Wasting Time and Words

Wow. My friend Beth recently pointed out a blog devoted to the belief that Barack Obama is the Biblical Anti-Christ...no sooner than she did that, I saw the same blog featured on CNN, a network that seems to shed credibility faster than Chinese gymnasts lose years. I'm not linking it, but I'm sure you can find it if you want to...I have, however, cut and pasted the anonymous writer's answers to some of his comments, adding my words in green.

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Without further ado, I present "Anonymous":


I also want to take a few minutes to all of the bashing I have been taking in the comments section, although around 81% of the people in my poll think Obama is, or maybe is the Antichrist.

Me:There is nothing more convincing in a debate than a blog poll and the word "maybe.".
You win.
I'm kidding. Seriously, your sentences would make more sense if you knew how to use verbs, i.e., "take a few minutes to all of the bashing"? Take a few minutes to what all of the bashing?


Your argument:If Barack is the Antichrist(or beast etc) then why would you tell people not to vote for him? There is nothing we can do about it.

Answer:You are right, there is nothing we can about it voting against him if he is the Antichrist, and yes that would mean Jesus is on his way. However, if Barack is just some guy, then he is clearly full of himself, and I don't think he would be a good leader, and I don't agree with his policies. I am not saying I am a big Mccain fan either.

Me: Interesting strategy for a debate,agreeing with your opponent and using circular logic to run laps around your own argument. If you are an Apocalyptic Christian Fatalist, then the arrival of the Anti-Christ is the best thing you could hope for because, as you state: "Jesus is on [H]is way" and nothing need be done save for sitting back and watching the End Times roll. As for being full of himself, well,duh. He's a politician and politicians are well-known for their inflated sense of self-worth...you don't like his policies? Fine. That doesn't add any weight to your claim that he is of supernatural origin.

By "just some guy", I presume you mean that Obama may be a mere mortal. Here's a shocking theory: Jesus Christ was "just some guy" who had some radical ideas regarding the way humans should treat each other. Those ideas were perceived as a threat by a corrupt, decaying Empire that was beginning to collapse under it's own over-extended weight and Christ was persecuted and eventually murdered for his philosophy. After his murder, he remained dead.

Please don't use the Bible to "prove" Jesus was supernal. That's akin to using Superman comics to prove Kal-El could fly.


Your argument:People have thought everyone like JFk, and Ronald Regan etc. would be the Antichrist, this happens every election cycle.

Answer:Yes, you are right on this one. Fine. However, from my perspective, and clearly many more, Obama has really been using biblical rhetoric, and people are seeing him as "the one" to save us, I see him as being unique from any leader I have ever known about, I feel strongly that there is a good chance he is the antichrist .

Me: Again, you start by agreeing with your opponent. Of course Obama uses biblical rhetoric-he, as stated, is a politician. American politicians always drag the Bible into their rhetoric- but not so much into their actions. I digress, but what are the notable "Christian" deeds of Bush Inc.? War? Poverty? Untreated illnesses? Ignorance? Jesus was against those things.

You see Obama as "being unique from any leader [you] have ever known about"?
That's a bad thing?
I wish to Godzilla that he was "unique" because we sure could use a change of direction, but again, your supposition makes no sense. Being different doesn't mean one is a creature of Darkness, but it does increase the odds that unlearned people will misunderstand one. Example: There are New York Jets fans who think Brett Favre is "the one" who will save them because he is unique from any quarterback that they have ever known, but really, the Jets don't stand a chance this season...by claiming that Obama is the AC because he is "unique" and because you have 'strong feelings', you come across as being crazier than a Jets fan. That's rubber wall territory.


Your ArgumentThe Antichrist was referring to Ceaser, or someone back in the A.D. it has nothing to do with our time. Or... The Antichrist is just a movement against Christian ways, there is no single person.

Answer:Yeah, maybe you are right. Maybe you are wrong. This Obama thing looks like a pretty big movement to me against Chrisian [sic]beliefs, tricking many Christians in the process... Maybe the Antichrist was only Ceaser, or some king in the A.D. Either way, Barack Obama stands against many of my beliefs. I am a pro-life person, who believes in a free market economy, and I am a real Christian, not someone using it for political ambitions.

