News and Commentary on Politics, Media and Culture

According to Rush the Democrats are starting to feel the effects that are leading to buyers’ remorse on choosing a hapless inexperienced far left Barack Obama for their choice as prez hopeful. This will only be exacerbated by the latest Reuters/Zogby poll that shows McCain pulling ahead before the DNC party in Denver:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a sharp turnaround, Republican John McCain has opened a 5-point lead on Democrat Barack Obama in the U.S. presidential race and is seen as a stronger manager of the economy, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

McCain leads Obama among likely U.S. voters by 46 percent to 41 percent, wiping out Obama’s solid 7-point advantage in July and taking his first lead in the monthly Reuters/Zogby poll.

I hope John McCain is paying attention. The Saddleback Q&A has many people paying attention, he was crisp in his answers and never once mentioned that any question was above his pay grade as did Obama when he ducked an abortion question. If John McCain sticks to this formula, pro domestic drilling, pro-life and pro-conservative values, borders, language and culture, he can continue the trend.

The Obama groupies in the media are on the defense as are the defenders in the Obama campaign. They blame (yes blame) McCain “attack ads”. Even the Reuters poll coverage alludes to such.

The reversal follows a month of attacks by McCain, who has questioned Obama’s experience, criticized his opposition to most new offshore oil drilling and mocked his overseas trip.

Yes, sadly the MSM water carriers believe that pointing out facts or asking questions that may be uncomfortable for the Democratic nominee are attacks. Not so much when it is the other way around.

For those of you doing the math, McCain’s 5 point lead is a reversal of 9 points since Obama’s lead last month. It further shows that the sad and tired Newsweek claims of a 15 point Obama lead was nothing more than bad poll taking by a pro-Obama wing of the media.

On another note John McCain appeared on Laura Ingraham this morning and ducked two questions, one on the potential choice of a pro-choice veep and the other on ANWAR. For sure the media has been hyping the veep narrative hoping to anger conservatives against McCain. McCain’s own duck indicates that he is looking for a way to squirm out of giving an answer. I can only imagine that conservative anger is just what is needed at the moment.

Think about it this way, John McCain is pulling ahead in some polls (not all) despite being weak on many things conservatives hold near and dear. John McCain, if he is smart, will continue to test the waters of playing to the conservative base. They can bring him along kicking and screaming or he can watch his chances for President fade like the memory it will become if he ignores the base. I believe there is much ground to be made here.

No Comments »

Barack Obama once famously announced he would debate John McCain anytime, anywhere. We found out that was untrue 75 days ago when John McCain invited The One to participate in 10 town Hall type debates. Obama agreed to one on the Fourth of july when no one would be interested and has avoided any other mention of the subject. The recent presidential forum at Saddleback church in California hosted by rick Warren demonstrated why Barack Obama is avoiding any more debates than he absolutely has to attend. He is not well informed, he is not well prepared and he got his head handed to him on a platter.

Obama took some risk in this type of venue because this is not the typical liberal base. Liberals believe in immoral things that fundamental Christians oppose and given Obama’s position on murdering children in the womb and after they are born it is safe to say he was entering a place where he was out of his comfort zone. Of course, any place where Obama is without prepared text and a teleprompter is out of his comfort zone.

The sainted one went first and he stumbled over questions by searching for the right answer. He could not avoid stating his positions that are well known but he searched for nuanced ways to make them a softer sell. His appearance was off balance, awkward and disastrous.

John McCain, on the other hand, gave immediate answers and was well prepared. He answered from the heart based upon decades of experience and his replies were genuine. He did not have to fumble around looking for the “right” answer because he gave sincere answers. He made Obama look like the amateur that he is.

It is obvious that the Obama camp knew right away that their messiah had done poorly. The campaign accused John McCain of not being sequestered and therefore being able to hear the questions beforehand. This is not true as McCain was in a motorcade in route to the event and then in a green room that had no feed of the broadcast. The Obama camp had to claim McCain cheated because they exclaimed that he was so well prepared. He was so at ease. He must have heard the questions because no one can answer that smoothly and confidently. Only he did.

