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McCain's health an issue; answers demanded

Message P. A. Triot

John McCain is in serious, serious trouble. I'm not referring to his bumbling and, for him, embarrassing campaign. I'm thinking about my suspicion that he might be dying.

First of all, he's a three-time sufferer of a vicious sort of skin cancer––melanoma.

"Melanoma is a malignant tumor of melanocytes which are found predominantly in skin," according to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. "It is one of the rarer types of skin cancer but causes the majority of skin cancer related deaths.

"Despite many years of intensive laboratory and clinical research, the sole effective cure is surgical resection of the primary tumor before it achieves a Breslow thickness greater than 1 mm."

The other day I listened to a radio interview with a medical doctor who specialized in skin cancer.

The good doctor, whose name I did not get, said that because of McCain's cancer history––the initial melanoma and two recurrences––his chances of surviving through his first term of office are pretty slim.

When a melanoma recurs in a patient, it is usually less likely to be successfully treated, he said.

That McCain has already had two recurrences makes him, in this doctor's words, "A dead man walking."

The doctor said that McCain's skin had the look of someone who was already "in trouble."

Photos of McCain plainly show a large growth in his left jaw. The growth is as big in circumference as a baseball and bulges out an inch or two.

It's fair, if not obligatory, to insist on answers from McCain and his medical providers whether or not McCain's cancer has metastasized into his jaw or elsewhere in his body, say, his brain.

What is his prognosis? What truly is the state of his health? Are his lack of clear thinking and his knee-jerk flip-flops on issues a result of a brain malfunction owing to cancer? Is he actually dying?

If that doctor is even close to being on the mark, we have to look at the consequences of his demise in the event he would be inaugurated president of the United States (because of either election or theft).

The nation would be stuck with she of vacuous mind, Sarah Palin. The governor of Alaska for 18 months, who served a couple terms as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, who thinks living in a state that is 100 miles, more or less, from Russia is experience in foreign affairs, whose husband is actively involved in a secessionist movement and who herself is cozy with the Alaska secessionist crowd, would immediately ascend to presidency.

I didn't used to think we could ever have a worse president than George "dubya" Bush. But such a turn of events as I outlined above has the nation staring into the abyss.

It's time for the McCain camp to come clean. We're beyond the usual political games of coyness and deception.

Simply because the McCain campaign trots out his 91-year-old mother occasionally is no reassurance that he's in good health.

Sarah Palin is simply not equipped in any way to be president of the nation.

She's a pretty face who can read a TelePrompTer, something nearly anyone can do with a day or two of practice (achieving the face of a babe takes a little longer). Beyond that, Palin as president is as frightening as it is appalling. 

McCain seems willing to throw himself on the historical scrap heap of short-term presidents simply for his ego. 

In death he would join the ranks of Zachary Taylor, who died about three months after being sworn in, and Warren G. Harding, who died in 1923 in a hotel room in California after visiting, you guessed it, Alaska.

 That McCain would leave his country in the hands of an incompetent person, from whom lies fly out of her mouth so easily and at the speed of sound, who would try to force her fanatical religious beliefs down the country's throat, apparently has never crossed his mind. That's not being a true patriot, as he purports to be.

This is a serious, serious issue for Americans, whether they realize it or not.

It's been said that Americans get the government they deserve. I add that that may be so, but America doesn't.

© Copyright 2008 by P. A. Triot. Reproduce and distribute at will, with proper attribution.

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P. A. Triot is the pen name of a retired journalist.
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