The Jed Report: Why is McCain suddenly downplaying 'Cross in the dirt'?
eclecticbrotha
· 1 year ago
He's afraid of those meddling Kossacks.
Pay attention to McCain's campaign tactics since the forum. Have you noticed he's trying to wage war on multiple fronts at once and each time underestimating the strength of the enemy? Just today he's attacking Obama (and getting blasted for the second day in a row), going after NBC (and getting blasted by Keith Olbermann) and trying to take on the blogosphere by going after Daily Kos (while getting hit from all directions by others who have picked up the same "cross in the dirt" story they're blaming the Kossacks for). Meanwhile, the rave reviews he got from his showing at the forum are being completely overshadowed by his angry responses to simple inquiries about his statements.
RandyH
· 1 year ago
I wonder if they're gonna hang themselves trying to defend this silly story... Please give us some video defending it, Johnny. Like Hillary and the sniper fire in Bosnia - she would have been better off never talking about it again once people started asking questions.
And was that cross in the dirt made with a sandal or a stick? Seems to have been told both ways.
dualdiagnosis
· 1 year ago
As a McCain supporter I say continue with the attacks on McCains story. There is a difference between the far left and the majority of Americans, and I have a feeling that this line of attack will not play well for Obama.
Keith
· 1 year ago
It only plays poorly for Obama if he's making the charge. If it turns out that McCain LIED about this, well then it turns out extraordinarily poorly for your guy. My guess is that Obama and his campaign don't go anywhere near this. They have more substantive issues to take up with McCain and lying than to bother with whether a 72 year old remembers what happened 40 years ago.
Patrick
· 1 year ago
Hi Jed, on last count, of your last 15 stories 13 have been about McCain, 1 about Obama and 1 about Bill Kristol, which is neither here nor there. I illustrate this because I think you've lost a sense of the blogging about the Obama campaign should go - frankly, the 'cross in the dirt' is nothing more than noise and a vestige of the past absolutely nobody will pay any real attention to. By all means, dedicate a couple of posts to question the authenticity of the story but prolong it over an extended period of time and it becomes a question of: Who cares?
You've been a stalwart in Internet reporting this election season, and I desperately hope that these broadside attacks on McCain don't begin to overshadow your coverage of Obama's virtues. As an Obama supporter, I would like to see nothing more than the political discourse dragged up from the depths of nitpicking over whether some guy scratched a cross next to John McCain 30 years ago.
sBF
· 10 months ago
All Truth must be told. No matter how insignificant. Just because most people don't care about this simple fact of life, doesn't mean it isn't important.
eclecticbrotha
· 1 year ago
Patrick, if nobody is paying attention to the story, why is the McCain campaign wasting time defending themselves against it?
Patrick
· 1 year ago
dear god, i truly do bemoan how people buy into this noise of utter insignificance given the gargantuan problems which face the nation right now. frankly, i think it's the height of twofacedness when someone like jed lewison can deride the MSM whilst at the same time taking time out every 5 posts to hail olbermann and maddow (both just as bad as their o'reillyesque counterparts) and covering such vapid bullshit like this.
i, for one am glad that i'm vindicated in the knowledge that obama is one of the most substantive politicians i've seen in a while. if the CW that he's nothing more than an empty suit were approaching the truth i'd have fled a long time ago, but i believe that the basis to his message is one that is absolutely concrete. this is why i hate that people are covering these two boring non-essentials which will do nothing but obscure the policies which underpin this historic run.
Jed Lewison
· 1 year ago
Just to be fair to myself Patrick, my previous post to this one was not about McCain or Bill Kristol.
It was about a false rumor about Barack Obama's VP choice.
But thanks for your feedback.
JS
· 1 year ago
McCain seems to be making his campaign on the fact that he was a POW, it looks like some of the remaining POW's have finally gotten sick of it and have the video out on Democratic Underground, these facts have been known for years, especially in the Viet Nam veteran community, but the have not used them until now in this campaign, I guess McCain's lies and dirty campaign finally got the best of them.
DiamondE
· 1 year ago
Patrick makes a fair point. If I may, Patrick, the word is 'God' with a big G. Unless you meant dear something else. In which case, please ignore my comment.
Judy
· 1 year ago
He attempted suicide?? That's kind of a big deal - Can he stand the pressure of the presidency?
