Bush supporter thread closed? Is this a mistake?

[amber]

Originally Posted by takenbythesky

Amber...That signature is awesome! Are they yours?!

-Justin

Yep. Thanks! The black n white one is good and perfect, the siamese is beastly, loud, and pugnacious. Now i wish i'd named them yin and yang, or something like that, but...ha, i chose them cause they opposite/match. just kidding! but they do...

[strandinthewind]

I thought this before, during, and after the election - I truly think it was the mere thought of gay marriage much less abortion that sent the pastors, ministers, and rabbis a runnin' to W for support. I mean the WH sent or had sent letters to Churches and other places of worship across the land urging them to preach from the pulpit that W was the person who would stop the dirty sinful, but tolerated , homosexual and the heinous abortionist - both of which are responsible for God ignoring America and sending us into this recession. While I am sure not all said it that way, I submit it was a variation of that line of thinking It also is a clear violation of the tax exempt status of houses of worship to do this and the fax to them was also a violation. Moreover, far religious right, with the clear support of the WH, turned the argument from no tax dollars to support one religion into "the liberals are trying to tell you you cannot worship God" - which was just sick of them IMO - but the churches bought it and preached it hook line and sinker This is why people are livid at the religious far right and, sadly, the "good" people of faith are caught up in that general thought.

Anyway, from the NYTimes:

November 5, 2004
FAITH GROUPS
Bush Benefits From Efforts to Build a Coalition of the Faithful
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
and WILLIAM YARDLEY

f a White House photographer with a keen eye for American religious trends were documenting President Bush's moves the past four years, here are some snapshots that would show up in a retrospective album:

The president framed by a nun and a cardinal on a visit to an urban Roman Catholic school; the president screening a Holocaust film in the White House one evening with a small group of Jewish leaders he had invited over; the president bowing his head before addressing an evangelical congregation.

For the past four years, Mr. Bush has been deliberately assembling the building blocks of a formidable faith coalition. Pastor by pastor, rabbi by rabbi, and often face to face, Mr. Bush has built relationships with a diverse range of religious leaders.

The payoff came on Tuesday. For all the credit claimed by evangelical Christians, Mr. Bush owes his victory to a formula that includes conservative Catholics, mainline Protestants, Hispanics, Jews and Mormons.

The president's strategists set out to improve his showing among not just evangelicals, but also Catholics, Jews, Hispanics and African-Americans by appealing to the social conservatives in each of those groups who felt alienated and disrespected by a popular culture that in their minds trivializes religion. In all of those groups, he won more of them over than he did four years ago, although the increase among African-Americans was negligible.

The pivotal group may have been Catholics, who make up 27 percent of voters. According to surveys of voters conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International, the president improved his showing by five percentage points among Catholics, from 47 percent in the 2000 election to 52 percent this year. In Ohio, where the Bush campaign sent thousands of field workers to Catholic churches, the margin was 55 percent to 43 percent for Senator John Kerry.

"In both Ohio and Florida, the Catholic vote helped carry the president across the finish line," said Leonard Leo, a Catholic adviser to the Bush-Cheney campaign.

Mr. Kerry, the first Catholic on a major party ticket since 1960, fared worse among Catholics than Al Gore did in 2000, Mr. Leo pointed out. "It's a pretty big sea change,'' he said. "In 2004, you have a Catholic running on a Democratic ticket, and he garners less Catholic support than the president, who is a Methodist. And this in the middle of a war where some Catholics are not with the president."

The president also did better among Hispanic voters: from 35 percent in 2000 to 44 percent in 2004. There are more Hispanic voters now than there were four years ago (going from 6 to 8 percent of the electorate), and many of them are either Catholic or evangelical. Among Hispanic evangelicals, 60 percent voted for the president; among Hispanic Catholics it was 39 percent (a lesser share than among Catholics as a whole).

The Jewish vote is small - 3 percent of the electorate. But after focusing attention on Jews in swing states like Florida, Ohio, Missouri and, when it looked competitive, New Jersey, the president increased his share of the Jewish vote from 19 percent in 2000 to 25 percent this year. Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, found that more than two-thirds of Orthodox Jews voted for the president.

