Setting the stage for a collision of religion and politics, Christian ministers from 22 states will use their pulpits Sunday to deliver political sermons or endorse candidates — defying a federal ban on campaigning by nonprofit groups.
The ministers’ advocacy could violate the Internal Revenue Service’s rules against political speech with the purpose of triggering IRS investigations.
That would allow their patron, the conservative legal group Alliance Defense Fund, to challenge the IRS’ rules, a risky strategy that one defense fund attorney acknowledges could cost the churches their tax-exempt status. Congress made it illegal in 1954 for tax-exempt groups to support or oppose political candidates publicly.
“I’m going to talk about the un-biblical stands that Barack Obama takes. Nobody who follows the Bible can vote for him,” said the Rev. Wiley Drake of First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, Calif.
Bring it on. I would love these, and all churches, to lose their IRS tax-free statuses. I never understood why religious organizations had those exemptions in the first place.
Temporary tax relief provisions can help companies free up capital to maintain operations, create jobs, and lend to one another. In addition, we should allow for a temporary suspension of dividend payments by financial institutions and other regulatory measures to address the problems surrounding private capital liquidity.
Hand them the rope. Let them cut taxes and shuffle billions to Wall Street. LET THEM DO IT.
It’s like everyone is standing around watching McCain shove a kid into traffic. Then when he pretends to “save” the kid from getting run over they all start whistling and applauding about what a hero he is.
And they stood there and watched him do it. They predicted he’d do it. They talked about what a phony set-up it was going to be. And they still run with the “McCain’s a Maverick Hero” headline anyway.
I have to say, it is pretty awesome watching the shitbirds who helped get us into this mess use the negotiations to help stave the crisis (assuming a bailout is needed) for political gain. It is like they simply don’t give a shit about anything but power.
Memo to Democrats- Walk away. John McCain is not there to work on a bipartisan solution. Here is there for himself. You have walked into a room where there is a plastic sheet on the floor and the curtains drawn, yet there has been no sound of gunfire yet. WALK. AWAY.
*** Update ***
Now, with video:
’
*** Update #2 ***
So what is the play? Will they continue to bog the negotiations until afternoon tomorrow? WaMu failed, and the markets are going to keep applying pressure to congress. Look for the market to tank tomorrow. Then the GOP can ride McCain in on his white horse in the afternoon?
This isn’t even funny anymore. I am now feeling bad for this moron, she is in so completely over her head. This is like one of those awkward moments in school when a student is giving a presentation they are completely unprepared for, and the teacher knows it, the student knows it, and everyone watching knows it, yet you sit there and go through the charade.
Heartbeat away. Jeebus.
*** Update ***
This woman is just dumb as a sack of hammers. Do not be mistaken, this is why they are trying to delay the debates next week.
I have to say, it is terrifying this woman might one day be President, but I am AB-SO-LUTE-LY dying to see how Hugh Hewitt, Red State, and the Weekly Standard are going to spin this.
The German auto industry attacked U.S. politicians on Thursday over plans to give $25 billion in low-interest loans to Detroit’s crisis-stricken carmakers.
“We are opponents of subsidy contests,” the head of the VDA automotive industry association, Matthias Wissmann, said during the IAA truck show in Hanover.
The chief executive of German heavy truckmaker MAN Commercial Vehicles , Anton Weinmann, said:
“That results in a distortion of competition…In the manufacturing industry, one should leave things to the free market.”
By: Comrade John Cole September 24, 2008 at 10:31 pm
Or did Bush seem better than normal tonight? No stumbling over the words, no staggering incoherence, and just calmly putting out his case?
I guess maybe he has decided that he can not compete with McCain when it comes to mind-bending incompetence, so he just decided to play it down the middle. Alternate working theory- all the crazy Bush advisors are now with the McCain campaign.
At any rate, for the first time that I can remember, he seemed, well, somewhat competent.
Chinese regulators have told domestic banks to stop interbank lending to U.S. financial institutions to prevent possible losses during the financial crisis, the South China Morning Post reported on Thursday.
The Hong Kong newspaper cited unidentified industry sources as saying the instruction from the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) applied to interbank lending of all currencies to U.S. banks but not to banks from other countries.
