This is one of MANY reasons that I wish Lennon were still around. To hear his views on the war, the Goverment, etc., but why do I see a "rerun" here - a repeat of the 1970's (a war that doesn't have an ending, gas prices going crazy, etc.) I think John might be shouting the same things today as in the early 70's.
This isn't a solution and I'm more than willing to hear any and all voices, solutions, etc, but to me, it's the rich getting rich and unless you have money, you're not getting into office to "change" anything, just to get "richer". And once the rich have the middle class money - it's out to get the "lower rich" money. They have to have it all or nothing!!! The U.S. government has chanced from "of the people, by the people, for the people" to "of the money, by the money, for the money". I've been voting since 1976 and yes, Reagan was a pretty good President (sorry for those whom think he was "great", but I didn't vote for him either time and I have no political ties to any party.), but I've not "seen" anyone that made me think - "Damn - now that person would make a GREAT President". I'm just seeing rich people wanting to get into office for their own "hidden" reason, get wealthier and hold on to that as long as possible (Ted Kennedy, Carl & Sandy Levin in Michigan, - these 3 have been in office almost as long as I've been alive!!) Let me at least say, the best bumper sticker I've seen said "I love my country, it's my government that I can't stand."
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Quote of the day, from Roger Simon of The Politico:
If a tree falls in the forest when everybody expects it to fall, does it make a sound?
Yes, says Hillary Clinton. It makes a deafening roar, says Hillary Clinton.
SHE WON THE WEST VIRGINIA PRIMARY BY A KAZILLION PERCENTAGE POINTS TUESDAY NIGHT, AND THAT, SHE SAYS, HAS TO MEAN SOMETHING!
Except the press doesn't think so. The press is unimpressed. This may be the first time in election history in which the press has withdrawn from a race before the candidate.
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Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe last night. I love this guy. He was pitching the same line with only slightly less vigor to Tim Russert on Meet The Press last Sunday:
This is hilarious: Chris Matthews obliterates radio talk show host Kevin James.
Yup, hilarious!!
Trouble is, there are SO many people who listen to the Kevin James' of the country, and are taken in by this BS. Comes straight from the top ... the Press secretary that didn't know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was ... who cares! She looks good on TV!!
I love John, I love Paul, And George and Ringo, I love them all!
Trouble is, there are SO many people who listen to the Kevin James' of the country, and are taken in by this BS. Comes straight from the top ... the Press secretary that didn't know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was ... who cares! She looks good on TV!!
Seven people sent me that link this morning. James probably got more attention for those nine minutes last night on Matthews than he's ever managed to get through his own efforts bloviating on KRLA. Looks good on him, too.
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2008 is beginning to look like 1980 with the party labels reversed, but does Obama have it in him to do for the Democrats what Reagan did for the Republicans?
McCain Can Run, but Bush Won’t Hide By FRANK RICH Published: May 18, 2008 / New York Times
THE biggest gift President Bush has given his party this year was to keep his daughter’s wedding nearly as private as Connie Corleone’s. Now that his disapproval rating has reached the Nixon nadir of negativity, even a joyous familial ritual isn’t enough to make the country glad to see him. The G.O.P.’s best hope would be for both the president and Dick Cheney to lock themselves in a closet until the morning after Election Day.
Republicans finally recognized the gravity of their situation three days after Jenna Bush took her vows in Crawford. As Hillary Clinton romped in West Virginia, voters in Mississippi elected a Democrat in a Congressional district that went for Bush-Cheney by 25 percentage points just four years ago. It’s the third “safe” Republican House seat to fall in a special election since March.
Party leaders have been haplessly trying to identify possible remedies ever since. It didn’t help that their recent stab at an Obamaesque national Congressional campaign slogan, “The Change You Deserve,” was humiliatingly identified as the advertising pitch for the anti-depressant Effexor. (If they’re going to go the pharmaceutical route, “Viva Viagra” might be more to the point.) Yet for all the Republican self-flagellation, it’s still not clear that the party even understands the particular dimensions of its latest defeat and its full implications for both Congressional races and John McCain in November.
