[ivwshane]

I was curious what every ones take was on it.

[namelessentity]

I watched some of it. I really don't like the way McCain answers questions. He comes off way too harsh and then becomes extremely defensive of his position immediately after. It's like he's constantly realizing he comes off as an asshole, so he has to explain himself.

Obama is sort of the opposite as well. He's overly nice, and while he generally actually answers a question directly, he throws in way too much filler that is just unnecessary in relation to the topic.

All of it was very much stereotypical republican/democrat answers. Anything financial was no new taxes on McCain's end. It's like they just looked up all the stereotypes and decided they would give generic responses.

All in all, I'd say I didn't learn anything new about either candidate, and it was generally a waste of the American public's time.

[ivwshane]

I agree with that, a waste of time unless you are the type to vote based on talking points.

[Tacdriver]

I was barely able to stay awake. I learned nothing new from either candidate. Neither one is "My Guy" so that didn't help matters much. McCain appeared to be better prepared for the questions though.

[mistawiskas]

I don't even watch people tell me what they think I want to hear.

[mattdev]

I enjoyed it. Both candidates handled themselves quite well.

Originally Posted by Tacdriver

McCain appeared to be better prepared for the questions though.

The Political Carnival: Video: Pastor Rick confirms McCain NOT in "Cone of Silence" during Obama Q&A

Pastor Warren, the host of last night's forum was just on CNN. In an interview with Rick Sanchez the pastor admitted McCain was not even at the Church for the first half hour of the event. This admission comes as a surprise to those of us who watched the event and were told many times that McCain was at the Church and in isolation.

CNN says they talked to McCain's camp and they said no one in his camp was listening. The honor system, are you kidding me?

I think it is pretty clear at this point McCain did indeed know the questions in advance.

[Tacdriver]

Nice find on the video because in it the Reverend states that Obama had access to a question ahead of time that McCain did not. Also, he believes McCain didn't hear any of Obama's Q&A while with the Secret Service. So I say again......McCain was better prepared and you helped make my point.

[ivwshane]

Originally Posted by Tacdriver

Nice find on the video because in it the Reverend states that Obama had access to a question ahead of time that McCain did not. Also, he believes McCain didn't hear any of Obama's Q&A while with the Secret Service. So I say again......McCain was better prepared and you helped make my point.

It's easy to sound good when you make stuff up:
Is McCain Lifting Passages From Solzhenitsyn?

[ivwshane]

I thought this was classic!
FactCheck.org: "Outrageous" Exaggerations

[Tacdriver]

Originally Posted by ivwshane

It's easy to sound good when you make stuff up:
Is McCain Lifting Passages From Solzhenitsyn?

"According to a very persuasive Daily Kos diary"
.......and I stopped reading at this point.

[ivwshane]

Let me help you:
Shortly after John McCain came back from Vietname in 1973, he wrote a detailed 12,000 word report of his experiences that was published in US News and World Report.
Even though McCain goes into a lot of detail in that story and mentions religion a few times, there is no mention of the cross in the sand story, even though it would have fitted in well with the whole narrative. There are numerous mentions of Vietnamese guards in the reports, mostly bad ones but also good ones, but there is no indication at all that any of them would have been Christian, although "[a] lot of them were homosexual".

• Calouste's diary :: ::

So even though McCain yesterday said:

It was Christmas day, we were allowed to stand outside of our cell for a few minutes, and those days we were not allowed to see or communicate with each other although we certainly did. And I was stadning outside for my few minutes, outside my cell. He came walking up. He stood there for a minute and with his handle [sandal?] on the dirt in the courtyard he drew a cross and he stood there and a minute later, he rubbed it out and walked away. For a minute there, there as just two Christians worshiping together. I'll never forget that moment so every day -

That moment he will never forget wasn't worth spending a few of those 12,000 words on.
Religion seem to have been important for the POWs though:

In March of 1971 the senior officers decided that we would have a showdown over church. This was an important issue for us. It also was a good one to fight them on. We went ahead and held church. The men that were conducting the service were taken out of the room immediately. We began to sing hymns in loud voices and "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Which makes you wander even more why seeing a fellow Christian on "the other side" doesn't get an explicit mention.
Update [2008-8-17 16:59:28 by Calouste]::
There is a story of a humane North Vietnamese guard though:

It was also in May, 1969, that they wanted me to write—as I remember—a letter to U. S. pilots who were flying over North Vietnam asking them not to do it. I was being forced to stand up continuously—sometimes they'd make you stand up or sit on a stool for a long period of time. I'd stood up for a couple of days, with a respite only because one of the guards—the only real human being that I ever met over there —let me lie down for a couple of hours while he was on watch the middle of one night.

Wich sounds strangely familiar to John McCain's statement yesterday, about the "Cross in the Sand" guard:

One night I was being punished in that fashion. All of a sudden the door of the cell opened, the guard came in, a guy who was just what we call a gun guard. He just walked around the camp with a gun on his shoulder. He went like this and then he loosened the ropes. He came back about four hours later, he tightened them up again and left.

So is that the same guy? Or is John McCain just making stuff up as he goes along?
Even so, that was May 1969, so the next Christmas, according to John McCain above, this guard draws his cross in the sand, right? Except that:

In December of 1969 I was moved from "The Pentagon" [he means "The Plantation" camp] over to "Las Vegas." "Las Vegas" was a small area of Hoala Prison which was built by the French in 1945.

