John McCain is refusing to renounce the endorsement of a prominent Texas televangelist who Democrats say peddles anti-Catholic and other intolerant speech.
Instead, the Republican presidential candidate issued a statement Friday afternoon saying he had unspecified disagreements with the San Antonio megachurch leader, John Hagee. Hagee endorsed him at a news conference Wednesday in San Antonio.
The man says Catholicism is a cult and that we need to create war in the Middle East to bring about Armageddon.
Why is it so hard for John McCain to denounce that? How short a leash does the religious far right have on him?
Continued evidence that the Clinton team is not serving their candidate well. Considering the attack they launched today, you’d think they’d be ready for a question asking for a single moment of Sen. Clinton dealing with crisis.
It’s true that Sen. Clinton’s security attack ad echoes Republican efforts. But on two fronts, I think it fails:
1) It’s not a very good ad. It’s, like most of the ads authorized by Clinton and Penn, generic to the point of banality. My first impression on watching it, with the family sleeping and the phone ringing n the background is that someone should pick up the freaking phone!
2) America is so over this crap. The time when politicians, especially Republicans, can scare up votes by screaming OMG TEH TERRORISTS ARE COMING FOR YOUR BABIES UNLESS YOU VOTE FOR US AND GIVE US THE RIGHT TO SUBPOENA YOUR HIGH SCHOOL ATTENDANCE RECORDS is over. The Republican party got a leg up politically by using the boogeyman device, but they’ve used it one time too many. People are aware of the terror threat and want it destroyed but they understand now that hiding under the covers and voting for the candidate who makes you pee your pants in fear isn’t going to produce a solution. In many ways, the people have grown up — ahead of the politicians.
2a) This isn’t really a “Daisy” ad. The actual “Daisy” ad is good and effective, and unlike this generic ad produced a stark contrast between LBJ and the lunacy of what Goldwater was pushing.
Hillary Clinton is echoing the failing Republican message, and their ads this fall are likely to echo this tired old theme. It’s why their chances are slim.
It’s all about the sham John & Cindy McCain foundation:
Between 2001 and 2006, McCain contributed roughly $950,000 to the foundation. That accounted for all of its listed income other than for $100 that came from an anonymous donor. During that same period, the McCain foundation made contributions of roughly $1.6 million. More than $500,000 went to his kids’ private schools, most of which was donated when his children were attending those institutions. So McCain apparently received major tax deductions for supporting elite schools attended by his children.
When they felt they would lose the Nevada caucuses, they tried to get them shut down. Now they see they could very well lose the Texas caucuses… so now they’re trying to get them shut down.
The Texas Democratic Party warned Thursday that election night caucuses scheduled for Tuesday could be delayed or disrupted after aides to Hillary Rodham Clinton threatened to sue over the party’s complicated delegate selection process.
In a letter sent out late Thursday to both the Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns, Texas Democratic Party lawyer Chad Dunn warned a lawsuit could ruin the Democrats’ effort to re-energize voters just as they are turning out in record numbers.
The Clinton team’s disregard for the rules reminds me of someone.
Sure, on the surface the issue is that it’s insulting that Saturday Night Live couldn’t find a single black comedian to play Barack Obama, but furthermore to me as a huge comedy fan - his impression sucks.
Fumbling in the middle of an appearance in Texas, the 71 year old John McCain says he will run a “dispirited” campaign and touts his credentials as a proud “conservative… liberal Republican”. Then the crowd laughs at him.
Jenna Bush and soon-to-be hubby, Henry Hager celebrated their last couple weeks of freedom in South Florida. Bush, 26, celebrated her bachelorette party in Boca Raton, FL in mid-February with a group of female friends, while Hager, 29, headed to South Beach the following weekend to party with the boys for his bachelor party.
The secret is out: Prince Harry has been serving on the front line with his British army unit in one of Afghanistan’s most lawless and barren provinces.
Harry is the first royal to serve in a combat zone since his uncle Prince Andrew flew helicopters during Britain’s war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands in 1982.
British officials had hoped to keep the 23-year-old’s deployment secret until he had safely returned, but they released video of Harry serving in Helmand Province after a leak appeared on the U.S. Web site the Drudge Report.
Hagee has denounced replacement theology, believing that Romans 9, 10 and 11 teaches that the Jewish people continue to have favor with God by the election of grace and as a people of the covenant their salvation is not dependent on belief in Jesus Christ. Hagee believes that the Bible commands Christians to support Israel and the Jewish people.
He alleges the land of Israel never belonged to the Arabs because sovereignty went from the Ottoman Turks who controlled the land prior to World War I, to the British, to the United Nations which authorized its partition and creation of the State of Israel. He claims the land was named Palestine after the ancient Philistines to punish the Jews for their revolt against the Romans, that there is no unique Palestinian language and most of those who claim to be Palestinians immigrated from other Arab nations prior to 1948.
Hagee has said Iran is a threat to Western civilization and that they will never respond favorably to diplomacy[citation needed]. He supports an American-Israeli attack on Iran to eliminate its alleged nuclear programme and supports the Neo-Conservative movement in the United States.
Hagee, like many other right-wing preachers, also is accused of using his church as a cash cow for him and his family.
Just for a nanosecond. A moment from the start of today’s presidential press conference:
Q Mr. President, bad economic news continues to pile up, the latest today with the GDP barely growing. Are you concerned that a sagging economy and hard times will help defeat John McCain, like it did your father in 1992? And how far are you willing to go to prevent that?
THE PRESIDENT: I’m concerned about the economy because I’m concerned about working Americans, concerned about people who want to put money on the table and save for their kids’ education. That’s why I’m concerned about the economy. I want Americans working.
Reporters are obsessed with framing everything as a campaign issue. For them, the years between elections are just filler between campaign seasons. But for the rest of us, in reality, it isn’t. Bush answers this question in the right way, knocking out the reporter’s stupid framing of it as a campaign issues. The economy matters because it affects the life of Americans. Not because it may or may not hurt John McCain in the fall. Leave that kind of stupid question to fellow journalists and pundits.
Both John McCain and effectively pro-McCain Taylor Marsh are pushing the hell out of this non-story, yet the Canadian government and the Obama campaign have both denied it.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton demanded that Sen. Barack Obama reject support from the Rev. Louis Farrakahn during a debate on Tuesday night. But what, a Dallas television interviewer asked Clinton on Wednesday, about Adelfa Callejo, an 84-year-old Latina backer of Clinton’s in Texas?
Callejo was reported as saying that black politicians hadn’t done anything to help Latinos. Did Clinton, the interviewer asked, reject and denounce Callejo for saying such a thing?
Clinton was equivocal. “People have every reason to express their opinions,” she said.
“You know, this is a free country,” Clinton said, laughing, when asked whether she still wanted Callejo’s support. She went on to say that she did not know the facts of the situation.
