voices for Civil Justice
Without a Purpose
Politics Press
Laura Elizabeth
Irregular News
Jim Himes Blog
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McCain's Mansions: The Houses that Greed Built

From Robert Greenwald's BraveNewFilms:


Most working families today do not have homes that have anywhere near 10 rooms. John McCain has 10 houses. Many working people in America have to work two and three jobs to provide for their families and pay their car loans. John McCain hops on a private jet. Is it any wonder why McCain champions a George Bush agenda of cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy, helping oil companies turn record profits, and leaving working families to fend for themselves? McCain's velvet world leaves him utterly unprepared to make the tough choices we need to restore the middle class and ensure that everyone in America has quality, affordable health insurance.

-Andy Stern, President, Service Employees International Union (SEIU)

John McCain is soaring to new heights of hypocrisy on his wife's personal jet. He flies around the country bent on duping the public into believing he's "one of them," a regular guy who can empathize with Americans facing an overwhelming economic crush. What's more, he disparages those who oppose his ridiculous policy proposals as "elitist." But who's the real elitist?

The REAL McCain is a multimillionaire who owns ten luxurious homes. The REAL McCain backs President Bush's tax cuts for big corporations. The REAL McCain empathizes only with the interests of our nation's wealthy minority, not its money-strapped majority. But far too many are buying into McCain's deceit because the corporate press won't present the whole picture, so we created this video to educate the public about the REAL McCain.

Together, you have been a force in making sure The REAL McCain videos have been seen by nearly 6.5 million people. But as Frank Rich noted in his NY Times column yesterday, 40% of Americans hear too little about McCain from the mainstream media, meaning "the public doesn't know who on earth John McCain is." That's why it's crucial you ensure this video is seen by as many as possible, and that we use each and every tool at our disposal to get the word out. Send this on to five friends and family members, and tell them to send it to five people they know. Get it to your local news outlets and blogs and networking sites like Digg. Raise hell about McCain's economic duplicity!

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney summed it up best when he said McCain "simply doesn't understand the challenges America's working families are facing because he isn't remotely affected by them." It's up to us to tell people who McCain really is, a personal jet-setting elitist more concerned with corporate lobbyists than hard-working Americans.

This video is also available onYouTube.
Let's just say that I know how this feels. Brewed here on my own Blog in May, 2008:

On the Sub-Prime Crisis

Many of you already knew that we were probably losing our home in the first wave of foreclosures hitting this state and the country. I have been sort of busy the last couple of weeks with this issue and (some of) you may have noticed that my Blog has been dormant because I have been so busy.

The bad news? We have given up trying to save our home.

The good news? Unlike the many American families that are, right now, living in tent cities (from the morgtage crisis, floods and also from hurricane Katrina) we have been fortunate enough to find a house to rent. And we will not have to move from New Milford, either. The kids are happy about that second part. They have made friends and like living here.

Finding a place to live has not been easy. Being in the first wave of foreclosures, many landlords refused to rent to us. This issue will likely resolve itself for others later on as more and more people with foreclosures and bankruptcies on their credit reports will flood the renters market. For now it is still an issue. An issue we that we kind of lucked our way around.

Lemons Meet Lemonade

The house we are renting? It is a little bit smaller than the home we loved but it does have some serious plusses that make this a better place for us. First, it has a nice little wood stove in the living room to curl up in front of on those chilly New England nights. It will also save us money on oil. Second, it has a nice, big and sunny room that I plan on turning into my media room that will look right out over the back yard. Third, it is not on a main street so the kids and the dog will be a little safer playing outside. Fourth, we will be saving hundreds compared to what our original mortgage payment started at, never mind how much our ARM was by the time it doubled.

As for the luck part? Well, we are renting the house from someone that was on the verge of losing it all, as well. She pretty much knows our situtation and, because of her own situtation, was a little more forgiving on our credit check. The lady who owns the house is where we were in the foreclosure process about 9 months ago. She did not have "ARM" or sub-prime issues, but employment/relocation issues. As the real estate agent that helped us find a place said, this is a win/win situation for everyone here. She won't be crushed financially like we were and we will have a roof over our heads.

I'll have more to write on this later but, for now, don't be surpised if my Blogging particiaption is a little bit irregular.