The Mississippi election was actually a runoff, required by law after a preliminary vote left neither candidate with the required 50 percent. In the last round, on April 22, the Democrat, Travis Childers, beat the Republican, Greg Davis, 49 percent to 46 percent. (The rest went to minor candidates.) On Tuesday, that margin increased dramatically: the Republican remained at 46 percent while the Democrat jumped to 54 percent.
What happened in the intervening three weeks helps explain why. The G.O.P. didn’t merely step up its expensive negative campaign, attempting to take down Mr. Childers (who is a white, conservative Democrat) by linking him with Mr. Obama, a ranting Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Nancy Pelosi. It also brought in the party’s big guns. Mr. Bush and Mr. McCain recorded mass phone pitches for Mr. Davis. Karl Rove and Mr. Cheney campaigned for him.
The vice president’s visit was last Monday, the centerpiece of a get-out-the-vote rally in DeSoto County, a G.O.P. stronghold. “We’ll put our shoulders to the wheel for John McCain,” the vice president promised as he bestowed his benediction on Mr. Davis. Well, he got out the vote all right. In the election results the next day, the Childers total in DeSoto County increased 142 percent, while the Davis count went up only 47 percent.
The district as a whole is the second whitest in Mississippi. (Its black population is 27.2 percent.) It’s the sole district Mr. Obama lost to Mrs. Clinton in the state’s Democratic primary in March. Yet even in this unlikely political terrain the combination of a race-based Republican campaign and the personal intervention of Mr. Cheney energized enough white moderates and black voters to flip the district to the Democrats. Keep in mind, it’s the Deep South we’re talking about here. Imagine how the lethal combination of the Bush-Cheney brand and backlash-inducing G.O.P. race-baiting could whip up a torrential turnout by young voters, black voters and independents in true swing states farther north and west.
Just 36 hours after the Mississippi debacle, Mr. McCain tried to distance himself from the administration by flip-flopping on his signature issue, Iraq, suddenly endorsing just the kind of timetable for withdrawal he has characterized as “surrender” when proposed by Democrats or Mitt Romney. (When Mr. McCain proposes it, he labels it “victory.”) But hardly had Mr. McCain spoken than his message was upstaged by Mr. Bush’s partisan political speech in Israel. The president implied that Mr. Obama would have enabled the Nazis even more foolishly than his own grandfather, Prescott Bush, did in the 1930s when he maintained “investment relationships with Hitler’s Germany,” as Kevin Phillips delicately describes it in “American Dynasty.”
Mr. McCain’s Iraq stunt was his second effort in a week to flee Mr. Bush, following a speech bemoaning administration inaction on climate change. These gambits were in turn preceded by Mr. McCain’s attack on the White House response to Hurricane Katrina. Too bad he took this strong stand nearly three years after it might have sped relief to those suffering in New Orleans.
The McCain campaign is hoping that such showy, if tardy, departures from Bush-Cheney doctrine will constitute a galaxy of Sister Souljah moments, each with headlines reading “McCain Breaks With Bush on...” and the usual knee-jerk press references to Mr. McCain as a “maverick.” Enough of these, you see, and those much-needed independent voters might be flimflammed into believing that the G.O.P. candidate bears no responsibility for the administration’s toxically unpopular policies.
You can’t blame him for trying. Independents favor Democrats over Republicans on most issues, according to the April New York Times/CBS News poll, including the economy (by 30 points), Iraq (by 13 points) and health care (48 points).
But are independents suckers? They’d have to be to fall for the pitch that Mr. McCain is an apostate in his own party in 2008. He has been an outspoken Bush defender since helping him sell the Iraq war in 2002 and barnstorming for him in 2004. Despite Mr. McCain’s campaign claims to the contrary, he never publicly called for the firing of Donald Rumsfeld. He is still one of the president’s most stalwart supporters in Congress, even signing on to the president’s wildly unpopular veto of an expansion of children’s health insurance.
