John McCain brain cancer.......now RIP

[Grifman]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKCN1LC0P8

Aside: Y'all should seek help for your Trump Derangement Syndrome, but not tax dollars please.

Uh, does this post have a point?

[Grifman]

Trump is such an asshole. He hasn't got a single molecule of decency in his body. Of course what should we expect from a man that cut off his brother's health insurance in a business dispute that was needed from an extremely sick nephew.

[hepcat]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKCN1LC0P8

Aside: Y'all should seek help for your Trump Derangement Syndrome, but not tax dollars please.

We’ll just get Mexico to pay for it too!

[YellowKing]

Also according to reports, Trump described news coverage of McCain's death as "over the top." Just drop dead you worthless piece of shit.

[$iljanus]

Also according to reports, Trump described news coverage of McCain's death as "over the top." Just drop dead you worthless piece of shit.

Awww, the Man Baby in Chief needs some attention time.

You're special too and when you finally leave office I'm sure the celebrations will be over the top as well. In the meantime have a juice box and go prank call the Prime Minister of Canada.

[GreenGoo]

Careful though. Timezones.

[Z-Corn]

Yeah, and we saw yesterday he doesn't know how to work a phone...

[Paingod]

Yeah, and we saw yesterday he doesn't know how to work a phone...

I really hate defending him, but what I saw was someone who was expecting a call to be transferred and he wasn't getting it. I was feeling more like there was a technology failure there than there was a presidential one.

I mean, with the context of bumbling idiot - it's funny. In the context of having worked around telecommunications equipment for over a decade, I can totally see some IT guy in the background sweating bullets and trying furiously to get a conference call to the president's desk.

[GreenGoo]

Comedic license and much hated person.

The president is being subjected to unfair criticism for comedic effect? Say it isn't so!

What have we become?!

Who gives a shit in this very serious time of unfair Google searches?

[AWS260]

The proposal to rename one of the Senate office buildings after McCain is running into pushback from Republicans.

You can understand their reluctance. After all, this would require removing the name of Richard Russell, who is revered in Republican circles for being:

-- A Democrat
-- A champion of the New Deal, which greatly expanded the scope of the federal government
-- An avowed white supremacist

It's at least one of those reasons; I can't figure out which.

[Smoove_B]

Maybe it's because of his final dig at Trump?

The Republican senator from Arizona, who planned his own funeral, chose Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza as one of the dignitaries to carry his coffin to the front of the Washington National Cathedral at Saturday’s memorial service.

...

The choice of Kara-Murza, who twice suffered organ failure from poisoning, appears aimed at sending a last message to Putin and Trump, who McCain had criticized for sounding too cozy with the Russian leader, amid an investigation into whether the U.S. president’s allies cooperated with Moscow’s efforts to intervene in the 2016 election.

[LordMortis]

Maybe it's because of his final dig at Trump?

The Republican senator from Arizona, who planned his own funeral, chose Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza as one of the dignitaries to carry his coffin to the front of the Washington National Cathedral at Saturday’s memorial service.

...

The choice of Kara-Murza, who twice suffered organ failure from poisoning, appears aimed at sending a last message to Putin and Trump, who McCain had criticized for sounding too cozy with the Russian leader, amid an investigation into whether the U.S. president’s allies cooperated with Moscow’s efforts to intervene in the 2016 election.

I was impressed with his non-digs at Trump from his final letter. What a presence of mind at the end. He absolutely nailed it right down to wall and blood and soil metaphors deconstructed.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... -his-death

'Fellow Americans' - that association has meant more to me than any other. I lived and died a proud American. We are citizens of the world's greatest republic, a nation of ideals, not blood and soil. We are blessed and are a blessing to humanity when we uphold and advance those ideals at home and in the world. We have helped liberate more people from tyranny and poverty than ever before in history. We have acquired great wealth and power in the process.

