It's Official...IT'S PALIN

[Master Mason]

Maybe Palin should take Obama out hunting, it couldn't hurt, it might even help him learn to make a real decision or two. Who knows.

I just can not resist this one...

As long as he doesn't go out with Cheney he'll be ok...

 

[TKERBELL]

I have no need to worry myself over something I can't do anything about until my child is born. Sarah Palin found out ahead of time and people want to canonize her because she chose to continue the pregnancy and not terminate it. Big deal, I say.

You are right to a point - you can't undo something that is - however you CAN prepare yourself for what will lie ahead for you and your child and any special needs you may have to acquire, that was MY point. I have no plans to cannonize her for keeping her down-syndrom child - there are PLENTY of other mother's with special needs children - many are right here if the DIS!!!

I wish you a healthy pregnancy (I am being very sincere)

 

[SeeVee]

Actually, no. It's not killing me. When I first read the CNN headline, my first thought was, "Who the hell is Palin?"

My second thought was a relief-filled, "Obama's the next President of the United States. Thank God it's over."

yep. It's killin' you.

 

[Master Mason]

Birth control that will all become illegal under a McCain-Palin Woman Hatin' Presidency, because they are considered "abortifacients."

You have got to be kidding me

 

[HakunaMatata2]

We all know a VP can be POTUS in a matter of minutes, and why would McCain ever postulate on Obama's fitness for a position he's not running for? You make no sense.

McCain doesn't think Obama is qualified to be POTUS, so what makes him think Palin is qualified as VP?

But I'll go on laughing and you can go on thinking I'm having a stroke.

Because as governor, Palin sits in a 'buck stops here chair'. Obama, as a newbie senator sits in a 'pass the buck' chair!

McCain-Palin

 

[SeeVee]

Birth control that will all become illegal under a McCain-Palin Woman Hatin' Presidency, because they are considered "abortifacients."

And hospitals in Latin America are refusing to treat women WHO ARE MISCARRYING!

DO YOUR HOMEWORK ON WHAT IS GOING ON IN THE WORLD!

HAHAHAHAHAH that is funny "abortifacients!"

Move to "Latin America" and do your part because I am not sure what Palin as VP has to do with a hosptial in Latin America.

 

[LotsOfQuestions]

Can you substantiate any of your accusations?

Some quotes in here by the former Mrs. McCain. She is still on excellent terms with her ex-husband. But even she says "he didn't want to be 40, he wanted to be 25", ie, dumping her for somebody younger and prettier.

McCain even admits he was cheating on Carol

The wife U.S. Republican John McCain callously left behind
By Sharon Churcher
Last updated at 1:45 AM on 08th June 2008

Now that Hillary Clinton has at last formally withdrawn from the race for the White House, the eyes of America and the world will focus on Barack Obama and his Republican rival Senator John McCain.

While Obama will surely press his credentials as the embodiment of the American dream – a handsome, charismatic young black man who was raised on food stamps by a single mother and who represents his country’s future – McCain will present himself as a selfless, principled war hero whose campaign represents not so much a battle for the presidency of the United States, but a crusade to rescue the nation’s tarnished reputation.

Forgotten woman: But despite all her problems Carol McCain says she still adores he ex-husband​

McCain likes to illustrate his moral fibre by referring to his five years as a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam. And to demonstrate his commitment to family values, the 71-year-old former US Navy pilot pays warm tribute to his beautiful blonde wife, Cindy, with whom he has four children.

But there is another Mrs. McCain who casts a ghostly shadow over the Senator’s presidential campaign. She is seldom seen and rarely written about, despite being mother to McCain’s three eldest children.

And yet, had events turned out differently, it would be she, rather than Cindy, who would be vying to be First Lady. She is McCain’s first wife, Carol, who was a famous beauty and a successful swimwear model when they married in 1965.

She was the woman McCain dreamed of during his long incarceration and torture in Vietnam’s infamous ‘Hanoi Hilton’ prison and the woman who faithfully stayed at home looking after the children and waiting anxiously for news.

But when McCain returned to America in 1973 to a fanfare of publicity and a handshake from Richard Nixon, he discovered his wife had been disfigured in a terrible car crash three years earlier. Her car had skidded on icy roads into a telegraph pole on Christmas Eve, 1969. Her pelvis and one arm were shattered by the impact and she suffered massive internal injuries.

When Carol was discharged from hospital after six months of life-saving surgery, the prognosis was bleak. In order to save her legs, surgeons had been forced to cut away huge sections of shattered bone, taking with it her tall, willowy figure. She was confined to a wheelchair and was forced to use a catheter.

Through sheer hard work, Carol learned to walk again. But when John McCain came home from Vietnam, she had gained a lot of weight and bore little resemblance to her old self.

