Obituaries

One of Cindy McCain's two half-sisters, Dixie Lee Burd, 74, has died. She had been ill for quite some time and had lived in a nursing home for the past two years.
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Campaign Potshots

In the grand scheme of American politics, Obama's campaign hardly ranks as the filthiest; the GOP has him all beat in that regard.

Think 1972 with Watergate. Think 1980 with the October Surprise. Think 1988 with Willie Horton. Think 2000 with Bush v. Gore. Think 2004 with Ohio. Nope, the GOP rules when it comes to presidential election filth, smears, dirty tricks, and outright fraud.

However, if you look at the history of Democratic primaries, Obama has no equal in the filthy politics department. But that was then. This is now.

Obama and especially his campaign of surrogates have had their tactics firmly in the gutter, but it's pretty tepid stuff compared to the GOP's history.

Campaign Dirty Laundry

Cindy McCain's one-time drug abuse once again gets put under a microscope.

Republican Convention III

Cindy McCain's remarks:

Republican Convention II

Speeches tonight:

Senator Lindsay Graham:




Tom Ridge:




I'll include the video of Cindy McCain:




And a bio of Sarah Palin:




I am doing this just for the record.

Cindy McCain

Cindy McCain was just on talking about herself, her family, and her husband. What is interesting is she calls herself an "only child," but technically she is not. She has two half-sisters from her parents' previous marriages.

The messy saga went public after McCain talked about her childhood in an NPR interview. Portalski's son, Nicholas, contacted the network to clarify the family history and his mother's feelings about being overlooked. "I'm upset," she told NPR. "I'm angry. It makes me feel like a nonperson, kind of."

Money, of course, has exacerbated the family tensions. The multimillionaire Hensley only occasionally saw his older daughter -- and was emotionally distant when he did, according to her son -- but gave Portalski and her children money and college tuition. But when he died eight years ago, Hensley bequeathed Cindy the majority share of his company. (Andrew McCain, John's son from his first marriage, is now the chief financial officer.) Portalski got no share of the business, and support to her family was abruptly cut off.

"It doesn't make any kind of sense at all,'' Portalski said yesterday. "He was generous over the years when I was growing up, so it doesn't compute that he would do that; that he would leave all of us out. He paid for college for two of my kids. He gave us yearly gifts that were generous, allowed for a down payment on a home. I felt shock and disbelief. I just wish I could ask him, 'Why?' "

Her son, Nicholas, asked for a copy of the will and said it had been amended so many times that it was hard to tell what the original intent or language must have been.

Now, she said, all she wants is for the McCains to apologize and acknowledge her branch of the family tree. (Since you asked: Yes, they're Democrats.) "He was my father, too. I don't know why even now he cannot be a part of my life."

Her side of the family tree is almost as messy as John McCain's first marriage and divorce.

Republican Convention

Laura Bush and Cindy McCain helped to kick off this year's convention by focusing on Hurricane Gustav.

Because of the hurricane, the convention will be scaled down somewhat this year.

John McCain Town Hall Sparks, Nevada

McCain signed my pledge card just as he and Cindy were leaving. Those smudges are his, by the way, not mine. McCain is left-handed as am I, so smudging on signatures is common.





Not all of his answers were popular with the audience.







McCain listens intently to a question.




John McCain makes sure he pronounces "Nevada" right. He said he is the underdog in the race and relishes it.







McCain takes time out for a drink. Of water, of course.





Note the red spot on his right side where he had the skin cancer or whatever it was removed the other day.




Since I was up in the bleachers and used the zoom, some of the pictures were a bit grainy although they are okay. Here is a good shot of McCain at the town hall.







To a crowd of at least several hundred if not a thousand or more at Reed High School in Sparks, Nevada, "special guest" Cindy McCain introduces her husband to an appreciative crowd. What I like about the McCains, no matter how I disagree with their politics, is the fact they are so approachable. I didn't think I'd have a shot at getting John's autograph, and I kept the pledge card just in case I could get it. Well, me being the way that I was, I was at the very end of the rope line just before the McCains were to leave the building, and John did sign my card. I should have asked Cindy to sign it as well.


Just before I forget, Jimbo Gibbons was nowhere to be found. McCain called Lt. Governor Brian Krolicki "governor." Well, he might just as well be.

You will get to hear the remarks when I upload the video on YouTube.

More Campaign Crap.

Cindy McCain has to pay back taxes on a San Diego condo:

San Diego County officials, it turns out, have been sending out tax notices on the La Jolla property, an oceanfront condo, for four years without receiving a response. County records show the bills, which were mailed to a Phoenix address associated with Mrs. McCain's trust, were returned by the post office. According to a McCain campaign aide, who requested anonymity when discussing a private matter, an elderly aunt of Mrs. McCain's lives in the condo, and the bank that manages the trust has not been receiving tax bills on the property. Shortly after NEWSWEEK inquired about the matter, the McCain aide e-mailed a receipt dated Friday, June 27, confirming payment by the trust to San Diego County in the amount of $6,744.42. County officials say the trust still owes an additional $1,742 for this year, an amount that is overdue and will go into default July 1. Told of the outstanding $1,742, the aide said: "The trust has paid all bills shown owing as of today and will pay all other bills due."

