Luckily, Wes Clark won't go under a bus without a fight. He's still promoting Barack even after that stab in the back.

Now Andrea is quoting professional moron John Avarosis claim the McCain did propaganda for the Vietnamese.

But, everyone in the McCain camp and MSM as well has taken Clark's statement to mean that McCain's military service in TOTAL, including being a POW, cannot be included as part of an overall record that qualifies him to be president and commander in chief.

I would submit that his POW status certainly shows the courage, strength and integrity that are all qualities most voters would include on any list of presidential qualifications.

it seems to easy to me for it to just become an accounting issue.

I was asked a direct question and I answered it directly.

Clark is absolutley right....And, now perhaps the hagiography of McCain can be given a rest.

And I would go one step further and look at the acutal facts of McCain's captivity.  As McCain himself has publicly acknowledged, he was severely injured (with several broken bones, the efects of which he still suffers from) when his plane crashed into a lake in Hanoi.  He was severely abused/tortured and then after four days signed a confession and started appearing in propaganda films in return for receiving medical treatment.  McCain has admitted all this.  It is likely the footage that McCain plays in his television commericals is from one of those propaganda films....There is no dishonor here--everyone "talks"....

McCain was offered and turned down early release, but as McCain himself admitted within the last few days, so did others.  Col. David Hackworth had this to say:

McCain refused an early release. An act of valor? Three former POWs told me he was ordered to turn it down by his U.S. POW commander and he "just followed orders."

McCain certainly doesn't appear to be a war hero by conventional standards, but rather a tough survivor whose handlers are overplaying the war hero card.  

McCain is holding town meetings. Obama should be doing so as well. No way Clinton would have held meetings like this. Not to mention a former candidate who may have won the popular vote....

AA Dem elected officials that supported Hillary are being challenged by
AA Dems that supported THE ONE.
Scary!

Reaching out to religious voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans to expand President Bush's program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and -- in a move sure to cause controversy -- support some ability to hire and fire based on faith.

Obama was unveiling his approach to getting religious charities more involved in government anti-poverty programs during a tour and remarks Tuesday in Zanesville, Ohio, at Eastside Community Ministry, which provides food, clothes, youth ministry and other services.

"Here's one (always stupid but nonetheless tenacious) meme that must now surely die out. Obama was billed by some - on Fox right and Clinton left - as a lofty, saintly, principled figure who would bring the party crashing to its usual "eggheads-and-African-Americans" defeat because of his super liberal squeamishness. Yeah, right. Most black male 46 year-olds manage to get to be the favorite for the presidency by acting like Gandhi.

But Obama's post-primary pivot to neutralize all the usual GOP attacks - and reintroduce himself to Middle America - has been more than usually pronounced. He can live with FISA telecom immunity; he's flexible on troop withdrawal from Iraq; he's happy with executing child rapists; he doesn't need public financing; he'll out-patriot the Right; he's touting his support for welfare reform; he'll expand Bush's faith-based programs; and he's okay with the Supreme Court's view of the Second Amendment. Oh, and he'll reduce taxes on the middle class, while hiking them for the rich or successful or whatever you'll let me call them.

Does this sound like a man who's happy to lose an election rather than compromise on a few political stands?  He knows that the pent-up desire among Democrats to win this election gives him more lee-way with the base than he might otherwise have. And he's using that as effectively as he can.

It's been clear for a long time: A man who beat the Clintons is as ruthless as they are. Just smarter, and less susceptible to losing his grip on the core principles he still believes in.

Yes, the more we fund good social programs through religious organizations, the more we undermine the separation of church and state.  Churches beef up their infrastructure (employees, offices, communications channels, mailing lists, computers, the works) with tax money while using their own money for their proselytizing and political work, much of which is anathema to our values and issues.  (e.g. the Catholic Church fighting equal rights for gays.)   They can easily show that the money that came in went to a project that it was intended for, and still use the tax money to backfill their organization.  When you pay someone's salary to coordinate a program, that doesn't stop them from spending their time doing whatever else the organization wants done.  (Try catching hundreds of thousands of faith based organizations for not doing the job their funding pays for.)  Since the initiatives fund good work for society, they're not going to be scrutinized on the level needed to stop or prevent abuses.  Distributed allocation of tax funds makes it even harder to prove churches use the money for purposes we don't want them to, and if you catch them, so what, it's easy to fire (or move) an employee that broke the rules and just continue.  Churches have learned not to proselytize at the soup line, but make no mistake, tax money backfills their organization, develops their infrastructure, and furthers their organization's objectives, which can be completely opposite of our goals. Tax money infusions free up the non-taxpayer funded portfolio of their operations for the work that secular taxpayers may or may not agree with.  Unfortunately, the faith based orgs can also out compete secular not for profit organizations because church groups are also funded through regular donations, other grants, etc.  Not to be too negative, but it's really an unstoppable economic force at this point.

