Interested in some McCain background?

[Orchidflower]

I found this interesting mainly because I didn't know McCain graduated from the Naval Academy 394 out of 399.
Also, note he tried to commit suicide at the Hanoi Hilton.
There is some information altho brief on his receiving praise for his conduct in captivity in Vietnam, whereas others were disciplined, with the implication being that he was praised due to his father and grandfather's military status.
Very interesting.....hmmmmmmm.....I wonder if this stuff is going to be used during the campaign by the opponent?

John McCain

[Nords]

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Originally Posted by Orchidflower I found this interesting mainly because I didn't know McCain graduated from the Naval Academy 394 out of 399.

Considering the behavior he details in his biography, I'm surprised he graduated that high.

Hey, Gumby, a USNA graduate claims that his company officer was pickin' on him!

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Originally Posted by Orchidflower Also, note he tried to commit suicide at the Hanoi Hilton. There is some information altho brief on his receiving praise for his conduct in captivity in Vietnam, whereas others were disciplined, with the implication being that he was praised due to his father and grandfather's military status. Very interesting.....hmmmmmmm.....I wonder if this stuff is going to be used during the campaign by the opponent?

While factual, they manage to imply that he behaved less honorably than other POWs. That's an impressive editorial effort, but it's a bit at odds with the biographical info presented in Timberg's & McCain's books.

When these "who did what in Hanoi" issues come up, IMO the best reference is how that person is treated by fellow POWs. They know the difference, and it'd be interesting to hear if any former POWs have spoken up about McCain like Kerry's former shipmates leaped on him. If we haven't heard from guys like Stockdale, Galanti, and Coffee over the years then I suspect McCain wasn't an issue.

I can't tell if the website did crappy research or edited out some info. I'm surprised that they passed up the opportunity to discuss cardiac problems among former POWs. McCain was a legendary drinker & womanizer even by Navy aviation standards, which isn't done justice by the phrase "ladies' man". They also didn't explain how he retired from the Navy and then deliberately shopped around the country to find a political race that he could win. Maybe these things aren't considered unusual among the other candidates, either...

[Orchidflower]

Thanks, Nords, for bringing up the good point that others at Hanoi Hilton would "know."
My friend's father was in the Bataan Death March during WWII, a POW for 3 years, 6'4" and 86 lbs. when released (causing him to be hospitalized like 2 years). He wrote the very long poem about how one of his "buddies" sold him out for a bowl of rice. So, I agree with you...the others at the Hanoi Hilton would know.
I'm going to make it my point to read his biography now. Thanks.
And, yeah...as a woman speaking, I can see how McCain could have been a womanizer when he was young. He was awfully good looking (women are pigs, too, you know).

[W2R]

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Originally Posted by Orchidflower I can see how McCain could have been a womanizer when he was young. He was awfully good looking

Was? Was? Somehow guys with white hair look a lot better to me now than they did 20 years ago.

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Originally Posted by Orchidflower (women are pigs, too, you know).

Sometimes we are - that's for sure!

Our primaries are tomorrow and I still haven't decided who I will vote for. It's a lot easier to decide who to vote against, but then after deciding that, there's nobody left.

[ChrisC]

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Originally Posted by Nords They know the difference, and it'd be interesting to hear if any former POWs have spoken up about McCain like Kerry's former shipmates leaped on him.

Only one of Kerry's former shipmates leaped on Kerry for his service and this view is unsupported by the weight of others who actually served with Kerry in his swift boat. Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry - Netlore Archive.

[HFWR]

But if we learned anything from Karl Rove, it's this: He who lies first wins...

[Notmuchlonger]

"I wonder if this stuff is going to be used during the campaign by the opponent?"


That would be political suicide if they did.

[RunningBum]

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Originally Posted by Orchidflower Thanks, Nords, for bringing up the good point that others at Hanoi Hilton would "know." My friend's father was in the Bataan Death March during WWII, a POW for 3 years, 6'4" and 86 lbs. when released (causing him to be hospitalized like 2 years). He wrote the very long poem about how one of his "buddies" sold him out for a bowl of rice. So, I agree with you...the others at the Hanoi Hilton would know.

Is your friend's father still alive? I'm doing the Bataan Death March marathon run at the end of March at White Sands, New Mexico. They have films and displays and such about it, and you get to meet some of the survivors. I'm very much looking forward to it.

[FinanceDude]

Hey a war hero married into money, I see a movie in that someday........

[Khan]

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Originally Posted by FinanceDude Hey a war hero married into money, I see a movie in that someday........

Is his second wife pro-family?

[clifp]

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Originally Posted by FinanceDude Hey a war hero married into money, I see a movie in that someday........

Actually, I think the more likely, case reading the between lines of various McCain books, is good looking charismatic naval aviator and war hero, meets gorgeous blonde. (I think Cindy is great looking gal now at (52), when she was 25 I'm sure she was spectacular) Chemistry happens and as an added bonus she is rich.



