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Primetime McCain

8.19.08 @ 12:01AM

SADDLED UP AT SADDLEBACK
Re: Philip Klein's McCain's Finest Hour:

Warning to conservatives: this is not the John McLame that I know. Give him a couple of days and he will fully recover from his Reaganesque performance at Saddleback Church and go back to the old conservative-bashing McLame we have all come to despise.

His next poke in our eyes will be his nomination for Vice President. Look for some liberal, "pro-choice" loser.

I am not convinced.
-- Keith Kunzler

Will someone please tell Senator McCain to quit using the term "My friends"? I bet he used it at least dozen times during the Saddleback interview. It sounds so disingenuous, like Richard Nixon's "My fellow Americans." It makes me cringe.
-- Mark Tarnowski

I couldn't agree with Phil Klein more. John McCain's performance at the Saddleback Church was the best I've seen of the man. His responses were solid and straight-on. Obama, on the other hand, in responding to Rick Warren's questions, did more tap-dancing around than Gregory Hines in his prime. It was truly a memorable moment in this year's presidential election process.

Truth be told, I contributed to Sen. McCain's campaign early on (I initially supported Mitt Romney) but became dismayed at many of the things McCain has said and done. Recently, after hearing of his comment that he would consider a "pro-choice" (read "pro-abortion") vice president, I sent the most recent solicitation for funds by the McCain Campaign back to them with a hand-written note from a gift pad of paper that bears the photo of my grandson. I soundly castigated McCain and his campaign for uttering such rubbish. However, Senator John's performance at Saddleback has pretty much calmed my fears and I will be sending in a contribution in the next solicitation that I receive (and they do seem to come 3-4 times a week).
-- Jim Bjaloncik
Stow, Ohio

Yet another fine piece by Philip Klein.

He did leave out one of the most telling Obama flubs, though -- when he failed to answer the question of when life begins. His core evasion (I had originally written "answer") was that the question was "above his pay grade."

Well, let's see if we can explain it to someone in Obama's "pay grade." I'll try to use as many words of one syllable as I can, considering the difficulty of the subject (for some).

First, let's imagine two moments and two bodies frozen in time -- my body a second before I die, and my body a second after. As far as the natural elements are concerned, the bodies are both the same, except that one of the bodies is "dead."

Clearly, something had been working on the elements in the living body to keep them developing and growing, but is missing in the dead body. We call that something "life."

We don't know what "life" is, where it resides in the body, or how it works. We just know that when it's there, our bodies are developing and growing, and when it's absent, they stop.

Now, let's look at conception. An ovum combines with a spermatozoon and the egg begins to develop and grow. Hopefully, it will continue to grow develop and grow through all of the stages of human life.

Here, however, not only do we not know where in that tiny body, measured in cells, life is, or how it works, but now we also don't know how it got there. Probably from the mother, maybe from the mother and father.

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