Mr. McCain’s one major domestic policy rebellion, over the Bush tax cuts, has long since been ditched. Last Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” his economic surrogate, Carly Fiorina, implied that Mr. McCain would make budgetary ends meet by cutting earmarks — federal pork that, in her inflated estimate, amounted to $42 billion over the past two years. But even if he cut all $42 billion, total federal spending would still be reduced by only 0.78 percent.
Hard as it is for Mr. McCain to run from the Bush policies he supports, it will be far harder to escape from Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney themselves. When Mr. McCain accepted Mr. Bush’s endorsement at the White House in March, he referred three times to the president’s “busy schedule,” as if wishing aloud that the lame-duck incumbent would have no time to appear at, say, get-out-the-vote rallies. Alas, Mr. Bush and company are not going gently into retirement.
Just look at Mr. Rove. Some Democrats are outraged that he is now employed as a pundit by Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal as well as Fox News. Instead of complaining, they should be thrilled that Mr. Rove keeps inviting Republican complacency by constantly locating silver linings in the party’s bad news. His ubiquitous TV presence as a thinly veiled McCain surrogate has the added virtue of wrapping the Republican ticket in a daily and suffocating Bush bearhug, since Mr. Rove is far more synonymous with his former boss than Mr. Obama is with his former pastor.
The Democrats can only hope that Mr. Rove will be a color commentator, so to speak, at the conventions. The parties’ weeklong infomercials are shaping up as quite a study in contrasts. For all the fears of a Democratic civil war, the planets may be aligning for a truce, and possibly a celebration. As fate has it, the nominee’s acceptance speech is scheduled for the night of Aug. 28, exactly 45 years after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. electrified the nation with “I Have a Dream.”
The next day brings another anniversary: Mr. McCain turns 72. And then, on Sept. 1, comes the virtually all-white G.O.P. vaudeville in Minneapolis. You’ll be pleased to know the show will go on despite the fact that the convention manager, chosen by the McCain campaign, had to resign last weekend after being exposed as the chief executive of a lobbying and consulting firm hired by the military junta in Myanmar.
The conventioneers will arrive via the airport whose men’s room was immortalized by a Republican senator still serving the good people of Idaho. This will be a most picturesque backdrop to the party’s eternal platform battles over family values, from same-sex marriage to abortion.
For good measure, antiwar demonstrators from within the G.O.P. — Ron Paul devotees — could provide at least a smidgen of the 1968-style disruptions the Democrats may avoid. In April, the Nevada Republican state convention abruptly adjourned in midsession after the Paul forces won rule changes. The Los Angeles Times reported last week that other Paul cadres, operating below the national press’s radar, have also been fighting guerrilla battles “at county and state conventions from Washington and Missouri to Maine and Mississippi.”
Already one of the national convention’s de facto hosts — Minnesota’s endangered Senator Norm Coleman — is frantically trying to save his seat by disowning his record as an Iraq war booster and disentangling himself from the president. Good luck! But how can Mr. McCain escape the dread specter of this White House at the convention? Surely Mr. Bush will exercise his prerogative to address the nation in prime time.
Unless, of course, Labor Day week just happens to be the perfect moment for a second Bush daughter to tie the knot in Crawford.
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Overheard...
The Last Debate
By MAUREEN DOWD Published: May 21, 2008
“What do you want? Please, Sweetie, would you just tell me what you want?”
“Don’t Sweetie me, Twiggy. You know what I want.”
“Besides that, Hillary. Seriously, you don’t want your delusion to put John McCain in the White House. Or maybe you do. You have no shot. I’m 60 delegates away from nomination nirvana. You should stop stalking me. I come down to Florida for a victory lap and you follow me down here and call for a recount. Look what that did for Al Gore. If you show a shred of common sense and take a powder now, the party will put you on a pedestal.”
“Pedestals are for losers. You’re on a pedestal. I’ve never been a loser. I refuse to lose. I won the West Virginia and Kentucky derbies, and I’m not going to end up like Eight Belles.”