John Kerry's wife Theresa is also rich, and she is certainly an interesting woman, but not good looking, IMO

[Gumby]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nords Considering the behavior he details in his biography, I'm surprised he graduated that high. Hey, Gumby, a USNA graduate claims that his company officer was pickin' on him!

I am shocked, shocked I tell you!

[Gumby]

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Originally Posted by Orchidflower I'm going to make it my point to read his biography now.

You might also want to read Robert Timberg's book The Nightingale's Song. Lots of interesting stuff about McCain, Oliver North, and James Webb.

[MooreBonds]

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Originally Posted by clifp

Hmmmm.....let's see: your wife is extremely beautiful, extremely rich, and you have no need to do ANYTHING the rest of your life -except spend a lot of time 'enjoying her company'.

And you end up spending all of your time arguing politics with other politicians who couldn't tell the truth if their life depended on it?

Anyone else left scratching their head over this one?

[ladelfina]

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"I wonder if this stuff is going to be used during the campaign by the opponent?" That would be political suicide if they did.

The far right seems OUTraged by McCain.. and it's the wingnut R fringe that has been dredging this stuff up so far, not the Dems.

The Raw Story | Anti-McCain vets ready salvo against Senator's presidential campaign
TPMmuckraker | Talking Points Memo | Swift Boat Vet "Appalled" by McCain Smear
Ross Perot Slams McCain | Newsweek Voices - Jonathan Alter | Newsweek.com
Covert History

They haven't gotten into the Keating 5 affair much yet. (Will be interesting when that comes back out into the light.)

That said, I think it's low to base an opinion solely on how someone behaved under the most inhuman of conditions. I'm sure we'd all like to think we'd come out with our morals and principals intact; it would be great if we did.. but is it likely? I guess you could see it as the ultimate litmus test of character, but more telling, to me, are the corners you cut when selling out isn't a matter of life and death, just standard operating procedure --another day at the office.

Fox News recently labeled McCain a Democrat (they made this 'mistake', too, with Foley and Specter.. whenever some R falls out of their good graces..).

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They will blame the loss on the fact that McCain wasn't a real conservative (just like Bush.) They know when to fall back and regroup. They're already playing for the next election. Everybody sing: Conservatism can never fail, it can only be failed.

Hullabaloo

It's sorta weird to see the Rs eating their own to this degree. The "conservatives" just seem to keep moving the bar ever right-ward and seem surprised and offended that the average R voter is not following them off the cliff.

They keep incanting "Reagan, Reagan, Reagan".. but if Reagan were in front of them today, he'd be seen as too liberal!! (just as Nixon would be, to an even greater extent). McCain seems to have always been politically in the Reagan zone; it's the R party pundits that have shifted rightward. In invoking Reagan, I don't think their crazy zeal and short attention span allows them the liberty of analysis: Reagan skedaddled from Lebanon and -more important for purposes of this discussion- gave amnesty to illegals, let's not forget. For the Rs, this stuff has gone into the memory hole along with so much else.

[Orchidflower]

Runningbum: No, the Bataan Death March hero died about 6 years ago. He did go to conferences/conventions of fellow prisoners and WWII vets I know every year.
I used to call him "my hero" all the time, and he seemed to really like that. He WAS a hero, too: this big 6'4" guy had to wear braces on his legs for the rest of his life after the POW camp. I think they burned his toes off one by one.
I do know that not only was he starved with one bowl of rice a day to live on and some water daily, but he was so shell shocked he couldn't SIT anywhere for any length of time (no restaurants, movies, no attending his kid's school events or recitals, etc.). He had nightmares every night until he died and would scream in his sleep.
But the worst was the Japanese gave 10 soldiers appendix operations (nothing wrong with their appendix as this was just for experimentation purposes). 7 died. He lived. NO anesthesia or pain killers at all. He just remembered passing out and waking up sewn up and screaming.
These are all things that most Americans probably aren't aware of happening. Truly horrific war stories that really shouldn't be forgotten about.
Lucky for my son, he passed on some of his war stories for him to remember.

Gumby: Thanks for the book suggestion. It's on my reading list now.

[Nords]

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Originally Posted by MooreBonds Hmmmm.....let's see: your wife is extremely beautiful, extremely rich, and you have no need to do ANYTHING the rest of your life -except spend a lot of time 'enjoying her company'. And you end up spending all of your time arguing politics with other politicians who couldn't tell the truth if their life depended on it? Anyone else left scratching their head over this one?

It's not about the sex, the money, or the people... it's all about the ego power.

Exhibit A: Donald Trump.
B: Gene Simmons.
C: [I'm sure we could add at least 20 names in as many minutes...]