Today, she stands at just 5ft4in and still walks awkwardly, with a pronounced limp. Her body is held together by screws and metal plates and, at 70, her face is worn by wrinkles that speak of decades of silent suffering.

For nearly 30 years, Carol has maintained a dignified silence about the accident, McCain and their divorce. But last week at the bungalow where she now lives at Virginia Beach, a faded seaside resort 200 miles south of Washington, she told The Mail on Sunday how McCain divorced her in 1980 and married Cindy, 18 years his junior and the heir to an Arizona brewing fortune, just one month later.

Golden couple: John and Cindy McCain at a charity gala in Los Angeles​

Carol insists she remains on good terms with her ex-husband, who agreed as part of their divorce settlement to pay her medical costs for life. ‘I have no bitterness,’

she says. ‘My accident is well recorded. I had 23 operations, I am five inches shorter than I used to be and I was in hospital for six months. It was just awful, but it wasn’t the reason for my divorce. ‘My marriage ended because John McCain didn’t want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. You know that happens...it just does.’

Some of McCain’s acquaintances are less forgiving, however. They portray the politician as a self-centred womaniser who effectively abandoned his crippled wife to ‘play the field’. They accuse him of finally settling on Cindy, a former rodeo beauty queen, for financial reasons.

McCain was then earning little more than $25,000 a year as a naval officer, while his new father-in-law, Jim Hensley, was a multi-millionaire who had impeccable political connections.

He first met Carol in the Fifties while he was at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. He was a privileged, but rebellious scion of one of America’s most distinguished military dynasties – his father and grandfather were both admirals.

But setting out to have a good time, the young McCain hung out with a group of young officers who called themselves the ‘Bad Bunch’.

His primary interest was women and his conquests ranged from a knife-wielding floozy nicknamed ‘Marie, the Flame of Florida’ to a tobacco heiress.

Carol fell into his fast-living world by accident. She escaped a poor upbringing in Philadelphia to become a successful model, married an Annapolis classmate of McCain’s and had two children – Douglas and Andrew – before renewing what one acquaintance calls ‘an old flirtation’ with McCain.

It seems clear she was bowled over by McCain’s attention at a time when he was becoming bored with his playboy lifestyle.

‘He was 28 and ready to settle down and he loved Carol’s children,’ recalled another Annapolis graduate, Robert Timberg, who wrote The Nightingale’s Song, a bestselling biography of McCain and four other graduates of the academy.

The couple married and McCain adopted Carol’s sons. Their daughter, Sidney, was born a year later, but domesticity was clearly beginning to bore McCain – the couple were regarded as ‘fixtures on the party circuit’ before McCain requested combat duty in Vietnam at the end of 1966. He was assigned as a bomber pilot on an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin.

What follows is the stuff of the McCain legend. He was shot down over Hanoi in October 1967 on his 23rd mission over North Vietnam and was badly beaten by an angry mob when he was pulled, half-drowned from a lake.

War hero: McCain with Carol as he arrives back in the US in 1973 after his five years as a PoW in North Vietnam

Over the next five-and-a-half years in the notorious Hoa Loa Prison he was regularly tortured and mistreated.

It was in 1969 that Carol went to spend the Christmas holiday – her third without McCain – at her parents’ home. After dinner, she left to drop off some presents at a friend’s house.

It wasn’t until some hours later that she was discovered, alone and in terrible pain, next to the wreckage of her car. She had been hurled through the windscreen.

After her first series of life-saving operations, Carol was told she may never walk again, but when doctors said they would try to get word to McCain about her injuries, she refused, insisting: ‘He’s got enough problems, I don’t want to tell him.’

H. Ross Perot, a billionaire Texas businessman, future presidential candidate and advocate of prisoners of war, paid for her medical care.

When McCain – his hair turned prematurely white and his body reduced to little more than a skeleton – was released in March 1973, he told reporters he was overjoyed to see Carol again.

But friends say privately he was ‘appalled’ by the change in her appearance. At first, though, he was kind, assuring her: ‘I don’t look so good myself. It’s fine.’

He bought her a bungalow near the sea in Florida and another former PoW helped him to build a railing so she could pull herself over the dunes to the water.

‘I thought, of course, we would live happily ever after,’ says Carol. But as a war hero, McCain was moving in ever-more elevated circles.

Through Ross Perot, he met Ronald Reagan, then Governor of California. A sympathetic Nancy Reagan took Carol under her wing.

But already the McCains’ marriage had begun to fray. ‘John started carousing and running around with women,’ said Robert Timberg.

McCain has acknowledged that he had girlfriends during this time, without going into details. Some friends blame his dissatisfaction with Carol, but others give some credence to her theory of a mid-life crisis.

