Arizona Senator John McCain (official)

[Gatorubet]

Originally Posted by DaytonBuck

The Vietnam Veterans against John McCain are the people that wish Lenin ran our country.

Well, well, well.....Oh well!

[DaytonBuck]

I'm not white, I'll always be a second rate citizen to you gator. I'm ready to bring you you tea massa.

[Gatorubet]

Originally Posted by DaytonBuck

I'm not white, I'll always be a second rate citizen to you gator. I'm ready to bring you you tea massa.

Dayton. Seriously - that is some [censored]ed up [censored]. If you are joking, I don't get it, and if you are serious, I sure don't appreciate it.

You're black? Get. Outa. Town. Why, I met a black man and some kind of oriental looking fella once, I stayed on the same side of the street as them without crossing, and I shook hands with them and everything.

So now that we are all like, minorities here (I'm a Gator), check out one of my fav sites! This shows how down with my African American friends I am, my brotha from anotha motha!

Black People Love Us!

[DaytonBuck]

Originally Posted by Gatorubet

Dayton. Seriously - that is some [censored]ed up [censored]. If you are joking, I don't get it, and if you are serious, I sure don't appreciate it.

You're black? Get. Outa. Town. Why, I met a black man and some kind of oriental looking fella once, I stayed on the same side of the street as them without crossing, and I shook hands with them and everything.

So now that we are all like, minorities here (I'm a Gator), check out one of my fav sites! This shows how down with my African American friends I am, my brotha from anotha motha!

Black People Love Us!

I'm an oversensitive half oriental who is boozed up. I am an idiot and deservedly so right now. You are a good person. I've sucked down too much Whiskey. Feel now shame I do, for I am the one who should feel it. You are a good American Gator. I made an unfortunate statement I'm sorry for. I'm pumped full of the bourbon and I made a fool out of myself.

[Gatorubet]

Originally Posted by DaytonBuck

I'm an oversensitive half oriental who is boozed up. I am an idiot and deservedly so right now. You are a good person. I've sucked down too much Whiskey. Feel now shame I do, for I am the one who should feel it. You are a good American Gator. I made an unfortunate statement I'm sorry for. I'm pumped full of the bourbon and I made a fool out of myself.

[censored], you're just having some drinky drinks and getting your drunk on!

Then never mind. We're all good. Get some sleep man.

['BusNative]

Originally Posted by DaytonBuck

I've sucked down too much Whiskey... I'm pumped full of the bourbon and I made a fool out of myself.

I thought I was the only one who did stuff like that (and then posted on the Poli board )

[Flocka]

Originally Posted by 'BusNative

I thought I was the only one who did stuff like that (and then posted on the Poli board )

You guys post sober?

[CookyPuss]

In one of the strangest things I've seen, the same Jerome Corsi that just put out the book of smears on Obama, linked McCain to Al-Qaida and organized crime in articles. I'd call the guy a piece of poo, but that would be demeaning to poo.

Group tied to al-Qaida backs McCain for prez

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain has enjoyed strong support from a lobbyist group that backs the Kosovo Liberation Army despite allegations the KLA is a Muslim terrorist group with ties to criminal drug networks and al-Qaida.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=57354

John McCain's personal fortune traces back to organized crime in Arizona, through his father-in-law, according to a report published by a multi-news agency team called Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc.

['BusNative]

New rumblings about McCain's cross in the dirt story..

CQ Politics | Political Insider - Is McCain Now Copying Solzhenitsyn?

Is McCain Now Copying Solzhenitsyn?

Last week, a speech by Sen. John McCain had phrases that were likely lifted directly from Wikipedia.

Now it seems McCain may have lifted another story last night at megachurch pastor Rick Warren's Faith Forum. According to a very persuasive Daily Kos diary, the anecdote McCain told about a North Vietnamese prison guard making a cross in the dirt as a sign of solidarity -- or as he said, "just two Christians worshiping together" -- is very similar to a story about Alexander Solzhenitsyn and his times in the Soviet Gulags.

"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."

Steven Waldman notes that McCain's recounting of this story has changed over the years and "has gradually morphed from being about the humanity of the guard to being about the Christian faith of the guard and John McCain."