[clifp]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ladelfina The far right seems OUTraged by McCain.. and it's the wingnut R fringe that has been dredging this stuff up so far, not the Dems. It's sorta weird to see the Rs eating their own to this degree. The "conservatives" just seem to keep moving the bar ever right-ward and seem surprised and offended that the average R voter is not following them off the cliff. They keep incanting "Reagan, Reagan, Reagan".. but if Reagan were in front of them today, he'd be seen as too liberal!! (just as Nixon would be, to an even greater extent). McCain seems to have always been politically in the Reagan zone; it's the R party pundits that have shifted rightward. In invoking Reagan, I don't think their crazy zeal and short attention span allows them the liberty of analysis: Reagan skedaddled from Lebanon and -more important for purposes of this discussion- gave amnesty to illegals, let's not forget. For the Rs, this stuff has gone into the memory hole along with so much else.

Ladelfina, while I think we'd disagree on a fair amount on politics. I think your analysis is right on. I come from a politically active California Republican family (both Grandfathers active in a various party organization, my dad a Goldwater delegate and was urged to run for Congress) they were huge Reagan fans and meet the man numerous times. I am sure all three are rolling over in their graves at some of the stuff being said in Reagan's name. It is pretty clear to me that if Ronald Reagan was running today (or Barry Goldwater) that they be pilloried as too liberal by the extreme elements.


I remember my Grandfather Bozzy, who I revered, told me he pulled out of Republican party activity when many of his organizations were taken over by the John Birch Society. I see same thing happening today with talk radio, and the right wing bloggers. It is fortunate that average Republican isn't falling for this vitriolic spewing.

On the other side of the aisle the moveon.org and Berkeley city council folks are just as bad when the start comparing the administration to Nazi etc.

If I was God, I'd round up all of the right wing nutters give them a gun and ship them off to Afghanistan and Iraq, and I send all the Moveon.org types to the workers paradises in Cuba, North Korea, and guess Venezuela. The hater on both sides are really bad for this country.

[TickTock]

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Originally Posted by Nords It's not about the sex, the money, or the people... it's all about the ego power.

Give me sex and money, someone else can have the ego/power.

I don't want to be famous, just rich.

[ladelfina]

clifp, I agree extremists are "bad".. to an extent. In the best of scenarios they aid in establishing positions to react to and which provide context. The problem over the last couple of decades is that the right keeps moving those goalposts rightwards.. and that the right-wing extremists are standard fare, not only at FOX, but at the NYT, CNN, etc. Their left analogs may exist, but are decidedly under the MSM radar. The MSM doesn't "do" context or history very well.

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Too bad (for you guys) it's the right these days who is quicker to activate Godwin's law:

McCain: "We allowed Hitler to come to power with that kind of attitude of isolationism and appeasement."
Coulter: "unlike McCain, Hitler had a coherent tax policy."

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O’Reilly said that MoveOn, “the Daily Kos or whatever that stupid thing is,” and others “use propaganda techniques perfected by Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of information. They lie, distort, defame, all the time.”

Think Progress » O’Reilly Compares Nevada Debate Opponents To Nazis

Then there's that imbecile Jonah Goldberg with his "Liberal Fascism".

CNN: Reaganism = Stalinism?

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What do Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan, and the current US Congress have in common with Joseph Stalin? No, it’s not that they are dead. Recently I appeared on one of those TV shows where a right-wing host interrupts the guest frequently. (Not that I had realized what it was. I had not heard of the guy, Glen Beck, and the producer had only told me they wanted me to talk about Washington’s reaction to new recession fears.) On the show I said I thought it would be a good idea if the recipients of tax rebates this time around included lower-income Americans, at least those workers who did not make enough to pay income taxes, but who did pay payroll (social security) taxes. This would be in contrast to the last 7 years of tax cuts which have left these people out. The TV host’s reaction was “Welcome to the show Mr. Stalin.” A media watch site called Media Matters for America picked this up, as an egregious comment even by the standards of talk show hosts. Of course the Democratic and Republican leadership of Congress, with the encouragement of the White House, have decided to include precisely these lower-income workers in the tax cuts this time. So I guess they are Stalinists. And Milton Friedman originally proposed the negative income tax, which was enacted as the Earned Income Tax Credit, and became highly successful when expanded by Ronald Reagan (1986) and Bill Clinton (1993). Quite a few Stalinists around!

Fiscal Stimulus: What do Ronald Reagan and Joseph Stalin have in common? | Jeff Frankels Weblog | Views on the Economy and the World

I don't hear that level of stridency (or frequency of Nazi-invocation) coming from the left.. Look to your own house.

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MoveOn.org Voter Fund did show a digital ad on its Web site for a time in 2004 comparing President Bush to Hitler. However, the ad was not paid for or produced by MoveOn; it was produced by another group as a contest entry, and MoveOn pulled it and apologized when objections were raised.

