Archive for April 30th, 2008
April 30th, 2008
The political sophisticates who figure that the flap over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has pretty well doomed Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy had better think again.
The latest Wall Street Journal-NBC poll SHOWS that Americans are more troubled by the relationship between two other men.
Guess who.
POSTSCRIPT: That same poll shows Obama with a national lead of 3 percentage points over Hillary Clinton and 3 percentage points over John McCain. THIS OTHER POLL shows Obama leading Hillary by 8 percentage points and tied with John McCain.
Yeah, that Rev. Wright stuff is just killing him, isn’t it? Maybe he should get out of the race.
UPDATE: Pat Buchanan tonight on MSNBC:
”If President Bush is more unpopular than the Reverend Wright, the Republicans are in a lot of trouble.”
Maybe George Stephanopoulos will ask this question the next time he interviews McCain: “Do you think President Bush loves America as much as you do?
UPDATE II: Jonathan Martin of Politico is out with THIS REPORT, which includes the following passage about sentiments among Republican activists:
“From top to bottom, from McCain down to the youthful campaign and party staffers who work nearly around the clock to get him elected, the working assumption seems to be that the Democratic contest is over and Obama has won.
“Even when Clinton attacks McCain, President Bush or GOP policies, the response is either outright silence or snarky, dismissive ridicule about a failed campaign barely relevant enough to merit a response.”
UPDATE III: And then there’s THIS GOOD NEWS for Obama.
April 30th, 2008
That Clinton-McCain gas-tax holiday scheme is getting THUMBS DOWN from leading economic and political pundits.
Can you say “panderers,” boys and girls?
POSTSCRIPT: It seems appropriate that I re-post this video of a speech in which Barack Obama addresses the gas-tax issue:
April 30th, 2008
Five years! Time flies, doesn’t it?
That means we have only 95 years left in Iraq, by John McCain’s figuring.
But let’s be fair. The White House SAYS the big sign on the big ship was some kind of abbreviation for something else.
UPDATE: Here’s a “Mission Accomplished” ad from those fine folks at MoveOn.org:
April 30th, 2008
This went so well yesterday, I thought I’d give it another whirl.
I’m off to do a radio gig with Ken DeCoster on WNTA this morning, and I’ve got errands to run.
Chat among yourselves in my absence.
April 30th, 2008
I don’t mean to dance on the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s grave, but I have to wonder why John McCain has yet to explain exactly why he embraced the infamous TV preacher when it was widely known that Falwell had blamed America for Sept. 11 (a verbatim reminder of which is PROVIDED by Chuck Sweeny this morning on his blog).
When McCain first ran for president back in 2000 as a maverick Republican who suffered fools badly, he denounced Falwell and the Rev. Pat Robertson as “agents of intolerance” and faulted George W. Bush for being too friendly with them.
But as the saying goes, that was then, and this is now. When McCain decided to run for president again this year, he cast himself as less a maverick and more a reliably conservative Republican. Accordingly, he made up with Falwell and Robertson and even deigned to deliver the commencement address at Falwell’s Liberty University (see photo above).
This was despite Falwell’s well-known record of outrageous utterances, not the least outrageous of which was the aforementioned blaming of America for 9/11.
Here are few others:
Back in the ’80s, after Southern Baptist Convention President Bailey Smith told a Religious Right gathering that “God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew,” Falwell offered an identical view. “I do not believe,” he told reporters, “that God answers the prayer of any unredeemed Gentile or Jew.”
Also in the ’80s, Falwell lost a lawsuit that stemmed from his having condemned the gay-friendly Metropolitan Community Churches as “brute beasts” and “a vile and Satanic system” that will “one day be utterly annihilated and there will be a celebration in heaven.” His attorney, without any disagreement from Falwell, said the Jewish judge in the case was prejudiced against Christians.
In 1993, despite his promise to Jewish groups to stop referring to America as a “Christian nation,” Falwell gave a sermon in which he said, “We must never allow our children to forget that this is a Christian nation. We must take back what is rightfully ours.”
In 1999, Falwell told a pastors’ conference in Kingsport, Tenn., that the Antichrist prophesied in the Bible is alive today and “of course he’ll be Jewish.”
John McCain has never renounced, rejected or disowned these and countless other bigoted statements made by Falwell — at least not since he decided that the road to the Republican presidential nomination ran through the precincts of the Religious Right.
Nor have the media made nearly the fuss over McCain’s relationship with Falwell (and other such crackpots) as they have over Barack Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright?
Falwell’s dead now, but his hateful legacy lives on. And John McCain says nothing about its poisonous effect on America.
