The Hagees, Hard Christian Right & Bad Boy Republicans are taking my party straight to hell. Then there's the spending.

This stinks.

Another Republican congressman, this time from New York, screws up with drugs and alcohol and gets picked up for a DUI. We'll probably find he has another wife and family somewhere.

In the meantime, the Republican Party pays for the privilege of counting the "Christian" vote again with the stupid Hagee and other questionable endorsements.

And the fiscal conservatives are rightly screaming about spending.

First of all, no one's ever heard of John Hagee and secondly, who cares? Hagee and now another Christian unknown has become the news of the day on Drudge and MSNBC and CNN that McCain supposedly is in a deep, right wing conspiracy with, something that could bring him problems. This is another exhausting example of how the lazy media tries tit for tat to ameliorate the devastating Jeremiah Wright connection to Barack Obama. The reports' object of course is to show how narrow minded the Republican Party is and we're all idiots.

Of course, the doctrine of these extreme right wing Christians plays right into the numbskull media's hands. If you have a minute, I'll try to explain it from a mainline Protestant's/Republican's point of view who comes from a Abolitionist Quaker, Methodist, Presbyterian, Disciple of Christ Church founders/builders/elders background. Maybe then my Roman Catholic and Jewish friends can understand why Republicans like me go crazy when things like Hagee happen to my party.

It depends on what the meaning of "it" is.
Hagee's extreme interpretation of the Book of Revelation and his equation of the Roman Catholic Church is with a certain frightening character in one of the chapters; however, he is in accordance with other born again Christians when it comes to "it." That is where the problem comes from when it comes to the rest of the human race and the Christian Right.

It. That one cannot enter the kingdom of heaven unless he goes through Christ.

Or as the folks on the panel last evening on MSNBC's Chris Matthews talking about it were doing so knowing full well what everyone really knows and don't want to flat say: the issue does point out a tendency toward this basic tenet in evangelical doctrine. It's a tough nut to crack. And evangelicals can't get around it.

It. Salvation through Christ. Period. The rest of the world are lost. No one wants to say it.

There are probably as many as a thousand groups with as many different beliefs. Hagee's tirade (using John's famous apocalyptic dreamscape scriptures in the Book of Revelation which he wrote while imprisoned on the Island of Patmos) describing Catholics is not representative of any one particular denomination in presentation. This view is not held in the body of mainstream evangelical thought from what I could see when I was belonged to an evangelical church for about six or so very, very long years. (I didn't pass the physical to go any further than a Sunday School teacher in their male hierarchy, not surprising to most readers.)

No, evangelicals, regardless of what they call themselves are equal opportunity believers that Christ told them that everyone who doesn't become saved through Him is lost, not just Roman Catholics. But most evangelicals regard Jews as their new best friends and don't talk about RCs above a whisper and certainly don't announce their ultimate damnation in Hagee's style. They talk around it in classes and in sermons but they don't spread it around. They tsk tsk about it privately. Evangelicals take the Great Commission very seriously, as they should, and go for the non churched, the unbeliever. They seem to be at the top of their list.

It.

Why'd I care? I just wanted to sing
I came from a strong, majorly strong Protestant background so I felt pretty secure in my salvation. I just couldn't accept IT. My ancestors were founders and builders of churches, so it was a sad thing for me to realize when in Southern California, in the back country I couldn't find my own comfortable denomination...where there are the fewest mainline churches, where there are mostly and nearly all nondenominational, community "Christ-centered"or "New Testament" ones, code for evangelical, code for no women allowed in leadership, code for sit down and shut up if your hair is longer than two inches.

Sometimes some of the churches were started up by lawyers, or businessmen or a couple who declared themselves visions. You never knew. It always was an interesting job to find a church home in California where most people stopped going to church once they came here, it felt like. One even had a box of Kleenex on the altar. I thought it was an interesting touch. There were two boxes come to think of it.

Well, I didn't have time anyway to get too involved in a church. I was single, had work and kids. I just wanted to sing in the choir. I closed my ears to the sermons and classes and knew better anyway. I didn't let it bother me until one day a man took me aside and said, "You know, Catholics don't stand a chance to get to Heaven."

Dang. I thought. There goes another perfectly good Sunday and another perfectly balanced Soprano section. They were going to miss me.

