Zero Class
The flag at the White House is back up to full staff:
Camera shot facing south over the White House – you can see the flag at the WH at full staff while the flags surrounding the Washington Monument are lowered pic.twitter.com/xT2KdPLgpB
— Karen Travers (@karentravers) August 27, 2018
President Donald Trump reportedly rejected sending out a statement praising Sen. John McCain, opting instead to write a short tweet.
According to the Washington Post, Trump nixed the statement, despite calls from his senior aides, including press secretary Sarah Sanders and Chief of Staff John Kelly.
The statement, drafted before the senator’s death Saturday, would have commended the Arizona Republican for his military service and his decades in the Senate. It also would have called him a “hero.” A final draft of the statement was ready for the president’s approval, per the Post.
But Trump reportedly told his aides that he’d prefer to send out a tweet. In that missive, he was brief – and his words focused on the McCain family and didn’t offer praise for the senator’s legacy.
He doesn’t want to do anything to take back his campaign-era slander of McCain.
Petty, childish … and typical.
UPDATE: He let himself be pressured into reversing himself. Cuck!
[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]
Follows WH flag protocol.
steveg (a9dcab) — 8/27/2018 @ 8:07 amCapitol holds at half staff until member is buried
Trump can and has ordered flags held longer at half staff.
steveg (a9dcab) — 8/27/2018 @ 8:10 amMy guess is it will be lowered by later today or tomorrow and Trump will make his statement… although if you recall, part of McCain’s last wishes was for Trump to stay the “F” out
While I hate to defend President Trump, in this case, I think he has followed the standard protocol established by Eisenhower in 1954.
For members of congress, flags in Washington fly half-staff on the day of death and the day after. In the deceased’s state, flags on federal buildings, etc, fly half-staff until burial:
(emphasis added)
Dave (445e97) — 8/27/2018 @ 8:10 amAs for the statement, or lack thereof, unless he is prepared to sincerely recant his slanders (yeah, right), I think it best for him to stay silent.
Dave (445e97) — 8/27/2018 @ 8:15 amThumb down.
Ed from SFV (6d42fa) — 8/27/2018 @ 8:16 amYes, but it is not the recent tradition. He has cover, though, and his fans will cite that.
It’s also standard protocol to nix a presidential statement calling a war hero a hero, I think. That was Ike too?
Patterico (115b1f) — 8/27/2018 @ 8:17 amIf that were true, the flag would be at half-staff until this Saturday. No, Trump did the bare minimum, perhaps less than.
Paul Montagu (9dcfd2) — 8/27/2018 @ 8:21 amI believe that character matters. Even if you disagree with someone—even if they have done your wrong—how you treat them defines your character. I understand that few people posting will agree with me on this. And that’s fine.
I’ll stick with my late father’s admonition, stated above.
Simon Jester (c8876d) — 8/27/2018 @ 8:23 amDave, as I read the instructions, shouldn’t the White House flag be at half-staff today since today is the day after McCain died? But the flag is not at half-staff today.
DRJ (15874d) — 8/27/2018 @ 8:24 amI think the Capitol building flags may be at half-staff, Paul. It seems the only federal building flag that isn’t is at the White House.
DRJ (15874d) — 8/27/2018 @ 8:26 amTrump is doing what his base would want him to do.
nk (dbc370) — 8/27/2018 @ 8:27 amAlthough since there has been no federal Proclamation, I doubt federal buildings outside Arizona and DC are flying their flags at half-staff. It will be interesting to see when I go to the Post Office.
DRJ (15874d) — 8/27/2018 @ 8:28 amMcCain turned Manafort down.
Paul Montagu (9dcfd2) — 8/27/2018 @ 8:29 amThere are plenty of damning criticisms, many of which I have articulated myself, but I just think the WH flag is not one of them.
It wouldn’t surprise me if flag protocol matters like this were handled by some career apparatchik without any input at all from Cadet Bonespurs.
Dave (445e97) — 8/27/2018 @ 8:32 amNever mind. I was wrong. McCain died Saturday. I lost a day this weekend.
DRJ (15874d) — 8/27/2018 @ 8:35 amWikipedia says:
That was Saturday night; Sunday was the day following his death.
Dave (445e97) — 8/27/2018 @ 8:36 amThe more thongs change, heh nk:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6101807/Todays-online-insults-compared-public-slander-Rome.html
Narciso (dca1bc) — 8/27/2018 @ 8:36 amI think that’s a little backward. Anything and everything that Trump does somehow turns out to be exactly what his base wants. “There’s nothing he could do that would make me stop supporting him.”
Radegunda (400d36) — 8/27/2018 @ 8:51 amOh, and Putin sent his condolences, which I’m guessing McCain would’ve loved.
Except that I’m sure he’d rather be portrayed as an enemy of Putin, not Russia.
Paul Montagu (9dcfd2) — 8/27/2018 @ 8:52 amWe don’t get much thuringiams around here,
Narciso (dca1bc) — 8/27/2018 @ 9:07 amMy outrage is at eleventy!!!!!!!!!
Colonel Haiku (b35858) — 8/27/2018 @ 9:13 amThe fact is, that the Never Trumpers were already pushing a bogus – unsourced report – that Trump had vetoed a WH statement praising McCain. They weren’t going to praise Trump or not attack him, no matter what he did.
OMG, he only lowered the WH flag for 2 days! Instead of how many days?
How many days was the WH flag lowered for Ted Kennedy? Does anyone know? IRC, no one cared.
McCain SPECIFICALLY dis-invited the POTUS from his funeral. Now, that is Classless. Trump is doing the perfunctory minimum. Which is as it should be.
rcocean (1a839e) — 8/27/2018 @ 9:15 am“Petty, childish … and typical.”
A lot of that going around these days…
Colonel Haiku (b35858) — 8/27/2018 @ 9:16 am13, history might have been different given the connects between Manafort and Giuliani, damn.
urbanleftbehind (5eecdb) — 8/27/2018 @ 9:17 amIf classless, attack dog, McCain, who called his fellow Senators “Dumb beeps” and “Wacko Birds” and endlessly attacked Trump and the Tea party is the ideal American Pol – then why are you attacking Trump?
rcocean (1a839e) — 8/27/2018 @ 9:18 amMcCain’s service should certainly be noted.
OTOH: He called Tea Partiers “Whacko Birds”; John “Build the Dang Fence” McCain was so 2010, but then joined Gang of 8 iun 2013 to push amnesty and very, very, very little border wall or enforcement; sat in Arizona for nearly a year and held his seat, though he was unable to perform many of the functions required of a senator; won fewer primaries in 2008 than anyone in the previous 40 years and was convinced that his right flank needed to be helped he pick Palin and then turned around (with Schmidt) and proceeded to rip her for his loss. Not realizing the ONLY time he was ahead of Obama in 2008 was after he picked her; then squatted and left a duece by announcing he was suspending his campaign after the implosion of Lehman – when he had very little ability to really do anything as a senator; and let’s not forget the Keating 5.
His military service and sacrifice should be commended. But he was a bitter man who lashed out with personal invective at anyone who didn’t agree with him. And since the Dems agreed with him – after campaigning to end Obamacare and voted to do just that when there was no downside, let’s not forget that John McCain.
Steve_in_SoCal (7f58f2) — 8/27/2018 @ 9:20 amThanks #3.
So Trump was following protocol.
rcocean (1a839e) — 8/27/2018 @ 9:21 amTrump, has in fact, treated McCain with Kid gloves. Despite his betrayal on Obamacare (done by the way, in the usual smirky, classless McCain way, his endless attacks on Trump, his going overseas to criticize Trump to foreigners, his stabbing trump in the back with the Dossier, and his public funeral dis-invite – Trump has not responded.
He hasn’t criticized McCain by name, since his disease was made public. And he sent out a condolence tweet, lowered the flag to half staff, etc.
Lets be clear. McCain had no class, and bragged about “not being Miss Congeniality” – Trump treated him far better than McCain treated trump.
rcocean (1a839e) — 8/27/2018 @ 9:26 amTrump is doing the minimum, and maybe a bit less. McCain asked he be excluded from the funeral.
Reporting one slight as petty and the other slight as a courageous or understandable stance…Well, don’t do that. Settle on a standard, and apply it equally.
Appalled (a85fc3) — 8/27/2018 @ 9:26 amTrump just announced a new trade deal with Mexico to replace NAFTA. Now he’s ready to open negotiations with Canada. That’s progress and the partial fulfilment of yet another campaign promise.
