WHY JOHN McCAIN'S HEALTH SHOULD BE A MAJOR ISSUE FOR VOTERS
Gary Ater
October 03, 2008
You may all have seen the recent video of Senator John McCain finishing a speech and then becoming confused before he was directed off the stage.
What you may not have seen is that literally seconds before McCain became confused on stage, his face twitched or convulsed twice. You can Google: www.americablog.com and look for "McCain lost on stage" and you will find both the video and the still pictures of the eye and lip "twitches". It happened twice. The "twitch" pictures are from around 5 seconds and 11 second into the video.
At some point, the corporate media needs to do its job and stop being a bunch of politically correct wimps. We saw something go physically wrong with McCain's face. And this is not the first time it's happened. It has been documented before. But the media refuses to ask McCain what is wrong because…….well, actually it's not very clear why the media refuses to ask McCain.
McCain is 72 years old, was tortured for five years (which couldn't have done anything positive for his health), and then he had 4 bouts of melanoma, the last one being a seriously invasive melanoma cancer.
Whether anyone wants to admit it, his health is an issue, and especially since he has chosen a real "novice" Veep candidate in the form of the Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
In addition, McCain, for this campaign, has never fully released his medical records in a way that permits anyone to actually peruse them correctly.
For this campaign, many months ago, McCain´s staff only permitted reporters to look at each page of his medical records for about 10 seconds before switching to another page. (There were hundreds of pages with very complicated medical jargon and they were difficult to translate.) And no one was permitted to copy or to take any of the records with them.
Today, the records are back under lock and key and McCain has refused to open them up again. For previous campaigns, McCain had released his medical records voluntarily and he did the same when he ran for president in 2000.
According to medical experts, several conditions can cause a facial paralysis, e.g., brain tumor, stroke, and Lyme disease. However, if no specific cause can be identified, the condition is usually just referred to as a "Bell's Palsy". The other theory that is being discussed is a possible "mini-stroke" as a cause.
The truth is, it has been hard to get many details about the health of the man. We know, as I´m sure you do by now, that if he wins the election, he will be the oldest president ever elected. He would be 2 years and 165 days older than Ronald Reagan was at the time of his inauguration. Though, one must admit, McCain´s still very capable, 96-year-old mother has occasionally been on the campaign trail with him. He has successfully been making the point that he comes from very good genes.
However, McCain does have malignant melanoma cancer. Research has also shown that if elected, he would not be the first president to have cancer. Grover Cleveland had cancer in his jaw. Reagan had both colon cancer and skin cancer and a less serious basal cell carcinoma on his nose. From what we have gathered, McCain has "Stage IIA melanoma", which carries an average 10-year survival rate of 66 percent.
If you see the pictures of McCain´s face, you will see a scar running down the left side and persistent puffiness of his left cheek. This is from the aggressive operation he had to remove the cancer and the lymph nodes in the area, as well as part of his parotid gland.
When these pictures have been shown to independent doctors, it is interesting that some doctors have said that an operation of that magnitude would only have been done "for a much more serious and aggressive cancer than IIA melanoma". But there have been no comments on this from the McCain campaign.
Last year after his annual check-up, a team of doctors from the Mayo Clinic made the following statement:
"Sen. McCain enjoys excellent health and displays extraordinary energy, and, while it is impossible to predict any person's future health, I and my colleagues can find no medical reason or problem that would preclude Sen. McCain from fulfilling all of the duties or obligations of the president of the United States."
If that is the case: "Why can´t the public see McCain´s latest health records?"
The "real Issues" for the voters are McCain´s health and his potential replacement.
The fact is that, for political reasons, I personally don´t think McCain is the right choice for what America needs in order to go forward.
But I am even more concerned that with McCain´s age and his past health issues, if he were to prevail as the winner of the election, the odds of Sarah Palin becoming the president during his first 4 year term are much better than the normal 1 out of 3 for a US vice president.
Even though McCain has the wrong ideas for what this country needs, Palin also continues to show that she would be way out of her league to take over if something were to happen to a President McCain.
Recently, many of the normally supportive conservative pundits, writers and analysts also began saying that Palin should back out, just as Harriet Meyers was forced to do when President Bush had nominated her for the Supreme Court.
Well respected national columnist and reporters such as; George Will, Kathleen Parker, Fareed Zakaria, Charles Krauthammer, David Frum, Ross Douthat and David Brooks have all publicly stated that Palin is either totally "out-of-her-league", not qualified or is very marginal at best. One long-time political columnist even stated that "Sarah Palin makes the prior VP, Dan Quayle look like a genius."
Even if I were a dedicated Republican and the supporter of a younger, healthier McCain, I would still have a problem with having Palin in the #2 position.
Apparently, I´m not the only one that feels that way. Even in her own state of Alaska, now that they are getting more information on Ms. Palin, her approval rating for being the country´s "favorite Governor" has fallen over 16%, just since she agreed to become the GOP veep candidate.
I guess I´d just have to say that I have a major concern for the "real" health condition of Senator John McCain and I´m also in line with those other "doubting" Alaskans about Governor Sarah Palin.
Copyright G.Ater - 2008