Happy Birthday Sumi.

I just had lunch after about an hour and half of being totally hangry and ready to kill anyone who looked at me. I still feel a little testy. I think I have a hangryover

Gar, I'd say "self-proclaimed holier-than-though Christians" in that case.

It disambiguates.

Or "a certain kind of Christian Conservatives."

So the people who think that a Jewish person shouldn't be president because of their Jewishness are people we should care about and listen to rather than say, telling them, "Y'all are nuts!"

I think it is more the attitude of "I'm going to vote for someone who shares my values" rather than "I'm not going to vote for a Jew". Maybe it boils down to the same thing, but the first one sounds more reasonable. I think the crazy part is the assumption of a direct correlation between religious affiliation and values.

Yeah but Rudy really really hates liberals.

Technically, he hates black people. And Hillary.

I do wonder how much of the GOP base is more than dimly aware that Rudy Guliani did not spring fully formed from the head of the Statue of Liberty on September 12, 2001.

It's sad that Rudy just being competent after a disaster is getting his this much cred. I mean, did he do anything other than not fuck up? (Ray Nagin, I'm looking at you)

It's sad that Rudy just being competent after a disaster is getting his this much cred. I mean, did he do anything other than not fuck up?

There's been some debate over how competent he really was (and that some of his policies prior to 9-11 made things worse that day). He projected competence and reassurance certainly, but I think he may have started his spin after Bush tanked it so badly in the aftermath.

I do wonder how much of the GOP base is more than dimly aware that Rudy Guliani did not spring fully formed from the head of the Statue of Liberty on September 12, 2001.

I was watching, of all things, a documentary about Broadway musicals, and they got to the transformation and Disney-fication of Times Square. They interviewed Michael Eisner, who talked about this theater that Disney renovated, but how he and the rest of the company weren't sure about Times Square and the adult-oriented businesses there.

He said something like "Rudy Guiliani said, 'They're gone.' And I said, 'But what about the ACLU...', and he said, 'Look at me. They're gone.'"

Eisner sounded both impressed and kind of scared.

The speeches he gave in the immediate aftermath were exactly what I, as a New Yorker, wanted and needed to hear. Looking back, there wasn't much in terms of actual action, but I am glad he was there at the time to say what needed to be said.

Which is to say, I would happily vote for Guliani to be Official Post-Disaster NYC Speechifyer, even if the thought of him as POTUS makes me run screaming for the Canadian hills.

Happy Birthday, sumi!!

I've seen that go both ways, fwiw. Protestants aren't in the TRUE church and all.

That's true. (I always liked the joke about the man who gets to Heaven and is given a tour by St. Peter, who points out, "And there are the Muslims, there are the Hindus, there are the Methodists, etc." and then the man asks about the big wall running along the back of Heaven, and St. Peter says, "Oh, behind there are the Catholics--they like to think that they're the only ones here.")

But, I did learn in CCD that Protestants were split out of the Catholic church and therefore part of the same tradition. From what ChiKat's told me, evangelicals have a tendency to think that Catholicism is the devil's religion and has nothing to do with their faith.