Legion of Angels News Archive

MELBOURNE, Florida (CNN) – Call it travels with Charlie.

We spent much of Monday crisscrossing Florida with the state’s popular Republican governor, Charlie Crist, while he campaigned for Sen. John McCain and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

I had the chance to talk to Crist for about an hour on arguably the most important jewel up for grabs in two weeks — Florida and its 27 electoral votes.

Crist is keenly aware the stakes here couldn’t be higher. The governor says he’s puzzled by news reports that allege a rift between him and McCain. Crist also has been accused of not doing enough for the GOP presidential ticket.

“It’s all hands on deck. I am committed to doing everything I can to help him win,” Crist said aboard a charter jet that ferried him and his entourage around the state.

“I think it’s important to our country,” Crist said, adding, “He’s my friend.”

Crist took a moment to say how much he likes CNN — especially Wolf Blitzer. “You know Wolf’s mom lives in South Florida,” he said. I didn’t. Now I do. Not sure what to do with that nugget, but I’ll drop in on Wolf at some point.

I asked Crist what happened to McCain’s summertime lead in the polls in Florida.

It’s not that Sen. Barack Obama has about 450 campaign workers here, compared with 100 for McCain. Or the fact that Obama is outspending McCain 3-to-1. Plain and simple, it’s the economy, Crist said.

“McCain’s got to stay on topic and talk about how he’ll improve the economy,” he said.

Like many states around the country, Florida is feeling a harsh bite — unemployment is up, construction is drying up.

“We have nearly 20 million people here, 12 million voters,” he said. “When things aren’t going well, voters tend to blame the political party in charge, and there’s no mistaking it: Republicans run Florida.”

For those who haven’t been on one of these mini-marathon swings, it’s amazing how fluid and well-coordinated they seem. At each stop — Sarasota, West Palm Beach, Melbourne and finally Tallahassee — Crist and other party faithful repeat the same speech nearly word for word with unbridled enthusiasm.

Crist is a consummate politician, moving effortlessly through crowds. Who knows — if things would have played out differently, maybe Crist, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal or former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney would be sharing the ticket with McCain.

Remember this summer when McCain invited them all to his Arizona ranch? There was widespread speculation that it was a beauty contest of sorts — that perhaps McCain wanted to see who, if anyone, would be a good vice presidential fit. Crist says he never got the impression they were being judged.

“To me, it was like a holiday Southwest barbecue,” he said.

I asked Crist if he thought Palin was going to lure undecided voters to the ticket.

“I think we both know the answer to that,” he said. “But there’s no question she fired up the base.”

Florida’s most eligible bachelor is getting married in December. His fiancée, Carole Rome, traveled from city to city with the governor, with Crist announcing, “Today’s her birthday.”

She was snacking on a cookie from the Gun Club Cafe. (Crist turned to an aide and asked, “Is it really called that?”)

She said, “I really shouldn’t be doing that — I have a wedding coming up.”

“Please,” I said. “Not only should you be eating the cookie — but it should have a candle on top.”

The governor did four cities in four hours. There was a healthy turnout on a Monday morning and lots of local news coverage.

We know Crist will have one big reason to celebrate when he weds in December. The question is, will he have a reason to offer a toast before that?

Source — CNN

ROUND ROCK, Texas, Sept. 11 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) – On September 30th, InterSkillMedia.Com, is launching a new audio book format on the anniversary date of the death of the famous actor, James Dean. Consumers are listening to audio books more than ever. Industry statistics released by The Association of American Publishers (AAP) show that audio books had an increase of 19.8 percent for 2007 to a total of $218 million. The recent sale of Audible.com to Amazon for a reported $300 million is proof of the growing demand for digital content.

Recognizing the new digital age and its growth potential, the company is calling the new audio format an Audio Movie Drama and, unlike the typical audio book, is not read by a single narrator but, rather by multiple actors. The first title in the new format, Curse of The Medallion, involves more than twenty (20) professional actors in a story about the race car owned by the famous actor James Dean, a 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder. According to legend, the car became cursed after the crash that killed the actor.

September 30, 1955 had been a beautiful day in California. James Dean had wrapped up shooting the movie Giant and had planned to enter his 1955 Porsche Spyder in an automobile race held at the Salinas, California Airport. Dean originally intended to pull his new silver Porsche Spyder on a trailer behind his station wagon but, at the last minute, decided to drive the sports car to put some pre-race mileage on it. Most are unaware that following in Dean’s station wagon were stunt car driver Bill Hickman and photographer, Sanford Roth. More than fifty years later, controversy still surrounds the automobile. Many believe the race car was cursed as quite a few died who came in contact with the mysterious vehicle after the crash. Numerous websites describe the car’s unsuspecting victims.

