John McCain has died
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I remember the energy of the room when Obama came in. The crowd was young and loud. Obama got up and gave his usual stump speech and then went around to shake hands. I shook his hand and got a word or two in but I could tell he wasn't really interested in talking to me and moved on.
I went to a McCain rally a couple weeks later. A much older crowd and a little more subdued. This was around the time MoveOn was criticizing General Petraeus over his surge in Iraq policy. McCain was upset about this so the mood at the venue, which was a VFW, was a little more bitter. McCain gave a speech which was different than Obama's, a little more off-the-cuff and a little more angry. I remember him talking with the audience rather than to the audience like Obama.
Afterwards, he shook hands with everyone and paused for a conversation. I remember talking to him about STEM programs and the importance of producing more engineers here in the U.S. He looked me in the eyes the whole time, was genuinely curious about my background, and wished me good luck at the end [0].
I ended up voting and working for Obama but I'll never forget that day and how genuine and down-to-earth McCain was with me.
[0] - https://twitter.com/manishsinhaha/status/1033516157343387648
He gave in to the RNC advisors and others around him that time around. Palin obviously turned out to be awful (maybe not strong enough a word) and he didn't care for her very much either, but I imagine he just wanted to get into office so that he could institute what he felt were good policies.
I think he was fundamentally a good person and would have been a good leader, though of course we can debate the merits of his policies. Everything being equal, I'll vote for the person I believe has the interests of the populace at heart.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice_presidential_candidacy_of...
Whomever made the decision, it was a rash move that proved that a low caliber, not so smart, but media savvy national candidate could win the support needed to be president. It led to 2016.
Having a gun toting female vp on the republican ticket would have been a strategic move had she not been such a dumpster fire, so I see where he was going with it. Unfortunately for America it propelled her into the national spotlight and we were subjected to her idiotic rambling for years.
I remember reading an AskReddit thread about "have you ever met Trump, what was he like?", it was nothing but amazing stories about his incredible gifts of memory, his intelligence, and his generosity. This of course was back when Trump was still a Democrat. After becoming a Republican he's suddenly a bumbling senile fool who just stumbled into the Presidency over someone who raised 3x the money and had all the establishment support. An amazing example of the Dunning Kruger effect.
You might want to take a look at what ”cum hoc ergo propter hoc” means.
> An amazing example of the Dunning Kruger effect.
That’s... not how the Dunning Kruger effect works.
I’m in no way giving Democrats a pass, they have to appeal to the “tax the rich”, we can give everything to everyone and they stay in the mushy middle not really standing for anything.
"People are idiots" is a known fault with democracies, but it's a known fault with all governments or, indeed, all human endeavors.
I know it seems like I’m giving Democrats a pass, but living in a southern state, I don’t see Democrats veer to far to the left on the state level. They can’t and still have any chance.
Who do you think is going to get that vote bank post Trump?
Someone even more ridiculous unless a better McCain-Palin type arrangement happens.
We are just one Wall Street/Silicon Valley/Pentagon created fiasco away from Alex Jones being president given the current "us VS them" narratives 24*7 news, social media keep amplifying.
We basically got that relationship with Trump/Pence, just flip the ticket and replace War with Religion.
"She was a popular, energetic and accomplished reformer as mayor, governor and as a campaigner," McCain writes. He also thought she would appeal to Democrats who had preferred Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama in that year's primaries. McCain notes her knockout speech at the party convention, but he admits it was downhill thereafter.
"She stumbled in some interviews," McCain relates, "and had a few misjudgments in the glare of the ceaseless spotlight. Those missteps too are on me. She didn't put herself on the ticket. I did."
https://www.npr.org/2018/05/03/607403619/exclusive-audio-in-...
At the time, she was one of the most popular governors in the US. She was young (44), female and in charge of the largest state in the country by landmass. She was a rising star in the Republican party and on the short list for the next opening for the US Senate.
