Obit: Senator John McCain (1936-2018)

Subject: Obit: Senator John McCain (1936-2018)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 09:14 PM

Well, we knew it was coming. John McCain died of the same kind of brain cancer that took his friend Ted Kennedy on August 25, 2009 - exactly nine years ago. I think Senator McCain was a good and courageous man. May he rest in peace. Here's what NBC News says:

Sen. John McCain, independent voice of the GOP establishment, dies at 81
"With the Senator when he passed were his wife Cindy and their family," McCain's office said in a statement.
by Elizabeth Chuck / Aug.25.2018 / 5:22 PM ET

John McCain, who shed a playboy image in his youth to become a fighter pilot, revered prisoner of war and both an independent voice in the Republican Party and its 2008 presidential nominee, died on Saturday, little more than a year after he was told he had brain cancer. He was 81.

McCain’s office said in a statement "Senator John Sidney McCain III died at 4:28 p.m. on August 25, 2018." He announced on July 19, 2017, that he had been diagnosed with a glioblastoma, an aggressive type of brain tumor. Earlier this week his family announced he was discontinuing treatment.

"With the Senator when he passed were his wife Cindy and their family. At his death, he had served the United States of America faithfully for sixty years," McCain's office said in the statement.

His daughter, Meghan McCain, said in a statement that "I was with my father at his end, as he was with me at my beginning."

"All that I am is thanks to him. Now that he is gone, the task of my lifetime is to live up to his example, his expectations, and his love,” she said.

In his 36 years in Congress, McCain became one of the country's most respected and influential politicians, challenging his fellow lawmakers to reach across the aisle for the good of the country, and often sparring with reporters with a biting if self-deprecating wit.

On a variety of issues — torture, immigration, campaign finance, the Iraq War — McCain was often known as the moral center of the Senate and of the Republican Party.

Last year, in his last act of defiance, McCain returned to the Capitol less than a week after his cancer was diagnosed to cast his vote on the Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act — the biggest legislative achievement of President Barack Obama, the man who defeated him in the 2008 election.

McCain first voted in favor of debating the bill, giving his fellow Republicans hope that their long-sought goal of repealing Obamacare was in sight. McCain then dashed those hopes by casting the decisive vote against repeal.

Before the vote, McCain denounced the rise of partisanship in a heartfelt speech from the Senate floor on July 25, 2017.

"Why don’t we try the old way of legislating in the Senate, the way our rules and customs encourage us to act?" McCain said. "Merely preventing your political opponents from doing what they want isn’t the most inspiring work."

But in recent months, the man who had been a mainstay on Capitol Hill for more than three decades was noticeably absent.

He missed a White House ceremony on Dec. 12, 2017, in which President Donald Trump signed the annual defense bill into law — one of McCain's signature achievements.

A statement issued the following day by the senator's office said he was at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland receiving treatment for the "normal side effects of his ongoing cancer therapy" and looked forward to returning to work as soon as possible.

McCain's life was punctuated by wild highs and lows, from the horrific conditions he endured for nearly 2,000 days as a prisoner of war to subsequent professional successes that brought him to the forefront of American politics.

Over the course of his career he rallied against pork-barrel spending and went against his own party's president, George W. Bush, on strategy for the Iraq war. He earned a reputation as a party maverick by advocating campaign finance reform, lending his name to the bipartisan McCain-Feingold Act of 2002, and supporting overhauling the nation's immigration system over the years.

But the pinnacle of his political career came in 2008, when he clinched the Republican nomination for president, only to lose to Obama amid the global financial meltdown and dragged down by Bush's low approval ratings. His contentious choice for a running mate, Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska at the time, was also believed to have contributed to the loss, and is still seen by some as a tarnish on his reputation.

But long before then, McCain was a Navy brat who had little interest in being studious.

John Sidney McCain III was born on Aug. 29, 1936, to a prominent naval family steeped in patriotism. Both his father and grandfather were four-star admirals, with his father, John McCain Jr., advancing to commander in chief of Pacific forces during the Vietnam War.

While McCain followed in his family's military footsteps, he did so with his own flair: When he graduated from the Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1958, he was ranked 894th of 899 graduates.

