Legion of Angels News Archive

FROM CNN’s Jack Cafferty:

Senator John McCain says when it comes to foreign policy he’s light years ahead of Barack Obama. Over and over again, McCain has insisted Obama lacks the necessary experience to conduct business with foreign countries on behalf of the United States.

So how do you explain this?

Citizens of dozens of foreign countries prefer Barack Obama over John McCain as our next president by a margin of almost 4 to 1, according to a massive poll conducted by the Gallup Organization. About 30 percent of those surveyed prefer Obama, while just 8 percent favor McCain.

This was no daily tracking poll either. Gallup polled people in 70 countries in Africa, Europe, Asia and North and South America, representing nearly half the world’s population, between May and September of this year.

Citizens of the Philippines and Georgia were the only ones who preferred McCain to Obama. Not exactly the super-powers we’re looking to mend fences with.

Here’s my question to you: Why do citizens in 70 foreign countries prefer Barack Obama to John McCain by a margin of nearly 4-1?

Interested to know which ones made it on air?

Justin from North Carolina writes:
Barack Obama is the candidate of reason. Only a fool would think of supporting the ticket with the oldest presidential nominee and a woefully inept vice presidential candidate are in the best interest of America or the world especially when the current disaster of a president proves to be more coherent than the both of them.

Kevin writes:
They prefer him because he’s a patsy and they know he’s going to pander to them. Kennedy was on medication during meetings with Khrushchev and Khrushchev called him a pygmy. No fear whatsoever. Good thing Kennedy did stand up to him during the Cuban missile crisis. Obama needs some testosterone shots. Putin, Chavez, the Castro’s, the Girl Scouts of China…anybody could chew him up, push him around, and spit him out.

F.S. from Rollinsford, N.H. writes:
Jack, just to let you know that from my wife’s and my visit to Europe for 3 weeks just recently, we couldn’t find anyone in 4 countries that wanted McCain for President. They all think he is warmonger and that Palin is a joke. Do they know something we don’t?

Jackie writes:
To be fair, I think McCain’s negativity rests with the “R” after his name. He is a decent man who, because of his age and knowing this is his last chance, sold his soul to the Republican National Committee.

Mike writes:
It’s simple. It may sound racist, but it’s really not. Foreign countries are tired of old white men bossing them around and looking down on them. They finally see someone who will respect & approach them as equals.

Zach writes:
Let’s see, Jack…where to begin…They don’t want to get bombed? They want to work with a well-spoken, even-keel U.S. President for a change? They’re smarter than almost half of the people in our own country?

Source — CNN

(CNN) – Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin suggested Tuesday that it would be Sen. Barack Obama’s policies that would spark the international crisis that Sen. Joe Biden has said would be likely within months of Obama taking office.

At a fundraiser Sunday night, Biden, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, said that after taking office, “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. … We’re going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

He added that the Obama administration would need people to stand with it at the time because “it’s not going to be apparent initially … that we’re right.”

“I guess we have to say, “Thanks for the warning, Joe,’ ” Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, told supporters during a rally in Reno, Nevada.

She speculated that instead of the crisis being generated by another world leader, as Biden suggested, an international crisis could be sparked by Obama’s willingness “to sit down with the world’s worst dictators without preconditions,” to send troops into Pakistan to try to kill Osama bin Laden and other top al Qaeda officials, or to draw down U.S. troops in Iraq.

In response to earlier criticism of the comments from Sen. John McCain, the GOP presidential candidate, Obama-Biden campaign spokesman David Wade issued a statement saying:

“Sen. Biden was making it clear that history has shown presidents face challenges starting on day one, and with our nation fighting two wars and 21st century threats abroad, we know that we need steady leadership in tumultuous times, not the erratic lurching and stubborn ideology of John McCain.”

But Palin zinged her Democratic counterpart, saying, “I guess the looming crisis that worries the Obama campaign right now is Joe Biden’s next speaking engagement.”

