Okay just did a Googleand found this:

McCain is also unable to lift his arms over his head because of injuries he suffered while a prisoner of North Vietnamese forces in the Vietnam War. Eckstein told reporters that McCain also suffers from reduced range of motion in his knee as a result of improper healing after torture and maltreatment by his captors during the war.

Sorry everyone. I'm deleting the rest of the diary.

Here's a story documenting yet another McBush flip-flop:
http://www.boston.com/...
McBush used to be against the tobacco lobby but is now for it.  He's now not only against cigarette taxes but also against putting the tobacco industry under FDA regulation.

McBush has a former tobacco lobbyist for a senior campaign advisor:
http://firedoglake.com/...

That's right.  McBush hired a glorified drug pusher (former Phillip Morris lobbyist Charlie Black) to work on convincing voters that he's for protecting America, upholding moral values, and preserving the sanctity of life.  

Of course, this can't possibly have anything to do with McBush's change of heart on tobacco regulations.  Really.  

This week's Parade Magazine has essays from Barack Obama and John McCain on patriotism.

One can read the essays and then go online and vote in the poll which asks:  which essay is more in line with your views?

Showing that he does indeed understand the awesome power of the internet, Senator McCain has invited his fervent online supporters to create their very own McCain campaign posters.

I was surprised that Steven R's diary on McCain and craps was the first I'd heard of this, and the only reason I'm writing a new diary is because, as a former craps dealer, I may be able to offer fresh insight.  (I wrote a piece about my career as a casino dealer for GQ in January, 2001.)

The Time article that got this going was kind of a fluff piece -- Barack as a poker player, McCain as a craps player, and what does that mean, exactly -- but it did get me thinking, and searching a little. There was a fair bit to uncover...

Last week, I observed with incredulous disbelief as the mainstream American media asserted that Obama had flipped on Iraq and essentially created an opening to manoeuvre on his numerously stated position that upon being sworn in, he will stipulate to his Joint Chiefs of Staff that they have a new mission in Iraq – which is ending the war and bringing American forces home. Apparently, this confusion was created by the statement that Obama made in an interview in which he stated that he would continue to "refine" his position on Iraq as dictated by the facts on the ground when he eventually travels to Iraq sometime this month. It wasn’t long after he made this statement that the depraved hyenas pounced, like a herd of starving carnivores in an African Serengeti.

Last week was a relatively slow news week, which makes it all the more puzzling that this bombshell of a story wasn't covered more by either the television pundits or the blog-o-sphere... obviously, one reason is because many on the blog-o-sphere now believe the election is in the bag and we don't really have to work much anymore to make it happen (publisher of this dKos included).  I disagree strongly, and I think this story is both relevant and revealing.  Relevant because it should give Christian Fundies serious pause about John "McCraps" and revealing because it illustrates what sort of personal attributes John "McCraps" has.

Here's the original Time Piece

(crossposted from Docudharma)

This is an essay grounded in simple reality, and intended for the perusal of those who are mentally and emotionally equipped to deal in such terms.
As to those who are not, it is my hope that you will herein acquire such tools.
But I'm not holding my breath.
The schoolin' begins on the jump.

Here's one where we're #1: Prevalence of mental illness in the population. "One-quarter of all Americans met the criteria for having a mental illness within the past year, and fully a quarter of those had a 'serious' disorder that significantly disrupted their ability to function day to day, according to the largest and most detailed survey of the nation's mental health.

http://bartdz.blogspot.com/...

From the same study: "The United States is the wealthiest, mightiest country in all of human history, and yet it has a higher proportion of poor or, worse, hungry citizens than almost every other industrialized nation

On the Fourth, Steven R wrote a diary about John McCain's essay on patriotism which appears in PARADE magazine today.

In the diary, Steven R pointed out McCain's subtle digs against his opponent in the presidential election, most egregious of which was the quote:

If this has been diaried to death already, just tell me and I'll delete.

but John McCain, by his own words is a computer illiterate.

Today I am leaving my usual sort of diary to enter into the world of tin-foil-hattery.  I am a scientist by training.  When I do write a diary, it is filled with citations and usually too long.  I qualify my speculations and express my opinions as such.  

Yesterday I posted such a diary on John McCain's wisit to the countries providing us our drugs,  Mexico and Colombia.  I discovered the many connections between those governments and their elected leaders and the funding of the "war on Drugs", now turned into a War on Illegal Armed Groups (IAGs).  While doing so, I came across the oddest factoid.  On July 2, while visiting Mexico on his July 4th Senate break, John McCain had a private dinner with Carlos Slim, by some accounts the world's richest man. link  This was only reported in the Miami Herald, whhich has a sister paper in Mexico City which covered McCain's visit with more attention to details.

Political opinions, election decisions, and other decisions, are often made by groupthink. Obama and McCain both rely on groupthink to haul in large portions of their bases. However, for Republicans, groupthink works. For Democrats, it doesn't. What is groupthink, what are its problems and symptoms, what can be done about it, and why does it help Republicans but hurt Democrats?

There has been quite a bit of work in the area of groupthink, but I do not know if anyone has examined it with regard to political parties and political opinions. I'm not a communications researcher, so my opinions are derived mostly from reading political blogs and newspapers, and watching televised news (mainly CNN) and this diary is rather simplistic. The purpose of this diary is to see what we, as Democrats, can do about our unsuccessful tendency towards groupthink, in order to help elect a more liberal President of the United States.

The Obama campaign has released a long, detailed memo thrashing McCain on the economy.  Find the full, must read memo here.

Not only does McCain not personally understand economics, but he doesn't appear to have a team around him that does.

Consider this memo your official kickoff for the week ahead:

Over the course of the week, Senator Obama will discuss his plans to strengthen the economic security of families feeling the strain of the faltering economy.

Senator Obama will kickoff the week by hosting a discussion on economic security for American’s families in Charlotte, North Carolina. On Tuesday, he will host a town hall meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. After speaking to LULAC Wednesday in Washington D.C., Senator Obama will wrap up the week by campaigning in Virginia and Ohio.

Just how patriotic does someone need to appear to be to be elected? More important, is showing patriotism dfferent from being patriotic?

My assumption is that some of the hundreds of millions of dollars raised by Obama and the Democratic party is being spent on professionals who were hired to win the White House and improve our percentage of the membership in Congress.  I assume also that the alleged Obama flip flops were the result of advice from the professionals because these essentially meaningless wedge issues nonetheless would be viewed as determinants by the uninformed swing voters.

My question to the truly informed liberals who populate DK is whether consistency on any of these issues is so valuable to you that you would undermine Obama because he followed what his team designed as a winning strategy?

Since reading a recent L.A. Times article by Neal Gabler about the ridicule and attacks Democrats suffer from supposed liberal journalists, I’ve had the opportunity to listen to Air America's Alex Bennett praise John McCain, then in the next breath run down Barack Obama. I’ve also noticed the glee with which the mainstream press has reacted to what Obama claims is a mischaracterization of his statement about Iraq.

I think there are probably techniques that you can use to successfully sell dogshit to people.  I'm not sure what those techniques are, but I know that if they exist they will do certain things.  First, they'll successfully convince people that what they're buying is not, in fact, dogshit.  They'll call it something else.  And they'll also have to disguise the trademark smell and overall unappetizing appearance of dogshit.  In any case, I'm pretty sure that John McCain's campaign is very busy trying to master these techniques, but I don't think it is going very well.