Will John McCain Endorse Pastor John's Harry Potter Witchcraft Trials?

Even Richelieu Would Have Been Sceptical.

War is one of the scourges with which it has pleased God to afflict men.

Televangelist Alert!

Senator John McCain has been endorsed by Pastor John Hagee.

As the situation with Farrakhan and Obama unfolded:

The very next day, John McCain appeared onstage in Texas with Pastor John Hagee, an influential activist in the Christian Zionist movement. Hagee's comments about world affairs can make Farrakhan seem pedestrian at times: He eagerly awaits the Armageddon, considers the Catholic Church to be the Anti-Christ, and has said that Jews brought their own persecution upon themselves. (TPM Election Central)

Hagee also supports Israel (go figure) and supports the war in Iraq. His tv audience numbers in the millions and his Ministries pay him quite handsomely (about $1.5 million per year). He has managed to stay out of the televangelist investigation conducted by Senator Grassley. That McCain would sidle up to another "agent of intolerance" is, to put it mildly, rather hypocritical. Or just plain weird.

Reading about Hagee's beliefs makes you think that he'd stone Daniel Radcliffe just for portraying Harry Potter:

"Someone who didn't know better could imagine from the very name Christians United For Israel - CUFI -that pastor John Hagee speaks for all Christians. Well, he doesn't." (Bill Moyers).

And...

Max Blumenthal: Rapture Ready - The Unauthorized Christians United For Isreal Tour - Huffington Post (7/26/07):

But CUFI has an ulterior agenda: its support for Israel derives from the belief of Hagee and his flock that Jesus will return to Jerusalem after the battle of Armageddon and cleanse the earth of evil. In the end, all the non-believers - Jews, Muslims, Hindus, mainline Christians, etc. - must convert or suffer the torture of eternal damnation. Over a dozen CUFI members eagerly revealed to me their excitement at the prospect of Armageddon occurring tomorrow. Among the rapture ready was Republican Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. None of this seemed to matter to Lieberman, who delivered a long sermon hailing Hagee as nothing less than a modern-day Moses. Lieberman went on to describe Hagee's flock as "even greater than the multitude Moses commanded."


Hagee's influence would make Richelieu envious. Is he as atuned to statecraft? No, but he doesn't think he needs to be. Is he as ruthless?

Probably.

Give me six lines written by the most honorable of men, and I will find an excuse in them to hang him.

A little outlandish for Pastor Hagee,

but nonetheless appropriate to his ideals.

The Christian Right NEVER Censors Itself - and... A Note on the Passing of a Conservative Mind

Oh, Wacko Waco Wherefore Art Thou?

Many Christian right-wingers must love Fred Phelps: next to him, they don't look so bad.

Why is it that so many evangelicals cannot bring themselves to REALLY censor someone who claims to be one of their own? When's the last time you saw or heard of a minister actively picketing Phelps? Oh yes, we've known how Baptist conventions everywhere have "excommunicated" him, but let's face it: BFD! Eight hundred years ago, Phelps could have been burned at the stake as a heretic. (The Dark Ages did have some enlightened moments!) And no concrete measures were taken to stop David Koresh from preaching that he was The Messiah.

I guess the Christian Right's problem is that there are so many sects, denominations, cults claiming to be Christian that to censor one would lead to censoring a lot of others. Fundamentalists have problems enough trying to shield their offspring from Catholicism and Mormonism. And not everyone can home-school their kids so as not to have contact with evil-doers.

Getting back to Koresh: since today is the 15th anniversary of the Siege of Waco, it's worth noting that secular (gasp!) scholars who studied Apocalyticism in religious groups tried to tell the FBI that their tactics were actually encouraging Koresh and the Davidians to believe that the End Times were near. But why didn't the Christian community step in before that? They could have done more than dismissing the Branch Davidians as a "cult."

Some Christian ivory towers are not only ugly, they're dangerous.

***

Today I read about the death of a great intellect. Liberals will shoot me when I say that William F. Buckley was more liberal than most people suspected. I had the honor to interview Mr. Buckley on two occassions. They were both phone interviews, but I could envision his facial expressions during replies. At first I was frightened to death of the possibility of interviewing him: he used his vocabulary to intimidate and dominate. My first question (actually too long to describe), however, put him on the defensive. Then I realized something: in order to get Buckley to talk about the things he REALLY wanted to talk about in a friendly and casual manner, you first had to gain his respect. Respect was what William F. Buckley was all about, you see. If you weren't worthy of respect, you weren't worthy of anything else.

Buckley's conservatism was far different than our neocons: do you think Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity would have been up to the task of talking to Buckley without encuring his polite disdain? His was the conservative outlook of less government and laisse-faire business. If you want to read unadulterated hypocrisy, read Ann Coulter's eulogy. Buckley would have given it a wan smile, then excused himself to go off stage... and vomit.

Above all else, William F. Buckly was a realist. On Iraq: "anything but conservative. The reality of the situation is that missions abroad to effect regime change in countries without a bill of rights or democratic tradition are terribly arduous." And: "One cannot doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed...it's important that we acknowledge in the inner councils of state that it (the war) has failed, so that we should look for opportunities to cope with that failure."

Thank you, Mr. Buckley, for giving us a time when conservatism meant "take heed" and not "take up arms."

Could Beverly LaHaye Compare to ANY of These Great American Women?

