John McCain is Gone

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Might as well add this from 1999 before the good old Dan Rather got caught forging fake news documents.

I wonder why this video isn't more popular.

I mean, 60 Minutes was a popular show.

How come nobody exploded against Trump in moral outrage back then?...

(psssssst... here's a hint... the moral panic game in the fake news outrage machine is amoral power, not life with morality...)

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

9 hours ago, KorbenDallas said:

Ah, the good ol days, anyone here agree with this?

Korben,

Actually, I do.

I don't think getting caught in war is worthy of contempt (unless you are someone like Bowe Bergdahl), and I have much compassion for those who get captured, but I don't think being a prisoner of war makes a person a hero. Shit happens to anybody, not just heroes.

The story is effective propaganda for a former POW running for office to use at election time, though...

It sure brings home the vote bacon.

So I don't fault McCain for using it. If I wanted to be a sleazy elitist warmongering-for-profit politician, I would not only use a story like that, I would goose it up.

Michael

 

LATER EDIT: With reference to the video Korben posted of then-candidate Trump saying about McCain he likes people who don't get captured, the folks who talk about this to diss Trump ALWAYS leave out what Trump said right before that. You know, the part about McCain calling the people who showed up at Trump's rallies "the crazies." (This was before McCain got creative and came up with the term "wacko birds.") Trump talked about that and said it offended him because these were good Americans, incredible people. 

Why do they always leave that part out, I wonder, I wonder?...  

[Jon Letendre]

 

Q posts can be found here: https://qanon.app

Praying Medic's Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/prayingmedic

Praying Medic describes a recent "coincidence" in Q's posts whereby No Name's Senate office releases a time of death that is precisely a month, to the minute, following Q's statement that he would be back in the news. This is not Nostradamus or seeing the future, it is Q demonstrating "We are in control." 

1. Praying Medic‏ @prayingmedic Aug 26

   More

   90) On July 25th, #Qanon posted this. Note the timestamp. 16:28 (4:28 pm) Senator McCain and I both live in Arizona. Same time zone.

   

    

    

    

 

1. Praying Medic‏ @prayingmedic Aug 26

   More

   91) This morning, #Qanon posted this. Note that 30 is in brackets. Note that 28 (minutes) is also in brackets.

   

    

 

1. Praying Medic‏ @prayingmedic Aug 26

   More

   92) According to CBS News, McCain died at 4:28 pm on August 25th. 30 days exactly (to the minute) after #Qanon posted the "hands up" photo. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/john-mccain-dead-81-arizona-maverick-senator-death-after-stopped-brain-cancer-treatment-live-updates/ …

   

    

[Jon Letendre]

That is hardly the first "30 day coincidence" from Q.

And there is a recent new one we can watch develop. "Think FLYNN [30]. Exactly [30]."

Q post #1935, August 27, 2018:

Q !!mG7VJxZNCI ID: fd6f58 No.2758814 
Aug 27 2018 19:11:09 (EST)

Q !!mG7VJxZNCI ID: fd6f58 No.2758706 
Aug 27 2018 19:04:20 (EST)

Focus Here:
"…raise troubling questions about Halper, who was believed to have worked with the CIA and part of the matrix of players in the bureau’s ‘CrossFire Hurricane’ investigation into Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Halper, who assisted the FBI in the Russia investigation, appears to also have significant ties to the Russian government, as well as sources connected directly to President Vladimir Putin."
https://saraacarter.com/whistleblower-exposes-key-player-in-fbi-russia-probe-it-was-all-a-set-up/
Define 'Projection'.
D's SCREAM when POTUS meets w/ PUTIN?
D's demand to hold hearings w/ the interpreter used during the private POTUS-PUTIN meeting?
D's demand ALL meetings w/ PUTIN be CANCELLED?
If POTUS knows everything - control over what orgs are central to operational success?
1. DOJ
2. FBI
3. NSA
4. US MILITARY
5. STATE
6. F_ASSETS
Ask yourself, if above are central to operational success, who would you pick to lead such orgs?
HRC election loss = CF inflow stop
CF inflow stop = No Name Institute inflow ramp
Compare donors.
Define DARK MONEY.
Direct correlation?
[He did not depart on his own terms]
Think FLYNN [30].
Exactly [30].
Q

>>2758706
Think for yourself.
Research for yourself.
Trust yourself.
Clickbait opinions are designed to attract reader to subscribe and/or follow and/or shape a pre-designed narrative.
FOLLOW THE FACTS.
SHEEP NO MORE.
Q

[Jules Troy]

V for vendetta!