Additionally, Mexico has agreed to accelerate purchases of US Agricultural products to compensate our farmers for stalled trade while negotiations were underway. Trump had acknowledged their sacrifice and asked for their continued support and patience. Mexico’s promise to buy in large quantities should go a long way toward making US farmers whole.
ropelight (91a9b9) — 8/27/2018 @ 9:27 am13) oddly deripasha still got more out of manafort, back then, then he did under trump, davis not only lobbied for Ukraine, but also for fannie mae, if memory served, only outfits like orion lobby for small defenseless countries, like say Montenegro,
narciso (d1f714) — 8/27/2018 @ 9:28 amfoer, was the one who put the alpha bank squirrel, under his byline at slate, wrote a long piece based on a dump from manafort, that helped me formulate my revenge theory about deripasha,
narciso (d1f714) — 8/27/2018 @ 9:33 am“Yes, but it is not the recent tradition. He has cover, though, and his fans will cite that.”
Interesting comment considering this “cover” was cited by one of T’s harshest critics on this site. Kudos to Dave.
Skorcher (5b282a) — 8/27/2018 @ 9:39 amthis was the little sparrow, who seems to have returned to her nest,
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/08/20/bingo-russian-escort-says-she-gave-recordings-of-deripaska-discussing-2016-election-back-to-deripaska/
now it seems he had connections as much to the democrats, through mark rich’s firm, and Belinda stronach’s husband as he had to the gop, david Vitter is representing his company,
narciso (d1f714) — 8/27/2018 @ 9:47 amTrump and Mccain hated each other. President Trump’s opponents in the GOPe, the MFM and the Dem party will stop at NOTHING to make him look bad. And let’s tell the truth; McCain in almost every dealing he had with anyone who dared disagreed with his often lunatic views was nasty and abrasive. And sadly this obsession with what is or is not “honorable” was exactly the kind of petty and undefined nonsense that characterized John McCain’s entire career. I wish McCain’s family some solace and peace; this warmongering loon rarely gave anyone else that chance. In fact, were it left to him, we would be at war in more places than you could count. Thank God, as awful as Obama was, McCain was never president.
Suggestion; you don’t like Trump, and perhaps you disagree with his policies. That’s your right. But some need to stop looking for petty and stupid reasons to badmouth him. As they say; get a new hobby.
Bugg (8aed21) — 8/27/2018 @ 9:50 amThanks, Dave. You gave us good information.
DRJ (15874d) — 8/27/2018 @ 9:57 am“Trump is doing what his base would want him to do.
nk (dbc370) — 8/27/2018 @ 8:27 am”
Yes, closing a new trade deal with Mexico. But many would prefer to ignore that. Better to get all worked up over rather a flag flew half staff long enough. The long term implications of that are so much greater.
Nate Ogden (223c65) — 8/27/2018 @ 10:00 amEisenhower’s proclamation tried to bring consistency to the flag issue but it is still the sitting President’s decision. Trump had trouble deciding what to do when the journalists were shot in Maryland, but he had no trouble criticizing Obama’s decision when servicemembers were shot in Tennessee. Even this is a political calculation.
DRJ (15874d) — 8/27/2018 @ 10:03 amis he from Hawaii:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-judge-extends-ban-of-online-3-d-printed-gun-blueprints/ar-BBMvYLd?ocid=spartandhp
intellectual property is not illegal is it,
narciso (d1f714) — 8/27/2018 @ 10:05 amNate, wasn’t it Trump and his supporters who argued that we need to enforce our immigration laws because we need to protect our values? This discussion is about American values. Do values matter or not?
DRJ (15874d) — 8/27/2018 @ 10:06 amApparently, Trump also will stop at nothing to make himself look bad.
Chuck Bartowski (bc1c71) — 8/27/2018 @ 10:15 amwell tom ‘red’ harkin’s protégé would say that, wouldn’t he:
https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2018/08/27/shocker-guess-who-chuck-todd-blames-for-distrust-in-media-hint-rhymes-with-socks-blues/
narciso (d1f714) — 8/27/2018 @ 10:21 amCharles-readily agree Trump often does himself no favors. Would contend he’s done the bare minimum here and it’s about what should be done, given the bad blood between him and McCain.
Bugg (8aed21) — 8/27/2018 @ 10:30 amWell, what do you expect?! He wiped his azz with it in Helsinki and keeps it high in the breeze to blow the stink off it.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/27/2018 @ 10:32 am“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”
Console yourself that he isn’t retweeting salty McCain memes. (And boy, there are some vicious ones.)
Ingot9455 (4db0d9) — 8/27/2018 @ 10:38 am@43.
Buggoff:
Suggestion; if you like Trump, stop looking for petty and stupid reasons to glad mouth him.
As they say; stop sniffing the glue and just get a new hobby.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/27/2018 @ 10:39 amGeraghty has a point about the fair-weather praise for McCain. As long as McCain didn’t threaten to take power from liberals, the Left really liked him. Otherwise, he was “erratic” and all kinds of other unkind words.
Paul Montagu (9dcfd2) — 8/27/2018 @ 10:43 amI think he has followed the standard protocol established by Eisenhower in 1954.
Guess they misplaced Ike’s old 48 star flag.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/27/2018 @ 10:44 amHe did not. I spent 20 years in Naval Intel and I am perfectly fine with what Trump said in Helsinki. I wish somebody said it earlier.
Steve57 (0b1dac) — 8/27/2018 @ 10:49 amI didn’t like the format.
Steve57 (0b1dac) — 8/27/2018 @ 10:49 amSeem to recall another ‘head of state’ perplexed by protocol who goofed up on lowering a flag out of simple respect and caught a lot of heat for it from the citizenry. Now what was her name… Helen… or Liz?
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/27/2018 @ 10:51 am@49. Except he did, Boris. Thanks for playing.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/27/2018 @ 10:52 am#41, you beat me to it. Trump looks bad on his own power, and Trumpistas keep insisting that he’s a much better person than he appears to be.
Their convenient fiction is that dislike of Trump is arbitrary, or merely about “style” (i.e. snobbish). They won’t admit the possibility that it’s because Trump is so grotesquely narcissistic and conceited; that he openly defines good and bad by what serves his ego; that his “unfiltered” style is not remotely rooted in honesty; that when he said “all my life I’ve been greedy, I grab and grab and grab,” it was a boast, not a confession; that he is quick to accuse others of sins but unwilling to acknowledge that he has any flaws at all. Recently he asserted that his only mistake in the presidency has been that other people aren’t praising him enough!
There’s plenty to find repellent about Donald Trump without even making any effort to find it.
Radegunda (400d36) — 8/27/2018 @ 10:55 amMcCain dealt with haters all his life. Trump’s disgraceful behavior and the cowardly way it’s been defended by dishonest hacks is actually a beautiful tribute to McCain’s career. It’s an honor to have been that hated by such terrible people.
Dustin (4b73e7) — 8/27/2018 @ 10:56 am“An egregious oversight at best…” spins Hewitt on MSNBC. Trying to defend pettiness is just petty.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/27/2018 @ 11:00 amPaul Montagu — depends. I voted for McCain in 2000, and while I voted for Obama in 2008, I never stopped *respecting* McCain.
aphrael (e0cdc9) — 8/27/2018 @ 11:03 am#40, DRJ, no, this isn’t about American values. It’s about manufacturing a virtue signaling pretext so the usual #NeverTrumpers can spew underhanded insults at Trump while wrapping themselves in patriotic platitudes.
The forms of Kanly have been satisfied, John McCain will receive all the honors his service earned, but that’s not good enough for the usual Trump bashers, they prefer to misuse McCain’s passing as a convenient excuse to continue their vitriolic campaign of smears and insults against President Trump.
ropelight (91a9b9) — 8/27/2018 @ 11:07 amah from the first of the first rendition,
https://saraacarter.com/major-potential-setback-for-muellers-trump-russia-report/
narciso (d1f714) — 8/27/2018 @ 11:12 amI think McCain’s going to be forgotten rather quickly. Most of his fans are never-trumpers and Democrats.
And the Democrats didn’t really like him, they just loved McCain’s “Maverick” act, where he’d attack his fellow Republicans. And the Never-Trumper’s are a small, but powerful/noisy, Minority.
Most Republicans -especially those outside DC and Arz – couldn’t stand him. People forget he got nominated in 2008, with about 40% of the vote. There’s not a lot of grief from “The base”.
rcocean (1a839e) — 8/27/2018 @ 11:12 am“Publicly, Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who passed away yesterday, is being mourned as a statesman and war hero who survived torture in the Hanoi Hilton. Privately, former colleagues, Republican party officials, and conservative activists see a more complicated picture of his legacy. To them, McCain’s legacy is studded with scandals and political betrayals that few want to discuss openly. “John McCain was a maverick in the sense you never knew when he was going to vote with the Democrats instead of the Republicans,” said The Stream Senior Editor and Townhall.com contributor Rachel Alexander. The Arizona resident, a longtime McCain constituent, told AMI that while McCain “was a bit of a hawk” on foreign policy, the Vietnam war hero’s rhetoric rarely matched his record. “He called himself pro-life, but advocated for government-funded embryonic stem cell research. He said he was pro-Second Amendment, but led calls to end the so-called gunshow loophole.”
