Despite Assurances, McCain Wasn’t in a ‘Cone of Silence’

Source: NYT

ORLANDO, Fla. — Senator John McCain was not in a so-called cone of silence on Saturday night while his rival, Senator Barack Obama, was being interviewed at the Saddleback Church in California.

The McCain campaign, which flew here Sunday from California, said Mr. McCain was in his motorcade on the way to the church as Mr. Obama was being interviewed by the Rev. Rick Warren.

The matter is of interest because Mr. McCain, who followed Mr. Obama’s hourlong appearance in the forum, was asked virtually the same questions as Mr. Obama. Mr. McCain’s performance was well received, raising speculation among some viewers, especially supporters of Mr. Obama, that he was not as isolated during the Obama interview as Mr. Warren implied.

Mr. Warren, pastor of Saddleback, had assured the audience while he was interviewing Mr. Obama that “we have safely placed Senator McCain in a cone of silence” and that he could not hear the questions.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/18/us/politics/18mccain....

Rick Warren must be the biggest sheister this side of rattle-snake handling. Sometimes a gleaming megachurch can sanction slime most foul.

Was there a LIE?

"Had not HEARD!" doesn't mean someone couldn't have put a piece of paper in front of him so he could READ the questions, unlike W, I think he can read!

isn't that breaking one of the ten commandments or something??

He's suppposed to be on Larry King tonight, think he'll be asked about this?

it amounts to an uneven playing field for the "interviewees" .

Apparently, Johnnie's getting a bit caught up in his web of lies.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection20...

Senator John McCain's integrity has been called into question after speeches he made on the campaign trail appeared to contain plagiarised material including some from Wikipedia.

By Alex Spillius in Washington
Last Updated: 9:07PM BST 18 Aug 2008
John McCain accused of plagiarising Wikipedia for speeches

John McCain's recent speech on Georgia was found to bear strong similarities to the country's entry on Wikipedia Photo: REUTERS

The veracity of a story often told by the Republican presidential candidate about a communist North Vietnamese prison guard drawing a cross in the sand was queried after he repeated the story during a widely televised forum on faith over the weekend.

It prompted claims by bloggers that he had not only changed the story over the years, but had allegedly made it up or plagiarized a similar story told by the late Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Meanwhile the originality of a speech he made about Georgia has also been placed in doubt after it was found to bear strong similarities to the country's entry on Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia compiled by the public.

Congressional Quarterly found that two passages from an Aug 11 speech were almost identical to Wikipedia, while a third bore striking resemblances. Wikipedia is freely available to everyone, but its terms of use require attribution.

More serious is the claim that Mr McCain has exaggerated or concocted the prison story, which he periodically uses in his stump speeches and which first appeared in his 1999 memoir Faith of My Fathers, which focused on his five and a half years in a North Vietnamese prison.

In the book Mr McCain told how one Christmas a Vietnamese guard "rather nonchalantly used his sandaled foot to draw a cross in the dirt" in his cell. The two of them stood for a minute or two in silent contemplation.

Bloggers on the liberal Daily Kos website have pointed out that the former naval pilot did not mention this story in a 12,000 word article on his imprisonment written soon after his release in 1973. The story then started appearing in his speeches during his unsuccessful 2000 bid for the Republican nomination.

Similarities were pointed out with a tale in Solzhenitsyn's bestselling The Gulag Archipelago, in which a fellow prisoner - not a guard - silently drew a cross in the dirt with a stick. Mr McCain has written about his admiration for the late Russian writer.

"I do question if John McCain has, in a mix up of perception or clarity, claimed this story as his own," wrote one blogger. Another claimed that "maybe it is all just a made up story".

The McCain campaign did not immediately comment yesterday on the allegations.

and apparently this one as well:

My dog has had to wear one and he hates it. I wish Dick Cheney and Dumbya had to wear one of those for the rest of their lives. Karl Rove too.

With obviously disastrous results.

Too big for the car. They had to have used the portable one!

McCrud asked Warren "when are we going back to the issue of Supreme court justices" When nothing had been said about Supreme court Justices other than talking about Roe v wade.

I said at that very moment... that he had "confused" what he heard during Obama's questioning and his own.

"Nicolle Wallace, a spokeswoman for Mr. McCain, said on Sunday night that Mr. McCain had not heard the broadcast of the event while in his motorcade and heard none of the questions. “The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous,” Ms. Wallace said."