He was also fiercely ambitious, but it was clear he would never become an admiral like his illustrious father and grandfather and his thoughts were turning to politics.

In 1979 – while still married to Carol – he met Cindy at a cocktail party in Hawaii. Over the next six months he pursued her, flying around the country to see her. Then he began to push to end his marriage.

Carol and her children were devastated. ‘It was a complete surprise,’ says Nancy Reynolds, a former Reagan aide.

‘They never displayed any difficulties between themselves. I know the Reagans were quite shocked because they loved and respected both Carol and John.’

Another friend added: ‘Carol didn’t fight him. She felt her infirmity made her an impediment to him. She justified his actions because of all he had gone through. She used to say, “He just wants to make up for lost time.”’

Indeed, to many in their circle the saddest part of the break-up was Carol’s decision to resign herself to losing a man she says she still adores.

Friends confirm she has remained friends with McCain and backed him in all his campaigns. ‘He was very generous to her in the divorce but of course he could afford to be, since he was marrying Cindy,’ one observed.

McCain transferred the Florida beach house to Carol and gave her the right to live in their jointly-owned townhouse in the Washington suburb of Alexandria. He also agreed to pay her alimony and child support.

A former neighbor says she subsequently sold up in Florida and Washington and moved in 2003 to Virginia Beach. He said: ‘My impression was that she found the new place easier to manage as she still has some difficulties walking.’

Meanwhile McCain moved to Arizona with his new bride immediately after their 1980 marriage. There, his new father-in-law gave him a job and introduced him to local businessmen and political powerbrokers who would smooth his passage to Washington via the House of Representatives and Senate.

And yet despite his popularity as a politician, there are those who won’t forget his treatment of his first wife.

Ted Sampley, who fought with US Special Forces in Vietnam and is now a leading campaigner for veterans’ rights, said: ‘I have been following John McCain’s career for nearly 20 years. I know him personally. There is something wrong with this guy and let me tell you what it is – deceit.

‘When he came home and saw that Carol was not the beauty he left behind, he started running around on her almost right away. Everybody around him knew it.

‘Eventually he met Cindy and she was young and beautiful and very wealthy. At that point McCain just dumped Carol for something he thought was better.

‘This is a guy who makes such a big deal about his character. He has no character. He is a fake. If there was any character in that first marriage, it all belonged to Carol.’

One old friend of the McCains said: ‘Carol always insists she is not bitter, but I think that’s a defense mechanism. She also feels deeply in his debt because in return for her agreement to a divorce, he promised to pay for her medical care for the rest of her life.’

Carol remained resolutely loyal as McCain’s political star rose. She says she agreed to talk to The Mail on Sunday only because she wanted to publicise her support for the man who abandoned her.

Indeed, the old Mercedes that she uses to run errands displays both a disabled badge and a sticker encouraging people to vote for her ex-husband. ‘He’s a good guy,’ she assured us. ‘We are still good friends. He is the best man for president.’

But Ross Perot, who paid her medical bills all those years ago, now believes that both Carol McCain and the American people have been taken in by a man who is unusually slick and cruel – even by the standards of modern politics.

‘McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and glory,’ he said.

‘After he came home, Carol walked with a limp. So he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona. And the rest is history.’

 

[TLSnell1981]

While I think Palin is an interesting and historic choice, I find the discussion on this board is focusing on 1 narrow issue of pro-choice/anti-abortion. Our current President certainly has strong views on this position, but what impact has this one issue had on our lives in the last 8 years? Not much. What has impacted us is the ongoing war for WMD in Iraq (with McCains full and ongoing support). The diversion of our troops from actually focusing on al queda, Bin Laden and other terrorists activity to the extent needed.

Bush and his staff is obviously out of touch with the realities of the Economy as our current tailspin is proof and McCain with his lack of knowledge of his own personal economy with the number of houses he owns is not a solution. The next president will have a huge deficit to inherit and clean up and it will not be an easy task. I, for one, want someone in the office who knows what it is like to grow up poor, make sacrifices, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, and was not handed everything to him and did not marry into an incredibly wealthy family.

Abraham Lincoln had less experience than Obama when he was elected. Proof that leadership ability and common sense can trump experience.

Obama's economic plan wants to redistribute the wealth in this country..aka let's get the small business man. He can talk pretty and raise taxes...bottom line there will be less growth and fewer jobs. This country has run on deficits for years. The only reason social security hasn't been over-hauled is the congress will lose a little slush money. Our contributions are directly supporting our current seniors. The main reason the Clinton years were so flush was a direct result of Reagan's success in ending the Cold War. We had all this money we normally spent on defense and didn't have a war to spend it on. The Clinton's went through that money like it was a birthday gift from Grandma! Next, we have 9/11.....no military...no defense money.