After the Obama camp made the accusations of cheating, Andrea Mitchell of NBC carried the water for them. She said that McCain was crisp, immediate, and forceful and that Obama did not do as well as his camp had wanted and then she said; “…what they’re putting out privately is that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama.”

Webloggin Note: Contrary to the rabid conspiracy theories from the left the Get Smart style Cone of Silence doesn’t even exist. Byron York of National Review Online explains:

A few points. First of all, it appears that some commentators believe there was an actual “Get Smart”-style “cone of silence” at Saddleback. There wasn’t. Pastor Rick Warren was making a little joke when he used that phrase. But he was assuring the crowd that McCain was not hearing any of the questioning of Barack Obama.

[~snip]

Obama actually knew one more question in advance than did McCain.

[~snip]

McCain was in the car with the Secret Service guys, Sen. Lindsey Graham, and press aide Brooke Buchanan. (Black was in another car.) Black says that McCain did not hear any of Warren’s questions or Obama’s answers during the car ride. Then: “We arrived at Saddleback and went into a holding room, which is a separate building from the main church. In the room there were four or five staff people, plus McCain, and there was no TV, no audio, no nothing. We talked through a few of the topics. We had spent time in the afternoon preparing, doing Q&A, and we did a few more questions to warm him up. At about ten til six, the advance guys came to get McCain to take him to the stage, because the handshake with Obama was a few minutes before 6 p.m. McCain never heard any of this stuff.”

Leave it to Andrea to fan the flames of rumor and unsubstantiated claims in order to assist The One. A real journalist would have investigated the claims in order to ascertain the truth and then reported it. Mitchell took the short cut in order to help Obama spread doubt about McCain. As a commenter on Wizbang pointed out, this is the way to help Obama in the real debates. They will give him the questions in advance so he can rehearse answers and then if McCain accuses him of cheating they will yell sour grapes and that he was the one who cheated. It is a ploy that involves the media wing of the Democratic party.

Another indication that Obama felt he did poorly was that he attacked McCain the very next day. Obama went on the attack because he knew he had been beaten like a rented mule. He had to go on attack to take the wind out of McCain’s sails. The problem is, when Obama attacked McCain, what he said made no sense:

“McCain says ‘Here’s my plan, I’m going to drill here, drill now which is something he only came up with two months ago when he started looking at polling,” Obama said of McCain’s energy policy. My Way News

Isn’t this a bit stupid? McCain might very well have changed his mind based upon polls despite his claims that $4.00 a gallon gas convinced him. However, Obama changed his mind two weeks ago and he did so based solely on polls. Obama was opposed to drilling (and still is) and he criticized McCain for changing his mind. Then, when polls showed that more than two thirds of Americans wanted us to drill, Obama says he is open to it. If Obama is critical of McCain in this fashion, is he not critical of himself as well? McCain was first to realize this issue and address it. Obama followed much later. As with Saddleback, Obama demonstrated he is a follower, not a leader. The only leading Obama did at the event was going first.

It is obvious why Obama will not debate McCain in Town Hall type events and why he will participate only in as many debates as he absolutely has to. McCain has much more experience and looks more presidential than Obama does. Obama will give a great speech in Denver because he will be reading prepared remarks from a teleprompter. Force him to answer based upon experience and knowledge and he flounders like a fish out of water.

One can only parrot Yes We Can [Thanks AOW] and scream Hope and Change for so long before the truth is exposed. Obama would have done better to start late so people did not have as much time to see his weaknesses. He will be played out by the time the election comes.

Given that Investor’s Business Daily said Saddleback was “No Contest” Obama and his people must be fretting the post convention debates. I can smell the fear and their reaction to Saddleback only demonstrates just how afraid they are.

