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It's tattooed on him.
Yes, I guess it is..........
After he regained consciousness, a mob gathered around him, spat on him, kicked him and stripped him of his clothing. Others crushed his shoulder with the butt of a rifle and bayoneted him in his left foot and abdominal area; although McCain was badly wounded, his captors refused to put him in the hospital, deciding he would soon die anyway. They beat and interrogated him, but McCain only offered his name, rank, serial number, and date of birth.
Having lost 50 pounds, in a chest cast, and with his hair turned white, McCain was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Hanoi in December 1967.In March 1968, McCain was put into solitary confinement, where he would be for two years. In August 1968, a program of vigorous torture methods began on McCain, using rope bindings into painful positions and beatings every two hours, at the same time as he was suffering from dysentery. Teeth and bones were broken again. On one occasion when McCain was physically coerced to give the names of members of his squadron, he supplied them the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line. His injuries to this day have left him incapable of raising his arms above his head.
The North Vietnamese wanted a mercy-showing propaganda coup for the outside world, and a message that only privilege mattered that they could use against the other POWs. McCain turned down the offer of repatriation due to the Code of Conduct of "first in, first out": he would only accept the offer if every man taken in before him was released as well. McCain's refusal to be released was even remarked upon by North Vietnamese officials to U.S. envoy Averell Harriman at the ongoing Paris Peace Talks.
And SERIOUS PWNAGE!!!
CasualObserver said:
elrod —19 minutes ago
It's tattooed on him.
Yes, I guess it is..........
After he regained consciousness, a mob gathered around him, spat on him, kicked him and stripped him of his clothing. Others crushed his shoulder with the butt of a rifle and bayoneted him in his left foot and abdominal area....His injuries to this day have left him incapable of raising his arms above his head."
I don't think I have read a more devastating reply EVER at TMV!
Uh . . . except that reply totally missed the point. McCain's patriotism is not at issue and should never be. The blatant hypocrisy of people who natter about people who choose not to wear American flag lapel pins (including a certain Democratic presidential candidate) is.
I thought CasualObserver's response was a pretty effective firewall.
On your other point...
It is undeniable that Obama has a weakness on this point that he needs to address...and probably more against Clinton than McCain.
Think about it: If she is willing to have surrogates mock McCain for his record...while carefully keeping her fingers clean...what is she going to do to Obama before this is over?
She is incredible.
Thanks for bumbling into this thread. I not only am a veteran, I served under McCain's fricking father during the Vietnam War, so you can stick your Holier Than Thee piety where the sun don't shine.
The point, once again for those of you drinking decaf today, is that neither I nor others to my knowledge are mocking McCain for his horrible ordeal nor question his patriotism.
The American flag lapel pin issue became a right-wing patriotic litmus test when it came to Obama, but these wingers would never dare point out that McCain isn't wearing an American flag lapel pin these days because the entire issue is so ridiculously h-y-p-o-c-r-i-t-i-c-a-l.
Do I make myself clear or should I draw you a picture?
BTW, can you point me to an instance of someone who's now shilling for McCain who had his/her panties in a knot over Obama's flag lapel pin? Because I thought when one points out hypocrisy, the idea is that the person who actually said "A" is now being inconsistent in applying the standard. I don't have a list handy of the particular 'wingnuts' that you're referring to, but my hunch is that they're not huge fans of McCain; and certainly, the man himself has given no one any reason to take the heat for what was an inane attack on Obama.
I could be wrong, and perhaps there are these hypocrites that you're referring to, but you'll have to name names before I'll agree with you.
And my point still stands that even if these hypocrites on the GOP side are legion, it's still not smart for Democrats to go anywhere near this line of commentary. I'm not sure why my saying that would cause you to accuse me of false piety, but again I'm heartened to know that the Democratic party tradition of shooting one's own feet is alive and well.
Good try at mangling what I said. And what a stoopid question! Of course I cannot point to anyone working for McCain who has criticized Obama. That is not the point and you obvious still don't get the point.