This is where “Curse of The Medallion,” the first title in the new audio format, begins. Bill Hickman and Sanford Roth follow in Dean’s station wagon. Stopping for directions, the two meet a young musician named Garrett Arizona. Within minutes, the three come upon the fatal crash site. Bill and Sanford are devastated. Standing nearby, Garrett picks up a shiny metal emblem that will change his life forever. Fifty years later, a series of letters are discovered in an old trunk by his grandson. The letters reveal not only the past but, also his future. Taking the letters, he embarks on a journey to find the grandfather he has never met. He may not survive it as he knows nothing of the Curse of Medallion!

To promote the new Audio Movie Drama format and its first title, “Curse of The Medallion,” for a total of 24 hours starting at 12:01 a.m., September 30th, the company is giving away free digital downloads on its website, www.InterSkillMedia.com. If you would like more information about this topic, or to schedule an interview with Jeff Edwards, please call (512) 300-7555 or email Jeff@interskillmedia.com.

Source — Send 2 Press

HUDSON, Wis. - Republican John McCain told a mostly female audience Friday that his plans to cut income, business and estate taxes would help women while Democrat Barack Obama’s proposals would only erect new economic obstacles for them.

A day after Obama devoted a day of campaigning to women’s issues, McCain did the same.

He told several hundred women in western Wisconsin that his tax cut plans would be particularly helpful to women because so many of them own or work for small businesses.

“Yesterday in New York, Senator Obama went on at great length about how much he cares about women’s issues,” McCain said at a town-hall forum in Hudson, where women vastly outnumbered men. “I believe him. But when you cut through all the smooth rhetoric, Senator Obama’s policies would make it harder for women to start new businesses, harder for women to create or find new jobs, harder for women to manage the family budget, and harder for women and their families to meet their tax burden.”

Obama’s campaign disputed the claims and noted that McCain opposed a Senate measure to lengthen the time that workers have to file pay discrimination lawsuits, a priority for some women’s groups.

McCain told the audience that he has a record of supporting equal pay for women. He later told reporters he opposed the Senate bill because he didn’t want “open-ended litigation by trial lawyers.” He said he has demonstrated his support for equal pay “in a whole broad variety of ways, from support of women in the military to all kinds of laws that provide employment” to women.

Republicans believe McCain has a chance to pick up Democratic and independent women who are angry or disappointed that Hillary Rodham Clinton lost her bid to become the first female president. But the Hudson event seemed geared to hard-core conservatives.

A woman drew loud cheers and applause when she told McCain: “The Democratic Party has moved so far to the left they’re almost falling off of the planet. Will you hammer away at their socialist, Marxist philosophy?”

When the cheering finally died down, McCain revived it by answering, “Yes.”

He eased the tone a bit later, talking of his willingness to anger fellow Republicans in the Senate by working with liberal Democrats such as Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, who is “in our prayers” because of his battle with cancer.

The event had a friendly, often lighthearted feel. LouAnne Reger, owner of J&L Steel Erectors, warmed up the crowd by talking of buying clothes, losing weight and getting divorced and remarried (more than once).

Cindy McCain continued the theme in introducing her husband. She said helping run a presidential campaign was a good way to lose 30 pounds, adding that the white slacks she was wearing were two sizes too large.

Some men’s bathrooms in the J&L Steel facility were converted to ladies’ rooms, forcing male volunteers to stand in line while the women’s restrooms were wait-free.

Meanwhile Friday, the political arm of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors endorsed McCain. The group’s chairman, Jim Risk, said Obama’s policies “are contrary to business interests,” mainly in the area of taxation.

Source — Yahoo!

WASHINGTON - Former Republican Sen. Phil Gramm isn’t the first friend to give a presidential candidate heartburn. And based on recent history, another one will be along before John McCain or Barack Obama know it.

“You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,” Gramm, a leading supporter of McCain, said recently, a less-than- sympathetic description of an election-year economy that features rising joblessness, a spike in mortgage foreclosures and a declining stock market.

“We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” he added — not all that helpfully in the opinion of the man he is trying to help win the White House.

“I strongly disagree,” McCain told reporters in Michigan, a state with an unemployment rate of 8.5 percent in May. “Phil Gramm does not speak for me. I speak for me.”

McCain’s the one discomforted this time.

But Obama’s known the same feeling. An unpaid adviser quickly became an unpaid former adviser this spring after calling Hillary Rodham Clinton a monster.

Not that Clinton escaped this type of embarrassment, either, in her bid for the White House. One of her national co-chairman once opined that Republicans would be looking for information on Obama’s admitted youthful drug use, a comment that caused a candidate-to-candidate apology.

The circumstances in these episodes vary, but often follow a predictable arc.