Me: Even in a non-answer to a non-argument, you can't help but agree with your opponent and make yourself look ignorant in the process. For instance, who or what the heck is "Ceaser"? A person or object that causes cessation? You speak of "the A.D." as if it were some bygone era, when in fact "the A.D." merely means "in the Year of our Lord". (Coming after the birth of Christ, the term encompasses the last 2,008 years of human history, including the present.)

There was a well-known historical figure named Julius Caesar, but he died forty-four years before Christ was born, so it's unlikely he was alleged to be the Anti-Christ.There have been other Caesars but no Ceasers that I am aware of. Did you mean "seizure" ?
Please don't have an apoplectic seizure if the Centurions seize yer goods and render them unto Caesar, after all, it's people like you who voted for our current Emperor.

It's difficult to take you seriously when you don't even understand how the calendar works. Julius Caesar, on the other hand, understood calendars. Perhaps fluent chronology is a sign of Evil?

Again, you disagree with Obama, but that doesn't make him Satanic. Having strong "belief" doesn't change facts- you can't alter the concrete by discussing the abstract.


A politician using their loudly self-professed faith as a means to satisfy ambition and obtain power? That sounds very familiar. I doubt we can survive four more years of that familiarity.

Matt sez: Real Christians don't proselytize on the virtual street corner.

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Man, I can't believe that I wasted my entire lunch hour on this trivial bullshit.

Disclaimer: I understand that some of the ideas put forth above may be offensive to the sensibilities of some readers and for that I'd like to apologize- I mean no real disrespect to New York Jets fans, I merely used Favre as a metaphor.

Progress Report

Tomorrow Gen. David Betraeus and American Ambassador Lyin' Crocker are scheduled to lie to the American public regarding the current state of the Iraqi occupation.

What lies will they tell? The same ones we've heard before.

They will tell us that progress is being made in Iraq.

This is true if you are a Shiite insurgent- the forces of rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr fought Puppet Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Iraqi Army to a bloody standstill last week during a poorly conceived military 'crackdown' on Sadr's private army in Basra...the operation didn't accomplish much except to prove that the Iraqi Army (and Maliki's government ) are helpless without U.S. air and ground support.
The recent battle also helped create and widen internecine divides within the Shiites themselves, thus making any future reconciliations more difficult- neighbor kills neighbor, brother kills brother...grudges were formed, to say the least.

The Iranians have also made considerable progress in Iraq, a nation which they have historically been at odds with...Maliki's Puppet Ministry is openly sympathetic to Iran's government; Saddam was not.

Gen. Betraeus and Mr. Crock will certainly point out that Mr. Maliki's government is not capable of standing on it's own and they will doubtlessly use that observation as part of their rationale for continuing the Iraqi occupation - what they won't give us is a 'timetable' as to when the civic miracle of Iraqi sovereignty will occur.

No one knows for certain when that will happen. But we do know when it won't happen. Peace won't break out while Iraq is occupied by a foreign power-Iraq will remain in a state of anarchistic violence as long as we stay there. As long as we stay, there will be war. There's no way to tell how long-or even if- a peace can be established, but it won't even start until we bring our troops home.

Imagine if you were given a project at work and you turned it in without finishing it, crying exultantly, "mission accomplished!"...five years later your boss is still asking you when you will be finished and all you can say is: "hey man, I'm workin' on it...all I need is more time. And a raise."
You'd be fired.

Five years have passed and we are still dropping bombs in the hearts of Iraqi cities.
From any perspective this is a failure and it will get worse before it gets better.

If we pull out our troops, Mr. Maliki and his Puppet ministers will probably be executed by their own people- history doesn't look kindly on wartime collaborators. Tough shit.