She was also a Westerner like McCain, at a time where the Republican party wanted to make sure it didn't become the party of just the Southern US and voters were sick and tired of the Bush administration and the career Republicans running the place.
McCain was losing, and losing momentum. People were scared, companies were going bankrupt, and the stock market crash was imminent.
His top choice was Lieberman, but he couldn't choose him. Republicans would hate to see one of the Senate's most senior Democrats (who was pro-choice) as VP. Many Democrats really disliked him too for his support for the Iraq War and opposition to Obama. He lost his primary seat in 2006 and ran as an Independent against the Democrat, basically winning by consolidating the Connecticut Republican vote.
The others on the short list were Governor Pawlenty (MN), Governor Jindal (LA), Governor Romney (MA) and Former Governor Ridge (PA). All governors. Pawlenty and Romney were the safe choices, but I don't think they would've been able to turn the tide and shift attention away from the Obama campaign.
I was a strong supporter of Obama, and I remember getting worried when McCain chose her. I was really disappointed to hear her first speech - it was patronizing and vindictive, but red meat to the Republican base. I think she basically was told what she needed to do -- i.e. serve as the attack dog and rile up the Republican base and fuel get out the vote efforts in those last two months. And she did a pretty good job at it. She did fine in the VP debate, though Biden did as well, and she looked very comfortable on the national stage.
I think the Democrats ran a great campaign, and were able to define her as a political neophyte that was unqualified to serve as President. I also think that McCain personally wanted to run an ethical campaign focusing on the issues, and her full embrace of the red meat partisan issues undermined his campaign. But if he had chosen someone else I don't think there would've been a different outcome. Republican strategists would still have come up with 'death panels' and trying to tie Obama to Bill Ayers and all that other conspiratorial nonsense, it just would've been a different politician saying it.
[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/davi...
[0]: http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/readings/code_of_conduct...
Of course there are way more variable involved, but I think his refusal was mostly on the basis of maintaining solidarity with the other POWs. In that situation, I could imagine that one of the few things that would keep me going was knowing that the thing i was fighting for back home wasn't just a delusion.
If the other POWs saw Mccain released for on political reasons, then who is to say that the POWs loyalty to their nation wouldn't have been compromised?
Unlike 2016 which was a complete horror show all around.
Given how much of a disaster Bush's 8 years were (and we shouldn't let the colossal disaster we're currently experiencing shift our perception of those years), it's a real shame that McCain didn't get his chance then instead of Bush.
It's not really how we should be deciding the presidency, but Kerry put off a strong vibe that he's not one of "us". The democrats need to embrace the actual people in their popularity.
How do you think an average middle-of-the-road person would feel if an 'average joe' was promoted to be their boss? I'd guess probably not great...
The irony is that most successful people in the world were rarely ever born with a silver spoon in their mouth. Kerry was actually one of those few candidates that I wished got their shot because his war record wasn't anything less but admirable. John Mccain's war record was far and beyond even his considering his many years being a POW.
They sacrificed so much for this country and yet the people only resonate with the candidates that seem hip nowadays.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocqueville#On_major...
The experiences of the elites are typically very different from that of the Average Joe. As such, they are frequently wholly unqualified to understand the needs of the people.
The people want someone capable of relating to them at least a little.
I think someone who’s truly extraordinary shouldn’t have to try very hard to look “relatable”. JFK comes to mind immediately— he didn’t dress or act like a man of the people, but you still got the sense that his family life was like what your family life would be like if you had a lot more money.
Kerry in jeans simply felt inauthentic. Nobody had any idea what his life was actually like behind closed doors.
The 'elites' underestimate the middle-of-the-road at their political peril.
Unrelated to Mr McCain, but living in California during the Clinton/Trump election, this struck me as extremely odd.
With California being essentially pre-decided due to the majority vote system, I saw zero campaign ads. Except for the news papers, the election simply didn't happen in California. What a weird system, where huge parts of the population get no representation.