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:

Praying Medic describes a recent "coincidence" in Q's posts whereby No Name's Senate office releases a time of death that is precisely a month, to the minute, following Q's statement that he would be back in the news.

Jon,

That is one hell of a coincidence.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here is one hell of a story about McCain and muh Russians.

From Rush Limbaugh.

John McCain’s 2008 Meetings with a Russian Oligarch

Guess who was in the middle of it?

Paul Manafort.

Guess who McCain met with while he was running for president? Twice? 

A Russian businessman and Putin ally named Oleg Deripaska, the very same the fake news media now loves to holler about in attacking President Trump.

Here's the deal and it's just one point of many. When President Trump discovered Manafort's lobbying ties to the Ukraine, he fired him. That was after three months. Rick Davis, Manafort's partner who set up the Deripaska meetings for McCain and other Russian stuff stayed around with McCain. Rush didn't mention it, but Rick Davis was the guy who just read McCain's final statement to the public after he died.

The way the fake news media is now saying it, McCain dismissed Manafort over Russian ties (see here for instance) while downplaying the relationship between Davis and Manafort. McCain ended up on the opposite side of Deripaska, but one wonders what really went on.

This story is a bit geeky for the layman, but the implications, which will eventually involve massive amounts of money, crony deals, arms running with Islamist militants, death and so on, will probably start making the news rounds soon. Like I mentioned, the fake news media is already trying to deflect.

It seems like the more you dig, the more there is with McCain...

The worst of it is, from what I can tell, in between bouts of evil backstate manipulations (like sending his own personal envoy to Europe to get the phoney Steele pissgate dossier on Trump), McCain probably believed his own bullshit.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

McCain was a war hero. Flying into combat against enemy planes and anti air makes that.

--Brant 

I don't have to consider Trump as an authority or even listen to him on this though he could say what he said about himself, to wit,  "I was a war hero because I wasn't captured!?"

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

McCain was a war hero. Flying into combat against enemy planes and anti air makes that.

Brant,

And here I thought fighting the enemy was part of the job description when one signs up for the armed forces.

That may sound snarky, but it really isn't.

I have no problem recognizing that going into danger requires a certain level of heroism. It takes balls. But if I am going to celebrate a person like John McCain as a hero among heroes, he better have done something more than getting captured and held prisoner of war for years. If what he did is deserving of special recognition, then why don't we celebrate those who were POW's with him?

Can you name one of them off the top of your head? I can't.

Why?

Are they less heroes than John McCain?

I doubt it.

And if not, why is he entitled to recognition for heroism and they not? You may think they deserve it, but that's not how it plays out in society. It plays out that he's the big hero and they are not, except when someone wants to give lip service to feel good about how viruous they are. And even then, they will only know the name of the former POW because they read it at the time or heard someone say it.

Either a hero is someone who does something exceptional to the norm, or a hero is everybody. You can't have it both ways and have it make sense.

Fighting the enemy and getting captured is not exceptional. It's part of the job and one of the risks of the job. It's definitely good guy stuff, it definitely deserves high respect, but it's nothing to build a monument to. Making a daring escape and saving others, now that would be exceptional. That's what I think of when I think of hero. That and other things like that.

Michael

[9thdoctor]

14 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

But if I am going to celebrate a person like John McCain as a hero among heroes, he better have done something more than getting captured and held prisoner of war for years.

While I was no fan of McCain qua politician, and regard his prisoner-of-war heroism as misdirected, the story bears reviewing.

This comes from David Foster Wallace's piece on McCain from 2000.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/david-foster-wallace-on-john-mccain-the-weasel-twelve-monkeys-and-the-shrub-194272/

But there’s something underneath politics in the way you have to hear McCain, something riveting and unSpinnable and true. It has to do with McCain’s military background and Vietnam combat and the five-plus years he spent in a North Vietnamese prison, mostly in solitary, in a box, getting tortured and starved. And the unbelievable honor and balls he showed there. It’s very easy to gloss over the POW thing, partly because we’ve all heard so much about it and partly because it’s so off-the-charts dramatic, like something in a movie instead of a man’s life. But it’s worth considering for a minute, because it’s what makes McCain’s “causes greater than self-interest” line easier to hear.