Trailing in polls nationally as well as in battleground states, the Republican ticket in recent days has been aggressively jumping on any opening given to it by the Democratic presidential ticket.

To reach voters in critical swing states, Palin and McCain have also increased the number of interviews they have done with local media outlets, in part to blunt the Obama campaign’s huge cash advantage.

On Sunday, the Obama campaign announced it raised a record $150 million in contributions in September.

McCain on Tuesday continued to hammer Obama for the comment the Democrat made to “Joe the plumber” in which — as he defended his decision to raise taxes on couples earning more than $250,000 a year while cutting taxes for people with lower incomes — Obama said that “when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

“After months of campaign trail eloquence, we’ve finally learned what Sen. Obama’s economic goal is. … Sen. Obama is more interested in controlling who gets your piece of the pie than he is in growing the pie,” McCain told supporters during a rally in Bensalem, Pennsylvania.

McCain also accused Obama of waffling on which team he was backing in the World Series between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Tampa Bay Rays, which begins Wednesday.

“It’s kind of like the way he campaigns on tax cuts, but then votes for tax increases after he’s elected. Or the way he says he backs the middle class and then goes and attacks Joe the plumber after he’s asked a tough question,” McCain said.

Obama, however, has said he was rooting for the Phillies and has never said he was also rooting for the Rays.

When he was joined by a number of Rays at a rally in Florida on Monday, Obama said, “I am a unity candidate bringing people together, so when you see a [Chicago] White Sox fan showing love to the Rays, and the Rays showing some love back, you know we’re onto something right here.”

On Tuesday, Obama keep his focus on Florida and the economy, the issue that is foremost on voters’ minds. Polls also suggest that voters have more trust in Obama’s handling of the current financial crisis than in McCain’s.

During an economic roundtable discussion in Lake Worth, Florida, Obama called the crisis “the worst since the Great Depression” and blasted the Bush administration for not doing enough to help “Main Street.”

“While President Bush and Sen. McCain were ready to move heaven and earth to address the crisis on Wall Street, President Bush has failed to address the crisis on Main Street — and Sen. McCain has failed to fully acknowledge it,” Obama said. “Instead of commonsense solutions, month after month, they’ve offered little more than willful ignorance, wishful thinking and outdated ideology.”

The nation’s economic woes appear to be affecting the presidential race more than at any previous time this election cycle, according to a poll released Tuesday.

More than three-quarters of voters who responded to a new survey by CNN and the Opinion Research Corp. say the United States is in a recession, and 40 percent say another depression is likely to hit the country within a year.

According to the new poll, 61 percent of registered voters say the economy is extremely important to their vote, a jump of three points since June and more than 10 points higher than the next most important issue on voters’ minds: terrorism.

Source — CNN

It has become commonplace in American politics: Certain Roman Catholic bishops declare that the faithful should cast their ballots on the basis of a limited number of “nonnegotiable issues,” notably opposition to abortion. Conservative Catholics cheer, more liberal Catholics howl. And that is usually the end of the story.

Not this year. Catholics, who are quintessential swing voters and gave narrow but crucial support to President Bush in 2004, are drifting toward Barack Obama. And this time, some church leaders are suggesting that single-issue voting is by no means a Catholic commandment.

In an interview yesterday, Gabino Zavala, an auxiliary bishop in the Los Angeles Archdiocese, said his fellow bishops have long insisted that “we’re not a one-issue church,” a view reflected in their 2007 document “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship.”

“But that’s not always what comes out,” says Zavala, who is also bishop-president of the Catholic peace group Pax Christi USA. “What I believe, and what the church teaches, is that one abortion is too many. That’s why I believe abortion is so important. But in light of this, there are many other issues we need to bring up, other issues we should consider, other issues that touch the reality of our lives.”

