scottleffler.com: Aug 10, 2008

Here's a bunch of random comments I've gotten in my inbox over the past few days.

News Headline: "Senate votes to collect state tax" Maziarz voted no.
Maziarz collected over $26,000 from Smokin Joes since May '03.
Most recent was maximum allowed, $9,500 June 26th.

I tune in late to the cycling and thought it was mens but it was womens. I notice that lots of these women have no breasts or little. I think that their estrogen/testosterone ratios may be just a little off. All legal of course!

I noticed that during the women's volleyball they had "technical" time outs. Why not just call them commercial time outs? If soccer ever becomes really popular in the USA they will have "technical" time outs. One thing about soccer they could have time outs during the game and you wouldn't miss anything. If on the rare chance someone scored they could just re-run it, which they do anyway.

If the armed forces TV network condensed soccer like they do football, you could see a whole match in 30 seconds, including all shots.

Hello Activists,

I just took a peek at http://www.tftptf.com/ and the picketing of McCain at Camp Leguene.

I'd like to add my own thoughts regarding John McCain and his record on TCE.

I grew up in Scottsdale, Arizona and thought you ought to know more about McCain and TCE. I know from personal experience that John McCain doesn't give a hoot about his constituents in the NIBW see:

http://yosemite.epa.gov/r9/sfund/r9sfdocw.nsf/webdisplay/oid-3a4364e2a3ab3c7688256de9006819f2?OpenDocument

To the best of my knowledge, McCain has never attempted to intervene on behalf of his contaminated constituents the way Elizabeth Dole and Hillary Clinton have done. He ought to be exposed for ignoring all those children in the NIBW during his years in office. He chose to keep the contamination of the groundwater in Scottsdale very, very hush-hush. Keating and others would not have appreciated that kind of publicity. It wouldn't have been good for that burgeoning real estate market to talk about all that poison in the water. (57 THOUSAND POUNDS have been removed thus far from the municipal wells that supplied my neighborhood in the 60's & 70's.) John McCain even failed to act when TCE was served to residents this year. His office staff in Tempe is apparently oblivious to the issue.

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/116853

John McCain has nothing to say about TCE and he ought to be ashamed of his disregard for advocating on behalf of all of his citizens. When I contacted his office in 2006 about the petition ATSDR accepted, I received no reply. It's just not a popular issue for McCain - he ought to be shamed out of office. I guess since so many of the kids I grew up with left the State to die in other places, he doesn't feel a need to respond on our behalf. The ones who still live there, in many cases, are not aware of their chronic TCE exposure and it's consequences.

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/87349

That petition, by the way, has gone nowhere fast. The principal investigator, Dr.Jane Zhu, told me she would send an email synopsis of the progress made thus far. That was two weeks ago - no progress report yet.

The UK Times scores the first interview with John McCain's first wife in the 2008 campaign season:

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.

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.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Westboro Church at it again ...

Video commentary for August 10, 2008

Barack Roll'd ...

WNYM: Wing King to appear on Emeril Live

From the email - grab bag ...

Today's Front Pages (8/10/08)

Practice, Practice, Practice