During a campaign stop in Pennsylvania on Wednesday John McCain spoke a line that has caught the attention of many people. For the past few months I've been reading a growing number of blog posting that question McCain's cognitive health:
TPM Cafe We've all noticed John McCain having those "John McCain moments. He gets confused. His thinking is unclear. When he's asked a question, he hesitates for long periods of time and can't remember the question. When he does respond to a question, the one about Corsi's book for example, he gives a diffuse inappropriate answer; "need to have a sense of humor about these things." He now reads everything off small cards and sometimes it appears that he may not know what's going on. Does anyone believe that his condition may be worse than his campaign strategists would lead us to believe?
AmericaBlog UPDATE: Because the McCain campaign is still refusing to release McCain's medical records, and refuses to say a word of explanation about McCain's strange facial convulsions that have now been repeatedly caught on film in the past few weeks, I'm bumping this post. America deserves to know if John McCain, who is 72 years old and has 4 bouts of serious melanoma, and who has been acting erratically and confused of late, is physically or mentally ill and not coming clean about it.
UPDATE: There's now slow-motion video making it painfully clear that something is wrong. Here's the video. It's gotten over 100,000 views on YouTube in just 4 days. Americans are clearly interested in knowing what is wrong with John McCain's health.
I have, until now, dismissed such postings as just your typical hyperbolic political speculation born of over reaching political exuberance. Now I'm not so sure...
During his campaign speech in Pennsylvania on Wednesday John McCain said,"Across this country this is the agenda I have set before my fellow prisoners," he declared. Then, without even realizing what just came out of his mouth McCain continued to berate Obama saying, "The same standards of clarity and candor must now be applied to my opponent." In the prepared remarks he was to say "fellow citizens" not "fellow prisoners."
This is the kind of mental mix-up that really makes one wonder what is truly going on inside of John McCain's mind - is everything really OK in there?
Bob Dylan's 1964 track 'The Times They are a-Changin' became the anthem of change for my generation.
"Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call. Don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall," and: "Come mothers and fathers throughout the land, and don't criticise what you can't understand. Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command. Your old road is rapidly agin'."
Early voting starts at 8AM October 20th and continues until 7PM October 31st. Please vote early this year.
The Collin County elections office had nearly 408,000 registered voters by Oct 1, 2008 with a backlog of unprocessed registration requests. Now that the Oct 6th registration deadline has passed it will take several days to possibly a couple of weeks to process the backlog of last minute registration requests. The numbers project out to as high as approximately 426,000 registered voters for the November 2008 election verses approximately 381,000 register voters for the March 2008 primary election and 369,412 register voters for the November 2004 election. (Note: this is my unofficial guesstimate of an upper end to the possible final number of registered voters for the 2008 election.)
A Dallas Morning News Story on October 6, 2008 at 08:36PM reports, "Collin County expects to have more than 410,000 voters on the rolls – up more than 11 percent from 2004."
In the November 2004 election 246,617 (66.8%) of the 369,412 register voters cast a ballot in that presidential election. 150,001, or 40.6% of 2004 registered voters, cast their ballot during early voting voting of that year.
If the same 2004 percentages of registered voters cast ballots in the 2008 November election, then 284,395 votes will be cast in the entire election and 172,979 votes will be cast during early voting in Collin County, assuming registered voter count stands at 426,000. If the voter registration count stands at just 410,000 then the projection changes to 273,713 votes cast in the entire election and 166,482 votes cast during early voting in Collin County.
On the higher end of the projections with a registration count of 426,000 voters, if there is a 80% total turnout with a 47.8% early vote turnout, then 340,800 total votes will cast for the entire election with 203,628 votes cast during early voting in Collin County. If the voter registration count stands at just 410,000 voters then the projection changes to 328,000 votes cast in the entire election and 195,980 votes cast during early voting in Collin County.
(Note: the above numbers are an unofficial guesstimate of possible 2008 voter turnout numbers based on extrapolations of 2004 Collin County voting patterns and projections of possible voter turnout percentatges reported in national newspapers. )
The Christian Science Monitor By Alexandra Marks | Staff writer / October 6, 2008 edition
McCain’s Republican health care proposal calls for taxing the health benefits that individuals now receive from their employers. Senator Obama notes that it is the first time that health benefits would be taxed and calls the plan “radical change.”
“What Senator McCain is proposing is really dangerous for the American public because … not only would he tax health benefits for the first time in history, but more seriously he would dismantle state-based regulation and tie the hands of those folks who are involved in consumer protection,” Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D) Kansas, an Obama supporter, said in a conference call with reporters Sunday October 5th.