So that Vietnamese guard is following John McCain around from camp to camp?
Update [2008-8-17 18:4:11 by Calouste]:
McCain told the same story on the 2000 campaign trail, except not about himself, as reported by the New York Times

Many years ago a scared American prisoner of war in Vietnam was tied in torture ropes by his tormentors and left alone in an empty room to suffer through the night. Later in the evening a guard he had never spoken to entered the room and silently loosened the ropes to relieve his suffering. Just before morning, that same guard came back and re-tightened the ropes before his less humanitarian comrades returned. He never said a word to the grateful prisoner, but some months later, on a Christmas morning, as the prisoner stood alone in the prison courtyard, the same good Samaritan walked up to him and stood next to him for a few moments. Then with his sandal, the guard drew a cross in the dirt. Both prisoner and guard both stood wordlessly there for a minute or two, venerating the cross, until the guard rubbed it out and walked away.

h/t to exmearden for finding this nugget.
In his 1999 book "Faith of my fathers" John McCain tells this story in the first person though.

[Tacdriver]

I'll help you out, try reading a little less from Huffington and The Daily KOS.

Confederate Yankee: Jeremiah Denton Must be Lying, Too

Jeremiah Denton Must be Lying, Too

As Andrew Sullivan, Jane Hamsher, Steve Benen, and other liberal bloggers try to discredit John McCain's story of compassion shown by a North Vietnamese prison guard as being stolen from a similar experience related between Russian author Solzhenitsyn and another prisoner, I'm forced to ask: when are the going to go after Jeremiah Denton?

Denton was another U.S Navy pilot shot down in Vietnam, a contemporary of McCain's in the same brutal North Vietnamese prisons ... and also the beneficiary of surprising Christian compassion from the North Vietnamese:

Denton also found strength in his fellow captives. The Americans were forbidden to communicate with each other. But that didn't stop them. They communicated in Morse code and other number-based codes they devised and transmitted through blinks, coughs, sneezes, taps on the wall and even sweeps of a broom.

"I experienced what I couldn't imagine human nature was capable of," Denton said. "I witnessed what my comrades could rise to. Self-discipline, compassion, a realization there is a God."

He also experienced periodic compassion from the North Vietnamese. Sometimes the guards would weep as they tortured him.

One experience, he will never forget. Denton kept a cross, fashioned out of broom straws, hidden in a propaganda booklet in his cell. The cross was a gift from another prisoner. When a guard found the cross, he shredded it. Spat on it. Struck Denton in the face. Threw what was left of the cross on the floor and ground his heel into it.

"It was the only thing I owned," Denton said.

Later, when Denton returned to his cell, he began to tear up the propaganda booklet. He felt a lump in the book. He opened it. "Inside there was another cross, made infinitely better than the other one my buddy had made," Denton said.

When the guard tore up the cross, two Vietnamese workers saw what happened and fashioned him a new cross. "They could have been tortured for what they did," Denton said.

Denton survived the war and returned home, and like McCain, became a Republican Senator.

It is also worth noting that Denton switched parties to become a Republican precisely because of the far Left's attacks on the military—including those from people like John Kerry—in the first place.

Update: And via Instapundit, a confirmation of McCain's story from another Hanoi Hilton alumni, reporting he first heard the story in 1971, two years prior to Solzhenitsyn's book coming out.

Will Sullivan, Hamsher, Benen, the Kossacks, etc apologize for attempting to discredit McCain?

The Corner on National Review Online

Fellow POW: I Remember McCain Telling the "Cross in the Dirt" Story [Byron York]

You've probably seen that there are some out there in the blogosphere questioning the authenticity of John McCain's "cross in the dirt" story, which McCain told Saturday night at the Saddleback Summit. But there doesn't seem much mention of the fact that McCain had a lot of fellow POWs in Vietnam, and they can be asked for their recollections. So I called Orson Swindle, a fellow POW who is campaigning for McCain, to ask him about it.

"I recall John telling that story when we first got together in 1971, when were talking about every conceivable thing that had ever happened to us when we were in prison" Swindle told me a few minutes ago. "Most of us had been kept apart or in small groups. Then, in 1970, they moved us into the big cell. And when we all got to see each other and talk to each other directly, instead of tapping through walls, we had 24 hours a day, seven days a week to talk to each other, and we shared stories. I vaguely recall that story being told, among other stories."

"I remember it from prison," Swindle continued. "There were several stories similar to that in which guards — a very few, I might add — showed compassion to the prisoners. It was rare, and I never met one, but some of the guys did."

As for the people who are questioning McCain's account, Swindle said, "That's garbage. These people are desperate."

08/18 04:23 PM

[ivwshane]

POW who is campaigning for McCain, to ask him about it.

That's where I stopped reading

No one is doubting such stories don't exist what people are doubting is that such a thing happened to mccain. If it did happen then why didn't mccain write about it in his books? Why in the past has he told the story in the 3rd person?

[SoulAssassin]

I'm not sure why you two care so much about these two candidates - they both suck donkey balls.

[ivwshane]

Originally Posted by SoulAssassin

I'm not sure why you two care so much about these two candidates - they both suck donkey balls.

Because, as far as I'm concerned all candidates in the past 50 years have sucked ass and to me it's not about who is the best candidate, it's about the discussion and the enlightenment one gets from such a discussion. The better educated Americans are and the wiser they are to the same old tricks is what will cause real change in this country.

I'm just trying to promote that one person at a time