I have written plenty on Countrywide, the mortgage crisis and a myriad of other political and social issues since then. This problem is growing exponentially under the Bush administration's incompetent economic policies. The same failed economic madness that politicians like John McCain and Chris Shays want to continue follow.

[update] The NY Times Caucus Blog:
Labor, Film Co. Paint McCain as the ‘Real Elitist’

The A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the Service Employees International Union have feuded plenty in recent years, but they have banded together to help distribute and publicize a new online video that characterizes Senator John McCain as elitist and out of touch.

The four-minute video, produced by Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films, is called “McCain’s Mansions: the Real Elitist” and showcases various McCain homes and condominiums in Arizona, California and Virginia, with one valued at $4.66 million.



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Obama and McCain - On the Economy

(h/t Crooks and Liars)

Nothing to add to this Barack Obama campaign ad showing the differences between Barack Obama and John McCain since it is factual and relatively straight forward and to the point:




Nothing to add, except for the fact that many of McCain's huge mistakes are the same ones that Chris Shays has made over and over again...
BTW, if you're the type who skips YouTube clips most of the time, don't this time.
("Psst" this at Brave New Films.)

As New Hampshire Republicans - unsatisfied with their terribly flawed candidates - start to glumly trickle into their voting booths today, a few may recall having seen Connecticut Congressman Chris Shays barnstorming around their state for the past week in support of John McCain.

This sight must have been particularly jarring: the former member of the Peace Corps, proudly displaying a reminder of that episode of his past life, while fighting for a candidate who wants a permanent American troop presence of Iraq:

Up in the McCain headquarters on the third floor of an old mill building, Connecticut's 4th District Rep. Chris Shays is sitting among the troops in a suit and Peace Corps cap, making the same get-out-the-vote telephone calls as everybody else. McCain has been using the Republican congressman as a surrogate at the smaller events he can't reach. Shays takes on the role a bit in headquarters at the lunch break...

Shays tells the workers their candidate is a reformer who can't be intimidated. He's got two things going for him, Shays says. "One is his character. The other is what we all hunger for in this country: straight talk."

Yes, that's right. "Straight talk."

Like this:

Where's the "straight talk" from Shays on Iraq, and his support for a Presidential candidate who would keep us there forever?

It's nowhere to be found :

"He has more positions on Iraq than Mitt Romney has on abortion," says Soltz, a veteran of the Iraq and Kosovo wars. "You never know where he sits on Iraq. He can tell you what he wants, but he is lined up with George Bush on this war."

"He likes to brag about how many times he's been to Iraq," Soltz adds, "but he's never served, and he doesn't really know how the military works...."

Fighting for endless occupation of Iraq... while wearing a Peace Corps cap. That pretty much says it all:


Chris Shays

(Ilustration by Danny Hellman for Fairfield County Weekly.)

(Disclosure: Tparty, the author of that, proudly consults for Jim Himes.)

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8/17/08

Alexander Solzhenitsyn Or John McCain?

Who are you going to believe?

You read. You watch. You Decide:

Here is a story about Alexander Solzhenitsyn from his times in the Soviet Gulags.

Along with other prisoners, he worked in the fields day after day, in rain and sun, during summer and winter. His life appeared to be nothing more than backbreaking labor and slow starvation. The intense suffering reduced him to a state of despair.

On one particular day, the hopelessness of his situation became too much for him. He saw no reason to continue his struggle, no reason to keep on living. His life made no difference in the world. So he gave up.

Leaving his shovel on the ground, he slowly walked to a crude bench and sat down. He knew that at any moment a guard would order him to stand up, and when he failed to respond, the guard would beat him to death, probably with his own shovel. He had seen it happen to other prisoners.

As he waited, head down, he felt a presence. Slowly he looked up and saw a skinny old prisoner squat down beside him. The man said nothing. Instead, he used a stick to trace in the dirt the sign of the Cross. The man then got back up and returned to his work.

As Solzhenitsyn stared at the Cross drawn in the dirt his entire perspective changed. He knew he was only one man against the all-powerful Soviet empire. Yet he knew there was something greater than the evil he saw in the prison camp, something greater than the Soviet Union. He knew that hope for all people was represented by that simple Cross. Through the power of the Cross, anything was possible.

Solzhenitsyn slowly rose to his feet, picked up his shovel, and went back to work. Outwardly, nothing had changed. Inside, he had received hope.

