The Pink Flamingo :: Contrasts - John McCain, American Hero, Barack Obama, American Ego

"...I was finding that prayer helped. It wasn't a question of asking for superhuman strength or for God to strike the North Vietnamese dead. It was asking for moral and physical courage, for guidance and wisdom to do the right thing. I asked for comfort when I was in pain, and sometimes I received relief. I was sustained in many times of trial...."John McCain

When the election season begins, we all wonder who is going to come out on top. You watch everyone primarily pandering and, while you see the differences, it all becomes a blur. The honest truth is, with the GOP field, except for Ron Paul and Tom Tancredo we were dealing with honest, honorable, decent people, any one of whom would do the nation proud as POTUS. We nitpicked every thing - until the very end. Those who were smarting over the loss of their candidate are finally getting over it and coming on board.

Let's be honest about one other thing. I don't know how the Republican Party does it. Election after election we come up with remarkable candidates - good, decent honorable men. While I think the trend needs to change a little gender-wise, we're consistant.

Once again we've managed to stumble through and pick a thoroughly remarkable man, maybe one of our greatest candidates ever (and this is coming from one of GWB's most loyal fans!). Not to blow our own horn, etc. year after year, we have these extrodinary gentlemen and the Democrats keep coming up with the most innane dorks out there. Their candidates are constantly flawed, the ones who could give the GOP a problem are almost always tossed aside the way they've thrown Hillary Clinton to the dinosaurs.

This year the Democrats have managed to do it again. Maybe they've chosen their worst candidate every (we hope). They have one of the most narcissistic, incompetent individuals I've seen in a long time. Let's face it, Barack Obama is a character who, if he did not exist in nature, would have been created exclusively by Saturday Night Live. He's that "amazing". I think Jonah Goldberg has nailed it. (H/T Mac's Mind)

"..."I find comfort in the fact that the longer I'm in politics the less nourishing popularity becomes, that a striving for rank and fame seems to betray a poverty of ambition, and that I am answerable mainly to the steady gaze of my own conscience."

Some might think this odd testimony from a young and inexperienced freshman senator on the cusp of seeking the highest rank, and the most famous position, in the world. It's a bit like a parish priest saying he's happy with his modest lot in life and then declaring he's throwing his hat in the ring to become pope.
But a closer reading reveals a possible explanation. Perhaps he's an adulation junkie. Maybe the diminishing "nourishment" Sen. Obama receives from "popularity" is actually causing him to ratchet up his pursuit of more and more praise just to get the minimal fix he needs. That would account for why a man who thinks striving for popularity is a character flaw has nonetheless decided to give his nomination acceptance speech in a 76,000-seat football stadium.

Or it might tell us why a candidate who hasn't even been nominated yet wants to re-enact some of the most famous scenes from both Reagan and JFK's highlight reels by holding a rally at Germany's Brandenburg Gate, even though he's not a head of state yet. (German authorities, aware of Obama's rock-star status with the German public, diplomatically suggested that it was up to Obama to decide what is in "good taste.")..."

Kyle-Anne Shriver writes in American Thinker today that Obama is going to go down in a landslide. We can only pray this will happen.

"...There are few things in this life as satisfying to more experienced people than to see haughty pride get its comeuppance.

How many working people in this Country have not had at least one experience with a young upstart, walking right out of college and into a position without a lick of hard knocks or humbling pragmatic necessity to be his guide? He's the guy who's got the whole business figured out because he read a book about it, or the gal who thinks raising great kids is no harder than summarizing the mistakes of others. And Barack Obama fits this stereotype to a perfect T.

He's 47 years old, but has spent the bulk of his adult life either coddled in an out-of-touch academia or perennially running for one office after another. He has not even had to stare down or discipline teenage children, for goodness' sake.

Yet, he's got it all figured out, down to the nuts and bolts of exactly why the rest of us "bitter" folks "cling to" our "religions and our guns." His two books are little more than summations of what other people think, their motivations and their difficulties. Reading his two autobiographical books leaves one with the uneasy impression that although Obama thinks he knows everything there is to know about us, he has yet to even figure out himself.

So, this is the man who has all of life and everything about American politics so well mastered, that he thinks he is ready to be President?

The vast majority of American voters are over 30, and in the voting booth, a candidate gets no extra points for excitement. No matter how thrilled some will be to vote for Barack Obama, their votes will count not one whit more than the old-fashioned, responsible votes cast for John McCain...."

Then there is Barack Obama's opposition.

"...many visitors came to talk to me. Not all of it was for interrogation. Once a famous North Vietnamese writer—an old man with a Ho Chi Minh beard—came to my room, wanting to know all about Ernest Hemingway. I told him that Ernest Hemingway was violently anti-Communist. It gave him something to think about.

Others came in to find out about life in the United States. They figured because my father had such high military rank that I was of the royalty or the governing circle. They have no idea of the way our democracy functions.

One of the men who came to see me, whose picture I recognized later, was Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, the hero of Dienbienphu. He came to see what I looked like, saying nothing. He is the Minister of Defense, and also on North Vietnam's ruling Central Committee.