“Conservatives were wary of him,” said Alexander, “but he ran a powerful political machine in Arizona that went around them to help him repeatedly get reelected. He may not have been the most likable guy in politics, but he was one of the most savvy.”
John McCain’s father, a career navy man who climbed to admiral and was stationed in the Panama Canal Zone, where the future U.S. senator was born – a tropical birthplace that would later became a liability since it raised constitutional questions surrounding his campaign.
Certainly, McCain‘s life was one of high drama from his graduating 894th in a class of 899, near the bottom of his class from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, to his heroic war record in the skies over North Viet Nam, his poise during torture sessions as prisoner of that communist dictatorship, his release and recovery, and his political career. The latter was marked by campaign-finance scandal and his campaign-finance reforms–which some see as historic and others view as unconstitutional. Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned key elements of his best-known legislative work, known as the McCain-Feingold Act.
After graduating from Annapolis, the young McCain requested a combat assignment and was duly assigned to the USS Forrestal in Vietnam. For McCain, such an assignment played to his need to live-up to the heroic footsteps of his idol President Theodore Roosevelt. But deploying the son of a U.S. admiral to the combat zone also heightened the risk to his fellow sailors as he immediately became a target for the communist regime. Ultimately, McCain‘s shoot-down and capture was a major propaganda coup for the enemy.
McCain arrived on the USS Forrestal in 1967 in time to survive a serious fire aboard ship that year. While flying over North Vietnam on October 26th, his plane was shot down. After being badly beaten, McCain was moved to Hỏa Lò Prison, also known as the “Hanoi Hilton.”
McCain’s capture was particuarily hard on his first wife, Carol. She led a national effort to free him as a POW. Her movement invented the POW black flag and the bracelets with prisoner’s names on them. A year before he was freed, she was injured in a car accident and walked with a shortened leg.
McCain met Cindy Lou Hensley, a beer distributorship heiress, in April 1979. He quickly secured a divorce from his first wife, Carol, and married the moneyed Hensley. His first wife was decidedly middle-class…”
https://aminewswire.org/stories/conservatives-john-mccain-leaves-behind-mixed-legacy/
Colonel Haiku (b35858) — 8/27/2018 @ 11:13 am@47. Don’t be childish.
He can keep his Trump Organization flag flying high. But the WH flag is not his alone. It’s ours. And when Trump croaks, it’ll be lowered- and lowered for only one reason:
“Captain Sobel, we salute the rank, not the man.” – Dick Winters [Damian Lewis] Band of Brothers, HBO TV, 2001
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/27/2018 @ 11:15 am“OBAMA JUDGE KILLS TRUMP ORDER TO DRAIN DEEPEST PART OF THE SWAMP: No part of the Washington Swamp is more deeply entrenched than the federal bureaucrat unions. So it was no surprise when the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) filed suit against President Donald Trump’s May 25 Executive Order (EO) directly challenging the bureaucrat unions’ power and perks.
Today, a Department of Justice spokesman hems and haws on what the administration will do in response to an Obama-appointed federal judge’s ruling late Friday striking down most of Trump’s EO. LifeZette’s Connor Wolf puts it all in proper context. This is VIP because if Trump can make Mexico pay for that wall, maybe he can also penetrate the bureaucrat wall that protects Washington against genuine reform.”
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/obama-judge-kills-trump-order-to-drain-deepest-part-of-the-swamp-no-part-of-the-washington-swamp-is/
Colonel Haiku (b35858) — 8/27/2018 @ 11:19 ambruce ohr will be testifying tomorrow, fwiw,
narciso (d1f714) — 8/27/2018 @ 11:22 amMy dad, the sainted Senior Chief Radioman, taught me that. If you had to salute the man I wouldn’t have rated one salute in ten.
And here’s the dealio. I got to return the salutes. Actually I was oblligated. But I’d rather say I got to because it’s a volunteer force. And everyone who saluted me deserved the salute back.
Steve57 (0b1dac) — 8/27/2018 @ 11:31 amThis would be true even if we had the draft.
Steve57 (0b1dac) — 8/27/2018 @ 11:40 am@38. Remember, DRJ, the Trump MO is SOP. In this case, ‘how do I make McCain’s death about me?’
By messing w/t WH flag.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/27/2018 @ 11:41 amOn my screen, #47 is my comment but it has nothing to do with the flag.
Paul Montagu (9dcfd2) — 8/27/2018 @ 11:46 amDemocrat trans-specied hold a dance tribute to Senator McCain… http://ace.mu.nu/archives/trolling%20attenborough.jpg
Colonel Haiku (b35858) — 8/27/2018 @ 12:03 pmrcocean, maybe McCain is forgotten. You sure seem to think about him and talk about him a lot, so at least I know you’ll remember Mccain for us.
Trump too, will certainly be someone the world remembers. Russians will forever know him as the weak man they were able to blackmail, and through him greatly corrode that shining beacon of freedom and democracy in the west. I believe Trump will probably be impeached, and we will learn a great deal about his collusion with the Russians… his placing himself above our democracy. He’s already a disgrace as a patriot for dodging the draft and insulting POWs, already a disgrace for the whoring and frauds he’s paid out for, both in court and in the dark, but the larger memory of Trump will relate to his campaign’s criminal behavior… at this point the convictions have already stacked up and no honest person denied his campaign’s criminality.
When Trump’s fans bash anyone’s legacy they do have a point. Trump will be remembered for centuries as an example of evil. He will be associated with Benedict Arnold and Neville Chamberlain and Jane Fonda. No exaggeration at all, and in fact I think Trump will be someone his supporters pretend they never liked (they have already started doing this).
Dustin (ba94b2) — 8/27/2018 @ 12:05 pmI doubt that anyone will remember Jane Fonda, one way or another, once the Vietnam era generation passes.
aphrael (e0cdc9) — 8/27/2018 @ 12:11 pm“Trump too, will certainly be someone the world remembers. Russians will forever know him as the weak man they were able to blackmail, and through him greatly corrode that shining beacon of freedom and democracy in the west”
Unless there is proof, that is a lie.
Colonel Haiku (b35858) — 8/27/2018 @ 12:11 pm@67. The battles are over.
The man is dead; died in office.
Honor his memory; dip the colors and bury him.
End of story.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/27/2018 @ 12:11 pm> The forms of Kanly have been satisfied
no, they really haven’t. not flying the flag at half mast until the funeral may be consistent with the *technical rules*, but it’s not consistent with *customary behavior in recent decades* — so to anyone who is familiar with that customary behavior, the decision to abide by the formal rules comes across as a calculated insult.
aphrael (e0cdc9) — 8/27/2018 @ 12:13 pm> How many days was the WH flag lowered for Ted Kennedy?
from the announcement of his death until his burial. Same for Inouye.
Seems like a reasonable ceremonial for a Senator who dies in office, to me.
aphrael (e0cdc9) — 8/27/2018 @ 12:15 pmAnd that lie goes well beyond even the squirreliest takes proffered by the far-left politicians… https://t.co/XeeePoTfOZ
Colonel Haiku (b35858) — 8/27/2018 @ 12:20 pmNo matter how much one disapproves of any number of things that McCain did (and I disapproved of a lot), any decent person would have been — any truly decent person was — appalled by Trump’s “I like guys who weren’t captured” remark.
It was a pathetic effort to posture as the really tough guy. What made it even more obscene was that it came from someone who had boasted that dodging STDs was his own “personal Vietnam.” All together, it revealed a dearth of human empathy and an absence of moral self-awareness.
Radegunda (400d36) — 8/27/2018 @ 12:22 pm> it revealed a dearth of human empathy and an absence of moral self-awareness.
I agree, and one of the things that disturbs me the most about our current political landscape is the number of people who cheer him on *because* of that dearth of empathy and moral self-awareness. There’s a crowd of Trumpists online for whom empathy is a dirty word, and that crowd has become far too prominent in our political discourse.
aphrael (e0cdc9) — 8/27/2018 @ 12:24 pm@71. =Haikhrushchev!= Gesputinheit!
Still Helstinki, Red.