“Hillary, you’ve been a great candidate, better than your train-wreck campaign. You’re Churchillian in your indomitable tenacity. You’ve inspired women all over the country. In fact, you’ve inspired some of them to hate me. But now it’s time for you to try to muster a gracious exit.”
“Forget it, Bones. Once Harold Ickes works his dark magic on the delegate rules to count Michigan and Florida, I’ll have the popular vote. And then the superdelegates will grovel back. They know in their hearts that they don’t want to go on a blind date with a guy who’s going to be BFF with Cuba, Hamas, Iran and retired Weathermen. You can bet your white turban that I’m not raising the white flag.”
“Like hell you aren’t, sister.”
“Sexist!”
“Racist!”
“Speaking of whites, you can’t win without them. And if you think your Secretary of Hairdressing, John Edwards, is going to help, you’re more delusional than I am.”
“Hillary, when are you going to realize that these whites you consider your pawns are so sick of the Republicans that they’re going to vote for anybody who has the ‘D’ next to their name, and it’s going to be me. So cool it with the White Fright. Now what do you want? Debt relief?”
“Bill and I don’t need your Netroots arugula moolah. We don’t need your stinking $20 donors. We’ve got Burkle, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis and Kazakh uranium loot on tap.”
“Settle down, Hillary. What if I let you write the health care plank in the party platform?”
“Wow, you’re so-o-o generous. Can I also write the plank on switchgrass?”
“I switched from grass a long time ago.”
“Listen, rookie, we’re gonna have to share this thing.”
“Fine, you can have the 3 a.m. shift on the White House switchboard.”
“Oh, you’re so witty with all your stupid rallies with 75,000 people and spending $100 million on ads to promote one puny word: Change. I’ve made sacrifices in this campaign. While you’ve been fake-eating and losing weight, I’ve had to stuff myself with all that greasy working-class junk food and chase it with Boilermakers.”
“What about me? I’ve come from nowhere, with a single mother on food stamps and a funny name.”
“Oh, you’re so inspiring. For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country.”
“Don’t mock Michelle. I would be polite and ask you to be my vice president, but you’d accept, just the same way Lyndon Johnson sandbagged Bobby Kennedy, so I can’t. You and Bill are just too much drama for me. Bill is off-the-charts crazy.”
“Tell me about it. But he’d be way over on Massachusetts Avenue, a completely different ZIP code than the White House. And Cheney built that underground bunker there, so we’d always have someplace to stash him. If you don’t put me on the ticket, I’ll signal my faithful to vote for John McCain. He’s more fun than you, anyhow.”
“Hillary, I don’t trust you. And Michelle hates your guts. Look, the Senate is a wonderful place. I enjoyed my two months there. You’ve never made the most of the experience because you were so busy using it as a launching pad.”
“Back at ya, Skeletor.”
“Can you stop talking, Hillary? Is that even possible?”
“No, I won’t, Mr. Never-Convened-Your-European-Affairs-Subcommittee. I don’t want to go back. It’s boring. And why should I work with all those self-hating, so-called feminists who stabbed me in the back, like Claire McCaskill and Amy Klobuchar?”
“Look, Hillary, a few years back in the Senate helping me move my world-changing agenda will help you repair some of those relationships. In Barack Obama’s Washington, there will be no more game-playing, mud-slinging or back-stabbing.”
“Hey, Señor Appeaser, there’s another primary in 2012. Bill and I are already gearing up for it.”
I've got no problem with what Hillary has done and is doing. I think Obama is by FAR a much stronger campaigner now as a result of Hillary's thorny and pesky challenges, and will be much less likely to make a fatal faux pas in the general election as a result of this.
Hillary's role in the general election, and in history, will be determined by what she does and says in the next few weeks, not by what she's done in the last few months. She has the power to rally her troops behind Obama and be the savior of the Democratic party and the country; conversely, she can signal them in subtle ways that it's OK with her if they stay home in November. She'll either be known as the great Democratic hero, or Ralph Nader's Ralph Nader.
