The conventional wisdom is that Mike Huckabee will carry the Evangelical vote in the south. The only problem is that there is no "Evangelical vote." Most people can't even define the word "Evangelical". Evangelical has become a convenient term used by the media but there is no monolithic group of Evangelicals. There are stark contrasts ideologically, theologically and politically between Christian conservatives and their liberal brethren such as Jimmy Carter.
Do not confuse southern Christians with the more liberal "Evangelical" denominations in other parts of the country. New Anglican churches are springing up everywhere as southern Episcopalians split with New England Episcopalians. Midwestern Lutherans and Protestants are far more liberal than their southern counterparts. Even within the liberal churches there is an on-going struggle over issues such as boycotting Israel.
While polls show Huckabee leading in South Carolina and Georgia, the campaign has hardly begun and people are just now becoming aware of Huckabee's record. In the South Carolina debate this week, Fred Thompson pointed out that Mr. Huckabee is not a conservative. South Carolina Christians heard and loved Thompson's call to the Reagan ideals. Christians across the south will respond the same way and the polls will change. I am not making predictions but I wouldn't be surprised if Huckabee fails to win a single southern state.
What of the Southern Baptists, the core of the Huckabee Christian followers, if he is really a Christian leader?
ReplyDeleteAll these different sects, enough to make ones' head spin.
Reagan raised taxes in California, over $1 Billion bcks worth, in 1967. When a Billion bucks was really something.
Reagan signed an illegal Immigrant Amnesty Bill into Law, in 1987.
By the "Southern Evangelical Standard", Ronald Reagan, a record of twenty years of "liberalism"
why hasn't anyone asked Hillary if she wears thongs, T-backs, or granny panties? Shaved or not?
ReplyDeleteThese are important question given the shuck and jive of this primary season.
The Southern Baptist Convention has not endorsed Huckabee and as the campaign swings into high gear more people will become aware of Huckabee's policies.
ReplyDeleteRomney and Giuliani have repeatedly sought to reassure Republicans about Supreme Court justices and abortion.
In the end, people will hold their noses if they have to do so in order to vote against a Democrat.
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration hit the brakes Friday on a controversial law requiring Americans to carry tamper-proof driver's licenses, delaying its final implementation by five years, until 2017.
ReplyDeleteA number of states have balked at the law, objecting to it largely over cost and privacy concerns. But under the administration's new edict, states that continue to fight compliance with the law face a penalty: Their residents will be forbidden from using driver's licenses to board airplanes or enter federal buildings as of May 11 of this year.
Congress passed the Real ID law in 2005 to address security flaws spotlighted by the 2001 terrorist attacks. But 17 states, including Arizona, Colorado and Nevada, have passed legislation calling for its repeal or opposing its implementation.
"Come May 2008, [their] citizens . . . will feel the consequences" of the states' resistance, Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke said Friday. To board a plane or enter a federal building, those residents will have to use a passport or other form of accepted identification, he said.
Good thing everyone in my family has a passport. We all have a Federal ID, no need for the State to help the Federals fill the void otf their lack of competency in supplying passports.
Voinovich today said he is co-sponsoring an amendment to the immigration bill � though there is some question whether that measure will pass this year � aimed at reducing the passport delay problem. Further, he wrote a letter to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice asking that, in the meantime, the State Department take some immediate steps to deal with the problem.
Voinovich's office said the senator is reacting to a huge increase in requests for passport help, heaping an extra load of work on Senate office staffers.
The logjam appears to be mostly because of new requirements that took effect earlier this year for U.S. citizens to use passports to re-enter the country after air travel from Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. It is thought the problem will only get worse when that policy extends to land and sea travel next year.
How closely do the Conventioneers follow the leaderships' reccomendations?
ReplyDeleteDoes the endorsement of the SBC matter, as much as Oprahs', or does each Baptist decide for themselves, whether to follow a Christian Leader or a secular one?
As I said, the sects and their differing levels of particpation in secular politics, is headspinning for a nonparticpant to try to understand.
Often Religion is touted as a driving component of an issue and how it effects the electorate, then on other issues touted as unimportant.
Has the SBC endorsed any candidate in the Primaries?
ReplyDeleteDo they have a past history of such endorsements?
A better question than about the style of panties, habu.
ReplyDeleteDoes Hillary prefer Bill using Cuban or Honduran cigars, in their foreplay?
It is not just that the Huckster is not conservative enough, but now ...
