Does the Media have Licence or Even an Obligation to Question an Elderly Leader's Mental Capacity

This is very good news for Barack Obama.

 

Want to make a couple of comments, pgabriel. Yes, there is "nepotism" in the service. Having a general or admiral as a father is very helpful to a career, just like having a rich real estate mogul as a father helped trump a great deal. Having said that about the service, you still have to be able to do the job you were trained to do. As an example, if the captain of a warship in the navy runs it aground, he/she is going to lose that command, won't get another ship, will be beached, and very probably never get a promotion, which can lead to essentially being forced out of the Navy. The circumstances usually don't matter. Neither does having an admiral as a father. Losing an aircraft? Vastly different.

One thing to remember is that we were in a huge war at the time of McCain's Naval Academy stint and after he graduated. I'm not at all surprised that McCain went on to become a pilot. I would be shocked if he hadn't. His class ranking is pretty meaningless, given the circumstances. They needed every officer good enough to graduate, badly. Bringing up the Academy isn't doing your argument a bit of good. The crashes? An A-4 isn't a warship. Crashes, fatal or not, happen far more than you might imagine. (The Navy lost over one hundred sailors in a year recently because they fell off a ship while it was underway, due to various circumstances. Those numbers are not at all unusual. Wrap your head around that!) They don't mean you "lose your command and career," like the captain who puts his ship on a reef. It's a dangerous profession, pilot or not.

The Navy did serious, extensive investigations of all those incidents, just like they do whenever anyone loses an aircraft. Having a father who was an admiral didn't help McCain in those investigations. You seriously believe they are going to risk a multi-billion dollar aircraft carrier and thousands of Navy men and women by keeping a man they believe can't do the job? No way. Where his father may have helped (not personally - just because people knew who his father was) would have been in getting promotions more quickly than he might have otherwise, and there is no proof of that happening. That is speculation on my part. Heck, if McCain had been under a admiral who was a rival or intensely disliked Admiral McCain, it could have hurt him. There are politics in the Navy, just like there is in any large organization.

Going after McCain for his naval service record, given the fact that we were in an enormous conflict with over half a million men in and around South Vietnam, is a waste of your time, in my opinion. Frankly, I can't understand why you are going there. Being a carrier pilot is one of the world's toughest jobs and certainly ranks with the most dangerous in the world. That is what Senator McCain was. And by the way, John McCain was a war hero. That is indisputable. I ignored what you are carrying on about back when he was running for president, and I'm a Democrat. His record was known to me. I could care less then, and I could care less now. I'm far more concerned about the health of a man who went through hell, a man I respect, despite disagreeing with him on a host of political things. So should you, in my opinion.

 

Yeah, there's just nothing to all that Russia stuff despite all the lying by several of his employees, all the secret meetings and ties from his employees, the confirmed hacking by multiple agencies, the fact he keeps praising Putin, the fact he's torched NATO and left Europe out in the cold to Russia's benefit, the fact he sought to undermine Russia sanctions right away, the fact he lied about giving Russia classified intelligence. And all of this in just a couple of months, like what? There's just no evidence at all that anything is going on except all that evidence.

 

I guess we might find some agreement that it is probably better to crash a plane than to crash a country. Right, pgabs?

 

You keep saying this with literally nothing to substantiate it and then accuse me of "conjecture."

And why bother defending Trump on privilege claims? You don't think he was born into privilege? And you want to compare it to McCain?

Even if they were both equally as privileged, one used his so called privilege to join the military, fight for his country and ultimately be tortured. He could easily have died.

The other used his privilege to grab p***y , hob nob with celebrities and make real estate deals.

It's crazy that the two are somehow comparable in your mind.

 

So crazy that it's factual. Are you on drugs? Seriously.

The lie like Trump whistle-stop tour continues.

 

Does this BBS have license or even an obligation to question an OP's mental capacity?

 

He hasn't gone full Mr. Meowgi yet but he's well on his way.

 

It's eerily similar. My dad flew for the Navy during the Korean War, and this thread is honestly pretty hard to read -- I mean on the OP's part, his posts. Just disgusting.

But you know, the similarity to Mr. M and other such posters is no accident. It's all FoxNews talking-head speak and AM radio stuff -- spoken confidently, all day long, and people do start to believe it. That stuff is like crack but people don't know they're getting high.

I have no hard feelings for OP but he's going on my ignore list. Insulting veterans, no matter their heritage, is just crossing a line for me. Makes me want to brawl and that's not why I come to the internet.

 

What is funny was I thought pgabriel was a far left poster, or was that my memory playing tricks on me.

 

So what's Trump's excuse for crashing the U.S. into Mt. Elbrus?

 

Forgive me for saying so, but that's the last time I will go to the trouble of giving more than a 3 sentence response to anything you post. You entirely wasted my time. Clearly, at least in D&D, you are not worth taking the trouble. With all due respect.

 

They are both children of privilege -- Make Believe Maverick and Mr. Bankrupt Casino, both. Even though I largely disagree with him on nearly every political issue, McCain has just done more in the service of the country than Trump, who has primarily existed to enrich himself.