The danger of funerals that last 6 months

John McCain is dead and – finally – buried.  I say “finally” buried, not to be derisive to the man, that'll come later, but rather to the – in my opinion – well over the top final farewell he scripted for himself. 

The dying and soon to be dead funeral business insists that funerals are for the living.  It seems John McCain – the deceased in this case -  who reportedly mapped out every detail of his final arrangements, used the occasion, in part at least, to settle old scores, get the last word in and saddest of all visit petty indignities on people from the grave.

None of it was necessary as McCain had already penned or dictated a score-settling final memoir where he did pretty much the same thing.  

Take Sarah Palin.  McCain dissed her in the book saying he should have picked Joe Lieberman as his 2008 running mate.  Then he or his family made it known the Palins were not to attend the funeral. 

It says more about the McCains than the Palins.  McCain confessed he screwed up his first big decision in a national political race and then very publicly disassociated himself from the woman HE CHOSE and who briefly resurrected his BS campaign.  Then in some fit of spite he publicly excluded her from paying her respects at his funeral in person.  Petty.  Vindictive.  Mean.  McCain.

Who the hell tells people not to come to their funeral?  Knowing my own will be sparsely attended, I told my wife to offer free beer and BBQ to get a respectable number of people in the room.

The McCains also disinvited PDJT.  Fine.  He probably didn’t want to go anyway.  But then after disinviting him they get their shorts in a knot because PDJT went and played golf during the funeral.  I guess he was supposed to lower the blinds at the white House, sit inside and cry.  Instead he played golf.  Oh the outrage.

If the 6 month farewell – ok it only seemed like 6 months – wasn’t bad enough, the over the top Trump bashing eulogies were disgusting.  Note to anyone given the duty, nay honor, of eulogizing Lex: I’ve settled almost all of my old scores – mainly by forgetting about them.  Please limit your comments to telling stories (make them up if you have to) to convince attendees (enjoying a free beer and BBQ) that I wasn’t quite the azz that they have been led to believe.  There’s absolutely no reason to use the occasion of my death to get even with Howard Edelstein for cutting in front of me at the lunch line in 4^th grade.

Okay this is where it gets sticky.  McCain is barely dead.  It only seems like he died when we were young and had hair.  But here is Lex’s take of McCain negatives in no particular order.   

Lex has often noted that The Empty Suit is nothing more than smarmy Affirmative Action pass through.

McCain graduated from the Naval Academy ahead of about 5 of his classmates - 894 of 899 if you believe Wikipedia.  McCain’s father and grandfather were both 4 star admirals.  So was McCain a Naval Academy legacy pass through?  Given his low regard for academics, if John McCain were born the son of a WY mechanic, would he ever even have gotten into the academy? Call me crazy, but I don’t think so.

It’s important because no academy, no Naval aviator, no Naval Aviator no Vietnam POW, no POW no political career.

If I heard it once I heard it a 1,000 times over the last few days, John McCain was a principled man.  Maybe.  But does a principled man tell his vice presidential running mate not to come to his funeral?  Seriously, how F-ed up is that? 

Does a principled man get caught up in the Keating 5 S&L campaign fraud bust?  Then in true Caligula, D.C. fashion, the swamp assigns the swamp creature dirt bag caught red-handed in the scam to write the legislation to keep other swamp creature dirt bags from committing the same crime and that becomes his signature piece of legislation – McCain Feingold.  

Does a principled man dump his ailing wife to take up with younger prettier wealthier woman?  Well, maybe McCain is smarter than I give him credit for.  After all, if you are going to dump your ailing wife it’d be really stupid to do that to take up with an older, ugly and poor woman.

Does a principled man rail against a piece of legislation for years, base his re-election campaign on repealing and replacing that piece of legislation and then when he becomes the deciding vote on fulfilling that promise stab every one of his constituents in the back by – in a very dramatic fashion - voting no on the repeal bill?

I’ve wondered for a long time, does a principled man hold on to a senate seat so he can die as a senator when he knew that there was no chance of returning to Caligula, D.C. to do the job AZ elected him to do?