It won’t be long before they realize the Emperor has no clothes. I bet even Hillary and Bill Clinton are smiling today…

Webloggin Note: Barack Obama voted against the 2002 infant protection act that would have protected babies that survived late term abortions. Without those protections babies that are born alive in an induced abortion are left to die after being born. In defense Obama said he would have supported the legislation had the language been exactly the same as the federal legislation. Of course it was Barack Obama that opposed making the language the same as the federal law. More here.

[Discuss This Topic with Big Dog]

No Comments »

There are certain statements guaranteed to evoke a sanctimonious head shake and a sigh in private conversations, and riotous applause when uttered to a talk show audience, particularly one shows like “Oprah” or “The View,” where emotions run high and most IQs not so much. One of these statements is the lament “Do you realize that only 30% (or 25 or 40–insert your favorite number from your favorite poll) of eligible Americans actually vote? That’s outrageous and we’ve got to do something about it!” Really? Yeah, I guess you’re right. We should be more like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. I think they had 100% turnout, which is only slightly lower than certain Chicago precincts.

At the risk of yet again demonstrating how out of step I am with popular contemporary American thinking, let me say simply that’s crazy talk. It’s baloney. We don’t need to “do something” about the fact that only a small percentage of eligible voters vote. We don’t need to let people vote on Saturdays, or for 6 months before election day and for 2 weeks afterwards. We don’t need ballots in 200 different languages. It’s a good thing that only those who speak English, have at least a nodding acquaintance with our Constitution, who are concerned enough to take the time to show up on election day and to learn what they are voting for to vote. I take it as a matter of pride that many Americans still believe that they can ignore government, despite liberals’ relentless efforts to control as much of our lives as possible. I respect people who don’t vote because they don’t have a clue who or what they are voting for.

Another stupid statement that inspires a similar reaction is “Why is it that in every election we have to choose between the lesser of two evils?” I was thinking about this complaint in the context of my earlier comment on negative campaigning, which you can read here. Leaving aside the obvious desire by the liberals in the MSM to quell their anguish over Barack Hussein Obama’s abysmal performance at Rick Warren’s church last Saturday, which explains their whining about “negative” campaigning, it’s become fashionable for people to show how “thoughtful” they are by bemoaning that our politics has become so “polarized” and so “negative.” “Why can’t we have civil campaigns that are strictly about issues?” whine the prissy, psedo-intellectuals and the Oprah-sotted mommies.

Au contraire, sophisticates. It’s a good thing that every four years we must choose between two candidates who for most of us leave something, more or less, to be desired. That’s the way our brilliant Founders wanted it when they came up with our two-party system. The alternative is something along the lines of what those pantywaists in old Europe have. Check out Italy’s history of failed governments, and see how well that’s worked out.

So, under the system designed by the Founders, we have the choice between two, not 15, flawed politicians; therefore, it is inevitable that campaigns will involve a certain amount of “negative” (as in why you shouldn’t vote for the other guy) advertising as well as some positive (as in here’s why you should vote for me). As I have often noted, liberals live in terror of “negative” campaigns which might expose their socialism-at-home, surrender-abroad agenda, all the while claiming to want to be involved in “civilized” campaigns about “issues.” That’s the last thing they want. If you doubt that, recollect how they come unglued when anyone confronts them with their statements, voting records or associations.

I guess there’s another alternative, which is the choice between a flawed politician and a messianic figure, a man-god who can solve all of humanity’s problems with the force of his personality, who has the answer to any question that might arise, an Übermensch whose public policy positions are less important than the fact that he is “The One.” The cult of personality concept brought us Lenin, Hitler and others of their ilk. The lesser of two evils brought us Jimmy Carter, but also Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, which makes the point, doesn’t it?

[Discuss This Topic with Teri O'Brien]

No Comments »

Me, Friday:

Because, now that I give it another think, I see we have a variation here that is newer than that other ancient one, and perhaps more dangerous: That is complete agnosticism about where evil is.