Hullo! Earth to CStanley. Anybody home?
The people who have criticized Obama are the Limbaughs, Coulters and their ilk; in fact, the very people who at one point said they'd rather bolt the party and vote for Clinton than abide McCain as the nominee.
The reason that the right wing goofballs attacked Obama over this was his statement about the wearing of pins, not the fact that it was absent from his own lapel. When asked about it, he chose not to just say that he didn't feel it was necessary or that wearing of the pin shouldn't be required to prove patriotism, but instead he said:
“I probably haven’t worn a flag pin in a very long time. After a while, I noticed people wearing a lapel pin and not acting very patriotic...."
Still stoopid that people made a big deal over it, but obviously those who did were offended because he pretty explicitly attacked the patriotism of some pin wearers instead of just saying that the pin itself wasn't important.
Since there's been no similar statement from McCain (and he did apparently give the more standard response that actions are more important than lapel pins, an answer which would have suited Obama well too), there's no hypocrisy in the Limbaughs or Coulters or Hannitys or Ingrahams neglecting to attack McCain over this.
Oh, now I get it.
Home run -- space shot.
Me and my friends refer to lapel flags as GOP flare. How many pieces do you have on? And why are we spelling stupid as stoopid? Am I missing an inside joke?
Making a point of NOT wearing it or criticizing those who do doesn't prove patriotism either: those who believe that are left wing idiots.
Obama leaned a bit too far to pandering toward the latter when he was asked about why he didn't wear one. That's all there is to this story, despite the attempts (either deliberate or through misunderstanding) to make it into something else.
They are, and thats who Shaun was making fun of, not McCain. Liberals don't mock people for not wearing flagpins. Neither do most conservatives unless they are talking heads.
The point I got from Shaun's post was that McCain is clearly a patriot and hero and anyone who would judge him otherwise due to the presence or absence of a flag pin is moronic. The same should go for the other candidates. No, they do not have McCain's heroic military service record, but surely people who serve in the Senate, work in a cubicle, or flip burgers are also patriotic or unpatriotic based upon what they do, rather than the pins they choose to wear.
Amen.
Amen.
good point, Slamfu, that's how I read it.
"The point I got from Shaun's post was that McCain is clearly a patriot and hero and anyone who would judge him otherwise due to the presence or absence of a flag pin is moronic. The same should go for the other candidates. No, they do not have McCain's heroic military service record, but surely people who serve in the Senate, work in a cubicle, or flip burgers are also patriotic or unpatriotic based upon what they do, rather than the pins they choose to wear."
Absolutely true, Pacatrue
(Or did you mean "GOP flair"?)
The "pwnage" was because Shaun is often a cheap-shot artist (he has a lot of gripes about a lot of people and a lot of things, more than I have even when I'm in a negative frame of mind) and chooses his photos normally to humiliate those in the photos. The response was slow and soft, but devastating. I've never done anything that good and I'm able to make a decent account of myself. It may seem to be an overdone measure of applause to C.O's reply and I certainly expressed approval of it. But it was very good given the history on this site. Besides, the way it was described as contemporary -- I doubt many here recall Marshall and the move in his chess game that brought gold pieces showered on the chess board, as the legend goes.
It's missing the point to fixate on the lapel pin. The kind of attacks we see numerous times on this site is the real issue here. And that reply was stellar.
2. I'm perfectly aware of the post-9-11 lapel pin practice, which I long ago said was the subject of the following behavior: The first person not to wear a lapel pin is like the first person to stop applauding in the old Soviet Union after a speech by Lenin. (At least here in the USA the first to stop didn't get arrested and led away.)
Let's just say he may not be so eager to ask for captions the next time he attacks someone, when he does attack someone. They're not limited to one-liners. heh
If you are going to be funny, remember, people in these days of PC need to be guided every step of the way.
The Curly Howard approach need be applied:
1) a woo-woo
2) an eye gouge
3) a nose slap
4) THEN, and only then, the punchline.
I accept your thanks ahead of time.