Government programs are notoriously hard to stop once they're in place in society.  Clearly, faith based initiatives are problematic, and yet still good for society.  However, now that Bush has established the initiatives, Democratic candidates can't go against it.  Which is why even Hillary Clinton said she supports the faith based initiatives.  Going after Obama on this issue is a waste of time.  He's chosen to use/expand/change/co-opt Bush's current system, and he'll definitely get votes out of it because when churches see the lure of big money on the horizon, they tell their obedient members voters how to vote.  It's that simple.  

While Mr. Obama opposes requiring religious tests for recipients of aid or use of federal money to proselytize, The Associated Press reported that he supports letting religious institutions -- in the non-federally funded parts of their activities -- hire and fire based on faith, according to a senior adviser to the campaign who the news agency said spoke on condition of anonymity.

While that notion appeared controversial, it seems to find support in a 2000 case involving the Boy Scouts of America. The Supreme Court ruled that the group, as a private organization, had a First Amendment right to set its membership rules.

 Military record of John Sidney McCain III

Both McCain III's father and grandfather were Admirals in the United States Navy. His father
Admiral John S. "Junior" McCain was commander of U.S. forces in Europe - later commander of
American forces in Vietnam while McCain III was being held prisoner of war. His grandfather
John S. McCain, Sr. commanded naval aviation at the Battle of Okinawa in 1945.

McCain III, like his father and grandfather, also attended the United States Naval Academy.
McCain III finished near the bottom of his graduating class in 1958.

McCain III lost five U.S. Navy aircraft
1 - Student pilot McCain III lost jet number one in 1958 when he plunged into Corpus
Christi Bay while practicing landings.
2 - Pilot McCain III lost another plane two years later while he was deployed in the
Mediterranean. "Flying too low over the Iberian Peninsula, he took out some power lines
which led to a spate of newspaper stories in which he was predictably identified as the
son of an admiral.
3 - Pilot McCain III lost number three in 1965 when he was returning from flying a Navy
trainer solo to Philadelphia for an Army-Navy football game. McCain III radioed, "I've got
a flameout" and ejected at one thousand feet. The plane crashed to the ground and
McCain III floated to a deserted beach.
4 - Combat pilot McCain III lost his fourth on July 29, 1967, soon after he was assigned to
the USS Forrestal as an A-4 Skyhawk combat pilot. While waiting his turn for takeoff, an
accidently fired rocket slammed into McCain Jr's. plane. He escaped from the burning
aircraft, but the explosions that followed killed 134 sailors, destroyed at least 20 aircraft,
and threatened to sink the ship.
5 - Combat pilot McCain III lost a fifth plane three months later (Oct. 26, 1967) during his
23rd mission over North Vietnam when he failed to avoid a surface-to-air missile. McCain
III ejected from the plane breaking both arms and a leg in the process and subsequently
parachuted into Truc Bach Lake near Hanoi. After being pulled from the lake by the North
Vietnamese, McCain III was bayoneted in his left foot and shoulder and struck by a rifle
butt. He was then transported to the Hoa Lo Prison, also known as the Hanoi Hilton.
1973 New York Daily News labeled POW McCain III a "PW Songbird"
On McCain III's fourth day of being denied medical treatment, slapped, and threatened with
death by the communist (they were demanding military information in exchange for medical
treatment), McCain III broke and told his interrogator, "O.K., I'll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital."

But one of the problems is vouchers that go to faith based schools which use public money to provide an educatioal choice also allows an admittance process that discriminates.

As I'm sure you know public school supporters don't agree with giving public school dollars for private programs that discriminate on the basis of faith.

Also faith based programs have been successful with black youths in inner cities where most public schools have not been able to provide the kind of direction voucher proponents say is neccessary.

Now I'm no Baracknaphile, but Wes stated the truth, and it's unfortunate that Barack could not try to put Clark's comment in perspective by challenging the media coverage of it.  He was able to challenge the media regarding some of the outrageous rumors, why not here?

It is so typical of the MSM to distort things, but I can't wait to see The Daily Howler's take on this.

Great that Wes didn't back down.