If force was capable of spreading 'freedom' it would have worked already- if the Persians wanted Western democracy, they could have adopted it from the Greeks two thousand years ago.
Or, more recently, from the British- we all remember how well the British occupation of the Middle East worked out, right?
Right?
Obviously not.
I mean, who could have foreseen any of the troubles that we, as the invader, have faced in the Middle East?
The Crusades went so smoothly, after all. No trouble there...man, the whole thing shoulda been a cakewalk, just like establishing Israel was...I mean, that went off without a hitch or complaint, right?

Ooops.
What I meant to say is that 60 years after establishing 'freedom' in Israel, we are still trying to stop the violence there and the best solution anyone seems to have come up with involves concentration camps, a segregated population and the copious use of armed force backed with an implied nuclear threat, three things that just scream ' freedom'...it's a wonder that the Liberty Bell doesn't shatter from the the stress of ringing out all that freedom.


Perhaps we will be told that the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein in power.

I challenge anyone to provide one concrete example to support that claim- just saying "he was a bad man" isn't good enough- how exactly is the world a better place? Be specific.

There were 631 reported incidents of Iraqi violence in March, up from 239 the previous month...at the time , the 'low' number of 239 was held up as sign of progress- only 239 attacks in a month, that's less than 10 bombings per day!

How many car bombs does it take to ruin one's day?

4.5 million Iraqis have fled their homeland. I suppose an optimist could say that Saddam never would have granted 4.5 million travel visas, but those Iraqis aren't on vacation, they are wartime refugees. What sort of 'progress' creates 4.5 million refugees?

Iran's theocratic leaders were held in check by Saddam's secular regime and vice-versa- Presidents Reagan, Bush 41 and Clinton all knew and understood this- the USA has a long history of supporting both sides of the perpetual conflict between Iran and Iraq because it served our interests to do so- Saddam also kept al-Queda from establishing a presence in Iraq...when Iraq invaded Kuwait during Bush 41's term, Osama bin-Laden contacted the Kuwaiti government and offered the services of his own private army to expel the Iraqi invaders; at the time, bin-Laden's Mujahadeen warriors were basking in the glow of their recent victory over the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, (a feat they accomplished with considerable American help) and were itchin' for a fight with Saddam, who al-Queda saw as a Westernized infidel who refused to pay proper tribute to their call for Fundamentalist rule...the Kuwaiti's rejected bin-Laden's offer but there was a lot of bad blood between Saddam and bin-Laden ; the Mujahadeen were not allowed in Iraq- until we invaded and opened the door for them-
before the U.S. invasion, an al-Queada agent would have been safer in Bush's Kansas than he would have been in Saddam's Iraq.

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Speaking of Fundamentalist rule, I used to live in Utah, circa 1984 and this group was one of the worst-kept public secrets I've ever encountered...I mean, everyone in Utah knew what their deal was ; every once in a while they'd make the news and would be pressured to re-locate to a locale that was more inclined to ignore polygamy, rape, pedophilia and forced marriages- these areas of America are more common than I'd like to believe-first Utah, then Colorado, then Arizona...now Texas has them. They can hold 'em for all I care.

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Speaking of progress:

-I did not and will not get a new PC anytime soon. That offer was withdrawn due to another family crisis. I can't go into that now.

-I had two job interviews last week but no job offers. I'm borrowed-out and flat broke. I need new shoes, new clothes, new food...new everything. I'm willing to work for them but no one is hiring...America just lost another 150,000 jobs over the last 45 days. In 1999 I made $25/hr...the best offer I've had this year was $8. It's a good thing that the cost of living has also dropped by 2/3 or I'd be at serious risk of losing my apartment.
I have been homeless before but it was brief and it was by my own choice...the next time promises to be neither.

- There are options to homelessness. The last time I was facing the street life here in Fallentown, I found a girlfriend with a house and moved in with her. She turned out to be a drug-dealing psychopath with shady connections to the world of professional art thieves. She also had a semi-domesticated pet wolf that was prone to killing the neighbor's pets and when we broke up she tried to 'sic' the wolf on me but I was one of the only humans it liked and I escaped unmauled.