How can otherwise normal people turn into weird crazies on one day a week I'll never know. Of course, what I've discovered over the years that most people can't face is that they're being lied to. Lied to by a bunch of punks who have free money coming in the likes of which they've never seen in their lives! Wahoo! Wamu! Keep those lies goin and dollars keep comin in for the new building fund, namely the parson's 4000 square foot "parson-age."

Like my daddy says, "Follow the money, Sister. That's where the trouble always starts." Hard to swallow, but he was right. People do terrible things for money. They always have and always will. And it's taught me not to take God for granted and what I was doing was not for Him but for me and my own ego.

Hey, Newbies. There are other ways!
By the way, the Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholics, the ones who have been around for two-thousand years or so and have somehow managed to spread the word of our Lord and believe the much same way, although evangelicals won't admit it--except that Protestants have women involved in leading, yes actual Head Ministers (EEEEEK!) and running churches just like we're actual people too.

RCs, believe it or don't, also have women running entire institutions and the men in them. Why do you think they call them Mothers Superior?

Ever met a woman Rabbi? They got them.

Evangelicals, bless their perfect hearts, refuse to acknowledge that Presbyterians, the Lutherans, the Christians, the Methodists, the Disciples of Christ and the rest of us have alter calls...they absolutely refuse. Every Sunday. It is part of the worship. Why? Most of them have never been in our churches. They say we're dead churches. Why? "They just don't feel it." Or they've heard something.

Also, they don't like it that some of our brotherhoods, like the Presbys believe that faith without works is dead. I'm not a Calvinist and I don't believe in predestination and that my salvation depends on it, but such ideas do get the Lord's jobs done. What's it to them? America's been built on such Calvinistic thought. They ought to get it straight. Either they believe in this Puritan, interest-bearing work ethic and live by it or they forgive all debts owed them and toss the whole theme out to live out their evangelical life style.

Seriously.

Besides, some mature Christians consider evangelical doctrine as Easy Christianity. Six Flags over Jesus, one of my best friends calls one the mega churches. Nothing hard...just show up, come as you are.

Do any of you people own suits and ties? Pantyhose? Heels? Just kidding.

Regardless of how these few people "feel," compared with the millions of martyrs over the centuries who have given for our Lord, our orphanages, schools and universities have been in operation for many years, maybe a bit longer than their stucco churches, their new ministries of mom's day out. Some have felt the need to love the Lord enough to work.

Yes, you cynical ones will point out the minuscule comparative numbers of abused children as if they're the norm. Go ahead. In that case, let's just stop all operations and let them all starve...a meretricious end to my article. I can't let that happen.

If indeed it hadn't been for those faithful "works" of the monks across the west during the dark ages, the knowledge of all of western civilization would have been lost. It ain't perfect, but it's the best we've got right now. Which is what I love to tell newcomers who've got all these grand ideas for how to better serve mankind...and there's nothing new under the sun, something else I learned from Mom and Dad.

There are the angry and cruel crusades that won back Jerusalem from the Muslims who took it in the first place. But then, we forget that part of the RCs, those dead Christians who gave everything. I wonder. Do you think they all went straight to Hell? Those who weren't born again the evangelical way? All those martyrs? Dead and gone for nothing. This would be an indictment for sure by a bunch of surfer dudes calling out centuries of serious Christian thought. Amazing if Paul Tillich isn't rolling in his grave. Guess some of us might never know.

I guess God just didn't think about the rest of creation until the likes of Billy Graham and Pat Robertson bumbled along. Two southern American white men who are so important that God waited to grant salvation to mankind until those two--southern--men could interpret the Word. Oh yes, and the late Jerry Falwell. What were these dead churches teaching before these young men came along?

Isn't it interesting? They're all, well, southern?

Evangelicals don't like the confession thing. I don't see a thing wrong with it myself. They think once you're saved, that's it. Well, I believe saved by grace is what's is happening, probably the best deal in town considering what's available. But confessing sure helps me to clean up once in a while.

Dang those purty education directors, anyway
However, I'm not about to get into a spitting match about saved by grace with an adulterous preacher. It's just real difficult for people to believe he doesn't have to work that one off. But he didn't. That's the good news. Other than losing his career and his family, he will not lose his salvation. Even a pastor on whom so many souls depend can screw up so badly and he is still forgiven if he asks sincerely for it.

