Nooooo John Sydney McSame III is pure as driven snow.  You can rest assured that if McSame's handlers say 'HE' didn't see/hear the questions/Obama, well... THEY did and handed him the answers, the guy DID finish 894 of 899 at the Academy after all, AND, he has a track record of cheating.

and,now the media is complicit in THEIR silence as to his whereabouts at what time... ('cept Andrea Mitchell).

We already know from his own admission that, instead of remaining silent, he lied to his Vietnamese captors in giving them the names of football players, instead of the names of his fellow pilots.  We also know that, subsequently, in the retelling of the story, he changed the identity of the teams, depending on where he was telling it.

A new story is being picked up in the press - John McCain's mother, Roberta McCain, sued her former daughter-in-law, Carol McCain, in 1980, to "reclaim some personal property".  And while neither John or Roberta remembers this happening - go figure - Carol does, and there's records of it.  And both John and Carol filed suit ten years later seeking punitive damages for items thrown out by a property management firm - but he doesn't remember it.

That's right!

John McCain will be speaking at the Republican Convention (I wonder if Senator Vitter will be there too).

Okay.  Edwards' political career is over. Actually, it was over already. He is not actually in office and was already no longer actually running for anything.

But John McCain's entire political career derives from his most famous act of adultery!

He was still married to Carol, the wife who stuck with him when he was a POW, who was raising their children.

So he had an affair. With Cindy. While still married to Carol. Affair? Adultery? Whatever.

Of course that is what led to his eventually making an honest (well, actually drug addicted and thieving) woman out Cindy.  So he married the younger more attractive model... marrying into Cindy's money, into her connections, and into the state of Arizona... and the rest is history.

And as you may have heard, McCain is actually in office and running for higher office.

By David B. Livingstone/North Star Writers Group

My friends, there's a full lineup and other fireworks below...

It's just sitting right there.

John McCain hopes that it doesn't become a talked-about issue during this campaign, but it's got to.

This is a Swiftboatesque ad waiting to be made, if only a 527 will pick it up and run with it.  The difference is, you don't even have to impugn his character.  He gleefully did it himself.

I wouldn't have recommended this even a month ago, but since McCain has decided to go Rovian in his last-throes desperation, the time is now.

I suggested this to my wife, and she admitted she didn't know the details and frankly had forgotten about the whole thing.

"Did he have an affair with Cindy while he was still MARRIED?", she asked.

Ohhhhh, yes.

Even if McCain wins in November, he has lost. This past week’s vicious and factually devoid attacks on Barack Obama follow the legacy of the 2 Karl Rove-directed Bush campaigns. He’s already alienated perhaps half of the country, maybe more. If he wins, he’ll most likely have to face a hostile democratic majority in both the House and the Senate. Thus, if he wins, he still loses, because his presidency will an ineffective one. Better to be Michael Dukakis or Barry Goldwater than Jimmy Carter or Herbert Hoover.

Here's my dilemma. By virtually all accounts, John McCain served as a pillar of strength during his years as a POW, enduring horrific torture while helping other POWs cope and even refusing to allow his status as an admiral's son to earn him an early release. (I discount the persistent "Songbird" rumors, which while interesting, fail to present any strong evidence of their reality. I'm glad that no one on the left except some fairly squirrely and irrelevant blog posters have tried to make this a campaign issue, not just because it would cause enormous "blowback" against the Obama campaign, but because it would be a terrible slander against McCain if the allegations weren't absolutely accurate--just as the ugly Swift Boat allegations against John Kerry were terrible slanders against him.) My question is, how the hell can McCain the POW hero jibe with McCain the gutter-dwelling politician?

The interview where he swapped the Steelers and Packers got headlines this week.
Considering what all Ron Reagan misremembered, McCain's gaffe hardly seems to be indictable.

This photo, however, is another matter altogether.
Here is healthy, smiling John McCain doing his homecoming routine in 1973.

So what happens in 1980 when he gets out of the Navy ?
For starts, McCain gets a disability that now pays him $58,000 a year tax free.
This for two claimed major disabilities connected to his service in Vietnam.

1. His right knee was "shattered" as he was ejected from his A-4 fighter/bomber

2. He was not able to raise his arms and he lacks full use of both  hands

Really ?
McCain has released his Navy medical records.
The "shattered knee" claim just doesn't make sense. NO INTERIOR SURGERY.
Where's any evidence showing more than a normally-mended cracked knee cap ?

More below the fold.

John McCain is just a shameless liar, as I can attest from personal experience. But the traditional media in the US remains so wedded to the McMyth he's constructed for them of a 'straight talker', that they generally ignore any evidence that would shatter it. Revelations that would destroy another politician's career routinely are cloaked in silence to preserve the McMyth. Reporters have settled on their narrative for McCain, and they're damned now if they'll admit that they were just blowing smoke at the public.

Take the revelation yesterday that McCain has lied and continues to lie about his marital infidelity and divorce.  Richard Serrano and Ralph Vartabedian of the LA Times uncovered documents to show that McCain's memoir falsified the facts.

In his 2002 memoir, "Worth the Fighting For," McCain wrote that he had separated from Carol before he began dating Hensley.

"I spent as much time with Cindy in Washington and Arizona as our jobs would allow," McCain wrote. "I was separated from Carol, but our divorce would not become final until February of 1980."

