While certainly being caught between a hurricane and a hard place, Senator John McCain seems to be making political expediency of the potential human tragedy of Hurricane Gustav. By severely truncating the Republican National Convention, McCain and company get to dodge a major bullet—appearances by President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney, two guys McCain would much prefer not attend the party. He also gets to sidestep an allegedly disgruntled Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, both snubbed in McCain’s sensationalistic nomination of Wonder Woman for vice president. The senator may also seek to maximize his profile by highlighting his leadership skills during the crisis, even though as a senator from Arizona he has no specific tasks to perform and no useful powers to exercise. Senator Barack Obama, on the other hand, brings not only a deeply embedded grass-roots organization into play, but nearly two decades of street-level organization and community action skills Senator McCain simply does not possess. While, like McCain, Obama has no official standing in the region, he has tremendously useful community-based organizational skills and unparalleled popularity among those most potentially affected by this arriving storm that would make any “highlighting” of Senator McCain’s leadership skills a dicey gamble on McCain’s part. Boots on the ground, helping troubled communities, is Obama’s primary occupation. Being a politician, I don’t put it past either candidate to make political hay of this storm, but, if anything this potential tragedy can likely further highlight the differences between the two would-be presidents, with Obama having the network and community relationships to make a quiet, useful and effective difference on the ground, while Senator McCain will work through official channels, but his social, economic and empathetic distance from these at-risk communities—rather than his leadership skills—is what will likely be highlighted.

I watched the Sunday shows yesterday, and was simply amazed at all the lying going on as the GOP spin team went to laughable extremes trying to say, with a straight face, that Sarah Palin is qualified to take the presidential oath of office. The lying was amazing, even painful to watch as, I’m serious, these folks’ lips were moving, but their eyes had a kind of sadness to them. Even Joe Lieberman, who is not likely to even be allowed on the White House lawn should Obama win, was clearly lying about Palin. It’s all in the eyes. They’re lying, and they’re not happy about being forced to do it. I may be reading more into this than is there, but I also seemed to detect some anger on the part of these campaign spokespeople and pundits at McCain’s laugh-out-loud veep selection, at McCain having not only given up their most effective weapon—whines about Obama’s readiness—but that McCain has now turned his campaign into a referendum not on Obama’s experience but McCain’s judgment.

It’s the Abbott & Costello candidacy, one reporter describing the McCain campaign strategy as “improvisational.” Forget her qualifications, as I mention, it’s that *voice* that loses. Obama’s big problem is not his experience, it’s his skin color. That’s the plain truth and I wish somebody out there was brave enough to say it. If Obama were white, he’d be dozens of laps around the track ahead of McCain. The headwind Obama is sailing into is overcoming an institutionalized racism that forces Obama to be, at minimum, twice as qualified as McCain before he’s able to compete on the merits. And, as institutionalized as racism is, sexism is even more deeply embedded, Hillary having to overcome the notion she’s Bill’s puppet (I’m quite sure it’s the other way around), and good ol’ boys assuming she’s a bimbo. As I said, I doubt Sarah Palin is a bimbo, but she sure looks and sounds like one. And that awful, terrible image of McCain’s younger, glamorous veep selection *towering* over her dad is head-scratchingly ridiculous. I mean it, all day yesterday, news people were trying, I mean trying hard, to be generous about this idea, giving the spinners extra-long leash yesterday to make their case for Palin.

It all tastes like stone soup. McCain seems to have sandbagged his own team, his own party. The one thing I agree with however, is this is indeed a hail Mary pass into the end zone. Palin appears to be a younger, female, and even less-informed Bush. Worse, there is emerging scads of video of her grinning, talking in that bimbo voice about how she knows nothing about what’s going on in Iraq, etc. The sliver of hope I have left for McCain is this: that he knows she’s an empty suit, but he also knows how stupid and uninformed the vast majority of us are, and how desperate his base is to NOT see an Obama presidency. I think Palin’s nomination aptly demonstrates McCain’s contempt for his own base, as she is a virtual parody of George Bush and Dan Quayle. But both those guys got elected.