We weaken our greatness when we confuse our patriotism with tribal rivalries that have sown resentment and hatred and violence in all the corners of the globe. We weaken it when we hide behind walls, rather than tear them down, when we doubt the power of our ideals, rather than trust them to be the great force for change they have always been.

We are three-hundred-and-twenty-five million opinionated, vociferous individuals. We argue and compete and sometimes even vilify each other in our raucous public debates. But we have always had so much more in common with each other than in disagreement. If only we remember that and give each other the benefit of the presumption that we all love our country we will get through these challenging times. We will come through them stronger than before. We always do.

Ten years ago, I had the privilege to concede defeat in the election for president. I want to end my farewell to you with the heartfelt faith in Americans that I felt so powerfully that evening.

[Alefroth]

Yeah, and we saw yesterday he doesn't know how to work a phone...

I really hate defending him, but what I saw was someone who was expecting a call to be transferred and he wasn't getting it. I was feeling more like there was a technology failure there than there was a presidential one.

I mean, with the context of bumbling idiot - it's funny. In the context of having worked around telecommunications equipment for over a decade, I can totally see some IT guy in the background sweating bullets and trying furiously to get a conference call to the president's desk.

Trying furiously? Was getting a conference call to a phone one of your greatest challenges? It's not like there have never been conference calls to his desk before.

[Paingod]

Yeah, and we saw yesterday he doesn't know how to work a phone...

I really hate defending him, but what I saw was someone who was expecting a call to be transferred and he wasn't getting it. I was feeling more like there was a technology failure there than there was a presidential one.

I mean, with the context of bumbling idiot - it's funny. In the context of having worked around telecommunications equipment for over a decade, I can totally see some IT guy in the background sweating bullets and trying furiously to get a conference call to the president's desk.

Trying furiously? Was getting a conference call to a phone one of your greatest challenges? It's not like there have never been conference calls to his desk before.

I was thinking more like "Trying furiously" to get a user to follow directions - like whoever was supposed to be dialing in to Trump so he could push a button was bumbling the IT person's directions - leaving the IT person with their ass in the air, because it's always the fault of IT when tech fails. It's never the user's fault.

[stessier]

because it's always the fault of IT when tech fails. It's never the user's fault.

Admitting it is the first step to fixing the problem.

[Daehawk]

Now that its all settled in to me I find I worry what Washington will be like under Trump without McCain there to help keep it on course. He didn't always stand up against Trump but he did more than anyone else. He went with what was right more.

Also just think if he had won in 2008 and had two terms. He would have been president until just 2 years before he passed.

[Kraken]

Lifted from Robert Reich's blog. I'm already getting tired of McCain worship, but this one is exceptional.

I was struck by this passage in Michael Lewis' 1997 New York Times Magazine profile of John McCain. It's even more poignant in light of Trump's response to McCain.

***

By 7:30 we were on the road, and McCain was reminiscing about his early political career. When he was elected to the House in 1982, he said, he was "a freshman right-wing Nazi." But his visceral hostility toward Democrats generally was quickly tempered by his tendency to see people as individuals and judge them that way. He was taken in hand by Morris Udall, the Arizona congressman who was the liberal conscience of the Congress and a leading voice for reform. (Most famously—and disastrously for his own career—Udall took aim at the seniority system that kept young talent in its place at the end of the dais. "The longer you're here, the more you'll like it," he used to joke to incoming freshmen.)

"Mo reached out to me in 50 different ways," McCain recalled. "Right from the start, he'd say: 'I'm going to hold a press conference out in Phoenix. Why don't you join me?' All these journalists would show up to hear what Mo had to say. In the middle of it all, Mo would point to me and say, 'I'd like to hear John's views.' Well, hell, I didn't have any views. But I got up and learned and was introduced to the state." Four years later, when McCain ran for and won Barry Goldwater's Senate seat, he said he felt his greatest debt of gratitude not to Goldwater—who had shunned him—but to Udall. "There's no way Mo could have been more wonderful," he says, "and there was no reason for him to be that way."

