What the Next President Can Do

Let me guess....Barry will sprinkle some fairy dust over cancer victims and cure them.....After all he is the Messiah!!

yo jonjon. what happened? olbermann and matthews getting tossed freak you out? or was it the absolute disgusting comments under your last blog? or maybe your enlightened "disabled infant"?

THIS IS NO MORE THAN A WHITE FEMALE VERSION OF CLAREANCE THOMAS. I AM BLACK AND PLEASE BELIEVE..........CLAREANCE THOMAS WOULD NEED TOP FLIGHT SECURITY TO WALK IN ANY BLACK NEIGHBORHOOD AND WE DISLIKED HIM FROM THE START AND WERE OFFENDED THAT REPUBS. THOUGHT WE WOULD COME TO HIS DEFENSE BECAUSE OF HIS PHYSICAL FEATURES.
SARAH PALIN'S VIEWS, THEORIES AND POLICIES ARE SO AGAINST WOMEN'S RIGHTS IT'S DISTURBING. I HAVE ENOUGH FAITH IN THE WOMEN IN THIS COUNTRY NOT TO VOTE FOR SOMEONE COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY AGAINST THEIR OWN INTEREST.

Just read Mike Allen's piece (on Politico.com) about Charlie Gibson's upcoming "interview" with Sarah Palin. Good grief! Instead of an honest-to-goodness SUBSTANTIVE hard-hitting INTERVIEW it sounds more like Charlie will be doing a PUFF CELEBRITY PIECE EXTRAORDINAIRE ala Barbara Walters!! This is really pathetic. No hard-hitting Q&A. Disgraceful. Is the rest of the MSM going to let Rick Davis & Co. get away with this? Can you imagine if this were "STEVE PALIN" - a total newcomer to the national political scene - who had not uttered ONE SINGLE UNSCRIPTED WORD IN 11 DAYS since being chosen??? Would the MSM be so meek and frankly, cowardly? Or would they create such a hew and cry about "Steve's" avoidance of answering TOUGH ISSUES questions that "Steve" would feel compelled to hold a press conference, do the Sunday political shows, etc.??? ONLY the WONDERFUL ROGER SIMON of POLITICO has had the GUTS to say that if Palin cannot answer the really TOUGH ISSUES questions from the MSM RIGHT NOW she has no business running to be VP! How about it MSM??? Are you as BRAVE as ROGER SIMON??? Or are you COWARDS who are SHIRKING your journalistic duties?

I am an AF Veteran widow and I feel frustrated about the fact that Americans are treating this Presidential Election as a popularity contest rather than the issues. The fact even take manage his/her own family how the heck is h/she going to manage the Country? How could McCain, a 72 year old man, who has had 3 bouts with malignant cancer, responsibly appoint an inexperienced, yet vocally strident woman as the possible future president of the United States? Just to put it into prospective, my husband, a USAF Veteran, died of bladder cancer at age 68! This is clearly a political move from McCain and an irresponsible one. So much for his rhetoric???s of "Country First" and "I would rather lose a campaign than lose a war." Heck no! He doesn't give a hoot about us. He just wants to win. That's his ultimate ambition. And apart from those 5 POW years, does he really deserve it? Come on! He was a rogue. He graduated from the Naval Academy 5th from the last. If it hadn't been for his Father, who as an Admiral, he'd be running an employment agency right now. I don't see how he excelled in anything except marrying a very wealthy woman and dumping his faithful wife and Mother of his children. I used to write to the guys in Nam, back in the early seventies, before I got married. I had 40 pen-pals I supported with my letters of encouragement and hope. Some of them got killed, some liked to kill, some got caught and I don't know what happened to them. McCain is just one of them, as far as I am concerned. and how about all the young people he sent to their death in Iraq by co-signing with Bush on the war? What would they say to him, if they could? What would their families say to him? The man has no integrity. He is a wolf in sheep's clothing. All I can say to you people out there who are considering voting for McCain is BEWARE!