Is it just me, or does the McCain campaign remind you of those Apple Computer ads? Especially the recent ones where “PC” goes to increasingly extreme lengths to, first, convince users he’s as good as Mac, and then bully them into using him. I mean, McCain kind of looks like “PC” in the ad, and his now ubiquitous flip-flopping and deceptive low-brow ads make him look desperate. As I’ve said here before, the Republicans seem to understand how gullible and uninformed the average American is, while the Democrats tend to be pretty much what McCain is calling them: egghead liberals who can’t believe Karl Rove keeps beating them like a drum. But the Rove-ites know people are stupid and will believe whatever they see on TV. So McCain’s genteel, thoughtful campaign, which began with the reasonable anti-Bush spot, “War.” Has devolved into a National Enquirer-style mud wrestle, culminating with this bizarre and desperate grab at Hillaryites and the right wing in his selection of Sarah Palin as running-mate. “Look! We have a woman, too! Hillary voters: The Black Kid screwed you! C’mon over and make history!”

With this selection, McCain has cashed in his biggest weapon against Obama—his ongoing whining about Obama’s lack of experience and unreadiness to command. In terms of experience, Sarah Palin makes Barack Obama look like Jesse Helms. I am told she’s a tough cookie, a hard-right conservative, but she doesn’t bring ballast to McCain’s ticket so much as it makes him look desperate and pandering. And her beauty pageant good looks only makes McCain look even more feeble and doddering than he already does. It’s a terrible image, this young, tall woman towering over the white-haired McCain, almost as bad as the image of Palin taking the presidential oath of office should something happen to McCain. I mean it, I’m terrified of this woman, this nut, becoming my president. Palin is a walking registration drive for Obama voters: if you didn’t have a reason to vote Obama, McCain just gave you one.

The one thing that gives me comfort, the one thing that keeps me from just moving to Canada, is her voice. Palin has a tinny, nasal, Bimbo Voice. Now, I doubt she’s a bimbo, as she seems to have a reasonable record—such as it is—as mayor of shantytown, Alaska, but she sure *sounds* like a bimbo. In the Rove lexicon, her sounding like a bimbo is just as good as her actually being a bimbo. She looks great, but every time this woman opens her mouth, she sounds like the over-anxious Century 21 agent trying to get you to sign the lease. She has the most un-presidential voice in American history, and she comes with laughable credentials. I’ve watched hours of news coverage of Palin with, to the person, news anchors struggling to find words and trying to keep a straight face. This seems an utterly bizarre move on McCain’s part. So bizarre, in fact, that the Obama campaign apparently slapped themselves down; after first issuing a biting rebuke of the candidate, somebody in the camp realized they may be being rope-a-doped by McCain. At the very least, Obama should just be polite and let the news media’s amusing awkwardness, their teetering struggle to remain objective, underscore the bizarreness of the choice and attendant questioning of McCain’s judgment speak for them. Obama can take the high road while the late-night comics and Olbermann do the job for him.

Lastly, Palin standing onstage with the loquacious Joe Biden will be a sight to see as well. Joe's biggest problem is Palin has the same advantage George W. Bush had against Kerry: nobody expects her to do well. So, if she can walk across the stage without tripping, that’s a win for her. That’s how Kerry lost in 2004: Bush knew how to play the lowered expectations game. Hopefully Biden is a West Wing fan and saw the debate episode where Martin Sheen chopped up James Brolin, a Bush-esque challenger, into mincemeat, literally calling him stupid on an hot mic. My instinct tells me the Obama camp is going to kid-gloves this woman, which may be the McCain strategy, the lowered expectations game. But Biden needs to Dan Quayle this woman, “I know Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton is my friend. Governor: you’re no Hillary Clinton.” Biden *must* be somewhere, rocking back and forth in a chair, waiting to drop that line on her.

Anybody have ANY idea, any at all, what McCain’s strategy is, here?

The woman is a walking Saturday Night Live sketch. A Hillary parody. Hillaryites are hurting and bitter: McCain’s shameless pandering likely comes across as offensive, insinuating Hillary voters are so uninformed and shallow that they’d vote for any woman—no matter how unqualified for office she may be.