Do something about that pink eye; then honor America: shower.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/27/2018 @ 12:27 pmYeah, preach it, lefty… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kckEBAuaehE
Colonel Haiku (b35858) — 8/27/2018 @ 12:27 pmyet he was friends with john Kerry, a man who defamed all servicemen in Vietnam, would have done the same had we gone to war with Nicaragua, and resumed course in Iraq, saying service personnel were ‘terrorizing’ Iraqi civilians,
narciso (d1f714) — 8/27/2018 @ 12:36 pm@77 — to make it more bizarre, there are influential Trumpistas who claim that Trump has more empathy then all of his rivals and critics. And the evidence is that crowds adore him. It doesn’t occur to those deep thinkers that crowds have often latched on to fantasy heroes who use them for self-centered purposes.
Radegunda (400d36) — 8/27/2018 @ 12:52 pm@77 — Trumpistas love to bat down criticism of character by saying things like “You gave us nice guys like Mitt Romney, and look where that got us!” As if Trump would have beat Obama in 2012!
Radegunda (400d36) — 8/27/2018 @ 12:56 pm@80, and Trump thought Hillary Clinton was a “really good” person who would make a “terrific” president, until approximately the moment he decided to run for president at the same time.
Radegunda (400d36) — 8/27/2018 @ 12:58 pmHannity must have called in:
White House has re-lowered flag to half-mast.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/27/2018 @ 12:59 pmWH statement says U.S. flag will remain at half-mast until McCain is interred.
It took a while for Elizabeth to catch on and get the message, too.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/27/2018 @ 1:11 pmThe problem I had with Trump slamming McCain using the line “I like people who don’t get captured” was not about McCain at all, it was about the 100,000’s of other Americans who have been POW’s.
Trump and McCain didn’t like each other; humans are like that. But Trump should have been more precise in his language.
steveg (a9dcab) — 8/27/2018 @ 1:32 pmI SMELL DSCIA BEING ANNOYING AND BOTLIKE AGAIN IN THE WAKE OF THE DEATH OF THE DADDY’S BOY WHO ACTIVELY SYMPATHIZED, VOTED FOR, OR STRONLY SUPPORTED ALL OF THE FOLLOWING INSULTS AGAINST THE RIGHTS AND FORTUNES OF AMERICANS:
““Do I think Russia is spying on us and being sneakily provocative? Hell yes. Do I trust their government or their leader? 100% no. But…
The Russian intelligence services aren’t recording and storing every call, text, and e-mail made in the US. That would be our own NSA, which stores all that in their yottabyte(!)-capacity facility in Utah.
Putin and the Russian army didn’t fund, train, and encourage ISIS, that would be elements in our own intelligence community, some say CIA, but really, who cares exactly who it was (is). It sure as hell wasn’t Spetznaz.
The Russians didn’t decide, while US troops were busily engaged in a long, exhausting counterinsurgency, that those very same fighters were the most likely people to engage in domestic terrorism. That would have been Janet Napolitano and Homeland Security.
GRU agents weren’t the ones harassing and targeting honest (if a little naive) tea party people. That would have been our very own IRS.
Russian internal security people aren’t the ones pulling old ladies and little girls aside at the airport and molesting them – we have our own TSA to thank for that.
Russia Today/Pravda/TASS/etc weren’t the ones that told us that Trayvon was an innocent 12 year old, that Mike Brown was a gentle giant, that Bruce Jenner had always been at war with Eastasia, er, been a woman, or that Mitt Romney(!) wanted to kill your grandmother. Our very own MSM was quite capable of that all on their own.
Russia’s foreign ministry wasn’t the agency that decided that Libya, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, etc. needed to be destabilized and turned into nightmarish abbatoirs. That was OUR own Department of State.””
President Trump is the only one whose judgment on McCain I trust, because President Trump is likely the only one with access to the original redacted records and the motivation and wherewithal to access, declassify, and release them. And as Lindsey Graham once said, he’s best compared to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
But when it comes to a man whose father who was ADMIRAL OF THE PACIFIC FLEET, all incredulity at his story of astonishing heroism that was never supported or corroborrated by his conduct afterward goes out the window.
Why respect anyone’s judgment of Trump after their unquestioning and full-throated paeans to a man who treated his voters far worse, far more reliably, far longer, with far fewer results?
Why celebrate uncritically a man who supposedly endured grave torture for his men (who were totally not motivated to tell untruths at the behest of the ADMIRAL OF THE PACIFIC FLEET) when he got home, saw that his wife had endured similar excruciating pains and recovery on the civilian side, and chose to dump her for a newer model before he got into politics?
The Reagans, much like Trump, looked at his record and treated McCain with the same dismissive perfunctory-and-no-more respect that all shameless opportunists deserve.
Steppe Nomad (8d58d5) — 8/27/2018 @ 1:36 pm#83
I think Trump has genuine empathy and admiration for certain individuals, groups of people.
He also clearly despises some individuals, groups of people.
I think it is fairly easy to know where you are on the Trump scale of empathy and admiration
steveg (a9dcab) — 8/27/2018 @ 1:41 pmI like people who don’t go off unhinged on sisters of POWs in the halls of Congress:
“The devices were primarily motion sensors, dropped by air, designed to pick up enemy troop movements. But they also had rescue capabilities. Someone on the ground — a downed airman or a prisoner on a labor gang — could manually enter data into the sensor, which were regularly collected electronically by US planes flying overhead. Alfond stated, without any challenge from the committee, that in 1974, a year after the supposedly complete return of prisoners, the gathered data showed that a person or people had manually entered into the sensors — as US pilots had been trained to do — “no less than 20 authenticator numbers that corresponded exactly to the classified authenticator numbers of 20 US POW/MIAs who were lost in Laos.” Alfond added, says the transcript: “This PAVE SPIKE intelligence is seamless, but the committee has not discussed it or released what it knows about PAVE SPIKE.”
McCain, whose POW status made him the committee’s most powerful member, attended that hearing specifically to confront Alfond because of her criticism of the panel’s work. He bellowed and berated her for quite a while. His face turning anger-pink, he accused her of “denigrating” his “patriotism.” The bullying had its effect — she began to cry.
After a pause Alfond recovered and tried to respond to his scorching tirade, but McCain simply turned and stormed out of the room. The PAVE SPIKE file has never been declassified. We still don’t know anything about those 20 POWs.”
Steppe Nomad (a41d1a) — 8/27/2018 @ 1:43 pmI think Trump has genuine empathy and admiration for certain individuals, groups of people.
Dictators, porn stars, Playboy bunnies, runway models, Russians and his reflection in the mirror.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/27/2018 @ 1:48 pm“I think Trump has genuine empathy and admiration for certain individuals, groups of people.
He also clearly despises some individuals, groups of people.
I think it is fairly easy to know where you are on the Trump scale of empathy and admiration”
I saw far more than enough of the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, consistently unpunished conduct of people who joined the military that already had high-ranking family members inside compared to those who didn’t. After several years of that contrast, McCain’s record of betrayal was entirely believable and entirely consistent with prior observations. I will NEVER allow the perfidy of these types to pass unremarked.
Steppe Nomad (6f7585) — 8/27/2018 @ 1:49 pmThough to be fair, the (divorced, now living in California, working for the Chamber of Commerce) father of Mollie Tibbits did give quite the McCain-worthy eulogy to the daughter he left in Iowa, and if anything we should follow Trump in ignoring and burying the betrayers of the past so we can excoriate the betrayers of the present:
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2018/08/27/mollie-tibbetts-was-nobodys-victim-her-dad-says-in-powerful-eulogy/23510218/
“Rob Tibbetts has not commented publicly on the topic. But in his eulogy he highlighted how the local Hispanic community had embraced him as he searched for his daughter.
“The Hispanic community are Iowans. They have the same values as Iowans,” he said, including an emphasis on family. “As far as I’m concerned, they’re Iowans with better food.””
In other words, “my daughter’s life is a small price to pay for your excellent burritos!”
Steppe Nomad (a02c00) — 8/27/2018 @ 1:53 pm#2
“My guess is it will be lowered by later today…”
Although I’d love to take the credit, I’m guessing it was the American Legion that got to Trump. He does admire the vast majority of men and women in that group
Next up:
steveg (a9dcab) — 8/27/2018 @ 1:56 pmTrump sends a buckboard wagon and an old jenny mule instead of USN horse and caisson transport for casket
Molly Tibbits’ dad deserves all the sympathy in the world but he’s dead wrong equating Stronger Border advocates with anti-Latino racism.
The reason we wanted her murderer out of the country is because he broke the law to get in, not because of his bloodline. If he had not broken in, she’d be alive – plain and simple.
harkin (9803a7) — 8/27/2018 @ 1:59 pm#90
Trump is just the latest in the parade of sinners to occupy the WH.
Its kind of amusing to see haw scandalized get over Trump when his personal behavior is certainly not very far out of line with previous Presidential mores.