"What this suggests is that the Bush coalition wasn't just evangelicals," said John C. Green, a professor of political science and director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron. "It included a much larger group of more traditional religious people, many of them outside of the evangelical tradition. What they have in common is that all of these groups tend to hold traditional views on sexual behavior."

Voters who identified themselves as white born-again or evangelical Christians made up 23 percent of voters this year. Seventy-eight percent of them voted for the president - clearly an increase over the 2000 election (but it is unclear by how much, since the question used to identify evangelicals in surveys of voters leaving the polls was asked differently four years ago, making a direct comparison impossible). Professor Green said his polling showed an increase in the evangelical vote for President Bush from 71 percent in 2000 to 76 percent this year.

African-Americans were the only constituency that did not respond in great numbers to the Bush campaign's overtures, said Tony Carnes, a sociologist at Columbia University who polls religious leaders.

He and several black ministers said in interviews that while Republicans were making inroads with appeals to biblical teaching on gay marriage and abortion, it was a hard sell within this traditionally Democratic voting bloc. "The pew is not yet voting Republican; it's the church leaders," he said.

Four years ago, said Mike Hightower, chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign in six northeast Florida counties, some religious conservatives may have been wary of Mr. Bush. Some may have been put off by news late in the 2000 campaign that he had once been arrested for drunken driving.

"In these four years, they have come to understand that this is a man of great, deep faith, and on that they all agree," Mr. Hightower said. "They saw a man who didn't just talk about being a religious person but lives it out."

He noted that when Republicans in Jacksonville first viewed a commercial showing a girl who said the president comforted her after she lost a parent on Sept. 11, "You will not believe the men and women who wept in my office. That to me is one of the high moments of the campaign."

Outside the sprawling, multiblock downtown complex that is the First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, a two-word chorus emerged from people on their way to the 6:30 worship service on Wednesday evening.

"Moral values."

Terry Lee, 52, an insurance salesman, said it. So did Reecia Harrell, a "50-something" kindergarten teacher. Same for Laura Hurse, a 20-year-old nursing student.

All white, all Republican, all Bush supporters, each offered the answer immediately when asked what had driven their vote for the president. And each cited the president's positions on a trinity of social issues - abortion, same-sex marriage and embryonic stem cell research.

But Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, warned against placing too much emphasis on "values voters.''

He noted that the percentages of voters who said they attended church once a week or opposed abortion were no greater than four years ago. In addition, a surprising 60 percent of voters said they favored some kind of legal recognition for same-sex couples, with 25 percent favoring marriage rights, and 35 percent favoring civil unions. Thirty-seven percent told pollsters that same-sex couples should not be granted any form of legal recognition.

Mr. Kohut also questioned whether the anti-gay-marriage initiatives that were on the ballot in 11 states helped galvanize conservative religious voters to vote for the president. After all, he said, Mr. Kerry won both Michigan and Oregon, two swing states where gay marriage propositions were on the ballot.

"After reading the newspapers this morning, we're getting a little carried away with the cultural and religious interpretation of this election," Mr. Kohut said. "It was a vote to some extent on values, but it was also a vote on John Kerry and how the American public felt about the way President Bush handled the war on terrorism."

Further, the religious alignment could splinter over particular policy issues, however. On abortion and stem cell research, evangelicals and traditionalist Catholics are opposed, while Orthodox Jews are not.

"There are differences,'' said Nathan Diament, director of public policy for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations. "It is not just that we are evangelicals who read our Bible right to left. But what is in common is an appreciation for the role that religious faith plays in a person's life and in the life of a community.''


Marjorie Connelly contributed reporting for this article.

[amber]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

- both of which are responsible for God ignoring America and sending us into this recession.

Not to ignore the rest of your giant, giant post, but from my study of history and econ, Repub boom/trickle down econ invariably leads to a bust...sorry if it's off topic, but it really goads me that people don't understand econ cycles, what causes them, etc. Although, actually, i don't believe Clinton was responsible, really, for the econ boom. I think it was tech...
anyways, sorry to interrupt...

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by amber

Not to ignore the rest of your giant, giant, post, but from my study of history and econ, Repub boom/trickle down econ invariably leads to a bust...sorry if it's off topic, but it really goads me that people don't understand econ cycles, what causes them, etc. Although, actually, i don't believe Clinton was responsible, really, for the econ boom. I think it was tech...
anyways, sorry to interrupt...