I suppose everyone has a few of these things in their past.  We should probably look at the balance of the entire life. That said, based on the last few days, I could have sworn McCain was a combination of Lincoln, Pope John Paul II, Gandhi, and Audie Murphy all rolled into one.

In 2000 and 2008 the same people heaping great praise on Saint McCain were trashing him as a misogynist, racist, homophobe, islamophobe, xenophobe etc.

Only after he failed in two presidential bids, saved Robertscare and became a vocal critic of PDJT was McCain considered suitably rehabilitated for a bipartisan uniparty slobbering love fest at his funeral.

Had he kept his word and shut down Robertscare or offered even tepid support of PDJT there would have been no fanfare at his passing.

Word is AZ might actually get a Republican senator now.

RIP John McCain.

 Today’s JG rant

Re Clarence Jeandrevin’s letter, “Trump’s accomplishments don’t add up to much”, of Sep 1, 2018

I loved Clarence Jeandrevin’s letter.  I read it over and over again with delight.  It helped me to relive the total radical leftists’ meltdown that occurred at about 9pm on Nov 8, 2016.  It was wonderful.

If PDJT is “totally unqualified to do his job”, please let’s send more unqualified people to Caligula, D.C. to help drain the swamp of the life-long professionally “qualified” dunderheads that have run up 21 trillion dollars in debt, destroyed Social Security, got us involved in unending wars, opened the gates and welfare rolls of the nation to the world’s unskilled, uneducated, and often criminal elements, destroyed our own education system, refuse to make use of the nation’s natural resources and are more interested in the world’s population than the American citizens they are elected to represent.

Trying to give Obama credit for today’s economic boom is hilarious.  It’s like giving the guy who sweeps out the locker room after the game credit for winning the Super Bowl.    

Oh, and our family picked up about $1,000 a year (yeah, I know – CRUMBS) after the tax cuts.  So I guess that makes us top 1% earners. Wow, who knew?  I gotta tell my wife.  She’ll be shocked. But if we’re top 1 percenters, why can’t I afford that Bugatti Chiron I’ve had my eye on?  

That must be for the top one-half percenters.

With regard to PDJT being an “authoritarian” because he pulled the security clearance of a lying, unhinged, commie-loving gasbag, I find it odd that the exact same people supposedly worried about an authoritarian takeover of the US government want us to give up our guns.  That’s really weird, huh.        

Trump's accomplishments don't add up to much

“Trump's detractors refuse to see reality” (Aug. 12) is the most myopic view of this administration I've read yet.

The author starts by saying he reads anti-Trump columns, editorial and letters every day.

Why do you think they're out there? Could it be because this man is totally unqualified to do this job, that he is a congenital liar or suffers from narcissistic personality disorder? That's why people refuse to follow him. 

What has he done for this country? 

His tax cuts were for the top 1 percent, at a cost of $1.5 trillion to the deficit. 

Rebuild our economy? President Obama pulled the economy out of near-depression and had it headed to the prosperity we now enjoy, which Trump is taking credit for now. And watch the economy as the trade war progresses.

Rolling back regulations is putting every worker and person in this country at risk.

Our military that Obama decimated? What a joke! Our military is the best in the world. Nobody has disrespected or not honored “our men in blue or military” – except Trump, who denigrated a Gold Star family.

The so-called illegal invasion of our country? There are only two cultures that didn't come here through immigration, Native Americans and the slaves from Africa who were brought here in chains. We are all immigrants. By the way, we fund a border patrol. We don't need a wall; the American taxpayer is not paying for it.

As a liberal, leftist Democrat, who served six years in the US Army and votes in every election, I'm proud of America and what I am. Don't dare call me unamerican because I won't honor a man who thinks more of Vladimir Putin and other despots around the world than our own intelligence agencies.

We are doing something constructive; we're fighting autocracy in this country. The security clearance debacle is the first step to authoritarianism. What will be the next shoe to drop?

Clarence Jeandrevin

Huntington