From Chicago:

Sep 11, 2008 10:58 pm US/Central

It is the place where her life was saved. Now a Chicago woman is planning to go back to Children’s Memorial Hospital again – to get married.

CBS 2′s Suzanne Le Mignot reports that when Lindsey Anderson was 10 years old, she had a tumor deep inside her brain. As an infant, doctors told her parents that half of her brain would have to be removed – and their little girl would be a vegetable for the rest of her life.

“All I’d known was brain tumor and medicine and seizures and being different from all the other kids my age,” said Lindsey Anderson, bride-to-be. “I have a very strong will too.”

At 13 months, Anderson’s first brain surgery took place at the Mayo Clinic. The tumor was partially removed because of the risk of brain damage and paralysis. When she was 10, her parents brought her to Children’s Memorial Hospital to see Dr. Tadanori Tomita, the head of pediatric neurosurgery. Dr. Tomita said the benefit of surgery would outweigh the risk.

“I felt I could remove it,” Dr. Tomita said.

In 1997, Dr. Tomita used computer-guided technology to completely remove Anderson’s tumor. She hasn’t had a seizure since. Medication and exercise therapy control head and neck pain. Rehab helped her regain the use of her left leg.

“He means the world to me and my family,” Anderson said. “I wouldn’t be here without him.”

That’s why Lindsey and Josh decided to have their wedding in the courtyard at Children’s Memorial Hospital. Lindsey says she wants it to be a sign, a message of hope for other families with children who are suffering right now like she was.

“This is also a very happy start of her life,” Dr. Tomita said.

Now at the age of 22, Anderson will begin a new chapter in her new life with Josh Leve.

“All the time we spent, her pain started to decrease and obviously every day since then, I fell more and more in love with her,” said Josh Leve, groom-to-be. …..

Go here for the rest of the story.

John Stephenson at NewsBusters early this morning asked, “Will (the) Media Report Obama’s Mocking of McCain’s Disability?”

The answer is “I doubt it,” at least beyond their blogs. Print edition or televised examples will be rare to non-existent.

Two other pertinent items will also probably be ignored:

• Bill Clinton’s acknowledged lack of tech skills and virtual non-use of e-mail.
• More important, the high likelihood that the next President of the United States, like his two predecessors, will rarely, if ever, use e-mail.

NB commenter “mikej” at Stephenson’s post did some web searching a falsely giddy Team Obama apparently didn’t have the time for (or do they not know how?). “mikej” found the following January 28, 2004 CNN Reuters item carried at CNN.com about Bill Clinton’s nearly non-existent e-mailing during his presidency (bolds after title are mine):

Clinton’s gift to Internet age: only 2 e-mails

The archives of the Bill Clinton presidential library will contain 39,999,998 e-mails by the former president’s staff and two by the man himself.

“The only two he sent,” Skip Rutherford, president of the Clinton Presidential Foundation, which is raising money for the library, said on Monday.

One of them may not actually qualify for electronic communication because it was a test to see if the commander in chief knew how to push the button on an e-mail.

Former Ohio Sen. John Glenn has the distinction of being the first American to orbit the Earth and the only person to receive an e-mail written by Clinton when he was in office.

The e-mail was sent with the help of Clinton staffers to the space shuttle while it was in orbit and Glenn was a part of the crew.

The bolded items show that Bill Clinton sent no official e-mails without assistance while he was president.

George W. Bush has also barely used e-mail as President, but it isn’t because he is unable.

An accessmylibrary.com item that isn’t available without a library membership indicates that Bush stopped e-mailing family and friends once he entered office.

Though I could not find evidence of it (maybe I need help from “mikej”), my memory is that he was advised to stop using e-mail completely upon inauguration.

Regardless, by the time this Wall Street Journal blog item appeared in October 2006, the president had virtually ceased using e-mail, for reasons that the new president will not, and more than likely should not, ignore (bold is mine):

In a CNBC interview with Maria Bartiromo, Bush was asked a question on many of our minds: I’m curious, have you ever Googled anybody? Do you use Google?