I think you are correct in that the economy is cyclical no matter who is in charge. But, there are things the govt. can do. For example, lowering interest rates to almost zero kept us out of a depression because the housing and commercial building market (raw materials, labor, mortgage brokers, and peripheral suppliers) subsequently boomed from the dirt cheap money and it and it alone sustained the economy for awhile and is still a boon. I, along with Alan Greenspan, think tax cuts can provide an immediate stimulus, but they must be met with fiscal responsisbility, which W does not have and Greenspan has repeatedly admonished this behavior. If not, they do not work in the long term, which I and Greenspan believe is what happened in the last two years. Finally, the private sector drives the economy, not govt. jobs. The tech industry is an excellent example of this. But, by the same token, a lapse of govt. regulation can lead to the unchecked fraud we saw at the end of the Clinton era, which lead to the immediate and direct loss of billions if not trillions of dollars (Enron, MCI, etc.) and many more trillions in peripheral economies like the sandwhich shops in the Enron and other buildings, the people on the Enron payroll had to stop patronizing other businesses because they no longer had a paycheck to sustain that patronage, etc. (this BTW is a form of the trickle down theory - trickle down is VERY important, but is not the be all and end all - it is just one part of the process) Also, the tech boom was unique in that a whole new mega market (the internet and PC's) had been created out of nothing. I am unsure we will see that happen again - perhaps in the vitural reality sector and the "your cell phone is your t.v. , radio, computer, etc." market they say is coming. I mean the PC market is okay, but there are not that many households in a recession that will spend another $1,000 to upgrade - they may spend it out of necessity (broken computer, etc.) - but not just because MS has a cool new $300 operating system.

So, I think they both go hand in hand. But, this debate has been going on for years and years

[amber]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

I think you are correct in that the economy is cyclical no matter who is in charge. But, there are things the govt. can do. For example, lowering interest rates to almost zero kept us out of a depression because the housing and commercial building market (raw materials, labor, mortgage brokers, and peripheral suppliers) subsequently boomed from the dirt cheap money and it and it alone sustained the economy for awhile and is still a boon. I, along with Alan Greenspan, think tax cuts can provide an immediate stimulus, but they must be met with fiscal responsisbility, which W does not have and Greenspan has repeatedly admonished this behavior. If not, they do not work in the long term, which I and Greenspan believe is what happened in the last two years. Finally, the private sector drives the economy, not govt. jobs. The tech industry is an excellent example of this. But, by the same token, a lapse of govt. regulation can lead to the unchecked fraud we saw at the end of the Clinton era, which lead to the immediate and direct loss of billions if not trillions of dollars (Enron, MCI, etc.) and many more trillions in peripheral economies like the sandwhich shops in the Enron and other buildings, the people on the Enron payroll had to stop patronizing other businesses because they no longer had a paycheck to sustain that patronage, etc. (this BTW is a form of the trickle down theory - trickle down is VERY important, but is not the be all and end all - it is just one part of the process)

So, I think they both go hand in hand. But, this debate has been going on for years and years

Agree. But, I think I think that trickle down is more harmful than you do..? It's pretty complex, though, and i think you spoke to that. But, studying econ can be strange, judging from the super repub, and conversely super socialist professors i have had on the subject...but i think it is so important to study the history, and sociology of it.
Thanks, Strandie!

[GateandGarden]

Originally Posted by amber

Yep. Thanks! The black n white one is good and perfect, the siamese is beastly, loud, and pugnacious. Now i wish i'd named them yin and yang, or something like that, but...ha, i chose them cause they opposite/match. just kidding! but they do...

They are adorable, Amber.

Hillary

[amber]

Originally Posted by GateandGarden

They are adorable, Amber.

Hillary

aww, thanks. Unfortunately i recently "saved" a redheaded stepchild (orange cat)...I swear, it's throwing my decor off!

[strandinthewind]

I thought this was interesting, particularly the stats he cites.
_________________________________________________________

November 6, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Values-Vote Myth
By DAVID BROOKS

very election year, we in the commentariat come up with a story line to explain the result, and the story line has to have two features. First, it has to be completely wrong. Second, it has to reassure liberals that they are morally superior to the people who just defeated them.

