Please. These excuses are so ridiculous.

He has plenty of time, he could go to them all -- he goes to fundraisers all over the country practically every day of the week, nor does he seem to work much, he admits he doesn't read, and if he took some time to go to funerals, he might hear things from people who aren't Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, or Paul Wolfman. Like every hot-dogger he hates going to "downers, dude".

Some reasonable parsing out of funeral time is not exactly outside the wit of humankind, supposing that he had the decency to figure out that he wanted to go. He just spent 30 hours on a plane to cut turkeys. Why not spend 30 hours with some of the families of the dead? Because it is not Mr. Macho with his toy plane.

Why not go to every tenth one, or one a month, draw them out of a hat, or go to one from each division? It is not remotely plausible that families of soldiers would start bitching that he went to this guy's funeral, but not to ours -- this is the kind of thing that people say who have no idea how military families live and die. And if they did? (unbelievable as it is) Duh. "I cannot go to them all, but I go to as many as I can". End of controversy.

PR flacks and hot-doggers.

yours,

Peter T.