With so many different kinds of insanity flying around at once, it helps to take a step back and appreciate the holistic implosion that is happening right now. We’re in the middle of a collapse so epic that it makes the Steelers-Cowboys superbowl look dignified. There isn’t a ray of light to be found for these guys. It’s like a race to the bottom where the GOP Congress, President thimblewit, Sarah “proof that Jesus loves Tina Fey” Palin and John McCain are all desperately vying to see who can become a living punchline first. Let me count the ways.
“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”
Across the country, satire writers sadly capped their pens and bookmarked monster.com.
Katie Couric asked Sarah Palin to name a time when John McCain gave more than rhetorical support to financial regulation (he did, once). Palin came up short. In fact the entire encounter was just as much of a disaster as her last real interview with Charlie Gibson.
At least Couric got verbal response, even if it didn’t techically count as an answer to a question. Other reporters would be so lucky
McCain then looked around the room and gestured as if to welcome questions. The AP reporter shouted a question at Gov. Palin (“Governor, what have you learned from your meetings?”) but McCain aide Brooke Buchanan intervened and shepherded everybody out of the room.
Palin looked surprised, leaned over to McCain and asked him a question, to which your pooler thinks he shook his head as if to say “No.”
Sarah Palin, living the feminist dream.
In related news, several pundits noted McCain’s polar swing from dissing economic concerns last Monday to hair-on-fire panic today. That sort of bipolar, crisis-to-crisis reactivity is normally taken as a sign that a person (or campaign) has no idea what is going on.
The Republican Study Committee, where the ideological stalwarts of the Congressional GOP call home, has a Very Serious Proposal™ : cut the capital gains tax. I wish that I was kidding. The rest of their fringe wish list makes even less sense.
...And then John McCain proposed his weird deal to stop campaigning and put off the debates. Then he put off Sarah Palin’s debate.
They’re all flailing. For a party that has trended towards irrelevance since America hit the practical limit of tax cuts and belligerent war during the first Bush term, history will remember this as the week when the GOP finally got there.
***Update***
An observation from the comments:
I’m still in shock over how terrible the Palin/Couric interview was. “Train wreck” is being charitable – it was more like a train derailing on a bridge, tumbling a thousand feet into a canyon and landing on a pile of old dynamite and gas drums. And then a jumbo jet crashed into the flaming wreckage. Followed by an earthquake that caused the whole mess to slide off a cliff into the sea, where the few miraculous survivors were eaten by sharks.
Conservatives sometimes remark that Sarah Palin must worry liberals since we can’t stop talking about her. Worry has nothing to do with it. You cannot look away.
Sarah Palin’s CBS interview with Katie Couric was a train wreck. Video when I can get it.
*** Update ***
Here is one. The video of her answering about Rick Davis was even worse. And that does not even count the clip with her getting riled up about a depression.
More here:
Train wreck. Now do you understand why they are trying to weasel out of the debate?
Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain announced Wednesday that he is suspending his campaign to return to Washington and focus on the “historic” crisis facing the U.S. economy.
Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama said at a news conference later Wednesday that he and McCain had spoken by phone and had agreed to issue a joint statement about shared principles in the approach to resolving the economic crisis.
But he disagreed with McCain’s call for postponing Friday’s first presidential debate in Oxford, Mississippi.
“It’s my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person will be the next president,” Obama said in Clearwater, Florida. “It is going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once. It’s more important than ever to present ourselves to the American people.”
Additionally, McCain has suggested that he and Obama could debate next Thursday instead of the VP candidates.
Let me unpack this for the rest of you retrograde morons out there who are still undecided and can not figure out whether you will vote for Obama or McCain. And no, I am not with the Obama campaign on any official or unofficial level, so I feel perfectly comfortable calling you a total moron if you are an undecided at this point.
1.) McCain is not putting politics aside. He is injecting a massive dose of politics into this debate. Now, when the negotiators stick on points over the next 36 hours, they will have to wonder if it is being done in bad faith in order to suspend the debate.
2.) Sarah Palin is clearly not ready to debate next week, and the McCain campaign is desperate for a way to postpone her appearance.
3.) McCain is giving you another glimpse of his temperament. Obama quietly, without alerting the press, approached McCain. McCain staged a media stunt. Wait till you all hear the statement from McCain to Katie Couric in which he derided Obama’s attempt to issue a joint statement.
4.) If you want some moron to run around like his hair is on fire in a time of crisis, McCain is your man.
My god, this is the easiest choice in an election in my lifetime.