According to CNBC’s unofficial transcript, he replied: Occasionally. One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps. It’s very interesting to see that. I forgot the name of the program, but you get the satellite and you can — like, I kind of like to look at the ranch on Google, reminds me of where I want to be sometimes. Yeah, I do it some. He added: I tend not to email or — not only tend not to email, I don’t email, because of the different record requests that can happen to a president. I don’t want to receive emails because, you know, there’s no telling what somebody’s email may — it would show up as, you know, a part of some kind of a story, and I wouldn’t be able to say, ‘Well, I didn’t read the email.’ ‘But I sent it to your address, how can you say you didn’t?’ So, in other words, I’m very cautious about emailing.

While we’re at it, let’s make sure the full record of refutation is all in one place (bolds are mine):

(Boston Globe; March 4, 2000; via Ace and Sweetness & Light)

McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing food stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from inside: McCain’s severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes.

(Forbes; May 29, 2000; via Ace and Jonah Goldberg at the Corner)

In certain ways, McCain was a natural Web candidate. Chairman of the Senate Telecommunications Subcommittee and regarded as the U.S. Senate’s savviest technologist, McCain is an inveterate devotee of email. His nightly ritual is to read his email together with his wife, Cindy. The injuries he incurred as a Vietnam POW make it painful for McCain to type. Instead, he dictates responses that his wife types on a laptop. “She’s a whiz on the keyboard, and I’m so laborious,” McCain admits.

(New York Times; July 13, 2008; via Ed Morrissey at Hot Air)

Q: But do you go on line for yourself?

Mr. McCain: They go on for me. I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. I don’t expect to be a great communicator, I don’t expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need – including going to my daughter’s blog first, before anything else.

Let’s review:

• Barack Obama and his campaign took out an ad that, among other things, mocked opponent John McCain’s tech-savviness and inability to e-mail.
• It turns out that the inability to e-mail is due to McCain’s war-caused physical handicaps. In fact, McCain has been an e-mail devotee for at least eight years, receiving help from a loving spouse to respond to messages.
• It turns out that a credible argument can be made, as Jonah Goldberg at the Corner has, that McCain “actually has more cyber-cred than Obama.” What about “regarded as the US Senate’s savviest technologist” doesn’t Team Obama understand?
• Obama and his campaign used as its central claim McCain’s supposed inability to do something (which he actually does, with help) that the next president will probably continue not doing, or will at most do very rarely, for the reasons President Bush cited.

In the process, the Obama campaign and its candidate wasted time and money on an irrelevant claim, while exposing its deep-seated guttural instincts and thought processes for all the world to see.

Keep it up, guys and gals. On this one, it probably won’t matter that traditional media will steadfastly ignore it.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

______________________________________________

UPDATE: Kevin at Wizbang dug through 2004 Howard Dean campaign director/tech-savvy guy Joe Trippi’s book, and found numerous references by the author to John McCain and his “first bold attempt to harness the power of the Internet” during the 2000 campaign. He also found a Salon.com article by a guy who watched Obama in the only other campaign where “The One” had a challenge (and lost), and wasn’t impressed.

______________________________________________

Previous Post: The Obama Campaign’s Unspeakably Mean (and Wrong) ‘McCain Can’t E-mail’ Ad

Given the truth, it may be the most offensive campaign ad — ever.

From the guys who supposedly want to concentrate on the issues, we get this, enthusiastically conveyed by Nedra Pickler of the Associated Press:

John McCain is mocked as an out-of-touch, out-of-date computer illiterate in a television commercial out Friday from Barack Obama as the Democrat begins his sharpest barrage yet on McCain’s long Washington career.

The new fighting spirit comes as McCain has been gaining in the polls and some Democrats have been expressing concern the Obama campaign has not been aggressive enough.

Well, it is aggressive. The trouble is, it’s also deeply offensive, and goes to a place I don’t believe any presidential campaign ad has ever gone:

1982, John McCain goes to Washington,” an announcer says over chirpy elevator music. “Things have changed in the last 26 years, but McCain hasn’t.”