ReplyDeleteBillary is not Black enough
A Harlem-based consultant to the Clinton campaign, Bill Lynch, called the former president’s comments “a mistake” and said his own phone had been ringing with friends around the country voicing their concern.
“I’ve been concerned about some of those comments — and that there might be a backlash,” he said.
Illinois State Senate President Emil Jones, a prominent Obama supporter, echoed those sentiments.
"It’s very unfortunate that the president would make a statement like that," he said of Bill Clinton's criticism of Obama's experience, adding that the African-American community had "saved his presidency" after the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
"They owe the African-American community — not the reverse," he said. "Maybe Hillary and Bill should get behind Sen. Barack Obama."
Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., through a spokesman, used even stronger language. "Following Barack Obama's victory in Iowa and historic voter turnout in New Hampshire, the cynics unfortunately have stepped up their efforts to decry his uplifting message of hope and fundamental change.
"Regrettably, they have resorted to distasteful and condescending language that appeals to our fears rather than our hopes. I sincerely hope that they'll turn away from such reactionary, disparaging rhetoric."
Many analysts think Clinton won New Hampshire on the back of a feminist backlash against criticism from her rivals and the media, and now, after his own defeat, it’s Obama’s turn. Race is particularly complicated turf this year, however, in a contest that features two towering figures who pride themselves for breaking racial barriers in American politics.
The first is Bill Clinton, sometimes referred to as “the first black president,” who now finds himself on the same uncertain ground as any other white politician speaking dismissively of an African-American rival.
The core constituency of each Party, the most dependable part of their respective electorates, in an uproar, demanding their due.
The Cardinals, they do not know what to do.
Ban eased on Saddam-era officials
ReplyDeleteThe Iraqi parliament has passed legislation allowing former officials from Saddam Hussein's Baath party to return to public life.
The US had been urging Iraq's Shia-led government to approve the move in a bid to reach out to minority Sunni Arabs.
It will allow thousands of former party members to apply for reinstatement in the civil service and military.
The new law was passed as US President George W Bush, who is in the Gulf, said hope was returning to Iraq.
Reconciliation
Saddam Hussein was executed on 30 December 2006 after a special tribunal found him guilty of crimes against humanity.
Finally!
ReplyDelete3 convicted in Islamic charity trial
By MARK JEWELL, Associated Press Writer Fri Jan 11, 5:02 PM ET
BOSTON - Three former leaders of an Islamic charity were convicted Friday of duping the U.S. government into awarding their organization tax-exempt status by hiding the group's pro-jihad activities.
Care International Inc., which is now defunct, described its mission as helping war orphans, widows and refugees in Muslim nations. But prosecutors said the organization also distributed a newsletter promoting jihad and supported Muslim militants involved in armed conflicts around the world.
Success!!!
ReplyDeleteVictory is at hand!!!!
Dhimmi watch
December 5, 2007
Basra jihadists threaten women: "Whoever disobeys will be punished. God is our witness that we have conveyed this message"
"Islam elevates women." (But the "elevator" only has a "down" button.) "Basra women fear militants behind wave of killings," from Reuters:
BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) - Women in Iraq's southern city of Basra are living in fear. More than 40 have been killed and their bodies dumped in the streets in the past five months for behavior deemed un-Islamic, the city's police chief says.
A warning scrawled in red on a wall threatens any woman who wears makeup or appears in public without an Islamic headscarf with dire punishment.
"Whoever disobeys will be punished. God is our witness that we have conveyed this message," it says.
Women in the Shi'ite city are convinced hardline Islamic militants are behind the killings and say they fear going out without a headscarf.
As westhawk informed last week:
Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Party (SIIC), Iraq�s largest and best organized Shi�ite party (and militia), seems to be pursuing his idea of political reconciliation on two crucial fronts. Although he holds no post in the government, Mr. al-Hakim is in a position to accomplish more than Prime Minister al-Maliki or his ministers can.
His Group, SIIC, controls Basra.
The shape of things to come
Success is at hand!
Bush's efforts to negotiate a long-term U.S-Iraq pact may remove troops as an '08 election issue for Obama, Clinton.
ReplyDeleteJan 12, 2008
In remarks to the traveling press, delivered from the Third Army operation command center here, Bush said that negotiations were about to begin on a long-term strategic partnership with the Iraqi government modeled on the accords the United States has with Kuwait and many other countries. Crocker, who flew in from Baghdad with Petraeus to meet with the president, elaborated: "We're putting our team together now, making preparations in Washington," he told reporters. "The Iraqis are doing the same. And in the few weeks ahead, we would expect to get together to start this negotiating process." The target date for concluding the agreement is July, says Gen. Doug Lute, Bush's Iraq coordinator in the White House--in other words, just in time for the Democratic and Republican national conventions.