And let's not forget ... she can still EASILY win this if she gets a whole lot of the uncommitted superdelegates to vote for her. Why would they? Well, she's pointing out that since March 1st, Obama has lost by HUGE margins to her in the major battle ground swing vote states that will absolutely determine the presidency in November (Ohio, Pennsylvania). Additionally, she's shown that Obama is going to have an awfully hard time winning the votes of white middle class workers (see Indiana, W. Virginia, Kentucky).
It's reasons like these that are keeping all those uncommitted superdelegates sitting on their hands. If it were a done deal, obvious as can be sort of thing, it would be over. It's not, so it's not.
So Hillary says "Stay tuned for more!", and the superdelegates are still listening ...
I love John, I love Paul, And George and Ringo, I love them all!
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I think Hillary Clinton is trying to strengthen her own position within the Democratic Party so that she can keep as many options open as possible. Taking the Veep slot doesn't make a lot of sense (at least to me), but she may want to run for Governor of New York eventually, become Senate Majority Leader, or lay the foundation for another run at the presidency in 2012 or 2016.
I doubt that many superdelegates are still in play. An undeclared super is not the same thing as an undecided super and I suspect that most of them are just waiting for the most politically opportune time (that is to say politically safest or most strategically advantageous time) to declare themselves. Clinton's prospects are virtually nil.
It is true that Obama has lost by huge margins among white working class voters in Appalachian states, but those voters are only marginally Democratic even within the Democratic Party so far as presidential elections go anyway. Democrats have been losing the less educated / low income voters in these states in presidential contests since at least 1968 and it's not at all clear that Hillary Clinton could carry very many more of them in the fall against John McCain than Barack Obama could. Winning working class voters in a Democratic primary is one thing, but holding them, especially within the broader working class electorate as a whole, is quite another. It's a conservative culture, and while local working class Democrats will support like minded people in local and congressional elections, national Democratic Party candidates, especially presidential ones, have been failing in these states for a long time. Even Bill Clinton only won pluralities of working class voters nationally in 1992 and 1996 (to say nothing of Appalachia): in a very real sense, it was Ross Perot, not Clinton's own coalition building, that won him two elections.
Obama has to solve the Democrat's long standing demographic / electoral disadvantage and either expand the number of voters or dislodge some Republican leaning constituencies. He has to look at key states and see who's up for grabs. Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania are perhaps the most important as usual (Florida appears to be trending Republican), and in my opinion it's not going to be so much working class voters who'll make the difference for the Democrats but suburban middle class ones. The Democrats ought to make their pitch not so much directly at poor and less educated voters as at middle class types wondering how they're going to pay for their mortgages and health care, for college for their kids, and for their own retirements. Practical solutions for concrete problems aimed at the aspiring middle classes, I think, is the most productive way to go about building a new enduring Democratic coalition. Show how government can be used as an instrument for achieving great personal and national goals.
I think Hillary Clinton is trying to strengthen her own position within the Democratic Party so that she can keep as many options open as possible. Taking the Veep slot doesn't make a lot of sense (at least to me), but she may want to run for Governor of New York eventually, become Senate Majority Leader, or lay the foundation for another run at the presidency in 2012 or 2016.
I doubt that many superdelegates are still in play. An undeclared super is not the same thing as an undecided super and I suspect that most of them are just waiting for the most politically opportune time (that is to say politically safest or most strategically advantageous time) to declare themselves. Clinton's prospects are virtually nil.
It is true that Obama has lost by huge margins among white working class voters in Appalachian states, but those voters are only marginally Democratic even within the Democratic Party so far as presidential elections go anyway. Democrats have been losing the less educated / low income voters in these states in presidential contests since at least 1968 and it's not at all clear that Hillary Clinton could carry very many more of them in the fall against John McCain than Barack Obama could. Winning working class voters in a Democratic primary is one thing, but holding them, especially within the broader working class electorate as a whole, is quite another. It's a conservative culture, and while local working class Democrats will support like minded people in local and congressional elections, national Democratic Party candidates, especially presidential ones, have been failing in these states for a long time. Even Bill Clinton only won pluralities of working class voters nationally in 1992 and 1996 (to say nothing of Appalachia): in a very real sense, it was Ross Perot, not Clinton's own coalition building, that won him two elections.