- My ex-girlfriend once tried to kill me with a wolf. How much worse could it get?
I'm dating again, so I'm pretty sure that I'm going to find out.

We Already Know That

After seven years of George W. Bush, it should be clear that any white man, regardless of intellectual capacity, can be selected as President of the United States.

So why is Mitt Romney making such a big deal out of being a Moron? We already have a Moron in the White House. Not for the first time, either.
I'm not sure if we, as Americans, are ready to elect a black man or a woman (of any color) to the Presidency, but I'm absolutely certain that we are willing to vote for a Moron.

Perhaps Romney wanted to point out that not only is he a Moron, he's also unfamiliar with American history and civics in general or that he specifically doesn't know Jack* about the Constitution of the United States.

Ask anything? OK, here goes:

1 ) What legally binding document contains the following stipulation?:
"...no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
Hint: It's the United States Constitution.

2) How many times is God mentioned in the United States Constitution? Be specific.

3) What does the first line of the First Amendment to the Constitution say?

4)Why do you think the founders felt it necessary to include this language?
Hint: The answer is in your mirror.

Take your time with these stumpers. It's easy to become distracted when one reads the documents on which this nation was founded...I was searching for God and facts kept drawing me away on tangents...have you ever read the Declaration of Independence, for instance?
It's pretty short reading; it's not an outline for democracy; what it is, is a petition of grievances against a power-mad lunatic named George.
It mentions a 'Creator', but not 'God'. According to correspondence between James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, this was meant to include: "Jew and Gentile, [ Native Americans] heathens and infidels."
It's meant to be inclusive, not exclusionary.

From the Declaration of Independence:

"'When in the Course of human events..." is what it says.

NOT: " During the mysterious movements of God..."

OR: "...due to the capricious whim of the Almighty..."

BUT: "...human events..."

The case for the "new religion of secularism" was made on July 4, 1776.


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Some of the DoI grievances against Mad George seem disturbingly current.

Does any of this sound familiar?:

-He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good

- He has obstructed the Administration of Justice

- He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people and eat out their substance.

- For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury

- For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

- He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

-He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and [he is] totally unworthy [as] the Head of a civilized nation.

Dudes! I couldn't have put it better myself.

Anyway, we eventually got rid of George, which gave us the freedom to design our own three- branched government; a system of checks and balances was used to insure that no one branch gained control over any other. Certain rights were given to specific Branches.

Congress, for example, was given the sole power to wage war. (Art. 1, Sec. 8)
Congress chose to give this power back to Mad George. The current anarchy in Iraq is the direct result of this dismantling of the American system of checks and balances.
Patrick Henry, it seems, died in vain.

Hey, check this out. It's in the Constitution too:

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

When the founders wrote ..."or Invasion...", they meant foreign invasion of American soil, not American invasion of foreign soil, but BushCo suspended Habeas Corpus anyway.


The United States Constitution also contains this wording regarding the Executive Oath of Office:
"Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:--"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

That parenthetical "(or affirm)" was placed there for a specific reason. It directly relates to the first question, above. It allows for the possibility that the person taking the Oath may not have the same -if any- theological beliefs as the persons who wrote the Oath.

But I am digressing.

Mitt, it's time for a hard question.

You said: " You cannot have freedom without religion".
This is in direct contradiction to the First Amendment.

Can you explain what you meant by that remark -or are there some things that your faith doesn't allow you to discuss?

This is a Mirror

This guy loves famous people.
See his hat? " I 'heart' Famous People"?
That would make a wonderful epitaph:

America
1776- 2007
We Loved Famous People

"I love famous people" is a more than a peculiar statement, it's a perverse new theology, the product of a highly irrational society, one that kills the fatted calf in bizarrely exuberant celebrations of the return of our prodigal children to the media spotlight while simultaneously ignoring events that we really should be paying attention to.
By qualifying our love of people with the word "famous", we have used semantics to tellingly, albeit unconsciously, acknowledge that we have turned our backs on our self-proclaimed national 'Christian' faith-you know, the one which adjures us to love poor (and presumably unknown) people? That one.

