As I have said before, McCain’s age and melanoma history are big concerns. Now physicians are demanding to see the details of his medical records.

Before some of you accuse me of sexism, I will say to you that is not my intention. Today, I decided to compare McCain’s and Obama’s voice. I am sure most of you noticed the femenine voice of McCain. I hope women won’t get offended.

I like to post some interesting stuff before I question McCain’s voice. The following is a trait theory of leadership.

In the 1920’s and 1930’s, leadership research focused on trying to identify the traits that differentiated leaders from non-leaders. These early leadership theories were content theories, focusing on “what” an effective leader is, not on ‘how’ to effectively lead. The trait approach to understanding leadership assumes that certain physical, social, and personal characteristics are inherent in leaders. Sets of traits and characteristics were identified to assist in selecting the right people to become leaders. Physical traits include being young to middle-aged, energetic, tall, and handsome. Social background traits include being educated at the “right” schools and being socially prominent or upwardly mobile. Social characteristics include being charismatic, charming, tactful, popular, cooperative, and diplomatic. Personality traits include being self-confident, adaptable, assertive, and emotionally stable. Task-related characteristics include being driven to excel, accepting of responsibility, having initiative, and being results-oriented. Read more here.

I decided not to attack McCain’s age. I would like to have fun with the voices. You all watched both McCain’s and Obama’s speeches. Probably you noticed high pitched McCain’s voice. Do you think he needs testestrone patch? Do you also think Obama needs to cut down on his testestrone patch? haha….

Lets get back to the point. Lets assume you are taking orders from McCain and Obama. Imagine your reaction to both orders. McCain giving order with girly voice. Won’t you get annoyed? I am not talking about your female bosses. In that case, you are talking orders from George Washington. That doesn’t count. You have to feed yourself. You also won’t forget mumbling, “…this witch is getting on my nerves”. I think you will be annoyed more when a man gives an order with girly voice. I will take Obama’s voice any day over McCain’s. Hey, wait he also beats McCain in the other traits. I just added you tube videos to compare the two voices.

John McCain likes to look towards left. Is he a Democrat? The above picture is from John McCain’s official website. Why do you think he posed that way? If you have noticed like I did, his surgical scars are on the left side. Is McCain hiding his scars?

My sugestion to Mr. McCain: use turtleneck for your next photo. The wrinkled skin under your jaw are still showing.

For comparison, I posted the photo which shows John McCain’s left face.

I am not sure if you guys played this game when you were children but I did. I still remember when I was wrestling with my buddy. I used to tell him how I took him down after the wrestling was over. My buddy used to get mad and the wrestling starts all over again. Can I call it bullying?

The New Yorker published an article that claims Bush adminstration is stepping up its covert operations against Iran. Do you think they want to tell us about covert operations? If they want to tell us, then it is not covert operation. It is declared war. The main objective is to provoke Iran so that republicans can benefit in this election. On top of that, the author of the article blamed the democratic congress for allowing Bush to get funds for these operations on CNN’s Late Edition. HINT!

You can read the article.

L ate last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.

Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.

Under federal law, a Presidential Finding, which is highly classified, must be issued when a covert intelligence operation gets under way and, at a minimum, must be made known to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate and to the ranking members of their respective intelligence committees—the so-called Gang of Eight. Money for the operation can then be reprogrammed from previous appropriations, as needed, by the relevant congressional committees, which also can be briefed.

“The Finding was focussed on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change,” a person familiar with its contents said, and involved “working with opposition groups and passing money.” The Finding provided for a whole new range of activities in southern Iran and in the areas, in the east, where Baluchi political opposition is strong, he said.

Although some legislators were troubled by aspects of the Finding, and “there was a significant amount of high-level discussion” about it, according to the source familiar with it, the funding for the escalation was approved. In other words, some members of the Democratic leadership—Congress has been under Democratic control since the 2006 elections—were willing, in secret, to go along with the Administration in expanding covert activities directed at Iran, while the Party’s presumptive candidate for President, Barack Obama, has said that he favors direct talks and diplomacy.