Forgive? Christ forgives seven times seven times seven times... It wouldn't been so shocking had the pastor's wife not had arthritis. Life and people can be cruel, can they not? Confessing sometimes is the only alternative a person has. That's all there is left. Everyone knows. See what I mean about cleaning up? I hear the Ph.D pastor now sells encyclopedias, a hell on earth for learned man, and the beautiful choir director, also a Ph.D who had teen-aged children who witnessed this public disgrace is somewhere, probably not teaching too many high falutin places now maybe. Who knows?

Maybe enough time has gone by that they've paid their dues for hurting so many parisioners and family members. I've forgiven them, although it changed my view of everything evangelical and I'll never go back to an evangelical church as long as I live, nor will I trust another evangelical church again. Four experiences is enough.

Proposition
As as I said, Christ's forgiveness and salvation has always been an attraction, a proposition, and once accepted the best deal in town, as one can clearly see in this instance. I'm not being flippant, by the way. It is indeed the best deal in the universe. I've always said so.

We "others" too have just celebrated Pentecost Sunday. At least that's what I heard. We too are born again. But we don't roll on the floor. We don't raise our hands in the air. Neither did Martin Luther as far as I know, to whom you should send a thank you note. We don't all shout out Hallelujah. What do you care? Why do you take it so personally if we do not? It says more about you than about us. We don't run up to people and demand to know if they're saved. It's a matter of style, you know. We do it our way. Maybe this is my way. That's why we have denominations.

So enough of that. We've established we don't agree on style. What do you expect? We're WASPs and we like it that way. We're not going to change for you.

Okay. I give up. So...where did you put my party? I've looked everywhere for it.
We're sorry if that bothers you Hagees out there. We're real sorry if that doesn't fit the template of the southern male (there I go again, one would think I hated men--I don't, you know--I adore them) dominated church that somehow took over the right wing of our party back then in response to a bunch of California and New York hippies.

We put up with those very odd ideas of yours then. We hoped you'd grow past the regional dullness of your politics. You haven't. In fact your fear factor has spawned more ignorance. We weren't thinking. We should've known. That was a Nixon deal.

But now it's beginning to make a real difference in what's happening in our country. We may lose this election because of how your intolerance has finally affected everyone else who do not believe as you do. It has to stop.

And. We haven't started on your obscene treatment of gay people.

I wouldn't be so hard on the Christian Right if they weren't so hard on everyone else. I really hate coming down on everyone so much lately, but things are way off kilter this year.

Apples and figs
Although the media's preoccupation with comparing Hagee and McCain with the Wright-Obama connection is downright laughable for lots of reasons not the least is John McCain is not an evangelical, they'll use it. He's he's a mainstream Protestant like me. With Cyndi's money, he's probably Episcopal, a Catholic who flunked his Latin.

Secondly, he didn't sit through 20 year's worth of "GD the Roman Catholics" from Hagee like Obama did "GD America" with Wright.

Thirdly, Wright married, baptized and did the family pastoral thing for the Obamas. Hagee sent a CD to the McCain campaign and offered to lend a hand. The relationship started and probably stopped there. It's really a stupid argument...kinda of like the 100 year war thing. But here we are. Again, we don't get the benefit of the doubt from a media waiting to pounce. That's what happens when people say they're perfect in the first place like these folks do.

Enough already.

Now the media is telling people the Republican Party is being pushed around by folks who say they don't "hate" Roman Catholics but say they're going to a bad, bad place if they don't get born again their way. Moreover, those people are disrespectful of the RC religion because it really isn't a religion at all? I don't want people thinking that of the Republican party.

They're going to have a good summer because of the Kennedy events. Get ready for an emotional one. I know how media people play on events.

And now I'm thinking...
We got an old guy running for president who's looking at a southern governor for a running mate. How depressing. I don't know where to go or what to do. I feel like I'm in a time warp and it's the year 19__, fill in the blank.

Speaking of the Trinity, we'd better start praying for a miracle in this election. We've got a terrible perception problem with independents and they are our target voters this time. We have to have them to win.

Most of them don't care about IT or Hagee or me or emotions. They do care about congresspeople getting DUIs on the public's dime. The closest thing they want to get to an afterlife is for everyone to leave them the hell alone and for their elected officials to do their jobs.

Thanks for the read.