For starters, the surrogate or supporter usually serves a political purpose, which explains their presence within the campaign. Gramm, for example, is well-known for his conservative economic beliefs, and can presumably help McCain strengthen his ties to advocates of tax cuts who might otherwise view the presidential contender with suspicion.

In many cases, the person who instigates the controversy follows up with a claim of being quoted out of context. Or misunderstood. Or speaking off the record. None of these constitutes a denial, though, which would be an invitation to further difficulty in an Internet era.

An apology may be forthcoming, although Gramm has yet to make one. Sometimes there is a parting of the ways.

With or without an apology, the candidate makes clear his disagreement, as McCain did, and hopes the controversy fades.

Yet often, and understandably, a rival campaign seizes on the incident in hopes of gaining a political advantage.

Obama did in the current case. “Let’s be clear,” he told an audience in Virginia as McCain struggled to escape the fallout of Gramm’s remarks. “This economic downturn is not in your head.”

McCain’s had some practice at this sort of thing.

Not long ago, he rejected an endorsement from Texas pastor John Hagee after an audio recording made in the late 1990s surfaced in which the preacher suggested God sent Adolf Hitler to help Jews reach the promised land. “Crazy and unacceptable,” McCain said of his erstwhile endorser. Hagee quickly said the parting was “best for both of us and the country.”

Or at least for McCain’s campaign.

Clinton went down the same path in the case of Billy Shaheen, a prominent New Hampshire Democrat and national co-chairman who said last winter that if Obama won the nomination, Republicans would work hard to uncover unsavory aspects of his youth.

“It’ll be, ‘When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?’” said Shaheen, whose wife, Jeanne, is a former New Hampshire governor and is running for the U.S. Senate this year.

A round of apologies ensued, one from Shaheen and another from Clinton to Obama.

“As soon as I found out that one of my supporters and co-chairs in New Hampshire made a statement, asked a series of questions, I made it clear it was not authorized, it was in no way condoned, I didn’t know about it and he stepped down,” she said.

Obama’s moment came when Samantha Power offered an unvarnished opinion of Clinton in a newspaper interview. “She’s a monster — that is off the record — she is stooping to anything,” was the quote.

An apology soon followed in a statement in which Power called her own remarks inexcusable and contradictory to her admiration for Clinton.

By then, Obama had already called to bid his adviser good riddance.

And Clinton’s campaign followed up with an e-mail to supporters informing then of what had happened and seeking campaign donations “to show that there is a price to this kind of attack politics.”

Of course, there are variations on the theme.

In the last few days, the Rev. Jesse Jackson mused in front of an open microphone about wanting to emasculate Obama, whom he said sometimes appears to be talking down to black audiences.

A novel idea, perhaps, of expressing support for a presidential candidate.

This time, it appeared the damage was done to the supporter, rather than the candidate.

Obama accepted an apology from Jackson.

And what did Jackson really mean?

“My support for Senator Obama’s campaign is wide, deep and unequivocal.”

Source — Yahoo!

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy on Wednesday made his first appearance in Congress since being diagnosed with brain cancer nearly two months ago, casting a single vote to help break a Republican filibuster of an important Medicare bill.

Colleagues greeted Kennedy with a lengthy standing ovation on the Senate floor just after 4:15 p.m.

The bill would reverse a 10.6 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors. The cuts in Medicare payments — part of a scheduled cost-saving formula — went into effect July 1, although the Bush administration said it will hold off processing claims until mid-July to give Congress time to reach a compromise.

In a written statement, Kennedy said, “I return to the Senate today to keep a promise to our senior citizens — and that’s to protect Medicare. Win, lose or draw, I wanted to be here. I wasn’t going to take the chance that my vote could make the difference.”

A vote on the bill before the July 4 recess fell one shy of the 60 needed to clear a Republican filibuster and advance in the Senate.

Senate Republicans joined the White House in objecting to the Democratic-back bill because it trimmed government support for private insurance programs that provide coverage to Medicare patients.

The private Medicare programs are a top policy initiative for Republicans. White House spokesman Tony Fratto says the presidents senior advisers would still advise the president to veto the bill in its current form.

The vote to end the GOP filibuster on the Medicare bill was 69-30, nine more than the 60 votes needed and two more than needed to override a presidential veto. The senators agreed to consider the bill passed if the filibuster was broken.

Kennedy had surgery to remove a tumor June 2 and is now undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatment.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid talked to Kennedy’s wife, Vicki, twice since Sunday about having Kennedy return for the vote, the source said. Reid “was not pushing, just asking,” the source said.

“The family doesn’t want to do it,” the source said.

Kennedy is chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and is an influential Democrat on health-care issues.

Some members of the Democratic leadership thought it would be a “great idea” if Kennedy was able to return because it would “buck up” Democratic senators who have worked hard to pass the stalled bill, the source said.

Source — CNN