In past years, the story line has involved Angry White Males, or Willie Horton-bashing racists. This year, the official story is that throngs of homophobic, Red America values-voters surged to the polls to put George Bush over the top.

This theory certainly flatters liberals, and it is certainly wrong.

Here are the facts. As Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center points out, there was no disproportionate surge in the evangelical vote this year. Evangelicals made up the same share of the electorate this year as they did in 2000. There was no increase in the percentage of voters who are pro-life. Sixteen percent of voters said abortions should be illegal in all circumstances. There was no increase in the percentage of voters who say they pray daily.

It's true that Bush did get a few more evangelicals to vote Republican, but Kohut, whose final poll nailed the election result dead-on, reminds us that public opinion on gay issues over all has been moving leftward over the years. Majorities oppose gay marriage, but in the exit polls Tuesday, 25 percent of the voters supported gay marriage and 35 percent of voters supported civil unions. There is a big middle on gay rights issues, as there is on most social issues.

Much of the misinterpretation of this election derives from a poorly worded question in the exit polls. When asked about the issue that most influenced their vote, voters were given the option of saying "moral values." But that phrase can mean anything - or nothing. Who doesn't vote on moral values? If you ask an inept question, you get a misleading result.

The reality is that this was a broad victory for the president. Bush did better this year than he did in 2000 in 45 out of the 50 states. He did better in New York, Connecticut and, amazingly, Massachusetts. That's hardly the Bible Belt. Bush, on the other hand, did not gain significantly in the 11 states with gay marriage referendums.

He won because 53 percent of voters approved of his performance as president. Fifty-eight percent of them trust Bush to fight terrorism. They had roughly equal confidence in Bush and Kerry to handle the economy. Most approved of the decision to go to war in Iraq. Most see it as part of the war on terror.

The fact is that if you think we are safer now, you probably voted for Bush. If you think we are less safe, you probably voted for Kerry. That's policy, not fundamentalism. The upsurge in voters was an upsurge of people with conservative policy views, whether they are religious or not.

The red and blue maps that have been popping up in the papers again this week are certainly striking, but they conceal as much as they reveal. I've spent the past four years traveling to 36 states and writing millions of words trying to understand this values divide, and I can tell you there is no one explanation. It's ridiculous to say, as some liberals have this week, that we are perpetually refighting the Scopes trial, with the metro forces of enlightenment and reason arrayed against the retro forces of dogma and reaction.

In the first place, there is an immense diversity of opinion within regions, towns and families. Second, the values divide is a complex layering of conflicting views about faith, leadership, individualism, American exceptionalism, suburbia, Wal-Mart, decorum, economic opportunity, natural law, manliness, bourgeois virtues and a zillion other issues.

But the same insularity that caused many liberals to lose touch with the rest of the country now causes them to simplify, misunderstand and condescend to the people who voted for Bush. If you want to understand why Democrats keep losing elections, just listen to some coastal and university town liberals talk about how conformist and intolerant people in Red America are. It makes you wonder: why is it that people who are completely closed-minded talk endlessly about how open-minded they are?

What we are seeing is a diverse but stable Republican coalition gradually eclipsing a diverse and stable Democratic coalition. Social issues are important, but they don't come close to telling the whole story. Some of the liberal reaction reminds me of a phrase I came across recently: The rage of the drowning man.

from www.nytimes.com

[strandinthewind]

This one offers insight as well, although I do not believe everything he says
________________________________________________________

November 6, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Time to Get Religion
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

f Democrats want to know how to win again, they have a model. It's the British Labor Party.

When I studied in England in the early 1980's, the British Labor Party seemed as quaint and eccentric as Oxford itself, where we wore gowns for exams and some dons addressed the rare female student as "sir." Labor was caught in its own echo chamber of militant unions and anti-American activists, and it so repulsed voters that it seemed it might wither away entirely.

Then Tony Blair and another M.P., Gordon Brown, dragged the party away from socialism, unions, nuclear disarmament and anti-Americanism. Together they created "New Labor," which aimed for the center and aggressively courted Middle Britain instead of trying to scare it. The result is that since 1997, Mr. Blair and Labor have utterly dominated Britain.

The Democrats need a similar rebranding. But the risk is that the party will blame others for its failures - or, worse, blame the American people for their stupidity (as London's Daily Mirror screamed in a Page 1 headline this week: "How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?").

