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Cindy McCain is no ice princess

Full speech here.

She’s introduced by a nice bio video that focuses on her philanthropic works with lots of photos of her delivering aid in poor countries and visiting victims of war and genocide. (It talks about her meeting John McCain at a cocktail party; it doesn’t mention he was married at the time.)

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Earlier today she said she disagrees with Sarah Palin on outlawing abortion in cases of rape and incest, and on teaching only abstinence in school.

For a minute she sounds like many speakers at the Democratic convention: She talks about: “Families worried about losing their homes, towns deserted by industies once at their center, adn mothers with no choice but to send their children to unsage and underperforming schools…”

But then she says people could solve these problems, “If only the federal government would get itself under control and out of our way.”

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On Palin:

“John has picked a reform-minded … hockey-mommin’ … basketball shootin’ … moose huntin’ … fly-fishin’ … pistol-packing … mother of five for vice president. And as a fellow hockey mom myself and a western conservative mother, I couldn’t be prouder that John has shaken things up as he usually does!”

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“Our son, Jack, will graduate from the United States Naval Academy next year – fourth generation – ready to do his service. And our son Jimmy – a lance corporal in the Marine Corps – served honorably in Iraq … as hundreds of thousands of other young men and women just like him are doing for America and freedom everywhere.
The stakes were never more clear to me, than the morning I watched my son Jimmy strap on his weapons and board a bus headed for harm’s way.

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“We all come to that knowledge in different ways. For me, the great moment of clarity came when I became a mother. Something changed in me, and I would never see my obligations the same way.
It was after that, I was walking through the streets of Dhaka, Bangladesh, surrounded by terrible poverty and the devastation of a cyclone. All around me were the children, and the desperate faces of their mothers. The pain was overwhelming … and I felt helpless. But then I visited an orphanage begun by Mother Teresa, and two very sick little girls captured my heart. There was something I could do. I could take them home. And so I did.”

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Now she’s talking about working with Operation Smile, visiting Georgia, and recognizing a mother from Rwanda who favours forgiveness and reconciliation. “You are my hero,” she says.

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