Bad Deeds for 8-21-2008

McCain to Mom of Veteran: I Don’t Disagree With Reenacting the Military Draft – An audience member at a McCain town hall meeting in Las Cruces, New Mexico on Wednesday said, “If we don’t reenact the draft, I don’t think we’ll have anyone to chase bin Laden to the gates of Hell.”

McCain responded, “Ma’am, let me say that I don’t disagree with anything you said.”

Who’s Elitist? McCain Says He Doesn’t Know How Many Homes He Owns
Sen. John McCain told Politico in an interview Wednesday that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own. “I think — I’ll have my staff get to you,” McCain told reporters Jon Martin and Mike Allen. “It’s condominiums where — I’ll have them get to you.” McCain’s staff said the answer is at least four. Guess again. Newsweek estimates that McCain has a total of seven homes. (Does McCain know how many pairs of $500 shoes he has? – JLV)

White House Missing as Many as 225 Days of E-mail – The White House is missing as many as 225 days of e-mail dating back to 2003 and there is little if any likelihood a recovery effort will be completed by the time the Bush administration leaves office. “With an eye on the clock, the White House continues to drag its feet and do everything possible to postpone public access to the records of this presidency,” said Anne Weismann, chief counsel to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a private watchdog group. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has said the White House’s failure to properly archive e-mails violated the Presidential Records Act. The top lawyer for the National Archives has expressed disappointment the White House did not have a formal records management system in place.

McCain Says There’s No Need to Differentiate Himself From Bush – I don’t have any need to show that I’m different than President Bush,” McCain told Politico’s Mike Allen and Jonathan Martin Wednesday.

McCain Attacks Obama’s ‘Ambition’ After Acknowledging His Own – Senator John McCain recently accused Senator Barack Obama of calling for an end to the war in Iraq because he is motivated by “the ambition to be president.” It has now come out that McCain himself has written of his 2000 presidential campaign, “I didn’t decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president.” That ambition, McCain added, even led him to “lie” and conceal his true opinion of the Confederate flag.

U.S. Military Held a Television Cameraman for Three Weeks Without Charges – The U.S. military freed a Reuters television cameraman on Thursday after holding him for three weeks in Iraq without charges. Ali al-Mashhadani, who also works freelance for the BBC and Washington-based National Public Radio, was detained in Baghdad on July 30 while he was in the Green Zone government compound for routine checks for a U.S. military press card. U.S. forces have detained Mashhadani twice before, at one point holding him for five months, but no charge has ever been filed against the cameraman, who is based in Ramadi, the capital of western Anbar province.

Man Dies After Waiting 22 Hours at Hospital
A mental patient died after workers at a North Carolina hospital left him in a chair for 22 hours without feeding him or helping him use the bathroom, said federal officials who have threatened to cut off the facility’s funding. An investigator’s report released Monday found that 50-year-old Steven Sabock died in April after he choked on medication and was left sitting in a chair for close to a day at the facility about 50 miles southeast of Raleigh. Surveillance video showed hospital staff watching television and playing cards just a few feet away.

Alaskan Governor Fired Public Safety Commissioner Who Balked Against Firing of Trooper Involved in Child-Custody Battle With Governor’s Sister – In July, Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin fired Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan. Monegan has said he felt pressured by the governor’s office to fire Palin’s ex-brother-in-law, Mike Wooten, a trooper who had been locked in a child-custody battle with Palin’s sister. Palin last Wednesday revealed a phone call made by her boards and commissions director, Frank Bailey, to a trooper lieutenant. In the call, Bailey lists various complaints about Wooten and says the governor and her husband couldn’t understand why he still had a job.

Soil Bacterium Used in Making Geneticaly Modified Crops Found to Transfer T-DNA into Chromosomes of Human Cells – Agrobacterium, a soil bacterium extensively manipulated and used in making geneticaly modified crops, not only infects human and other animal cells, it also transfers genes into them. Until Stony Brook University in New York (SUNY) professor Vitaly Citovsky and his team made the discovery, the genetic engineering community had assumed that Agrobacterium did not infect animal cells, and certainly would not transfer genes into them. Agrobacterium was found to transfer T-DNA into the chromosomes of human cells. Preliminary findings now suggest a link between Morgellons Disease and Agrobacterium. Morgellons Disease first became known in 2001. A growing list of people are registered with Morgellons Disease, totalling 12,106 worldwide recorded by Morgellons Research Foundation, as of 12 April 2008.

McCain Sidesteps Question About Why His Account of His Affair During His First Marriage Doesn’t Match Official Documents – CNN’s John King has been looking into the circumstances of McCain’s divorce from his first wife, Carol.. Not only was McCain 17 years older than Cindy, but he was still married to Carol, and their daughter was only 12 years old. King explains. “He’d been having affairs for several years.” King stated, “his own divorce filing shows they dated for nine months while he was still living with Carol, and records show he applied for a marriage license in Arizona before his divorce was final.”

However, Cindy McCain told King that it didn’t bother her to be dating a married man because “my husband had been separated. … You know, six and a half years, it was a long separation.” John McCain also wrote in his memoir that he had separated from Carol before he started dating Cindy.

When King asked McCain about the fact that “the chronology that is presented publicly doesn’t necessarily match the chronology of the documents,” McCain’s only answer was, “It’s 30 years ago. I have a happy marriage.”

John McCain’s Introspective Comments in His AutoBiography Were Not Written by John McCain – In his 2002 book, “Worth the Fighting For,” John McCain offered this confession — an acknowledgment of a restless mind: “Although I seem to tolerate introspection better the older I am, there are still too many claims on my attention to permit more than the briefest excursions down the path of self-awareness. When I am no longer busy with politics, and with my own ambitions, I hope to have more time to examine what I have done and failed to do with my career, and why.”

A telling observation, or so it seems, and refreshingly candid for a public figure. But the words are not John McCain’s. They were written by his longtime aide Mark Salter, McCain’s literary alter ego. “Worth the Fighting For,” like McCain’s other four books, is by “John McCain With Mark Salter,” as they all say on their covers. This comment on McCain’s disinclination to commit introspection was “my surmise,” Salter said in a recent interview in his windowless office at McCain headquarters in Crystal City. He explained his technique:

“It’s his voice, but I’m going inside his head to speak some psychological truth about him. I’m drawing a conclusion based on my observation of him. I always show him: ‘This is what I’ve written. This is what I think about you. Is this fair?’ ”

Regards,

Jim