After about two weeks, I was given an operation on my leg which was filmed. They never did anything for my broken left arm. It healed by itself. They said I needed two operations on my leg, but because I had a "bad attitude" they wouldn't give me another one. What kind of job they did on my leg, I do not know. Now that I'm back, an orthopedic surgeon is going to cut in and see. He has already told me that they made the incision wrong and cut all the ligaments on one side.

I was in the hospital about six weeks, then was taken to a camp in Hanoi that we called "The Plantation." This was in late December, 1967. I was put in a cell with two other men, George Day and Norris Overly, both Air Force majors. I was on a stretcher, my leg was stiff and I was still in a chest cast that I kept for about two months. I was down to about 100 pounds from my normal weight of 155.

I was told later on by Major Day that they didn't expect me to live a week. I was unable to sit up. I was sleeping about 18 hours, 20 hours a day. They had to do everything for me. They were allowed to get a bucket of water and wash me off occasionally. They fed me and took fine care of me, and I recovered very rapidly.

We moved to another room just after Christmas. In early February, 1968, Overly was taken out of our room and released, along with David Matheny and John Black. They were the first three POW's to be released by the North Vietnamese. I understand they had instructions, once home, to say nothing about treatment, so as not to jeopardize those of us still in captivity.

That left Day and me alone together. He was rather banged up himself—a bad right arm, which he still has. He had escaped after he had been captured down South and was shot when they recaptured him. As soon as I was able to walk, which was in March of 1968, Day was moved out.

I remained in solitary confinement from that time on for more than two years. I was not allowed to see or talk to or communicate with any of my fellow prisoners. My room was fairly decent-sized—I'd say it was about 10 by 10. The door was solid. There were no windows. The only ventilation came from two small holes at the top in the ceiling, about 6 inches by 4 inches. The roof was tin and it got hot as hell in there. The room was kind of dim—night and day—but they always kept on a small light bulb, so they could observe me. I was in that place for two years....It's vital to keep your mind occupied, and we all worked on that. Some guys were interested in mathematics, so they worked out complex formulas in their heads—we were never allowed to have writing materials. Others would build a whole house, from basement on up. I have more of a philosophical bent. I had read a lot of history. I spent days on end going back over those history books in my mind, figuring out where this country or that country went wrong, what the U. S. should do in the area of foreign affairs. I thought a lot about the meaning of life.

It was easy to lapse into fantasies. I used to write books and plays in my mind, but I doubt that any of them would have been above the level of the cheapest dime novel.

People have asked me how we could remember detailed things like the tap code, numbers, names, all sorts of things. The fact is, when you don't have anything else to think about, no outside distractions, it's easy. Since I've been back, it's very hard for me to remember simple things, like the name of someone I've just met.

During one period while I was in solitary, I memorized the names of all 335 of the men who were then prisoners of war in North Vietnam. I can still remember them..."

There is a 17 page excerpt from John McCain's story. It makes you proud to be an American. Then, there are these disgusting conservatives who think they are the be all and end all of the GOP. They are determined to control the situation and the agenda, but are rapidly failing. From the Weekly Standard.

"...Fewer voters may identify themselves with the Republican party these days, but more still describe themselves as conservative than liberal. Rich Keenan is one of them. He calls himself an independent and a conservative. He has voted for Republicans but does not consider himself one. "I do think that there are millions of Americans out there like me who are fairly conservative, probably more conservative than John McCain, and I think a lot of them are concerned about what's going to happen if he does get elected..."

Then there are the obnoxious little bigots like Glenn Spencer, who is another John Tanton flunkie. Spencer likes to play para-military somewhere out in the wilds of Sierra Vista. He cowers behind a mail drop that is in a UPS office next door to the Safeway. That way he can go rake in the cash send from all those anti-Hispanic dupes while sipping his Starbucks latte purchased over at Safeway. Their hatred of John McCain borders on the irrational. According to Spencer, if John McCain appears at La Raza, it will be TREASON. Maybe Spencer should shut up long enough to realize he can march around with his little KKK buddies because John McCain nearly paid the ultimate price protecting Spencer's right to be a bigot. The Third Party suicide bomber conservatives at Borderfire consider McCain's behavior treason. Kinda funny after you read the above excerpts from his life, isn't it?
Jeff Jacoby wrote:

"...Much attention was focused on General Wesley Clark's comments that McCain "hasn't held executive responsibility" and that "riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down" is no qualification for the Oval Office. Far more obnoxious was the claim by an informal Obama adviser, Rand Beers, that McCain's national security experience is "sadly limited" because he was a POW and thus "did not experience the turmoil" of the antiwar movement "or the challenges" faced by those who went ashore in Vietnam. Do Democrats only honor a military record when their nominee happens to be a veteran? In a recent speech, Obama mentioned McCain's wartime service, pointedly adding that "no one should ever devalue that service, especially for the sake of a political campaign." Now if only the rest of his party would listen...."

The same goes for all those little third party conservatives who do nothing but degrade John McCain.

Let's be honest, aside from Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham and a few other twits, Michelle Malkin is the very worst at it. Maybe Ms Malkin, who gives a tremendous amount of lip-service to honoring our military should consider honoring a true hero like John McCain.

Dime con quien andas y te digo quien eres.

08 Bloggers Alliance