@chingarrasan

lol’d at the fruity nutcake.  and couldn’t agree more!

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There is no comparison, in terms of military service between General Clark, and John McLame! McLame is full of bullsh*t when he claims not to use negative campaigning! The fact that he uses the swift boat liars, to attack anyone who criticizes him, is proof of his hypocrisy!

Yep! The torture McCain was subjected to did have an effect on his mental capacity. Consider his angry outbursts toward his peers in the senate. And now this citizen complaint of assult and battery! McCain is an unstable mental
case, who goes from happy, to enraged in a heartbeat, whenever he thinks someone is about to disagree with him or oppose his views! He is a text book example of someone who is as nutty as a fruitcake!

How does the fact that he was a prisoner of war, qualify him as a hero, or for that matter, a canidate for POTUS? A real hero would have committed suicide, rather that be used as an instrument of propaganda as he did!

Poor old senile McLame! I say senile because he seems not to remember anything that casts him in a bad light. He can’t remember the pledge he made concerning campaign money. He can’t remember all the things he used to be for, that he’s now against!

He is a lying, flip flopping, nut case, with no integrity whatsoever! And, he has LIEberman whispering in his ear to correct his endless gaffs! He is a bought and paid for political hack, and I can’t understand how he thinks he has a chance to become president! QUIT NOW JOHN, before you embarrass yourself even further! You are a pathetic little man who’s future in politics ended when Bush gave you that disgusting kiss!

Thanks Joe Conason for pointing out the breathtaking hypocrisy of those who feign outrage at Wesley Clark’s indisputably accurate comments.

Previous military service does not, by itself, qualify one to be president. In fact, I am leery of candidates whose ties with the military are too close, as they may not be able to be objective in evaluating advice from their former peers.

Of course, I would much prefer a former military officer who knew enough about war to avoid it at almost any cost, as opposed to a simpering frat boy who looks at war as a way to aggrandize himself.

“...I will not fault McCain or any other POW for whatever they said under torture…”

I didn’t mean to fault McCain for BEING a craven coward who capitulated to his captors; most of us would do the same. Where I point MY finger is to the McCain who is loose in WASHINGTON DECEIT and keeps trying to tell us what an effing hero he was in captivity in Vietnam. A hero, he wasn’t; he wasn’t even a very good flyer—-he got shot down TWICE.

Kerry was a real hero and got swiftboated for his action under fire from enemy forces, but the ONLY heroic thing I ever saw McCain do was to defend Kerry when the Bushitters tried to make him out a coward instead of a brave (if stupid) sailor.

My guess is that McCain will resign at the convention and defer to Jeb Bush, who will proceed to win the election easily by proving himself to be the “smart” brother when he tells us how stupid his brother George always was. No question that Jeb can beat any black man or woman alive is there? McCain may be just a placeholder, someone to take the fire and protect the real contender from the petty slings and arrows.

In today’s NY Times, Paul Krugman wrote that the feigned outrage over Clark’s comment reflects that McCain is running for a third Karl Rove term—a point underscored by the fact that McCain has just retained Rove’s protege as his campaign manager.

Sam.  My father was tortured (waterboarded) by the Japanese Kempetai.  After hours of this brutal procedure and multiple lapses of consciousness, he signed a confession that he was a British agent even though it was not true and even though he thought he was signing his own death warrant.  Such is the impact of torture.

I will not fault McCain or any other POW for whatever they said under torture.  But I don’t consider him a hero either, and I resent his suggestion that such war time experience makes him an expert in matters of national security, especially considering that this privileged son of admirals barely made it through the Naval Academy, graduating 894th out of 899. 

McCain was shot down, wounded, captured and held as a POW.  Clark also served in Vietnam and was wounded.  I served, was shot at but never wounded.  That doesn’t make any of us “heroes.”  And, standing alone, none of our war time experiences establishes the qualification to hold the nation’s most intellectually challenging office, period, full stop!

Let’s get an honest investigative reporter to look into how a POW can dictate to his captors that he won’t accept his own freedom. I have long known that the whole McCain story of captivity was a fake and a self-serving lie from a to z. This man is really worse than Gingrinch at making up shit to satisfy his high opinion of HIMSELF.