Chris Matthews and his Sunday morning pals

(I feel guilty. I should be in church.)

Joe Klein, the brilliant writer with Time Magazine; Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor of The Atlanta Journal Constitution; and Patrick Healy of The NY Times. They were all there. It was a Libs compadre moment. I was probably one of among ten or so to watch it. Here's a summary what they had to say.

"That Clinton woman is taking the presidency away from the black man and she is really a bad person to do it."

Those darn Dems. They just kill me. Like there's something wrong with talking about her opposition's electability.

What's on next?

All politics all morning
Okay. I know NBC's slant. Let's get another take. What do these Dems really want? And most importantly to this Republican, can they get it?

Of course, what I think they really want is nothing more than a total and complete change in our nation's psychology and approach to American life and politics. In other words politics--what we civilized people use to keep from killing each other--is bad and we need to change how we practice them.

I've been listening more than usual to a bunch of rich 40-year olds during this election season. They're the ones who seem to have the Democratic party by the you-know-whats these days--the ones who claim they can and must do politics their way lest the entire world fall into an abyss because of policies of this barbarian, George W. Bush and his predecessors, all of whom are bad inherently.

The "New School" people--the real radicals, the big money--are convinced (as is every generation) if they can just grab hold of the reins of power this time they can somehow use their own inimitable wisdom and superior intelligence and accompanying technology which those who have gone before them did not somehow possess because they, themselves are so very special this time. This time is different. This time. We all say that, by the way. This time.

Let's look at ABC.

Local Yokels
I tuned in just in time to watch a local city councilman, Democrat Richard Alarcon as he was insisting upon a surtax on the 270,000 millionaires in Los Angeles who live in homes over 5000 square feet. "They'll never miss it." That's the kind of change they believed in.

Next up came one of the Latino super delegates for the Dems, about 35 or 40, who announced he regards the use of "negative ads" as one of his guidelines for choosing the nominee. No, seriously. This is a man who is participating in grown-up American politics, no doubt his first time. His other criterion was "electability." I thought it was noteworthy that this imbecile listed it as second on his list and mentioned Mrs. Clinton as having "...stuck her toe into the negative ad category." He read that somewhere and decided to use it--the "toe" part.

I resisted the urge to commit Hari Kari out of frustration that people could actually be so idiotic, that critical thinking abilities could have not been fully developed in this individual, then I realized he was instructed in Los Angeles schools. I've thought of taking up a hobby which doesn't involve handling sharp things.

Next popped up another one of the Dem super delegates who is Nancy Pelosi's forty-year old or so daughter, a rather sandpapery person who evidently was rubbed the wrong way again when asked if her mother and Mrs. Clinton were still friends. Her response, "What a silly question," to a seasoned journalist took her appearance from important to twit in just four little words. Shrugging off a legit question may have seemed kewl to her Marin County buds, but it is simply impatient and stupid to non-California voters. Even Hillary Clinton learned that such a tin ear can get you tossed out on it if you're not careful, almost too late.

During these commercials, I have to include in my Sunday morning's assessment the opinions of the usual suspects, bad pennies and some retreads whom I heard over the week. They must keep turning up because we're living longer, we had no draft and we had great medical care and medicine in the last generation. These overgrown, professional students always wanted revolution and I guess they've settled for their organic one. Slow, ain't it, Dudes? Well, when you're comfortable in places like Santa Monica, the oppressor ain't so bad, especially when you make the kind of money most of them pull down. Shaking things up has been very good to them.

What's on CBS? Good. More Dems.

Between their ears
Rebels are boring as hell because they all look alike, act alike and sound alike. I decided to switch the channel just in time for a new guest on another local LA political Sunday program that no one watches.

Did you know that there are black people and women among the Dems who want to forge some sort of a union? That's a good thing, I guess; however, they're almost beside themselves because they see the Barack-Hillary thing as a competition. I just didn't know there was that big of a schism. Who knew?

That's what Lizabeth Gant-Britton, Ph.D from UCLA said. Dr. Gant-Britton, a beautiful, about 45-year old tiny, blond, light skinned African-American who co-authored a few books about fascinating black women, one of whom was Frederick Douglas's wife, was most candid about her fears that the Dems will blow this whole thing. It was apparent that she had a real investment in this election as she patiently explained this historic opportunity for women and blacks. It seems as if the parties don't trust one other. I'm not sure what Dr. Gant-Britton will do because she's black, white, a woman and has two names. She's really in a bind.

