Hagee has called the Catholic Church a "false religious system" and a "false cult system"
At least it's not a "real" cult. It's only a false one, so that should be okay.
Quoted Text
McCain said that just because he accepts -- or seeks -- someone's endorsement does not mean he endorses that person's views.
That I readily believe. I think if a candidate can smell votes, he's there in a jiffy with a handshake, be they part of the fundamentalist / spaz division (LOVE that term) or not. I guess the Jews have a better lobby, because the Catholics have been complaining about this guy for months and never got anywhere. I hope McCain is now seen as a "false" fundamentalist for this rejection and the spaz division gets riled.
Quoted Text
"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.
Me, too! Let's get back to the bowling scores and flag pins. Those were fun.
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 hope McCain is now seen as a "false" fundamentalist for this rejection and the spaz division gets riled.
He's going to get pied going in the other direction now. The fundamentalists (correctly) read the Hagee thing as a pander and never believed him in the first place, and his backing off now will only make them jeer him even more loudly as he runs away. It won't even matter to them that McCain fled because he found out that Hagee's nuts. Insincerity is bad enough, but insincerity provisionally given and later retracted because it's become inconvenient is really asking for the tomatoes. Good job all around, I'd say.
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Bush-McCain Fundraiser Scaled Back Due To Lack Of Takers
By Eric Kleefeld - May 24, 2008, 12:31AM
A planned mega-fundraiser for the GOP, featuring President Bush and John McCain, has now been scaled back in the face of a daunting problem: Too few people actually wanted to buy tickets.
According to the Phoenix Business Journal, fundraiser set for this Tuesday in the city's convention center failed to sell enough tickets, leading to fears that the anti-Bush protesters might end up outnumbering actual attendees.
The new plan is for the Bush-McCain fundraising effort, which will benefit both the McCain campaign and the RNC, to be held in private residences in the Phoenix area away from media coverage.
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
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Two good commentaries on Hillary Clinton's Friday afternoon blunder:
All About Eve
By MAUREEN DOWD from THE NEW YORK TIMES Published: May 25, 2008 WASHINGTON
Maybe it was the proximity of Mount Rushmore and Deadwood, but something caused Hillary’s inner Eve Harrington to leap out in South Dakota.
Venturing into Daschle-Obama territory, she inadvertently and inelegantly illuminated her thinking on why she wants to keep running as long as she can: stuff happens.
In politics, there are many unpredictable and unsavory twists and turns. That’s why she’s hanging around, and that’s why she and Bill want to force Barack Obama to take her as his vice president, even if he doesn’t want her, even if Michelle can’t stand her, even if she has to stir the sexist pot, and even if she tarnishes his silvery change message.
In an interview with The Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, Hillary disagreed that she’s hurting party unity: “My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.”
She was talking about the timeline for June, not wishing physical harm upon her rival. But many Democrats were upset. Congressman James Clyburn of South Carolina called her words “beyond the pale.”
Maybe a tired, stressed Hillary was giving an unfiltered version of a blunt conversation that she’s had with her husband and advisers about staying in the race, using R.F.K. as an anything-can-happen example, in the same way she fantasizes about Sean Hannity breaking a story that would demolish Obama.
She’s made the tasteless assassination comment before, including in a March interview with Time.
But coming right after the anniversary of the King assassination, right before the anniversary of the Bobby Kennedy assassination, right in the midst of the wrenching news about Teddy Kennedy’s brain tumor, and right in the middle of Billary’s hostile takeover attempt on the vice president’s mansion, the image was jarring.
Senator Clinton apologized and, in a fairly inspired reach, suggested that it was the awful diagnosis for Teddy that had put the dark thought in her head.
Standing incongruously in front of the salad-dressing section of a Sunshine Foods, she said, “The Kennedys have been much on my mind the last days because of Senator Kennedy” and pointed out that she holds Bobby Kennedy’s Senate seat.
Teddy Kennedy decided to endorse Obama in part because he was upset that Hillary sat silently when Francine Torge introduced the New York senator at a New Hampshire event saying: “Some people compare one of the other candidates to John F. Kennedy. But he was assassinated. And Lyndon Baines Johnson was the one who actually” signed the civil rights bill into law.
Hillary knows that in politics, bimbos erupt. Tapes leak. Husbands disappoint. Friends commit suicide. Rivals get sick. Her Senate race against Rudy Giuliani suddenly turned in her favor when he got prostate cancer and dropped out.
The macabre story of 2008 is that the vice presidential picks are important. On the Republican side, it’s because of John McCain’s age and history of skin cancer, and that’s openly discussed.