The real trouble with Clark’s statement was that he himself puffed up the McCain lie and left him as a hero of some kind, when McCain was just another craven coward who capitulated to his captors to save himself from torture and pain. McCain wasn’t ever a hero, just a failed flyer who couldn’t do his job.

I don’t get it.  clark wasn’t denigrating MacCain’s service or patriotism, just pointing out quite logically that military service and sacrifice aren’t requirements for the presidency—something George Bush and dick cheney would certainly agree with.

Unfortunately, the Media will grab onto anything in order to have stories to fill a 24/7 news cycle—the silliest thing gets blown out of proportion and repeated incessantly until a disaster occurs to minimize it. 

I hope Obama isnt reverting to the ultra-cautiousness he displayed during the early months of campaigning against Hillary.  That demeanor inspires nobody.

Why all of the bullshit rhetoric, including the admonishment from Obama? This was yet another time when Obama didn’t need to say anything.

At the time, I agreed with you.  I actually watched the whole interview when it came on Sunday morning, and when Clark said what he said, I knew that it was the truth, I knew that the in context it was absolutely correct, and that it was in no way intended to disparage (the sainted) McCain’s military experience.  But it was jarring.  It was not artful.

When Obama stepped up to distance himself from it, I thought, “oh fuck, here we go again.  Another step toward appeasing the bastard mud throwers on the right, and we’re headed right back into replaying 1988 and 2004”.

But Obama’s remark had the effect of letting it all blow over.  Clark said what he said, the mouth breathers work themselves into a lather about it, and at the end of the day, few people are sticking even the out of context soundbyte on Obama.  It actually worked.

This was not the right time to take a stand on a wedge issue (McCain is a hero to all who have ever served in the military and all democrats are pinko traitorous scumbags).  There was nothing to be gained from it, and Obama knew it.  Clark got thrown under a very small bus, but the point was made, and then the whole thing blew over.  The only people still making hay on it are the FreepFoxNewsMaxLGF crowds stuck in the echo chamber, and they mostly hate McCain anyway. 

Same thing with the whole death penalty, FISA wrangling.  It’s a pretty canny strategy aimed at suppressing wingnut turnout.  Obama’s coming across like a reasonable sort to them (or not like a full-on Lib), and they have no love for McCain, so they’ll likely sit this one out.

The faith-based initiatives/public-private partnership thing, on the other hand, is something he believes strongly in.  He knows that government can’t (nor should it) do it all for the disadvantaged, and that the church plays a huge role in advocating for and helping the down and out.  There’s no reason to abandon an effective strategy in helping the poor simply because the HuffPo crowd is out the screaming that this is some kind of betrayal of liberal values because he dares bring up the G word in that context.

Peter Rowlands:  Thank you for about an apt description of right wing spin as I have ever heard—“fact free environment” indeed!

McSAME is a weak candidate and they all know it. So, they have the experience card, race card and war record going for them (at least that is their delusion). Where are the POW’s For Truth? Someone shot down while on a bombing mission in a previous illegal and immoral war fails to generate much enthusiasm from me.

McSAME had better conserve all his energy - all of the flip-flopping has probably taken a lot out of him!

I still contend that Clark was and is the likely Obama surrogate to get ‘out’ what has not been said but needed to be that McCain’s military service is not a qualification for the presidency - particularly important to point out since it’s about the sum total of McCain’s argument.

It’s politically expedient, apparently, for Obama to distance himself from Clark’s statement, or Obama wouldn’t have done so. What we have to do is quit playing into the hands of the opposition by attacking Obama.  Methinks he knows what he’s doing.

The Clark “tempest in a teapot” shows that the Obama-army is in sheer panic because many of his more intelligent followers are discovering that most of his “pronunciamentos” during the primaries were nothing but hot-air and are leaving his camp in droves. The latest mislead is that Obama now favors gay marriage. He does not. All he has said is that he opposes California’s anti-gay marriage initiative. So does California’s governor Schwarzenegger who is a Republican. On gay (legal, civil)marriage Obama has not flip-flopped. He is still against.