> I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.
> It's natural, tonight, to feel some disappointment. But tomorrow, we must move beyond it and work together to get our country moving again.
If I might add, ten years later: it seems "the necessary compromises to bridge our differences" were not found.
With that said I think he genuinely wanted what was best for the country, even if we never saw eye to eye on what "best" actually was.
Ie Celebrate his life
> It will be a stirring sight to watch President Obama, his wife, Michelle, and their beautiful girls step through the doors of the White House. I know millions of Americans will be overcome with pride at this inspiring moment that so many have awaited so long.
I feel bad writing it out, but it gives me a bit of comfort to know it isn't something that could have been managed with the added resources of someone on the national stage like McCain.
The first surgery is pretty amazing because they can get almost all of the cancer out, and all the weird behavior just disappears and you have a normal person back. And then you have a year or so to swallow that fact that it's all going to come back and you've been handed a death sentence. Since the cancer is in your brain, they can't be as aggressive as they are in other parts of your body. Also, the cancer cells worm their way into all the cracks and crevices, so what started out as one tumor turns into a whole pile of tumors the second time around.
Probably the most painful memory I have is we were watching a movie and my dad didn't believe me that it wasn't a movie about my life and he thought I was lying to him when I said it was just a movie we were watching. Seeing someone you respect laid low like that is rough. Sort of like a very fast moving alzheimers.
Puts life in perspective though. Dad died at 58. I'll be 30 this year. Halfway to the grave. No time to waste putting things off till "later".
As someone going through something similar (for the second time), thank you for sharing this.
So no, I'm not bitter at the doctors because my mother didn't "beat" their estimate. Not everyone can reach the average. Sadly my mother was one of them, but that's just how things go sometimes.
Last part always gets me. It takes a lot of humility to accept mistakes. RIP an honorable man
Well, I just finished a cool CRUD app.
I'm not sure I can imagine how difficult that would be in practice, though it's nice to think you could do it in theory.
I'm dealing with some family members not doing the right thing recently by not respecting the final wishes of their own mother. With that on my mind, it makes for such a stark contrast.
Thats serious integrity and loyalty.
I feel bad about playing video games sometimes and have to remind myself of the photograph called Hubble Deep Field. Look it up if you haven’t seen it before.
Do what you want to and don’t stop yourself from enjoying it by comparing your life to some famous person or some blogger. It’s easy to feel bad when you read a biography of Augustus....why aim low and settle for comparing to McCain?
If you want to attempt great things, go for it, but don’t start thinking a comfortable and peaceful life (which is the only thing so many people throughout history yearned for and were denied) is “not enough.”
Thank the universe for McCains contributions. I didn’t agree with his politics much of the time, and I’ll miss his approach to his fellow humans and politics.
In all, 134 men on the carrier died from the fires and explosions that day.
Per the article:
> At about 10:51 (local time) on 29 July, an electrical power surge in the Phantom occurred during the switch from external to internal power. The electrical surge caused one of the four 5-inch Mk-32 Zuni unguided rockets in a pod on external stores station 2 (port inboard station) to fire.
What's interesting is that if you dig into the sources cited, they explicitly call out bullshit like yours:
> In recent years, articles have appeared on the internet that are extremely inaccurate and generally intend to unfairly tarnish the reputation of Senator John S. McCain III, who survived the fire.
From: https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/about-us/l...
