IS MCCAIN DYING?

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WHY IS HE HIDING FROM REPORTERS?

HAVING SELECTED A SUCCESSOR, IS HE READY TO "MOVE ON"?



SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE: Tina Fey & Amy Poehler
"Gov. Palin and Senator Clinton address the nation"


Has McCain Saddled Us With A Rank Amateur In His Final Hours?

John Sidney McCain III hasn't given a press conference since receiving his Party's nomination. McSame hasn't answered a single question from any national reporter in any situation in weeks now. Is he unable to hold it together? Or is he readying his followers to go on without him?

In carefully stage-managed closed meetings with hand-picked citizens, McBush seems frail and disoriented. The smallest things catch him off balance. He has begun to refer to the next Administration as if it might not be real for him, as if he might not be a part of it. Is he unfit for office? Is he trying to tell us something?

Sarah Palin keeps saying she's ready to step into McCain's shoes. She talks about running things from Day One. Her entire campaign is focused on replacing McCain. In effect, she has already done that. Even as she stumbles and bumbles through softball interviews, she has grasped the reins of power, for which she is as under-qualified as she is over-eager.

What would be the legalities if McSame died before Election Day, or Inauguration Day, should his ticket win? Would the Presidency automatically fall to Palin, grossly unqualified as she is? That seems to be the Republican game plan. Is America ready for that? Is the world? Can we all survive another eight years of faith-based hubris and bloody chaos in the White House and in the world at large?

Don't we deserve to know what's going on here? Shouldn't even potential McBush voters know that they are actually voting for an airheaded newby with weird cultist ideals and beliefs? Does anybody really want our next President to be an inexperienced, under-educated, emotionally unstable lightweight with a history of corruption and abuse of power? Don't we already have one of those? Whatever happened to "CHANGE"?


INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE
"McCain is less accessible these days"

' John McCain is not mixing it up with the people much these days. His strong suit and distinguishing characteristic — accessibility — is rarely on display in these buttoned-up weeks of the presidential election campaign, when worries about missteps or getting off the topic of the moment trump the freewheeling nature of the Arizona senator. That made his town-hall meeting Monday, the first in nearly a month, all the more striking. For now, he is practically bubble-wrapped, campaigning in staged events with little spontaneous interaction with voters. McCain, for example, seemed to be caught unaware when a middle-schooler Monday asked him what he thought about a $40 athletics fee imposed at his school. Such fees have become commonplace in public high schools, but McCain has sent his youngest children to private school. "Really?" the senator asked incredulously. Unlike Obama, McCain has not held a news conference since accepting his party's nomination. He has not taken questions from his traveling press corps in more than a month. '

YAHOO NEWS
"McCain's stump speech more about Palin than self"

' Two things jump out from John McCain's standard campaign speech: Sarah Palin and change. Mostly Sarah Palin bringing change. McCain's choice of Palin as his running mate injected an unexpected and enormous burst of energy into his White House bid, and now he tries to tap into that dynamic in his campaign speeches. Nearly unprecedented for presidential contenders in recent history, McCain's stump speech now is often almost as much about his No. 2 as it is about him. In fact, McCain is expected to do few rallies without Palin through the fall. With McCain's uneven delivery and stiff stance on the stage, big events and formal addresses have never been a staple of his campaigns. He prefers roundtables and town-hall settings where he is more apt to shine. For a long time, he was content to leave the glitzy auditorium-filling events and smooth speechmaking to Obama. But now crowds are gathering by the thousands for the Republican ticket, and they're there as much to see her as him. Even if she's not there, like at solo McCain rallies Monday and Tuesday, they want to hear about her. And do they ever. Listen to McCain on Palin: His lines about himself can come across as rote, but never the ones about her. "What a great, great and exciting experience it has been for me, just in the last week or so, to introduce to the United States of America, Governor Sarah Palin," he gushed Monday. And even though Palin wasn't there, the audience's hearty applause showed it was one of the lines they liked best, too. '

THE MINNESOTA INDEPENDENT
"Doctors: McCain’s health “an issue of profound importance”"

' Nearly 600 medical doctors have signed a statement calling for Republican presidential nominee John McCain to issue a full and public disclosure of all of his medical records. McCain is a 72-year-old four-time cancer survivor who has lived most of his life with physical disabilities as a result of torture endured as a prisoner of war. In May the McCain campaign made more than 1,000 pages of medical records from the last eight years available only to select journalists for a three-hour period under a stringent set of rules. The statement argues that such a disclosure is insufficient and call McCain’s health “an issue of profound importance.” If elected, the Republican nominee would become the oldest person ever inaugurated as president of the United States, a fact that is often mentioned in the context of his relatively inexperienced running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. '

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
"Willie Brown: How does President Palin sound?"

' For first time in modern history, a presidential race is actually going to be decided by the vice presidential pick. Thanks to Sarah Palin, this is no longer a contest between Barack Obama and John McCain - it's between Brother Barack and Sistah Sarah. Rock star vs. rock star. Inexperienced vs. inexperienced. Newcomer vs. newcomer. Change vs. change. His "change" is East Coast intellectual. Her "change" is NASCAR. His change is wine and cheese. Her change is mayonnaise by the gallon. The Democrats have got to get to the core of this new campaign. It's not a pretty thought, but somehow Democrats must plant in voters' minds that, given McCain's age and his health history, he might not make it through the term if he's elected. Even if McCain does make it through a term, it's not likely he'll seek re-election and she will be the natural successor. In other words, Sarah Palin may indeed be president someday. '

STREEM.COM
"I'm ready to be President: Palin"

' Sarah Palin has jumped the role of her leader John McCain, insisting she is ready to become President. With questions lingering over the health of 72-year-old John McCain, Palin says she is ready to replace McCain as President. Asked about the moment she accepted McCain's request that she become his Vice Presidential running mate, Palin said she did so mindful of the potential Presidential responsibility. "I answered him `yes' because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can't blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we're on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can't blink," she said during an interview with ABC America. '

HATTIESBURG AMERICAN
"Palin isn't ready for vice president"

' There has been a lot of debate lately about the (lack of) experience of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Now the Republicans are actually arguing that she has more "executive" experience than Obama because she served as mayor of a town the size of Petal and has spent a year and a half as governor of Alaska (a state with half the population of Hawaii). What should be important, however, is not experience but qualifications. In her big speech at the RNC, Palin mocked Obama's work as a community organizer; but while he was busy getting unemployed people in the south side of Chicago back to work, Palin was Miss Alaska runner-up and a sports reporter in Anchorage. For 12 years Obama has taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School. On the other hand, only a month ago Palin had to ask "what is it exactly that the vice president does every day?" '

GUARDIAN
"Forget the row about lipstick. It's Sarah Palin's politics that matter"

' This is to overlook the substance of her beliefs. Palin represents an extreme form of conservatism. She is not just anti-abortion, she opposes abortion even in cases of rape or incest. And Palin supports the introduction of creationist ideas into the classroom, alongside evolution. She is sceptical of global warming, only recently accepting that human activities might play a role, flying in the face of vast bodies of scientific opinion - even the US government's own advisers. She is pro-drilling for oil in environmentally sensitive areas in a world that needs to wean itself away from fossil fuels. Her grasp of foreign policy is limited to a series of hawkish and naive soundbites on Russia, terrorism and Iran. '

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