Like this writer, General Clark served in Vietnam.  Clark did not dishonor John McCain’s service.  Clark merely stated the obvious—getting shot down over North Vietnam and then held captive, standing alone, does not qualify one to occupy the nation’s most intellectually challenging office.

On the issue of character, one has to grant that unlike the current president, McCain did not utilize his family connections to evade service in Vietnam—McCain’s father was the commander of all U.S. naval forces in Vietnam at the time he was shot down.  He did serve, was shot down, and, like all other POWs, lived an impoverished existence until released.  But while McCain was languishing in the Hanoi Hilton, his first wife, a one time beauty queen, was disfigured in an auto accident.  So what does McCain the returning hero do, he promptly dumps her so he could marry an heiress to a beer fortune.

Educational background provides a better guide.  McCain is the privileged son and grandson of powerfully placed admirals.  His connections got him into the Naval Academy, where McCain failed to rise even to the level of mediocrity, finishing 894th out of a class of 899.

Obama is the product of a broken home; a self-made man who parlayed hard work and a brilliant mind into a law degree from this nation’s most prestigious law school, Harvard—Magna Cum Laude no less.  While he could easily have parlayed that into a high paying job at a Wall Street law firm, he chose to return to Chicago to serve as a community activist.

Anyone who listens to the brilliance of Obama’s erudition as measured against the almost incoherent McCain mumblings comes away with an appreciation that this race is, intellectually, a classic mismatch.

Ever since Loyd Benson told Dan Quayle, “Senator you’re no John Kennedy,” Republicans have disparaged any effort to mention the intellectual inferiority of their candidate—“elitism” being the usual moniker they hand ‘round the opponent’s neck.  In this case, McCain cannot run on intellectual qualifications, but there’s that war record—so how dare Clark challenge its relevance. 

We have seen these past 8 years what transpires when the White House is headed by the intellectually challenged.  One hopes the American people have the wisdom to reject idiocy.

I am sick of Mac’s self congradulating BS!
What other kid would have not been kicked out of the Academy with the crap grades he got. what other kid would have been given another plane after he crashed two prior, What other kid was given the opportunity to lead a unit with such dismal achievements.Who else was offered a Free pass Home out of the POW camp when Mac’s Admiral Daddy got him his Ticket? How stupid would the Viet Cong have been to choose him for Torture over the Nobody Kid from BFE ?
Mac is not only NOT qualified to be President, He is Not qulaified to shine the boots of all those who slept in the jungle and dodged trip wires or those who are currently serving in these two For Oil Profiteering ventures.
It is not one appearance of valor which makes a leader or a hero when multitudes of others have sacrificed far more. Mac has far more to explain regarding his last 40 yrs of undermining and pandering to the Inc’s- Keating 5, health care, GI bill….
As far as I’m concerned he’s about as honorable and trustworthy as a Pedophile Priest. he did his stint in service only to abuse the trust thereafter.He has betrayed this country and every person who wears our uniform.

The media turns mice into men and loves to tear down men and women of real accomplishment.

McCain’s heroism has been hyped up much as Jack Kennedy’s was.  Gore Vidal said in his recent interview with Amy Goodman, “Jack said, ‘I came home expecting to be court marshalled, to find that dad had turned me into a hero.’”  Millions of people are wondering how having your plane shot down makes you a hero.  Repeat something in the media over and over for years and it becomes a truth.  Real heros never have to say they are.  Eisenhower, Bradley, Patton, McArthur, they never had to hype anything.

Thanks Joe. I agree 100%. I’m sick of all the fake shit. Wesley Clark simply spoke the truth. Being a POW does not alone qualify one for the office of president.

Why all of the bullshit rhetoric, including the admonishment from Obama? This was yet another time when Obama didn’t need to say anything.

Wesley Clark is grown. He can speak for himself.

The Rush Limbaugh types are enough to make me homicidal. He’s a big fat obnoxious doper who can’t even hear his own stupid talk because all that dope has destroyed his hearing.

It should have done the same to his vocal chords..then we might have an example of some justice in this life.