Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion.
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"News that's not known, or not known enough." Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion. Available in weekly or daily dosage. |
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Twofer of travails by Hazel Burke Monday, August 18, 2008 PERMANENT LINK 1) I watched Obama's and 1/2 of McCain's appearances at Saddleback Mountain on Saturday. Obama was very tentative and weak. McCain answered crisply but with an undertone of a student who has been coached to give certain answers -- McCain glowed with joy each time he gave the answer he knew the white evangelicals wished to hear. He also told several heart-warming stories about his time in captivity being tortured by the Vietnamese. I think that Obama may even have lost votes with his pathetic appearance. Someone needs to tell him to just spit out his answers and stop making noises in between words to cover up for his think-time -- it becomes
The whole system is becoming unstable. This will be interesting. I expect a world of shit to hit the fan starting in 2009. That will be the point where Republicans decide to publicly state that deficits DO matter and that the Dems are fiscally irresponsible Hazel Burke I can't say anything intelligent about the economic system, except that it's obviously teetering and any fix from the criminals in charge will be phony. Helen & Harry It was Pastor Rick Warren's church. He is the author of "A Purpose Driven Life" and pastor to 400,000 people down in SoCal. The show was 2 hours long, with each candidate appearing separately for one hour, and each was asked the same set of questions in approximately the same way. The topics covered were general and religious, such as the question of requiring faith-based ministries receiving federal funds to not discriminate in hiring. Obama came out against discrimination in hiring, McCain was in favor of allowing the churches to do anything they want, said it would hamper their work. The problem w/Obama's answers, in addition to being mumbledy, was that he refused to educate on the fine points of why he wouldn't give the pre-approved answers. For example, he could have said that hiring only Christians to ladle soup, or to dig latrines would be unChristian and could over time, force people to pretend to be Christian in order to find jobs -- or that in time, non-Christian groups might so discriminate against needy Christians and how would that feel? Etc. By the way, after seeing the candidates' joint appearance at Saddleback Church, I came away believing that Obama actually has a very good chance of losing the election unless he gets his shit together. McCain "won" the contest by far, in my opinion -- there was really nothing about Obama's performance that seemed presidential; it was as if he were a young man speaking to a wise elder, with timidity and trepidation. Oy. Hazel Burke Well, that's scary. America as we've known it won't survive either way, but with McCain in charge the collapse would be catastrophic, complete, and it'll come very, very fast. It's weird and tragic and a big blood-stained symptom of America's problems, that the two big-name candidates meet at a church to discuss their religions beliefs at length, but there won't be any similar meetings with, say, physicians and nurses to discuss health care issues, or with scientists to discuss global climate change, or with teachers to discuss education, etc. Helen & Harry
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