This is different from the guy who calls evil good, and good evil. He, at least, must make the concession that there is such a thing as evil. And much of the time, he’ll either place some value on human life, or pretend to do that much. Capital punishment is a great example. I say “Hey, admit it or not, there are some guys who will kill again if they’re allowed to live; you can’t hold them in the prisons, especially when you have liberal hippies running around, unleashed, struggling to come up with new excuses every year for releasing criminals from prison.” You come back at me and say “Waitaminnit, how can you say killing is wrong, and then prove it by killing someone?” And we debate back and forth. Me with the law-and-order argument, you with the Sean Penn Susan Sarandon argument.

At least we are both placing some value on human life; or pretending to.

Not so with the moral relativist who crusades on “weeeeelllllll…ya just gotta keep an open mind.” That is a new level of ignorance.

And it must, inevitably, metastasize into the darkest, purest form of evil. For it doesn’t place a value on human life, nor does it pretend to.

Divine Kismet of the Cosmos (of some kind):

Hey, there goes that Morgan K. Freeberg guy babbling away with his foolish nonsense again. We’d better make some stuff happen. Some stuff that will make Freeberg’s foolish nonsense look sensible. Let’s get to work.

Madonna, quoted in Kyle Smith’s column, Sunday (H/T: Karol again). Commenting on her upcoming film I Am Because We Are, she gives herself the fiftieth-birthday gift of making an enormous fool out of herself. Which raises a problem for her: How’s this different from any other day?

Thank you Divine Kismets. Although I have a feeling Madonna didn’t need much of a nudge to say something idiotic.

“When you think about the way people treat each other in Africa, about witchcraft and people inflicting cruelty and pain on each other, then come back here and, you know, people taking pictures of people when they’re in their homes, being taken to hospitals, or suffering, and selling them, getting energy from them, that’s a terrible infliction of cruelty. So who’s worse off? You know what I mean?”

Whoa. At first you think she’s going to be banal, if gracious, in acknowledging that paparazzi aren’t as bad as what Africa faces. Then you realize she’s saying the opposite. “Inflicting cruelty” = “Terrible infliction of cruelty.” She thinks being photographed is the same as the African horror show. Also: she thinks Africa’s big problem is witchcraft? “God’s going to have his revenge,” she said, at a dark moment, referring not to genocide in Africa or suicide bombings in Israel, but Martin Bashir, whom she suggested should be the Lord’s next thunderbolt target - for making a documentary on Michael Jackson.

Of her film on Malawi, which includes scenes about a young widow who must submit to being raped three times a day to “cleanse” her, Madonna said, “It’s not my place to judge that tradition. But to have a conversation with a village headsman and say, ‘Do you realize this is spreading a deadly disease?’ and have him say, ‘Yes, but there’s nothing I can do’ is mind-bogglingly frustrating. But we drop bombs on children during wartime, so you think, ‘Who’s practicing black magic?’ ” So ritualized rape is OK if you use a condom, and anyway the real horror story is the United States. [emphasis mine]

That needs to go into the List of Things People Say to Get Attention file, because even with a skewed value system this makes no sense at all. You can’t look at it and go “Oooh, look at Madonna, what a wonderful person, she’s so non-judgmental and everything.” You can’t say that, because inside of a sentence or two she’s judging, and making a big show out of doing it.

She’s fifty and ageless, so it’ll have to be a few decades before she drops from natural causes. But whenever that happens, at whatever age, wherever medical technology is at that point — there has to be something to be learned from dissecting her brain to see what wrinkles are on it. Arrangements must be made. If it were up to me, I’d put her brain on the list in front of Einstein and Beethoven’s. Something is simply not clicking in there.

