McCain also recently addressed a crowd as his "fellow prisoners". Clearly, the POW history is not really history. He is living it every day. While this deserves our compassion, it pragmatically disqualifies McCain for the most pressure filled office in the world.

He is damaged goods.

"What's more, in late August, McCain appeared on "The Tonight Show" last night, and Jay Leno joked about McCain's confusion over how many houses he owns."

slow down and write sentences which make sense.

I've never criticized John McCain's POW experience, but when he dares us it against John Lewis, he's gone too far. McCain was in a war, he took a risk, and lost, and was tortured by 'the enemy.' John Lewis's torture was at the hands of 'fellow Americans,' as was the mental torture of millions of Black Americans. McCain's scars are real, but so are Lewis' and so is the memory of how he got them.

And John McCain, who so pitiably played to the black audience at Saddleback by naming Lewis as one of the three wisest men he knew, never fought for equality here -- he was too busy getting drunk and raising hell at the Naval Academy he only made it through through his father's connections.

McCain did fight though in the civil rights struggle. He fought against honoring all those who did fight by naming a holiday for one of their leaders. And then, later, he fought for the Confederate flag -- oh yes, he's apologized for that -- he's great at apologizing.

John McCain, you aren't fit to shine John Lewis' shoes, and had all of America been like you, as brilliant and wise as Lewis was, that's the sort of thing he would have been doing, shining shoes, at least if he'd stayed in Georgia.

McCain being a POW 35 years ago is not going to pay the bills, put food on the table, or secure America's financial future.

He's telling us, flat out, that he's the Manchurian Candidate. When will the msm take notice?

GET OFF MY LAWN!!!

What else does he have?

Of course, if you look at his actual history as a POW, according to his fellow POWs, he doesn't even have much there. But what he has, that's it.

What else is he going to say: "Vote for me, I don't know what kind of car I drive, I don't know how many houses I own, and I take a 9 car motorcade from my house to Starbucks to get myself a latte?"

Please, please, voters of the US, spare us from having to see Rick Davis one more time after Nov. 5! This McCain/Davis association alone should be more than enough to disqualify McCain for the presidency. In competency of staffers, a McCain presidency would be much the lesser compared with the Bush presidency.

Pathetic
Old
Wino.

"He was in a Vietnam prison camp serving his country with his civil rights also denied."

McCain was a volunteer to a bad war. John Lewis did not volunteer to have his civil rights denied him.

You left out one thing - when McCain was at a rally recently and referred to the audience as "My Fellow Prisoners". I don't know about you folks, but when I heard that - and realized that it was apropos of nothing he was talking about at the time - I seriously started wondering about the mental health of this guy.

I think this P.O.W. talk should be turned around on McCain, and the real issue should be addressed: Can we seriously consider a candidate who was a prisoner of war for 5 years when he won't release his mental health records? Before that one phrase - "My Fellow Prisoners" - it honestly had never occurred to me that this guy may not be dealing with a full deck. I mean, he's loony, but that's a Republican M.O. But the harshness of captivity really does seem to have taken its toll on this guy. If he keeps using the P.O.W. card, it should be brought to the forefront of the collective American mind that such captivity can have a serious impact on the mind of the prisoner. And if he won't release his records, then he is rightly suspect.

We've already been dealing with one President CooCoo Bananas for the last 8 years. We don't need another one. And if McCain in some way believes he's still fighting his captors in Vietnam, I think most people would agree he shouldn't be given the key to the castle with it's giant nuclear arsenal.

After the "my fellow prisoners" line two hosts on Fox Sports Radio were making fun of McCain for being hung up on the POW thing. That is, Fox Sports Radio, where political comments are pretty rare but inevitably right-wing, at least up to now.