You do seem obsessed with porn stars, playboy bunnies and models; it reeks of jealousy and I wonder what Freud would say
steveg (a9dcab) — 8/27/2018 @ 2:06 pm#88, it’s fairly easy to see that Trump admires “strength” and “toughness,” insofar as he thinks it’s a mirror of himself. He admired the strength of the Chi-Coms in putting down the ordinary people who sought freedom. It’s clear that he finds almost no one as admirable as he considers himself to be.
An empathetic person would not constantly declare his own superiority to others, or say that ordinary people “live like dogs” because they won’t give up the property he covets, or openly ridicule others as “losers” and “stupid people.” An empathetic person would not be so obsessed with whether he is getting the adoration he craves.
Trump may have some awareness of what an empathetic person is supposed to do, but his history doesn’t give much evidence of the real thing.
Radegunda (400d36) — 8/27/2018 @ 2:09 pm#95, no one is claiming that previous presidents were not sinners. But this president imagines that he is not one; that he has never done anything requiring forgiveness or a sincere apology. In his book, it’s only other people who are sinners.
Meanwhile, his public behavior (at least) is so far out of the norm as to repulse many people who might otherwise support him generally on strict policy grounds. But Trumpistas think that’s a virtue in Trump, and that the only sin is being repulsed by it. They wanted someone to smash all norms and rules — and then they started complaining that Trump is a victim of unequal standards!
Radegunda (400d36) — 8/27/2018 @ 2:22 pmneontaster 🐉🎲🐺
@neontaster
The Vox writer who said you could draw a straight line from McCain to Trump was right, but not for the reasons she thinks she is. I think the treatment of McCain during his campaign was a herald of Trumpism to come. Old media tweets from 2008 being dredged up help illustrate this
__ _
James Hasson
harkin (c0421f) — 8/27/2018 @ 2:30 pm@JamesHasson20
Completely agree. A chunk of the base watched McCain be civil, get smeared, and lose. Then they watched Romney be civil, get smeared, and lose. So they concluded the nominee would be smeared regardless, norms didn’t matter, and only winning elections mattered. Enter Trump.
97 Radegunda you sure are good at reading what is in other people’s minds, almost to good, like maybe your projecting your own thoughts onto others?
Nate Ogden (223c65) — 8/27/2018 @ 2:34 pmReally nobody should snark about McCain, Trump, and funerals given his prior conduct:
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/investigating-john-mccains-tragedy-at-sea/
“Whatever the circumstances of the fire’s origins, McCain did not stay on deck to help fight the blaze as the men around him did. With the firefighting crew virtually wiped out, men untrained in fighting fires had to pick up the fire hoses, rescue the wounded or frantically throw bombs and even planes over the ship’s side to prevent further tragedy. McCain left them behind and went down to the hangar-bay level, where he briefly helped crew members heave some bombs overboard. After that, he went to the pilot’s ready room and watched the fire on a television monitor hooked to a camera trained on the deck.”
The parallels to the ‘bare minimum’ conduct of lots of the Republican consultant class in 2016 can’t fail to be made!
“McCain’s actions after the fire show a determination to exit the ship as quickly as possible. When New York Times reporter Apple finished gathering his notes on the fire, McCain boarded a helicopter with him and flew to Saigon. Given that fires still burned on the ship and some of his fellow airmen were gravely wounded and dying, McCain’s assertion that he left the carrier for “some welcome R&R” in Saigon has a surreal air.”
‘Surreal’ is generally not the word I would use.
“Apple, now dead, said nothing in his news reports about inviting McCain to leave the ship, although he did report talking to him in Saigon later that day. McCain does not mention receiving permission to leave the still-burning ship. Merv Rowland, a commander and chief engineering officer of the Forrestal at the time of the fire, told me that he had not known that McCain left the ship within 30 hours of the fire and that he found this “extraordinary.” Rowland added that only the severely wounded were allowed to leave the ship and that no one, as far as he knew, would have been given permission to fly to Saigon for R&R. McCain’s quick flight off the Forrestal meant that he missed the memorial service for his dead comrades held the following day in the South China Sea.”
Some people deserve to have high-ranking people attend their funerals. Some do not.
“The record suggests that after McCain left the burning Forrestal for the greater ease of Saigon, he saw his Navy career as being in jeopardy. Soon, he went to London, where his father, Adm. John S. McCain Jr., was stationed as commander in chief of the United States Naval Forces in Europe. Sen. McCain has written little about the fire, and his book does not mention any conversations with his father about bombs dropping from his plane on the Forrestal or his leaving the ship. However, it is difficult to imagine that he did not discuss the tragedy and his own personal difficulties because, by McCain’s own account, his father had intervened on his behalf before. After seeing the admiral in London, McCain went to the French Riviera, where he spent his nights gambling at the Palm Beach Casino.”
Maybe Trump’s father had records of his selfless service overseas at the time?
“McCain’s book skips over the weeks after the Forrestal fire, but Timberg says that the young naval officer spent the months of August and September 1967 “unsure of his status.” Following McCain’s application for a transfer to the Oriskany, his orders were delayed, and in September he returned to his home in Jacksonville, Fla. There, an old friend, Chuck Larson, saw a change in McCain: The pilot was discouraged about his future. McCain confided to Larson that he might have to get out of the Navy because, in the words of the Timberg biography, “his past had become a burden” and “whenever he joined a new outfit he was dismayed that his reputation for mayhem had preceded him.” Aside from any questions about his Forrestal actions, McCain had, in his short Navy career, crashed two planes and flown a third into power lines in Spain because of, as he put it, “daredevil clowning.””
Entirely possible that this episode brought a clarity to his life and purpose that culminated in extraordinary sacrifice while a POW and at absolutely no other time afterward. Or it’s possible that he needed a new cover story.
BTW, I fully agree with the later account of the Forrestal fire barring absolutely damning evidence of later redactions, his fellow Navy shipmen and pilots may have justifiably hated him but there’s always the motivation to place all the blame for your own screw-ups on the biggest newly-arrived screw-up.
But in the real world where planes and aircraft carriers do blow up easily and kill a lot of innocent unrelated people if you’re not careful, this is why ‘personal record and prior qualifications in comparable endeavors’ matters way, way, way, way, way, WAY more than ‘personal character’ for an effective reputation, though they’re often interlinked!
Steppe Nomad (9422cf) — 8/27/2018 @ 2:36 pm99. I’m assuming that when Trump fans put things into words for others to read, they are telling us what is in their minds.
Radegunda (400d36) — 8/27/2018 @ 2:38 pm@87. You smell camel dung. Shower, Rouge Boy.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/27/2018 @ 2:44 pmThe only person posting usefully and incisively about McCain is Michael Tracey:
“@mtracey
2h2 hours ago
More
Even in death McCain is causing rifts among Republicans, which is what the media always loved most about him.”
“@mtracey
3h3 hours ago
More
Terms like “straight-talker,” “honor,” and “lion of the Senate” have no obvious political content, yet they’re being widely used to describe a national political figure. McCain’s admirers want him to be remembered apolitically. Because his political project was a disaster.”
“@mtracey
21h21 hours ago
More
McCain published a book *this year* finally admitting, on his deathbed, that the Iraq War was “a mistake.” That’s unforgivable, and “mistake” is not the right word. More like “grievous, career-destroying offense.” Any remembrance which doesn’t put this front and center is a sham.”
“@mtracey
Follow Follow @mtracey
More
His picking Palin was a minor offense compared to being the chief Senate advocate for the Iraq War (and every other war) but for emotional liberals, that’s the one thing you’re allowed to mildly criticize McCain about”
“@mtracey
Follow Follow @mtracey
More
I never hated McCain on a personal level. Aspects of his character probably were genuinely endearing. But that’s the trick. He wasn’t somebody’s uncle. He was a national political figure who spent decades advocating a political program which wrought untold death and destruction.”
“@mtracey
Aug 26
More
McCain’s self-created mythology (country first, maverick) was supposed to have been shattered during the 2008 campaign, when much of the press he so assiduously courted turned on him. Today it’s like 2008 never happened. The mythology was single-handedly resurrected by Trump”
The common courtesy you could offer is to THANK the man who cleared the way for the shameless 180-desgree rehabilitation of your most dependable Beltway meal ticket.
Steppe Nomad (3cfb6a) — 8/27/2018 @ 2:46 pmAnd DSCIA should THANK us that his funeral is going to be a private family affair rather than the mass grave his comrades usually reserve for each other once the Party Musical Chairs game stops.
Steppe Nomad (2ce54d) — 8/27/2018 @ 2:48 pmAnd probably the best one:
“Michael Tracey
Verified account
@mtracey
Steppe Nomad (e4ef25) — 8/27/2018 @ 2:50 pmAug 25
More
The most telling thing is going to be how the media and his colleagues refuse to see “decades of advocacy for unbridled military destruction” as a reflection on his “character.” For them a character flaw is cracking mean jokes, not killing innocents.”