Obama has to solve the Democrat's long standing demographic / electoral disadvantage and either expand the number of voters or dislodge some Republican leaning constituencies. He has to look at key states and see who's up for grabs. Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania are perhaps the most important as usual (Florida appears to be trending Republican), and in my opinion it's not going to be so much working class voters who'll make the difference for the Democrats but suburban middle class ones. The Democrats ought to make their pitch not so much directly at poor and less educated voters as at middle class types wondering how they're going to pay for their mortgages and health care, for college for their kids, and for their own retirements. Practical solutions for concrete problems aimed at the aspiring middle classes, I think, is the most productive way to go about building a new enduring Democratic coalition. Show how government can be used as an instrument for achieving great personal and national goals.
Good points all, especially about Obama needing to peel some previously Republican voters over to the Dem side, like "voters formerly known as soccer moms and accountant dads from the 'burbs", whatever they are called this season.
If any justification for this point of view is needed - article in the NYT today describing how the Jewish Florida vote may be swinging Republican, for racial reasons. Jeesh, if you can't count on those votes as a Dem, it really isn't the same old ballgame (probably not the "Change" Obama meant when he came up with his campaign logo). I think it's things like this that are keeping the undeclared delegates from declaring for now.
I think the only way Obama can be assured of locking up the race in November is to have Hillary campaign like he*l for him. And, the only way she'll do that is if she is assured she will be "rewarded" appropriately, however that may be (VP, with de facto Secy. of State powers, and also guaranteed leadership role in energy and health policies, or something suitably impressive and powerful). I think that is what makes Hillary run now - to be as strong as can be this fall. Strange bedfellows ... the usual in politics!
I love John, I love Paul, And George and Ringo, I love them all!
I think Hillary Clinton is trying to strengthen her own position within the Democratic Party so that she can keep as many options open as possible. Taking the Veep slot doesn't make a lot of sense (at least to me), but she may want to run for Governor of New York eventually, become Senate Majority Leader, or lay the foundation for another run at the presidency in 2012 or 2016.
I doubt that many superdelegates are still in play. An undeclared super is not the same thing as an undecided super and I suspect that most of them are just waiting for the most politically opportune time (that is to say politically safest or most strategically advantageous time) to declare themselves. Clinton's prospects are virtually nil.
It is true that Obama has lost by huge margins among white working class voters in Appalachian states, but those voters are only marginally Democratic even within the Democratic Party so far as presidential elections go anyway. Democrats have been losing the less educated / low income voters in these states in presidential contests since at least 1968 and it's not at all clear that Hillary Clinton could carry very many more of them in the fall against John McCain than Barack Obama could. Winning working class voters in a Democratic primary is one thing, but holding them, especially within the broader working class electorate as a whole, is quite another. It's a conservative culture, and while local working class Democrats will support like minded people in local and congressional elections, national Democratic Party candidates, especially presidential ones, have been failing in these states for a long time. Even Bill Clinton only won pluralities of working class voters nationally in 1992 and 1996 (to say nothing of Appalachia): in a very real sense, it was Ross Perot, not Clinton's own coalition building, that won him two elections.
Obama has to solve the Democrat's long standing demographic / electoral disadvantage and either expand the number of voters or dislodge some Republican leaning constituencies. He has to look at key states and see who's up for grabs. Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania are perhaps the most important as usual (Florida appears to be trending Republican), and in my opinion it's not going to be so much working class voters who'll make the difference for the Democrats but suburban middle class ones. The Democrats ought to make their pitch not so much directly at poor and less educated voters as at middle class types wondering how they're going to pay for their mortgages and health care, for college for their kids, and for their own retirements. Practical solutions for concrete problems aimed at the aspiring middle classes, I think, is the most productive way to go about building a new enduring Democratic coalition. Show how government can be used as an instrument for achieving great personal and national goals.