Andrew Sullivan says that McCain's early accounts of his years as a POW do not even include this story.

['BusNative]

McCain just refuses to understand the huge conflict of interest to have a paid lobbyist on his staff from one side of an international conflict. In fact, now he's "proud" of that fact.

McCain OK with aide's lobbying past - USATODAY.com

McCain OK with aide's lobbying past

By Matt Kelley and David Jackson, USA TODAY

ORLANDO - Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain told USA TODAY on Sunday that he has no problem with his top foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann's past lobbying work.

The fighting between Russia and Georgia has brought renewed attention to Scheunemann and the lobbying firm he founded, Orion Strategies, which received more than $730,000 from Georgia since 2001, records show.

Scheunemann's role as lobbyist and campaign adviser came to light in May, when USA TODAY reported he had contacted McCain's Senate office on Georgia's behalf last year while he was working for the campaign.

Scheunemann in March ended his lobbying work for Orion, which continues to represent Georgia, and formally separated from the firm in May, said McCain spokesman Brian Rogers.


"I'm proud to have supported them," McCain said of Georgia in an interview on the campaign plane. "And I'm so proud that so many of my friends have done so, who also believe in freedom and democracy."

McCain said he found it interesting that Barack Obama's campaign called him "confrontational" with Russia.

Yet "rather than worry about the people of Georgia," McCain said, his Democratic rival "worried about whether someone on my staff had supported Georgia or not...

[ScriptOhio]

Navy aviator John McCain stands next to a fighter aircraft in this undated photograph.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- It was September 1967, and Lt. Cmdr. John McCain was back from Vietnam on home leave. He invited Chuck Larson over for dinner, and during a late night game of bridge, McCain pulled his buddy from the U.S. Naval Academy and flight school aside.
Larson recalls being stunned at what he heard.
"You know Chuck, I might have to get out of the Navy," McCain told him. "And I said, 'Why is that John?' and he said, 'Well I want to be a serious naval officer. And when I go places now, people tend to not take me seriously. They hear all the stories, they look at the early days and if they can't take me seriously, I don't know how I can perform.' And I said, 'John, you're going back.' "
A few weeks later, McCain reported for duty on the USS Oriskany and, as he did on his previous assignment on the USS Forrestal, began flying bombing missions over North Vietnam.
October 26, 1967, was McCain's 23rd mission. His target was a power plant on the outskirts of Hanoi.
"I was still in the dive, I had just started to pull out and got hit by a surface-to-air missile, and it basically took the wing off the aircraft," McCain told CNN in one of a series of conversations for "McCain Revealed." "And so I was gyrating very violently, almost straight down, so I had to eject very quickly."
Retracing McCain's steps in Vietnam was a fascinating experience. On the shores of Ho Truc Bach -- White Bamboo Lake -- we spent time with Nguyen Dang Doanh, who said he was on the far side of the lake that morning when he saw a parachute splash down in the water.
McCain was "stretched out -- he was lifted by the life jacket," Doanh said. "Then we all pushed him here [to the edge of the lake] and the security forces surrounded him. .. At that point everyone in the village was here. Everyone came down to see the American pilot."
Nguyen Thi Tranh was a nurse on duty at a neighborhood first aid station that day. Its purpose was to treat local residents hurt in the American bombardment, but Tranh remembers the day more than four decades ago when police came in carrying a white-haired American pilot.
Tranh, now 82 and living in a modest home not far from the lake, told us she bandaged McCain's arms and one leg. She said she "hated the American pilots" because of the deaths and destruction caused by their bombing runs, but she viewed it as her job and her duty to help treat him.
She would later learn that the man who was in her care for 15 or 20 minutes that day became a politician after he returned to the United States. "Would you like him to be president of the United States?" we asked Tranh.
"That depends on the U.S. people. I don't know," Tranh said.
Another Vietnamese official who had close contact with McCain in those days did express hope the Arizona senator wins the election.
Tran Trong Duyet was the director of the Hoa Lo prison, known as the notorious "Hanoi Hilton" to American POWs, from 1968 to 1973. He has kept track of McCain's political career, and said he admires the man once in his custody because of his work to push the United States, during the Clinton administration, to normalize relations with Vietnam.
As for his prison days, Duyet said in his conversations with McCain, "He would never admit the United States made a mistake in the war. ... Therefore I say John McCain is an extremely conservative man. He was loyal to his ideology."
The low point for McCain came in 1968, before his transfer to the Hanoi Hilton. In his own accounts of those days, McCain wrote that after four days of beatings -- including a re-breaking of his left arm -- he signed a confession admitting to war crimes.
"I wasn't as tough as I had hoped to be and I certainly wasn't as strong as some of my comrades," McCain said.
The Vietnamese knew his father was the admiral commanding U.S. forces in the Pacific, and they offered McCain early release. But he refused, on grounds the code of conduct instructed that prisoners be released in the order in which they had been captured.
"There was a correlation between my refusal to accept early release and my treatment," McCain told us. "Because after it was clear to the Vietnamese I would not do that, then the treatment got very much worse."
As for his father, who knew from U.S. intelligence that increased bombing could result in harsher treatment for his son, McCain said: "I think in many ways it was harder on him than it was on me."
Duyet grew animated and agitated when pressed about accounts by McCain and dozens of other American POWs who said they were beaten and tortured, including being hung from the ceilings of their cells with their hands bound behind their backs.
"This is not true, because our nation is civilized and humanitarian and you do not understand the Vietnamese nation," Duyet said. "We never beat anybody."
Ernie Brace is among the many who tell a different story of their time as a POW, including time at Hao Lo when McCain was there.
"I had my front teeth knocked out, I had my cheekbone broken, I had my nose broken," said Brace. He described other inmates who were, among other things, "beaten with a fan belt for three of four days." He said the captors would "put your elbows behind your back and tighten up the rope around your elbows until your shoulders dislocated."
Many of McCain's friends said he rarely brings up his POW days in their conversations, and won't discuss details of his treatment unless pressed.
"It's just a chapter in my life that I'd rather remember the good parts than the bad parts," McCain said. "I don't know what the point is of going through all that."
.
.
.
Continued