As moderates from the heartland, like Tom Daschle, are picked off by the Republicans, the party's image risks being defined even more by bicoastal, tree-hugging, gun-banning, French-speaking, Bordeau-sipping, Times-toting liberals, whose solution is to veer left and galvanize the base. But firing up the base means turning off swing voters. Gov. Mike Johanns, a Nebraska Republican, told me that each time Michael Moore spoke up for John Kerry, Mr. Kerry's support in Nebraska took a dive.

Mobilizing the base would mean nominating Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2008 and losing yet again. (Mrs. Clinton has actually undertaken just the kind of makeover that I'm talking about: in the Senate, she's been cooperative, mellow and moderate, winning over upstate New Yorkers. She could do the same in the heartland ... if she had 50 years.)

So Democrats need to give a more prominent voice to Middle American, wheat-hugging, gun-shooting, Spanish-speaking, beer-guzzling, Bible-toting centrists. (They can tote The Times, too, in a plain brown wrapper.) For a nominee who could lead the Democrats to victory, think of John Edwards, Bill Richardson or Evan Bayh, or anyone who knows the difference between straw and hay.

I wish that winning were just a matter of presentation. But it's not. It involves compromising on principles. Bill Clinton won his credibility in the heartland partly by going home to Little Rock during the 1992 campaign to preside over the execution of a mentally disabled convict named Ricky Ray Rector.

There was a moral ambiguity about Mr. Clinton's clambering to power over Mr. Rector's corpse. But unless Democrats compromise, they'll be proud and true and losers.

So what do the Democrats need to do? Here are four suggestions:

• Don't be afraid of religion. Offer government support for faith-based programs to aid the homeless, prisoners and AIDS victims. And argue theology with Republicans: there's much more biblical ammunition to support liberals than conservatives.

• Pick battles of substance, not symbolism. The battle over Georgia's Confederate flag cost Roy Barnes his governorship and perhaps Max Cleland his Senate seat, but didn't help one working mother or jobless worker. It was a gift to Republicans.

• Accept that today, gun control is a nonstarter. Instead of trying to curb guns, try to reduce gun deaths through better rules on licensing and storage, and on safety devices like trigger locks.

• Hold your nose and work with President Bush as much as you can because it's lethal to be portrayed as obstructionists. Sure, block another Clarence Thomas, but here's a rule of thumb: if an otherwise qualified Supreme Court nominee would turn the clock back 10 years, approve; back 25 years, vote no; back a half-century, filibuster.

"The first thing we have to do is shake the image of us as the obstructionist party," notes Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, who manages to thrive as a Democrat in the red sea. He says Democrats must show a willingness to compromise, to get things done, to defer to local sensibilities. "We have to show the American people," he says, "that Democrats aren't going to take away your guns, aren't going to take away your flags."

Rethinking the Democratic Party will be wrenching. But just ask Tony Blair - it's not as wrenching as sliding into irrelevance.

from www.nytimes.com

[strandinthewind]

Finally, Lord love her - she's a half a bubble off - but she rings true this time IMO:
______________________________________________________

MY OPINION

Bible verses used as 'Bible versus'

Published on: 11/05/04


"The Old Testament did sanction slavery. God said, 'Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you. . . . And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children. . . .' "

— "Domestic Slavery Considered as a Scriptural Institution,"

Rev. Richard Fuller, 1847


Last Tuesday, there was at least one thing about which blue states and red states, black Americans and white Americans, Northerners and Southerners could agree: Gays and lesbians should be denied the right to full citizenship. Constitutional amendments to ban same-sex unions appeared on the ballot in 11 states and passed easily — from Michigan, Ohio and Oregon to Georgia, Mississippi and Arkansas.

It was a triumph for bigotry based on the Bible. From conservative pulpits around the country, pastors had implored their flocks to go to the polls and vote against the "abomination" of homosexuality. They claimed that preventing gays from getting married would shore up the institution among heterosexuals — though it is not clear how.

It was also a triumph for the Machiavellian madness of Karl Rove. He understood only too well that many Americans were willing to ignore a sputtering economy, a profoundly flawed war and soaring health care costs for the opportunity to enforce discrimination against a despised minority. Rove also knew that calling out the legions of ultraconservative Christians who abhor equal rights for gays would ensure that President Bush won not only the Electoral College but also the popular vote.

