Mr. Tea, I know you’re not. You’re only interested in tossing out the usual hyperbole and hysteria when it serves your purposes to do so.

It’s only when anyone correctly notices that you’re distributing taffy that you become “not interested.”

But hey, keep bringing up McCain’s five years as a prisoner of war. Keep that front and center in the minds of the American people as they head for the polls. That’s absolutely a winning move for you folks.

J.

The story has been told by Billy Graham, who attributed it to Solzhenitsyn. It dates from the late 1970s. Obviously it can’t be disproved, and I’d give him the benefit of the doubt, but it’s weird. In any case, Bud Day is known to be both pro-Republican and very dishonest.

Wow!

And who was that American citizen? I believe you’re referring to Ms. Jones, who–in the tender care of conservative nutcases of varying stripes–sought “redress” for something that only turned into a “wrong” long after the fact, and only with the encouragement of Mr. Clinton’s political enemies.

Yessiree. The fate of the Republic definitely hung in the balance on that one.

And back to the topic at hand… we have McCain saying an incident occurred. We have a second party who says that yeah, he heard the same story way from McCain back when it would have been still fresh.

On the other hand, we have a bunch of assholes who say “gee, McCain’s story sounds an awful lot like one from ‘The Gulag Archipelago.’ Er, um… we mean, it sounds like a story Solzhenitsyn told people, but didn’t put in his book. Er… make that, it sounds like a story someone said they heard from Solzhenitsyn, but he never actually told. Anyway, McCain MUST have made it up, ‘cuz… um… he’s like old and stuff, and… SWIFT BOAT!!!!!!”

Yup. I definitely put a lot of stock in that second one.

J.

This just in. High crimes and misdemeanors do not always include killing.

Clinton was impeached over a lie about a private matter of no consequence to the Republic and which did not deserve public attention, a lie that was not perjury, a lie that was removed from the public record when the case was settled out of court. His lie did not reach the level of a “high crime.”

Shouldn’t the current fool be impeached if he lied about things that killed people?

Clinton was required to testify under oath in a matter of no consequence to the Republic, although apparently White House staffers are not held to the same high legal standard as Democratic presidents. Should Bush be made to swear an oath and tell us about his actions in the White House?

I don’t like people lying, one way or the other. Republicans want to eff the constitution over someone lying about an affair, I just think they should be ridiculed. I leave the impeachment to lies that caused people to die.

Oliver on McCain: Oh, no! Was it a stick or a sandle?!!! Breaking news! Pants on Fire!

Oliver on Clinton: So what if a democrat actually is a proven liar — I still love me some Slick Willy!!!

Ronald Reagan had a habit of reciting tales of heroism straight out of WW II propaganda films as though they had actually taken place, while he was watching. Was there ever a president that embarrassing? Until now, that is?

But Ronald Reagan was old and suffered from Alzheimer’s, which destroyed his mental capacity sometime around 1983, so he can be excused for being a mere pawn of his corrupt lobbyist handlers, confused and helpless without notes to read from, shuffling by instinct between the white marks on the floor and smiling at his friend the camera, and reading the script prepared for him without understanding the meaning of the words.

What’s McCain’s excuse?

…Anyway, this settles two aspects of this tale: This never happened to Solzhenitsyn, and there’s no way McCain could have picked it up from his works.

Still, we have the all-important stick vs. sandal scandal still left unsolved.

The plot thickens.

It appears to be somewhat widely believed that this happened to Solzhenistyn, such that it is reproduced in books and articles (the one originally quoted, from the Communion magazine) on the author.

I’m not saying Sen. McCain lied – far from it – but the fact that it’s not actually in the book doesn’t dispute the fact that in certain circles it’s (or rather, it was) widely believed to have happened to Solzhenistyn. He could have read an article on the author just as easily and cribbed it from there. There’s probably nobody credible alive (in America, anyway, I doubt anybody’s placed a call to Vietnam) that can confirm this one way or the other.

wasn’t even indigenous to Vietnam

My God. There’s an angle I completely missed. McCain is going down in flames.

OBAMA ‘08!!!!!!!

according to McCain, it was done with a sandal

and now Oliver links to Sullivan and tries to claim that Bud Day gets the story wrong when he says the guard made a cross with his foot.

Genius! Oliver is on the case and providing accurate analysis as usual!

Here’s an idea: The film makers thought the imagery of “drawing” with a stick looked better visually than drawing with a shoe. Oh noes! They didn’t depict the event 100% accurately! McCain’s a dirty liar about his POW years!

Comedy gold.

There’s been a ton of buzz on the web for the last day or so — beginning with this Daily Kos diary — suggesting that John McCain patterned his story about a Vietamese captor drawing a cross in the dirt before him on a similar episode from Russian novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s time in the Soviet gulags.

But it turns out that this episode probably never happened to Solzhenitsyn at all, and according to a Solzhenitsyn biographer it appears nowhere in his published writing. Columbia University professor Michael Scammell, the author of Solzhenitsyn: A Biography, says the episode “never happened,” and didn’t appear in Solzhenitsyn’s book, Gulag Archipelago, either.

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/solzhenitsyn_biographer_crossi.php