What actually happened:
At 1050, Forrestal commenced early launch of two KA-3B tankers, an EA-1, and an E-2A in preparation for an 1100 launch of a 24-plane Alpha Strike, the second of the day. At that time, a VF-11 F-4B (No. 110,) was spotted on the extreme starboard quarter of the flight deck. As the pilot of F-4B 110 shifted from external to internal power, multiple electrical malfunctions ignited one of the four 5-inch Mk-32 Zuni unguided rockets in a pod on external stores station 2 (port inboard station), which fired across the flight deck and struck VF-46 A-4E No. 405, piloted by LCDR Fred White, rupturing its fuel tank, igniting the fuel, and initiating the fire. Although the board of investigation reached the opinion that the Zuni rocket hit 405, there is some ambiguity in eyewitness accounts as to whether the rocket hit 405 or the plane next to it, 416, piloted by Lieutenant Commander John McCain. The rocket itself actually impacted the ocean beyond both aircraft. Regardless, shrapnel ripped into both aircraft, and both were immediately sprayed by fuel; a pool of fuel ignited between and under the two aircraft. Both pilots initially escaped from the flames around their aircraft.
(Edit: Except of course of the year, 67, not 69)
Some video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chuiyXQKw3I
"As a torture victim, Mr. McCain was sensitive to the detention and interrogation of detainees in the fight against terrorism. In 2005 the Senate passed his bill to bar inhumane treatment of prisoners, including those at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, by limiting military practices to those permitted by the United States Army Field Manual on Interrogation. His 2008 bill to ban waterboarding as torture was adopted, but vetoed by President Bush."
Very few people would be capable of enduring torture across nearly six years, while letting numerous other prisoners go free in their stead.
McCain signed up to the military willingly. He comes from a family line of professional soldiers. Who knows how many of those others he put before himself were forcibly drafted into it, plausibly many of them (late 1967 was near peak US troop levels, a lot of soldiers taken POW at that time forward would have been drafted; in 1968 300k were drafted, 1.7m total across the war (38% of which served in Vietnam)).
Personally I'd never agree with the US involvement in the Vietnam civil war. McCain is a hero for his actions in captivity, not for his war fighting.
“John McCain and I were members of different generations, came from completely different backgrounds, and competed at the highest level of politics. But we shared, for all our differences, a fidelity to something higher – the ideals for which generations of Americans and immigrants alike have fought, marched, and sacrificed. We saw our political battles, even, as a privilege, something noble, an opportunity to serve as stewards of those high ideals at home, and to advance them around the world. We saw this country as a place where anything is possible – and citizenship as our patriotic obligation to ensure it forever remains that way.
Few of us have been tested the way John once was, or required to show the kind of courage that he did. But all of us can aspire to the courage to put the greater good above our own. At John’s best, he showed us what that means. And for that, we are all in his debt. Michelle and I send our most heartfelt condolences to Cindy and their family.”
-Barack Obama
http://www.ontheissues.org/Celeb/John_McCain_Homeland_Securi...
Also he did NOT support torture and was an author of a bill that was passed that forbid it.
You are idealistic with no understanding of the facts.
McCain was a war hawk who voted for both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars amongst others and constantly supported overthrowing other governments by force. To support a war like Iraq was unconscionable. Everyone knew the allegations that led to to it were bullshit without having any access to classified information. It seems the idea of a hero here in America is one who goes and sends others to die in war for no reason, without thought, without any consideration for the massive loss of human life that entails. These aren't wars of self defense like WWII, to address your question above, they are wars of aggression, hate, cruelty, and racism. Yeah that sure makes a real hero, killing and sending others to kill for a hateful, cruel agenda.
Yet, you are okay with WII? Which is it? Are the those that fought in a war you agree with not Heroic?
As to the 2nd Iraq war - A large number of good people were mislead by President G.W.Bush. There is no proof that Senator McCain had any knowledge beyond the reset of the members of the Senate. Furthermore I would argue that having fought in a war, having been tortured for 5 years, he more then others would have a very clear understand the consequences and cost of his vote.
All of you arguments deal in absolutes in a world that has way to many shades of grey. Ideally I agree with you - all war is wrong. Unfortunately not everyone in the world shares your view, and there are still bad people. Senator McCain was far from perfect, but is he quite distance from the monster you make him out to be.
Good guy, who served with honor. Will be missed.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/07/report-mccains-pro...