The request for funding came in the same period in which the Administration was coming to terms with a National Intelligence Estimate, released in December, that concluded that Iran had halted its work on nuclear weapons in 2003. The Administration downplayed the significance of the N.I.E., and, while saying that it was committed to diplomacy, continued to emphasize that urgent action was essential to counter the Iranian nuclear threat. President Bush questioned the N.I.E.’s conclusions, and senior national-security officials, including Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, made similar statements. (So did Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee.) Meanwhile, the Administration also revived charges that the Iranian leadership has been involved in the killing of American soldiers in Iraq: both directly, by dispatching commando units into Iraq, and indirectly, by supplying materials used for roadside bombs and other lethal goods. (There have been questions about the accuracy of the claims; the Times, among others, has reported that “significant uncertainties remain about the extent of that involvement.”)

Military and civilian leaders in the Pentagon share the White House’s concern about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but there is disagreement about whether a military strike is the right solution. Some Pentagon officials believe, as they have let Congress and the media know, that bombing Iran is not a viable response to the nuclear-proliferation issue, and that more diplomacy is necessary.

A Democratic senator told me that, late last year, in an off-the-record lunch meeting, Secretary of Defense Gates met with the Democratic caucus in the Senate. (Such meetings are held regularly.) Gates warned of the consequences if the Bush Administration staged a preëmptive strike on Iran, saying, as the senator recalled, “We’ll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America.” Gates’s comments stunned the Democrats at the lunch, and another senator asked whether Gates was speaking for Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. Gates’s answer, the senator told me, was “Let’s just say that I’m here speaking for myself.” (A spokesman for Gates confirmed that he discussed the consequences of a strike at the meeting, but would not address what he said, other than to dispute the senator’s characterization.)

The Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose chairman is Admiral Mike Mullen, were “pushing back very hard” against White House pressure to undertake a military strike against Iran, the person familiar with the Finding told me. Similarly, a Pentagon consultant who is involved in the war on terror said that “at least ten senior flag and general officers, including combatant commanders”—the four-star officers who direct military operations around the world—“have weighed in on that issue.”

The most outspoken of those officers is Admiral William Fallon, who until recently was the head of U.S. Central Command, and thus in charge of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. In March, Fallon resigned under pressure, after giving a series of interviews stating his reservations about an armed attack on Iran. For example, late last year he told the Financial Times that the “real objective” of U.S. policy was to change the Iranians’ behavior, and that “attacking them as a means to get to that spot strikes me as being not the first choice.”

 

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/6/19/2194/52473/300/538728

I am not that good at Maths but it looks like the Obama camp raised more than $40 million. Their goal: 10,000 new donors. They already passed that benchmark. Lets assume the average donation will be $100, they can only raise $1 million. I think they are confident that they can beat McCain and RNC combined if they get $1 million more in addition to what they already raised.

That is just my take.

Today, I will say something about pretty common diagnosis in Psychiatry, erotomania.

First, definition:

Erotomania: A delusion in which one believes that another person, usually someone of higher status, is in love with him or her. It is common for individuals with this type of delusion to attempt to contact the other person (through phone calls, letters, gifts, and sometimes stalking).

Guess why I chose this topic today. A person named Larry Sinclair claims to have sex with Barack Obama in 1999. I am not saying it is false. But it seems 99.9999…..% false. I fail to believe this man until his doctor tells me he is mentally fit. It is not uncommon to fall in love with a prominent figure. Delusional people also think what they are saying is true. But there might be so many people who will believe this claim. I hear people saying “Knowledge is power”. It should be.

You should be. You have many reasons to be worried about John McCain’s health. The top on the list is his age. As a person ages, so many problems come in to play. This is because physiological functions deteriorate with age.

Lets start from the higher functions. Central nervous system will be affected in elderly as each of you noticed on your grandparents. The population of brain cells will decrease. This is normal process. When this happens, the memory will deteriorate. You could argue that John McCain is fit in every aspect. As he usually does, you might mention his 90-years old mother. The health condition of elderly is unpredictable. They can deteriorate pretty fast.