Well, ZoneAlarm just stopped working. Again. It did this last week of June when MI$ updated XP again, breaking ZA. I did not notice any updates last night, but ZA is busted and I've no wasted almost three hours trying to find a work-around.

Bill Gates is the devil. Every time MI$ updates something, all havoc breaks loose. And now, even though I've stopped ZA (after going through many, many trying iterations), bits and pieces of it are still running, blocking access to the net. Now, I can launch IE, connect with IE, but wait a few minutes and this block comes on, no more connection. Have to reboot.

People are starting to post on ZA's boards. I suppose I'll need to uninstall the thing, but I'm waiting to see if anybody has a friggin' clue what's wrong THIS time...

Or maybe this is a bug I picked up someplace...?

Grrrr...

“A community organizer,” former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani sneered, referring to Barack Obama’s years on the streets of Chicago, from June 1985 to May 1988, as director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland (Roseland, West Pullman, and Riverdale) on Chicago's far South Side. During his three years as the DCP's director, its staff grew from 1 to 13 and its annual budget grew from $70,000 to $400,000, with accomplishments including helping set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens [Wikipedia]. And this was *before* earning his Juris Doctorate from Harvard and teaching constitutional law for twelve years. Giuliani, like most of the “red meat” republicans in attendance, wrote of Obama—a man they know very little about—as though the senator has been lounging on a sofa for twenty years waiting for the nomination. Whether this ignorance was deliberate see-no-evil monkey business or if these folks were just plain ignorant, either way I was insulted on behalf of the people this convention was meant to inspire: clueless right-wing Ballentine chuggers and house fraus.

Giuliani made it seem that such work was negligible and unimportant, and that it didn’t contribute to the overall fabric of the man who would be president. I’ll have to think hard, but I really can’t remember if we’ve ever *had* a U.S. president who had any real street-level experience solving the problems of average Americans. I would tend to suspect such experience should be a vital qualification for high office and, rather than sneer at Obama for his years of service, I’d tend to criticize Senator McCain’s résumé for *not* having any community service on it. The GOP spent four days telling us, often in grating detail, the suffering McCain went through in Vietnam which, I suppose, Obama would be doing if he’d had that experience as well. But McCain’s outstanding military service record neither prepares him nor qualifies him for the Oval Office. It was four days of emotional blackmail, three of them spent finding 7,000 ways to attack Obama without using the “N” word. The entire event was fairly difficult for me to watch. It was sad, all of those people in such denial, actually booing—yes *booing*—Obama’s service as a community organizer. Which was both shocking and revelatory of how disconnected from reality these folks are. I guess if you live in a big house in an upscale neighborhood, community service is some esoteric “other,” some “thing” done by some people over there, where the poor folk live. Well-off people don’t understand it beyond the most basic pass-out-sandwiches face of community service. Their booing Wednesday night said volumes about who these people are and how utterly un-plugged from reality they are.

"You have plenty of images of committed white people for McCain; you need pictures of committed black people," Krim Ballentine said as he surveyed the Xcel Energy Center. As one of just 36 black delegates, Ballentine stands out. The retired chief deputy U.S. marshal printed up business cards for the occasion calling himself a "Constitution Philosopher" and "The Last Negro." The latter title, the back of his card explains, is in honor of the "First Negro," Othello. "Disrespect is the main ingredient in every act of violence, with racism being the most discernable negative attribute of disrespect," the card reads. Ballentine is a committed McCain supporter, but he won't be voting for him in November. "I'm from the Virgin Islands," he explains; he can't vote in presidential elections. The black man standing nearby won't be voting for McCain, either. "That's my son," Ballentine said. "He's with Republicans for Obama." [National Journal]

Their heroine was, of course, Alaska Governor Sara Palin, whose big hair and shrill voice made her sound like every well-off stay-at-home soccer mom I’ve ever met. I’m not a big fan of soccer moms. That simply was not my experience. People who don’t work have a very different view of the world from people who do, from people who struggle. They tend to get fixated on minutiae like when are their neighbors going to mow their lawns and what time the mail arrives. Soccer moms with mini vans are not necessarily rich, but their worldview is so different, usually so much smaller than the planet actually is, that it makes being around them a real chore. Having one of these people take the oath of office of president of the United States ranks among my worst nightmares.