Angela1
· 1 year ago
Apparently they lie about a whole lot things............check this from www.npr.org
Cindy McCain's Half Sister 'Angry' She's Hidden by Ted Robbins
Ted Robbins/NPR Kathleen Hensley Portalski displays newspaper clippings of her father in World War II, as well as snapshots of herself as a child with her father.
Read the original profile on Cindy McCain.
Courtesy Nicholas Portalski Portalski is shown with her late father, Jim Hensley, who also was Cindy McCain's father.
Ted Robbins/NPR Nicholas Portalski, whose mother is McCain's half sister, says it's "very, very hurtful" that he and his mother haven't been recognized.
All Things Considered, August 18, 2008 · Last Tuesday, NPR broadcast a story about Cindy McCain's business and charity work. In it, Ted Robbins described McCain as the only child of Jim Hensley, a wealthy Arizona businessman. The next morning, NPR received an e-mail from Nicholas Portalski of Phoenix, who heard the story with his mother.
"We were listening to the piece about Cindy McCain on NPR, All Things Considered, and it just struck us very hard," Portalski said.
His mother, Kathleen Hensley Portalski, is also Hensley's daughter.
The Portalski family is accustomed to hearing Cindy McCain described as Hensley's only child.
She's been described that way by news organizations from The New Yorker and The New York Times to Newsweek and ABC.
McCain herself routinely uses the phrase "only child," as she did on CNN last month. "I grew up with my dad," she said then. "I'm an only child. My father was a cowboy, and he really loved me very much, but I think he wanted a son occasionally."
McCain's father was also a businessman — and twice a father.
"I'm upset," Kathleen Portalski says. "I'm angry. It makes me feel like a nonperson, kind of."
Who Is Kathleen Hensley Portalski?
Documents show Kathleen Anne Hensley was born to Jim and Mary Jeanne Hensley on Feb. 23, 1943. They had been married for six years when Kathleen was born.
Jim Hensley was a bombardier on a B-17, flying over Europe during World War II.
He was injured and sent to a facility in West Virginia to recuperate. During that time, while still married to Mary Jeanne, Hensley met another woman — Marguerite Smith. Jim divorced Mary Jeanne and married Marguerite in 1945.
Cindy Lou Hensley was born nine years later, in 1954.
She may have grown up as an only child, but so did her half sister, Kathleen, who was raised by a single parent.
Portalski says she did see her father and her half sister from time to time.
"I saw him a few times a year," she says. "I saw him at Christmas and birthdays, and he provided money for school clothes, and he called occasionally."
Jim Hensley also provided credit cards and college tuition for his grandchildren, as well as $10,000 gifts to Kathleen and her husband, Stanley Portalski. That lasted a decade, they say. By then, Jim Hensley had built Hensley and Co. into one of the largest beer distributorships in the country. He was worth tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars.
Sole Inheritor To Hensley's Estate
When Hensley died in 2000, his will named not only Portalski but also a daughter of his wife Marguerite from her earlier marriage. So, Cindy McCain may be the only product of Jim and Marguerite's marriage, but she is not the only child of either.
She was, however, the sole inheritor of his considerable estate.
Kathleen Portalski was left $10,000, and her children were left nothing. It's a fact Nicholas Portalski says his sister discovered the hard way.
"What she found in town — on the day of or the day before or the day after his funeral — was that the credit card didn't work anymore," Nick says.
The Portalskis live in a modest home in central Phoenix. Kathleen is retired, as is her husband. Nicholas Portalski is a firefighter and emergency medical technician looking for work.
They say it would have been nice if they were left some of the Hensley fortune.
They also say they are Democrats, but Nicholas Portalski says he had another reason for coming forward.
"The fact that we don't exist," he says. "The fact that we've never been recognized, and then Cindy has to put such a fine point on it by saying something that's not true. Recently, again and again. It's just very, very hurtful."
Kathleen Portalski says she'd like an acknowledgment and an apology.
NPR asked the McCain campaign — specifically, Cindy McCain — to comment or respond. Neither replied.
Debra Moore/Milwaukee
· 1 year ago
I noticed in the forum McCain answered when asked what was his biggest regret was in life, and he said his failed first marriage, with a glistening in his eye. It occurred to me WELL YOU CHEATED ON YOUR WIFE with a woman 15 years your junior, thats why it failed! thats bull***t. and that pastor, Rick Warren, OMG! Did you see him on Larry King last night? He was pro-McSame all the way. i believe he knew full well before the airing of that show that McCain was not there.