BTW DLS, read the comments. Pacatrue and Slamfu explained how this was not a slap at McCain but at conservatives who made the lapel thing a big issue in the first place.
If people are going to set ridiculous standards for who is and is not patriotic, they shouldn't be surprised to see such standards turned against them when they fail to live up to such standards. This obviously does not apply to McCain, who was smart enough to avoid this ridiculous "lapel" controversy. But it certainly applies to the ultranationalist pro-war hypocrites who have one set of standards for their opponents and another set of standards for themselves and their allies.
I responded to CO's reply and the sub-discussion that arose from it, which addresses something we have seen in numerous threads as well as having been a brilliant caption Shaun didn't ask for this time. It's a separate, distinct issue than the flag lapel pin; I separately addressed that issue, which I described as a political issue long ago. At least three separate issues have materialized.
"If people are going to set ridiculous standards for who is and is not patriotic [or to be far more appropriate here, politically acceptable, such as being rabidly anti-war], they shouldn't be surprised to see such standards turned against them when they fail to live up to such standards."
CO did this brilliantly.
Short version: In this case, "IN YOUR FACE!"
Long version:
It's a contemporary Net-slash-techno-geek term (I don't use it, as a rule, but I understand what it means) that has a number of meanings, and here you can use the meaning that CO's comeback wasn't merely a victory, but a devastating one. (That word was accurately used by Macan.) It wasn't devastating in that it was bombastic or attention-getting, but was a thorough comeback to anyone who would say McCain is unpatriotic, or otherwise is put down by the rabid anti-war group who would bash him because he's been other than rabidly anti-war on Iraq.
(Ironically it is the rabid far-left ones that "pwn" the intellectually level that merits if not mandates the use of crude measures such as Cosmo described. That and pictures, I guess. I prefer something more subtle -- or is that refined or even "nuanced"? -- as my references to captions indicates, but for a number of reasons I didn't originally substitute my preference in place of "home run -- space shot," the scene of Marshall and gold pieces showering the chess board.)
Perhaps everyone here assumes that Shaun didn't mean it as an attack on McCain, but it's a bit disingenuous to act as though hinting that his supporters SHOULD attack him over this isn't still an attack on McCain himself (if they don't, they're hypocrites, and the GOP who don't support him are hypocrites according to Shaun because they won't attack him the same way as they did Obama, even though I've already demonstrated that the attacks on Obama over this weren't strictly over the lack of the pin, it was over his insistence that wearing the pin meant that someone was probably a false patriot.)
Besides being disingenuous to ignore that attacking supporters (or those who are not happy with their party's candidate but refuse to attack that candidate on the same grounds that they attacked the opposition party candidate) isn't an attempt to tarnish the candidate himself, there's also the fact that it's just stupid politically to go anywhere near a conversation about patriotism of a veteran who paid such a high price for his service in war- the Democrats obviously know this well since they have lately begun grooming all sorts of Vietnam veterans and assuming that their status immunizes them against any insinuation of lack of patriotism. If the Dems want that immunization to be true, they ought not to test it on McCain, of all people (I'd say that 5-1/2 years in captivity by a brutal enemy ought to be sufficient immunization against quite a lot.)
What a lot of people are missing is that the whole pin controversy came up when some on the left were using the LACK of a pin as a badge of honor- like Kerry throwing his medals over the WH fence, this was a show of unity with the anti-war. I find the whole matter to be a contrived controversy, but I've already summed it up like this: right wing nuts were claiming that wearing a pin meant that the wearer was expressing patriotism, and left moonbats were claiming that NOT wearing a pin expressed patriotism because they believe that dissent is the highest form of patriotism. Both extremes are silly because in both cases, action is more important than cheap outward expressions (one type of expression or the other.) The most correct stance for politicians to take would be to say that pins are expressions that some people choose as an outward sign, but wearing one doesn't take the place of actions and that people are entitled to have different views on what it means to act in a patriotic way. That wasn't, however, the response that Obama chose to explain why he took off his pin and decided not to put it on again.
[smiles, salutes]