One-in-four chance McCain may not survive 2nd term

So that's a 75% chance that Sarah Palin...yes, that Sarah Palin, will be the President of the United States sometime in the next eight years!

If McCain is elected, the chance Palin will become President is much closer to 100%. We've already seen McCain admit he really isn't running is own campaign and didn't get to pick is first choice for VP. Shortly after being sworn in, the power brokers behind McCain will tell him it is time to go and he will resign.

If they are talking about a second term, I guess it would be because a majority of people were happy with the job McCain and Palin were doing after their first term. She'd have over four years of experience as VP as well.

How can that guy make such a prediction? McCain will not release his medical records, so we have no way of knowing if his cancer has come back. He obviously has something to hide, or he would have released them. In a couple of recent appearances he had something strange going on with his left eye and the left side of his face, giving the appearance of a stroke, although I did not notice it during the debate. What was that about? He won't say.
We have evidence Barak Obama is healthy. John McCain says "Trust me." With Sarah Palin waiting in the wings, that is too much to ask.

1 in 4 chance? Phew! I thought it would be much much worse.

Seriously, even if Palin is...oops, I meant McCain is elected I highly doubt he would get a second chance. He probably wouldn't even choose to run for a second term, and if he did he wouldn't get elected BECAUSE of his age. Unless he was a true reformer and changed the way Washington works. But what are the chances in that happening? 1 in 700 billion?

Chance the country will survive another Republican - 50/50. Stock up on food and water now.

What is the point of this? As far as I know, we are having an election for the next 4 years. McCain has 8.4 years according to this. no issue. move on to something that matters.

First off, McCain's never freely released his medical records. Instead, his campaign allowed a hand-picked group of 5 to glance at over 1,000 pages of medical data for a mere 3 hours; no recording items of any type (including, evidently pen and paper) permitted, and the pages reportedly were not in any particular order.

As a nurse with 26 years experience, having read thousands of charts, I'm trying to imagine just how much WASN'T disclosed. Unless the 5-man team took the time to coordinate their efforts and delegated each man to check out 1/5 of the pages (assuming each was given an identical stack of paper - that their copies were in the same questionable order, not shuffled, etc) it's a sure bet a hefty percentage of vital data was buried.., which was the intent, no doubt.

For myself, I would be highly interested in finding out if McCain was given the mini-mental exam one typically gives to persons over 65, or if he was tested for evidence of early Alzheimer's. Of course, if I was running for President of the United States I would forgo such a test if I was worried about the outcome.

Consider this: McCain for the past year has had increasing trouble recalling important facts an figures (can't remember the difference between Shiite & Sunni ideologies, forgot we were still at war in Afhghanistan twice this summer, etc). He has become inceasingly bizarre - picking possibly the least quallified woman to be his running mate (self proclaimed 'soccer mom' & 'mother of five').

Any rational person would be concerned about the behaviors such as McCain precipitously cancelling his appearance on the Late Show at the very last moment (leaving the host scrambling to find a replacement), telling Letterman he had to RUSH to Washington because it was an emergency and being found up the hall a short time later in makeup, preparing to give an interview (he still hasn't apologized). Shortly there after he states he's NOT leaving Washington until Congress passes some sort of legislation on this crisis- plus he's immediately suspending his campaign (which he never does)- then the next day spends a few hours in a meeting with the President, Obama and 11 others - where it's reported by several sources he sat in stony silence, staring at his papers in front of him; not once did he offer a single comment or solution. After all that he rushed off to a campaign rally long before there was a consensus on the bill.

Backing up six weeks, we find McCain selecting his running mate based on very brief meetings (the first a mere two hours); he didn't even wait for a complete vetting of his choice. According to insiders against all advice to wait a little longer he announced his choice of Palin, leaving his campaign advisers nothing to do but back him publicly. Within hours of his announcement the media began uncovering incident after incident of questionable judgment on the part of Sarah Palin from the time she first took office as mayor of a tiny town of 9465 - a position where she only had to attend city meetings once a month - to her actions as governor of the state of Alaska (a state with a population less than that of the entire city of San Diego). Incidents that includes taking campaign contributions from mining concerns & Oil Companies (who pay for 90% of Alaskan's services, including the fact citizens pay ZERO income tax in that state).

McCain didn't even stop to think about the fact Sarah Palin's husband is an executive with Major Oil & how that would play out with voters, or how it would affect how Sarah Palin conducts herself as vice president. (Wives, after all, try to help their husbands achieve success as part of their job description).

Making sudden turnabout's & snap judgments lacking any rationale are, in my opinion, harbingers of Alzheimer's.