Good points all, especially about Obama needing to peel some previously Republican voters over to the Dem side, like "voters formerly known as soccer moms and accountant dads from the 'burbs", whatever they are called this season.
If any justification for this point of view is needed - article in the NYT today describing how the Jewish Florida vote may be swinging Republican, for racial reasons. Jeesh, if you can't count on those votes as a Dem, it really isn't the same old ballgame (probably not the "Change" Obama meant when he came up with his campaign logo). I think it's things like this that are keeping the undeclared delegates from declaring for now.
I think the only way Obama can be assured of locking up the race in November is to have Hillary campaign like he*l for him. And, the only way she'll do that is if she is assured she will be "rewarded" appropriately. I thank that is what makes Hillary run now - to be in as strong a position as she can be this fall. Strange bedfellows ... the usual in politics!
I love John, I love Paul, And George and Ringo, I love them all!
Just got this alert in an email. Apparently the Holocaust was the Jews' fault. Man, the people that politicians will sleep with:
You might have heard that Pastor John Hagee, a key supporter of John McCain's campaign, once said that the Catholic Church was a "great whore" and that Hurricane Katrina was the judgment of God against New Orleans for planning a gay pride parade.
If that weren't already enough, now new audiotape has surfaced where Hagee says that God sent Adolf Hitler to cause the Holocaust so that Jews would move to Israel. But John McCain has refused to renounce Hagee's endorsement in his campaign for President.
I just asked John McCain to finally renounce Hagee's endorsement. I hope you'll join me! You can listen to the new audio and take action here:
All you've got to do is choose love. That's how I live it now. I learned a long time ago, I can feed the birds in my garden. I can't feed them all. -- Ringo Starr, Rolling Stone magazine, May 2007
For all I know, Ringo might be a yogi disguised as a drummer! - George Harrison
I think the only way Obama can be assured of locking up the race in November is to have Hillary campaign like he*l for him. And, the only way she'll do that is if she is assured she will be "rewarded" appropriately, however that may be (VP, with de facto Secy. of State powers, and also guaranteed leadership role in energy and health policies, or something suitably impressive and powerful). I think that is what makes Hillary run now - to be as strong as can be this fall. Strange bedfellows ... the usual in politics!
I think Clinton is maneuvering to strengthen her own position within the Democratic Party and among parts of the party's base. She probably doesn't have an explicit goal in mind beyond maximizing her own power and ability to exploit whatever opportunities come her way, or that she can make for herself. I suspect she probably hasn't quite given up hope of dislodging Obama yet, either.
Interestingly, there are a lot of rumors circulating today that Bill Clinton is really pushing for Hillary to be offered the VP slot. The rumor itself is probably a political gambit on the Clintons' part, and whether its purpose is really to further its own stated aim or maneuever toward some other outcome (power play to force a concession from Obama) will make a good guessing game for the next few days. It's pure Clinton, though; we saw this sort of thing throughout the nineties, especially after the Republicans took over Congress in early 1995.
But putting Clinton on the ticket is dangerous. The Clintons are nothing if not formidably ambitious and thoroughly ruthless, and even assuming that it's better to have a rival close where there is at least some possibility of exerting some measure of control over him or her, what is Obama going to do with Bill, an adolescent narcissist who will be asked to play second fiddle to a second fiddle? He'd have to rewrite his whole personality to cope with that, and until or if he did, Obama would be the guy who would have to do the coping. More Clinton drama is hardly my idea of change.
