Five Healthiest/Least Healthy Categories of Americans

Damn, I'm only one in the healthy, 3 in the least healthiest. Better get married...

Healthiest

1. Ages 65+ (71 Healthy Behavior Index)
2. Monthly Income of $7,500+ (63.6 Healthy Behavior Index)
3. Married (63.3 Healthy Behavior Index)
4. Women (62.7 Healthy Behavior Index)
5. U.S. Adult Average (61.2 Healthy Behavior Index)

Least Healthy

1. Single (56.2 Healthy Behavior Index)
2. Monthly Income Under $500 (56.9 Healthy Behavior Index)
3. Ages 18-44 (57.1 Healthy Behavior Index)
4. Divorced (58.1 Healthy Behavior Index)
5. Monthly Income $500-$2,999 (58.2 Healthy Behavior Index)

Quote-O'-The-Moment: Angry Old McCain edition

By GottaLaff

Remember when President Obama went out of his way to make overtures to Gramm-pa McCain (Super Bowl Sunday comes to mind, as does this)? And remember how Gramm-pa returned the favor? So does Bob Shrum:

"He is bitter and really angry. He is angry at the press, which he thinks is unfair. He is angry at Obama and angry at the voters. He has gone from being an angry old candidate to being an angry old defeated candidate."
--Bob Shrum said of McCain in an interview on Friday

Deep Thought

John McCain on my teevee sounds like a nasty, pissy, cranky old man. Too many lies to keep track of. Crowd doesn't sound very friendly either. Oh, and what John Cole said.

John McCain can't put a sentence together

Has he been taking elocution lessons from Palin? Seriously, it's painful to listen to him talk (just now on MSNBC). Gotta love the dirty tee hee's from the crowd when he called Obama, Pelosi & Reid a "threesome". Ugh.

McCain Losing It?: Calls Americans 'My Fellow Prisoners'

Wow, not sure what to think about this. Wonder if it's related to the meds he's taking. Via Jed of course.

McCain's Base

No teeth, no brains, no service.

Via , h/t WT.

VIDEO-- Chris Matthews: "Is McCain too Troll like?...Like a codger?"

By GottaLaff

Tweety said a lot of things I disagreed with last night, but when I saw this, my ears perked up. Bingo:

"McCain is a geezer"

By GottaLaff

The following is a letter to the L.A. Times editor re: Jonah Goldberg's piece about Obama's 1982 ad:

Goldberg is going to have to come to grips with a painful fact: McCain is a geezer. How do I know? I am a geezer myself, and I recognize the condition a mile off.

Oh, yes, I revel in the idea that 70 is the new 60. I ride my bicycle 40 minutes every day; I still conduct an active business; I can still hammer a nail; and I take corners at 50 mph in my Porsche.

But physically I am not what I used to be, and neither is McCain. A fellow geezer can spot it in the careful way he carries himself. And, in a very short time, it will get worse.

He thinks about it every day. He thinks about it before anything else, before what he's going to have for breakfast and before the state of the union.

So the question may boil down to this: Do you want a president who can bound from his bed clear-eyed and alive, or can you wait around while he adjusts for a little spinal curvature, takes an aspirin for his arthritis, stands at the toilet for three minutes, steams in the shower for half an hour to clear his head, nods off after lunch and takes half a dozen pills every day?

Even if I could embrace his policies (which I admit I don't), I could not vote for a fellow geezer to fill the top spot in the nation.

Age is a factor in this election, whether we want to admit it or not. Why? Not because of the number of years, but because of the person. A vibrant 70something is one thing, but despite Cindy McCain's protests to the contrary, it's become painfully obvious that Gramm-pa is not what he used to be, to say the least.

He's forgetful, his confusion shows itself regularly, he apparently has some hearing impairment, he blanks on his words more than someone running for president should, and his team claims he's too physically impaired to use a computer keyboard.

I want somebody in office who has a sharp mind, not a sharp tongue.

Gramm-pa McCain Says He Would Fire SEC Chair, But Can’t

By GottaLaff

Cuckoo, cuckoo!