Seaniccus
· 1 year ago
So... are you mentally deficient or something? To answer the question "what's your biggest regret," i'd say "cheating on my wife" is a pretty good answer. He may have said it in a polite way, "my failed marriage," but obviously that means his biggest regret is the infidelity that caused his marriage to fail. Did you really not understand that, or are you letting your personal feelings about the man's political career to get in your way of understanding a non-political statement?
muffler
· 1 year ago
McCain does not get Card Blanche because he was a POW. That was 30 years ago and he has done many bad things in the majority of his life after being a POW. Kerry was in Vietnam as was Gore, so the hypocrisy of the Republican's is wrong. What bothers me the most is the hubris of the usage of this POW experience. You can't discuss it, but it's OK to hide behind it. No!
Slave Revolt
· 1 year ago
Come on, trying to make hay out of the cross in the dirt story is exactly what McCrack wants everyone to do.
Even questioning this is simply silly--there is not way to prove that it didn't happen, and it makes folks that would suggest such a thing look petty and silly.
Insane.
Far better to go after McCrack's connections with notable cocaine dealers and pedophiles.
TrumanHugh
· 1 year ago
SLAVE REVOLT: I highly doubt that McCain wants people digging around in his bedtime stories...especially one so easy to disprove. Read the Daily Kos diary from earlier this week; you can't deny the logic.
If McCain had shared such a similarly rare and amazing experience with a man whom he idolized, don't you think McCain would have mentioned it at some point? Like maybe in the Op-Ed piece he wrote right after Solzhenitsyn died?
It could have gone like this: "What's so amazing, is that he and I shared a similar act of grace and kindness in the midst of such evil and darkness. Each of us, while imprisoned, were blessed to find ourselves in the presence of a kind-hearted guard..."
I don't want to write too much more, otherwise I'll find McCain lifting MY WORDS for use in a future debate or "moment of truth."
I'm sure you can grasp what I'm getting at. McCain would be very embarrassed if this were to play out at logic would dictate.
eclecticbrotha
· 1 year ago
To those who are accusing us of demeaning a war hero - yeah, whatever - I ask that you read this diary from the guy who started this whole discussion in Daily Kos. He explains the situation much better than I ever could.
The beauty of this and "conegate" is that the MSM is focused not on Saddleback but all this nonsense....the pols the last 2 days show that Sat. nite did not hurt Obama, his numbers are Gallup +3 and Rass +2 from ......
The value of this dustups are newscycle management and this is a beauty that clearly has some legs to it as does conegate
Bubblefish
· 1 year ago
Maybe it is because he potentially LIFTED the story from the life of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn?
dpolitico
· 1 year ago
Interestingly, I've come across a radio ad McCain ran in December of 1999 highlighting "A Christmas Story" from his time as a POW. It is not the cross in the sand story. In an ad narrated by Bud Day (yes, that guy) he says:
"Christmas of 1971 was centered around scripture that John had gotten from the first Bible we had been able to get from the Vietnamese," Day says in the first radio ad. "John composed an extremely compelling sermon that night about the importance of Christmas ... I think it was certainly a shot to everyone's morale to hear those Christian words in that very un-Christianlike place."
You would think that of all the powerful stories he had to tell, the cross in the sand would've trumped the "compelling sermon."
because its plagiarized from renowned russian author alexander solzhenitsyn, who wrote about his own experience in russian gulags and prison camps.
henry dribble
· 1 year ago
What I found interesting about Mark Salter's comments was that he categorically denied that McCain had every told the story prior to his meeting and research on his book during 1997. when they supposedly met every evening in the Senate. how can he make a statement like that? unless he knows that he gave McCain the story then or later. I would love to see Salter interviewed and his knowledge of Solzhenitsyn explored. as for the war hero thing, McCain and his father and all those that created the War in Vietnam ruined my college days. and they are not heroes to me. how soon we forget!
Hylas Ipsum
· 1 year ago
Consider McCain's appearance at the Sturgis Bike Rally 2008 just scant days ago, fast forward to this week - uber-focused, glint in the eye and eager for discourse.