The McCain campaign acknowledges that it would tax currently exempt health benefits as personal income. But it argues that giving a tax credit would equalize a system that currently favors employees who get health care benefits over individuals who have to buy them on their own.
The main idea behind McCain's health care plan is to change the tax treatment of health benefits Americans get from their employers. Instead of allowing the cost of group insurance premiums to be ignored in calculating paycheck income tax withholding amount, as happens now, McCain would replace the current "paycheck" income tax deduction with an "tax credit" of $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families applied to April Income Tax Return calculations. The concept is that people would apply the tax credit towards the purchase of health insurance. The credit would be valid whether people buy insurance through their employers or on their own. If McCain's new once a year tax credit doesn't equal the amount of employer paid health benefits, on which the employee will have already paid income tax withholdings "paycheck by paycheck," then employees end up with an additional income tax payment on the difference. According to the latest Kaiser Foundation Benefits Survey, “premiums for employer-sponsored group health insurance rose to $12,680 annually for family coverage” in 2008. It should be noted that employer group premium rates per family are far lower than individual insurance market per family rates.
After adding a lot of confusion to everyone's annual income tax return, McCain's Health Care Plan amounts to the government spending a lot "tax credit" money to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic. Even McCain's business supporters aren't impressed with the McCain health care plan that will cost even more and do nothing to help the uninsured. The only people that will truly benefit are Big Insurance Companies who will be taking in all that "tax credit money" as insurance premium payments. (Remember, McCain Advocates Deregulating Health Care Like He Has Pushed Deregulation Of Wall Street) Giving everybody a big new tax credit costs the government a lot of "real" money, but McCain has been less than clear on how he will pay for his Health Care Plan.
First McCain said he would eliminate the entire tax deduction for health insurance, in order to pay for his new tax credit. This would have paid for itself, but it would have done so by raising taxes on a lot of people.
Then McCain decided he was keeping part of the deduction after all. While he would be raising taxes on a very few people, he'd be lowering them for most. Of course, that would also have meant running much bigger deficits.
Now McCain is saying, no, no, he's not going to increase the deficit with his health care plan. Instead, McCain will pay for his Health Care Tax Credit Payments To Big Insurance Companies by cutting Medicare and Medicaid.
The Wall Street Journal Online McCain Plans Federal Health Cuts By LAURA MECKLER - October 6, 2008
John McCain would pay for his health plan with major reductions to Medicare and Medicaid, a top aide said, in a move that independent analysts estimate could result in cuts of $1.3 trillion over 10 years to the government programs. . . Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Senator McCain's senior policy adviser, said Sunday that the campaign has always planned to fund the tax credits with savings from Medicare and Medicaid. Those government health-care programs serve seniors, poor families and the disabled.
But McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, tells a different story about Medicare/Medicaid cuts while speaking to seniors who depend on Medicare and Medicaid. At a rally in Florida on Tuesday Oct 7th, Palin delcared that McCain will “protect the entitlement programs that Americans depend on”:
And John McCain and I will protect the entitlement programs that Americans depend on - and above all, Social Security. No presidential election cycle is complete without the Democratic candidate coming down here to Florida to try to stir up fear and panic on this issue. And if you expected any better from the guy who promised to get rid of “old-style politics,” you’re in for a disappointment - because Barack Obama has exploited this issue the way he exploits so many others.
So, let there be no misunderstanding: John McCain has always kept his promises to America, and as president, he will keep America’s promise to our senior citizens.
Conservatives like Republican incumbent for the U.S. 3rd Texas Congressional District, Sam Johnson, age 78, Republican incumbent for the U.S. 4th Texas Congressional District, Ralph Hall, age 85, and Republican incumbent Senator John Cornyn all support Senator John McCain's calls to deregulate Health Care, just as they all supported deregulating the Banking and Home Mortgage Loan systems. The Republican incumbents also support McCain's Health Care Plan to tax employer provided health care benefits and McCain's call to cut Medicare and Medicare funding.
During an interview with the Dallas Morning News, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) endorsed Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) health care proposal and suggested that Americans with pre-existing conditions could find coverage in the individual market:
Q. Do you support Senator McCain’s — and President Bush”s — proposal to move away from employer sponsored [health] insurance and not just have those tax credits focused — tax breaks — on big employers?
A. I do because, you know, one thing that I’ve been amazed at is how many people feel like they’re trapped in a job that they don’t like because they’re afraid to move to a new job and be excluded under a pre-existing conditions clause in their new employer’s health insurance policy.
