I saw quite a few during Desert Storm, back in '90 - '91. I don’t recall seeing any at all during the current wars.
This is probably better suited for GD than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
And of the character he inspired in Inherit the Wind who “moved away by standing still”. I don’t think he’s even pandering because he’s not up for election again until 2016 by which time he’ll be 80 and anything that happened in 2010 will be as distant as Teapot Dome in the public memory.
In plain text, McCain’s statement is incoherent. It has no connecting thesis at all.
So I’d assume that if you boil it down and extract the essense from it, it amounts to “Gays are bad.”
Which, frankly, is about what you’d expect from him.
The argument some of the opponents, including McCain were making was, “If it ain’t borke, don’t fix it.” Of course there is a big gaping logical porblem with that argument, the fact that it is fucking broke, well trained, valuable, skilled, patriotic servicemen and women being froced to hide their true live, or being forced out if they do, is fucking broken. McCain is an asshole.
It’s borked.
Just for fun I’m going to try to defend McCain a little. He is old, has been losing touch for at least a few years now and his whole view of life was formed by his experiences in the military; a military that was far different from what it is today. Since then waving a flag and spouting off have won him great fame and reward. Plus, he is sort of obligated by his constituents to resist all change of any kind. So he does what all good politicians do and rambles on about vague topics that are sort of related without ever making any statement about the point at hand. Note how he talks about how liberals will high-five, how they have never serve America, how real Americans will react when the change is repealed and he knows this because real Americans (military men) tell him so. But he never says a word against gay people, because they vote too.
Politicians are all slippery weasels. When they get old and start losing oil it ain’t pretty.
At least it’s better than the Icelandic army, which is björked ever since they adapted that swan uniform.
It would be one thing if he was just old and curmudgeonly and resistant to change. The problem is that the pre-senile John McCain said he would be willing to repeal DADT when the services were ready. Well, three of four service chiefs are now in favor of repeal, and suddenly he forgot that he was for it.
I doubt many vote for McCain. (I’m sure some do, but very few I’d think.)
I wonder if his daughter Meghan plans to enter politics when she’s a few years older. Her mindset is a lot less “and we by gum liked it that way!” and her stupider comments can still be written off to being young and sheltered.
Hey, that’s camouflage, man!
Went through in '87. The screwing was quite literal by then. Fun times and still think about at least one of those gals. Damn my young, dumb ass for not locking that one up…
Another thread that may be of interest: What is up with John McCain? - Great Debates - Straight Dope Message Board
You mean he was in favour of it before he was against it?
If people remember him at all, this would be a better legacy than being remembered as the man who put Sarah Palin on the national political stage. Though if he’s remembered for that, it will probably be because she actually gets elected president and leads us into a catastrophe of some kind.
So… better that people don’t remember him at all, except from one or two sentence comments in some history books.
Ah, but again, by analogy to what his political compatriots say about the citizenry in general, the Chiefs are not the “Real” services, they are the services’ political elites. Well, as some of them are wont to remind you under other circumstances, in there it’s not a democracy.
A “real” military professional will remember his/her oath is to the Constitution and to obey the lawful orders of the CinC and his duly appointed officers. Not the parts s/he agrees with, the orders s/he would have given him/herself, not the CinC s/he voted for – the Constitution and the CinC as they are. Constitution says, Congress makes the laws about raising and organizing the military, the Prez is the CinC and through the officers gives the orders to run it. Whoever would rather resign than abide this, wasn’t getting it.
What a sad twilight. Can Bob Dole go give the Senator some pointers on stepping away like a mensch?
Even Dole jumped on the Swift Boating bandwagon in '04 against his fellow vet John Kerry, but I understand your point.
You want McCain to be a spokesman for erectile dysfunction medications? :dubious:
You’re dead-on. McCain is telling us that he knows better, that the lower ranks are the ones that object. Oh, well. It’s a shame the military isn’t a top-down kind of organization, where the people below have to follow their superiors orders!
What?