WILL HARRY POTTER FANS JOIN CATHOLICS IN BOYCOTTING JOHN McCAIN'S NARROW & BIGOTED CAMPAIGN?

McCain's lust for power going up in flames-- with Harry Potter books

Virtually all of John McCain's instructors at the Naval Academy faulted him for refusing to read manuals or take instruction from people with experience. Aside from being a drunken playboy he was a terrible student, graduated 6th from the bottom of his class and crashed up half a dozen airplanes-- always someone else's fault-- before being shot down and captured by the North Vietnamese, his ticket to glory. And, apparently, textbooks and airplane manuals aren't the only think Mr. Know-It-All refused to read. He brags that he doesn't know squat about economics and can hire MBAs if he gets into the White House, forgetting, I suppose that an MBA is at the head of the current Regime that has done our economy such grievous damage with his ignorant and greed-obsessed ideology and policies. And what's worse, one has to wonder if McCain has ever bothered to read the U.S. Constitution.

He has basically rubber stamped every Bush-Cheney initiative to emasculate and eviscerate it. But in recent days we have come to see how he doesn't care about-- or, perhaps, understand-- what the Founding Fathers, in their wisdom, had in mind when they firmly took care to separate Church and State-- for the good of both. Their forethought has been a great blessing to America for the past 230 years. And, then, along comes Mr. Know-It-All. If McCain learns anything from the John Hagee scandal-- which is doubtful (Know-It-Alls don't learn, his problems since his teenage years)-- it should be that there are very sound reasons for keeping religion and government out of each other's business.

His relentless pursuit of an extremist cult leader, John Hagee, is making other Republicans, particularly Catholics, gays and Jews, who have been demonized by Hagee over the years, rethink their attitudes about the smoothly hyped image of John McCain as a wise and moderate leader. Regardless of his PR machine, he is neither wise nor moderate, as the Hagee episode clearly demonstrates. As Claire Hoffman writes in her "Under God" column in today's Washington Post, "incendiary faith is the opposite of consensus building."

McCain has said that he is proud to be associated with Hagee. This must be in part because McCain's strategists think he needs to burnish his evangelical credentials and Hagee's vote, along with his 19,000-member strong congregation, is just the solution.

Thing is, this country is big. Real big. And you need to bring together a lot of people to vote for you if you want to be president. That may be a little harder for McCain to accomplish thanks to his association with Hagee, who in recent years has many, including but not limited to Catholics, homosexuals, Muslims and Harry Potter-author J.K. Rowling. He has suggested that Hurricane Katrina was God's wrath for the city's "gay parade" and he has called the Roman Catholic Church a "false cult system."

...Where things get uncomfortable is when Hagee is grinning on stage next to McCain, who could lead this diverse country and directly affect the lives of said Catholics, gays and Muslims. Obama faced this same question of a divisive friendship last week when he said he would reject the endorsement of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

McCain for his part has said he won't reject Hagee's endorsement but that "in no way did I intend for his endorsement to suggest that I in turn agree with all of Pastor Hagee's views, which I obviously do not."

Now, it is one thing for McCain to alienate the Catholic leaders who have called for him to change his tune on Hagee and risk losing the support of American Catholics who make up as much as a quarter of voters. But if that doesn't scare him, Hagee's views on the Harry Potter books should: Hagee has called them "witchcraft" and suggested that they "desensitize readers and introduce them to the occult." According to my own casual statistical research about 99.9 percent of Americans are fans of the Harry Potter [books]. If I were McCain, I'd start building consensus there.

UPDATE: MEANWHILE, WHAT ABOUT McCAIN AND DRUGS?

No, I'm talking about his wife's addiction or about her being arrested for stealing drugs from a charity. That's the past. I'm talking about all his lobbyists again. The vast majority of the American people want to see more regulation of prescriptions drugs, not, as McCain wants, less. The lobbyists who run the Double Talk Express and who are likely to man any McCain administration would never agree to take away the profitable ability of Big Pharma to screw Americans over royally.