[Discuss This Topic with MKFreeberg]

No Comments »

Fertility treatment is big money, so there are gazillions of treatment centers in most communities. One such center in San Diego County may well have been put out business, though, by a California Supreme Court ruling mandating that physicians have to provide treatment to lesbians and other unmarried women, even though doing so goes against their religious beliefs:

California doctors who have religious objections to gays and lesbians must nevertheless treat them the same as any other patient or find a colleague in the office who will do so, the state Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday.

The justices rejected a San Diego County fertility clinic’s attempt to use its physicians’ religious beliefs as a justification for their refusal to provide artificial insemination for a lesbian couple. The ruling, based on a state law prohibiting businesses from discriminating against customers because of their sexual orientation, comes three months after the court struck down California’s ban on same-sex marriage.

“This isn’t just a win for me personally and for other lesbian women,” said the plaintiff, Guadalupe Benitez. “Anyone could be the next target if doctors are allowed to pick and choose their patients based on religious views about other groups of people.”

[snip]

“This court is allowing two lesbians to force these individuals to choose between being doctors in the state of California or being able to practice their faith,” said attorney Brad Dacus of the conservative Pacific Justice Institute, which filed arguments backing the doctors.

Benitez, now 36, sued North Coast Women’s Care in Vista (San Diego County) and two of its doctors, saying they told her in 2000 that their Christian beliefs prohibited them from performing intrauterine insemination for a lesbian. The doctors later said they would have refused the treatment for any unmarried couple.

They referred Benitez to another clinic for the insemination, which cost her thousands of dollars because it wasn’t covered by her health plan, her lawyer said. She did not become pregnant then, but since has borne three children and is raising them with her partner of 18 years.

You can read the rest here.

I can’t do any better than to echo Dacus: “This court is allowing two lesbians to force these individuals to choose between being doctors in the state of California or being able to practice their faith.” All of you know from my previous posts that I believe that, where a marketplace exists, it ought to control the outcome of these matters — and that’s true even if I disagree with the business owner’s beliefs or decision.

It would be different if this were a situation akin to the Jim Crow South and there was a monolithic wall of hatred against gays and lesbians seeking infertility treatments. Here, however, the contrary is true, because there is a thriving market and fertility clinics make much of their money off of lesbians. Even in conservative San Diego, as the story above indicates, there are people willing to serve that market. Further, I find it very hard to believe that, in all of San Diego, the defendants’ office was the only one that worked with the gal’s health plan.

The bottom line for me is that, if that office wanted to do itself out of business based on religious principles, that’s a market decision, not a “court denying people their livelihood based on their beliefs” situation. And this is, again, different from a monopoly situation such as that at the Minneapolis airport, where almost all the taxi drivers were Muslim, where airport passengers were a captive market, and where the Muslims refused to accept dogs or alcohol in their cabs. That situation, obviously, was closer to the Jim Crow analogy, where there is no real marketplace.

One other point of interest. The San Francisco Chronicle story from which I quoted above has an interesting caption: “Doctors can’t use bias to deny gays treatment.” Doesn’t that sound as if some ER doctor had before him a gay person who was dying on the table and just walked away because the doc was a homophobe? That would certainly be a dreadful situation, worthy of that caption, especially because imminent death again implies no marketplace. A busy marketplace, however, in which doctors turn away money because of their religious principles, strikes me as a different situation altogether, and one that does not deserve that type of lede.

For a good analysis of the legal errors in the Court’s opinion, go here.

[Discuss This Topic with Bookworm]

No Comments »

Mr. Bookworm cannot stand the fluff pieces that are an integral part of Olympic coverage. On Saturday night, therefore, when NBC switched from Michael Phelp’s history breaking gold medal to an interview with Kobe Bryant, Mr. Bookworm immediately switched off the television. I’m now quite sorry he did. Kobe may be a multi-million dollar celebrity, but it turns out he’s also a good, old-fashioned patriot:

Collinsworth [from NBC]: Tell the story when you first got your USA uniform.

Kobe: Well I had goosebumps and I actually just looked at it for awhile. I just held it there and I laid it across my bed and I just stared at it for a few minutes; just because as a kid growing up this is the ultimate, ultimate in basketball.