I am 39 yrs. of age and African American. I have never been poll on a political race, not ever. Not for a local race or national. How do I get my opion (on a poll) out there like everyone else? I know that most polls have to be consider with care, but I'd still like participate along with everyone else. In over 20 yrs. of voting you would think someone would ask my opion?

In other words you can't trust the polls, and with the last two elections it has been proven that you really can't trust the vote count.

Hey Nasty Alter, I saw a toning down on your attitude!! It has nothing to do with sacking of your likes Keith Olbermann et al, I guess!!

As a mother of a 8 year old who is battling cancer at St. Jude in Memphis, Amen. No child should ever be put on end of life treatment because of cancer nor have to endure chemo and radiation to rid their body of the deadly disease only to have to fight it again years later. Is Cancer todays Black Plague?

This is a great article. Our family is dealing with Alzheimers and we see so little new research and when you consider how long they have been doing cancer research, it seems so little. Yes they can detect cancer better and if found early can do treatment. But the treatment is almost as horrible as the disease. John McCain is too old to undertake the Presidency. Choosing Sarah Palin is a slap in the face to Americans showing his contempt for the entire political process. That he thinks she is qualified to be President shows how demented he is.

Excellent article and one I will share with friends. It upsets me greatly that Bush cut funding for research on diseases like cancer, altheizmers, etc. We have lost far too many to these insidious diseases. This is especially close to my heart as we lost a 5-year-old in my family to pediatric cancer. Pediatric cancer gets so little attention. Families with children facing this deadly disease end up conducting their own fundraisers to pay for research at hospitals like Sloan in NYC. see bandofparents.org -- it is mind boggling. I will vote for Obama and hope.

This is absolutely true about the NIH. One world-renown researcher in the field of deadly metabolic disorders in newborns related to me personally that funds coming out of NIH have virtually dried up over the past 8 years. He has contacted senators and representatives, and asked us to do the same, to restore funding for NIH and medical research. The biological and genetic leaps and bounds that have been made in the past 20 years are coming to a screeching halt, with comparatively little improvement in life span.
I don't see any evidence that McCain will steer away from the current policies.

Great article. My husband has prostate cancer. Surgically removed prostate last year, but tumours are still there and growing. He is otherwise very healthy and extremely active. We are fighting it and hope for new lines of research down the road that will be available if the cancer doesn't stay under control. I agree with you completely, Mr. Altar, that research is the key and the hope for cancer victims and their families who love them -- along with a good health insurance system, which we don't presently have. And our president DOES have the power to fight to make federal research grants available for cancer -- instead of cutting research funding to fund wars overseas and giving available funding to entrentched interests who are not innovative or driven to help humanity -- as well as fighting to overhaul our health insurance system at the same time. Americans are known for their fighting spirit of not giving up or giving in to adversity -- and for their optimisim and ingenuity to make things better. My husband and I think Barack Obama will be the president to use his power to help fund cancer research and overhaul the health insurance system quickly. Not the only reason we???re 200%++ for him, but one of the reasons. (FYI: We???re both lifelong Republicans turned Non-Partisan ??? voted for Bush twice ??? wrong decision) Thank you for your article and best of luck to you.

Great article. My husband has prostate cancer. Surgically removed prostate last year, but tumours are still there in other areas and growing. He is otherwise very healthy and extremely active. We are fighting it and hope for new lines of research down the road that will be available if the cancer doesn't stay under control. I agree with you completely, Mr. Altar, that research is the key and the hope for cancer victims and their families who love them -- along with a good health insurance system, which we don't presently have. And our president DOES have the power to fight to make federal research grants available for cancer -- instead of cutting research funding to fund wars overseas and giving available funding to entrentched interests who are not innovative or driven to help humanity -- as well as fighting to overhaul our health insurance system at the same time. Americans are known for their fighting spirit of not giving up or giving in to adversity -- and for their optimisim and ingenuity to make things better. My husband and I think Barack Obama will be the president to use his power to help fund cancer research and overhaul the health insurance system quickly. Not the only reason we???re 200%++ for him, but one of the reasons. (FYI: We???re both lifelong Republicans turned Non-Partisan ??? voted for Bush twice ??? wrong decision) Thank you for your article.

