The runner stumbles - After his strong start, Kerry is making a lot of gaffes

You said: "Some of us can understand the meaning there, even if you wish to parse it to death. Notice how he didn't humbly say 'anointed', he said 'anointed the NEXT PRESIDENT'. Just a wee bit weird and clearly in conjunction with the Bishop laying of hands on him, he was claiming just what the obvious inference is."

Sorry I seem to look like I'm parsing, but I think we make ourselves look like fools when we use quotation marks for things that were never said. So, yes, my parsing self does have a problem with another conservative quoting Kerry as saying that he was "anointed by God to be the next president." He did say very clearly that he was "anointed to be the next president." There is a difference, and I'll spell it out for you.

The bishop laid his hands on him and may have prayed for that very thing. So Kerry might be saying that he had been anointed by the bishop to be the next president. That statement would be accurate.

Different denominations have different beliefs (and who knows what Kerry thinks) about the actions of God in speaking into the hearts of people. Some do not see a special anointing by a bishop as being anything more than the stated preference and blessing of a bishop hoping and wishing for God's action. Others see a bishop as one who "speaks for God." So, yes, Kerry might be saying that he was "anointed (by a bishop) to be the next president."

I had to laugh when I heard Imus this morning play a clip of Kerry, evidently from last night, where he thundered about the right mixing Church and State and not observing the "separation".

LOL

So however you wish to read it, can we not agree Kerry at the least is mixing politics with religion?

:)

I think this has nothing to do with Kerry being tired. I believe this is the "real" Kerry, whose arrogance is overwhelming his caution.

Yup. At this point, with Teraysa's $ and the liberal press holding his waterwings, Kerry thinks he can walk on water.

Well put. Frustrating and corrosive as is the liberal bias of the media, intelligentsia and popular culture icons, it is a double-edged sword. It's enabled the left to be politically dominant for decades, but at the same time has intrinsically weakened the left while strengthening conservatives.

With slow, Darwinian inexorability, the left have become hothouse flowers, adapted to and dependent on the adulation of the intelligentsia. It's support has meant they didn't have to construct or justify their policy with intellectual rigor, or confront and acknowledge it's failures. Their foibles are discretely overlooked, while conservatives are continually peppered with challenging questions and accusations. Far left extremists (even literal Stalinists and Maoists!) are seldom outed as such by the press, and so influence liberal policy and contribute to the drafting of Democratic talking points, while the right and Republicans have been under constant social compulsion (if it our instinct anyway) to marginalize and repudiate our own wackos and extremists.

A new generation of conservatives, led by the political genius of Bush/Rove, understands these liberal weaknesses and how to exploit them, while the left clings to the old formulas, in fact increasingly reverts to them in spite of the example set by The Rapist's DLC triangulations. Clinton was a kind of Darwinian monster (as well as moral monster). He could thrive -- for a time, at great cost -- outside the liberal hothouse, but most leftists simply can't anymore.

There's a good chance Kerry will self-destruct long before November.

(((((

Agreed! I can easily see a "Torricelli shift" happening during this campaign.

Hardly anyone in the dem camp has loyalty to Kerry - the man. The weaker he looks, the more chance there will occur some 'inevitable' event, probably in Boston during their convention.

I'm with you one this one. That is too much mixing of politics and religion.