The Stars Hollow Gazette w/ Updates

Picking Fights and Drawing Lines in the Dirt.

Oh Noses. Daily Kos once again has it’s recommended list filled with scurrilous Consipracy Theories (CT stands for “Completely True” BTW).

While the point of this story doesn’t depend on the particulars I’ll briefly rehearse them so you understand the issues I’m really addressing.

So at Rick Warren’s “debate” John McCain told this heartfelt story about how he shared a moment of Christian worship with a guard who scratched out a cross in the dirt at his feet.  One problem with that story is it’s been attributed to Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

In Honor of Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Writer, Leader, Hero

Monday, August 04, 2008

By Paul M. Weyrich

This man who Solzhenitsyn said he had never seen at the gulag took a stick and drew a cross in the dirt. And he left, never to be seen again. Solzhenitsyn later came to believe that that kindly figure was Christ himself.

Other details differ, in Solzhenitsyn’s story the person who scratches the cross in the dirt is a fellow prisoner.

I can’t myself prove it comes from The Gulag Archipelago, it’s Googlebook search indicates no relevant matches from ‘cross’ or ‘dirt’ or ‘guard’, but there are redacted pages and I don’t have an account.  It might be from One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, I haven’t checked that.

What I do know is that Paul Weyrich is this Paul Weyrich and if he remembers it from TWO STINKING WEEKS AGO! so should John McShame or at least his PLAGIRIZING SPEECH WRITERS!  Otherwise they’re incompetent fools.

Just like when they plagiarized the Wikipedia article about Georgia (last week!) and those cookie recipes.

Thought seems to be split into three main camps, ‘Completely True’, ‘Cone of Silence’, and ‘Shut Up’.  ‘Cone of Silence’ isn’t what you think, it’s the contention that McShame’s cheating by knowing the questions before is the more important story.

‘Shut Up’ is exactly what you would think, Democrats too cowardly to challenge McShame’s character as if Mr. Wetstart had any.

‘Cone of Silence’ gains traction in Corporate Media-

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

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE, The New York Times

Published: August 17, 2008

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

Members of the McCain campaign staff, who 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 author of the best-selling book “The Purpose Driven Life.”

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.

McShame pushes back against ‘The Cone of Silence’-

McCain protests NBC coverage

By MIKE ALLEN, Politico

8/17/08 11:32 PM EST

Warren referred again to “the cone of silence” when McCain came onstage, and the senator joked: “I was trying to hear through the wall.”

Mitchell reported that some “Obama people” were suggesting “that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama. He seemed so well prepared.”

A McCain aide said that is not the case: “Senator McCain was in a motorcade led by the United States Secret Service and held in a green room with no broadcast feed.”

Likewise ‘Plagiarism-gate’-

Is McCain Now Copying Solzhenitsyn?

By Taegan Goddard, Political Insider @ CQ Politics

August 17, 2008 8:23 PM

Last week, a speech by Sen. John McCain had phrases that were likely lifted directly from Wikipedia.

Now it seems McCain may have lifted another story last night at megachurch pastor Rick Warren’s Faith Forum. According to a very persuasive Daily Kos diary, the anecdote McCain told about a North Vietnamese prison guard making a cross in the dirt as a sign of solidarity — or as he said, “just two Christians worshiping together” — is very similar to a story about Alexander Solzhenitsyn and his times in the Soviet Gulags.

Also ‘Evil-gate’-

McCain cites questionable story on ‘evil’

Ben Smith, Politico

August 17, 2008

A reader points out that John McCain’s example of pure evil yesterday rests on a story asserted by Iraqi officials, but since cast into doubt.

“Not long ago in Baghdad, Al Qaeda took two young women who were mentally disabled and put suicide vests on them, sent them into a marketplace, and by remote control, detonated those suicide vests,” McCain told Rick Warren. “If that isn’t evil, you have to tell me what is.”

The horrifying story that terrorists used two women with Down Syndrome to carry bombs was a sensation in February, but The New York Times later suggested it hadn’t happened that way: