[Rhodes22-list] Political Ad - OOPS!

[Tom Hogarty]

I can't type worth a damn either, but used this for years.  This  works
great for dictation and computer voice commands.  Computers can be very
friendly to those with special needs.
http://www.nuancestore.com/v2.0-img/operations/scansoft/site/513201/513201_dns-talk.htmlNope,
computers are too powerful not to master.

On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 8:23 PM, Brad Haslett <flybrad at gmail.com> wrote:

> Did you see the new Obama ad that came out today making fun of the
> fact that McCain doesn't use e-mail?  Turns out, McCain can't type as
> a result of his injuries while in captivity.  Oops! Back to the
> drawing board. Here's a quote from a 2000 article and the whole
> article below.
>
> "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."
>
> Brad
>
> ---------------------
>
> McCain character loyal to a fault
>
> By Mary Leonard, Globe Staff, 3/4/2000
>
> EMPE, Ariz. - Facing a threat that his homosexuality would be exposed
> by Christian conservatives at a city council meeting, Mayor Neil
> Giuliano did what he thought was nobody's business: He held a press
> conference and declared, ''I happen to be gay.''
>
> The reaction of Arizona's senior senator, John McCain, was swift and angry.
>
> ''John was the first to tell the religious right, 'This doesn't make a
> damned bit of difference,''' Giuliano said, remembering how McCain
> went out of his way to call him a good mayor and a great friend.
> ''Politically in Arizona, McCain should have done just the opposite.
> Instead, he came right to my defense. He's a loyal friend.''
>
> GOP presidential candidate John McCain has a pattern of putting his
> heart ahead of his head and even his political judgment. Peel off the
> pretense of a cocky fighter pilot and a prickly politician, those who
> know him well say, and what really shapes John McCain is his loyalty
> to family and friends and a fierce sense of duty to defend underdogs
> under attack.
>
> Today McCain will be in Boston seeking support in Tuesday's GOP
> primary in Massachusetts. He has been in hot water this week for his
> highly personal lashing of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who he
> said he believes have dishonored him with their negative attacks.
> McCain was forced to apologize after calling the two Christian
> conservative leaders ''forces of evil,'' and then he faced new
> questions about his temperament to be president.
>
> ''I don't think it should be a source of worry,'' McCain said during a
> candidates debate Thursday night, ''but anything is fair game, as I've
> found out during this campaign.''
>
> To admirers like Giuliano, McCain's sensitivity, generosity, and
> loyalty are the hallmarks of his character. To targets of his outrage,
> McCain's thin skin is his fatal flaw.
>
> ''His greatest strength is also his greatest weakness,'' said Mike
> Hellon of Tucson, a state GOP leader who has known McCain for two
> decades. ''John is impatient with fools. Particularly if people are
> acting improperly or in a self-serving fashion, he can be very
> difficult. He puts loyalty first, even when it is not in his best
> interest.''
>
> Lisa Graham Keegan, Arizona's superintendent of public instruction,
> was close to McCain until she publicly called for the resignation of
> Governor Fife Symington after he was indicted for bank fraud in 1996.
> McCain, who stood by his friend Symington, considered Keegan disloyal,
> told her so in no uncertain terms, and shut her out of his political
> circle.
>
> ''He was right: I was disloyal, and I meant to be,'' said Keegan, who
> is so sure McCain would be a good president that she recently arranged
> a meeting in which both apologized for the falling out.
>
> Now, Keegan frequently travels with McCain's campaign and advises him
> on education policy. ''He's never going to win the Miss Congeniality
> award or take you to lunch, but he is always looking to do the right
> thing.'' she said.
>
> McCain had values drilled into him by a father and grandfather who
> were decorated Navy admirals and adhered to a rigid military code of
> honor, duty, and country. He's a proud graduate of the Naval Academy
> (though, McCain ruefully notes, he was a hell-raiser who barely
> squeaked through). And he had a profound lesson in allies and enemies
> as a tortured prisoner of war in Vietnam for 51/2 years.
>
> Bruce Merrill, the pollster in McCain's first congressional campaign
> in 1982, said he respects and admires the senator's compelling
> history. But like others who have been in combat with McCain, Merrill
> has been awed by his ambition and alienated by his self-righteous ''in
> your face, do it my way or you'll pay a hell of a penalty'' style.
>
> ''He is a very forceful, dynamic person, and in 30 years of political
> consulting, I have never seen a candidate as driven as John McCain,''
> said Merrill, a professor at Arizona State University in Tempe. ''He
> is a crusader, and the mythology that has built up here - that he
> divides the world into his camp or the enemy camp - is consistent with
> a crusade.''
>
> McCain saw enemies challenging all his relationships - friends,
> family, fellow veterans - during the bitter, losing primary fight last
> month in South Carolina. There was Texas Governor George W. Bush,
> failing to renounce a supporter who accused McCain of disloyalty to
> veterans. There was Robertson, in a taped telephone message, calling
> McCain's friend, the former New Hampshire Senator Warren Rudman, ''a
> vicious bigot.'' And there were strident voices all over the airwaves,
> spreading ugly stories about his wife and children.
>
> Barreling down a South Carolina highway on the campaign bus, aides
> showed McCain a flier filled with personal smears that had been
> circulated at an event earlier in the day. McCain snatched the leaflet
> before his wife, Cindy, could read it.
>
> ''Why upset her unnecessarily?'' McCain snapped. ''Like most wives,
> she doesn't want to see those things said about her husband.''
>
> The McCains were deeply and personally offended by Bush's visit to Bob
> Jones University, which bans interracial dating, and by rumors about
> their ''black child.'' On a relief mission to Bangladesh in 1991,
> Cindy McCain claimed an orphan who was so severely disfigured by a
> cleft lip and palate that she was unable to eat. She brought
> 2-month-old Bridget home to Phoenix, where the McCains adopted the
> baby and nursed her through a dozen operations.
>
> ''What people miss about John is that behind the tough, fighter facade
> is a deeply sensitive person, and things really hurt him,'' said
> Everett Alvarez Jr., who was a fellow POW in Vietnam.
>
> Uncomfortable war hero
>
> Orson Swindle, McCain's neighbor in the Hanoi Hilton, blinked back
> tears when he recalled McCain's reaction to winning the New Hampshire
> primary last month. ''Amid all the electricity that night, John got
> incredibly solemn,'' Swindle said. ''He came over and looked me
> straight in the eye, as if to say, `My God, look how far we have come
> and what we have done.''
>
> McCain has never been comfortable as a war hero, honored and greeted
> with adulation, Swindle said, when so many other Vietnam combat
> veterans came home to no warm welcome at all. ''That wound is still
> with a lot of us,'' said Swindle, adding that it probably fuels
> McCain's strong sense of injustice.
>
> But McCain's loyalties have at times blurred his political judgment.
> At the request of Charles H. Keating Jr., a Phoenix developer and
> political benefactor, McCain met in 1987 with federal bank regulators
> who were closing in on Keating's shaky Lincoln Savings & Loan
> Association. After an investigation of McCain and four other senators,
> the Senate Ethics Committee reprimanded McCain, though concluded he
> did not act improperly. Still, it appeared McCain had catered to the
> kind of special interest he now decries.
>
> Another strong and unlikely relationship was at work in 1992, when
> McCain supported a Senate bill allowing fetal-tissue research. His
> good friend and Democratic mentor, Representative Morris K. Udall, was
> suffering from Parkinson's disease, and Udall's family convinced
> McCain fetal tissue showed some promise as a cure. Antiabortion
> activists still are attacking McCain for his vote.
>
> McCain and Jim Kolbe ran for the US House from separate Arizona
> districts in 1982, but only McCain won. Two years later, when Kolbe
> ran again, McCain ignored the political convention that you don't
> campaign against an incumbent and went door-to-door for his friend
> Kolbe until he was too exhausted to stand up straight. Kolbe won.
>
> Kolbe called McCain first as he prepared in 1996 to disclose his
> homosexuality. ''Before I got two words out, John said, `I know what
> this is about, and it doesn't matter,''' Kolbe said. ''He wasn't
> shocked or offended.''
>
> McCain stands out as having one of the most loyal and long-serving
> staffs on Capitol Hill. Aides say he doesn't micromanage, but he does
> solicit their views, inquire about their children, pummel them with
> smart-aleck insults, and work them to the bone, the same way the
> 63-year-old McCain works himself.
>
> On the day of the South Carolina primary, McCain telephoned Deb
> Gullett, a longtime aide and his Arizona campaign manager, to tell her
> he was losing that hard-fought contest.
>
> ''He called to ask me how I was doing, to make sure we were fine, and
> I just wanted to cry,'' Gullett said. ''He also said, `By the way, get
> your dead asses back to work,' and that is a direct quote.''
>
> Mark Salter, McCain's chief of staff, said his boss isn't cozy with
> his Senate colleagues because he gores their sacred cows and ''won't
> treat them like movie stars, with exaggerated courtesy.'' Salter, who
> has worked for McCain for 11 years and coauthored his best-selling
> biography, ''Faith of My Fathers,'' attributed reports of the
> senator's hot temper to ''legend-padding.''
>
> Family first
>
> Senator John Kerry says he and McCain forged a bond as Vietnam
> veterans and he respects him as a loyal friend. ''I enjoy his company,
> John's a funny guy,'' the Massachusetts Democrat said. ''Most of the
> bad things you hear come from people he's put on the spot.''
>
> Kolbe said McCain got better at controlling his temper in the wake of
> three unnerving and very personal events. One was the Keating scandal,
> which he saw as an assault on his honor. A second was the discovery
> that his wife had been addicted to prescription painkillers from 1989
> to 1992 and had stolen drugs from her family's charitable foundation.
> A third was a 1993 diagnosis of malignant melanoma, the most lethal
> type of skin cancer. McCain had the cancerous mole removed from his
> shoulder, and no melanoma has recurred, according to his medical
> records.
>
> ''Those things were pretty scary for him, and he really refocused his
> life and realized what a blessing his family was to him,'' Kolbe said.
>
> McCain blames himself for the breakup of his first marriage. McCain
> wanted a fuller, faster life than he found back home with his first
> wife. Carol Shepp McCain, who lives in the Washington area, has spoken
> kindly of her former husband, says she supports his candidacy, and
> attributes their divorce to ''John turning 40 and wanting to be 25
> again.''
>
> McCain did what he believed was honorable: He provided generously for
> Carol, who had been seriously injured in a car accident during his
> captivity, and their three children, including two adopted sons from
> her previous marriage. ''If you can ever have an amicable divorce,
> this one was,'' said George ''Bud'' Day, a lawyer and POW friend who
> drew up the papers in 1980.
>
> A month after the divorce, McCain married Cindy Hensley, 24, an
> heiress to a Phoenix beer-distribution fortune, and part of a
> politically well-connected family. They have four school-aged children
> who McCain dotes on and disciplines in a way his own father never did.
>
> The grown children from his first marriage - Doug, Andy, and Sydney
> Ann - are campaigning for McCain, and Andy works for the Hensley
> family's company in Phoenix.
>
> McCain sent leatherbound copies of his biography to Doug's children,
> autographing them ''The Old Geezer.'' ''The kindergarten teacher
> admonished my daughter to stop calling her grandfather that,'' said
> Doug, a former Navy flier who is now a commercial airline pilot in
> Virginia Beach, Va. ''She said, `but that's what he likes to be
> called.'''
>
> For a geezer, McCain is as energized as a Boy Scout leader around his
> children, camping, hiking, fishing, swimming, and grilling the food at
> their weekend cabin near Sedona, Ariz. On the campaign bus, the
> youngsters are either fighting McCain for the last potato chip in the
> bag or giving him a hard time.
>
> ''Pork-barrel spender!'' Jimmy McCain, 11, yells at Jack, his
> 13-year-old brother. Jimmy's not sure what the expression means, but
> it sounds funny and besides, he's heard his candidate-father bellow it
> hundreds of times.
>
> Betsy Cuming, an old friend from Yuma, said the family lives in
> Phoenix, not Washington, because McCain thinks the children of elected
> officials get coddled, spoiled, and too often uprooted. Sharon Harper,
> the McCain's neighbor in Phoenix, said McCain wants to be president
> for a very personal reason: To restore honor to the military before
> all or some of his children are old enough to serve.
>
> 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.''
>
> McCain's determination was evident to Lawrence in another way. During
> the therapy, he insisted his ''physical terrorist'' was the perfect
> match for one of his POW buddies, William Lawrence. She resisted,
> McCain persisted, and the Lawrences were married months after McCain
> forced them to meet at his home over dinner.
>
> McCain says his campaign is ''a noble mission,'' and those close to
> him believe he has brought to it the same character traits -
> toughness, endurance, even risk-taking - that Ann Lawrence observed
> many years ago.
>
> ''He has a zest for life that sometimes can drive the rest of us
> nuts,'' said Cindy McCain, who reluctantly signed onto her husband's
> presidential express last fall, not really expecting it to become this
> runaway train. ''When we're exhausted, John says, `There's more to the
> day - let's go!'''
> __________________________________________________
> To subscribe/unsubscribe or for help with using the mailing list go to
> http://www.rhodes22.org/list
> __________________________________________________
>