Collinsworth: Where does the patriotism come from inside of you? Historically, what is it?

Kobe: Well, you know it’s just our country, it’s… we believe is the greatest country in the world. It has given us so many great opportunities, and it’s just a sense of pride that you have; that you say “You know what? Our country is the best!”

Collinsworth: Is that a ‘cool’ thing to say, in this day and age? That you love your country, and that you’re fighting for the red, white and blue? It seems sort of like a day gone by(?)

Kobe: No, it’s a cool thing for me to say. I feel great about it, and I’m not ashamed to say it. I mean, this is a tremendous honor.

Is it only me or does Collinsworth come across like a complete ass? He reminds me of a teenager trying to embarrass someone into backing off of an opinion by warning him he won’t be seen as “cool” (and this is entirely separate from the fact that Collinsworth himself apparently thinks that it’s beneath him to love his country).

Kobe, fortunately, had a more sense than the overpaid NBC talking head. This is a great country and it does offer amazing opportunities. I mean, heck, in what other place or time do you become a beloved multi-millionaire for tossing a ball into a hoop? Kobe’s right that it’s completely cool (and honorable) to express gratitude to a nation that makes these opportunities possible, that it’s immature and ungrateful to try to intimidate someone into backing off from that kind of honorable sense of appreciation and patriotism.

Webloggin Note:

MsUnderestimated has the Collingsworth video HERE.

Here’s Kobe Bryant in a real interview with Anjali Rao of CNN who doesn’t go down the same anti-American path as Chris Collingsworth:

[Discuss This Topic with Bookworm]

No Comments »

The sky, my room, my legs beneath the covers… everything is silver. It reminds me of the nights at the Cottage, sleeping in the upstairs room - the one with the pineapple bed - the moon shining in through the window. This place is like that, with its dark sky showing everything that shines within it.

[Discuss This Post with Right Girl]

No Comments »

A group of Bay Area bloggers have joined together to create a blog advocating a John McCain presidency. I’m one of those bloggers. The new blog is called (appropriately enough) Bloggers for John McCain. i’ll have a regular Saturday gig there. My first post there today is called “The Tide Is Turning.” Here’s a snippet, but it would be great for the new blog’s traffic if you’d check the post out at Bloggers for John McCain.

It’s always fun to flirt with the edge of a cliff. We dance up to it, proud of our courage in getting so close to the that knife’s edge between security and oblivion. But when we actually look into the abyss, well, that’s when sensible people start getting nervous. Right now, sensible people are backing off of the abyss that is the Democratic party.

The Washington Post has just reported that McCain had his top fundraising month to date, although he’s still not achieving financial parity with Obama:

Republican Sen. John McCain posted the best fundraising month of his presidential campaign in July, bringing in $27 million, but his supporters are bracing for the near-certainty that he will be operating at a severe financial disadvantage in the two-month stretch between the end of the party political conventions and Election Day.

Even the bad news in that paragraph — that Obama is way ahead in the money game — isn’t quite as bad as it looks. To begin with, while the media has carefully looked the other way whenever someone tries to flag its attention about Obama’s fund-raising irregularities, it’s becoming apparent that at least some of Obama’s money is actually funny money — very funny.

Read the rest here.

[Discuss This Topic with Bookworm]

No Comments »

It appears as if the city of Denver has its own formerly secret prison. The city converted a warehouse into a jail to process and house those who get arrested during the Democratic National Convention.

DENVER - Activist groups say the converted warehouse poses a threat to civil liberties. The city maintains the facility is needed in case of mass arrests during the Democratic National Convention.

[~snip]

“We feel the city should be ashamed of this secret prison they’ve set up,” said Re-create ‘68 organizer Glenn Spagnuolo.

Spagnuolo and other activists gathered outside the formerly-secret facility on Friday to protest the city’s plan to use it as a processing center for all those arrested outside the DNC.