For the past few years, Udall has lain ill with Parkinson's disease in a veterans hospital in Northeast Washington, which is where we were heading. Every few weeks, McCain drives over to pay his respects. These days the trip is a ceremony, like going to church, only less pleasant. Udall is seldom conscious, and even then he shows no sign of recognition. McCain brings with him a stack of newspaper clips on Udall's favorite subjects: local politics in Arizona, environmental legislation, Native American land disputes, subjects in which McCain initially had no particular interest himself. Now, when the Republican senator from Arizona takes the floor on behalf of Native Americans, or when he writes an op-ed piece arguing that the Republican Party embrace environmentalism, or when the polls show once again that he is Arizona's most popular politician, he remains aware of his debt to Arizona's most influential Democrat.

One wall of Udall's hospital room was cluttered with photos of his family back in Arizona; another bore a single photograph of Udall during his season with the Denver Nuggets, dribbling a basketball. Aside from a congressional seal glued to a door jamb, there was no indication what the man in the bed had done for his living. Beneath a torn gray blanket on a narrow hospital cot, Udall lay twisted and disfigured. No matter how many times McCain tapped him on the shoulder and called his name, his eyes remained shut.

A nurse entered and seemed surprised to find anyone there, and it wasn't long before I found out why: Almost no one visits anymore. In his time, which was not very long ago, Mo Udall was one of the most-sought-after men in the Democratic Party. Yet as he dies in a veterans hospital a few miles from the Capitol, he is visited regularly only by a single old political friend, John McCain. "He's not going to wake up this time," McCain said.

On the way out of the parking lot, McCain recalled what it was like to be a nobody called upon by a somebody. As he did, his voice acquired the same warmth that colored Russell Feingold's speech when he described the first call from John McCain. "When you called Feingold … " I started to ask him. But before I could, he interrupted. "Yeah," he says, "I thought of Mo." And then, for maybe the third time that morning, McCain spoke of how it affected him when Udall took him in hand. It was a simple act of affection and admiration, and for that reason it meant all the more to McCain. It was one man saying to another, “We disagree in politics but not in life.” It was one man saying to another, party political differences cut only so deep. Having made that step, they found much to agree upon and many useful ways to work together. This is the reason McCain keeps coming to see Udall even after Udall has lost his last shred of political influence. The politics were never all that important.

[GreenGoo]

Lifted from Robert Reich's blog. I'm already getting tired of McCain worship, but this one is exceptional.

People turn into Saints when they die. If you're religious, they *literally* turn into saints.

Everyone knows that. I settle for a few nice words and move on. Only those close to the dead should worship them, imo, although sometimes people need inspiration and they can get it by this sort of thing (the country-wide worshiping). Even if you aren't inspired, being tolerant is good enough.

Great story about McCain though. More powerful for being from his early days, and written during that time frame.

Anyone can write a eulogy.

[Kraken]

If the McCain hagiography moves one Republican senator to aim higher, it's useful.

[GreenGoo]

If the McCain hagiography moves one Republican senator to aim higher, it's useful.

As I say to my kids when there is a word I don't understand, "No, you're a hagiography!"

For the record and those who come after, it means writing that idolizes the subject.

[em2nought]

For the record and those who come after, it means writing that idolizes the subject.

Thanks, yeah we don't do idols. Except maybe John Wayne.

[milo]

As I say to my kids..., "No, you're a hagiography!"

Wow, man. That's, uh, that's not cool.

[GreenGoo]

As I say to my kids..., "No, you're a hagiography!"

Wow, man. That's, uh, that's not cool.

No, you're not cool!

[Alefroth]

Yeah, and we saw yesterday he doesn't know how to work a phone...

I really hate defending him, but what I saw was someone who was expecting a call to be transferred and he wasn't getting it. I was feeling more like there was a technology failure there than there was a presidential one.

