Back to the Beginning

Due to technical difficulties, you can debate everything from the sanity of Bush to the sanctity of gay marriage at my original site: Dancing With Fire. Thanks.

Behold the Man, Part One: Follow the Money

The oil industry has paid John McCain more than 1.3 million dollars since he changed his position on offshore drilling. But really, isn’t that to be expected? Some items on McCain’s laundry-list of money scandals are quite a bit more intriguing:

Lawyers for the FEC decided on August 14, that John McCain did not violate finance laws late last year when he received millions in loans secured by agreeing to reapply for public funds if he lost early primary contests and to use that money as collateral. Got it?  That’s okay, nobody else does either. Lawyers for the FEC concluded that since McCain did not pledge to use public financing as collateral for those loans he didn’t break the law!

On July 18th, Phil Gramm, author of the “Enron Loophole” and a Vice-Chairman of UBS, officially stepped down as McCain’s senior economics advisor, though the two have been spotted together as recently as last Thursday at the Aspen Institute. Randy Scheunemann, still a top foreign policy advisor, has raked in nearly $800,000 in lobbying fees from the nation of Georgia.

McCain welcomed donations from the Muslim terrorist group KLA when he ran for President back in 2000, and is still accepting their money this time around.

McCain’s mafia connections stretch across the globe, including Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, and as close to home as his father-in-Law, James Hensley. Now, McCain first met Hensley in April, 1979; when he started dating Hensley’s daughter, Cindy Lou; McCain would divorce his wife, Carol, a year later.

And, from the beginning of their friendship till 1987, McCain had received $112,000 in contributions from Charles Keating and his associates. The 1991 Senate Ethics Committee cleared McCain of any criminal wrongdoing but criticized him for “poor judgement”.

To be continued…

Just Two Christians Worshipping

The purpose of this post is not to rail against John McCain for lying. I’m more interested in the way American voters are responding to McCain’s lies. My good friend Evan wrote a piece detailing how John McCain stole his “cross in the dirt” story; you know, the one that brought a tear to the eyes of Saddleback Church congregants during Saturday Night’s forum. I kind of joked with Evan about his revelation – I thought everyone knew McCain stole the story from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

The other whopper I thought everyone knew was nothing but a big, fat fib was McCain’s interrogation tale where he says he threw his torturers off-track by giving them the names of his buddies, the 1967 Green Bay Packers’ offensive line. Unless he’s telling the tale in Pittsburgh, where his buddies were the Steel Curtain.

Now, I was under the impression that the American electorate was savvy enough to know when they were getting hosed and were willing to just go along with McCain and his flare for the dramatic. A few republicans are pleased that McCain has the testicular fortitude to flat-out lie in a House of God, but I truly had no idea that the vast majority of Americans believe McCain’s tall tales.

I’ve come across one or two bloggers that say if voters are so stupid, we deserve what we get – a Bush third term full of lies, corruption and incompetence. I disagree. I care about America deeply, and I hope there are enough Americans that are smart enough to see through McCain’s blatant, obvious lies to stop that third term before it ever starts…

Saddleback

On May 6, 2008 the late Tim Russert said, “We now know who the democratic nominee will be…”, and I was a happy camper – I’ve been an Obama supporter from day one. Today, quite unfortunately, I’ve got my own Russert moment for you. We now know who the next President of the United States will be: John McCain.

Rick Warren and Barack Obama are friends; they speak the same language. Yet, it was John McCain who wowed the crowd of “new Evangelicals”. His straight-talk responses – Iraq? We must win and we WILL win! Energy? We must drill and we must drill NOW! Women’s rights? I will have a pro-life administration and appoint pro-life judges!

Now, stop right there. Let’s look at Obama’s reasonable position on a woman’s right to choose. Have abortions ceased to exist under pro-life President George W. Bush? No. What makes you think they will disappear under pro-life President John McCain? They won’t.

Barack Obama wants to tackle the causes that place women in the position of having to make that most serious of choices. If more women had the means, motive and opportunity to have a child, more women would obviously choose to bring a baby into this world. But George W. Bush, John McCain and the republicans have made this a very dark, cold and lonely place for many perspective mothers. We have a broken economy – people are making less and have to spend more. Wanna buy a home in today’s market? America is ranked 19th in the world in education, but as far as incarceration - we’re number one!

Anyway, the bottom-line is that John McCain utterly trounced Obama in what was supposed to be a real breakthrough moment for the democrat. Sure, McCain is wrong on the issues and will only lead America further away from the greatness that is beginning to seem like a distant memory, but politics isn’t about being right – it’s about winning. Come to think of it, in American politics, being right and winning seem to be mutually exclusive…

“It’s just common sense.”

I sincerely hope the family of the first child killed in Houston, Texas’ Harrold Independent School District will be comforted by those words from Superintendent David Thweatt. See, the School Board just approved- unanimously – a plan to allow teachers to carry guns in the classroom. Teachers who wish to bring guns will have to be certified to carry a concealed handgun in Texas and get crisis training and permission from school officials, said Thweatt.

Will the first kid get shot by a stray bullet because two teachers get into a lovers’ spat? Will he or she die because the Biology teacher has had his fill of cry-babies that don’t want to dissect a frog? Will the child die because another kid wanted to play a practical joke on his least favorite teacher and it “backfired”?

Well, there are any number of scenarios to choose from. You put loaded guns in the hands of teachers, some child is going to get shot. It’s just common sense…