It's almost too funny to believe.

and adulterer!

in his POW status.

"For lunch, I had a hamburger, which I would have had on 9-11 if it hadn't been for 9-11...."

It's awful that his genuinely terrible POW experience would become a joke, but then, he's the one making it so.

What's next?

While ordering lunch? "As a former POW, I'd like the corned beef on rye."

Making campaign accomodations? "Wow, this Holiday Inn Express is fit for an ex POW, which is me!"

Call of nature? "I need to visit the 'little boys' room, as us old prisioners of war sometimes do."

He's like Giuliani with 9/11. Anytime he's in trouble, they just start shouting "POW! POW! POW!" like some magical incantation.

But let them do it. By November, people will be sick of his excuses.

effected his ability to reason, thus making his judgment suspect.

SUPERB, lurky!!!

That pretty concisely sums it up.

Thank you, rick warren, for accidently forgetting to zip yourself up before you went out in public. Your "slip" is showing!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

Let's kick this debate up another notch -- POW!

Or use those old Batman splashes from the TV show whenever he speaks: "POW!" "BANG!" "ZOWIE!" "OOF!!!"

No, it's not funny. It cheapens the legitimate suffering he and many others went through.

by the thugs and the complicit media for having three purple hearts (a separate slam from the swiftboating). He was accused of using that the same way McCain is using the POW mantra.

Take your pick.

How much more transparent can these idiots be?

It's the only thing that make sense, he must have had it changed to "John McCain, a former prisoner of war" So we can look forward to John McCain, a former prisoner of war's economic plan, John McCain, a former prisoner of war's favorate ice cream flavor and singing along to "...Happy birthday dear John McCain, a former prisoner of war, happy birthday to you" for his 74th birthday.

MaGoo's first wife if a POW cheats.

that is what it would say.

Seriously though that's pretty insulting to whip out "the card" like that willy nilly.

Holy Biden, Batman!

It's in his/their answer to everything.

Earmarks? I was a prisoner of war during Woodstock, so, of course...

Voting against MLK Day? I was a prisoner of war when MLK got shot. Heard it over the radio at the Hanoi Hilton, so, of course...

Cheating on his wife? He was a prisoner of war when she got herself into that nasty car accident, so, quite naturally...

Cone of silence? He was a prisoner of war in "Nam, so, of course....he was in a cone of silence in 2008.

(albeit allegedly because of his own carelessness) that he is incapable of lying through his freakin teeth is outrageous. The man lies...err, misspeaks, at almost every turn!!

nt

McSame McLame is a cheater and nothing has changed since he cheated on his wife, Carol, and was a member of the Cheating Keating Five.

Directly equivalent to: Never "expect it" and "to rain" and "when it gets cloudy."

Fixed.

Okay, so that's snarky. Let me restate it: never trust a preacher if what he's telling you is based on unproven mythological nonsense.

Is the journalist here just an ignorant twit who doesn't know the difference between "implied" and "stated," or was she just instructed to elide the truth so that when this came out it wouldn't seem as if a promise was actually broken?

Who is this Rick Warren character anyway? As far as we know he could have slipped McCain the questions days in advance.

-trick is-his people were not. They'd do the prep, giving him questions and how he needs to handle. And of course throwing in POW pow pow pow pow pow.

which means IT DIDN'T

Looks like we are getting closer to the truth. Put this together with the odd way McCain could predict questions and he looks very guilty.

The OP should have 50 Recommends.

Thanks, kskiska!

questions before the interviewer was finished asking them. I believe that he was given these questions before this event. He was way smoother than he normally is. If that was the "real" McCain then he should have given up the TelePrompter's years ago! How can we have a debate with them not knowing the questions ahead of time. Obama looked like he was coming up with the answers as he was asked....Thinking through each one and answering with such depth. McCain was another Bush or Regan all performance no substance!

what a surprise. POS

the last sentence in the story:

"Interviewed Sunday on CNN, Mr. Warren seemed surprised to learn that Mr. McCain was not in the building during the Obama interview."

...as you say, 'what a surprise'

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on the back of my car!