An examination of court documents tells a different story. McCain did not sue his wife for divorce until Feb. 19, 1980, and he wrote in his court petition that he and his wife had "cohabited" until Jan. 7 of that year -- or for the first nine months of his relationship with Hensley.

Although McCain suggested in his autobiography that months passed between his divorce and remarriage, the divorce was granted April 2, 1980, and he wed Hensley in a private ceremony five weeks later. McCain obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still legally married to his first wife.

The Times neglects to mention that adultery is considered "conduct unbecoming an officer" and can be prosecuted under the UCMJ. The report does however show that despite his later version of events, McCain concealed his extramarital affair from fellow officers and friends as well as his wife, Carol, for the better part of a year. McCain's false chronology obviously is meant to conceal how calculated his behavior was throughout. That's hard to deny given that he got a marriage license while he was married.

So, we have the presumptive Republican presidential nominee caught lying in his memoir about his sordid behavior and past dishonesty. Predictably, the rest of the US media have turned a blind eye to the LA Times' revelations (though they're considered newsworthy abroad).

Because voters don't need to know about evidence regarding McCain's integrity. Reporters have already presented the McMyth. What more could the public want?

An article in today’s Los Angeles Times about John McCain’s adultery and subsequent divorce chose to focus on how his actions affected his relationship with Ron and Nancy Reagan. But as sad as it is to learn that Nancy treated McCain with "cool correctness" after he left his disabled wife and three children for a 24 year old heiress, why don’t we just stay with this aspect of the story; the part where John McCain either forgot that he had carried on an affair for nine months or he lied about it in interviews and in his memoir, Worth Fighting For.

In his 2002 memoir, "Worth the Fighting For," McCain wrote that he had separated from Carol before he began dating Hensley.

"I spent as much time with Cindy in Washington and Arizona as our jobs would allow," McCain wrote. "I was separated from Carol, but our divorce would not become final until February of 1980."

An examination of court documents tells a different story. McCain did not sue his wife for divorce until Feb. 19, 1980, and he wrote in his court petition that he and his wife had "cohabited" until Jan. 7 of that year -- or for the first nine months of his relationship with Hensley.

It seems that Senator Straight Talk’s pants were on fire in more ways than one.

When asked for a comment, a McCain spokesman said:  

Of course we will not comment on the breakup of the senator's first marriage, other than to note that the senator has always taken responsibility for it.

Yes, he has.  McCain has blamed his actions on his "immaturity" (he was 42), but he still hasn’t explained if he’s been lying about having had an affair with his current wife, or if it’s just one more thing that he’s confused about.

During his first run for public office, John McCain said:

One of the things I've never tried to do is exploit my Vietnam service to my country because it would be totally inappropriate to do.

And now, with the release of his second ad for the general election, McCain continues to be totally inappropriate:

KEY IMAGES: Scenes from the late 1960s — demonstrations, the Woodstock music festival. Black-and-white footage of a military plane on a mission fades to a still shot of McCain in his flight suit. A photograph of the wreckage of his shot-down plane in North Vietnam gives way to clips of McCain recovering from his wounds in captivity...The ad ends with McCain in profile superimposed over a clip of a much younger McCain, saluting upon his release from Vietnam.

Of course that visual history does leave out the part about his extramarital affair(s), and when he left his disabled wife for a 25 year old heiress, but hey, there is only so much you can cram into 60 seconds.

Tomorrow, July 3, could have been a happy day for John and Carol McCain.  It was 43 years ago tomorrow that the young Navy pilot and the swimsuit model were joined in matrimony.  John McCain had finally decided to settle down after many years of hard partying and womanizing.

But while tomorrow might be a happy day for John McCain, as he continues his run for the presidency and prepares for a holiday weekend with his fabulously beautiful and wealthy second wife, the day is likely to be bittersweet – if not flat out bitter – for Carol McCain.  You see, she was  abandoned by John McCain after he returned home from Vietnam and found that she had been crippled in a car accident.  Before long, he was having affairs with other women.  And eventually he simply (and literally) traded her in for a new model.

It seems like we should do something tomorrow to remind John McCain – as well as the rest of the country – about his willingness to break his wedding vows and turn his back on his disabled wife in order to fulfill his own sexual desires and increase his personal wealth.

Huffington's front page is proclaiming an eminent article in a news weekly on the delinquicy of McCain's property tax on a luxury beach condo.  This is a gift of some dubious value.

There are no magic bullets.  McCain and every candidate rises fom such silver encased projectiles impact to bare their fangs again. If there is peril in such high impact stories it is that they distract from McCain's real problems.  

Even as poll after poll shows Barack Obama consolidating his sizable leads among women in general and Hillary Clinton supporters in particular, the American media soldiers on in its attempt to manufacture dissent.  CNN is no exception.  Last night, Larry King featured disgruntled Clinton backer turned McCainiac, Cynthia Ruccia of the group Women for Fair Politics.  Decrying the supposed sexism of the Democratic Party and the press, Ruccia made the case for John McCain, who just happens to be among the most sexist presidential candidates in recent memory.

How would the master of destructive politics take on Senator McCain?  He would look at Senator McCain's greatest strength, or rather, his greater perceived strength.  He would turn that strength into a weakness.  John Kerry was a war hero before he was thought to be a war criminal.  John Kerry was a leader in the field of battle before he was portrayed as being too indecisive.  John Kerry was an American hero before he was a Frenchman married to a foreigner.   So how would Karl Rove pursue John McCain?