It also points to the corruption and downfall of language as a means of communicating ideas. If words no longer mean what they are supposed to mean, then communication will break down- and every endeavor that requires human communication will suffer as a consequence.This pretty much includes everything that people do, so it's a serious problem. Politics and policy are a good example of just how disastrous believing in lies can be .
Our political system has been crippled, perhaps slain, by the wounds inflicted by words with false meanings. "Freedom" = surveillance. Peace is war., etc etc...
George Orwell rolls over in his coffin and says "told ya so", but there's six feet of dirt and decades of stupidity muffling his admonishment.

I can hear the interred voice of Edgar Allan Poe, warning us, " Hey guess what? The only time those famous people even notice you is when they take time out of their famous day to hate you. Or rip you off." (Maybe that was Dorothy Parker- I always get the two mixed-up)

In this case, Mr. Famous Love is apparently ignorant of the difference between fame and infamy.
If you are best-known for setting records (since broken) in professional sports, you are famous.

If you later become a household name because you decapitated your ex-wife, your prior deeds are eclipsed and you are now infamous. You will be loved only by drooling half-wits and your high-powered attorneys, because frankly, no one else can stand to be around you.

Ah, if only that were true...instead, Mr. Famous Guy inadvertently* points out another sign of our national malaise- our prideful , yet ignorant and apathetic approach to our own national politics- many times I have heard people tell me "I NEVER vote because all politicians are crooked, it's all the same, it's boring etc etc."
This is often said with a perplexing defiant, defensive pride. If Al Gore had gotten one vote for every time I've heard someone boast about not voting, we wouldn't be in Iraq right now.

Well guess what? This country is in a mess - arguably the worst ever- and it's because you and you and you didn't vote. Or if you did, you believed the obvious bullshit and voted for the wrong man-twice. Even Diebold couldn't rig enough machines to skew the results of what should have been a landslide in 2000...and 2004. But fear and ignorance won the day- twice.

Fooled twice? Shame on you.

Yeah, tell me that Al Gore would have invaded Iraq..uh huh...it's quite possible that if Gore had won, Osama bin Laden would have called off the 9/11 attacks- the primary goal of the attacks was to goad America into a mis-placed and ill-considered war of savage attrition and it's very unlikely that Gore would have invaded Iraq- quite likely, he'd have finished the job his boss started by catching or killing Osama bin Forgotten - instead , the attacks led to an pointless, soul-killing war predicated on lies and an unquestioning national devotion to our sanguicolous leaders, a cabal loyal only to itself and driven by profits reaped on the harvest of war ; we allowed them to lead us blindly into a war that should have been obviously unjust and unwise to anyone NOT wearing a hat proclaiming their love of famous people.

Oh yeah, we love famous people. Again, I will use Mr. Famous Guy to illustrate just how utterly enervated and atrophied our national political will has become. MFG, unlike many celeb-gawkers, is politically active. Check out his choice of candidate:

Believe it or not, there are people who would be worse as President than George W. Bush. For example, I wouldn't want Charles Manson as President...or O.J. Simpson in any office that doesn't include steel bars, a stainless sink and a metal cot.

OJ [in] '07. That's how far we have fallen.

We love famous people. Godzilla help us.

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* I have been told that Mr. Famous Love is a prankster, in which case his garb is a wickedly pointed jab at what ails us- what ails us is us.

Wide Stance, Narrow Mind

I'm sure you've heard the story of Sen. Larry Craig (R-Top) by now. According to Craig, his splay-legged defecatory crouch led to his arrest in a Minneapolis airport restroom. Either that, or he was reaching for a non-existent piece of toilet paper in such a manner that an undercover detective felt obliged to intervene. In any case, he got busted with his pants down.
( Query: When you use public toilets, do you pick up stray bits of paper with your bare hands? Mr. Craig claims to. Yuck.)

Not surprisingly, Sen. Craig is an outspokenly anti-gay conservative Republican. He is so anti-gay that the words "I'm not gay" keep popping up on the tape recording of his arrest and I'm sure he'll repeat them when he resigns.