You probably already know what happened. In October of ’67 McCain was himself still a Young Voter and flying his 23rd Vietnam combat mission and his A-4 Skyhawk plane got shot down over Hanoi and he had to eject, which basically means setting off an explosive charge that blows your seat out of the plane, which ejection broke both McCain’s arms and one leg and gave him a concussion and he started falling out of the skies right over Hanoi. Try to imagine for a second how much this would hurt and how scared you’d be, three limbs broken and falling toward the enemy capital you just tried to bomb. His chute opened late and he landed hard in a little lake in a park right in the middle of downtown Hanoi, Imagine treading water with broken arms and trying to pull the life vest’s toggle with your teeth as a crowd of Vietnamese men swim out toward you (there’s film of this, somebody had a home-movie camera, and the N.V. government released it, though it’s grainy and McCain’s face is hard to see). The crowd pulled him out and then just about killed him. U.S. bomber pilots were especially hated, for obvious reasons. McCain got bayoneted in the groin; a soldier broke his shoulder apart with a rifle butt. Plus by this time his right knee was bent 90-degrees to the side with the bone sticking out. Try to imagine this. He finally got tossed on a jeep and taken five blocks to the infamous Hoa Lo prison – a.k.a. the “Hanoi Hilton,” of much movie fame – where they made him beg a week for a doctor and finally set a couple of the fractures without anesthetic and let two other fractures and the groin wound (imagine: groin wound) stay like they were. Then they threw him in a cell. Try for a moment to feel this. All the media profiles talk about how McCain still can’t lift his arms over his head to comb his hair, which is true. But try to imagine it at the time, yourself in his place, because it’s important. Think about how diametrically opposed to your own self-interest getting knifed in the balls and having fractures set without painkiller would be, and then about getting thrown in a cell to just lie there and hurt, which is what happened. He was delirious with pain for weeks, and his weight dropped to 100 pounds, and the other POWs were sure he would die; and then after a few months like that after his bones mostly knitted and he could sort of stand up they brought him in to the prison commandant’s office and offered to let him go. This is true. They said he could just leave. They had found out that McCain’s father was one of the top-ranking naval officers in the U.S. Armed Forces (which is true – both his father and grandfather were admirals), and the North Vietnamese wanted the PR coup of mercifully releasing his son, the baby-killer. McCain, 100 pounds and barely able to stand, refused, The U.S. military’s Code of Conduct for Prisoners of War apparently said that POWs had to be released in the order they were captured, and there were others who’d been in Hoa Lo a long time, and McCain refused to violate the Code. The commandant, not pleased, right there in the office had guards break his ribs, rebreak his arm, knock his teeth out. McCain still refused to leave without the other POWs. And so then he spent four more years in Hoa Lo like this, much of the time in solitary, in the dark, in a closet-sized box called a “punishment cell.” Maybe you’ve heard all this before; it’s been in umpteen different media profiles of McCain. But try to imagine that moment between getting offered early release and turning it down. Try to imagine it was you. Imagine how loudly your most basic, primal self-interest would have cried out to you in that moment, and all the ways you could rationalize accepting the offer. Can you hear it? It so, would you have refused to go? You simply can’t know for sure. None of us can. It’s hard even to imagine the pain and fear in that moment, much less know how you’d react.

But, see, we do know how this man reacted. That he chose to spend four more years there, in a dark box, alone, tapping code on the walls to the others, rather than violate a Code. Maybe he was nuts. But the point is that with McCain it feels like we know, for a proven fact, that he’s capable of devotion to something other, more, than his own self-interest. So that when he says the line in speeches in early February you can feel like maybe it isn’t just more candidate bullshit, that with this guy it’s maybe the truth. Or maybe both the truth and bullshit: the guy does – did – want your vote, after all.

[william.scherk]

"Not a lot of people know" that John McCain is celebrated in Vietnam for ushering in a 'new relationship.' For example (use Google Translate to render into English; you can also peruse the Vietnamese-language Google News aggregator for more information on the details of official regard): John McCain và duyên nợ với Việt Nam

This translates roughly as 'John McCain's Love Affair with Vietnam.'

A lot of people are saying that McCain was instrumental in making a productive peace between the USA and Vietnam, including its present military cooperation with regard to China.

President Trump looks interested in improving and extending the USA-Vietnam relationship, according to this VOA report from last year: Trump Shows Signs He Will Rekindle US-Vietnam Relations

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

6 hours ago, 9thdoctor said:

While I was no fan of McCain qua politician, and regard his prisoner-of-war heroism as misdirected, the story bears reviewing.

Dennis,

Based on your recommendation some time ago, I had already read that.