In a speech in Cedar Rapids, Iowa today, Sen. John McCain said that if he were president, he would fire Chris Cox, the current chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is charged with regulating the stock market. From McCain’s prepared remarks :

[...] "The Chairman of the SEC serves at the appointment of the President and has betrayed the public’s trust. If I were President today, I would fire him.”

The only problem is, as ABC’s David Wright points out, “while the president nominates and the Senate confirms the SEC chair,” the president does not have the authority to “fire” the head of the independent commission.

From time to time, presidents have attempted to remove commissioners who have proven “uncooperative.” However, the courts have general upheld the independence of commissioners. In 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt fired a member of the Federal Trade Commission and the Supreme Court ruled he acted unconstitutionally.

But why let a little thing like constitutional authority get in the way of a fiery, populist stump speech?

Add it to the list of confused, out of touch, lying remarks by Gramm-pa J Sid.

Video-- McCain: Palin knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America.

By GottaLaff

(Via)

...McCain campaign is using Sarah Palin as a virtual human shield for John McCain, bringing her to every event to deflect attention away from McCain. [...] They're desperately trying to deflect our attention away from the fact that John McCain got old some time in the last year or so, he's no longer the quick, smart, energetic man he once was. And it would scare the voters to see what he's become. So they hide him. Yes, you'll notice that later on in the interview, when McCain gets angry, he kind of wakes up and his answers become more coherent. Sometimes McCain is his old self, albeit an older version, but lots of times he's someone else entirely. Are we really going to have a president who's coherent and alert half the time, but the other half is confused, bumbling, and somewhat incoherent?

As Paddy and I were saying to each other in a phone call, Palin and J Sid can't possibly campaign separately. She'd get the crowds, he'd get crickets. They're forced to be stuck together, like conjoined twins. And if you add Bush, like conjoined triplets (Bush being the invisible one).

Hey, somebody's gotta prop him up.

John Sidney McCain: Stuck in the Sixties

By GottaLaff

Via

Okay, J Sid, let's make it about the past. Because when it comes to the past, you've got years and years and years of it.

John Sidney McCain didn't know what kind of car he drove, either

By GottaLaff

How will he get to the houses he doesn't know he has without a car he doesn't recognize? Let's close our eyes in unison and think back to 2007:

[A] 2007 interview revealing he knew neither how many houses he owned nor what car he drove:

In our News interview, he was asked what kind of car he drove. As with Politico’s question about home ownership, he didn’t know and had to ask a nearby aide. “A Cadillac CTS,” she told him. But then the senator was quick to point out that he had bought his daughter a Prius — the prefect (sic) halo symbol for his green pretensions. […]

We also pressed McCain on the home issue, though at that time he was only willing to reveal two of his dwellings: one in Phoenix and a second home in Sedona. And he was quite proud of the fact that he had installed solar panels on the Sedona pad.

It doesn't say how many cars he owned/owns. 7? 8? 9?

John Sidney McCain resents Cindy's "obsession" with technology

By GottaLaff

Out of touch much? Let me preface this with: My father is in his late 80s, and he's very computer savvy. When I worked with the then 81-year-old Dick Van Dyke, he was beyond computer savvy, a computer animator. Now let's see what nearly-72-year-old Cocoon alumnus J Sid said about them new-fangled typing machines with the tubes and TV screens:

The AP has released a “pre-convention package” with lists of “25 Things About Obama” and “25 Things About McCain.” Number two on the McCain list is a tidbit from Cindy McCain: Her husband gets annoyed by her interest in technology. Via Politico’s Playbook:

His wife says her obsession with electronic gadgets and technology is one of his pet peeves.

So not only does Cindy have to help McCain send e-mails, but he resents the fact that she takes an interest in e-mail in the first place. Even in his own demographic — white, college-educated men over 65 — McCain is an outlier.

I understand he also resents it when Cindy interrupts him for his colonic while he's listening to Victrola recordings of Rudy Vallee.