And they weren't just white voters. Homophobia oozes across lines of color, linking black America with white in a common contempt masquerading as morality. It is deeply disappointing to see black churchgoers enthusiastically wield the Bible as a bludgeon against another group, since Scripture was also used against us, as a justification for slavery, in the 19th century.


"In Genesis . . . soon after the flood Ham's descendants were doomed by the Almighty to a state of slavery . . . and . . . the descendants of Shem and Japheth . . . were ordained to be their masters."

— "Slavery: Its Origin, Nature and History,"

Rev. Thornton Stringfellow, 1861


Indeed, black Christians have become more hostile toward gays over the last decade or so. While 65 percent of black Protestants believed that gays should enjoy equal rights in 1996, that view was held by only 40 percent this year, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Among most other religious groups surveyed, including white evangelical Protestants, support for gay rights increased (if only marginally) over the same period.

Ultraconservative black Christians helped make the difference for President Bush in the key state of Ohio. Bush nearly doubled his support among black Ohioans, from 9 percent in 2000 to 16 percent on Tuesday, according to senior analyst David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington think tank specializing in issues of interest to black Americans. That increase — about 50,000 voters — came from black Christian conservatives, he added.


"It is vain to look to Christ or any of his Apostles to justify [abolition]. On the contrary . . . they exhort 'all servants under the yoke' to 'count their masters as worthy of all honor.' . . . St. Paul actually apprehended a runaway slave and sent him to his master!"

— The Pro-Slavery Argument, Hammond's Letters on Slavery,

(Former S.C. Gov.) J.H. Hammond, 1853


When American Baptists split over the bondage of black men and women in the 1840s, the Southern brethren, who backed slavery, formed the Southern Baptist Convention. Many of its members continued to resist equal rights for black Americans through the 1960s.

At their Atlanta meeting in 1995 — belatedly recognizing the error of their ways — the messengers of the Southern Baptist Convention issued a broad apology for the church's support of slavery. The founders of the Southern Baptist Convention were "good, godly, Bible-believing persons, but they were not infallible," the Rev. Charles T. Carter said at the time.

Some 50 to 100 years from now, no doubt, some Christian churches will find themselves apologizing for their contemptuous treatment of gays and lesbians, many of whom are fellow Christians. For now, however, the conservative Christian church — black and white — has forsaken two of Christ's most profound injunctions:

"Love thy neighbor as thyself."

— Matthew, 22:39

"Judge not, that ye be not judged."

— Matthew, 7:1

Find this article at:
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/o...er/110704.html

[greatdarkwing]

Originally Posted by sodascouts

We did - for about five seconds! I did get a hug out of him! lol

I do give the best hugs...not to brag, LOL.

It was quite funny that Jason posted about your boots, cause when I met you, you were complaining about them! LOL!

~Alex

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by greatdarkwing

I do give the best hugs...not to brag, LOL.

It was quite funny that Jason posted about your boots, cause when I met you, you were complaining about them! LOL!

~Alex

Boots - politics - women

there is a diff?



Nancy

[Vianna]

"think W and the R party are trying to create a theocracy and here is how I support that:

1. They want to use public funds to place Christian (and they only fight for th Christian ones mind you) symbols in public places. They do not mind and in fact want to turn public buildings into places of worship.

2. They want everyone to live by Christian ideals. For example, no sex (hetero or homo sexual) out of wedlock.

3. They want to use public funds to use in Christian schools and for Christian Charities. I seriously doubt if the Wiccans applied for these same funds, they would get them.

4. I see the day to day activity of many Christians and they are exclusive. I cannot tell you how many people I heard, bumperstickers I read, etc. all saying something to the effect of W will make America safe for Jesus again. I fully realize this is not all Christians, but I submit it is over 50%.

My comment about the church coffers and abortion was born from my experience with churches here and things like the 700 club. Like it or not, they represent the majority of Christians. And - they preach this to fill their coffers. As an example, Pat Robertson routinely begs for money while preaching against abortion - in fact, he has had telethons on the subject. So, that is how arrived at, not jumped to as you asserted, that conclusion. If you can prove me wrong, I am all ears."


Well said, David. I agree.

[strandinthewind]

I think I said that But, David may certainly take credit if he so desires because he often is better spoken than I