Most significant of all, the new partnership deal with Iraq, including a status of forces agreement that would then replace the existing Security Council mandate authorizing the presence of the U.S.-led multinational forces in Iraq, will become a sworn obligation for the next president. It will become just another piece of the complex global security framework involving a hundred or so countries with which Washington now has bilateral defense or security cooperation agreements. Last month, Sen. Hillary Clinton urged Bush not to commit to any such agreement without congressional approval. The president said nothing about that on Saturday, but Lute said last fall that the Iraqi agreement would not likely rise to the level of a formal treaty requiring Senate ratification. Even so, it would be difficult if not impossible for future presidents to unilaterally breach such a pact.
As far as the number of U.S. troops that would remain in Iraq under such a pact, the administration is considering changes that could also pre-empt anything the Democrats have in mind. Gen. Petraeus told reporters that he and Pentagon planners were also working on a new "intellectual construct" for a U.S. troop presence in Iraq beyond the planned withdrawal of five brigade combat teams, two Marine battalions and the Marine Expeditionary Unit by the end of July. "We're going to continue to play with this, if you will," Petraeus said. "We literally meet a couple of times a week and keep working this along." Asked whether he and the Pentagon were considering a larger drawdown than the current one--which would shrink the U.S. presence to a pre-surge level of about 130,000, he added: "Certainly there is a possibility of that." In fact, one Pentagon contractor who is working on the long-term U.S. plans for Iraq says that the administration is considering new configurations of forces that could reduce troop levels to well under 100,000, perhaps to as few as 60,000, by the time the next president takes office.
On time, on target.
DR asked:
ReplyDeleteDoes Hillary prefer Bill using Cuban or Honduran cigars, in their foreplay?
Come on, Desert Rat. No reporter is going to ask Mrs. Rodham-Clinton that question, because they all know that she cannot answer. How would Mrs. Rodham-Clinton know anything about Bill's foreplay preferences?
I agree with Habu. Our press tried to sniff out whether it was 'boxers or briefs, Mr. President, the whole world is breathless to know', we should do at least as well with Hillary. And I want the truth about her hip size.
ReplyDeleteSchuck, jive and hip, the three necessary legs of a winning campaign.
ReplyDeleteAnd if Hillary can hitch her star to that mountain climber Sir Edmund Hillary, what's wrong with Obama hitching his to that other man that saw the mountain, Martin Luther King?
ReplyDeleteNot a thing, bob.
ReplyDeleteActually Obama is a part of the outcome that Mr King was striving for, a fruit of genealogical tree planted on the that mountain top
I myself am named after Robert of Normandy, who mortgaged his holdings to William II to enable himself to go on the First Crusade.
ReplyDeleteWho you named after, Rat? :)
ReplyDeleteWho's Habu named after, for that matter?
ReplyDeleteEveryone knows it is not the content of one's character that matters so much, but the cut of one's name. Just ask Zsa Zsa's husband Frederic Prinz von Anhalt. He didn't score Zsa Zsa by being called any old mike huckabee.
ReplyDeleteA REMINDER FOR THOSE THAT NEVER saw any of the Burma Shave signs, here is a quick lesson in our history of the 1930's and '40's. Before there were interstates, when everyone drove the old 2 lane roads, Burma Shave signs would be posted all over the countryside in farmers' fields.
ReplyDeleteThey were small red signs with white letters. Five signs, about 100 feet apart , each containing 1 line of a 4 line couplet......and the obligatory 5th sign advertising Burma Shave, a popular shaving cream.
Here are more of the actual signs:
DON'T STICK YOUR ELBOW
OUT SO FAR
IT MAY GO HOME
IN ANOTHER CAR.
BURMA SHAVE
TRAINS DON'T WANDER
ALL OVER THE MAP
'CAUSE NOBODY SITS
IN THE ENGINEER'S LAP
Burma Shave
SHE KISSED THE HAIRBRUSH
BY MISTAKE
SHE THOUGHT IT WAS
HER HUSBAND JAKE
Burma Shave
DON'T LOSE YOUR HEAD
TO GAIN A MINUTE
YOU NEED YOUR HEAD
YOUR BRAINS ARE IN IT
Burma Shave
DROVE TOO LONG
DRIVER SNOOZING
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT
IS NOT AMUSING
Burma Shave
BROTHER SPEEDER
LET'S REHEARSE
ALL TOGETHER
GOOD MORNING, NURSE
Burma Shave
CAUTIOUS RIDER
TO HER RECKLESS DEAR
LET'S HAVE LESS BULL
AND A LITTLE MORE STEER
Burma Shave
SPEED WAS HIGH
WEATHER WAS NOT
TIRES WERE THIN
X MARKS THE SPOT
Burma Shave
THE MIDNIGHT RIDE
OF PAUL FOR BEER
LED TO A WARMER
HEMI SPHERE
Burma Shave
AROUND THE CURVE
LICKETY-SPLIT
BEAUTIFUL CAR
WASN'T IT?