Neos, I've no idea what your post has to do with this article - but it's nice to see I'm not the only one who thinks the way you do. Bush has gone above and beyond what we even thought to be a big deficit with our budget. Clinton did so much in finally balancing it, only to have it pissed away by yet another republican who can surely be called "the worst one (republican, or politician) EVER!!

Typically speaking, in each white house era there is usually at least one thing each president has done that can be considered a good thing - (regardless of the stupid things they did as well)... but I can not think of ONE tiny, itty bitty, little thing that Bush has done in his 8 years of running our country that had a positive affect on any of us. That man has completely and utterly ruined this country, and left our next president with a huge mess to clean up. They'll basically be spending their first 4 yrs in office just fixing things!

Here's hoping for 8 future years of Democratic rule... Go Obama!

OK, Boys and girls. It's quiz time!!
Of the last 5 Republican presidents - name which one(s) had budget deficits throughout their terms? (Even when Republicans held congress as well...
And for the bonus round, which one(s) actually left the federal government larger than he/they found it?

Jeopardy theme music......

Actually the answer to both questions is all of them. So much for Republican promises of small government and fiscal responsibility. Instead of tax and spend we got borrow and spend. Expect more of the same with McCain.
And so,how did we get the money to cover the deficits and increased spending for the ever-larger government? Did we increase revenues and responsibly pay our way? No, we did not. We put it all on the ol' VISA card. Yep, we borrowed a ton of money from our bestest buddies: China and Saudi Arabia, etc. and plan to leave this enormous tab to our kids. And now we get to divert hundreds of billions of dollars a year to our bestest buddies to service the debt. Money that could have spent at home repairing our crumbling transportation infrastructure, for example. Remember the Clinton surpluses???

Mr. Alter, you are wrong on so many levels. I don't recall cancer ever being a national problem that we expect our government to fix. We have too many more problems the govt CAN fix rather than worry about a disease in which the medical community is responsible for. What about U.S. poverty, is that not as important ??? or say, more so than cancer to those who live in a car?

My mother had breast cancer. She had the tumor removed, went thru radiation & is now supposed to take a certain medication for the next 5 yrs - but, with the side effects of that med, she has decided NOT to continue taking it. I am against this, however, I do not believe that complaining to my Senator is the answer here, and I fail to understand what the govt has to do with eradicating cancer aside from the designation of research funds.

If we do someday eradicate some types of cancer, a new type will eventually pop up that we can do nothing about, (that???s evolution), yet you're implying that the government is responsible for and should fix ???cancer???. There's nothing to fix here! It's a medical disease! This is not something anyone should expect the politicians to fix.

It's not just my mother that has had cancer either, I've lost 2 uncles, (one at age 33) my maternal grandmother had breast & uterine cancer, & I've lost 3 great-aunts to breast cancer. I understand what people go through, I've seen it, but again this is a MEDICAL problem, not a political one.

The best thing our politicians can do is work towards getting healthcare for everyone. You're basically implying that our government should solve our medical problems, rather than the medical community. That???s an outrageously obscure statement - it just doesn???t make sense.

I suffer from daily severe chronic pain (I'm a USAF Vet too), so should I expect Obama or McCain to have an answer to this medical issue? (Which by the way, affects MORE people than cancer & has a HIGHER rate of missed work than cancer does). Expecting that is wrong in so many ways. As a Vet, yes, I expect our politicians to work to get the VA to better help out all Veterans, but as an American, I in no way expect them to fix this particular medical issue. In my opinion, it???s absurd to think that way.

I asked my mother how she feels about this issue and I'm sorry to tell you that aside from agreeing that the govt needs to better fund research, cancer, nor any one specific disease, is NOT an issue that the candidates need to make any statements or promises for. As I said before, there is so much more at stake here, things our government CAN do something about, that's at risk in this election.

I'm glad to hear that you are a survivor of cancer, and I hope you continue on that road, but I just don't understand how you can make such a statement about cancer, when so many things on so many different levels are going on. Our economy, healthcare, the war, etc??? THESE are the issues that are at stake. NOT cancer.