Bizarre ads on Internet sites (approved by McCain) proclaimed he'd won Friday's debate before it'd even taken place; he continued this crystal ball campaigning by claiming he'd personally brought the Hill to an agreement on the bail-out...and we all know how that turned out. McCain angrily damned Obama for not being in Washington to work on the bill, "he's left the fight on the most important issue we've ever faced to continue his campaign, thinking he can phone in his vote" ... while speaking from own campaign rally in Columbus, OH. One can only wonder how he managed to be in two places at once.

McCain loudly asserted our economy was strong, even as it was collapsing - indeed, on the very Monday it came crashing down. On that day he stated he found the American economy had never been better, that it was deregulation that would strengthen it even further - despite the fact our current mess can be directly tied to he & Phil Gramm seven years ago slashing important rules and regulations put in place in the 1930's to stop some of the same excesses that caused the 1929 debacle.

The Republican candidate has reportedly developed an explosive temper - throwing items and smashing things when confronted with a sudden change of any kind, something those of us who deal with Alzheimer's patients see often. They can't deal with anything that upsets their day; it's the similarities in their day that allow them to continue to function. One could tell at the debate McCain was relying on rehearsed blurbs; he kept repeating word for word lines he'd fixed in his head. His anger was clearly barely controlled during the debate: his hands tightly clasping the podium, legs almost crossed, head down, refusing to look at his opponent, voice pitched low and grumbling- he looked and sounded like the guy who yells at kids to get off his grass.

McCain's had 4 episodes of melanoma - a deadly form of skin cancer one is never truly free from. What happens if it recurs (and remissions can cease in an astoundingly short time) or if his Alzheimer's gets so unmanageable we're left with Sarah Palin to lead our country. She who has no Washington experience has already demonstrated she can't handle even a simple one on one interview with the press, who admits prior to being selected as McCain's running mate didn't even pay attention to the goings-on overseas (including the Iraq war), hadn't been out of Alaska her entire life (she applied for her first passport only a few weeks ago in order to go on a photo-op in Kuwait...oh,yes, she never actually set foot in Iraq despite claims to have made a trip there this summer, nor did she visit Ireland, unless on includes having her plane refuel there on the way back from Kuwait).

Americans've not had a chance to truly get to know just what exactly Sarah Palin's capable of because Palin's been kept far away from the media: frankly, her own campaign doesn't trust her to give rehearsed answers as trained (in light of her interview with Katie Couric, they're right). So far all we've seen are carefully constructed photo ops with Afghan leader Kurzai, 90 year old Henry Kissinger and one other – where news reporters were forbidden to ask a single question, and in the case of Kurzai, lasted only 27 seconds; her only question to him reportedly 'how's the new baby?" and his answer, "Fine.". End of meeting.

Senator McCain's first actual press conference (not campaign stop) in 6 weeks followed that photo shoot: it went by so fast if you blinked, you missed it. From start to finish a mere 11 minutes... including his lengthy opening statement. [has anyone noticed he recites his lines from cue cards or the Teleprompter one sentence at a time, always pausing to proudly smile after each line delivered correctly... much like a little boy who's in a school play showing mommy and daddy 'I did it right!'] In it he spent half a minute decrying executive "Golden Parachutes", wasting more than half the opening statement's time repeating worn-out slogans. But, when he went off well-rehearsed prepared statements & attempted to put together coherent statements, his impaired mental capacity stood out like a sore thumb.

For example: McCain spent that aforementioned half minute decrying golden parachutes. As soon as he didn't have his carefully prepared speech in front of him and was trying to present his stand on the current economic disaster in an off-the-cuff manner, he said Senior Adviser Carly Fiorino SHOULD receive her $40 million retirement package from Hewlett-Packard even though the company had such disastrous financial returns under her tutelage & 20,000 employees lost their jobs.

He then went on to give a totally garbled sentence that went EXACTLY like this:

"I hope that Democrats would recognize that this that this issue should not be related in any way to my vote. This issue should be and their votes should be determined and how we can resolve this crisis and get America going again. This is a huge crisis. We know. So to somehow for the Democrats to say that their vote is going to be gauged on my vote does not do them a great deal of credit"

Does that sound as bizarre to you as it does to me?

It must be obvious to Sarah Palin (the person who'd win this election's Most Promiscuous Liar award hands down) as she promoted herself to top dog on the ticket last week: "This is how things will be in a Palin/McCain Administration!" It wasn't the first time she's made comments about how things would be if she was elected, either. She seems to view herself as the primary candidate on the Republican slate if one looks at her comments as to how SHE plans to change things on the hill.