Cornyn has it backwards. While the "Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996" (HIPAA) includes protections “that limit exclusions for preexisting conditions” for individuals in groups plans, the unregulated individual insurance market that Senator Cornyn supports systematically excludes people with pre-existing conditions from coverage. Further, since McCain and Cornyn advocate full health care deregulation, the "Health Insurance industry the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996" would be deemed as unneeded, as Cornyn seems to suggest in his Dallas Morning New interview.
Conversely, Americans with pre-existing conditions can rarely find coverage in the individual market. According to one Commonwealth study, nearly 90 percent of people seeking coverage in the individual market “never end up buying a plan, finding it either very difficult or impossible to find one that met their needs or is affordable.” Individuals with preexisting conditions are “denied coverage, have conditions excluded, or face much higher premium payments that are out of reach of most family budgets.”
Last month, Cornyn claimed that the Texas health care system — despite having the highest uninsured rate in the country — should serve as a model of reform. Thus, if Cornyn sees a higher number of uninsured as a mark of successful Health Care Plan, then McCain’s plan — which would increase the number of uninsured Americans from 45.7 to 55 million by 2013 — is certainly his best option.
The Center for American Progress Action Fund reported last month that 11 million Texans (see Texas figures in table below) could lose their employer health benefits under Senators McCain’s and Cornyn's health care plan.
Texas Health Care Statistics
Currently
Under The McCain/Cornyn Health Care Plan
Uninsured
% Uninsured
Uninsured With Chronic Conditions
Annual Health Care Spending Growth
Could Lose Their Employer Health Benefits*
Wouldn’t Find Coverage In Individual Market**
Tax Increase by 2013 for Couples Making $60,000
5.5 million
27%
1.8 million
7.4%
11 million
3.9 million
$580
*Total number of people with employer-based coverage **Covered by employer plan with chronic conditions who can't obtain coverage in the individual market Sources: Kaiser Family Foundation, Congressional Budget Office, Tax Policy Center, Center for American Progress Action Fund
Rick Noriega, the Democratic Candidate running for the U.S. Senate seat to replace incumbent John Cornyn, Tom Daley, the Democratic Candidate running for the U.S. House of Representatives 3rd Congressional District seat to replace incumbent Sam Johnson, and Glenn Melançonthe Democratic Candidate running for the U.S. House of Representatives 4th Congressional District seat to replace incumbent Ralph Moody Hall, oppose the Republican plan to deregulate Health Care, tax employer provided health can benefits and cut Medicare and Medicare funding. All three Democratic Candidates have said that they support some type of heath care program that extends health care coverage to all Americans.
Speaking in Albuquerque on Monday, Senator John McCain attacked Senator Barack Obama on several fronts that by now have become familiar. But many of his charges relating to the economic meltdown, taxation and health care contained inaccuracies or exaggerations of his own position or Mr. Obama’s.
The Wall Street Journal Online By LAURA MECKLER - October 7, 2008
Independent voters swing behind Barack Obama and Joe Biden according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. Sens. Obama and Biden have a six-point lead, with 49% of registered voters saying they would vote for them, compared with 43% for Sen. McCain and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. That is up from a two-point advantage in the previous Journal poll, two weeks ago, and parallels other recent national polls. Independent voters are among the most important voting blocs because many of them would consider voting for either candidate. In the Journal/NBC poll two weeks ago, independents favored Sen. McCain by 13 points. The new survey finds Sen. Obama leading by four points.
Embarracuda Time Magazine Posted by Joe Klein - October 6, 2008
I'm of two minds about how to deal with the McCain campaign's further descent into ugliness. Their strategy is simple: you throw crap against a wall and then giggle as the media try to analyze the putresence in a way that conveys a sense of balance: "Well, it is bull-pucky, but the splatter pattern is interesting..." which, of course, only serves to get your perverse message out. I really don't want to be a part of that. But...every so often, we journalists have a duty to remind readers just how dingy the McCain campaign, and its right-wing acolytes in the media (I'm looking at you, Sean Hannity) have become--especially in their efforts to divert public attention from the economic crisis we're facing. And so inept at it: other campaigns have decided that their only shot is going negative, but usually they don't announce it, as several McCain aides have in recent days--there's no way we can win on the economy, so we're going to go sludge-diving.
But since we are dealing with manure here, I'll put the rest of this post below the fold - Read the rest of the story.
A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty.
By TIM DICKINSON - Oct 16, 2008
Few politicians have so actively, or successfully, crafted their own myth of greatness. In McCain's version of his life, he is a prodigal son who, steeled by his brutal internment in Vietnam, learned to put "country first." Remade by the Keating Five scandal that nearly wrecked his career, the story goes, McCain re-emerged as a "reformer" and a "maverick," righteously eschewing anything that "might even tangentially be construed as a less than proper use of my office."