“He admits he still doesn’t know how to use a computer, can’t send an e-mail, still doesn’t understand the economy, and favors two hundred billion in new tax cuts for corporations, but almost nothing for the middle class,” it says. It shows video of McCain getting out of a golf cart with former President George H.W. Bush and closes with a photo of him standing with the current President Bush at the White House. “After one president who was out of touch, we just can’t afford more of the same.”

Here’s the truth (bolds are mine):

(the Boston Globe; March 4, 2000; via Ace and Sweetness & Light)

McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing food stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from inside: McCain’s severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes.

(Forbes; May 29, 2000; via Ace and Jonah Goldberg at the Corner)

In certain ways, McCain was a natural Web candidate. Chairman of the Senate Telecommunications Subcommittee and regarded as the U.S. Senate’s savviest technologist, McCain is an inveterate devotee of email. His nightly ritual is to read his email together with his wife, Cindy. The injuries he incurred as a Vietnam POW make it painful for McCain to type. Instead, he dictates responses that his wife types on a laptop. “She’s a whiz on the keyboard, and I’m so laborious,” McCain admits.

(New York Times; July 13, 2008; via Ed Morrissey at Hot Air)

Q: But do you go on line for yourself?

Mr. McCain: They go on for me. I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. I don’t expect to be a great communicator, I don’t expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need – including going to my daughter’s blog first, before anything else.

Jonah Goldberg at the Corner credibly contends that the combination of the points made above show that McCain “actually has more cyber-cred than Obama.”

Barack Obama is mocking the physical challenges of his opponent, caused by his opponent’s 5-1/2 years as a POW, to falsely accuse him of not being capable of things he is, with assistance in some cases, actually doing.

For this, an AP reporter cheers Obama on for “showing a newly aggressive tone.”

The sentiments stated in the ad come from the standard-bearer of the supposed party of compassion, conveyed with fanfare by the supposedly objective Essential Global News Network.

If there is a lower point to which Obama, his campaign, and its media elite water carriers can go, I’m not sure I want to see it.

They should be totally ashamed of themselves, and embarrassed at how wrong they are. I doubt they are either.

John Stephenson put a post up ahead of me over at NewsBusters, and asked, “Will Media Report Obama’s Mocking of McCain’s Disability?” Does anyone doubt that an ad campaign such as this would finish off a GOP candidate?

_____________________________________________

UPDATE: There was a point briefly raised here about Bush Admin e-mails that was incorrect; it has been removed. I thought the President had abandoned using e-mail upon entering office; what he abandoned was sending e-mail to family and friends, because he couldn’t guarantee their privacy.

UPDATE 2: Wait a minute; I was right, but I don’t know whether it started on Day One of his administration or came later. The WSJ link is from October 2006 –

He (Bush) added: “I tend not to email or — not only tend not to email, I don’t email, because of the different record requests that can happen to a president. I don’t want to receive emails because, you know, there’s no telling what somebody’s email may — it would show up as, you know, a part of some kind of a story, and I wouldn’t be able to say, ‘Well, I didn’t read the email.’ ‘But I sent it to your address, how can you say you didn’t?’ So, in other words, I’m very cautious about emailing.”

So it really is the case that:

• The Obama campaign mocked its opponent’s war-caused physical handicaps.
• Claimed they prevent him from doing things he actually does (in some cases with help from a loving spouse).
• Used as its central claim his supposed inability to do something that the next president will probably continue not doing, or will at most do very rarely, for the reasons President Bush cited.

In the process, the campaign and its candidate exposed its guttural instincts and thought processes for all the world to see.

Great show, guys and gals.

UPDATE 3: Mark Steyn weighs in at the Corner (HT Instapundit) — “It’s extraordinary that someone who wants to be our president and our commander in chief knows how to send an e-mail …but not how to do a five-minute Google search.”

UPDATE 4: John at Powerline — “I guess now we’ll find out whether Barack Obama is capable of shame.” Don’t hold your breath waiting for it.