But let’s not forget his attitude toward POW/MIA advocates, which totally doesn’t :
“McCain argued that keeping the criminal penalties would have made it impossible for the Pentagon to find staffers willing to work on POW/MIA matters. That’s an odd argument to make. Were staffers only “willing to work” if they were allowed to conceal POW records? By eviscerating the law, McCain gave his stamp of approval to the government policy of debunking the existence of live POWs.
McCain has insisted again and again that all the evidence has been woven together by unscrupulous deceivers to create an insidious and unpatriotic myth. He calls it the work of the “bizarre rantings of the MIA hobbyists.” He has regularly vilified those who keep trying to pry out classified documents as “hoaxers,” “charlatans,” “conspiracy theorists” and “dime-store Rambos.””
DOES THIS *EVER* PREDICT THE CONDUCT OF THE BELTWAY RIGHT IN 2016!
“Family members who have personally pressed McCain to end the secrecy have been treated to his legendary temper. In 1996 he roughly pushed aside a group of POW family members who had waited outside a hearing room to appeal to him, including a mother in a wheelchair.”
The halo of heroism is a hell of a shield, you can imprison known innocents, shove war widows, outright pay for testimony, repeatedly blow off your constitutents, underperform repeatedly and spectacularly, it’s almost like the fiduciary motivation to manufacture or co-opt heroes after their heroism to gain an advocate that can act with impunity denied mere civilians might just be a LITTLE bit high, and only shameless and constant demand for results can break through the PR conditioning!
Steppe Nomad (d36d9b) — 8/27/2018 @ 2:56 pmIn any case, for the good of the country, lets hope the Arizona governor can find a candidate to flip his seat red for this election.
Steppe Nomad (cd73ff) — 8/27/2018 @ 3:02 pmStatement from the President
Issued on: August 27, 2018
“Despite our differences on policy and politics, I respect Senator John McCain’s service to our country and, in his honor, have signed a proclamation to fly the flag of the United States at half-staff until the day of his interment.
I have asked Vice President Mike Pence to offer an address at the ceremony honoring Senator McCain at the United States Capitol this Friday.
At the request of the McCain family, I have also authorized military transportation of Senator McCain’s remains from Arizona to Washington, D.C., military pallbearers and band support, and a horse and caisson transport during the service at the United States Naval Academy.
Finally, I have asked General John Kelly, Secretary James Mattis, and Ambassador John Bolton to represent my Administration at his services.”
“I respect Senator John McCain’s service to our country…”
Except you don’t, Donald. But hey, what’s a day w/o a daily lie, eh, Captain, sir?!
“Take the tow line; defective equipment, no more, no less!” – Captain Queeg [Humphrey Bogart] ‘The Caine Mutiny’ 1954
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/27/2018 @ 3:04 pm“I respect Senator John McCain’s service to our country…”
Well played by President Trump. When a no class Senator publicly dis-invites you from his funeral – after attacking you publically for 2 years, this kind of response is truly classy.
rcocean (1a839e) — 8/27/2018 @ 3:10 pm“Service to our country” is a phrase bland and wide enough to smuggle in all manner of exceptions, and it’s about all McCain deserves.
By the way, all of the NeverTrump HARRUMPH about The Donald’s prior infidelities might have been a little more impactful if they had actually focused on McCain’s far more horrifically callous conduct:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1024927/The-wife-John-McCain-callously-left-behind.html
Steppe Nomad (7e96bb) — 8/27/2018 @ 3:11 pmGiven ASPCA’s continuous slobbering over teh First Lady, one can well imagine…
“Did I see Ms. December’s Playboy centerfold? See it? I ruined it!”
—- ASPCA
Colonel Haiku (b35858) — 8/27/2018 @ 3:12 pmYEAH, WHINING ABOUT FUNERALS ATTENDED MIGHT BE A BAD LOOK, GUYS:
““Apple, now dead, said nothing in his news reports about inviting McCain to leave the ship, although he did report talking to him in Saigon later that day. McCain does not mention receiving permission to leave the still-burning ship. Merv Rowland, a commander and chief engineering officer of the Forrestal at the time of the fire, told me that he had not known that McCain left the ship within 30 hours of the fire and that he found this “extraordinary.” Rowland added that only the severely wounded were allowed to leave the ship and that no one, as far as he knew, would have been given permission to fly to Saigon for R&R. McCain’s quick flight off the Forrestal meant that he missed the memorial service for his dead comrades held the following day in the South China Sea.””
Steppe Nomad (e3e022) — 8/27/2018 @ 3:18 pmYou know you’ve entered Bizarro World when you’re seeing left-wing hit pieces regurgitated from October 2008.
Paul Montagu (9dcfd2) — 8/27/2018 @ 3:21 pmAlmost as bizarre as keeping a “Republican” who barely ever votes for Republican interests, especially at delicate and precise times like repealing Obamacare, one might say he crashes and burns whenever handed something important that other people are depending on him for.
Steppe Nomad (cb5d31) — 8/27/2018 @ 3:26 pmI’m honestly starting to wonder if the media promoted McCain above others in the 2008 election because they figured he’d be the easiest to beat, they were proven exceptionally right in hindsight, plus after the election he treated them far better than he ever treated the uppity wacko birds and war widows who merely voted for him.
Steppe Nomad (39a87a) — 8/27/2018 @ 3:30 pmIf you really want to plumb the depths of exactly how hypocritical NeverTrump criticism of Trump is, consider the actual life and times of John McCain in retrospect.
Steppe Nomad (c86ffa) — 8/27/2018 @ 3:41 pmropelight:
Care to update your comment now that Trump has completely reversed course? Like “No, this isn’t about American values because Trump doesn’t care about values or morals. It’s about responding to public pressure in a way that makes Trump looks good, even if it means he has to completely reverse course in one day.”
DRJ (15874d) — 8/27/2018 @ 3:46 pmToday I learned Steppe Nomad is blonde.
Dustin (ba94b2) — 8/27/2018 @ 3:48 pmHeh.
DRJ (15874d) — 8/27/2018 @ 3:49 pmDon’t worry, McCain was *ecumenically* terrible to anyone dumb enough to be his constituents, he doesn’t need the liberal media to work extra hard at destroying people who rely on him:
https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/john-mccain-vets-worst-enemy-6331635
“In both 2006 and 2007-08, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America gave McCain a D for his record on key congressional votes.
The Disabled American Veterans scored him at 20 percent in 2006, 25 percent in 2005, and 50 percent in 2004.
And the Retired Enlisted Association gave him a 0 in 2006 and a rating of 18 percent in 2004.”
Steppe Nomad (e2fff1) — 8/27/2018 @ 3:55 pm“Today I learned Steppe Nomad is blonde.”
I also have blue eyes, Aryan features, a Jewish nose, and completely black skin.
Steppe Nomad (0bdf5c) — 8/27/2018 @ 3:57 pmThe Disabled American Veterans scored him at 20 percent in 2006, 25 percent in 2005, and 50 percent in 2004. And the Retired Enlisted Association gave him a 0 in 2006 and a rating of 18 percent in 2004.”
That’s truly shocking. I assumed that whatever else he was, McCain was for the Vets.
I guess that was more McCain “straight talk”.
rcocean (1a839e) — 8/27/2018 @ 4:04 pmI’ve been reading the Liberal eulogies about McCain. Its seems McCain was a great man because he
a. was a Maverick, who hated Trump;
b. opposed torture;
c. loved illegal immigration.
But he had flaws, because he:
a. Nominated Palin;
b. and opposed Gays in the Military.
Damn Liberals are weird.
rcocean (1a839e) — 8/27/2018 @ 4:07 pmThe scare quotes around “Republican” is a tell, and this “barely ever” business is factually false. A lifetime ACU rating of 81 is not “barely ever”. As for Obamacare, Trump pledged to repeal and replace, but he welshed on replacement.
Paul Montagu (9dcfd2) — 8/27/2018 @ 4:45 pm@111. Ah, you’ve seen the ‘Girls of the Gulags’ issue, too, Haikhrushchev!
Oh come all ye faithful; joyful and triumphant, Red.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/27/2018 @ 5:31 pmDoes every President fly the flag at half mast every time a veteran dies? Or is that only necessary if the vet is a Senator?
This is a serious question. Because I don’t recall the issue coming up before. And if the important thing is that McCain was a Senator, doesn’t that means our priorities are screwed up.
Steve57 (0b1dac) — 8/29/2018 @ 9:30 amIf this was McCain’s family’s doing, they have no class. If it was his wish, the same goes for him.
https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/08/29/sarah-palin-loyal-running-mate-excluded-from-john-mccains-funeral/
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 8/29/2018 @ 5:22 pmYes, but we’ve gotten the measure of the man
Narciso (a0b92f) — 8/29/2018 @ 5:32 pmZero class indeed. The next question is who is GOING.
