Trail Mix

by TED S. McGREGOR JR. & r & & r & Burned by Burma & r & & r & The cyclone that killed tens of thousands of Burmese earlier this month has also cut a swath through John McCain's campaign for president. Despite McCain's harsh condemnation of the ruling junta in Burma (also known as Myanmar), it turns out the DCI lobbying firm was working for those same thugs, trying to soften their image in America. And, as reported by Newsweek, two of DCI's top guys -- oops! -- just happen to work for the McCain campaign.





Not any more.





Doug Davenport and Douglas Goodyear both resigned from the McCain team, "so as not to become a distraction to this campaign," as Goodyear put it. (Too late for that.) Goodyear was also in charge of running the GOP convention this summer, a post he has also given up.





She's More Popular


Speaking of Burma, what was up with having Laura Bush deliver the press briefing on America's response to the humanitarian crisis there? Theories abound. Maybe she's just polishing up her own resume to make a presidential run -- a la Hillary -- in 2012. Or she could be helping out John McCain, who would way rather be associated with her than with her husband. Or maybe W was just in the zone during his workout and didn't want to break away -- after all, talking just seems to drive down his approval rating. That's probably it: Hearing President Bush rail about a government's inept response to a major natural disaster would just make life way too easy for the likes of Jon Stewart and David Letterman.





His Bad!


Speaking of McCain and his various albatrosses (albatri?), Rev. John Hagee has apologized to Catholics. In all the fanfare over Barack Obama's anvil to bear, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, you may not have heard that one of McCain's prized evangelical backers once called the Catholic Church "the great whore." That was one big misunderstanding, Hagee argues in a written apology urged on, according to the New York Times, by influential Catholic Republicans.





"I may have contributed to the mistaken impression that the anti-Jewish violence of the Crusades and the Inquisition defines the Catholic Church," Hagee wrote. "It does not."





His fiercest critic, William Donohue of the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights, will now meet with Hagee, adding, "Well, miracles do happen."