Entire article: The night that changed McCain's life - CNN.com

['BusNative]

Commentary from Jack Cafferty. It's fairly strong-worded, and the title is obviously abrasive for McCain supporters, but it's hard to say the content is inaccurate. Also, sorry to post the whole thing, but it was on the border of being too long to post (about the same length as the post above), so I just ran with it so I could bold the one line below and include his academic record.

Commentary: Is McCain another George W. Bush? - CNN.com

Commentary: Is McCain another George W. Bush?

By Jack Cafferty
CNN

Editor's Note: Jack Cafferty is the author of the best-seller "It's Getting Ugly Out There: The Frauds, Bunglers, Liars, and Losers Who Are Hurting America." He provides commentary on CNN's "The Situation Room" daily from 4 p.m.-7 p.m. You can also visit Jack's Cafferty File blog.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Russia invades Georgia and President Bush goes on vacation. Our president has spent one-third of his entire two terms in office either at Camp David, Maryland, or at Crawford, Texas, on vacation.
His time away from the Oval Office included the month leading up to 9/11, when there were signs Osama bin Laden was planning to attack America, and the time Hurricane Katrina destroyed the city of New Orleans.
Sen. John McCain takes weekends off and limits his campaign events to one a day. He made an exception for the religious forum on Saturday at Saddleback Church in Southern California.

I think he made a big mistake. When he was invited last spring to attend a discussion of the role of faith in his life with Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, at Messiah College in Pennsylvania, McCain didn't bother to show up. Now I know why.

It occurs to me that John McCain is as intellectually shallow as our current president. When asked what his Christian faith means to him, his answer was a one-liner. "It means I'm saved and forgiven." Great scholars have wrestled with the meaning of faith for centuries. McCain then retold a story we've all heard a hundred times about a guard in Vietnam drawing a cross in the sand.

Asked about his greatest moral failure, he cited his first marriage, which ended in divorce. While saying it was his greatest moral failing, he offered nothing in the way of explanation. Why not?

Throughout the evening, McCain chose to recite portions of his stump speech as answers to the questions he was being asked. Why? He has lived 71 years. Surely he has some thoughts on what it all means that go beyond canned answers culled from the same speech he delivers every day.