But Palin really isn’t a soccer mom (or hockey mom as she says). And, despite her claims to Christian values and her giant republican hair, her record and her stated values don’t always add up. She’s doing a lot of backpedaling now on the trooper scandal and some business about her pressuring a librarian to remove “questionable” books from the public library, the governor never apparently having heard of the First Amendment. But it is both her pregnant teen daughter—who, for all we know, is being forced into a marriage destined to fail—I mean, look at that poor boy’s face—and the fact Palin went back to work just two days after giving birth to a son who suffers from Down Syndrome. I’m trying to put this all together, this woman of faith, this paragon of virtue. If Barack Obama had a pregnant daughter and had tried to ban books and fire troopers and went back to work two days after his Down Syndrome son arrived—this convention would be talking about nothing else.

But Republican convictions are relative: that’s what I hate about fundamentalism and, frankly, fundamentalists. If you believe something, then believe it. The pregnant daughter forces me to question what values, if any, are being taught in the Palin home. If Palin’s values are her husband’s values, if they are her children’s values. Sure, kids make mistakes—black teens most especially. I am in no way judging the kid herself, but it’s reasonable to asses what someone claims to be by the evidence of their lives. Palin says she never tried to get this trooper who was allegedly abusing her sister fired, but then she admitted to more than a dozen contacts with the police chief she later fired, leaning on him about the trooper.

Among many reasons I don't watch a lot of TV. But I'm actually sorry I missed this. To my Christians friends-- apologies for the edge, but this is just hilarious.

That tinny voice. The Prom Queen hair-doo. The Tina Fey thing. But, mostly, the audacity at work here. Governor Sarah Palin is, to me, a walking, breathing insult to: (1) Hillary Clinton’s PUMAS, (2) Hillary Clinton, (3) her historic campaign—which Palin is directly benefitting from in a very cheap way, (4) polar bears, (5) most anyone who graduated middle school. The saddest part about all of this, to me, is that this will probably work. It is, in its iniquity, quite the genius move. Go back and watch those West Wing eps where James Brolin created a Bush-esque fop as a GOP candidate running against the erudite Martin Sheen and you’ll see what I mean. Palin is a parody of the whole Obama phenomena and actually kind of makes McCain’s point for him: that style wins over substance every time. She’s a fake Hillary, which must really, and I mean really, burn Hillary up. Reporters speculate Obama has Hillary muzzled while he lets this thing play itself out over the next couple weeks, hoping that America’s short attention span will eventually wane over Palin or demand more of her, or that Palin’s shallowness will become evident as she reluctantly gives in to interview requests.

I don’t buy the McCain campaign’s flimsy assertion that they’ve kept Palin off the grid to protect her from reporters “pouncing” on her about her pregnant kid. Memo to McCain campaign: she’s running for Vice President with an old guy who looks exhausted every time I see him. She *needs* to be pounced on. Had McCain selected anyone else, they’d be getting pounced on. Getting pounced on is what happens when you spring people on us at the last minutes. If Sarah Palin can’t take the heat of Chris Matthews and the boys, she’s really in the wrong racket.

Obama seemed stuttery and off-balance on Olbermann, which *really* bothers me. He’s *got* to know this jittering cautious tone undermines people’s confidence in him. I’m sure he doesn’t want to misspeak, but McCain tends to land decisive (and yet stupid) sound bytes.

The GOP are clearly setting the agenda, here. It’s All Palin All The Time, it’s all process stories—even Keith, whom I was disappointed in. Forget Palin, let’s talk about the issues. But Barack is off-message for more than a week now. Is Obama trying to rope-a-dope McCain, or is he foundering?