When we go to Cardiovascular system (heart and blood vessels), elderly population is at an increased risk. The reasons are; the complicated biochemical functions of the body are decreased in elderly, the hardening of blood vessel walls, and many other reasons. Again, you can say, McCain has “healthy heart”. I don’t know what they meant by “healthy heart”. They based their assessment on the Stress Test. I don’t think today’s negative stress test shows tomorrow’s “healthy heart”. On the side, they talked about his cholesterol lowering medications. Does that mean his cholesterol level is high too? Oh, yea. They even said it is not well controled. Does that make you worried?

As we all know, John McCain had been through hard times. His previous physical injuries are in play too. Didn’t you read that he might need joint replacement in the future? Aren’t you worried about operations in the elderly eventhough John McCain had been through some? What about anesthesia? Metabolism of the medications in the liver will be derranged in elderly. So is the excretion of those drugs from the kidneys.

Of course, history of melanoma is the main topic in my blog. I will be back with some scientific facts. Till then, think about it. Don’t forget to comment.

Today, I will write some scientific facts about melanoma. My reference will be uptodate dot com.

Melanoma is the third most common cancer causing brain metastases in the United States, after cancers of the lung and breast , which appears to reflect the relative propensity of melanoma to metastasize to the central nervous system (CNS) . Brain metastases are responsible for 20 to 54 percent of deaths in patients with melanoma , and among those with documented brain metastases, these lesions contribute to death in up to 95 percent of cases .

Although all patients with melanoma are at risk for metastasis to the brain, certain characteristics that are associated with increased risk of systemic metastases also correlate with the subsequent development of brain metastasis. These factors include :

• male gender
• Melanomas arising on mucosal surfaces or the skin of the trunk, head, or neck
• Wide, thick, deeply invasive, or ulcerated primary lesions
• Acral lentiginous or nodular lesions on histologic examination
• Involvement of more than three regional lymph nodes, either at diagnosis or relapse
• Visceral metastasis at the time of diagnosis, especially if the visceral metastasis is disseminated to more than one organ

When you look at the risks for metastasis, Sen. McCain’s melanoma history is worrisome. He is male, his previous melanomas arose from head and neck area. As far as I am concerned, I don’t know what histologic type his melanoma was. Most probably you won’t find it on the released medical records. By the way, acral lentiginous and nodular lesions are histologic types of melanoma which will be seen on microscopy. As you have seen the extensive surgical scar on Sen. McCain’s face, the surgeons removed the lymph nodes in that are to prevent metastasis.

One more thing you should know about this notorious cancer is its prognosis.

PROGNOSIS — Melanoma patients with brain metastases have a poor prognosis. In two series totaling almost 1400 patients, the median survival was four months, and one year survival rates were 9 and 19 percent, respectively .

This shows how serious it could get if it metastasize to brain. Given the known recurrence of melanoma, no body knows what is going to happen to Sen. McCain.

For further reading: http://www.uptodate.com/patients/content/topic.do?topicKey=skin_can/2547

Many people don’t want to talk about it. Do you know why? They don’t have enough information about melanoma. As a medical student, I was taught melanoma is one of the worest cancers out there. Even though people prefer not to talk about cancers, they need to be informed well about melanoma. Senator John McCain is one of the most likable senators. This could lead to presidency. The melanoma could come back any time.

You can see what is reported on time.com. http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1779596,00.html?cnn=yes. Do people want to lose the president they elected? I don’t think so. Senator McCain’s age is another disadvantage. If this cancer comes back, the best treatment is chemotheray. The risk of using chemotherapy in elderly is even higher. As many people know chemotherapy is not fun. I will take any other cancer than melanoma. This cancer could spread to brain and leads to bleeding in the brain. The prognosis depends on the depth of the melanoma (thickness). But its unpredictable nature makes it more dangerous.

What else you have to know? Go to www.melanoma.org. Voters should know before they cast their votes. If you are informed well, you will be comfortable with your decision.