When uttered by 'straight' white conservative men, the phrases: "I'm not gay", "I support family values" and "I oppose the gay agenda" seem to be code for: " I suck cock in public toilets."

Remember this guy?


Even after Ted Haggard got exposed for doing meth with gay hookers he referred to his sexual orientation as a "problem." After three weeks of 'therapy' , Haggard publicly declared that he was cured and that he is now and always has been " completely heterosexual", whatever that means.
Haggard was a rabidly anti-gay conservative who passionately preached against his own secret practices until he got outed by a gay prostitute.


How about Tom DeLay? Sure signs that you are in deep trouble include:

- Having to explain your idiosyncratic style of defecation to a detective.

- Having Tom DeLay defend your honor.

Disgraced ex-Congressman Tom DeLay tried to cover for Craig and his ilk by pointing out that the kettle is also black. Delay's defense of Craig was bizarre. First he said he wanted to hear "the facts" - this is after Craig had plead guilty and the facts had pre-empted hours of cable news, including the GAO report that refutes the Bush claim that the 'surge' is working. He then began pointing fingers at Democrats and the "biased" media ; claiming that the Craig story was diverting attention from our victory in Iraq. What victory? What media bias?
The fact that DeLay is given any credibility at all seems to be at odds with GOP claims that the media has a liberal bias...having Tom DeLay speak about corruption is akin to having O.J. Simpson lecture on domestic violence. They are both experts, just not the kind you want on your side.


Do you know who William Bennett is?

He was Secretary of Education and the so-called 'drug czar' under the Reagan/Bush regime. He lost the ill-considered 'War on Drugs' and subsequently amassed a huge fortune as an author, consultant and public speaker on the subjects of ethics and morality.
In 2003 it was discovered that he had spent a considerable amount of that fortune on Las Vegas slot machines.

Can you see a pattern emerging? I have heard it referred to as "he who smelt it, dealt it."

With this pattern in mind, let me introduce you to Ron Luce.

Watch a chilling video excerpt here.

Luce is a self-appointed messenger of God and his mission is to protect the virtue of teenagers. He is very, very concerned about teenage sexuality- his ministry is actually named Teen Mania. Luce holds Nuremberg-style rallies called 'BattleCry' where pyrotechnics, Jumbotron TV screens and rock music are used to preach his message of abstinence and humility.

He claims the 'secular media' are brainwashing our children and he uses the trappings of a Kiss concert to deliver this message to an audience of chanting, swaying, brainwashed teens.
His justification for his campus dress code (long skirts, minimal flesh) is exactly the same as that of the Taliban- that men just can't be held responsible for the terrible things they might do if they catch a glimpse of feminine pulchritude.

I'm not the inveterate gambler that Bill Bennett is, but I'd wager that the odds are pretty good that Luce's pattern will eventually emerge, if you know what I mean.

Anyone wanna bet?

One Down

"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.' "
-Jerry Falwell on 9/11

With Falwell gone, who will protect us from Tinky Winky's
Big Gay Illuminati and their insidious Man-Purse Agenda?

I can honestly say that I am glad the man is dead. He has been waging a campaign against human rights since 1973, when the Supreme Court of the United States had the temerity to give women sovereign rights over their own bodies in Roe v. Wade, outraging a young Falwell with their decision.

Calling feminism a "satanic" movement, in 1979 he founded the ultra-right wing fundamentalist lobbying cartel, the so-called 'Moral Majority', whose main goal was the destruction of the walls between Church and State, the ultimate target being an American Christian Church/State- the sort of New Rome that attracts apocalyptic nut jobs who think it's OK to attack abortion clinics and shoot doctors while simultaneously ranting about the Islamo-Terrorists
that we need to be protected from- at the price of our civil liberties.
Unless you were gay or female. Then you weren't supposed to have any civil liberties in the first place.
His vision was one of a Christian America that would assert itself in a global struggle with the 'rising tide of evil' in the growing Muslim world.