Just got this alert in an email. Apparently the Holocaust was the Jews' fault. Man, the people that politicians will sleep with:
This is a good example of what can happen when a Republican candidate desperate for an endorsement by the party's fundamentalist / spaz division but unfamiliar with the perversities of its members grabs for a handshake from one of them without doing some vetting first. But it's all over: McCain's dumped the nasty little wretch:
McCain Rejects Pastor's Backing Over Remarks
By Juliet Eilperin and Kimberly Kindy Washington Post Staff Writers Friday, May 23, 2008; Page A01
STOCKTON, Calif., May 22 -- Sen. John McCain on Thursday repudiated the presidential endorsement of the Rev. John Hagee after learning about a sermon in which the megachurch pastor from San Antonio declared that God allowed the rise of Adolf Hitler because it resulted in returning Israel to the Jewish people.
The Arizona Republican's decision to distance himself from Hagee came after months of mounting criticism, particularly from Roman Catholics, over his acceptance of Hagee's endorsement in late February. Hagee has called the Catholic Church a "false religious system" and a "false cult system" and has suggested that the church played a role in the Holocaust.
Hagee, 68, is one of the country's best-known Christian television evangelists and is known for his fervent support of Israel. But he has a conflicted relationship with Jewish organizations. He spearheaded a group called Christians United for Israel, but not all Jewish groups embrace him, because he does not support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They are also leery of his support because he has suggested that their "rebellion" against "Jehovah" has caused much of their suffering, including the Holocaust.
This week, a new controversy over his preaching began when a video started circulating of a sermon, delivered in the late 1990s, in which Hagee calls Hitler a "hunter," a reference to the Book of Jeremiah, which quotes God saying he "will restore" the Jews "to the land I gave to their forefathers."
"Then God sent a hunter. A hunter is someone with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter," Hagee says in the sermon. "And the Bible says -- Jeremiah writing -- 'They shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill out of the holes of the rocks,' meaning there's no place to hide. And that will be offensive to some people but don't let your heart be offended. I didn't write it, Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel."
When asked what McCain thought of the remarks, spokesman Tucker Bounds responded with an e-mail from the candidate denouncing Hagee. "Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible, and I repudiate them," McCain said. "I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee's endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well."
Speaking to reporters later, McCain said: "I just think that the statement is crazy and unacceptable," adding that while "Pastor Hagee is entitled to his views," he does not want to be affiliated with them.
Mindful of the controversy that ensnarled Sen. Barack Obama, his possible opponent in the November election, McCain tried to draw a distinction between his link to Hagee and Obama's ties to the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who was the pastor for many years of the church Obama attends in Chicago. Wright's incendiary remarks about the U.S. government have dogged the Democratic front-runner for months.
"I have said I do not believe Senator Obama shares Reverend Wright's extreme views," McCain said in the statement. "But let me also be clear, Reverend Hagee was not and is not my pastor or spiritual advisor, and I did not attend his church for twenty years." He added: "I have denounced statements he made immediately upon learning of them, as I do again today."
At a campaign rally in February, McCain said he was "pleased to have the endorsement" of Hagee. The next day, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights publicly chastised the candidate and demanded that he reject the endorsement. But McCain refused, despite comments Hagee has made about Catholicism, and his implication that Hurricane Katrina represented divine retribution because a gay pride parade had been planned in New Orleans for that week.
Initially, after learning about Hagee's comments, McCain said that just because he accepts -- or seeks -- someone's endorsement does not mean he endorses that person's views. McCain later said that he repudiated Hagee's views, but continued to say that he accepted and was proud of the endorsement.
Hagee issued his own statement Thursday, saying that he was withdrawing his endorsement to prevent any further damage to the presumptive GOP nominee's candidacy.
"I am tired of these baseless attacks and fear that they have become a distraction in what should be a national debate about important issues," he said in a statement.
McCain also received the endorsement of another controversial television evangelist in late February, the Rev. Rod Parsley of Ohio, whose sermons have been called anti-Muslim. In one sermon, posted on YouTube, Parsley described what he said is "our historical conflict with Islam," adding that "America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed."
Asked about the two preachers Thursday, he said: "I've never been to Pastor Hagee's church or Pastor Parsley's church," adding: "I received their endorsement, which doesn't mean I endorse their views."
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