Performance enhancing medications (Alzheimer's) are doing wonders for my Father in law, who has memory and recall problem. Realize you don't need Alzheimer's to benefit from these focusing drugs.
Seanicus, I agree with you to some extent but in the context of how both candidate's answers are compared to one another, often with Sen Obama's "nuanced" & "thoughtful" answers (funny how a negative connotation can be given to anything nowadays) being considered not as "impressive" or "decisive" as Sen McCain's. I would like to have seen a simple comparison of that particular question, because basically if you compare both answers, Sen McCain's answer was the equivalent of Sen Obama saying "I did some unwise things as a young man". Would Sen Obama have been let off the hook with such a short answer? I doubt it. But please, don't take this as a dig on Sen McCain, the kids say "don't hate the playa, hate the game" and I think Sen McCain's entire performance was one of those "well played, Sir" moments.
atw
· 1 year ago
I don't get how this means Salter is "afraid" of something. It sounds more like he's saying independently of the McCain campaign that McCain is making stuff up to get brownie points with a certain voter base. I think that's likely. As in sniper fire.
All Comments
Pay attention to McCain's campaign tactics since the forum. Have you noticed he's trying to wage war on multiple fronts at once and each time underestimating the strength of the enemy? Just today he's attacking Obama (and getting blasted for the second day in a row), going after NBC (and getting blasted by Keith Olbermann) and trying to take on the blogosphere by going after Daily Kos (while getting hit from all directions by others who have picked up the same "cross in the dirt" story they're blaming the Kossacks for). Meanwhile, the rave reviews he got from his showing at the forum are being completely overshadowed by his angry responses to simple inquiries about his statements.
And was that cross in the dirt made with a sandal or a stick? Seems to have been told both ways.
You've been a stalwart in Internet reporting this election season, and I desperately hope that these broadside attacks on McCain don't begin to overshadow your coverage of Obama's virtues. As an Obama supporter, I would like to see nothing more than the political discourse dragged up from the depths of nitpicking over whether some guy scratched a cross next to John McCain 30 years ago.
i, for one am glad that i'm vindicated in the knowledge that obama is one of the most substantive politicians i've seen in a while. if the CW that he's nothing more than an empty suit were approaching the truth i'd have fled a long time ago, but i believe that the basis to his message is one that is absolutely concrete. this is why i hate that people are covering these two boring non-essentials which will do nothing but obscure the policies which underpin this historic run.
It was about a false rumor about Barack Obama's VP choice.
But thanks for your feedback.
Cindy McCain's Half Sister 'Angry' She's Hidden
by Ted Robbins
Ted Robbins/NPR
Kathleen Hensley Portalski displays newspaper clippings of her father in World War II, as well as snapshots of herself as a child with her father.
Read the original profile on Cindy McCain.
Courtesy Nicholas Portalski
Portalski is shown with her late father, Jim Hensley, who also was Cindy McCain's father.
Ted Robbins/NPR
Nicholas Portalski, whose mother is McCain's half sister, says it's "very, very hurtful" that he and his mother haven't been recognized.
All Things Considered, August 18, 2008 · Last Tuesday, NPR broadcast a story about Cindy McCain's business and charity work. In it, Ted Robbins described McCain as the only child of Jim Hensley, a wealthy Arizona businessman. The next morning, NPR received an e-mail from Nicholas Portalski of Phoenix, who heard the story with his mother.
"We were listening to the piece about Cindy McCain on NPR, All Things Considered, and it just struck us very hard," Portalski said.
His mother, Kathleen Hensley Portalski, is also Hensley's daughter.
The Portalski family is accustomed to hearing Cindy McCain described as Hensley's only child.
She's been described that way by news organizations from The New Yorker and The New York Times to Newsweek and ABC.
McCain herself routinely uses the phrase "only child," as she did on CNN last month. "I grew up with my dad," she said then. "I'm an only child. My father was a cowboy, and he really loved me very much, but I think he wanted a son occasionally."
McCain's father was also a businessman — and twice a father.
"I'm upset," Kathleen Portalski says. "I'm angry. It makes me feel like a nonperson, kind of."
Who Is Kathleen Hensley Portalski?
Documents show Kathleen Anne Hensley was born to Jim and Mary Jeanne Hensley on Feb. 23, 1943. They had been married for six years when Kathleen was born.