It's the Republican way.
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I Think That In Order [Updated]

to understand Cindy McCain, one really needs to look at the entire story of how John met her in the first place.

I have to give Newsweek a little bit of credit for mentioning it, though:

In the spring of 1979, Cindy joined her parents on a trip to Hawaii. At a Navy cocktail party, a cocky captain came up and introduced himself. John McCain was the Navy's chief liaison to the Senate in Washington. He was 41, but told her he was 37. Cindy was 24, but told him she was 27. By both accounts, it was love at first sight—though for McCain, it was far more complicated. He was a married father of three. His relationship with his first wife, Carol Shepp, was coming apart, and the two were separating, though he didn't divulge any of that to Cindy that first night.

And this:

Shepp no longer discusses the marriage, but has said she doesn't blame McCain. She has told reporters she thinks of him as a friend and supports him for president. The marriage soured because of "John turning 40 and wanting to be 25 again," she told McCain's biographer Robert Timberg. Others who know them say McCain pursued Cindy as a way of putting his war years behind him. "I think John very much saw her as reclaiming the life he had lost," Albert (Pete) Lakeland, a former congressional staffer who was with McCain when he met Cindy, told Timberg.

The war had nothing to do with it. McCain was a womanizer BEFORE he went to Nam.


The bottom line is this: John McCain probably cares for Cindy, but he had political ambitions, and staying in the military wasn't going to cut it. Cindy wasn't just any pretty trophy wife--she had money, tons of it, and that money was instrumental in getting him where is today.

The article, which makes much of her personal problems, including miscarriages, a stroke, and drug dependency, is mostly a puff piece.

For the record, a comparison of the two wives using the wedding photos.

The first picture of Carol McCain and her ex, taken at their wedding in 1965, I got from the Washington Post:




One month after Navy veteran John threw Carol overboard, he married the very wealthy Cindy Hensley:



And also for the record, this picture, also taken from the Washington Post website, gives one an inkling of what kind of person the first Mrs. McCain was like:



This was a Thanksgiving picture of the McCain family when he was a POW. We all know how he eventually thanked THEM.

Campaign Dirty Laundry.

If he is elected president, which is all but a sure thing if Obama is the opponent, John McCain will be the second divorced president in American history. Ronald Reagan, of course, was the first one.

So what about that first marriage? Well, it IS old news McCain cheated on his first wife; he admits it. And the two of them are still on good terms. That's old news.



But the U.S. media won't write about it because they will claim it is ancient history and McCain has fessed up, at least with regard to her. But what is her story in case anybody cares?

She fell sucker to his charm even though he was carousing around in his youth, let alone after he returned from the Hanoi Hilton.

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.

After sustaining serious injuries in an automobile accident, Ross Perot helped pay her medical bills. Of course her husband couldn't possibly help her out.

After returning to the states, he was glad to see her, but obviously she wasn't going to do in the looks department. Once again he reverted to his bad habits.

Moreover, he was starting to make some political connections. Enter Cindy Hensley:

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.’

Perhaps the saddest thing of all is Carol McCain is still crazy about him. But not everybody who knew the two of them are crazy about John, including Ross Perot.

More is here, here, here, and don't forget this article about McCain and Perot.

John McCain's

womanizing has never been any kind of secret, and he was messing around with Cindy while still married to his first wife.

The article was from last year along with more articles about McCain's life story.

The fact his first wife, Carol, doesn't seem to have hard feelings against him pretty much inoculates him from the womanizing charges:

In February 1980, less than a year after he met Cindy, McCain petitioned a Florida court to dissolve his marriage to Carol, calling the union "irretrievably broken."

Bud Day, a lawyer and fellow POW, handled the divorce proceedings.

"I thought things were going fairly well, and then it just came apart," Day later recalled. "That happened to quite a few. . . . I don't fault (Carol), and I don't really fault John, either."

In his book Worth the Fighting For, McCain offers his own post-mortem on his failed marriage. He "had not shown the same determination to rebuild (his) personal life" as he had to excel in his naval career.

"Sound marriages can be hard to recover after great time and distance have separated a husband and wife. We are different people when we reunite," McCain wrote. "But my marriage's collapse was attributable to my own selfishness and immaturity more than it was to Vietnam, and I cannot escape blame by pointing a finger at the war. The blame was entirely mine."

Carol, who remains on good terms with her former husband, generally has avoided reporters interested in hearing her side of the story.

She did briefly address her divorce to Timberg: "The breakup of our marriage was not caused by my accident or Vietnam or any of those things. I don't know that it might not have happened if John had never been gone. I attribute it more to John turning 40 and wanting to be 25 again than I do to anything else."