Those issues, Bishop Zavala said, include racism, torture, genocide, immigration, war and the impact of the economic downturn “on the most vulnerable among us, the elderly, poor children, single mothers.”

“We know that neither of the political parties supports everything the church teaches,” he added. “We are not going to create a culture of life if we don’t talk about all the life issues, beginning with abortion but including all of them.”

Zavala was careful to say that he did not want to take issue with any of his fellow bishops. But his view contrasts with that of others in the hierarchy.

This month, for example, Bishop Joseph F. Martino of the Scranton (Pa.) Diocese issued a letter warning that “being ‘right’ on taxes, education, health care, immigration and the economy fails to make up for the error of disregarding the value of a human life.” He added: “It is a tragic irony that ‘pro-choice’ candidates have come to support homicide — the gravest injustice a society can tolerate — in the name of ’social justice.’ ”

Bishop Zavala’s desire to speak out with an alternative view is a sign of how much has changed in four years: Progressive Catholics are now as organized as conservative Catholics were in 2004. At Web sites such as http://ProLifeProObama.com, they are arguing that the abortion question does not trump all other concerns.

The impact of the new Catholic politics could be substantial. Catholics are often a decisive electoral group partly because church membership ranges from upscale to working-class whites, a large group of Latinos, and a significant number of African Americans.

Catholics typically make up about a quarter of the electorate, and they are strategically located. White (non-Latino) Catholics are important in such swing states as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, while Latino Catholics make up a notable share of the populations of New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and Florida.

Polls have varied in measuring the Catholic shift toward the Democrats, but Obama seems to be running ahead of John Kerry’s performance in 2004. According to the network exit polls, Bush carried 52 percent of the Catholic vote to 47 percent for Kerry. By contrast, a mid-October Pew Research Center survey showed Obama leading John McCain among Catholics by 55 percent to 35 percent.

Post surveys over the same period have found more modest Catholic gains for Obama. A Post tracking poll released yesterday showed Obama and McCain splitting the Catholic vote at 48 percent each. Obama’s Catholic share probably stands somewhere between the Pew and Post numbers. But even a split among Catholics could mark a sufficient improvement over Kerry’s performance to tip key states the Democrat’s way.

In many respects, Catholics simply reflect the country as a whole in moving toward the Democrats because of frustrations with the economy and the Bush years. But the Catholic debate entails a very particular argument over what counts as a commitment to life. To an unexpected degree, this election could hang on the struggle of Catholic voters with their priorities and their consciences.

Source — Washington Post

As the words to the Christian rock song fade from the giant screens at Mountain Springs church, Pastor Steve Holt steps forward to speak to his congregation. These are perilous times, he says, but he urges them not to despair.

“There are still two weeks before the election,” he says, before announcing a week of fasting and prayer in the run-up to polling day.

For conservative Christians, such as Holt and his congregation, the prospect of a Democratic victory represents sheer calamity. Yet Evangelicals have not been natural supporters of John McCain, doubting the Republican’s commitment to banning abortion and gay marriage.

But conservative Christians believe a Barack Obama presidency would roll back a generation of political gains which culminated with their privileged position in George Bush’s White House.

“I don’t think we are going to have any influence with Barack Obama in the White House,” Holt told the Guardian.

The election represented a paradigm shift for the US as well as for evangelicals. “I think there is a backlash against Bush because of the economy and I think frankly because of a lack of leadership,” Holt said. “There is a sense we are in a position of weakness right now.”

A political forum at the church saw bewilderment and frustration among members of Holt’s flock as they tried to come to terms with Obama’s widening lead over McCain - and the potential loss of their power in Washington.

“Has Obama through mass hypnosis figured out a way to bypass the critical faculties of all Americans?” asked Brian Sherman, a church volunteer.

Mark Andre, a commodities trader, said he had not started out a supporter of McCain - though the senator was well liked by his Democratic friends before the campaign. “It’s almost like Democrats became hateful of McCain. Has it been Sarah Palin and her stance, or is it just Obama and his ideology? What happened to all the Democrats who loved McCain?”