In a speech to midshipmen at his alma mater in October 2017, McCain joked about his abysmal academic performance.

"My superiors didn’t hold me in very high esteem in those days," he said. "To be honest, I wasn’t too thrilled to be here back then, and I was as relieved to graduate — fifth from the bottom of my class — as the Naval Academy was to see me go."

After graduation, McCain volunteered for combat duty in the Vietnam War and, as a lieutenant commander, got orders to ship out in 1967. He narrowly escaped death in July of that year, when, while preparing for a routine bombing mission, an explosion on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal engulfed his plane in flames, killing 134 men on board.

Only three months later, on Oct. 26, 1967, McCain's plane was shot down over North Vietnam. Both of his arms and his knee were broken, and McCain was knocked unconscious and taken as a prisoner of war.

That began a five-and-a-half-year nightmare inside a prison where Vietnamese soldiers, upon learning that McCain was the son of an admiral, set out to use him for propaganda purposes. They tortured and beat him, but McCain refused an early release, denying communist North Vietnam a propaganda victory, and followed a code of conduct that POWs must be released in the order they were captured.

When the war ended in 1973, McCain finally returned to a hero's welcome.

In 2008, he spoke passionately about the patriotism he maintained while imprisoned in Hanoi.

"I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's," he said in accepting the Republican presidential nomination.

McCain was first elected to office in 1982, when he won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives from Arizona. Four years later he was elected to the Senate, and he was re-elected five times.

He first ran for president in 2000, becoming the main GOP challenger to George W. Bush, who went on to win the nomination and the White House.

In October, he reflected on his life in an interview with GQ Magazine.

"I have had the most fortunate life of anybody you will ever talk to, and I have nothing but gratitude, gratitude and joy, because I've had the most fortunate life that anybody has ever had," he said. "So I spend my time in gratitude and work as hard as I can to get done what I can get done while I can."

Subject: RE: Obit: Senator John McCain (1936-2018)
From: Donuel
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 09:22 PM

I bend a knee to John.

and your obit Joe, nix what I attempted/

Subject: RE: Obit: Senator John McCain (1936-2018)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 09:58 PM

This is my favorite John McCain story (his whole family, but you'll see). Short and very sweet.

Subject: RE: Obit: Senator John McCain (1936-2018)
From: Rapparee
Date: 25 Aug 18 - 10:18 PM

One less person who, I think, actually cared about the country. I may have disagreed with many or most of his views, but I respected him.

Subject: RE: Obit: Senator John McCain (1936-2018)
From: gillymor
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 08:56 AM

In the age of Trump, Chris Collins, Duncan Hunter and the like it's good to be reminded of what a real, if self-described "imperfect", public servant looked like.

Subject: RE: Obit: Senator John McCain (1936-2018)
From: Jeri
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 09:33 AM

I believe he requested that both George W Bush and Barack Obama deliver eulogies at his funeral. He picked people who defeated him in elections.

Subject: RE: Obit: Senator John McCain (1936-2018)
From: Raedwulf
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 12:56 PM

I am not at all enamoured of politicians. Being a cynical bastard doesn't help much in that regard. JC is the only UK pretty polly I have any respect for & I wouldn't (& won't) vote for him. If I know little enough of my own country's pollys, I know less of others, though we outside of the US can hardly escape knowing something of your pollys.

JMC seemed a decent sort who served his country well & will be kindly remembered. That ain't a bad epitaph! Fare thee well, sir, and good luck in whatever comes next.

Subject: RE: Obit: Senator John McCain (1936-2018)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 01:18 PM

I don't seem to recall thinking much of him at all when he and Palin were an item. He may well have been better than the nightmarish ragbag of fellow contenders for the Republican nomination, but in November 2008 your country made by far the better choice, I reckon.

Subject: RE: Obit: Senator John McCain (1936-2018)
From: Jeri
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 04:40 PM

You probably would need to be here to get more about him. He royally pissed Trump off (that, in itself, made me happy) when he voted against repealing Obamacare. Maybe that was his last vote.