Kevin M (e4323c) — 8/29/2018 @ 5:56 pmIf that’s true about Sarah Palin, Trump has probably been more sinned against than sinning in this spat.
This is so foreign to my culture. In the first place, we don’t invite people to funerals. They just show up. In the second place, people are not told to stay away. Funerals are when enmities are put aside, either temporarily or permanently by people making up and letting bygones be bygones.
nk (dbc370) — 8/29/2018 @ 6:28 pmAgreed nk.
NJRob (fc0f06) — 8/29/2018 @ 6:37 pmYep, nk has it right.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 8/29/2018 @ 7:56 pm@130. Ya’ think she might be ‘Going Rogue?!’
“You bet’cha!”
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/29/2018 @ 8:13 pmI ask because at the rate veterans are dying, particularly WWII and Korean War vets, we’d never fly the flag at full staff. It’s more than a little elitist to lower the flag to half staff if the vet is a member of Congress. I’m ashamed to admit I don’t know the exact order of precedence, Just that the DFC is below the Medal of Honor, the Navy Cross, and the Legion of Merit. It is still no cheap award and I will never have one and neither will 99.99% of the people reading this. McCain earned one and no one can detract from that. I despised him as a Senator, but I had no choice but to respect him as a warrior. So this is no knock on John McCain.
Do we always lower the flag to half staff when men like McCain die? Also, I need to correct an earlier mistake. I said he earned his grave at Arlington. Apparently he chose to be interned at Annapolis.
Steve57 (0b1dac) — 8/30/2018 @ 7:09 amthe official rules that the Executive branch is supposed to follow for flying the flag at half staff:
https://www.va.gov/opa/publications/celebrate/halfstaff.pdf
kaf (0ff60d) — 8/30/2018 @ 7:24 amNotice how many of us are concerned about regulations about funerals, and nk simply writes about what ought to be the case, organically.
We live in a bureaucratic sea, and that drive to give and get instructions gets into our brains via osmosis, I guess.
Simon Jester (c8876d) — 8/30/2018 @ 7:36 amSteve57, I don’t think the flag is being lowered for McCain for his service in the military. It appears Trump is following the guidelines in the Eisenhower Proclamation and McCain is being honored because he is a Senator. The Proclamation says sitting Senators will be honored by having the flag lowered on the day of death and the following day, and that is what Trump originally did. After that, Trump in his discretion ordered the flag lowered for more days.
DRJ (46c88f) — 8/30/2018 @ 7:44 amThe VA link kaf provided is based on the Eisenhower’s Proclamation, as it states.
DRJ (46c88f) — 8/30/2018 @ 7:47 amnk,
I don’t agree with you here (which is quite rare!). I agree McCain was less than kind but Trump was, too. As I said at The Jury:
DRJ (46c88f) — 8/30/2018 @ 7:52 amIn addition, mcCain had brain cancer. I know from experience with family members that the death process affects the way a person thinks, including dementia-like symptoms. I suspect that intensifies with brain cancer, so while I blame him for being rude, I also understand. I (It’s unfortunate that McCain remained a Senator through that process but it was his decision under the law.)
DRJ (46c88f) — 8/30/2018 @ 7:56 amIn addition, mcCain had brain cancer. I know from experience with family members that the death process affects the way a person thinks, including dementia-like symptoms. I suspect that intensifies with brain cancer. So while I blame McCain for being rude, I also understand and I don’t think Trump has a similar excuse. (Further, yes, it’s unfortunate McCain remained a Senator through the process but it was his decision under the law.)
DRJ (46c88f) — 8/30/2018 @ 7:57 amSorry for the double post. I had keyboard help from a foster kitten that is trying my patience.
DRJ (46c88f) — 8/30/2018 @ 7:58 amNo I hold accountable for what he said and Did, as to his minions like mark Salter, who seems to be behind some of his more illconsideed statements.
Narciso (919f92) — 8/30/2018 @ 7:59 am127 – yep.
Palin appears to be responding with pure class, which for her is standard.
Also his statement to be read after his death about ‘hiding behind walls’ smears anyone who wants to do whatever is necessary to impede illegal border crossings.
But must not criticize! The double standard being applied in McCain’s death, especially ignoring the vitriol for him from the left in the 2008 campaign, is a hoot.
“Trump is a huge racist!”
“You mean just like John McCain & Mitt Romney?”
“Well… um… yeah… but for realz this time!”
https://startthinkingright.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/john-mccain-fangs-blood-warmonger.png
harkin (0f0199) — 8/30/2018 @ 8:10 amMcCain should have invited the person he invited to be his vice president, especially if he was going to invite the presidential rival who beat him to speak at his eulogy. It was ultimately McCain’s fault that he didn’t vet Palin for the job, and she shouldn’t have to pay for his own bad decision, and I’m saying this as a fairly strong McCain supporter.
Paul Montagu (9dcfd2) — 8/30/2018 @ 8:12 amTo the end, he seemed to curry favor with those who called him a war criminal, an adulterer, and a generally unstable personality, there s a name for that in the dsm.
Narciso (919f92) — 8/30/2018 @ 8:17 amBeldar vetted Sarah Palin, and that’s good enough for me. I don’t fault her for anything — I fault the McCain campaign staff who did not protect her from, and properly prepare her for, the nest of rabid weasels known as the news media that they made her walk into. Despite that, she was the best thing to happen to McCain’s campaign. She is the reason that he did not lose by double the margin he did.
I suspect that it was her support for Trump which soured the McCain clan on her. I don’t know enough about the McCain family dynamics for this to be an educated guess, but I do wonder how much of “Senator McCain” we got in the last year was from McCain himself and not his son-in-law Ben Domenech.
nk (dbc370) — 8/30/2018 @ 8:32 amI agree, Paul. I wish McCain’s family had decided not to honor his Palin decision. Maybe they agreed with him. Often we hold stronger grudges against the people we are close to or the people we are similar to. That may be the case with McCain and Palin and McCain and Trump.
DRJ (15874d) — 8/30/2018 @ 8:34 amThat sounds right, nk 147. Good comment.
DRJ (15874d) — 8/30/2018 @ 8:36 amThe invitee list was leaked to Buzzfeed via David Kramer.
Munroe (8f2207) — 8/30/2018 @ 8:37 amI like Beldar, and I hope he returns after the recent purgings, but if he vetted her, then he effed up. But that said, I don’t think anyone expected the breadth, depth and depravity of the smear campaign against Palin, but she also gave her antagonists enough material to work with. There were other, more qualified candidates for McCain to pick from. With a good VP running mate, the McCain campaign could’ve really gone after Obama’s choice of Biden, highlighting his lengthy history of gaffes and garbled comments and general brainlessness.
Paul Montagu (9dcfd2) — 8/30/2018 @ 8:57 am@137, thanks for educating me, DRJ. I really was puzzled. I didn’t even know where to start looking for answers.
Steve57 (0b1dac) — 8/30/2018 @ 11:02 am@147/@151. Stop making excuses for stupid; she’s as dumb as a brick.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/30/2018 @ 11:26 amBut hey, look on the bright side, Biden droned for an hour today- a lot about himself- [just like you know who] at another man’s memorial and unlike ‘you know who,’ was about as engaging [read that as ‘entertaining’] as a glass of water. In this day and age, if you’re a Rabid Righty, pray for him to run in 2020.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/30/2018 @ 11:34 am#153
I am not sure what the failure to invite Palin to a funeral has got to do with her IQ.
People are treating the exclusion of Palin as if it were McCain’s decision, and there is no real evidence for that. Palin always refused to indulge in McCain bashing, which speaks well of her. Even when McCain spoke of regrets, he was careful to praise her efforts in the campaign. My guess that the people around McCain, who have resented other Republicans since before Bush, are the ones who kept her off the invitation list.
Appalled (a85fc3) — 8/30/2018 @ 11:36 amASPCA… when he’s not lasciviously ogling women, he’s disparaging them, misogynist that he is.
Colonel Haiku (6fe2b1) — 8/30/2018 @ 11:47 am@155. If you read 147/151’s posts, that wasn’t really what was being referenced. She did ‘go rogue’ on McCain and wasn’t a personal chum- she was the last-minute, ‘Hail Mary.’ McCain himself did the details for this ‘show’– didn’t want the current CiC and apparently didn’t want his running mate there. So be it. By Saturday night, it really doesn’t matter. More interesting, given his friendship w/Loren Michaels, is if he and Tina Fey were invited to any of these services. Check the list…
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/30/2018 @ 11:48 am156. =Haikhrushchev!= =Gesputinheit!=
Don’t defend stupid party girls, Moscowvitz. And please, Helstinki, honor America shower, or the EPA will get after you.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/30/2018 @ 11:54 am#157
I also think there is too much of a tendency for folks to say person a or person b is stupid, because they subscribe to a set of beliefs we don’t. Once you get people who are Legacies or Machine Tools, there aren’t a whole lot of dumb people who can make it into political office.