The sort of Nationalistic Christian America that would return to the days of the Holy Crusades, using it's military might to spread it's ideology outside it's own borders, while using the so-called 'word of God' to oppress and suppress any at home who might disagree, including politicians and the press.


"I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the religious right had not evolved," he said when he stepped down as Moral Majority president in 1987.

Twenty years later, most of it under the sway of the Religious Right, and the country is in the worst shape since the Depression. Falwell's ideology was a great fit with the Reagan-Era neo-cons who help anoint Bush 43 as our Emperor.
We got our Crusade.
It's called Iraq and it's going rather poorly, which any thoughtful person could have predicted.

The Generals and advisers who called the Iraq occupation a bad idea were fired, demoted or otherwise had their lives and careers torn apart- see war critic Joseph Wilson's wife Valerie Plame for an example. Or they sold out, drank the Kool-Aid, repeated the party lies, were pilloried as scapegoats and retired in disgrace: see Colin Powell.

I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the religious right had not evolved," he said when he stepped down as Moral Majority president in 1987.

I love the irony of Falwell invoking evolution so much that I'm re-pasting the quote.

The Religious Right can't evolve. It's fundamentally against evolution.

Much like a Great White shark, it doesn't have to evolve, merely adapt- it's already the perfect mindless and unreasoning devourer, with a nearly unstoppable and all-consuming appetite for more power and wealth, damn the costs in lives. Violence is inevitable in the face of such aspirations.
The same religious madness that drove generations of armor-clad European fodder to the meat grinder of Jerusalem during the Crusades is still in force today.

It's what makes people hate others simply because of the way the others love.

It's what makes people burn books that they've never read.

It's what makes people fly planes into buildings full of people they've never met.

It's insanity and it's advocated by both the Taliban and American Evangelists. Both groups spell god differently, but both strive for a militantly strict patriarchy of putatively heterosexual men; holding women as little more than breeding stock for more Jihadists/Crusaders.

Those are some of the 'old-fashioned values' our Evangelical Christians seek to return to. Imagine Cotton Mather leading a legion of Clayton Waagners with the world's most devastating weapons at their disposal. Their enemy: Anyone who stands in the way.

That's what Jerry wanted. He may still get it, but I imagine it's going to be hard for for him to enjoy it from his reserved suite in the darkest pit of Tartarus.

Your Big Gay Baby

Have you ever fired a shotgun at a hobo? The traditional method involves removing the lead 'shot' from the ammunition and replacing it with chunks of rock salt.
This is slightly less fatal than buckshot but guaranteed to hurt like hell in any wounds it causes- but most hobos will jump from a moving boxcar at the sight of a shotgun, rock salt or not- a hobo trapped in the narrow confines of a railway freight car is an easy target.

But there are easier targets.

Fundamentalist Christian Homophobes, for example. Attacking them and their ludicrous 'beliefs' is easier than drowning slugs in a barrel of pickle brine.

These Christians, who hate Science when it teaches evolution or uses stem-cells to fight diseases, have opened up Pandora's Closet with this almost unthinkable uproar about Gay Babies- in theory, these Christians hope, science will allow them to determine their unborn child's sexual orientation , giving them the chance to 'cure' unborn queer babies of their homosexuality, which no serious modern scientist would call a disease anyway...

A Fundie Christian wrote this:

If a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin.

My idea would be to guillotine the writer's penis in order to help him avoid the "inevitable effects of sin" - but why stop there? Let's remove his fingers before he pens more poison words - heck, lose the whole hand.
Dude.
Save yourself from the Sin of Onan.

This dogmatic freak is using religious insanity as an excuse for practical applications of eugenics theory.
Even the Nazis were not this crass- the Germans conducted their atrocities in the name of science and Nation and left God out of their vocabulary of horror- but this man implies that God would be OK with Man tinkering with the unborn if it kept them from being gay...hmm, what's next? Does Thalidomide prevent self-abuse? Does being born with a flipper instead of an arm keep you pure?

They could test for other 'degenerate' traits...what if you were a Christian Couple and the doctors told you that due to some miscegenation during the Third Crusade, there was a slight chance you might have a Muslim baby- or a Jewish baby...what if your child was destined to be an alcoholic or a vegetarian? A serial killer or the next Gandhi?