[From Luke Veronis, "The Sign of the Cross"; Communion, issue 8, Pascha 1997.]

Now watch this John McCain ad:



Does anyone else get the feeling that McCain's old war stories that he rattled on about during the Forum on Faith, and during this campaign, are nothing more than a heaping, steaming pile of BS? Hey! it wouldn't be the only lies John McCain told in that church last night...

Further reading for your homework pleasure:
  1. TomP: Cross in the Dirt, a recap of what we know
  2. Calouste: No "cross in the sand" for McCain in 1973
  3. Throwing Stones: McCain lies, contradicts himself on Cross story


[update] It appears that even the Freepers have known McCain's story was all a lie since way back in 2005:

And McCain had just published his latest book of embellished tales. A Freeper posted the reference to the Cross-in-the-Dirt story, and Freepers accepted it with, lets say, something less than enthusiasm.

http://www.freerepublic.com/...

Among some of the responses are:

Do I sense a run for president coming up? Sorry if I'm too cynical.

Perhaps McCain is making obvious Christian statements to gain support for 2008.
----
Perhaps??? :-)

and of course:

This guy is so full of $hit his eyes are brown. He is a sellout RINO. I would not believe a word he says.

But my jaw hit the floor when I read this:

Hmmmm. Looks like McCain has been reading Solzhenitsyn.
From The Mayor's daily posts at FR's Finest and The Canteen from the devotional "Our Daily Bread" comes Sunday's reading...

World-famous Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was sent to a Siberian prison because he criticized communism. Languishing there under intolerable conditions year after year, he decided to end his life. But suicide, he firmly believed, would be against God's will. He thought it would be better for a guard to shoot him.

So at a public assembly of the prisoners, he sat in a front row, planning to get up and walk toward an exit, compelling a guard to kill him. But to his surprise, another prisoner sat down, blocking his exit. That unknown man leaned over and, to Solzhenitsyn's astonishment, drew a cross on the dirt floor.

Here's a direct link to that response:
http://www.freerepublic.com/...

So... Both the left and the right seem to be in agreement that McCain is full of, ummm? Let's just say McCain has brown eyes, OK?

[update] I have already written another post on this topic, but in the interests of correcting the origins of the story for people, like Rinehardt947, that find this archived post:
McCain Campaign and Surrogates Attack Navy Vet


The exposure of another likely plagiarism, this time plagiarizing Solzhenitsyn, by the McCain Campaign has them and their surrogates hypocritically attacking the patriotism of a Navy Veteran:

First of all, I would like to thank the people who have sent their encouragement and kind messages to me. I have been complimented on my "good citizen journalism" and have seen people take my idea and raise it to the level such that it is being talked about in the mainstream media.

Of course, along with the good comes the bad, and I have been called a traitor, a terrorist, un-American, and someone who wants to destroy Christianity. I have been called a "pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons" player who loves to "disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement" by the McCain people. Because of these attacks, I feel that it is necessary to tell a bit about myself, and to highlight what it is that we are really up against in the candidate that is John McCain.

I served in the Navy as a Nuclear Plant Operator for over 14 years. I served onboard the USS Texas (CGN-39) in Operation Desert Storm. I served onboard the USS Arkansas (CGN-41) in support of Operation Desert Fox. I was a crewmember of the USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) when airplanes struck the Twin Towers on 9/11, and our ship was the first ship that was flying attack missions into Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. I am a father, a husband, an active member of VoteVets, and I take personally any attack on my character or on my morality.

...snip...

They have used McCain's POW history to create a firewall to shield from all criticism, and as a universal qualifier for all things that pertain to foreign policy or to the military.

Here are some examples:

- Any question of McCain's integrity is instantly an insult to all military personnel and all veterans who have ever served.
- Any opposition to McCain's ideas must be prefaced with a disclaimer honoring his military service.
- Any McCain misstep or gaffe is instantly forgiven because he was once a Prisoner of War, and must be honored as such.
- John McCain's war hero status overrides the Ten Commandments, because according to Sean Hannity, his adultery is erased by the fact that he was imprisoned in Vietnam.

The Legend of John McCainTM has been perpetuated by the Republican party and the Corporate Media to crush all dissent and create a teflon candidate that is beyond reproach.

