This piece comes from an Asian news service.
Conventional wisdom also says that because he's a white man facing a black man or white woman (barring some extraordinary occurrence) at the top of the other ticket, McCain should have a female or minority (or both) on his ticket. Since McCain is a senator - and his wife runs the family business he married into - he should have a governor or someone with an administrative background. Since McCain is a moderate Republican, he should have a rock-solid conservative on the ticket. Since he represents a western state, McCain should tap an easterner, preferably from a swing state that the running mate could tip into McCain's corner.
~Snip~
Crist almighty?
Virtually every Republican governor has gotten at least a glance as a McCain running mate. One of the favorites is Florida's Charlie Crist. He first came to national attention as state attorney general "Chain Gang Charlie", advocating reinstatement of putting inmates to work outdoors shackled together. Florida is a key state to win - ask Al Gore - Crist is enormously popular, 52 years young, and very tight with McCain. During his 2006 gubernatorial run, Crist asked President George W Bush to stay away while welcoming McCain.
But Crist may be a bit too much of a maverick for the Republican knucklewalkers McCain hopes to energize. As attorney general, Crist bucked the far-right fringe by respecting Teri Schiavo's right to die in that ugly case. And, like McCain, he's one of these family values guys who's been divorced (a year after marrying his one and only wife ... hmmm). As governor, he's tangled with insurance companies, so there goes the free market vote. Both of those crowds would prefer Florida's ex-governor Jeb Bush, but with the Democrats trying to portray McCain as George Bush's third term, there's no way the name Bush would go on his ticket.
McCain's supremely cynical VP option... By Muhammad Cohen
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THESSALONIKI – Few people – at least in Europe – seem to believe in life after death these days. Craig Ewert had come to a point where he did not think much of life before death either. On a September morning in 2006 in a nondescript Zurich apartment, Craig, terminally ill with Lou Gehrig’s disease, swallowed a glass of sodium phenobarbital, then a sip of apple juice to kill the taste. Forty-five minutes later, with his wife Mary by his side, the 59-year-old former university professor died peacefully. Craig was what the local press disparagingly calls a “suicide tourist.”
~Snip~
“Throughout my career, I have never returned to the same subject twice but I decided to make an exception with euthanasia as a result of the Terri Schiavo case,” says Zaritsky, speaking of the brain-damaged Florida woman at the center of a bitter right-to-die case between her husband and right-wing Christians as well as the Bush administration a few years ago. “Given the appalling reaction to the Schiavo case, I decided it was important to make another film,” he says.
Of course, two or perhaps even 200 documentaries will not be enough to change general attitudes and public policy on the subject. It’s the “R” word. “I am not a religious person,” the Oscar-winning Canadian director says. “I believe that organized religion prevents society and governments from making social advances that the public clearly wants. This is certainly the case with euthanasia, which shows public support for the right to die consistently at 60 percent or more in nearly all Western countries.”
Critics see a “slippery slope” whereby mercy killing degenerates into involuntary euthanasia, with elderly or sick people choosing to end their lives for fear of becoming a burden on their families. Nevertheless, laws permitting assisted suicide and/or voluntary euthanasia have also been passed over the past 15 years or so in Oregon in the USA, the Netherlands and Belgium...............
A ‘suicide tourist’ bids farewell
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Chain Gang Charlie made sure that Terri was surrounded. He’s tough on everybody UNLESS THEY ARE BIG FUNDRAISERS or LIBERALS.