Burma Shave
NO MATTER THE PRICE
NO MATTER HOW NEW
THE BEST SAFETY DEVICE
IN THE CAR IS YOU
Burma Shave
A GUY WHO DRIVES
A CAR WIDE OPEN
IS NOT THINKIN'
HE'S JUST HOPIN'
Burma Shave
AT I NTERSECTIONS
LOOK EACH WAY
A HARP SOUNDS NICE
BUT IT'S HARD TO PLAY
Burma Shave
BOTH HANDS ON THE WHEEL
EYES ON THE ROAD
THAT'S THE SKILLFUL
DRIVER'S CODE
Burma Shave
THE ONE WHO DRIVES
WHEN HE'S BEEN DRINKING
DEPENDS ON YOU
TO DO HIS THINKING
Burma Shave
CAR IN DITCH
DRIVER IN TREE
THE MOON WAS FULL
AND SO WAS HE.
Burma Shave
PASSING SCHOOL ZONE
TAKE IT SLOW
LET OUR LITTLE
SHAVERS GROW
Burma Shave
Do these bring back any old memories?
If not, you're merely a child.
If they do - then you're old as dirt...
LIKE ME!
I mark the press conference when Bill Clinton was asked about his underwear as the moment when any residual formal respect for the office of the President vanished from American life.
ReplyDeleteOverseas, the Kuomingtang has won the election in Taiwan, over the more independence minded party. The K. has been talking with the Chinese for a long time, and Taiwan will be absorbed into China one of these days, peacefully. More business deals in the making in the immediate future. China will keep lil' Kim bottled up too.
ReplyDeleteHuck's not going to take your gun but he could do a little better explaining his outlook--
ReplyDeleteThis is from Huckabee's appearance on the Colbert Report:
COLBERT: South Carolina gun laws are so loose that you can go into any gun shop and buy as many handguns as you want. I mean 200 of them and then just ship them up here to New York and sell them illegally on the street and raise some serious scratch.
HUCKABEE: How do you think I've financed my campaign for the past 11 months?
COLBERT: Smart man!
COLBERT: Pick me up a couple?
HUCKABEE: On their way. What kind would you like?
COLBERT: Something with the serial numbers scratched off.
HUCKABEE: Consider it done.
COLBERT: I know you're a man of your word. You would never rescind your offer of making me vice president no matter how well you do in the campaign. But I'm going to give you one more chance to get out of it. Just ask me, I'll say no ...
HUCKABEE: Steven, be my running mate?
COLBERT: Yes!!!!!!!!!
And so Obama stood before a Culinary crowd that was already wearing red T-shirts with his name printed on them, telling them how he would "make the Las Vegas dream the American dream."
ReplyDeletexxxxxxxxx
"Las Vegas is what the world would have become if the Nazis had won the war."
from 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'
Iraq's parliament adopted legislation Saturday on the reinstatement of former Baath party supporters to government jobs, a benchmark sought by the United States as a key step toward national reconciliation.
ReplyDeleteThe voting was carried out by a show of hands on each of the law's 30 clauses. The bill, officially called the "Accountability and Justice" law, seeks to relax restrictions on the right of members of Saddam Hussein's now-dissolved Baath party to fill government posts. It is also designed to reinstate thousands of Baathists in government jobs from which they had been dismissed because of their ties to the party.
Habu
ReplyDeletebobal said...
ReplyDeleteAnd so Obama stood before a Culinary crowd that was already wearing red T-shirts with his name printed on them, telling them how he would "make the Las Vegas dream the American dream."
xxxxxxxxx
"Las Vegas is what the world would have become if the Nazis had won the war."
from 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'
_________________
Outstanding
This Article has an excellent comment thread, especially about halfway through when they get into algae.
ReplyDeleteDoug, you might be interested in Shell Oil's open pond algae project in Hawaii.
Rufus, that is an amazing post.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Deuce; It kind of got my head spinning, also.
ReplyDelete