It's a myth McCain has cultivated throughout his decades in Washington. But during the course of this year's campaign, the mask has slipped. "Let's face it," says Larry Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. "John McCain made his reputation on the fact that he doesn't bend his principles for politics. That's just not true."
Few politicians have so actively, or successfully, crafted their own myth of greatness. In Mc- Cain's version of his life, he is a prodigal son who, steeled by his brutal internment in Vietnam, learned to put "country first." Remade by the Keating Five scandal that nearly wrecked his career, the story goes, McCain re-emerged as a "reformer" and a "maverick," righteously eschewing anything that "might even tangentially be construed as a less than proper use of my office."
It's a myth McCain has cultivated throughout his decades in Washington. But during the course of this year's campaign, the mask has slipped. "Let's face it," says Larry Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. "John McCain made his reputation on the fact that he doesn't bend his principles for politics. That's just not true."
Back in 1999, John McCain acknowledged his role in the 1980's Keating Five savings and loan scandal that rightly stained his career. "The fact is," McCain said, "it was the wrong thing to do, and it will be on my tombstone and deservedly so."
As AmericaBlog, Crooks and Liars and Politico reported, the campaign, ignoring McCain's own acknowledgment of his role in the 1980's savings and loan scandal, deployed McCain's lawyer John Dowd to rewrite history on his client's behalf during a conference call on Monday October 6th:
McCain lawyer John Dowd described McCain's "former relationship with Charles Keating as 'social friends,'" and called the situation a "classic political smear job on John."
Over the course of the 2008 election, Barack Obama's campaign has shown vision in deploying web-based technology to fundraise, establish political (social) networks, advertise to targeted audiences, build email lists and otherwise facilitate grassroots organizing. This week team Obama released its new application for the iPhone - a powerful new tool to help its supporters Get Out The Vote, literally wherever they are.
The Obama '08 iPhone application (available for free) brings much of the content and functionality of the Obama web site to the Apple iPhone. Supporters can access issue information, immediately receive campaign updates, get national and local campaign news, find nearby Obama events and browse video and photos. And the iPhone's global positioning system technology gives directions to the nearest campaign office or event and can help in working block walking lists too.
Anyone that has been doing any "virtual phone banking" will see the real power of Obama's new iPhone application for political organizing at the grassroots level. The "Call Friends" feature turns the iPhone into a "personal phone bank" that allows supporters to get and use call lists to call potential voters anywhere anytime.
Katie Couric sat down with Sarah Palin and Joe Biden and asked them their thoughts on Roe v. Wade. Couric asked both Palin and Biden if they beleive that the Constitution grants an explicit right of privacy to American citizens. Both Palin and Biden answered that Constitution grants a right to privacy, but Palin qualified her answer saying that the right to privacy is actually a "States' Rights" issue. ("States' rights" refers to the concept that states possess certain rights and political powers over which the federal government should have no authority.)
The question of whether the Constitution protects privacy is controversial. Many conservatives, who subscribe to "originalist" or "constructionist" philosophy of Constitutional Law, argue that no such general right of privacy exists. Constructionists argue that because the U.S. Constitution nowhere includes an exact phrase, "Congress shall make no law respecting the people's right to privacy," the right is not granted or protected by the U.S. Constitution. Constructionist Conservatives call this philosophy of Constitutional Law "strict adherence to the Constitution."
The Supreme Court, however, beginning as early as 1923 and continuing through its recent decisions, has broadly read the "liberty" guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment to guarantee a fairly broad right of privacy that has come to encompass decisions about child rearing, procreation, marriage, contraception and termination of medical treatment. Polls show most Americans support this broader "right to privacy" reading of the Constitution.
Griswold v. Connecticut is the landmark case in which the Chief Justice Warren Supreme Court in 1965 struck down a state law prohibiting the possession, sale, and distribution of contraceptives to married couples. Different justifications were offered for the conclusion, ranging from Court's opinion by Justice Douglas that saw the "penumbras" and "emanations" of various Bill of Rights guarantees as creating "a zone of privacy," to Justice Goldberg's partial reliance on the Ninth Amendment's reference to "other rights retained by the people," to Justice Harlan's decision arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment's liberty clause forbade the state from engaging in conduct (such as search of marital bedrooms for evidence of illicit contraceptives) that was inconsistent with a government based "on the concept of ordered liberty."
