USVI-On-Line

Aww...with all this talk about race, the other 800 lb gorilla in the room is very sad that he is being ignored. So lets revive it!

AGE. McCain is will be 72 years and 67 days old on Election Day this year with a 14.2 and 15.1 percent chance of dying before Inauguration Day 2013. There is a roughly 1 in 3 chance that a 72-year-old man will not reach the age of 80, which is how old McCain would be at the end of a second presidential term. And, this actuarial data this doesn't even take into account his medical history (war injuries, metastatic cancer).

If McCain passed away while in office, then we'll have President Palin. Roll that one around in your brain for awhile. Many prominent Republicans/conservatives have:

Kathleen Parker: "As we've seen and heard more from John McCain's running mate, it is increasingly clear that Palin is a problem. Quick study or not, she doesn't know enough about economics and foreign policy to make Americans comfortable with a President Palin should conditions warrant her promotion."

George F. Will: Palin is "obviously not qualified to be President"

David Frum (speech writer who wrote Bush's "axis of evil" speech): "I think she has pretty thoroughly -- and probably irretrievably -- proven that she is not up to the job of being president of the United States."

Peggy Noonan, former speechwriter for George H. W. Bush (remember "a thousand points of light"?): "[W]e have seen Mrs. Palin on the national stage for seven weeks now, and there is little sign that she has the tools, the equipment, the knowledge or the philosophical grounding one hopes for, and expects, in a holder of high office."

Colin Powell on Palin: "now that we have had a chance to watch her for some seven weeks, I don't believe she's ready to be president of the United States, which is the job of the vice president," he said. "And so that raised some question in my mind as to the judgment that Sen. McCain made."

Ouch.

PS: I revived this sensitive issue ONLY because I have absolutely had it with the ugly code words and fear tactics being freely employed here and by McCain and Palin. And, recent polls have clearly indicated that voters are more concerned about McCain's age than Obama's race.

The barrage of labels they have tried to pin on Obama begs the question though: haven't these people ever heard the Chicken Little fairy tale about the sky is falling?

PPS: predictable replies to this post - McCain's mother is 90 something years old; Obama is a smoker and used cocaine as a youth; Palin has more "executive experience" than Obama and Biden; those egghead intellectuals quoted above don't speak for the vast majority of the GOP; Powell only endorsed Obama because he is black too; etc. etc. etc.

And before you belittle or express outrage with this post, consider this: age and cancer are not fairy tales. They are real issues in this election that deserve consideration. It is not an abstraction that can be talked about using derisive McCain "air quotes". Just ask anybody who has dealt with an aging parent or had cancer affect their lives.

In one of her few interviews, Palin didn't even know what the vice president did. I can't imagine she has a clue what the president does either. (BTW, I learned what the vice president does in high school government class. To be fair, I was in AP Government.)

If any of us went into a job interview and did not even the big picture of the position for which we were applying, we would not be hired. When that position involves the whole world, that's frightening.

Isn't the whole theme of this election finding someone to clean up after an ill-prepared governor who became president. I don't think the solution is to "hire" another one.

21% of presidents don't finish out their terms...so there's a 1 in 5 chance that Palin would be president just based on those stats.
I think McCain's health and age are serious issues. and I had a tremendous amout of respect for McCain, until he chose Palin, i think it was truly a huge lapse in judgement.

McCain wanted Lieberman. His campaign talked him out of it. He caved to them. So much for being a maverick.

I had a tremendous amount of respect for McCain in 2000, back when he was a moderate and a maverick and seemed to care about people who weren't Christian fundamentalists. Picking Palin was just one more way that he has pandered to the religious right. I hope at the end of the day, selling out to win an election, that he is not going to win, was worth it to him.

I just miss the old McCain and hope that he finds his way back to the Senate after the election.

Think about if McCain had picked Romney instead of pandering to the base. Maybe would’ve made those in the GOP who didn’t even like the choice of McCain even madder. But imagine how that would've been played over the past few weeks, having Romney front and center, talking about his experience as a successful businessman, his accomplishments in Mass. as a Republican Gov in a blue state, etc. instead of having Palin up front talking about the "real America".

Lulu76 wrote:In one of her few interviews, Palin didn't even know what the vice president did. I can't imagine she has a clue what the president does either. (BTW, I learned what the vice president does in high school government class. To be fair, I was in AP Government.).

Come on Lulu, be fair. In a later interview (in response to a 3rd graders question) she clarified that she thinks the VP is in charge of the Senate.

I am not a constitutional scholar but I am pretty sure that should speak for itself on her preparedness to be our president.

Basically McCain blew the "Obama has no experience" argument out of the water himself when he picked her. Experience was my primary #1 reason for backing Clinton over Obama in the primaries. Not because I didn't like Obama, but because I thought the republicans would skewer him over the issue of experience and would have had a substantive argument.

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Flip-flop, didn't you once say it was scary how much we think alike sometimes?

I think it's funny that Obama was for change and McCain was for experience. And then McCain picked Palin and they were both "mavericks" and they were going to change Washington.

Maybe into a place where the vice president runs the Senate and effects all this change by voting for legislation.

I don't think that worrying about the president's health is unethical. As I said before, it's not really a partisan issue. JFK and FDR were both very sickly, and Reagan had Alzheimer's during his term. Obama smokes like a train and has already had several threats on his life. I would just be more comfortable with Joe Biden leading this country than Governor Palin.

When it got down to Obama and McCain, I said whom they selected as vice president could make or break the election. However, I had suspected McCain would choose more wisely and blow Obama out of the water.

SJfromNJ wrote:Nice job at lowering the ethical bar on the political topics. I cant even think of a wisecrak about this topic.

So irrefutable issues of age and health are “lowering the ethical bar”, but all the fear tactics and labels, actual and implied, that are being stuck on Obama are A-OK?

Alrighty then. The hypocrisy is astounding but not at all surprising.

Let me see if I have this right...I am calibrating my moral compass.

Saying Obama is a socialist/communist, who believes in infanticide and is a friend to terrorists is ethically above the belt.

Saying McCain is OLD (he is 72, on any scale I'd argue that is old) is below the belt.

Got it.

Great new Obama ad by the way. Re: McCain and the Economy.

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/5eUz13-pmTY&hl ... ram><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/5eUz13-pmTY&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

I thought you guys were going to quit the political discussions???

Pete - I think your in-box is full - the system keeps bouncing your IMs back to me. I recently doubled the size of storage for everyone, but you have to trash old messages once in a while...

Pete - I think your in-box is full - the system keeps bouncing your IMs back to me. I recently doubled the size of storage for everyone, but you have to trash old messages once in a while...

Hope it's not hate mail.

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Those issues are lame arguements to even start.

They're only lame arguments if you have a competent Vice Presidential candidate. It this case they are pretty darned (did I really use that word) serious.