Redux: Moyers and Wright on PBS
I had to watch that again. And again. I had other choices as Rev. Wright had been speaking nonstop to many groups the whole weekend. Who could miss him or Senator Obama?

It was Rev. Wright's appearances that reminded me about something else that's happening in this election. Suddenly, it's okay to be a Christian--if you're a Democrat--and the right kind of Christian, preferably black.

I don't recall ever seeing so many campaign speeches made in so many churches, namely Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton of the Democratic Party who have campaigned in church after church after church. Democrats keep a straight face and dare to talk any Christian about separation of church and state in our courts and in our schools? Their hypocrisy as they speak of state business behind pulpits is in direct conflict with the rest of what they say on Monday and is the biggest civic joke of the century which no one seems to get but me. Or I've missed the discussion.

Get me my epee, quick.

What's a dreary relativist to do?
There was very little subtlety as the Sunday am Dems spoke openly, resigned and wistfully of the immediacy of what's ahead because of what they've perceived as their party's odd locus--black man and white woman, religious folks and secular progressives, rich moguls and poor streets folk. How could god, if there is one, grace our beloved party with this embarrassment of riches? We want it both ways. We don't want to take a stand, to make a choice.

In the Democrats' world which values non competition, non judgment and complete separation of church and state, ideals they've grown up with their entire lives which is demonstrated by their own vague gray scale of life, their internal ambiguity and personal angst must be killing them as they are presented with these huge contrasts in real life. Watch how they choose. It will be dirty, desperate and ungodly as hell. Let me add here there ain't nothin democratic about any of it.

I hope there's enough Xanax to go around should things not work out--especially in Obama's favor. God knows I'm going to need it just to get through the fall out.

Or maybe I'll just go to church next Sunday and let those other nine viewers watch Matthews.

Thanks for the read.

Prince Barack of Indonesia and Hawaii speaks of Small Town, PA

Senator Barack Obama made these statements at a fundraiser in San Francisco when describing those pesky xenophobes in Pennsylvania.

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Town and towns between miles!
I was eighteen when I saw what was to me a phenomenon as I drove in the western part of that beautiful state. In other states, like eastern Kansas for instance where I grew up, a person could ride for fifteen, heck, probably even thirty miles before you got to another town. For a place to have a berg after every turn or hill in the road was just too strange. Pennsylvania, with its old towns and different sounding people and many cultures was a lovely new experience for me.

Though I didn't realize it then, I had Pennsylvania DNA all over me. Darn near all my American family began there many years ago. As I went through some genealogical research later in my life, I discovered many names of other families in census records who also had parents born in Pennsylvania. Lots and lots of them.

If individuals desired to get to Ohio and Indiana they had only a few "civilized" choices in 1812, such as they were: one had to go through Pennsylvania and many Indians to get to four or five traces (roads) if you lived in the Southern Atlantic area of the colonies, you could take the routes up through the Cumberland Gap out of North Carolina and across the Ohio River into Kentucky. Neither choice was exactly a super highway with a Motel 6 keepin' the light on for ya. The way through to the Northwest Territory from the Atlantic Coast was PA. There warn't no toher choice. If ya git ma drift.

Back to those cultural and elitist misspeaks from Obama, my American family's story is not very special or very unusual...by a long shot. I suppose that is why I'm so put off by this latest "missed" analysis by Obama.

There actually are American groups (black and white) who have kin who lived in PA for a century or so before they were able to come West. That, or they made it big and stayed; and others immigrated into PA for the reason of moving on. Amazing as it is, Pennsylvania has somehow handled it. These are data Senator Obama should know before he spews sociological opinions about the place, comparing them to the midwest.

It's a big old place and yes, somehow the state has survived, with guns and religion, from all the stress that strange and different looking people and cultures and immigrants have brought over and over and over again. It embarrasses me to see a presidential candidate make such a gigantic error in knowledge about a major force in our American history. It's astounding to me.

It would behoove Mr. Obama to pick up a few Pennsylvania history books plus 49 or so others, and actually read them. I have a few here in my own library, if he'd like to borrow them. Or he could ask his younger researchers to do it, if they could disconnect themselves from a rap song long enough.

