Since his heroic return from 'Nam, has John McCain handwritten anything? Has he used a phone keypad? Has he initiated or terminated a phone call?
Surely you understand there are varying levels of disability, especially with the use of the hands. I've had my thumb broken and I was able to write (poorly) but typing was out of the question. My hand was in a cast, so my four fingers were like one big useless clump, which is kinda like what we see with McCain. When I see McCain shake hands with people and the way he always has his writs at a particular angle, I easily see how a disability would make writing easier than typing. But all of this is beside the point isn't it? Obama implied that McCain couldn't send emails because he is just an old fart stuck in the stone age. This is dishonest to say the least.
John McCain was 31 years old when he was brutally checked in to the Hanoi Hilton. He didn't know how to type then, and, by his own admission, he doesn't know how to type now—irrespective of the horrific trauma that he endured.
I don't get your point. The argument wasn't that he didn't "know how to type." And what would that mean anyway? Type properly? I can type 65 words a minute and yet I peck away like a chicken. I never learned to type using the orthodox method either. But the argument was that he can't type or send an email, strongly suggesting that the reason for this has to do with his age and stubborness. This is demosntrably false and absolutely dishonest given the fact that it is due to his disability.
And frankly I am shocked that so many Obama defenders are trying to save Obama by suggesting McCain has been lying about the extent of his disability! Apparently the idea that Obama engaged in smear politics, just doesn't quite register.
Neither you nor I know the extent of John McCain's wartime disabilities.
Well, I do actually. You see, this little known fact had already been leaked to the public many years ago, albeit without the malicious implications that the Obama campaign has cooked up:
McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing food stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from inside: McCain’s severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes. Friends marvel at McCain’s encyclopedic knowledge of sports. He’s an avid fan - Ted Williams is his hero - but he can’t raise his arm above his shoulder to throw a baseball.
After Vietnam, McCain had Ann Lawrence, a physical therapist, help him regain flexibility in his leg, which had been frozen in an extended position by a shattered knee. It was the only way he could hope to resume his career as a Navy flier, but Lawrence said the treatment, taken twice a week for six months, was excruciatingly painful.
"He endured it, he wouldn’t settle for less,” said Lawrence, who rejoiced with McCain when he passed the Navy physical. "I have never seen such toughness and resolve.”
http://graphics.boston.com/news/politic ... ult+.shtml
The same factoid was published in Forbes Magazine in 2000,
In certain ways, McCain was a natural Web candidate. Chairman of the Senate Telecommunications Subcommittee and regarded as the U.S. Senate’s savviest technologist, McCain is an inveterate devotee of email. His nightly ritual is to read his email together with his wife, Cindy. The injuries he incurred as a Vietnam POW make it painful for McCain to type. Instead, he dictates responses that his wife types on a laptop. “She’s a whiz on the keyboard, and I’m so laborious,” McCain admits.
http://www.forbes.com/asap/2000/0529/053_print.html
Now please explain for us why the McCains would share this information with the media, long before Obama's ad, if it were not true? I mean what is the point of lying about something like this eight years ago? This is hardly a "gotcha" for Obama and it cannot be said to be ad hoc by the McCains. If McCain's critics think Obama has a valid point here, then it is because they are ignorant of the fact that this was already an established fact, long ago. The only difference between the facts and Obama's version, is that Obama belittles a war hero and ridicules him for a disability he earned during war time. I'm not sure it is even possible for a politician to go lower than this.
But we do know that he can write, use a phone keypad, and handle the dexterous demands of a phone call.
"Dexterous demands"? Come on Brent. Just look at the photos of him shaking hands, writing and using the phone, and then you tell me if you see anything abnormal here:
So in these photos, am I to believe he is just acting like he has issues with his hands, so he could use it as an excuse, just in case someone finds out he never wrote an email?
I think it is silly to argue that someone who can't type mustn't be able to do anything with their hands. This is an extraordinarily poor argument. Typing involves more than two dozen finger muscles and requires flexibility in more than two dozen different joints. Try taping four of your fingers together for a day and see how much you can accomplish throughout a day. You'd be surprised what you can lift, wiggle, write, etc. But typing, while technically possible, would be tedious and impractical.