This is about the scariest thought one could have. A President with a Veep with decided eyes on succeeding to the highest office sooner rather than later needs to be very, very careful. Were I McCain, I'd restart the ancient position of 'Royal Food Taster' on Day 1; pathological liars (like Palin) are defined as ambitious people who will do anything to get ahead.

George Will, undeniably one of the MOST conservative writers- who has consistently backed his Republican party - came out the other day & wrote flatly 'John McCain is not fit to be President.

He wrote "McCain characteristically substitutes vehemence for coherence." Will says if McCain can't even remember that the president does not have the authority to fire the head of the SEC, he clearly has problems". He talks about how McCain tends to fire off vitriolic rhetoric and he says he is "channeling his inner Queen of hearts... furiously & apparently without even looking around at the facts..." and he says he [McCain] engages in "childish reflex", and often engages in "fact free slander".

"... the more one sees his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people & events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection & clear principles. Having neither patience nor aptitude for either... it is arguable McCain, because of his boiling moralism & bottomless reservoir of certitude, is NOT suited to the presidency." We'll goes on to say, "Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?"

He says "McCain's smear is a harbinger of a McCain presidency."

[Source: Washington Post.com & MSNBC.com]

Will clearly sees McCain cannot handle the stress of the Presidency. Is it Alzheimers? Or is it a basic personality flaws the candidate has had forever, but are now being exacerbated by the relentless pressures of the campaign? It isn't beyond consideration at his age. He surely shows enough signs of it: he cannot recall important details, he mixes up dates and times, he has an explosive temper especially when the timing of things are changed, he repeats mistakes even when he knows he shouldn't i.e "The economy is strong" on the day the market is crashing and all hell is breaking loose. McCain simply couldn't assimilate the new data and process it, so he fell back on what he knew in the past.

More signs of his poor judgment include picking Palin [after meeting her for a mere 6 hours and not waiting for her vetting to complete]. Now we are learning about all sorts of dicey antics of the Alaskan Governor...and, despite the loud calls from the McCain camp of how ALL Alaskans simply adore their governor, we find that a significant number do not. Those voices decrying her are becoming louder.

Having picked her, he can't let Palin out of his sight for a moment lest she say something stupid. They've locked up her family so nobody testifies in Troopergate. McCain's advisers have changed Palin's previously promised cooperation into "nobody testifies" - and so, everyone subpoenaed by the Alaskan legislature has steadfastly refused to comply. They've decided if they tell outright lies fast and loud [hoping nobody will be able to catch them in a falsehood] the American people will not see past such transparent desperate tactics. An example of this is Palin's oft repeated statement she sold the Alaskan governor's private jet on EBay, an event that, though she did try, NEVER happened. [The jet sits outside the Governor's mansion' private hanger as we speak]. When questioned by the press McCain also loudly proclaims it is true, yes, she sold that jet, the physical presence of the jet notwithstanding. Ditto the claims that she never supported the $100 million infamous Bridge to Nowhere in Ketchikan (pop. 17,954) again, proof of support clearly indicating her unbridled support right up until Congress yanked the funding.

McCain's judgment's so poor for a statesman of 26 years; for a man, who, up until about six years ago, was sharp as a tack. The American people really must insist on his medical records be made accessible to an independent group of qualified persons, & they must do it NOW – the election's only a few weeks off. We MUST know if this man is mentally & physically qualified to handle what will be undeniably the most difficult presidency in the last century.

This is a wonderful example of media bias and how AP writers who are on the Obama bandwagon are skewing the news to manipulate the voters!

The ORIGINAL ARTICLE was written August 4th and published by rueters
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS191450Aug-2008+BW20080804

The title: Both Major Presidential Candidates Can be Expected To Remain Healthy for Two Full Terms, International Actuarial Firm Finds

"Either candidate can be expected to serve two full terms, without
age or health being an issue," said John M. Bragg, chairman of
Atlanta-based Bragg.

Go READ the original unbiased article about this and reread this one. The media altered the basic premise and scope of the article and "re-wrote" this to be clearly biased!

If there was any doubt the media is trying to FIX this election and form public opinion here is the perfect example!

So we went from:

Both Major Presidential Candidates Can be Expected To Remain Healthy for Two Full Terms, International Actuarial Firm Finds

To: One-in-four chance McCain may not survive 2nd term

Same Data , 26 days later and CLOSER to the election. Why cant we trust the media?

SPIN,SPIN,SPIN! that's why!

I would rather see Sarah Palin in the White House than the Taliban partying on the front lawn of the White House.