Next issue?

 

[Par8hed]

You have got to be kidding me

Truthfully, there is preliminary legislation floating around around there.

 

[TheGoofster]

Dang your lost.

The president doesn't pass bills PERIOD. He signs them into law if/when Congress passes them.

People care about the Presidents stance on abortion etc. becuse it's the President who selects Supreme Court nominees.

Sorry, but it's not that simple. If a bill (abortion, taxes, or whatever) gets a simple majority of votes in the congress (even by just 1 vote) it is then given to the President to sign. IF he vetoes that bill, it goes back to congress, but it now needs a 2/3 majority to override that veto. If the original bill didn't have that 2/3 majority, then it is most likely dead in the water. In fact less than 1/10 of the bills vetoed by a President have been overturned.
So I repeat - the President's position on abortion is very important, because if he vetoes a bill, it most likely won't get passed. And that's why BO's statement "It's above my pay grade" just doesn't cut it.

 

[gottaluvPluto]

Mc Cain is older , he dies ... is she really ready to run the country ..
i think NOT

She is more experience than Obama. Look at her job experience.

 

[SeeVee]

It's terminating a pregnancy. I'm not interested in holding women's uteruses hostage as punishment.

Its killing babies.

Pregnancy is a "punishment?" Oh yeah. that is what BO said.

 

[Charade]

Yes but you're comparing the editor of the New York Times to the publisher of the Pennysaver. We're talking Alaska here. Beautiful and wonderful state but not exactly a mecca of responsibility

I bet you the editor of the PS is smarter than the editor of the NYT.

 

[Laura]

You are right to a point - you can't undo something that is - however you CAN prepare yourself for what will lie ahead for you and your child and any special needs you may have to acquire, that was MY point. I have no plans to cannonize her for keeping her down-syndrom child - there are PLENTY of other mother's with special needs children - many are right here if the DIS!!!

I wish you a healthy pregnancy (I am being very sincere)

Thank you for your well-wishes. I'm young enough that Down syndrome isn't a big concern, but if my child turns out to have it, well, I will educate myself when he or she emerges. I'm sure there's not much difference between caring for a newborn with Down syndrome than a typical newborn. Anything I can't do, the doctors will.

Lots of people have children with special needs. My DH was born with a terrible case of clubfeet. I was born with a deaf ear. But DH walks, and I can hear and speak. Life isn't over if my kid won't be a marathoner or the greatest genius since Einstein. I'm sure many prospective mothers feel the same way.

 

[SeeVee]

Well, he can think about it. The Bush administration hasn't employed telepathy yet. Just wire-tapping, video surveillance, and the sale of your civil liberties to telecommunication companies.

Touche'!

 

[Par8hed]

Obama's economic plan wants to redistribute the wealth in this country..aka let's get the small business man. He can talk pretty and raise taxes...bottom line there will be less growth and fewer jobs. This country has run on deficits for years. The only reason social security hasn't been over-hauled is the congress will lose a little slush money. Our contributions are directly supporting our current seniors. The main reason the Clinton years were so flush was a direct result of Reagan's success in ending the Cold War. We had all this money we normally spent on defense and didn't have a war to spend it on. The Clinton's went through that money like it was a birthday gift from Grandma! Next, we have 9/11.....no military...no defense money.

Next issue?

Ummmm. Clinton inherited a defecit from Reagan and left a surplus for Bush.


And I guess you didn't watch Obamas speech last night. 95% of people to get a tax CUT.

 

[Carly_Roach]

I hardly think McCain can just pluck any woman Republican out of obscurity and expect all Hillary supporters to think he's their man.

Wanna bet?

 

[Laura]

Its killing babies.

Pregnancy is a "punishment?" Oh yeah. that is what BO said.

Have you been pregnant? I don't consider it a laugh riot, but something I'm having to endure so I can have a baby. And I'm not even huge yet!

Having an unwanted child because someone didn't approve of my lifestyle is punishment. For me as well as the child. Adoption isn't the answer for everyone, either.

 

[LotsOfQuestions]

. Not to mention that she is a very beautiful woman, and young too. AWESOME choice for McCain! He has my vote for sure!!!

Yup, those are the qualities to be picking the 2nd in line for the leader of the free world: Young and Beautiful

She going to use her feminine wiles with Putin to get him to leave Georgia?

 

[Laura]

Because as governor, Palin sits in a 'buck stops here chair'. Obama, as a newbie senator sits in a 'pass the buck' chair!

McCain-Palin

Then McCain isn't even qualified as VP!