“The public was never going to view this place, it was just found out,” Spagnuolo said. “They got caught with this place. They told our lawyers in negotiations that this place didn’t even exist.”

There is no doubt the jail was built for the DNC and not because Denver needed a new jail. Interestingly, the jail was a secret. No one was supposed to know about it and probably would not have until the arrests started but someone found out and exposed it. Civil rights groups are up in arms and claim that this has the potential to lead to abuse of people’s civil rights. I agree that a secret prison would have that potential but since it is no longer a secret it is no different than any other jail.

But let us explore the whole secret jail issue. The Democrats knew about it and it was built especially for their convention. They know that a huge number of protest groups are going to show up and they want them arrested and off the streets quickly so as to avoid coverage of anything that might hurt their chances of winning.

So let’s get this straight. The same Democratic party that howls about Guantanamo Bay and secret CIA prisons in other countries knew about a secret prison right here in America built for their convenience. Some might call that a bit hypocritical. Others, like me, might ask why it is that the Democrats oppose prisons (secret or not) that house terrorists and other enemies of our country but are in favor of a secret prison to house people who show opposition to the Democrats?

I wonder why the liberals think that Bush is Hitler and Gitmo should be closed but that they should have secret prisons to lock up Americans who disagree with them. Such hypocrisy. What do you expect from a group that screams global warming and vows to have a green convention but complains that there are not enough limousines in Denver to cart them around. I know Denver has buses.

Oh yeah, all that stuff is for the rest of the country to follow. Not the do as I say, not as I do Democrats…

Source: 9NEWS.com Colorado: City defends ’secret jail’ built for DNC

[Discuss This Topic with Big Dog]

No Comments »

The AP is up to it’s same ol’, same ol’ again, this time looking to tout Barack Obama’s imaginary strength as a Christian.

The article, or should I say wishful anecdote, by AP Religion Writer Rachael Zoll is supposedly some sort of introspective on the contrasting faiths between John McCain and Barack Obama, both of whom will appear at a forum at Rev. Rick Warren’s evangelical church.

As AP introspectives would have it Barack Obama has an advantage over John McCain based on his Christian faith.

The Rev. Rick Warren is so prominent and respected that just being seen with him is a boon for any presidential candidate. For Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, their appearances at a forum Saturday night at Warren’s evangelical California megachurch bring risks along with rewards.

The event will play to one of Obama’s strengths, talking about his Christian faith, but it will also underscore the gulf between his views and those of the most conservative Christian voters.

Yeah, that’s a new one from the rewrite on history bin. I once was reprimanded for calling reporters liars but honestly I don’t know what else to call them when they spew this sort of garbage.

I am a Christian as are a majority of the practicing faithful in this country. So I ask the following questions of all you other practicing Christians:

• As a Christian have you have attended Islamic schools at any time in your youth?
• How many of you sat for years in a church with a racist pastor spewing hate about this country with that oft repeated Christian verse, “God Damn Amerikkka”?
• As a Christian do you advocate late term or partial birth abortions? (In the Christian world partial birth abortion is called infanticide, in Barack Obama’s world it is called a choice)
• As a Christian would you even think of hiring pro-Palestinian advisers that are so bent in their beliefs that they would secretly meet with Hamas terrorists to do whatever it is that is done in secret meetings with child killers, thieves, murderers, racists and genocidal maniacs? (All in the name of religion mind you)
• As a Christian would you sit a table without passing judgment with home bred terrorist wannabe and unrepentant anti-American radical William Ayers?

I can tell you my answers. Not in a million years. Sure Christians forgive but that doesn’t mean facilitate, turn a blind eye or any of the other “errors in judgment” that Barack Obama has had. He has a lifetime of this sort of Christianity.

As for the AP perhaps it is fitting that a religion writer would weave Barack Obama’s strength in Christianity out of whole cloth. We are talking miracles here and what better place to dream one up?

No Comments »