But they give the time as a full hour, so supposedly McCain only could have heard half. But Obama's segment only lasted 44 minutes, so McCain could have listened to nearly all of it.

http://www.c-span.org/

and talking to him and/or his aides on his cell phone while he was in the car. Meanwhile, his aides in the car were tutoring him while they drove.

During the opening comments of the event, Rev. Warren stated that Obama would be interviewed first, based on some system, like a flip of a coin or something.

If Crash McCain was not on the church premises yet--as much as a half-hour late according to some posts--what would they have done if Crash was to have gone first?

Or, did they really have a system to determine who was questioned first, and they were too happy to accommodate McCain by giving him the advantage of being interviewed after Obama, and throw out this 'cone of silence' bullshit to the audience?

When Andrea Mitchell raises this question on a national TV program, you know something smells rotten.

Crash was a lot smoother in his answers in this interview. Cripe, any other time he's had to field questions, he stammers and stutters around and talks slow and calculated. He acts like he needs a script to know when to take a shit.

He was in a regular room in the church and I'm sure that everything could be heard throughout that church or the audience wouldn't have been able to hear.

Check out the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n83M-jgOaJQ&eurl=http://...

CHEATER!

What the hell else explains his policy positions?

Hiding a real scandal behind a less damaging one is typical Rove distraction politics. The plagiarism thing could never be proved. We can prove that McCain was not in a "cone of silence"----meaning the preacher LIED .

This is Big Time!

I think people misinterpret all of this. For McCain, he needed to kiss Fudagelical ass. For Obama, I think he needed to convince everyone that he was not the anti-christ. Besides Obama not telling them that he is anti-abortion as they would have liked, he said that he didn't know when human life began.

The vast majority of people who paid attention to this were NOT going to vote for Obama. The question was, would they show up just to vote AGAINST Obama and FOR a man that they do not like ... John McCain.

From that standpoint, I think McCain lost. He can kiss ass 24-7 from now until the election. John McCain has been needling these people for a long time and quite a few are likely to remember. Conversely, by showing up and answering Christian questions, I think Obama convinced the fundagelicals that he is in fact NOT the anti-christ.

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let him prove it isn't true. But, consider it dropped.

McCain didn't mention his tardiness when Warren asked him how he liked being in the cone of silence:

Warren: NOW MY FIRST QUESTION WAS THE CONE OF SILENCE COMFORTABLE THAT YOU WERE IN JUST NOW?

McCain: I WAS TRYING TO HEAR THROUGH THE WALL.

Everyone should always remember that Repubs can't campaign on the issues, can't tell the truth, they always have to cheat and lie over and over again!

When, oh when, will we learn that Xtian Fundies ARE NOT TO BE TRUSTED. They are the enemies of Democracy and reason.

J

Do you seriously think some Freeper wouldn't slip them to him long before?

C'mon. This is national politics we're talking about.

Not necessarily a freeper, but Warren, or some member of his staff.

they all had shit-eating grins on their faces, especially Lindsey Graham, so I wondered what was up...they watched the beginning in the limo and couched Sir McCain, I'll bet.

Bill Casey's Theft and Reagan's Debate Performance

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan met in a presidential debate. Many people were impressed at how well Reagan conducted himself in the debate. Three years later, the facts behind Reagan's superior performance came out.

In a 1983 book, Gambling with History, Time correspondent Laurence Barrett revealed that Reagan campaign aides "filched" (stole) President Carter's briefing papers to help prepare Reagan for the 1980 debate. Chief of Staff James Baker would later say that Reagan's campaign manager William Casey was the thief.

Ronald Reagan did not deny the theft, he defended it. Using a twisted analogy Reagan said, "It probably wasn't too much different than the press rushing into print with the Pentagon Papers."

Upon assuming the presidency, Reagan appointed William Casey to head the Central Intelligence Agency. Casey would later become chief architect of the clandestine Iran-contra operation.

http://www.geocities.com/thereaganyears/1980election.ht...

Warren had no idea where McCain was when he said he was in the cone of silence.

He should be exposed as a deceptive flak as much as McCain. If someone on his staff told him McCain was in house safely tucked away, then Warren should expose and fire that person publicly.

Warren, btw, the moonies claim they have met with him three times and he is OK with Moon.

This is just so pathetic. A supposed Christian Preacher, a supposed man of a moral God, lies and covers up for a two faced politician. See when religion and politics mix, they are both corrupted.