Citing the Griswold v. Connecticut decision and justifications of privacy the Justice Burger Court extended the right of privacy to include a woman's right to have an abortion in its 1972 Roe v. Wade decision.
On today's court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Alito, Scalia and Thomas, who all subscribe to the "constructionist" philosophy of Constitutional Law, are not inclined to protect privacy beyond those cases raising claims based on explicit Bill of Rights guarantees. In other words four out the nine justices sitting on the Supreme Court do not recognize the "implied right to privacy" that their Supreme Court predecessors have recognized.
The next President will appoint at least one and possibly three Justices to the Supreme Court. John McCain has repeatedly said that he will appoint more Constructionist Justices just like Roberts, Alito and Scalia. When asked, "which of the Supreme Court Justices, would you not have nominated," McCain answered, "Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer;" All the Justices who have upheld the "right of privacy" principal.
With five to seven "constructionist" Justices sitting on the Supreme Court Americans will very likely find they no longer have a "right to privacy." This will likely not only reverse the Court's 1972 Roe v. Wade ruling, but also the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut right to privacy in contraception use ruling and other Supreme Court rulings based on an "implied" right of privacy. The other right of privacy rulings encompass decisions about child rearing, procreation, marriage, contraception and the termination of medical treatment, such as in the Terry Schiavo case. Even the Court's Pierce v. Society of Sisters right to privacy ruling, which serves as the foundation for the right to home school children, could be reversed.
As reported in the Wall Street Journal OnLine, "The Bush Administration's Department of Health and Human Services has written a draft regulation that defines most birth-control pills and intrauterine devices as abortion because they work by preventing fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus." Evangelical Republicans define a fertilized egg, from the "moment of conception," as human life with full civil rights. Any human interruption to the natural processes that might allow the fertilized egg to implant in the uterus and develop into a full term birth is murder.
Palin and McCain should be asked by reporters if they support the Bush administration's attempt to define common contraception, that prevents fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus, as a form of abortion. They further should be specifically queried if they believe that married couples should have a "right of privacy" to use birth-control pills and intrauterine devices that prevent fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus.
If the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut right to privacy ruling were to be overturned, it is conceivable that the common birth control pill and IUD device in use today could eventually be ruled a type of abortion by a very right leaning "Constructionist" Supreme Court created by a President John McCain.
Related Postings: GOP Seeks To Outlaw Right To Choose - McCain promises to appoint judges that will curtail family and women's rights in many ways.
WASHINGTON — The next president will tip the courts, one way or another.
[Up to three] Supreme Court openings are all but guaranteed, and that's just the start: 44 trial and appellate federal judicial vacancies already await filling. There will be more.
Consider this: President Bush has placed 316 judges on the bench during his two terms. One out of three federal judges now owes a lifetime-tenured job to the current president. Whoever replaces Bush will be likewise recasting courthouses, top to bottom.
"The proper role of the judiciary has become one of the defining issues of this presidential election," Republican presidential candidate John McCain said in May. "It will fall to the next president to nominate hundreds — hundreds — of qualified men and women to the federal courts, and the choices we make will reach far, far into the future."
In truth, many polls suggest, relatively few voters consider the federal judiciary a defining issue. But those who do care, care a lot. . .
Salon.com - Her deadly wolf program By Mark Benjamin
With a disdain for science that alarms wildlife experts, Sarah Palin continues to promote Alaska's policy to gun down wolves from planes.
Wildlife activists thought they had seen the worst in 2003 when Frank Murkowski, then the Republican governor of Alaska, signed a bill ramping up state programs to gun down wild wolves from airplanes, inviting average citizens to participate. Wolves, Murkowski believed, were clearly better than humans at killing elk and moose, and humans needed to even the playing field.
But that was before Sarah Palin took Murkowski's job at the end of 2006. She went one step, or paw, further. Palin didn't think Alaskans should be allowed to chase wolves from aircraft and shoot them -- they should be encouraged to do so. Palin's administration put a bounty on wolves' heads, or to be more precise, on their mitts.
In early 2007, Palin's administration approved an initiative to pay a $150 bounty to hunters who killed a wolf from an airplane in certain areas, hacked off the left foreleg, and brought in the appendage.
Democratic challenger Rick Noriega closes the polling gap with incumbent Republican Senator John Cornyn to seven points in latest Rasmussen poll. Noriega now trails Cornyn by just 43% to 50% in the battle for the U.S. Senate seat for Texas.
Cornyn had an 11-point lead over Noriega in August and has been out front by double digits in every poll conducted since June. Cornyn is currently seeking his second term in the U.S. Senate.