It's the latest fad. The new craze. Flags, flags, flags. Get 'em while they're hot. In volume and size, they obviously fully represent our patriotism. And we, so gullible a nation, have fallen hook, line and sinker for this latest Madison Avenue brain scrub, rushing out to the mall— the mall— because they've actually convinced us going shopping will somehow bring Osama bin Laden to justice.

It's insane. And it's both dangerous and sad to realize how completely gullible we are as a people. How ready we are to conform and fall into the sweep of national mood. Flags everywhere. People running out and buying cars to “save the nation.” The US government giving $20 billion to bloated airlines who stuff their chief executives' pockets with million-dollar bonus packages while continuing to allow felons and illegal aliens to run their security checkpoints.

If there's a way to make money, US industry will find it. And, in the wake of ongoing terror, it seems like we, as a nation, have reverted to type, becoming, once again, the naive, guileless children who still believe in Oswald in the book depository, while industry and government have a field day under cover of national crisis and patriotism. How much money are these flag makers pocketing? And how obscene is it to profit from this tragedy?

I've received numerous inquiries about whether or not it's right for me to post that mock TIME cover with George Dubya on it. I've been asked if I should, perhaps, remove my scathing criticism of the 2000 election.

I didn't like Bush then. I don't like him now. I don't know what more he could be doing or what more effective measures he could be taking. It's unlikely anyone else could be doing a better job, and we certainly could have someone far, far worse. It's not fair to kick the president over this war, but it's equally unfair to exempt him from a reasonable examination of his policies and performance. Instead, all we get is whitewash and the First Cheerleader ramping up his Good Ol' Boy routine while sneaking even more tax cuts for his country club buddies through Congress. But, shame on me for mentioning that.

I've, to date, been unsuccessful at making anyone understand, censoring my genuine, reasonable complaint about our government and our leaders, even in this time of crisis, robs me of the very freedom all this haughty flag waving is meant to represent.

Watching her right now. She seems immaculately groomed for this appearance. She's sharp, she's done her homework, she knows how to work the camera. Blew the Q on the Bush Doctrine, but, overall, Charlie is not as soft as I expected, she's not as bad as I'd hoped.

How utterly disappointing...

Okay, here's the hell:

(1) ClearType looks blurry. It's nowhere *near* as good as whatever Apple OSX is using, which looks *amazing.* (2) I usually keep it turned off. (3) I've been looking at my sites over at friends' homes and realize they have CT on (it's on by default). Lots of problems with the text (CT doesn't like Century Gothic below 10pt or so, makes Georgia look fat and clumsy, etc.) So, (4) I turned CT on at home. Oh, the horror. Been fixing pages to look better with CT on because (5) I could add a disclaimer asking people to turn CT off, but (6) church folk really aren’t going to do that. It's enough to just get 'em to their own website--anything technical (like getting them to add the site to their Trusted Site List) just ain't gonna happen. Like McCain, most black pastors aren't terribly computer literate.

I feel like the tail wagging the dog, here: I *have* to design for IE. 97% of my users are on it, which means most of them have CT turned on, so I have to design for CT. Sure, I could post a link to M$'s CT "tuner," which, I hear, works only so-so, but, again, anything past turning their PC on and selecting the website from their bookmarks just ain't gonna happen with this crowd.

I get what M$ is doing--trying to improve their GUI to keep up with Steve Jobs. But this ClearType is just awful. Gives me a headache just looking at it. And, because most of my users are simply computer illiterate, they just go with whatever the default settings are. But CT seems, to me, like a product that was rolled out too soon (though, I am told, it's now eight years old. Eight years?! And this is the best they can do?!)

I've also heard M$ has released fonts that will work best with CT, but I can't embed them because they are not licensing them. And, once more, my users ain't installin' no stinkin' fonts.

Hell, I tell you. Curse you, Gates...