Obama gave thoughtful answers, explained his reasoning

mccain spoke in soundbites, slogans and cliches

Suspend belief for a moment and assume Warren didn't know McCain wasn't in the building and under a cone of silence.

This brings up other questions.

Did McCain Lie? Nicolle Wallace, a spokeswoman for Mr. McCain, said he was in a motorcade during Obama's appearance.

Yet, when asked "....was the cone of silence comfortable...?". McCain replied "“I was trying to hear through the wall.”

Do Motorcades have walls? If so, did McCain really expect to be able to "hear" through a wall when he was miles away?

What type of audio/video/communication equipment did the McCain motorcade have? Were there any McCain staffers/supporters reporting via cellphone/texting/blogging to McCain's motorcade. McCain's answers to questions were sound-bitey, sloganing - the kind of answers that one would expect if short on prep time and ones that would be easy to remember.

Is this another case of John McCain not speaking for the John McCain campaign?

I watched the rerun, and the questions to the candidates were significantly different. Obama's were tough for a Dem and designed to push him to either offend the fundies or his base, such as his definition of marriage, position on abortion, his stance on gov't funding for faith-based orgs. They gave McCain some of those questions, but notably not the one on abortion, or, that I remember, the one on funding the "faith-based" programs. They gave them both a pass on repealing the Bush tax cuts on capital gains and corporate taxation. Nor were there any questions on the environment including any on their voting record on it. Obama did not get a question on how he planned to deal with the energy crisis (so he didn't get to disabuse this audience that his sole plan was for Americans to inflate their tires), but McCain did--see below.

Then the rest of the stuff they asked McCain was taken directly from the script of his standard stump speech. McCain got enormous applause with his conviction that by seeing the soldiers in Iraq he was convinced "we will win" (loud applause), and wasn't questioned on his record of voting against veterans' benefits. And neither the pastor/author (who's name escapes me), nor the audience (going by the cheering) seemed to have any problem with the Christianity of waging endless elective war, or government abandonment of the working poor. BTW, it seems a vote for McCain is a vote for an entirely radioactive future(huge applause). He said he wanted to emulate the French in what he claimed is their 80% reliance on nuclear power. And when he heard a little hesitance in the audience, he informed them that "France now has a pro-American President." (great sigh of relief in room) They asked them both at what point increased taxes for the rich would kick in and Obama said over $250K and spoke about responsibility to future generations, while apparently McCain expects to stop taxing everybody entirely and instead start handing out money. That was very popular.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLZKEre3yJ0

Check out the latest comment listed under the video!










*edit to fix link

...before Warren finished asking them, and his answers seemed too "contrived".

Republican values. FURW

Life Imitates Art:

From Wikipedia- Cone of Silence (1960 film)

Captain George Gort, a pilot for British Empire Airways, is found to be at fault after crashing his Phoenix 1 jetliner, killing his co-pilot, on takeoff from Ranjibad airport in Pakistan . He is accused of rotating too early, increasing drag to such an extent that the aircraft cannot achieve flying speed.

Gort is reprimanded but is allowed to return to flying the Phoenix after a check flight under Captain Hugh Dallas.


Gort is later involved in a second crash, this time killing all on board. The crash is remarkably similar to the first - both involve a fully-loaded aircraft on a hot night, taking off under Captain Gort from the same runway at Ranjibad airport.

So from now on he should be known as McCaptain Gort.

Speaking of Phoenix,you should check this site for some...interesting articles about

McSlime: http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/mccain

McGeezer usually stumbles around the questions, getting his facts mixed up and getting all flustered.

This time he did not - 1 + 1 = 2.

.... ahead of time.


“The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former
prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous,” Ms. Wallace said.

army of transcribers with answers at the ready.

Good grief, even the church lies.

.....prior to the appearances of each candidate? I think most of us understand the meaning of republican honor

when he debated Kerry. Remember that? What a bunch of cheaters!!!

that the hump on Bush's back when he debated Kerry was Joey "Lips" Lieberman's mouth.