Washington Post had something about it yesterday https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bad-blood-between-mc...
[1] http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/08/25/john-mccain-dead-...
Addendum: the comments section seems to have been removed from that story.
Hivemind N.B.: I had strong disagreements with both Scalia and McCain. Don’t taze me, bro!
You are forgetting that the Bush republicans hated mccain and one of the most toxic republican campaigns was in 2000 between Bush and McCain.
The 2000 toxicity was superceded by the 2008 Obama/Biden vs McCain/Palin election. Now that was a vicious campaign. McCain and Palin was attacked mercilessly by the media, the democrats, social media and even some republicans. The same celebrities who are praising mccain today were the same ones calling mccain a racist and all kinds of awful names in 2008.
If you are young, you probably don't remember any of it. But the 2008 was the first "social media" election and nobody got more hate than mccain. It's so strange to see social media and the media praising mccain. It was something unthinkable 10 years ago. It would be like CNN praising Trump in 2028 or Trump praising CNN in 2028. That's how toxic the 2008 environment got. I'd say it was worse than the 2016 election. To me the 2016 was more cartoonish than vicious.
Anyone else feel like 2008 was a lifetime ago? It's only been 10 years, but at the same time it seems like an eternity ago.
> Addendum: the comments section seems to have been removed from that story.
The same thing is being done all over social media too. Though I'm against censorship ( especially of political figures ), I guess it is understandable. The guy just died. Not sure what kind of precedent it sets to scrub the internet of speech against a politician though.
It was easy to understand why she was picked, yet it turned the whole run into a farce and diluted his message. A meaningful lady VP (maybe Condoleezza Rice) would've won it for him. It seemed they positioned for that, but calculations probaly didn't support. It would've needed a different Republican party.
Great man passed.
For those of you that met him in person and were impressed by his personality, most halfway decent politicians can pull that off, that's how they got elected. His domestic politics were standard conservative fare, and was against raising taxes on the rich to provide for human need. McCain failed us and menaced the world.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/09/john-mccain-wor...
https://www.liberationnews.org/john-mccain-war-criminal-not-...
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/8/25/17778146/j...
https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/john-mccain-for...
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/...
As a related meta-analysis of the response to his passing, i am surprised how many comments here include disclaimers to the appreciation offered. "I didn't agree with him but...".
Have we become this partisan as a people? Our semi-anonymous respects for the passing of a prominent figure must be disclaimer-ed with political editorials. A worrying trend.
I mean, he was a politician.
And I don't think people are saying that to disclaim their appreciation at all, they're saying it to underline the fact that their appreciation exists despite a deep disagreement with his politics.
The only actual anger towards McCain comes from Trump extremists. And this is the interesting bit: accountability is supposed to be a key aspect of democracy but you can literally push your country into a totally unnecessary and that's A-OK. You'll only be criticized if you deviate from the party's leader.
And while McCain may have eventually admitted Iraq was a mistake it did nothing to lessen his efforts to bomb brown people. He was a key supporter of Saudi Arabia's carpet bombing of Yemen [2] which is now literally blowing up school buses of children. I guess you don't even have to learn from your mistakes.
[1] https://www.vox.com/2018/5/25/17394466/john-mccain-memoir-ir...
[2] http://observer.com/2017/06/democrats-trump-administration-a...
It's a human thing. econtalk had an interesting interview this week with someone who wrote a book on this topic.
http://www.econtalk.org/lilliana-mason-on-uncivil-agreement/...
Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity.
That's no way to build a healthy society. It scares me more than any given issue of the day. I have kids growing up in this world.
I’ve seeing it happen before my eyes over the last 20 years. Where I grew up, lots of rich Indians and Middle Eastern people were Republicans. Identity politics wasn’t a thing. No longer. The current political climate is forcing people to pick sides, and people aren’t stupid—they’ll pick sides along tribal lines. You might not agree with your tribe, but you can trust them not to turn on you when things go sideways.