[X-post from my Christian blog, hence the Christian references]

Barack Obama took the gloves off in his presidential campaign against Republican contender Senator John McCain, whose campaign has comprised mainly negative attack ads against Obama and crowd-pleasing campaign stump speeches with his running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who is the lightning rod for McCain's otherwise lackluster campaign. I've not seen an issue-oriented McCain ad in months, virtually all of his television spots attacking Senator Obama using distortions and childish foolishness such as demanding an apology from the Illinois senator for a quip about "lipstick on a pig." "Enough," Senator Obama finally declared last week. "THIS is what they want to talk about— what they want to spend two of the fifty-five remaining days on." Obama, who has virtually owned the high ground while sinking in the polls beneath McCain's increasingly shrill and sophomoric campaign of attacks. However, by sinking to McCain's level, by releasing childish attack ads, Obama falls into the trap of allowing the Arizona Senator and the Republicans to set the campaign agenda, up to and including forcing Senator Obama to run not against GOP nominee John McCain, but against veep nominee Palin, a moose-shooting political neophyte eerily reminiscent of clueless Texas slacker Governor Bush, selected for political reasons to run with the geriatric McCain and, if elected, be one heartbeat away from the presidency. What the Obama campaign is not saying or is perhaps afraid to say is that a vote for McCain is a vote for Palin for president. It is unlikely Palin would ever have won her party's nomination, let alone a general election. But, should McCain win, the remote possibility of Palin assuming the office of U.S. president becomes more of a probability if not a likelihood. Which is very frightening business, electing a political lightweight being used for her gender as our next president. To this end, I believe Senator McCain has acted selfishly and recklessly, placing this country at potentially great risk at a time of economic uncertainty and war. And this is what utterly perplexes me about conservatives—Christian or otherwise—how they cannot see that. That this man is desperate to win and will stop at, apparently, nothing, up to and including putting a woman not demonstrably more qualified than a Wal-Mart store manager in the Oval office when so very much is at stake.

Another campaign ad Obama SHOULD have run:

[Images of Palin] If her name was Bob, nobody would even be talking about her. Bob Palin would never have been selected as a running mate--Bob Palin would have been laughed out of the room. Palin's gender, therefore, is the central reason for her selection. And the McCain campaign asserts, at every opportunity, that her gender is an issue that is off-limits. It is, in the end, the only thing about Palin that in any way explains McCain's bizarre choice.

[Image of McCain] McCAIN: THE ORIGINAL MAVERICK
Show was cancelled 40 years ago

It’s interesting how conservatives brand anyone who disagrees with them a “liberal,” as though there were only the two extremes to public opinion. I'd have to sit and think awhile about whether or not I’m a liberal. I have fairly strong conservative views and fairly strong convictions. So strong, in fact, that when I see people lying and harming others, I tend to point that out. The problem I see with most Christian conservatives is they think in these absolutes: black and white, right and wrong, liberal and conservative. And so they’ll turn a blind eye and deaf ear to corruption and caprice because, to many of these people, there is no alternative. The overwhelming number of these people see an extremely dangerous and complex world as a single issue—abortion. Gay rights comes a close second, but for many conservative Christians, the entire world is about abortion rights and Roe v. Wade, and it has allowed that tail to wag the dog for decades, with Christians voting, time and again, to bring unscrupulous and, in the case of George W. Bush, dangerously unfit people to power simply because to their minds there is no other ethical option: white/black. Truth/lie. Good/evil. Conservative/abortionist.

When asked, Jesus said the greatest commandment is this: to love God with all of your heart, and to love your neighbor. In God's eyes, there are no big sins and little sins. Sin is sin. Doing harm to your neighbor is just as big a sin as abortion. Turning a blind eye and deaf ear to s nasty and divisive campaign just because the guy is a conservative or that he's pro-life is inconsistent with the biblical model: sin is sin. But we Christians routinely excuse one sin (meanness, intemperance) for another (abortion). This is a guy who sins. A guy who lies. Is he better or worse than the other guy? Only God knows. What I do know is the offensive tone of his campaign does not, in any way, display the qualities of Christ. He is not, in any way, the "Christian candidate" or "God's man." God's man will have God's qualities.