Jim Hensley was a bombardier on a B-17, flying over Europe during World War II.
He was injured and sent to a facility in West Virginia to recuperate. During that time, while still married to Mary Jeanne, Hensley met another woman — Marguerite Smith. Jim divorced Mary Jeanne and married Marguerite in 1945.
Cindy Lou Hensley was born nine years later, in 1954.
She may have grown up as an only child, but so did her half sister, Kathleen, who was raised by a single parent.
Portalski says she did see her father and her half sister from time to time.
"I saw him a few times a year," she says. "I saw him at Christmas and birthdays, and he provided money for school clothes, and he called occasionally."
Jim Hensley also provided credit cards and college tuition for his grandchildren, as well as $10,000 gifts to Kathleen and her husband, Stanley Portalski. That lasted a decade, they say. By then, Jim Hensley had built Hensley and Co. into one of the largest beer distributorships in the country. He was worth tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars.
Sole Inheritor To Hensley's Estate
When Hensley died in 2000, his will named not only Portalski but also a daughter of his wife Marguerite from her earlier marriage. So, Cindy McCain may be the only product of Jim and Marguerite's marriage, but she is not the only child of either.
She was, however, the sole inheritor of his considerable estate.
Kathleen Portalski was left $10,000, and her children were left nothing. It's a fact Nicholas Portalski says his sister discovered the hard way.
"What she found in town — on the day of or the day before or the day after his funeral — was that the credit card didn't work anymore," Nick says.
The Portalskis live in a modest home in central Phoenix. Kathleen is retired, as is her husband. Nicholas Portalski is a firefighter and emergency medical technician looking for work.
They say it would have been nice if they were left some of the Hensley fortune.
They also say they are Democrats, but Nicholas Portalski says he had another reason for coming forward.
"The fact that we don't exist," he says. "The fact that we've never been recognized, and then Cindy has to put such a fine point on it by saying something that's not true. Recently, again and again. It's just very, very hurtful."
Kathleen Portalski says she'd like an acknowledgment and an apology.
NPR asked the McCain campaign — specifically, Cindy McCain — to comment or respond. Neither replied.
Did you really not understand that, or are you letting your personal feelings about the man's political career to get in your way of understanding a non-political statement?
Even questioning this is simply silly--there is not way to prove that it didn't happen, and it makes folks that would suggest such a thing look petty and silly.
Insane.
Far better to go after McCrack's connections with notable cocaine dealers and pedophiles.
If McCain had shared such a similarly rare and amazing experience with a man whom he idolized, don't you think McCain would have mentioned it at some point? Like maybe in the Op-Ed piece he wrote right after Solzhenitsyn died?
It could have gone like this: "What's so amazing, is that he and I shared a similar act of grace and kindness in the midst of such evil and darkness. Each of us, while imprisoned, were blessed to find ourselves in the presence of a kind-hearted guard..."
I don't want to write too much more, otherwise I'll find McCain lifting MY WORDS for use in a future debate or "moment of truth."
I'm sure you can grasp what I'm getting at. McCain would be very embarrassed if this were to play out at logic would dictate.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/19/11438/1...
RD
www.Ultimate-Anonymity.com
The value of this dustups are newscycle management and this is a beauty that clearly has some legs to it as does conegate
"Christmas of 1971 was centered around scripture that John had gotten from the first Bible we had been able to get from the Vietnamese," Day says in the first radio ad. "John composed an extremely compelling sermon that night about the importance of Christmas ... I think it was certainly a shot to everyone's morale to hear those Christian words in that very un-Christianlike place."
You would think that of all the powerful stories he had to tell, the cross in the sand would've trumped the "compelling sermon."
http://www.endpoliticsasusual.com/2008/08/mccai...
I would love to see Salter interviewed and his knowledge of Solzhenitsyn explored.
as for the war hero thing, McCain and his father and all those that created the War in Vietnam ruined my college days. and they are not heroes to me. how soon we forget!
Performance enhancing medications (Alzheimer's) are doing wonders for my Father in law, who has memory and recall problem.
Realize you don't need Alzheimer's to benefit from these focusing drugs.
He behaves remarkably similar.
Namenda and Aricept Combination Therapy:
http://www.namenda.com/sections/20/proven-benef...
Here's one about McCain as a storyteller:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/19/113844/...