Ok - so we can talk about McCain being a POW - which was in the '60s and 70s - but we can't talk about the Keating 5 because it's "old news" - which was in the 80s and 90s.

you forgot the POW card for

1. Why he can't use a computer
2. in response to a question about whether he had governement run health care all his life
3. Why nobody can challenge him on Charles Keating
4. Why he can call Vietnamese people "gooks" for the rest of his life

off topic about the pow defense, but on topic about defending bad behavior, i heard a mccain spokesman on NPR this moring, defending the behavor of people attending their rallies by saying they were "hard working americans who were angry."

i have lots of problems with this...

first, if they are so "hard-working," what are they doing at a rally in the middle of a week day?? do they all work third shirft or somethin???

second, does this mean that ALL hard working amercians , given the chance will stand in a public place and yell "traitor," "nigg@r," or "kill him" about someone running for office??? can't imagine the campaign meant to imply THAT....

third...what about the NOT hard working americans???? i'm only working part time and I'M not happy [i rarely anger]

fourth...how about the unemployed??? don't they come to the rally?? aren't they angry???? wtf....

another indicator that the mccain campaign can't think ANYTHING through...

they simply aren't serious...

spellchecka

Ok - so we can talk about McCain being a POW - which was in the '60s and 70s - but we can't talk about the Keating 5 because it's "old news" - which was in the 80s and 90s.

Everything old is new, again. If Mc Cain's still around in 2020, then we can talk about the Keating 5. It's very retro, really. In the 70s, we had "Happy Days". In the 90s, "That 70s Show". In ten years, we can have "Keating & Co.".

McCain's playing of the POW card on Leno is strikingly similar to this bit from Tim Dickinson's Rolling Stone article:

"Thanks to my prisoner-of-war experience," McCain writes, "I had, as they say in politics, a good story to sell." And sell it he did. "Listen, pal," he told an opponent who challenged him during a candidate forum. "I wish I could have had the luxury, like you, of growing up and living and spending my entire life in a nice place like the first district of Arizona, but I was doing other things. As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived the longest in my life was Hanoi."

See http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/make_believe_maverick_the_real_john_mccain/page/6

Think I'd give this one a pass, Steve. For once, it seems a reasonable use of his POW card.

George Wallace became governor of Alabama in 1963. John McCain became a POW in 1967. Are we to suppose that he was totally unaware of the Civil Rights movement in the four intervening years?

A little bit of an inaccuracy here. George Wallace was elected governor in 1962 and gave his inaugural speech with the "segregation forever" line in January of 1963. Wallace continued in that vein during his 4-year term while the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham occurred and while Viola Liuzzo, Jonathan Daniel, Jimmie Lee Jackson, and others were killed in Alabama. Wallace's vicious rhetoric gave the Klan and their ilk permission to carry out those crimes.

John McCain was imprisoned by the North Vietnamese on 26 October 1967. A few months later George Wallace began his run for president, in which he downplayed his racist approach and ran as a "law & order" candidate.

jcricket makes my own point.

Clearly being a POW in Vietnam for an extended period would affect the strongest mind and constitution. That the effects of this are so evident today should be a concern for any US citizen, given the power invested in the President. He clearly both is volatile and jumps to judgement. Not a good combination as the most powerful man on the planet.

McCain's favorite song is "Dancing Queen"?
That's a catchy tune, but at this point another ABBA hit might be a more appropriate choice. May I suggest "Waterloo"?

I say bring it on - the comparison with John McCain's five year POW experience and John Lewis' lifetime of abuse in the Jim Crow south. While John McCain lived the life of an Admiral's son, goofed around and partied at the Naval Academy, and crashed his airplanes while hot dogging over Asia, John Lewis' civil rights were being violated for most of his life. He attended sub-par schools, sat in the back of the bus, wasn't allowed entry into shops and restaurants, was told he couldn't vote, was threatened and beaten by white supremicists, and was jailed for peacefully demonstrating for his rights. John Lewis is my Congressman and I'll be damned if his lifetime of service to our city and to an entire people is compared to McCain. McCain isn't worthy to utter John Lewis' name.