This whole event just gets funnier and funnier. When it was over and all of the balloonheads were analyzing every "and" and "the", Chuck Todd - who is becoming more and more like his dunderheaded brethren Russert, Broder, Brooks and Brokaw by the minute - was raving hysterically about how Obama better watch his ass because McCain was going to DESTROY HIM just like Rambo when he rewon the Vietnam War! But this wasn't a true debate in the first place. It is meaningless to the majority of Americans, who weren't even watching. It was on a Saturday night against the Olympics, for Christ's sake (no pun intended, Mr. Warren). But it is the McCain campaign that is delusional if they thought that this would help McCain in the long run, because a good performance at this "forum" - whether they knew the questions in advance or not, although personally, from the knowledge we have of Republican values- which are nil- I believe they DID know, considering that Charlie Black and Steve Schmidt have the ethics of a 3-card monte scam artist - only increases expectations for a good performance during the debates, and I have a strong feeling that tired, pasty, confused and self-important Mr. McCain will have to struggle to keep up with Obama during these events. You cannot constantly fall back on your POW status when you are trying to defend yourself against voting with Bush 95% of the time, and trying to start a war with Russia to make political points during a presidential election.

How shocking.

It's not exactly like they're setting a precedent here.
Why do we fall for this stuff? This is like Lucy pulling
the football away from Charlie Brown every fall. It happens
every time. We KNOW it will happen every time. It's time
we kicked Lucy instead of empty air.

If Granpa needs to be fed questions before(dejavu Hillary?) then he must be one sorry debater.

He's a Reverend with an agenda, and that agenda trumps truth.

If McCain wasn't there?

How could Rick Warren not know McCain wasn't there?

If McCain wasn't there, why wasn't the start of Obama's interview delayed until he got there?


Enquiring minds want to know

Barack did pretty well, playing especially well to the constituencies he needs on election day - and that does NOT include Evangelicals.

That was the point.

How's McCain going to look when key swing voter constituencies actually start to pay attention?

The whole thing was staged to make McCain look good.

What are these guys made of? Their lust for controlling the levers of power is so great that they are willing to bend every norm of decency , every rule in the book and everything that can be called fair.

It is time to quit whining. We need to fight this like a war - Everything is fair in war.

Instead they spend it on lavish churches way out in the suburbs and waste money on dumb debates like this. These mega churches are going to default on their mortgages pretty soon.

Even if McCain was in soundproof room .. what is there to prevent him from listening in with his cell phone and from being coached by his campaign staff on the answers ..

This is a cone of puke <--- See

cross posted on the video link as well

so now we are supposed to throw all REASON aside not just some.

reason says:

he cheated before, in many areas of his life. he cheated at school. he cheated on his wife. he cheated as a POW. He's cheated in this race. he's cheated with the keating 5 scandal. he cheated with the private jet rides from the female lobbyist for whom he did many personal favors in an unethical way by granting her/her company the pull they wanted in congress. he cheated by not paying his property taxes in california. is there an area of life I've left out?

so he cheated in all of these ways, but we are supposed to ASSUME that while he had both means, opporunity and motive, he chose to do the right thing and NOT cheat?

that is illogical. the logical conclusion is that he did cheat. Of course he did. can he prove that he has fundamentally changed as a man since he last cheated?

and frankly, I find this entire thing unsettling. I tried yesterday to go along, bring in the moderate christian vote, etc -- but when we are having a particular religion vet our presidents in a government which specifically states separation of church and state so we may be free to practice all or no religion, it is patently WRONG. And involves setting aside a certain amount of reason just in the allowing of such a panel to take place.

and now they want us to set aside ALL reason in the name of faith? No, this is not the age of darkness. We must come back to reason before all is lost. the age of fanaticism is dangerous and has compelled such siren songs to abandon all thought, reason and discourse.

I was willing to be both reason and faith, but under no circumstances should we allow this to continue down the path of all faith (in people, no less, not gods) and no reason.

Lake Forest (Main Campus)
1 Saddleback Pkwy
Lake Forest, CA 92630
Phone:
(949) 609-8000
E-mail:
info@saddleback.net

quack quack.

... that he simply was better prepared? He's had twenty years to fine-tune his message to fire the right neurons among evangelicals.

Talking religion isn't something that Obama has as much practice, nor are evangelicals attuned to hearing his style of it.

No.. It's not possible.

Better prepared than who, than what? Than himself just days or weeks before? He "suddenly" develops the skill of being able to put two sentences together without stuttering???

Even though McCain cheated... Obama still wiped the floor with him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqcSWI6Ppks&feature=rela...