Given those skills, McCain's computer illiteracy is inexcusable in such an innovative era of software accessibility.
As Trevor said, I think you're really grasping at straws here. Even if I grant everything you said here as fact, show me something that matters. Because this ain't it.
So, Barrack Obama wants to sully the minds of children with explicit sex?
That wasn't what the ad said. The ad said he supported "comprehensive sex education" for children who had yet to learn to read. This is a fact, period.
There's more to the story...
Sure there is. But nothing that changes the fact that the statement in the McCain ad is essentially true. CNN tried saying this was a lie because the "intention" was to protect children from pedophiles. Of this I have no doubt, but the fact is the curriculum went well beyond what was necessary to protect kids from sexual predators. For crying out loud, the bill used the same exact terminology as the ad: "comprehensive sex education."
Yes, the curriculum is explicit in the sense that it is candid and truthful. Do children have to attend? No
But this is irrelevant. Obama supported this curriculum which would teach children "comprehensive sex education." That is what the McCain ad said, and that is what the evidence supports. Case closed. McCain's ad wasn't lying.
Indeed, the bill explicitly (no pun intended) stated that parents/children could opt out of the program (see here). My daughters (31, 28, 26, and 20 [I also have an almost-13-year-old son]) asked and learned about human reproduction at very young ages, and they've grown into remarkably intelligent and healthy adults (if I were purely partisan, I'd also add: no teen pregnancies—*oops!*).
Again, this is irrelevant to the question of whether McCain lied. McCain didn't lie, yet the folks at CNN and the View and everywhere in media land, insist it is a lie.
Kevin, Sarah Palin's incessant retelling of the "bridge to nowhere" is a lie—period.
Not necessarily. She is ultimately the one who had the power to kill it, and she did. This is the point she was making I think, and it is true. Of course it is also true that congress pulled funding and left Alaska the money anyway. Was there still some back and forth going on between her and congress after this press release about the funding? Palin suggests there was. McCain was obviously intimately involved in the ordeal as well, and one of his hired hands wrote her speech that mentioned the "I told congress thanks but no thanks," so I suspect her remark is probably factual, but in reference to something the newspapers didn't bother to report since the issue was already dead to them. I saw her respond to Gibson on this point and she didn't strike me as someone who was just making stuff up. Ultimately she was the person who could have made it happen, and she decided not to. Whether she said this to congress at some point, may or may not be true. It certainly isn't proved that she didn't. How do you prove that someone didn't say something?
Palin supported the earmark before she became governor and after when the Alaskan congressional contingency sent the earmark to the House.
True. But she did this after 1. Debating the subject with folks like McCain and 2. doing a cost benefit analysis as a responsible governor should. She decided the project was not worth the money or the effort - especially in light of the massive bridge collapse in Minnesota and Hurricane Katrina - and she made the right decision to toss it out. The fact that she changed her mind in light of new knowledge, shows me she is a resonable person.
Not until public and congressional outcries echoed from the oil-enriched northern slopes did Palin kill the project—and even then, she "graciously" accepted the first installment of the earmarked $200,000,000.00+.
Of course she did. Why wouldn't she? Alaska has always required more federal funding for roads, bridges, water treatment facilities, sewage plants, etc (basic necessities that rural towns cannot pay for themselves). Alaska is huge and yet it has small towns thrown about all over its geography. So it is no wonder Alaska was the biggest earmark receiver than any other state, long before Palin became governor.
Palin never said she was "against earmarks" as so many people (CNN, TIME, CBS, ABC, Huffington Post, Washington Post, NYT, beastie, etc) have falsely asserted. She said explicitly that she is against the "abuse" of earmarking, and a perfect example of this is an earmark to pay back friends, and especially campaign contributors. This is Obama's way of doing political favors. Palin's earmarks were not paybacks in any sense of the word. She single-handedly reduced the $700 million 2005 earmarks to $500 million in 2006 and then in 2007 she cut the earmark request in half again. She is responsible for vetoes that amount to a half billion. Many of these earmarks were ongoing projects that were started by her predecessors, and couldn't be abandoned instantly. It was a gradual process, and her record stands impressive, despite the semantic game over the "bridge to nowhere."
PS: Save me from politics Brent. I really need you to publish your book so I can get back into Book of Abraham mode.