The Keystone State
Back to my trip my first exposure to the bucolic part of beautiful PA was when I met and fell in love with my Aunt Jane's and Uncle William's beautiful four-story stone home built in the 1700s outside of Centerville. I had vowed to myself that I was to be married in that house someday. I'll never forget that lovely place and the feeling of "being at home." It sat on a working farm, above a lea with small lake, a spring house as I recall and among rolling hills. Washington, Pennsylvania, the home of a pretty fierce labor guy isn't far away.

And in the lowest depths of that same lovely home are hidden the secrets of the most compassionate, remarkable courage of some Pennsylvanians who carried out the Godly tasks of righting a few of the wrongs in our nation: a stop on the famed Underground Railroad--doubtlessly fortified with guns and religion. I don't even know their names. I think their clinging to guns and religions might have been a good thing.

It's on the other side of Pennsylvania that my Quaker grandfather was born on the Delaware River in 1670 in Chester, now Philadelphia, the birthplace of our Constitution. The Society of Friends members were abolitionists, and some even died for those unpopular beliefs. I guess that would be the "religion" Obama refers to so flippantly as part in his little offhanded remarks he made to elicit money from his supporters while they drank bad wine (and didn't know it).

I have to mention, if only to demonstrate the breadth of Pennsylvania's people and culture in their small towns, the Irish Protestants in my family who came to this country after losing their own ancestral homes to the British. They probably didn't have guns to cling to so they escaped with their lives and came to America to get away from the British.

They settled in the Parsippany area where many of my kin still live. One, my great grandfather many generations ago, lost a leg at the Battle of Yorktown. I can't imagine people like them being caught up in the bitterness this Mr. Obama speaks about. They've been through these downturns quite frequently in the past few hundred years.

I'm pretty sure sons and daughters of the Revolutionary war don't get bitter. They just go on with their lives and figure out other ways to get through. Cling to guns? I don't know about that. Maybe on a cold morning and if the deer haven't shown up yet.

Cling to religion? Yes, for sure. Admittedly, faith does mean quite a bit to families there or they probably would've quickly converted to keep the ole Irish barn.

There are millions of Americans like me whose roots are in Pennsylvania and like me, are spread across this country, a fact that is not lost on Mrs. Clinton. Nor on Senator McCain.

Guns and religion
Someone needs to tell Senator Obama that the steel industry's closings and rearranging of the state's economy probably has little to do with whether Pennsylvanians continue hang a gun over their doorways or go to church. When deer and other wild game become extinct and when God really is dead, we'll talk.

These new Democrats clamor they want someone who's been around, who's been somewhere. Well, Barack's been somewhere. He's grew up on an island that is predominantly Muslim for four years with his Mom and then went to be a Dude when he was ten in private schools in surfin' Hawaii on Waikiki. That's being somewhere. Then he was airlifted into Chicago to learn how to be black. That's being somewhere.

But he hasn't been to the places I've mentioned evidently for any quality time or anywhere else that does not have a vast ocean around it. In other words put this man on a Greyhound with a ticket across America and he's lost. He looks at a group and sees a labor union or a voting block or calls Reverend Wright or one of the over-the-hill NAACP pals in his fave fives in Atlanta and yells for help.

Back at the center of the universe in San Francisco
I could see him in my mind's eye as he's holding a nice Cuban cigar in one hand, highball in the other (he's learned from the con artists in Atlanta to expect good bourbon straight from a Waterford glass to get respect from the white man), speaking to a ring of sycophants; explaining these Pennsylvanian "natives," that he and Michelle actually lived among some quite like them in a place called Chicago, observed their mating habits, gathered and kept their "scat."

Mr. Obama's friends and he don't realize that others are listening while they ridicule the real people who have built this country, the very ones who have made them extremely rich.

"Damned xenophobes. Guess we'll just have to eliminate their guns and religion when we get our power. Good grief, what's next? Rain dancing? How charming. I'll have to tell my wife when she returns from freeing the Tibetans."

They (princes) talk like that, you know--the kind we Americans ran away from centuries ago.

Of course, what Mr. Obama hasn't got the experience or brains to know yet is this: big money goes away as fast as it seems to come in when you have these kinds of slips. I don't think he has another one in him. I heard Mrs. Clinton just gave the go ahead on that order of pastel pantsuits from the biggest department store in Pittsburgh.

Thanks for the read.