He was asked "if evil exists." His response was to repeat for the umpteenth time that Osama bin Laden is a bad man and he will pursue him to "the gates of hell." That was it.

He was asked to define rich. After trying to dodge the question -- his wife is worth a reported $100 million -- he finally said he thought an income of $5 million was rich.

One after another, McCain's answers were shallow, simplistic, and trite. He showed the same intellectual curiosity that George Bush has -- virtually none.

Where are John McCain's writings exploring the vexing moral issues of our time? Where are his position papers setting forth his careful consideration of foreign policy, the welfare state, education, America's moral responsibility in the world, etc., etc., etc.?

John McCain graduated 894th in a class of 899 at the Naval Academy at Annapolis. His father and grandfather were four star admirals in the Navy. Some have suggested that might have played a role in McCain being admitted. His academic record was awful. And it shows over and over again whenever McCain is called upon to think on his feet.

He no longer allows reporters unfettered access to him aboard the "Straight Talk Express" for a reason. He simply makes too many mistakes. Unless he's reciting talking points or reading from notes or a TelePrompTer, John McCain is lost. He can drop bon mots at a bowling alley or diner -- short glib responses that get a chuckle, but beyond that McCain gets in over his head very quickly.

I am sick and tired of the president of the United States embarrassing me. The world we live in is too complex to entrust it to someone else whose idea of intellectual curiosity and grasp of foreign policy issues is to tell us he can look into Vladimir Putin's eyes and see into his soul.

George Bush's record as a student, military man, businessman and leader of the free world is one of constant failure. And the part that troubles me most is he seems content with himself.

He will leave office with the country $10 trillion in debt, fighting two wars, our international reputation in shambles, our government cloaked in secrecy and suspicion that his entire presidency has been a litany of broken laws and promises, our citizens' faith in our own country ripped to shreds. Yet Bush goes bumbling along, grinning and spewing moronic one-liners, as though nobody understands what a colossal failure he has been.

I fear to the depth of my being that John McCain is just like him.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer.

Another I am 'leaning' toward Obama... I will be "rich" much sooner under him than with McCain

[LitlBuck]

This will be my last post in the Political Conversation and Debate forum regarding the Presidential candidates. I am just too emotional about it and I think you know who I would like to see win. Saying that, I hope that the person that does win is the right person for our Country.

I don't like the war in Iraq any better than the rest of you but I just don't think we can leave or the Middle East will just explode. I don't know maybe I am completely wrong. I hate it when any of our citizens get injured or die doing what they think is best for our Country. I pray for all of them as much as I can.

I will still be reading the threads to see everyone's viewpoint but for me is just too emotional of a topic. You would have to know my complete personal history to understand why.

[jimotis4heisman]

Originally Posted by 'BusNative

Commentary from Jack Cafferty. It's fairly strong-worded, and the title is obviously abrasive for McCain supporters, but it's hard to say the content is inaccurate. Also, sorry to post the whole thing, but it was on the border of being too long to post (about the same length as the post above), so I just ran with it so I could bold the one line below and include his academic record.

Commentary: Is McCain another George W. Bush? - CNN.com



Another I am 'leaning' toward Obama... I will be "rich" much sooner under him than with McCain

just a few things.

1-i personally like short simple answers. maybe its the pragmatic me.
2-if elected mccain joins a long list of stupid republicans who have been president. that technique is nothing new to me, 43, 41, reagan, etc..
3-894th at the naval academy impresses the hell out of me. if you graduate from the naval academy im impressed period.
4-no mention that mccains great great grandfather was an owner of 52 slaves?

all that being said, i havent been so disinterested in two canidates in a long time....

['BusNative]

Originally Posted by jimotis4heisman

3-894th at the naval academy impresses the hell out of me. if you graduate from the naval academy im impressed period.

Service as an officer is no doubt impressive, but do you think his class rank is impressive enough for president, JO? (sheer curiosity) What if he was 894/899 at Harvard or from a law school? Would that disqualify him?

4-no mention that mccains great great grandfather was an owner of 52 slaves?

Hmm... is this widely known? I honestly didn't know that. Seems like bringing stats from the days of the Roman Empire is a little out of bounds - do you think he owned gladiators or regular slaves?