I tend to beat on Church Folk a lot, but it is in fact white evangelicals who are the most dangerous people in America. Extremist, “light switch” thinking in severe moral absolutes properly defines fascism. It is the Christian equivalent of what the Nazis did in World War II, boil down complex questions of society into simplistic, child-like slogans and prosecute those ideas with religious fervor. The evangelical political movement is also dangerous in that it is inconsistent with the personal example of Jesus Christ. It is a bunch of folk helping God out by enforcing God’s law on their community. Which misses the point, entirely, that we are no longer under the Law but under grace, and our responsibility to God is a personal one: to not sin ourselves and to make disciples of men (and, presumably, women). I might be missing a point, here, but I’ve found no biblical model for the political actions of the religious right in this country, and absolutely no biblical support for voting for bald-faced liars simply because the bald-faced liars claim to be pro-life.

I also find no scriptural support for being a moron, for being led around by your nose and told who to vote for by church elders. For being lemmings, marching in step toward the cliff, pulling levers for conservatives just because that’s what they claim they are. The world is a much bigger, much more complex place than that. God is a much bigger, much more complex God than that. His creation is a much more wonderful and varied mosaic than that. Narrowing your thinking to severe either-ors insults and, in many ways, blasphemes God. To blame God for your having voted twice for the worst president in modern history is simply ludicrous. Ignorance is not a quality of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Changing society at gunpoint—or by legislation—is not what God has asked us to do. He’s asked us to be witnesses for Him. To change the world one disciple at a time.

All the rest of this noise is so far off the mark, I rightfully question the motives and, frankly, the spirituality of those who perpetuate it. Such politicization of The Gospel is an offense to the cross. Lacking a biblical model of Christ Himself, it is, by definition, antichrist. Does that mean we do nothing, that anything goes? No, of course not. It means try the spirit by the Spirit [I John 4:1]. It means examine the whole candidate: his record, his motives, and, yes, how he conducts his campaign. Then, sure, vote for Obama if he’s earned your vote. Vote for McCain if he’s earned your vote. But, if you are marching in the name of Jesus, please stop marching like lemmings.

From The Drudge Report:

EXCLUSIVE: LETTERMAN MOCKS MCCAIN CANCELLATION
Wed Sep 24 2008 17:41:58 ET

David Letterman tells audience that McCain called him today to tell him he had to rush back to DC to deal with the economy.

Then in the middle of the taping Dave got word that McCain was, in fact just down the street being interviewed by Katie Couric. Dave even cut over to the live video of the interview, and said, "Hey Senator, can I give you a ride home?"

Earlier in the show, Dave kept saying, "You don't suspend your campaign. This doesn't smell right. This isn't the way a tested hero behaves." And he joked: "I think someone's putting something in his metamucil."

"He can't run the campaign because the economy is cratering? Fine, put in your second string quarterback, Sara Palin. Where is she?"

"What are you going to do if you're elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We've got a guy like that now!"

Developing...

Y'know, Wednesday's anti-McCain Letterman show was maybe the funniest Letterman has been in a long, long while. Seems when Dave gets pissed, as he was before the show started and as he *visibly* became even more so upon discovering McCain was down the street, he just dumps the queue cards and his killer comedic instincts take over. Ironically, the show reminded me how good Letterman *used* to be back when he used to invade NBC's NY affiliate, "Live At Five," walking right on-set with a camera crew, back when Letterman used to tape at Rockefeller Center ("Live At Five" started locking the doors, then actually posted security to keep Dave out, so Dave broadcasted from the hallway, pining for Sue Simmons, "Sue! Suuuuuue!!").

So far as I can tell, Dave's been coasting for a long time, now. Still amusing, but not nearly what I'd call "funny." Wednesday was really funny. And despite CBS News execs going public with their displeasure, the fact is, now more than ever, America could use a good laugh. We sure got one Wednesday.

By the by, if CBS News was *really* all that outraged, the Letterman show could have been cut to exclude the footage, or NBC could have not run the show at all.

I've got the entire show on DVD. It's a keeper.

Is it just me or is Pelosi an idiot? Did she just tank the deal by laying on the "Vote Democrat because the Republicans did this to us" speech? And isn’t this the same woman who wouldn’t allow a vote on impeachment?

I'm starting to wonder which party Nancy represents...