by Joseph Duggan Joseph Duggan, who worked in the State Department and White House in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, is an investor and consultant in St. Louis.
His path to distinguished service in the United States Senate led through the Naval Academy, aerial combat over hostile territory, and long years of confinement, beatings, and torture in the Hanoi Hilton.
He was a man worth remembering.
No, his name was not John McCain.
Six years before McCain’s election to the Senate, Alabama voters sent retired Rear Admiral Jeremiah Denton to Washington’s upper chamber.
Both the parallels and the divergences in Denton and McCain’s lives tell something about the last few decades of our political history.
Twelve years older than McCain, Denton was born in Mobile in 1924, the same year as George Herbert Walker Bush. After studies at the Jesuits’ Spring Hill College, Denton transferred to Annapolis where in 1946 he graduated in a class that included a young man from Americus, Georgia, named Jimmy Carter. Denton excelled academically, earning a master’s in international relations from George Washington University and winning the Naval War College’s award for best thesis. Diligent in his study of philosophy and history, he was respected as a strategic thinker.
Denton, at 41, was one of the oldest active American pilots in Vietnam when his A6A Intruder, leading a squadron of 27 other aircraft, was shot down over North Vietnam in 1965. (His friend and contemporary, George H.W. Bush, meanwhile was one of the youngest American pilots in the Second World War.)
McCain, the son and grandson of four-star admirals, was erratic as a student at Annapolis. He graduated number 894 out of 899 members of his class. When he was shot down in 1967 he was 31 years old.
Denton suffered imprisonment for nearly eight years, McCain for nearly six. Both men gained national and international attention for defiant courage during their ordeals. As son of the admiral commanding the U.S. Pacific fleet, McCain spurned Communist Vietnamese efforts to manipulate him for propaganda purposes. Denton, as one of the top-ranking officers, outwitted the enemy when they featured him in a televised propaganda news conference. Unbeknownst to his captors, he blinked his eyes with the Morse Code letters T-O-R-T-U-R-E as he answered questions.
‘I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else’s.’
Sen. John McCain accepts the Republican nomination for president in St. Paul, Minn., Sept. 4, 2008.PHOTO: BOSTON GLOBE VIA GETTY IMAGES
August 29, 2018
From John McCain’s speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination, Sept. 4, 2008:
I was in solitary confinement when my captors offered to release me. I knew why. If I went home, they would use it as propaganda to demoralize my fellow prisoners. . . . I wasn’t in great shape, and I missed everything about America. But I turned it down.
A lot of prisoners had it worse than I did. . . . I always liked to strut a little after I’d been roughed up to show the other guys I was tough enough to take it. But after I turned down their offer, they worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me.
When they brought me back to my cell, I was hurt and ashamed, and I didn’t know how I could face my fellow prisoners. The good man in the cell next door, my friend, Bob Craner, saved me. Through taps on a wall he told me I had fought as hard as I could. . . . And then he told me to get back up and fight again for our country. . . .
I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else’s. I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency; for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again. I wasn’t my own man anymore. I was my country’s.
When Is A Scandal Not A Scandal? When There’s A Democrat Involved
September 7, 2017
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE:
Menendez in on trial for allegedly having sold his office in exchange for luxury vacations, private flights, and piles of campaign cash. In his opening remarks, Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Koski said “this case is about a corrupt politician who sold his Senate office for a life of luxury he couldn’t afford and a greedy doctor who put that senator on his payroll. … The defendants didn’t just trade money for power, they also tried to cover it up.”
It’s the first time in 36 years that a sitting U.S. senator has been on trial for bribery, which you’d think would make it front page news.
And the stakes of the trial’s outcome are big, too. Should Menendez be found guilty and forced to give up his Senate seat, New Jersey’s Republican Gov. Chris Christie would almost certainly replace him with a Republican, giving the GOP a bigger margin in the Senate. That could, among other things, improve the odds of getting things like ObamaCare repealed and tax reform enacted.
Corruption:A sitting U.S. Senator is currently on trial for bribery, and if he’s found guilty it could have major political ramifications. Haven’t heard about this case? That’s because the Senator in question is a Democrat.
A CNN story this week about the opening of the trial against New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez noted that “Democrats are eager to avoid the subject of Menendez’s bribery trial.”
That headline would have been just as accurate if it said “Reporters” instead of “Democrats.”