Subject: RE: Obit: Senator John McCain (1936-2018)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 06:49 PM

Well we can follow the news pretty well in this global village of ours, though there's always something to be said about "being here," I suppose. Of course, in your big country "here" could mean New York, Chicago, Las Vegas, Houston, Miami or any one of a thousand really nice rural locales or any one of a thousand redneck hangouts. Agreed about his Obamacare strike. But we are talking about a man who cheerfully picked Palin as his running mate. Lest we forget. The evil that men do, or might have done, lives after them, sometimes appropriately. He looks so good now because Trump is so bad. Maybe it's occasionally easier to see things from slightly afar, that is, not "here."

Subject: RE: Obit: Senator John McCain (1936-2018)
From: michaelr
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 07:06 PM

"Bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran" The man was a war hawk.

Sure, he looks like an elder statesman compared to Trump, but he voted Trump's line 83% of the time. And his record before the current administration isn't great from a center-left perspective.

I won't miss him.

Subject: RE: Obit: Senator John McCain (1936-2018)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 08:05 PM

A definite part of his legacy was, in picking Palin, that he kick-started the present surge of populism.

Subject: RE: Obit: Senator John McCain (1936-2018)
From: ranger1
Date: 26 Aug 18 - 09:00 PM

Much like Rap stated above, I didn't agree with him much of the time, but I did respect him.

Subject: RE: Obit: Senator John McCain (1936-2018)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Aug 18 - 12:50 AM

If you want a lovely reminder of how talented a politician and gracious individual McCain was, take 15 minutes to watch his 2008 speech at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial foundation dinner in New York.

Al Smith dinner. It's very well done, and very funny.

Subject: RE: Obit: Senator John McCain (1936-2018)
From: gillymor
Date: 27 Aug 18 - 06:46 AM

Thanks for that link, Acme. It seems like that sort of graciousness and good humor is long gone from American politics.

Subject: RE: Obit: Senator John McCain (1936-2018)
From: robomatic
Date: 27 Aug 18 - 02:23 PM

He was a man.
He displayed courage, humility and humor.

Subject: RE: Obit: Senator John McCain (1936-2018)
From: gillymor
Date: 27 Aug 18 - 02:40 PM

One of the Senator's finest moments-
Click

Subject: RE: Obit:John McCain (1936-2018)
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Aug 18 - 07:18 AM

Personally John was drenched in humanity but in policy there was almost no conflict he did not embrace.
Our President is the polar opposite of John. Donald, the largest smallest person in the WH uses the exact language and stratagy of the Nazi American Bund in the 1930's of America first.

McCain , whether framd by comparison or by being his own man, John is the superior American.

Subject: RE: Obit: Senator John McCain (1936-2018)
From: Mr Red
Date: 30 Aug 18 - 07:53 AM

Twitler was pretty dismissive of JMC.

For a maverick Trump is largely predictable.

Subject: RE: Obit: Senator John McCain (1936-2018)
From: keberoxu
Date: 30 Aug 18 - 02:38 PM

The Arizona memorial is happening right at this moment, Thursday.
Friday is the Maryland/D.C. service, and then
McCain's burial at Annapolis, Maryland.

And wouldn't you know,
when Aretha Franklin died considerably earlier this month,
the big funeral service was scheduled for ... tomorrow, Friday.

It's going to be a heavy day in the mass media.
I may abstain for a day...from listening/watching, I mean.

Subject: RE: Obit: Senator John McCain (1936-2018)
From: keberoxu
Date: 01 Sep 18 - 08:37 PM

Interment tomorrow. Vale.

Subject: RE: Obit: Senator John McCain (1936-2018)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 01 Sep 18 - 11:10 PM

His funeral in Washington, D.C. was broadcast and was as non-partisan and as elegant as anyone could hope for. It was a lovely, heart-felt service and as the mark of a good event, there was laughter.

Subject: RE: Obit: Senator John McCain (1936-2018)
From: gillymor
Date: 02 Sep 18 - 01:45 PM

In a very moving and eloquent eulogy of her father Meghan McCain came down hard on President Shrimp and was roundly applauded for it (at a funeral)-

"We gather here to mourn the passing of American greatness, the real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice he gave so willingly, nor the opportunistic appropriation of those who live lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served,"

"The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again, because America was always great,"


CNN