Political soul-searching is under way at conservative churches across the US - but nowhere more so than Colorado Springs, a town known locally as the “evangelical mecca”.

Local government officials lured conservative Christian groups here with tax breaks in the 1980s. Colorado Springs is now headquarters for the most powerful Christian organisations in the US.

The town and surrounding areas remain defiantly conservative in a state that has been leaning Democratic in state elections for the last four years since voting Bush in 2000 and 2004. John Morris, the chairman of the county Democratic party, called the town “a black hole of Republican extremism”.

Colorado is now emerging as a key battleground state, and Republicans are counting on the evangelicals to help McCain hang on. The party has sent emissaries to 400 churches over the past few days to recruit volunteers for “evangelical-to-evangelical” phone banks. It has also used the churches to generate excitement about Palin’s rally schedule yesterday, handing out tickets after morning services on Sunday.

In an ordinary election that grassroots organisation would make a difference. Evangelicals consider it a “Christian duty” to vote. Past elections have seen high turnouts among conservative voters - especially if there were ballots on gay marriage or abortion.

In an attempt to bring out the faithful this year conservatives in Colorado drafted a ballot measure that confers human rights on a fertilised egg from the moment of conception.

Church leaders have also tried to impress on their followers that - even if they are still cool towards McCain - conservatives cannot afford to have Obama in the White House.

But with election officials predicting unprecedented turnout across Colorado - up to 90% in heavily Democratic Denver and Boulder -the tested Republican strategy of winning elections by getting out the evangelical vote is unlikely to work. That vote would be simply swamped by a very high turnout.

There are also signs that evangelical power over the ballot box could be waning - even in Colorado Springs.

Recent years have seen more Democrats in the area. There have also been signs of an internal revolt against local conservative Republican politicians.

Over the years, the influx of evangelicals to Colorado Springs shifted the local party establishment to the right. Party politics increasingly revolved around the emotive issues such as abortion. That alienated more traditional Republicans who wanted their officials to focus on the economy and infrastructure.

Last month, Jan Martin, a lifelong Republican and an elected city council official, announced she was supporting Obama because she believed the party had moved too far to the right.

“I think Bush has been too extreme, and he has catered to this black-and-white extreme view of conservative Christian thinking. The leadership of the local party is still very conservative and still very much us against them.”

A number of evangelical leaders have also begun asking whether their movement has drifted too far to the right. Some church leaders in Colorado Springs have called for the evangelical focus to be broadened beyond abortion and gay marriage and address issues such as climate change and poverty.

Few are willing to publicly write off McCain and the current brand of Republicanism. But in the political forum at Mountain Springs, local Republican elected officials were already discussing how they would operate under an Obama administration.

“God forbid, but if it comes about we are going to have to be speaking out like never before,” said Doug Lamborn, the local Republican member of Congress.

Republicans needed to update their methods of communications by launching more conservative blogs, added Amy Stephens, a local state representative.

Holt was also now moving to reconcile himself to defeat. “This could be the best thing that ever happened to the evangelical cause,” he said. “We’re used to being against the tide.”

Source — Guardian

NEW YORK - Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama made ground zero their common ground for one rare day, free of politics and infused with memory. Putting their partisan contest on a respectful hold, they walked together Thursday into the great pit where the World Trade Center towers once stood and, as one, honored the dead from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

They walked down a long ramp flanked with the flags of countries, chatting at times, silent other times, and sharing a quick laugh at one point. Right behind them, Cindy McCain clutched Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s arm — Michelle Obama was with her daughters in Chicago.

At the bottom of the ramp, the two rivals stopped to talk with a small group of relatives of the attacks’ victims of seven years ago. They laid flowers at the pit’s commemorative reflecting pool — a pink rose from Obama, a yellow rose from McCain — bowed their heads and walked off to speak with fire and police personnel. There were no speeches.

