He’s already been a hero three times, by my count.
*- When he refused to take a pass from Hanoi because his father was an admiral. *-When my wife sat next to one of John McCain’s buddies on a flight out east, and the man told her how they ferried supplies to post-war Vietnam. I met McCain years later and asked why he ran a pipeline to people who tortured him. Eloquent shrug, with those ruined arms, told me: it’s the right thing to do. *- When the lady in red started with the Trumpian b.s. about Barack Obama being a Muslim, and John McCain said, “No, ma’am,” and took away the mike. Now I’m asking John McCain to be a hero a fourth time. Sometime in late January, the new President is going to legally and officially and publically expose himself as maliciously unqualified. He cannot help himself. I’m counting on John McCain, the man who is not a hero to Donald Trump because he got captured, to mix his miserable SOB persona with his idealistic free-thinker persona (that he exercises way too rarely) and become the congressional leader of the what-were-we-thinking movement. The movement needs a leader, a role model. Republicans are contaminated from eight years of sabotaging a black President (oh and also the country.) The Democrats are a disaster after rigging the delegate count against Bernie Sanders. The country needs somebody in Congress to stand up at the first blunder and say, “Enough.” My candidate is the guy who impulsively snatched back the microphone from the bigot-lady. Haven’t seen him much in eight years. But I know he’s in there. Right now, that’s all I’ve got.
Michael Green
12/19/2016 06:07:44 pm
I confess to thinking, as you do, Mr. Vecsey, that we haven't seen much of that hero for the past eight years, and of course all of us have both better and nastier angels in our nature. I hope you are right, and here's a thought: McCain just won reelection as he approaches age 80. Running again is unlikely in the extreme. He may think more about his legacy than about his political future.
George Vecsey
12/20/2016 11:29:09 am
Dear Michael Green: Thanks for the comment. The same day I had a great visit in his office, I had seen him go off on a witness at an Olympic hearing. I asked him why, and he said she was flippant about financial details she should have known. I'd love to see some of that directed toward the odd birds being recruited into govt.
Brian Savin
12/20/2016 08:02:06 pm
George, I missed my chance to vote for that wonderful man in 2008. Loved ones did vote for him, believing it was his time and the other guy wasn't ready. They were right, and then some, I never saw what was coming. I should have. Eight years later we are where we are as a result. Personally, I'm hopeful about the election. The people our new President defeated were bad people in my opinion. I'm watchful right now. For what it's worth I'll let you know when I give up on him. Not yet. He may even seek support from across the isle and need it more than we might realize.
George Vecsey
12/20/2016 09:50:38 pm
Brian, from having met him, and knowing some of his history from neighbors who know him -- and watching him on TV -- I think he is defective and dangerous. I've had conversations (admittedly about football and boxing) in which I didn't think he could absorb the other person's point of view. Totally self-absorbed and dishonest.
Joshua Rubin
12/22/2016 04:18:38 pm
I share your hope if not your optimism about McCain. Part of what makes him so "maverick-y" (in a former VP candidate's words) is that he is not consistently a maverick. I hope, given all his service to the country, he would be as alarmed as I am at Trump's tilt not just towards Russia but away from the entire system of alliances (and the underpinning values of that system) that the US has been building since the end of WWII that has kept the world from going at it again on that scale. Whatever one thinks about Obama's, or Trump's, approaches to domestic policy or even ISIS, he ought not get a free pass for moves and moves he has telegraphed that would take us in the direction.of less global stability than we have seen since the first half of the 20th century.
George
12/22/2016 06:58:57 pm
Josh: thanks. I don't believe Trump knows anything about govt. he scammed half the country. I see McCain, Graham, GRdner and Schumer are calling for special committee. Gee: politics in action after eight years of sabotage against Trump's Kenyan.
John McDermott
12/24/2016 05:58:31 am
The Republicans, who are all about waving the flag, and the bible, actually betrayed the country when they elected not to work with the Democratic administration to resolve problems and fix things, and instead dedicated themselves solely to blocking everything that the President wanted to accomplish. They placed loyalty to party(and hunger for power) over loyalty to country. Shame on them! Now "their" party has been hijacked by an outsider and many of these same people are still wondering how it happened and what to do next. Meanwhile the crass, vulgar and unqualified winner of the electoral college game(but not the general election!) is about to move in to the White House. I don't see him lasting a full term...but then we would be stuck with that prick from Indiana.
George Vecsey
12/24/2016 04:05:25 pm
12/26/2016 06:40:54 am
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Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online. The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal…. After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness. The progress stems mostly from three factors: First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot. Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.) Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year. “Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.” That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.” That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data. One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines. Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks. Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths. The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions. Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately Republican and white. Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.) *** From the great Maureen Dowd: As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop. But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels." --- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing. *** "Putting out the paper," we called it. Much more than nostalgia. ---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html |