Since the senate seems to be incapable of drastically ending or altering Obamacare, this just may be the answer. President Trump could end Obama’s gift to Congress by ending the subsidies Congress was given to reduce the pain for them from the high cost of premiums for Obamacare. Let Congress be impacted by the high cost of Obamacare and perhaps that will add a little urgency to their voting. Nancy
How Trump can win the ObamaCare fight: End the “friends and cronies” exemption for Congress
by John Fund Fox News July 28, 2017
If President Trump wants to fulfill his repeated promise to end ObamaCare, his best course of action is a radical change in tactics that would hit members of Congress where it hurts – in their wallets. The 55-45 vote Wednesday by the Senate rejecting a straight repeal of ObamaCare makes it clear that the president needs to try something new.
With a mere stroke of his pen, President Trump could end the exemption that President Obama gave members of Congress and their staffs that makes them the only participants in the ObamaCare exchanges to receive generous subsidies from their employer (the American people) to pay for their health insurance. Nothing would better focus Congress’ attention on changing ObamaCare than being trapped in it just like other Americans.
When Vice President Pence was asked about the special exemption for Congress by Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Wednesday, he lamented that it was “pretty typical” for there to be “one set of rules for the American people and another for the political class here in our nation’s capital.” But he wouldn’t be pinned down over whether the Trump administration would act: “It would be (President Trump’s) decision to rescind that special treatment for members of Congress and their staffs,”he told Carlson
Well, it’s about time. Ending the special perk funded by taxpayers may represent the only leverage President Trump has to fulfill his promise to repeal ObamaCare.
Ending the special perk funded by taxpayers may represent the only leverage President Trump has to fulfill his promise to repeal ObamaCare.
Back in 2009, when ObamaCare was being debated, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) was able to insert a provision requiring all members of Congress and their staffs to get insurance through the ObamaCare health exchanges.
“The more that Congress experiences the laws it passes, the better,” said Grassley.
Although his amendment was watered down to exclude committee staff, it still applies to members of Congress and their personal staffs. Most employment lawyers interpreted that to mean that the taxpayer-funded federal health insurance subsidies dispensed to members of Congress and their personal staffs – which now range from $6,000 to $12,000 a year and cover about 70 percent of the cost of insurance premiums – would have to end.
An open health-care debate finally would bring some actual accountability.
Friday, July 21, 2017 by Kimberley Strassel
Sen. Rob Portman on Capitol Hill, June 20.PHOTO:ASSOCIATED PRESS
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE:Voters would be able to see just how gigantic a Medicaid payoff Ohio’s Rob Portman, Nevada’s Dean Heller and West Virginia’s Shelley Moore Capito are demanding for their support. They’d watch supposed conservatives such as Tennessee’s Bob Corker vote against pro-growth tax cuts. They’d observe Utah’s Mike Lee offer up changes to ObamaCare mandates, muster not even a dozen votes, and realize how unpopular his position is. They’d witness Kentucky’s Rand Paul vote against all reform ideas—no matter how good—because they still weren’t good enough for Rand Paul.They’d see Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski cynically vote against the very same repeal-only amendment she supported in 2015, back when it didn’t matter. They’d see South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham and Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy cast the only two votes for a bill they’ve been pushing—and confusing everyone with—for weeks.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at this point has busted pretty much every move in his effort to rally 50 votes for an Obama Care replacement. He’s listened. He’s negotiated. He’s encouraged. He’s cajoled. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Months later, still lacking a majority, the time has come for the Kentucky Republican to execute the final, clarifying move. It’s time for Mr. McConnell to make this all about his self-interested members.
Up to now, this exercise has been about trying to improve health care and the federal fisc. The House bill isn’t perfect—no bill ever is—but it amounts to the biggest entitlement reform in history. It repeals crushing taxes. It dramatically cuts spending. And it begins the process of stabilizing the individual health-care market and expanding consumer freedom.
None of this is good enough for a handful of senators, so now it’s time to make this exercise all about them. Mr. McConnell should make clear that the overwhelming majority of the Republican Party stands ready to make good on its repeal-and-replace campaign promise—and that it would have done so already were it not for a cynical or egotistic few. It’s time for some very public accountability.
That rests in Mr. McConnell giving his caucus a drop-dead date to broker a compromise, after which he will proceed to bring up the House bill. And any Republican who votes against moving forward, “a motion to proceed,” will forever be known as the Republican who saved ObamaCare. The Republican who voted to throw billions more taxpayer dollars at failing entitlement programs and collapsing insurance markets. The Republican who abandoned struggling American families. The Republican who voted against a tax cut and spending reductions. The Republican who made Chuck Schumer’s year.
[caption id="attachment_17661" align="alignnone" width="448"] Laura Ingraham ********** www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqNhDVcvrsg (She definitely brought down the house with this one ! )