“Thanks, we’ll see ya,” McCain told Obama as the Democrat patted the Republican’s back and they shook hands and parted.

Earlier, McCain spoke briefly at a simple ceremony in remote, rural western Pennsylvania, held on a large hilly field close to where United Airlines Flight 93, the third of four airliners commandeered by terrorists, crashed. Investigators believe some of the 40 passengers and crew rushed the cockpit and thwarted terrorists’ plans to use that plane as a weapon like the ones that hit the World Trade Center and Pentagon. All aboard all planes died.

The Arizona senator said those on the flight might have saved his own life, as some believe the terrorists wanted to slam that plane into the U.S. Capitol. He said the only way to thank those who died on the flight is to “be as good an American as they were.”

“We might fall well short of their standard, but there’s honor in the effort,” McCain said.

Obama, in a statement, said that on Sept. 11, 2001, “Americans across our great country came together to stand with the families of the victims, to donate blood, to give to charity, and to say a prayer for our country. Let us renew that.”

The Illinois senator added: “Let us remember that the terrorists responsible for 9/11 are still at large, and must be brought to justice.”

Left unsaid by both was their sharp disagreement over the Iraq war, which McCain supported and Obama opposed as a distraction from the Afghanistan war and broader fight against terrorism.

It was not a day for spelling out differences but rather a respectful time-out in an otherwise heated campaign with 54 days to go. Both agreed to suspend TV ads critical of each other.

In Pennsylvania, grieving family members and a few dignitaries sat in front of a chain-link fence adorned with flags and mementos that serves as a temporary memorial while a permanent one is built. Bells were rung as each victim’s name was read. McCain and others laid wreaths at the foot of two flagpoles and a large wooden cross.

The political truce was evident in remarks thanking McCain for traveling to Shanksville by Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat who occasionally speaks against the Republican nominee as an Obama campaign surrogate. “It’s an honor to have him here, not just as a presidential candidate but as a great American patriot,” Rendell said.

Another display came near the ground zero pit, as McCain adviser Mark Salter huddled with Obama spokeswoman Linda Douglass, a former ABC News correspondent, to discuss Sarah Palin’s interview Thursday with the network.

Obama and McCain were intersecting again later, at a Columbia University forum on public service in the evening. Their sessions at the forum were separate, joined only by a handshake.

At the Twin Towers site, Bloomberg told them time was running out to touch the bedrock at the base of the pit. “This is the last year because the ramp goes away for the rebuilding,” he said.

Officials said the family members Obama and McCain talked with were Mary Fetchet, whose son Brad worked on the 89th floor of the South Tower; Michael Henry, brother of firefighter Joseph Henry; Joanne Langone, widow of policeman Tom Langone; and Maggie Lemagne, sister of Port Authority officer David Lemagne. Brian Cichetti, a World Trade Center site safety manager who is working on construction of the memorial and museum, also was with them.

At the top of the ramp on the way out, McCain and Obama shook hands with police officers.

“Appreciate everything you do,” Obama said. “God bless you all. We think about you this day and every day.”

Obama’s running mate, Joe Biden, visited an American Legion post in suburban Cleveland for an invitation-only gathering of area police, firefighters and other first responders.

“Part of today is reminding Americans that every single day there are acts that are both ordinary and profound,” Biden said in recalling the attacks. “You suit up, head out on that vehicle not knowing what you’re going to find. If, God forbid, anything remotely close to that happens, it’s going to be you guys trying to save all of us.”

Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate, was in her home state of Alaska to attend an Army ceremony to send her eldest son, Track, off to duty in Iraq.

Obama and McCain last appeared together in August when they shook hands at minister Rick Warren’s megachurch in Orange County, Calif., and spoke separately about faith and values. In June, they attended the funeral of NBC newsman Tim Russert, sitting next to each other at the family’s request.

Source — Yahoo!