 

If you want to have a hoot, look at other 2000 reporting on McCain and especially the reporting during 2008. The guy was a Nazi, racist, traitor, sellout, white supremacist, liar, and on and on and on. The people who wrote those things are the same who now praise him to the skies.

I want to address something you quoted that DFW wrote, though, since it permeates a lot of the stories about McCain's "heroic sacrifice" of spending 4 more years in the POW camp rather than abandon The Code and cut in line to come home. DFW asks you to get into the head of McCain at the time he was offered early release. And I'm OK with that. As an ongoing student of human nature, I like trying to discern intent and mindset. DFW writes about it well and even makes it visceral for the reader--I like his writing skills. But then he puts out the following and it's the kind of statement we see echoed all the time about McCain's decision.

6 hours ago, 9thdoctor said:

But, see, we do know how this man reacted. That he chose to spend four more years there, in a dark box, alone, tapping code on the walls to the others, rather than violate a Code.

This makes a couple of presuppositions.

1. It assumes that McCain knew in advance he would be spending 4 more years and that it would be in a dark hole. How could he have known that? It would take the ability to time travel. He could have just as easily imagined we would be rescued any day or that he would be shot any day.

2. It assumes McCain believed his captors, the very ones who manipulated and tortured him, and believed the offer was real at the time. Wouldn't it have been just as easy for McCain to think they were setting him up for a propaganda move? As it was, they were trying to get him to sign false confessions and things like that all the time. So rather than heroically abide by The Code rather than sacrifice his colleagues, maybe he simply relied on it as the rules he was supposed to follow because it was the only thing he trusted that made any kind of sense to him in that situation.

There are other things like that we can ask when digging into McCain's mind by imagining it.

One I read or watched in particular got me to thinking, but for the life of me, I can't find it or remember who said it.

The gist is that McCain had political ambitions even when he was a fighter pilot and he loved his dad. He knew if he walked away from the prison camp as the privileged son of an Admiral, this would be broadcast all over the place and stick to him like glue for the rest of his life. According to the cultural mindset of the time, it would have been seen as a huge indication of cowardice. Thus, according to this theory, McCain might have thought that any future he would have once he got out of that hell hole would be nuked and the stain would extend even to his father's reputation, thus damage his father's future.

I find that plausible.

And maybe he was just plain batshit crazy, like he later indicated when he sang to a Beach Boys tune: Bomb bomb bomb... Bomb bomb Iran...

I do give him credit for putting Sarah Palin in the mainstream, though. He did it as a political strategy to trick the people who would become her base into supporting him, and later regretted it bitterly because he loathed that base (calling them crazies, wacko birds and so on), but he did put her name on the national stage. The liberty movement was better for it since she has helped elect a ton load of liberty-leaning politicians ever since. Including one Donald J. Trump.

That, to me, was McCain's greatest achievement. As for the rest, his Senate record goes from mediocre to an outright mess.

Michael

[9thdoctor]

26 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

As for the rest, his Senate record goes from mediocre to an outright mess.

Michael

Amen to that.  McCain-Feingold in particular, which led to the Citizens United case. 

As to the rest, all I wanted to establish was that he did "something more than getting captured and held prisoner of war for years", no matter how we project what his motives at the time were.  He made a choice, and (hard to believe I'm about to type this) it was something comparable to John Galt advising his captors how to fix their torture machine. 

[caroljane]

1 hour ago, 9thdoctor said:

Amen to that.  McCain-Feingold in particular, which led to the Citizens United case. 

As to the rest, all I wanted to establish was that he did "something more than getting captured and held prisoner of war for years", no matter how we project what his motives at the time were.  He made a choice, and (hard to believe I'm about to type this) it was something comparable to John Galt advising his captors how to fix their torture machine. 

"The elements so in him mixed,

that  Nature might stand up and say to all the world.

This was a man."

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, 9thdoctor said:

He made a choice, and (hard to believe I'm about to type this) it was something comparable to John Galt advising his captors how to fix their torture machine. 

Dennis,

One of the great thing about living in freedom is the right to disagree.

And here on OL, I think it's also great that we can hold 100% absolute no-holds barred unequivocal telling it like it is opposite views on how to compare Rand to world events and still be friends.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

13 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Brant,

And here I thought fighting the enemy was part of the job description when one signs up for the armed forces.

That may sound snarky, but it really isn't.

I have no problem recognizing that going into danger requires a certain level of heroism. It takes balls. But if I am going to celebrate a person like John McCain as a hero among heroes, he better have done something more than getting captured and held prisoner of war for years. If what he did is deserving of special recognition, then why don't we celebrate those who were POW's with him?