Good opponents are the foundation of a strong democracy. You're in real trouble when you honestly struggle to say anything nice about your opponents, or you're too tied up in tribalism to entertain the possibility that your opponents might be decent and principled people who just happen to have different principles. "I don't agree with you, but I respect you as a person" is the essential basis of civilization.
So I agree with you that people should be civil, but the premise of respecting the other still hinges on identifing others.
Yes. Will Wheaton apologized for his privilege as an introduction to his public confession of his mental health issues. The post was on the front page here. I typically get disapproval unless I mention I did not vote for Trump when discussing anything political these days.
Given a lack of context, people jump to a lot of conclusions these days. So people feel required to volunteer context. It might stop if we learn to give each other the benefit of the doubt.
But that requires trust.
It shouldn't matter. But unfortunately, all too often, it does.
Sadly, all too many voters (and politicians) treat it like a football game.
The way I'm interpreting it implies that the platform differences between those parties isn't really important in any way.
McCain, to me, seemed to embody values that showed a willingness to work with people who shared different views. He put his nation before himself. That's partly what I was alluding to..
Ifshin was a prominent Vietnam war protestor (and Democrat) who later developed a relationship with McCain.
Glioblastoma is particularly awful, even in the realm of cancer. Two books I found quite interesting on neurosurgery and cancer as a whole.
Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery
by Henry Marsh
and
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
by Siddhartha Mukherjee
http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-when-tokyo-rose-ran-...
By most biographical accounts he was not a nice man in private, very egocentric, and had a very carefully constructed and well-maintained public image.
He also was a POW to a brutal, Communist regime, a real war hero.
It was sad to see him go to such a terrible disease.
A complicated man indeed.
...and then stayed married for 38 years until his death.
Also, he and Carol were married only 2 years before he was shot down and they then spent 6 years apart, and then 6 years together post- her accident.
So it's a bit cheap to cast him as just a trophy-wife chaser, who ditched his amazing first marriage the moment her looks got messed up.
You may not have liked McCain politically, but it's probably best to keep quiet about intimate things such as his romantic intentions or past relationships, your comment is sleazy and cheap, and I'm almost certain you're not an authority on those aspects of his life.
Of course I am not an authority on those aspects of his life, doesn't mean I can't speak about it or have an opinion about it. This is after all a discussion forum, which by its nature should encourage alternative views and opinions.
I like McCain, I voted for him twice (primary in 2000 against Bush, and again in 2008 against Obama). I even liked Palin, before she self-imploded.
Until 2016...
But they all had to veer to the right a little more than I thought they were comfortable with to win the election. But McCain shut down anyone who tried to make the election about race.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_John_Mc...
He and Kerry considered running together in 2004. It is sad that such a ticket could never win. :-(
Yeah, post-Trump he may seem to have been in the wrong party, but post-Trump even much of the conservative establishment is questioning the Republican Party (George Will encouraging conservatives to vote for Democrats in the midterms, for instance.)
But then you have the Southern Republicans who use to be Democrats before the Civil Rights Era in the 60s - the Confederate Flag waving, “Moral Majority”, hate immigrants, anti-trade populists, who see the world changing and “ruining American culture”.
But when I look at the Republican Party today, I don’t recognize it. How did they get overtaken by The far right? If they had focused more on rural America instead of big business would that have helped?
Yes my view of the Republican Party has always been viewed through the lense of keeping southern republicans out of power - no matter if the Republican Party had some ideas I agreed with.
Democrats on the other hand are just weak and don’t have the courage of their convictions. They could easily have brought the middle class and rural America and minorities together. Except for the South, until the demographics change, there was no way a Black man was ever going to win the southern states.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Represen...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Senators...