What if you made a drastic, irreversible decision about your baby based on a faulty screening test- what if your mistake turned your straight fetus into a gay one- or into a liberal- or made them creative- or atheist-or intellectually curious- or any other item off of the seemingly endless list of things that Fundie Christians cannot tolerate... I reject this idea of aesthetic fetal modification for ethical and practical reasons- if, for example, Oscar Wilde had been "de-faggotted" before birth, would he still have been an excellent author? What else gets destroyed, changed or lost when you start modifying the minds of the unborn? I trust science a lot more then Faith, but I'm not gonna let anyone- Labcoat or Frock- tell me I shouldn't love my child simply because they are gay.

I would have a gay child.
I would love them.
So what?

They'd be loved because they would be my child.

Even atheists love their children, although, in my case, not enough to force mutation on them in the womb.
I might reconsider if they were to be seriously deformed, but probably not.
What if some 'curative' treatment was applied to an unborn Stephen Hawking- perhaps he'd walk, but what would have become of his mind? Would he have been the same?
Aren't people like Mr. Hawking part of God's Plan? Some of us are strong, some are smart...together we are supposed to work it out and take care of each other.

Isn't that the idea? Not according to Fundie Freeks.

If Stephen Hawking was my kid, I'd be proud. Very, very proud.


Fundie Freak makes a great point here:

The discovery of a biological basis for homosexuality would be of great pastoral significance, allowing for a greater understanding of why certain persons struggle with these particular sexual temptations.

What he really means is that this will allow guilt-wracked Fundie parents to stop agonizing over why their kids turned out gay- it's not because of the painfully sado-masochistic homo-erotic imagery of the Crucifixion, it's not because their role-model Pastor likes giving head to the gay hotel hookers who supply his amphetamine habit; it's not because they were never shown the love and attention that they needed at home and wound up getting buggered by the priests- now they can blame it on the DNA. Simple and cleansing.

Fundie insists God created DNA and His "pernicious" handiwork can be seen in the DNA helix, Original Sin being just another genetic marker, but the Bible tends to contradict this Fundie statement:

Given the consequences of the Fall and the effects of human sin, we should not be surprised that such a causation or link is found. After all, the human genetic structure, along with every other aspect of creation, shows the pernicious effects of the Fall and of God's judgment.

Ummm...riiiiighhhtt...

Personally, I think God a is pretty poor consultant when it comes to matters of conception, breeding , DNA and whatnot- at least one precedent comes to mind:

Once upon a time , this Old Guy named Zelophehad died , and he owned lots of land but he didn't have any sons, just daughters- and Jehovah was pretty sexist towards unmarried women and property (women were property, they did not typically own or inherit it), so there was some dispute as how to keep the father's wealth in the hands of his unmarried daughters - and, of course, in the tribe.

Moses was pretty much the spiritual go-to guy back then , so he was dispatched to go ask God about how to settle this dilemma.

This is what God told Moses:

"This is the word that Jehovah has commanded for the daughters of Zelophehad, saying, ‘To whom it is good in their eyes they may become wives. Only it is to the family of the tribe of their fathers that they should become wives."

What God was saying is : "Marry your father's brother's sons- marry your cousins and keep the money in the family."

This concept explains a lot about American Evangelicalism but it shows an alarming ignorance of genetics, especially from the Being who allegedly Created DNA.

Marry your cousin?

God should know better.

It amazes me that anyone could attribute 'Intelligent Design' to a God that is so intellectually dense that He doesn't even understand the basic chromosomal principles at work in His own creations.

Didn't God invent Mendel and those famous beans? Can't He read?

However, the agnostic idea that there may very well be a God, and that God is as thick as the proverbial brick, seems to gather steam every time I hear about these close-minded and dangerous lunatics; in fact , the idea of God being really powerful but a bit clumsy, a trifle stupid and dangerously incompetent seems quite logical.

After all, it's His image.