Can you name one of them off the top of your head? I can't.

Why?

Are they less heroes than John McCain?

I doubt it.

And if not, why is he entitled to recognition for heroism and they not? You may think they deserve it, but that's not how it plays out in society. It plays out that he's the big hero and they are not, except when someone wants to give lip service to feel good about how viruous they are. And even then, they will only know the name of the former POW because they read it at the time or heard someone say it.

Either a hero is someone who does something exceptional to the norm, or a hero is everybody. You can't have it both ways and have it make sense.

Fighting the enemy and getting captured is not exceptional. It's part of the job and one of the risks of the job. It's definitely good guy stuff, it definitely deserves high respect, but it's nothing to build a monument to. Making a daring escape and saving others, now that would be exceptional. That's what I think of when I think of hero. That and other things like that.

Michael

Sorry, but I said nothing about how heroic he was as a prisoner of war. Thank you.

--Brant

I'd hesitate to say the soldier clerk typist at the rear was heroic, he did not sign on for combat arms (not talking about the Marines)

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

3 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Sorry, but I said nothing about how heroic he was as a prisoner of war. Thank you.

Brant,

I could keep going down this path, but why?

We read each other perfectly.

And both of us are smart-asses.

 

Michael

[Jules Troy]

James Clavell spent half of WWll as a POW in Changi.

King Rat was based upon his experiences there.

Talk about turning lemons into lemonade!

The other thing I admired about him?  Almost all of his heroes are businessmen.

[william.scherk]

On 8/27/2018 at 11:52 PM, Jon Letendre said:

Praying Medic's Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/prayingmedic

Praying Medic describes a recent "coincidence" in Q's posts whereby No Name's Senate office releases a time of death that is precisely a month, to the minute, following Q's statement that he would be back in the news. This is not Nostradamus or seeing the future, it is Q demonstrating "We are in control." 

Nobody but the Q could guess that McCain would be 'back in the news' and then die?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Turns out, McCain had a nasty little social justice warrior hiding in the dark parts of his heart.

Does he really need a safe space at his funeral where he can virtue signal from beyond the grave?

Sarah Palin, Loyal Running Mate, Excluded from John McCain’s Funeral

When McCain invited Sarah to be his running mate, it was a sham to hoodwink the people who later became Trump supporters. Just like Democrats always did with blacks, he only wanted the heartland votes and then wanted to forget all about them.

After his loss, I don't think he forgave himself for empowering Sarah and the people--people like me--he held such contempt for. He wanted us back in the barn. We were human livestock to him and only that. In his mind, Sarah was not supposed to become a powerhouse for the Tea Party that later morphed into the Trump movement.

Well, sorry, McCain. You did invite Sarah Palin to be your running mate and she was part of your history. You cannot erase that from your legacy.

You did good for the country despite your despicable intentions. It looks like you went to your grave with that on your mind.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

18 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Brant,

I could keep going down this path, but why?

We read each other perfectly.

And both of us are smart-asses.

 

Michael

Just because you've said where your brain is doesn't mean mine is too.

--Brant

opps

[caroljane]

17 hours ago, Jules Troy said:

James Clavell spent half of WWll as a POW in Changi.

King Rat was based upon his experiences there.

Talk about turning lemons into lemonade!

The other thing I admired about him?  Almost all of his heroes are businessmen.

Snap. I love Clavell's sagas, though I found the Tai-pan series  tedious at times, but I thought King Rat was hist best-written, with Shogun a good second.  The movie was pretty good too.

But for me no POW story could surpass that bridge on the River Kwai.I also thought Empire of theSun was brilliant.

Changi was unspeakable. One of my husband's uhildhood neighbours died three.One of the survivors came to visit the family after the war. Not Clavell but equally a hero. What a hard job to tell the truth to mourners, but probably  not the whole truth.

[Jules Troy]

No..not the whole truth.  Those POW’s were as close to being dead while still being alive.  Pretty horrible what people are capable of doing to other people that they deem to be less than or inferior to themselves during wartime.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

4 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Just because you've said where your brain is doesn't mean mine is too.

Two-way street, bro...

I didn't say we agreed. I said we read each other.

Perfectly.

You're not the only one with eyes.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

5 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Two-way street, bro...

I didn't say we agreed. I said we read each other.

Perfectly.

You're not the only one with eyes.

Michael

I forgot the smiley face.

--Brant