I mean, with the context of bumbling idiot - it's funny. In the context of having worked around telecommunications equipment for over a decade, I can totally see some IT guy in the background sweating bullets and trying furiously to get a conference call to the president's desk.

Trying furiously? Was getting a conference call to a phone one of your greatest challenges? It's not like there have never been conference calls to his desk before.

I was thinking more like "Trying furiously" to get a user to follow directions - like whoever was supposed to be dialing in to Trump so he could push a button was bumbling the IT person's directions - leaving the IT person with their ass in the air, because it's always the fault of IT when tech fails. It's never the user's fault.

I hadn't seen the full video before. An aide came over and got it working pretty quickly- https://www.thecut.com/2018/08/donald-t ... _source=fb

And there's a transcript.

[GreenGoo]

Can you imagine being that aide? Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I'll help you, but it will make you look bad, and you HATE looking bad. There's no good answer when you work for a shitty human being.

[$iljanus]

Yeah, and we saw yesterday he doesn't know how to work a phone...

I really hate defending him, but what I saw was someone who was expecting a call to be transferred and he wasn't getting it. I was feeling more like there was a technology failure there than there was a presidential one.

I mean, with the context of bumbling idiot - it's funny. In the context of having worked around telecommunications equipment for over a decade, I can totally see some IT guy in the background sweating bullets and trying furiously to get a conference call to the president's desk.

Trying furiously? Was getting a conference call to a phone one of your greatest challenges? It's not like there have never been conference calls to his desk before.

I was thinking more like "Trying furiously" to get a user to follow directions - like whoever was supposed to be dialing in to Trump so he could push a button was bumbling the IT person's directions - leaving the IT person with their ass in the air, because it's always the fault of IT when tech fails. It's never the user's fault.

I hadn't seen the full video before. An aide came over and got it working pretty quickly- https://www.thecut.com/2018/08/donald-t ... _source=fb

And there's a transcript.

You know, when you decide to hold a live propaganda event and there are technical difficulties, you deserve all the ridicule and embarrassment you can get.

[Skinypupy]

Fox & Friends goes after Megan McCain and Obama for “criticizing Trump”in their eulogies.

Interesting that they never once mentioned Donald Trump. Rather, they talked about bombast, insults, and pettiness in politics. About not being influenced by despots and strongmen. Conservatives then immediately connected all of those labels to Trump.

Maybe that should tell them something.

[Holman]

We're at the point where praising virtue is instantly understood as an attack on the POTUS.

[em2nought]

You fellas really love a Republican that you can beat don't ya? I guess Romney is going to get a whopper of a funeral too.

[Skinypupy]

Yes, we have respect for people who served their country honorably, demonstrated decency and respect throughout their career, and aren’t racist, narcissistic assholes. Their political affliliation doesn’t factor into it.

All of which are completely foreign concepts to you, I’m sure.

[GreenGoo]

You fellas really love a Republican that you can beat don't ya? I guess Romney is going to get a whopper of a funeral too.

This is all I hear.

[Holman]

Yes, we have respect for people who served their country honorably, demonstrated decency and respect throughout their career, and aren’t racist, narcissistic assholes. Their political affliliation doesn’t factor into it.

All of which are completely foreign concepts to you, I’m sure.

+1

[hepcat]

You fellas really love a Republican that you can beat don't ya? I guess Romney is going to get a whopper of a funeral too.

And you apparently love draft dodgers. Go figure.

[em2nought]

You fellas really love a Republican that you can beat don't ya? I guess Romney is going to get a whopper of a funeral too.

And you apparently love draft dodgers. Go figure.

Another war we should have never been involved with in the first place.

[GreenGoo]

Draft dodgers are heroes. Heroes, I say. Only suckers like dbt would fight when his country called.

[hepcat]

You fellas really love a Republican that you can beat don't ya? I guess Romney is going to get a whopper of a funeral too.

And you apparently love draft dodgers. Go figure.

Another war we should have never been involved with in the first place.

That's liberal commie talk.