Is there any wonder they’re trying to destroy this man?
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Here’s an open question to anyone on the right who cares to answer it. Will the same WorldNet Wingnuts who demanded John Kerry open up his records also demand that John McCain sign Standard Form-180 and open up his military records as well? Full scrutiny is, aftterall, very important for the public to get a true sense for the man they may elect President in November. Right?
There are indeed very many questions to be answered. What does John “The Maverick War Hero” McCain have to hide???
…and where are the other 617 pages Senator?
The Navy may claim that it already released McCain’s record to the Associated Press on May 7, 2008 in response to the AP’s Freedom of Information Act request. But the McCain file the Navy released contained 19 pages — a two-page overview and 17 pages detailing Awards and Decorations. Each of these 17 pages is stamped with a number. These numbers range from 0069 to 0636. When arranged in ascending order, they precisely track the chronology of McCain’s career. It seems reasonable to ask the Navy whether there are at least 636 pages in McCain’s file, of which 617 weren’t released to the Associated Press.
I expect Blumer and Newsbusters to be all over this.
No wait. No I don’t!
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This from a guy who considers himself a McCain fan:
“But I can confirm to you that we never tortured him. We never tortured any prisoners.”
Mr Duyet reminisces instead about how he often summoned the future US presidential candidate to his private office for informal chats.
“We used to argue about the war – about whether it was right or wrong,” he says.
“He is a very frank man – very conservative, and very loyal to his country and the American ideal.
“He had a very interesting accent and sometimes he taught me words in English and corrected my accent. I have followed his career since he left prison.”
Private office for informal chats? Man, that doesn’t sound like the imagery we have been sold. It sounds more like an…um…what’s the word? Country club?
So Tran Trong Duyet, is John McCain lying?
“He did not tell the truth,” he says.
“But I can somehow sympathise with him. He lies to American voters in order to get their support for his presidential election.”
Let’s be clear here. If John had just been shot down and housed in a prison where he was treated properly within the confines of an oft GOP-maligned Geneva Conventions, he should be considered an honorable war veteran. I got no qualms there. If he embellished his captivity by telling stories of torture when his injuries were really sustained in the crashing of his plane, then he’s a dishonest, opportunistic man unfit for command.
Let’s just hope the entire truth comes out before it’s too late and this man possibly has his hand on the big red button!
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Seemed good for YouTube Tuesday. More coming. Ouch. Pay particular attention to the end. A bit of Swiftboat comes around goes around, maybe? Hehe.
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Today is the day. After some tough talk from some trusted friends, Hillary has finally decided to read the handwriting that has been on the wall for months. She will suspend her campaign and throw her support behind the presumptive nominee Barack Obama.
About time. I’m an Obama supporter and have been for a long time now, but I say the following as someone who wants real change from the Republican nightmare that got me blogging in the first place. Here is what I want to hear from Hillary:
She should rally her supporters and thank them for their loyal support. Nobody can question their loyalty, which rivaled anything Obama supporters could bring. That’s the reason for the division, this equal loyalty on both sides that was equally as stubborn as well.
She should remind her supporters that they can still honor her and support what she believes in by supporting Barack Obama. She should also tell them in no uncertain terms that any talk of protesting her not getting the nomination by voting for McCain would dishonor her personally. She shouldn’t give some weak “that would be the wrong thing to do” as she has in the past. She needs to make it personal. Tell them they will be offending her personally if they do such a thing.
Her tone in this speech needs to be precisely opposite from her speech after the June 3 contests. She should stand proud, but not be defiant. She should lament a loss, but be hopeful in what an Obama campaign in the general can bring.
She should remind everyone of the danger of not uniting and losing the momentum that has seen Democrats come out in record numbers while Republicans have essentially settled for John McCain. We’ve not settled, we’ve fiercely battled and picked the best candidate in an energetic process that set records. We must continue to set records in taking back this country from a McBush continuation of the George W. Bush nightmare.
Hillary is a political professional. She needs to pull out all the stops and give the speech of her life. it will not only help us in the general election and help to heal divisions and give us a spark going into the Obama-McCain battle, but will enhance her future political ambitions. To do that, she needs to talk just enough about her race and what she accomplished. Her focus, however, should be on what happens now and what her and her supporters should do to help us win.
Obama has given her and her supporters the space they need to do the right thing. It is hard. Thinking of Obama suspending his campaign makes me nauseous. I can completely relate to what some Hillary supporters must be feeling. I’m truly empathetic to that. I know it will take some time and all the right moves by both Hillary and Obama. She can open the door to that process. I expect he’ll continue it in a way that will honor her and her supporters. He has to.
I look forward to a new day of unity and focus on winning in November. It’s the most important contest since I began blogging and those of us on our side of the political spectrum can not take this lightly. We have to win.
Go Hillary. Help bring us together. You do that and I’ll work hard to forgive and forget the primary.
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A new piece in The New Republic by Michelle Cottle offers a glimpse into what went wrong with Hillary’s campaign.
Bottom line: I just don’t think she was hungry enough for it in the beginning. It wasn’t really until the ten-in-a-row loss that she started doing stuff like ‘Saturday Night Live’ and Jon Stewart. In the beginning, it was hard to get her to do those things.”
i think it was 11 in a row, but whatever. There are many more examples given by those in the know. Some we knew and others that were a bit surprising. Financial mismanagement bordering on fraud. More themes than you can shake a stick at. Inability to frame a campaign in a change environment. Circular firing squads. The list goes on. I’m sure this campaign will be studied for years to come. They took inevitable and turned it into unwinnable. Worth reading about the cautionary tale that is has become.
It would also behoove the Obama campaign to take a look see at what not to become in the general. They’ve been about as good as Hillary has been bad, though. It doesn’t mean their game doesn’t need to tighten up for a general – it does. There is certainly less room for error if he is to be elected in the fall.
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It could be related to Israel. It could be related to misinformation. Or it could be related to skin color. It most likely is all three. I think the primary reason why Florida Jews (and all Floridians, really) aren’t warmed up to Obama is because he hasn’t been allowed to campaign there. Everywhere else he hasn’t campaigned yet he starts low and gains momentum. A recent New York Times piece examines why Florida Jews are expressing doubts about Obama.
Race within the Jewish community there does seem to play a factor:
“The people here, liberal people, will not vote for Obama because of his attitude towards Israel,†Ms. Weitz, 83, said, lingering over brunch.
“They’re going to vote for McCain,†she said.
Ms. Grossman, 80, agreed with her friend’s conclusion, but not her reasoning.
“They’ll pick on the minister thing, they’ll pick on the wife, but the major issue is color,†she said, quietly fingering a coffee cup.
The article points out how crazy misinformation about Obama is in the state, particularly South Florida. It will be important for Obama to campaign and for surrogates and other Democrats with sway to correct this.
Sometimes the racism isn’t even under the surface at all:
Some of the resistance to Mr. Obama’s candidacy seems just as rooted in anxiety about race as in anxiety about Israel. At brunch in Boynton Beach, Bob Welstein, who said he was in his 80s, said so bluntly. “Am I semi-racist? Yes,†he said.
Decades earlier, on the west side of Chicago, his mother was mugged and beaten by a black assailant, he said. It was “a beautiful Jewish neighborhood†— until black residents moved in, he said.
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Not surprising given the desperation that must have been setting in prior to North Carolina and Indiana:
One of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s top financial supporters offered $1 million to the Young Democrats of America during a phone conversation in which he also pressed for the organization’s two uncommitted superdelegates to endorse the New York Democrat, a high-ranking official with YDA told The Huffington Post.
Didn’t work.
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