But on the Democratic side, it is, as The Times’s Obama reporter Jeff Zeleny has written, a “hushed worry.” Barack Obama has fused two of the most powerful narratives in American history — those of Martin Luther King Jr. and Camelot — and that makes him both magical and vulnerable.
He was only 6 years old in the spring of 1968, when Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. But the unspoken fear that he is in some danger as their spiritual heir hovers over his race. He got a Secret Service cordon last May, the earliest a candidate has ever been given it.
Alma Powell’s worries about assassination helped influence Colin Powell not to run. Michelle Obama expressed concern before her husband’s election to the Senate but said on “60 Minutes,” “I don’t lose sleep over it, because the realities are that, you know, as a black man, you know, Barack can get shot going to the gas station.”
Mike Huckabee had to apologize after making a joke at the National Rifle Association convention about a noise, saying it was Obama tripping off a chair when “somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.”
Obama now has the perfect excuse not to pick Hillary as his running mate. She has been too unseemly in her desire to be on the scene if he trips, or gets hit with a devastating story. She may want to take a cue from the Miss America contest: make a graceful, magnanimous exit and wait in the wings.
That’s where the runners-up can be found, prettily lurking, in case it turns out the girl with the crown has some naked pictures in her past.
Well, of course, Hillary didn't mean to suggest that Barack Obama might be assassinated before June 4. Maybe she was just meditating or trying to plant herself in some nut case assassin's head. This is so driven a brain that the country cannot trust it.
Just imagine her excuse after the mea culpa, that she was so wrought up over Ted Kennedy's illness that she couldn't help but think of brother Bobby's own death.
This is my warning to Barack Obama: Hillary as vice president would make your life miserable. She would behave like FDR's first vice president, John Nance Garner, who ran against him in the 1932 and 1940 primaries. In any case she would be trouble. Already Bill Clinton has staked her claim to be your successor.
LOL! Did you mean to write "fee" instead of "free"? Whatever, it was perfect. Thanks for the coffee up the nose. I enjoy a good snerk.
And thanks for the updates, Geoff! Man, I hope they can use this gaff to get Hillary out of Obama's hair. She will really louse him up. (Yes, more bad puns. Throw some Beatles at me in punishment...)
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
LOL! Did you mean to write "fee" instead of "free"? Whatever, it was perfect. Thanks for the coffee up the nose. I enjoy a good snerk. ...
And thanks for the updates, Geoff! Man, I hope they can use this gaff to get Hillary out of Obama's hair. She will really louse him up. (Yes, more bad puns. Throw some Beatles at me in punishment...)
Like most things of mine that turn out creative-like (afraid to actually say creative), it started as an error that was better than the original intended! Sorry for the coffee-sinus cleansing experience, I hope it wasn't too strongly caffeinated!
OT - I wonder if that is how most creative stuff happens? It seems so hard to sit down and say "I'm going to doing something different and creative now ...". I mean did the chord shift in the middle eight of "From Me to You" happen by mistake, or did they say ... "hey, let's make up something really wacky here, whaddya say?".
Sorry for these psychobabble cr*p, I really am an empiricist at heart, please don't tell my colleagues!
And now in punishment for your punctiliousness, you are hereby sentenced to listen The Goon Show, which apparently got the young Lennon's burgeoning mind warped for life (and probably had a few good ones, I'd bet)!
I love John, I love Paul, And George and Ringo, I love them all!
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Electoral strategy...
Obama looks westward in electoral map play By CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN | 5/27/08 4:30 AM EST
LAS CRUCES, N.M. — Officially, Sen. Barack Obama traveled to this desert city Monday for a Memorial Day address. He stood against the backdrop of the Organ Mountains and talked about honoring veterans, but his campaign aides came here believing they could do something bigger: win back the Mountain West from Republicans.
The underlying goal of Obama’s trip this week through New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado is to lay claim to a region that Obama views as one of his best opportunities to pick off states in November.
“We want to send a message now that we are going to go after them, and I expect to win them,” Obama told reporters after laying a wreath at a veterans’ memorial.
President Bush picked up 19 electoral votes across these three states — the margin by which Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry fell short in the Electoral College in 2004. He edged out Kerry by 5 percentage points in Colorado, 2 points in Nevada and less than 1 point in New Mexico. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters Kerry lost because he ignored places like rural Nevada.
Four years later, Democrats say they have learned their lesson. Party leaders bumped Nevada to the front of the primary calendar and chose Denver to host the convention.
“If we win these three states, plus the traditional Democratic base, he is president,” New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said of Obama, in an interview Monday. “If John Kerry had won these three states and lost Ohio as he did, he would’ve been president. To ignore the Mountain West is perilous.”