Palin, I think, had the wrong personality to deal with a constantly oppositional press, who were really intent on doing her in, as she was seen as The Obstacle to an Obama Presidency. And then she made the mistake of not being rich, so she was unable to deal with the Lawfare the Democrats dispensed after the 2008 election.
But, honest, she may have the best argument for being bitter about how she was treated in the election, and she didn’t fire it at McCain.
Appalled (6b45a7) — 8/30/2018 @ 12:02 pm159… Class as opposed to No Class.
Colonel Haiku (6fe2b1) — 8/30/2018 @ 12:05 pmI don’t get what all this stink is about flying the flag at half staff. Yes, at one time it meant something. As a 5th grader my buddy and I were responsible for putting the flag up and taking it down. I remember putting it at half-staff twice, both times for deaths of US Presidents (Eisenhower and Truman, IIRC). But today, most flags I pass on a regular basis are being flown at half-staff it seems 50% of the time. It has ceased to have much meaning to me. School shooting, muslim-shoots-up-gay-bar shooting, mayor’s cat died, who knows. Ike’s rules themselves seem a bit generous themselves but I’d be happy if we just went back to that.
Skorcher (5b282a) — 8/30/2018 @ 12:07 pm@159. She brought it on herself. Just another Brodie; not up to the challenge. Don’t be surprised if she once got lost in her own state. Besides, she was a quitter; they don’t usually win.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/30/2018 @ 12:08 pm“With a good VP running mate, the McCain campaign could’ve really gone after Obama’s choice of Biden, highlighting his lengthy history of gaffes and garbled comments and general brainlessness.”
McCain didn’t have the stomach – much less desire – to go after Democrats. He was all about pursuing and supporting policies that virtually guaranteed the election of Democrats a few years down the road when the poultry came home… to roost!!!
Colonel Haiku (6fe2b1) — 8/30/2018 @ 12:09 pm@161. This week-long-show is more or less a metaphor for the end of discourse as it was and acceptance of what it has become. It’s Trump’s party now.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/30/2018 @ 12:20 pm“I am not sure what the failure to invite Palin to a funeral has got to do with her IQ.”
It has nothing even to do with Palin, it’s just a commenter going out of his way to show he is as dumb as…..well, maybe not a brick but about equal to a president who thinks Austrians speak Austrian.
harkin (0f0199) — 8/30/2018 @ 12:26 pm@163. ‘Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran’ was a catchy tune that caught a lot of flak, Haikhrushchev.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/30/2018 @ 12:28 pmShe was forced to choose between bankruotcy and relinquishing her office, through a weaponizing of the ethics complaint process through Perkins and coie.
Narciso (d02ef1) — 8/30/2018 @ 12:30 pmHere is a list of attendees and other details about the service, as provided by the late senator’s office.
Current and Former U.S. Senators (Listed Alphabetically)
• Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN)• Senator John Barrasso (R-WY)• Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO)
• Senator John Boozman (R-AR)• Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA)
• Senator Chris Coons (D-DE)• Senator Bob Corker (R-TN)
• Senator John Cornyn (R-TX)• Senator Steve Daines (R-MT)
• Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ)• Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)• Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND)
• Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI)• Senator John Hoeven (R-ND)
• Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV)• Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR)
• Senator Patty Murray (D-WA)• Senator Jack Reed (D-RI)
• Senator Jim Risch (R-ID)• Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE)
• Senator Jon Tester (D-MT)• Senator John Thune (R-SD)
• Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS)• Senator Todd Young (R-IN)
• Former Senator Jon Kyl• Former Senator Carl Levin (D-MI)
• Former Senator Connie Mack (R-FL)• Former Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR)
Notable Attendees (Listed Alphabetically)
• Vice President Joe Biden • Governor Doug Ducey and First Lady Angela Ducey
• Larry Fitzgerald Jr. • Former Congressman Jim Kolbe
• Representative Ben Quayle • Former Vice President Dan Quayle
• Players and Staff from the Arizona Cardinals, Arizona Diamondbacks and Arizona Coyotes
The memorial service will [began] at approximately 10 a.m.:
• Prelude
• Processional
• Welcome and Invocation by Senior Pastor Dr. Noe Garcia
• Hymn, “Amazing Grace,” performed by the Brophy Student Ensemble
• Reading, Ecclesiastes 3:1-2, read by Bridget McCain
• Tribute by Grant Woods
• Tribute by Tommy Espinoza
• Hymn, “Expression of Love,” performed by Jonah Littlesunday, Navajo flutist
• Tribute by Larry Fitzgerald, Jr.
• Tribute by Vice President Joe Biden
• Reading, 2 Timothy 4:6-8 by Andrew McCain
• Song, “Arizona,” performed by the Brophy Student Ensemble
• Message by Father Edward Reese
• Hymn, “Going Home,” performed by Jay Smith on bagpipe
• Benediction and Dismissal by Senior Pastor Dr. Noe Garcia
• Recessional, “My Way,” original music by Frank Sinatra
At approximately 11:15 a.m., during the recessional, Pastor Garcia will lead the processional followed by ceremonial pallbearers, followed by casket and family. Senator McCain’s motorcade will then depart North Phoenix Baptist Church for Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.
Tributes and Readings (Listed Alphabetically):
• Vice President Joseph Biden• Brophy Student Ensemble
• Tommy Espinoza: Friend. • Larry Fitzgerald: Friend.
• Dr. Noe Garcia: Senior Pastor of North Phoenix Baptist Church• Jonah Littlesunday: Navajo flutist.
• Andrew McCain: Son. President of Hensley Beverage Co.• Bridget McCain: Daughter.
• Jay Smith: Bagpiper.• Grant Woods: Friend.
Pallbearers (Listed Alphabetically)
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/30/2018 @ 12:44 pm• Richard Adkerson: Friend.• David Berry: Friend.
• Steven Betts: Friend.• Charles Black: Friend.
• Don Brandt: Friend.• Robert Delgado: Friend.
• Shane Doan: Friend.• Luis Gonzales: Friend.
• Dr. Oliver Harper, M.D.: Friend and neighbor.• Joseph Harper: Friend and neighbor.
• The Honorable Diane Humetewa: Friend. • Chris Koch: Friend.
• George Weisz: Friend.• Greg Wendt: Friend.
Ushers (Listed Alphabetically):
• Babs Donaldson: Friend • Deb Gullett: Friend.
• Wes Gullett: Friend.• Paul Hickman: Friend.
• Tim McKone: Friend.• Bettina Nava: Co-founder and owner of OH Strategic Communications.
• Nancy Ives Schroeder: Friend.• Michelle Shipley: Friend. – source, KTAR, Phoenix
Ecclesiastes 3, heh. If there truly is a God, I propose a toast that perhaps He’s set a room aside for McCain and Trump to share where they can sit read Ecclesiastes 3 to each other over and over and over again.
Skorcher (5b282a) — 8/30/2018 @ 1:00 pm115, no I think it was a lot of workaday Dems that crossed over, afraid that the greater electorate would not pick a woman or a black that November. Same crime, different suspects and motive.
urbanleftbehind (5eecdb) — 8/30/2018 @ 1:22 pmLarry Fitzgerald? Though that guy’s been in even stranger company before.
urbanleftbehind (5eecdb) — 8/30/2018 @ 1:28 pmIt would be in keeping w/McCain’s sense of humor if his office forwarded a letter to Congress stating:
“I’m dead. Accordingly, I hereby resign my Senate seat, effective in two weeks.”
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/30/2018 @ 4:44 pm”I don’t understand, even in the tough world of politics, why there continues to be such an assault on a good and decent person,” he [McCain] said, referring to Palin. “I admired and respect her. I’m proud of our campaign.” – Politico
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/30/john-mccain-funeral-campaign-aides-no-invite-804162
harkin (0f0199) — 8/30/2018 @ 5:27 pm@173. “McCain was criticized by the Senate Ethics Committee for exercising “poor judgment.”-source, wikirapsheet
SOP. That’s why.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 8/30/2018 @ 5:38 pmSenate ethics is an oxymoron:
https://amp.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/aug/29/security-clearance-review-revocations-to-continue/?__twitter_impression=true
Narciso (0efe62) — 8/30/2018 @ 6:05 pmThat statement is at odds with another one three months ago
Narciso (0efe62) — 8/30/2018 @ 6:55 pm