FactCheck.org: Caught "Red-Handed?"

MoveOn is just a vehicle, and Daily Kos is just a very large group blog. It's not quite the same as the rarified media access that Novak, Kristol, BOR, Hannity, Limbaugh, Coulter, Podhoretz, Goldberg, the Kagans, et al. have.

-------
Sadly, the recent "conservative" mission has, for at least the last 16 years, been one of destruction, not of construction. They have no one to blame but themselves if that message has stopped being appealing, if it ever was. Obama will prevail, I hope, with a positive message. The right-wing pundits are screaming and writhing like the Wicked Witch of the West when they see voters gravitating to the center. They feed on bad vibes and character assassination. "Getting along" and means risking their bread & butter.

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And what if the unthinkable happens, and President McCain is inaugurated? I've led an impeachment movement before, Coulter said, and "I can lead another one."

Unhinged Coulter Uses Hitler Analogy To Bash McCain - Politics on The Huffington Post

Translation: Screw the country.. we will NOT be IGNORED!!
(and yes, I know Coulter is a sideshow.. but she is also the tip of a certain -destructive- political iceberg nonetheless.) Those that "risk" appealing to what the majority of voters want are now "sell-outs" (!).. not to the Republican cause.. but to the neocon right-wing-pundit cause, which is an out-of-control Golem and a hothouse media creation. Like with kudzu, it will be a long, hard, road to its eradication, if ever.


I do feel badly for the "real" conservatives.. because I actually could share some of their principles. What has passed for 'conservatism' lately has been actually quite radical, and profligate. "Not your father's Oldsmobile", clifp..

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Indeed, what the Republican establishment considered an unbeatable alliance, talk radio combined with National Review, was unable to save them from what they perceive as the horror of a John McCain nomination. Still, the predominant narrative you see among that crew since Tuesday is that McCain must come to them to reassure them of his stalwart conservatism. That’s hubris all over again, isn’t it? GOP voters have obviously considered the merits of McCain vs. his conservative “deficiencies”, and decided that he’s the candidate they prefer. What business, then, do these people have in demanding that he come kneel at their feet for their blessing? McCain’s CPAC speech is the best they are going to get out of him, and it was little enough. Indeed, Kathryn-Jean Lopez at NRO tried to give the talkers credit even for that: Quote: This McCain speech would not have been given today, if it weren’t for folks like Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Andy McCarthy, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham. Can I thank them on behalf of America? This is the delusion the Republican leadership, and the conservative establishment are laboring under: They really think that there is nothing wrong with their ideas, their methods, or their scorn for their own voter base. Even after the 2006 “thumping” they took in Congress, they don’t see it. Rather than take a step back and consider that McCain may actually be closer to the base in terms of his policy preferences (they can, after all, always tell themselves these primaries were about “electability”, not policy), they intend to soldier on with their losing agenda, keeping a nice supply of brickbats ready to hurl at their own base when things don’t work out the way they expected them to.

Right wing establishment failed to deliver for Romney « Cadillac Tight


Their sense of entitlement, and thus "betrayal" is acute. Right-wing sis sent me this stupid post from Mark Steyn (NRO):
Mark Steyn on John McCain & 2008 on National Review Online

and I wrote:

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Basically, when NRO accuses Obama of being "highly partisan".. that means "he doesn't vote the Republican line as often as Lieberman". What you missed in the Steyn post is the most telling aspect.. not funny, but sad: "He loves us not. She loves us not. .." Boo hoo hoo. The right-most righties now feel unloved. SO WHAT? If you were reading Jesse Jackson complaining that he wasn't getting enough attention from Bush and Kerry.. would you care, particularly? Steyn's sense of entitlement is profound and disturbing. This is apparent all through the righty pundit class.. they've been constantly braying for the last 16 years and have gotten comfortable assuming that they can call all the shots. Now they may be faced with their own version of 'downsizing' and they're hopping mad. I think they fear Obama because they can't get a negative handle on him as much as on HRC... if they can't keep deriding the "awful Clinton years" of relative peace and prosperity where are they going to hang their hat for the next 5+ years? They make a living raising pitbulls in the ghetto, where everyone is at each other's throats. Agreement and co-operation and bi-partisanship is bad for business. If you live in a leafy suburb, a snarling pit bull is out of place. I think people are suffering from angry-right-wing-pundit fatigue, and so the pundits are running scared. People want to move forward.

Clifp, I'd take you up on your challenge. While I don't agree with 95% of what Fidel or Chavez does... I'd survive better, as would you, in Cuba than Afghanistan. The Taliban and OBL were aided and abetted by the American Right. Cuba would no doubt be more open if we'd dropped our embargo. When you create polarizations (in order to exploit them), you can't point to the same polarizations as an excuse for more of the same.