.....snip.... (edit insert the original post above)

So far we have established that McCain has had different versions of the story to recount in more recent years - since about the year 2000 - for campaign purposes, a pretty clear indication that McCain can't keep the lies straight:
It's worth noting that pursuing the cross-in-the-dirt evangelical parable as it might have happened to McCain is in no way impugning anyone's war record. No one is disputing in any way what McCain did in Vietnam, his heroism, his sacrifice or any jot and tittle of his combat in arms and time in captivity. What we're curious about is how an urban legend in Christianist circles (attributed to Solzhenitsen but originating, so far as one can tell, in Chuck Colson) reshaped and altered an actual, utterly believable story of rare humanity in a prison camp. And how a campaign not only adopted the improved story but then wielded it in a campaign ad and as a critical message to evangelicals. If that ad is not actually true - and its depiction of the cross in the dirt we know is false (according to McCain, it was done with a sandal; in the ad it is done, as in Colson's account, with a stick) - it's a question of challenging a campaign's veracity, and what can only be called a cynical use of religion. Could the campaign confirm that the ad itself is visually incompatible with the Salter story? Or were they unconcerned with such detail, assuming no one would be foolish enough to question a war hero's unconfirmable anecdote - and eager merely to show the deeper (and true) point that McCain relied on God to survive the unimaginable?

And, clearly, many of the witnesses the right wing have trotted out to provide cover for the plagiarism charges in the last week claiming McCain told them before have been so contradictory in their stories it is laughable.

From May of this year:

“I don’t recall us talking specifically about our faith,” says Orson Swindle, one of McCain’s closest friends and a fellow POW. “We talked about our friends, families, our resistance posture, and that our country didn’t seem to have the will to win.”

Belief in a higher power helped them survive the routine torture and daily indignities, Swindle says. “It would help us endure what we had to endure. But we knew God wasn’t going to come down and wave a magic wand.”

Swindle's recollection today is here.
Spin reactionary right wing thugs. What a joke... His life and faith altering moment was so important that there is no recount in his earlier recounts of Christmas stories:
I just want to point out that there's a chapter specifically devoted to three Christmases of McCain's captivity in The Nightingale's Song, Robert Timberg's critically acclaimed 1995 book, which helped put McCain on the map as a political celebrity -- and the cross story does not appear. Nor does it appear anywhere else in the book.

The chapter is titled "'Tis the Season to Be Jolly." It says that on Christmas Eve 1968, a guard tried to compel McCain to attend a church service that was being staged for the benefit of visiting photographers. McCain decided "to ruin the picture," letting out a series of curses ("'Fu-u-u-u-ck you, you son of a bitch!' shouted McCain, hoisting a one-finger salute whenever a camera pointed in his direction"). There's certainly no mention of a cross in the sand in this account.

On Christmas Eve 1969, we're then told, McCain had a civil conversation with the Cat, the one guard he's said in other accounts was considerate to him a guard called the Cat (see Calouste's correction in comments) -- but again there's no mention of a cross in the sand. (Timberg tells us that McCain and the Cat discussed the Cat's tie clip and cigarette lighter, as well as McCain's decision not to accept early release.)

On Christmas 1970, Timberg writes, McCain was transferred to a cell with his friend Bud Day -- "the perfect Christmas present" because he'd just spent two and a half years in solitary. Again, no cross.

(The chapter also includes an account of the car accident in which McCain's first wife, whom he later divorced, was seriously injured. The accident took place on Christmas Eve 1969.)

Never mind that his rock solid faith was so affirmed by all of his experiences as a POW that as soon as he got home he cheated on his first wife repeatedly... Before divorcing her.

Do you really think anybody is believing a word that comes out of McCain or his campaign anymore?

Do you really think anybody is believing a word that comes out of McCain or his campaign anymore?

If McCain's lips are moving... He is lying:
The problem is that in an era where things can easily be verified, “I don’t remember” is sometimes passable and “I never said that” or “I never did that” is unacceptable and easily verifiable.

And that is just off the top of my head and a quick search.

So let’s start calling him what he is. A full on liar. Not only “forgetful”, not only “misinterpreted”, not only “misquoted”, not only mean-spirited and stretching the truth.


And, please remember you insane right wing nuts... That if you really want to address who started all of these plagiarism accusations in the first place: Right wingnut Freepers at the Free Republic. Yeah, that's right... YOUR OWN RIGHT WINGNUT SMEAR CAMPAIGN BUDDIES.