It's just 2, Strom Thurmond in the senate and Albert Watson in the house. If the "party switch" narrative were correct, you'd expect many more. What is going on here is that nobody wants to own the history of the KKK or voting against civil rights legislation because that is an unelectable position to take in modern America. An effective way to evade this ugly history is to throw it at the opposing party, falsely claiming the illogical idea that the parties just decided to swap sides one day.
Prior to the supposed switch, democrat politicians voted against civil rights laws and even filibustered them. They were also KKK. Republican politicians were trying to pass civil rights legislation. The electorate for democrats presumably liked democrats (else why vote that way?) and the same for the electorate for republicans.
So you say it wasn't the politicians that switched, but the electorate. OK, so now people on both sides suddenly change their views... say what? That would be like a 2020 election with all the Hillary voters choosing Trump and all of Trump's original supporters picking Robert Mueller.
Want to make it that the politicians switch views but stay in their party, while the voters switch views and/or party affiliation? Aw, come on... this is completely implausible. Suddenly the republican politicians all become racist, and suddenly the democrat politicians all decide they like civil rights? What could possibly make that unproven event happen, and why would only 2 members of congress resist going along with it?
None of that is believable at all. This whole thing is just marketing.
I have in fact lived in the South, and anybody running for congress WILL LOSE if they take a position against civil rights. When your political party has a history seeped in this unelectable position, you'll do anything to evade it, including dishonestly claiming the other party somehow inherited your past.
However, he served with dignity. He was willing to compromise and admit mistakes. I believe he cared more about America than about being a politician, and that he voted what he felt was best for the country, not just his party line.
If I have to disagree with a fellow American, McCain is the type of person I want to disagree with. You could box with McCain without worrying whether he’d try to hit below the belt.
In an era no-holds-barred politics, McCain represents a past way of doing things that will be sorely missed.
Truly a sad day.
On topic, loss is sad when anyone dies, even if they hold views you find abhorent. They leave behind friends and family and remind us of our own mortality and the one thing we all have in common (finite existence).
Except for his family. A more fitting epitaph may be: John McCain, Father, Husband, Son. And that's not bad at all.
Tell that to the guys he provided close air support for. I've been on the ground when it comes down. Years later I'm still thankful and it brings tears to my eyes.
That's what I remember him for. He later said he was just joking. As if joking about killing thousands of people is somehow better.
I remember him for that one but also for advocating the permanent military presence, like South Korea, going forward in Iraq. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf7HYoh9YMM
I'm somewhat surprised that HN seems to have such a hardon for the man, and every negative comment is being downvoted / flagged. I remember pretty clearly how Obama-obsessed the tech world was in 2008, and even Family Guy did a "we're not saying he's a nazi but nazis support him" routine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRHL5QlwA-g What happened to make the HN crowd change their opinion (did McCain fight back against software patents at some point despite being a self-admitted computer illiterate?), or was it always glowing and the subject just didn't come up?
He died, and most people tend to talk only about good stuff out of respect immediately afterward. You don't see people getting up and criticizing the deceased at funerals.
- His hand was very soft. Notably so.
- His face, his skin, looked translucent. Scot-Irish background indeed.
So, not much of a story to tell, but if you want to know what it was like to see him up close... ^^^
While Russia is invading and expanding occupation and impotent Europe is "Concerned" and Obama or Trump did not do jack shit, McCain was only one to voice up and support really small country against huge money he could have earned from Putin like others do.
Fuck cancer and Fuck Russia
He was a real RINO though.
There is no such thing as true Republican anyways. I mean, look at Trump, he, like Bush, obviously isn’t a fiscal conservative and doesn’t care about the deficit. That anti deficit position only comes up when a democrat is in charge, and is promptly forgotten afterwards.
McCain was an effective politician because he was a maverick, and he shouldn't be chastised for his independence.
http://www.climateoutcome.kiwi.nz/uploads/1/7/4/3/17431675/7...
(we are now at 415ppm, so +22 Fahrenheit expected)
Remember he would have been president if the military (Cheney+Bush) had not taken over.