The states sit in Obama’s top tier of potential pickups, aides say, along with Ohio, Florida, Virginia and Iowa. It is in these states that Obama’s promise of building a broader electoral map will be put to the test.
Demographics, political trend lines and economic conditions help explain why Democratic strategists see the region as favorable terrain this year. After a vigorous attempt by Bush to appeal to Hispanics, who backed him with 40 percent of their vote in 2004, the anti-immigration bills pushed by Republican congressional leaders since then have alienated many in this voting bloc. Colorado has been trending Democratic, Nevada has been hit hard by the housing foreclosure crisis and New Mexico has swung between the parties in the past two presidential elections.
Obama will face a challenge from Sen. John McCain, who has represented Arizona for more than 20 years and took a lead until last year on comprehensive immigration reform, which won him a following among Hispanic voters.
Both candidates campaigned Monday in New Mexico, where both claimed strength in the region.
“I believe as a Western senator I understand the issues, the challenges of the future for these ... states, whether it be land, water, Native American issues, preservation, environmental issues,” McCain said in an interview with The Associated Press.
He said his positions on a number of issues — “pro-life, pro-military, pro-small business” and immigration — “will allow me to receive the consideration of the Hispanic voter.”
"I've got my work cut out for me. There's a strong economic headwind. There's a brand problem of Republicans. I understand those challenges, and I am sure I can meet them and I can win,” McCain said.
Obama told reporters he was “absolutely confident” that he would do well in the West because the voters are “independent-minded and are gonna look at whether or not over the last eight years the country is better off under Republican rule. And I think they are going to conclude they are not.”
Polls released last week by Rasmussen Reports found Obama beating McCain in Colorado, 48 percent to 42 percent, and in New Mexico, 50 percent to 41 percent. McCain held the edge in Nevada, 46 percent to 40 percent.
Bush lost New Mexico by 366 votes in 2000, and won it four years later by only 6,000 votes.
Nevada has proved similarly competitive, with Bush winning the state both times by less than four percentage points.
In Colorado, Bush’s margin of nine percentage points in 2000 dipped to five points in 2004. Democrats have since won a Senate seat, the governor’s office, two congressional districts and control of the state legislature.
“Democrats have been on a roll,” said Jennifer Duffy, an analyst with the Cook Political Report who views Colorado as Obama’s best opportunity of the three states.
The first order of business, however, for Obama is building deeper ties with Hispanic voters, who routinely favored Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton through the primary season.
Obama, an unknown on the national stage until 2004, had two problems at the outset, Richardson said. Hispanics were not familiar with him, and the Clintons had built strong support within the community over the years.
“Obama clearly has work to do,” said Simon Rosenberg, president of NDN, a progressive think tank and advocacy group that has studied immigration and the Hispanic vote.
But Rosenberg and Democratic strategists say, despite the slow start, the Illinois senator will win over the constituency, if only because the issue environment favors him. Hispanic voters, like other demographic groups, feel the effects of the economic downturn and have turned against the war, they say.
Obama advisers are mapping out a strategy that targets Hispanics, who make up 37 percent of the eligible electorate in New Mexico and 12 percent in Colorado and Nevada, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. It will include exposure in the Spanish-language media, paid advertisements, heavy campaigning in Hispanic areas, registering Hispanic voters and sending well-known Latino leaders such as Richardson out on the trail.
More fluency in Spanish would also help, Richardson added.
“He just cut an ad in Puerto Rico that is very passable Spanish,” Richardson said. “He practiced it intensively. He is getting there.”
Maybe I can find an island somewhere, call it "Nutope", use John's "Nutopian International Anthem" for my national anthem, have a majority of those that are on DM'S Beatle Forum as Nutope's ambassadors and skip off of these "elections".
Seems like the 2008 Presidential Election has been going on forever (since early 2006) and before anyone can blink, the mid-term 2010 elections will be here and the "re-elect" the winner of 2008 Presidential campaign will start all over again.
Maybe I can find an island somewhere, call it "Nutope", use John's "Nutopian International Anthem" for my national anthem, have a majority of those that are on DM'S Beatle Forum as Nutope's ambassadors and skip off of these "elections".
But no: the trick is to fight for and change what we've got here right now. Going to island just ducks the issue, and anyway there isn't an island remote enough. Evenings off on a beach somewhere sounds like a hell of a good idea, though.
Geoff - I was going to respone, but I don't want to bring everyone down. To me - The dream is trully over, and keeping a happy face to keep 'em wondering.
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, but hey, it's a fee country!