Can we help it if it is pretty darn clear that it is true?

[update] The long trail of this mythology/story on the conservative side of the aisle makes it pretty darned clear that any right wingnut could have cobbled this campaign lie together for McCain:

But it turns out that this episode probably never happened to Solzhenitsyn at all, and according to a Solzhenitsyn biographer it appears nowhere in his published writing. Columbia University professor Michael Scammell, the author of Solzhenitsyn: A Biography, says the episode "never happened," and didn't appear in Solzhenitsyn's book, Gulag Archipelago, either.

This only solves a piece of the mystery, but it's a key piece. It doesn't necessarily rule out the possibility that McCain or his biographer, Mark Salter, picked up the tale that this happened to Solzhenitsyn elsewhere and embellished it for their own purposes.

But it takes one well-trafficked theory off the table: That McCain, a fan of Solzhenitsyn, picked it up straight from his works. More broadly, it also skewers once and for all the cherished right-wing falsehood that this happened to Solzhenitsyn at all.

Of course, it's still possible that McCain or Salter picked this up from the sort of right-wing circles that it first originated in. After all, this tale was bandied about by Chuck Colson and many other wingnuts for years; McCain or Salter could have picked it up from such circles, as the notes from Colson's 1983 book, Loving God, explain:

"The story about Alexander Solzhenitsen and the old man who made the sign of the cross was first told by Solzhenitsyn to a group of Christian leaders and later recounted by Billy Graham in his New Year's telecast, 1977. It has been retold subsequently, most publicly by Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC)."

Those investigating this story have also pointed out that no one can find evidence that McCain referenced this episode until his 1999 book -- it didn't appear anywhere in a lengthy 1973 article McCain wrote about his captivity. It does seem odd that McCain would not have discussed such a pivotal moment until twenty-five years later.

What is becoming clear is that this is just more of the typical GOP and conservative crap that is made up and inserted into the mythology of any campaign or far right wingnut cause that wants to abuse the truth.
IOW: McCain did likely plagiarize from someone... Colson, Jeremiah Denton, Billy Graham or Helms... Who knows who else because the story is so old. The similarities to the "origins" are one thing. The inconsistencies in McCain and his own campaign's recounting of everything is simply beyond the pale.

[update] A late update on this considering right wingnuts are still using the Swindle lies to cover the McCain Campaign tracks on this long after Swindle was completely discredited while pissing and moaning that the left attacks veterans while simultaneously twisting into the hypocrisy of trying to use the notorious swiftboat liar Bud Day as their new lie to cut'nrun from the truth... Anyways, this from the Jed Report:

McCain's ghost writer Mark Salter now claims CITD wasn't a pivotal moment for McCain:

As for assertions that the "cross in the dirt" story was a "pivotal" experience in McCain's time as a POW, Salter said, "That's just plain bulls—t. His pivotal experience was his refusal of early release and the three or four days of torture he took for it, his confession, and his attempted suicide. That was his pivotal experience. He's never represented [the "cross in the dirt" story] to be that."

But on Saturday McCain said:

I'll never forget that moment.

And in October 2007, according to the Christian Science Monitor, McCain said it was the most profound experience of his time as POW (emphasis added):

For McCain, there were other moments of grace in prison. While in solitary confinement, he would be left for the night with his arms tied back in a painful position. One night, a guard walked in and loosened the ropes, then came back five hours later and tightened up the ropes again, without saying a word. Two months later, on Christmas Day, McCain was allowed to stand outside for 10 minutes in a courtyard, and that same guard came up to him. The guard stood beside him for a minute, then drew a cross in the dirt with his sandal and stood there for a minute, looking at McCain silently. A few minutes later he rubbed it out and walked away.

"My friends, I will never forget that man," McCain recounts during a town-hall meeting with voters, his voice choked with emotion. "I will never forget that moment. And I will never forget the fact that no matter where you are, no matter how difficult things are, there's always going to be someone of your faith and your belief and your devotion to your fellow man who will pick you up and help you out and bring you through."

It was, he said later, the most transcendent and uplifting experience of his imprisonment.

It's obvious that Salter is trying to minimize a story that McCain himself was hyping just two days earlier.

Keep bringing this story up you right wing fools... Even John McCain is already trying to hide from this huge lie.
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