'Tis the season to be busted: John Sidney McLiar

By GottaLaff

You all remember that cross in the sand tale that McPOW recounted at the Fake Forum? Well guess what:

It's been noted that McCain made no mention of this incident in a detailed account of his POW years that U.S. News published in 1973, and no one, so far, has found evidence of McCain telling the story before 1999 -- when his most formidable opponent for the GOP presidential nomination was a man who was making a concerted effort to court religious voters.
I just want to point out that there's a chapter specifically devoted to three Christmases of McCain's captivity in The Nightingale's Song, Robert Timberg's critically acclaimed 1995 book, which helped put McCain on the map as a political celebrity -- and the cross story does not appear. Nor does it appear anywhere else in the book.

No kidding! Why, that would make J Sid a liar!

The chapter is titled "'Tis the Season to Be Jolly." It says that on Christmas Eve 1968, a guard tried to compel McCain to attend a church service that was being staged for the benefit of visiting photographers. McCain decided "to ruin the picture," letting out a series of curses ("'Fu-u-u-u-ck you, you son of a bitch!' shouted McCain, hoisting a one-finger salute whenever a camera pointed in his direction"). There's certainly no mention of a cross in the sand in this account.

On Christmas Eve 1969, we're then told, McCain had a civil conversation with the Cat, the one guard he's said in other accounts was considerate to him -- but again there's no mention of a cross in the sand. (Timberg tells us that McCain and the Cat discussed the Cat's tie clip and cigarette lighter, as well as McCain's decision not to accept early release.)

On Christmas 1970, Timberg writes, McCain was transferred to a cell with his friend Bud Day -- "the perfect Christmas present" because he'd just spent two and a half years in solitary. Again, no cross.
(The chapter also includes an account of the car accident in which McCain's first wife, whom he later divorced, was seriously injured. The accident took place on Christmas Eve 1969.)

Hmm, no cross-in-the-sand under here. Oh, sorry, I was looking for WMD. I didn't find those, either.

It's clear that McCain told Timberg a lot of dramatic stories. Timberg chose to construct an entire chapter around stories about the Christmases of McCain's captive years.

Want to know a secret?

Via Steve Benen, I see that the firstpeople to note the McCain/Solzhenitsyn connection were fellow right-wingers at Free Republic.

H/t: Eve for the link

The Fake Forum: Short Version

By GottaLaff

I'm using the hotel computer, so I don't have much time. Here's my recap of last night:

"Noun. Verb. P.O.W."

[We'll be driving home soon. We hit an enormous traffic jam due to an overturned, burning big rig yesterday which added an hour to our drive, so we'll see how long it takes us coming back. I'll check in when we finally get home. AND THANK YOU ALL FOR THE WONDERFUL BIRTHDAY WISHES. YOU MADE MY DAY.]

McCain needs cue card to remember milk prices

The indispensable Jed.

iBarack? oBamaPhone?

By GottaLaff

I'm almost sure I overheard John Sidney Mc19thCentury say he was doing the same thing with a sticker, a quill, an inkwell, and a telegraph:

Another evolution in technology: a fan of the Obama campaign has created an iPhone Web app -- a countdown for change clock.

And why not? Probably a half hour or less of coding. Even if toys like these don't pick up any votes, they contribute to the idea that the Obama campaign has immersed itself in the modern consumer experience.

Oh J Sid? Czechoslovakia called. They want their century back.

Quote-O'-The-Day: John Sidney McDinosaur edition

By GottaLaff

"I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. I don't expect to be a great communicator, I don't expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need... I don't e-mail, I've never felt the particular need to e-mail."

-- Sen. John McCain, in an interview with the New York Times, once again raising an important question.

McCain Website Launches New Blog

By Paddy



Okay. I'm tired and depressed. But, OMG, this is AWESOME!!!

Must. Monitor. Every. Day.

The McCain campaign has unveiled a new blog, dubbed "The McCain Report," that will allow supporters, reporters and bloggers to interact with the campaign. According to the campaign Website:

The goal of this project is pretty straightforward: to provide journalists and bloggers with a little more insight into what's going on over here, to provide quotes and information you won't be able to get anywhere else, and to serve as a point of contact for online media.

I know you can see the excitement in my typing. "Insight" into the McCain campaign. What more could a girl ask for?

(wow- the video at the top of this post is the real video at the top of the McCain blog post. He's an ABBA fan. Erp)