More aptly: Would any of these women identify themselves with Concerned Women of America?

Part II

The women featured here stood FOR something, but the CWA has defined itself by what it is in opposition to:

(From wikipedia) CWA opposes:

- Legal recognition of GLBT people and any form of GLBT rightsRecognition of marriage or any form of civil unions or domestic partnership between same-sex individuals, including reciprocal health benefits, calling all of these "counterfeit marriage" that will be used "to take control and to have the force of law to legitimise their disordered, unnatural behaviors."

- Abortion rights in all cases except to save the life of the mother. Health exemptions are considered "deceptive" and not supported.

- Hate crime legislation that includes sexual orientation, referring to such laws as "weapons against... people who might oppose the homosexual agenda, such as Christians preaching on the street, even Christians preaching from the pulpit around the world"

- All forms of sexual education other than that which teaches abstinence

- Pornography, obscenity, and media indecency, including on satellite radio, and satellite and cable television

- Embryonic stem-cell research, describing it as "deadly" and the destruction of "embryonic human beings"

- Emergency contraception in all cases including rape, asserting that ECP is actually an abortifacient by redefining pregnancy to begin at conception, not implantation of the zygote.

- Human trafficking in all forms, particularly of women for sexual purposes.

- Feminism and the Equal Rights Amendment

Somehow, I don't think these women felt the same way.

From top left: Elizabeth Taylor, Sacagawea, Rosa Parks, "Unsinkable" Molly Brown, Oprah Winfrey, Marion Anderson, Josephine Baker, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Helen Keller, Helen Hayes, Elizabeth Cady Stanton (with Susan B. Anthony), Eleanor Roosevelt, Dolley Madison, Coretta Scott King, and Amelia Earhart.

Now compare these women to Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America (Her boss is LaHaye). Wendy is quite sincere and quite idiotic in her hyposthesis that comprehensive sex education programs WANT kids to get STDs (you read that right)

The above American icons ROCK!

However, Wendy Wright IS a rock!

Yesterday's amazing photo editing work by Philip Scott Johnson (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8U6jD) featured (in order):

Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, Gloria Swanson, Marlene Dietrich, Norma Shearer, Ruth Chatterton, Jean Harlow, Katharine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, Bette Davis, Greta Garbo, Barbara Stanwyck, Vivien Leigh, Greer Garson, Hedy Lamarr, Rita Hayworth, Gene Tierney, Olivia de Havilland, Ingrid Bergman, Joan Crawford, Ginger Rogers, Loretta Young, Deborah Kerr, Judy Garland, Anne Baxter, Lauren Bacall, Susan Hayward, Ava Gardner, Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly, Lana Turner, Elizabeth Taylor, Kim Novak, Audrey Hepburn, Dorothy Dandridge, Shirley MacLaine, Natalie Wood, Rita Moreno, Janet Leigh, Brigitte Bardot, Sophia Loren, Ann Margret, Julie Andrews, Raquel Welch, Tuesday Weld, Jane Fonda, Julie Christie, Faye Dunaway, Catherine Deneuve, Jacqueline Bisset, Candice Bergen, Isabella Rossellini, Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, Meryl Streep, Susan Sarandon, Jessica Lange, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sigourney Weaver, Kathleen Turner, Holly Hunter, Jodie Foster, Angela Bassett, Demi Moore, Sharon Stone, Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts, Salma Hayek, Sandra Bullock, Julianne Moore, Diane Lane, Nicole Kidman, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Angelina Jolie, Charlize Theron, Reese Witherspoon, Halle Berry

Music: Bach's Prelude from Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007 performed by Yo-Yo Ma http://www.myspace.com/eggman913

Why Can't Ann Coulter Be More Like Lauren Bacall?

(They are the same age, aren't they?)

This blog post is going to be a two-parter

Part I:

February 27 celebrates the 86th year of women's suffrage in America

It also celebrates the birthday of one of the most indomitable women of our time: Elizabeth Taylor (O.K., she's a little bit older than Coultergeist, but in comparison, she's ageless, whereas Coulter...)

So, it's fitting that we celebrate Great American Women by featuring some Great American Film Actresses.

As a parting note on Ann Coulter, she has stated numerous times that women should never have gotten the vote. Those statements along with the one about Joe McCarthy being a great American Patriot rank among the most anti-American in history:

"Everything you think you know about McCarthy is a hegemonic lie. Liberals denounced McCarthy because they were afraid of getting caught, so they fought back like animals to hide their own collaboration with a regime as evil as the Nazis."

One actress who managed to go toe-to-toe with McCarthy (and, by extension, Ann Coulter) was Lauren Bacall. Once, Larry King asked about her politics:

Bacall: "I'm a total Democrat. I'm anti-Republican. And it's only fair that you know it."

King: "Wait a minute. Are you a liberal?"

Bacall: "I'm a liberal. The L word!"

This video is one of the most amazing pieces of photo editing I have ever encountered! It's
by Philip Scott Johnson and has garnered over 2 million fans! Yes, you may have seen it before, but I know you won't mind seeing it again, even for the umpteenth time!

The complete list of these actresses will be posted tomorrow. Try to name them all - in order - and no cheating!

I hope you don't mind me ending this gushing post with a bit more gushing about my own star: my mother. She was fearless, pro-family and pro-choice. The only televangelist she ever knew was Bishop Fulton J. Sheeen. She respected him a lot, but never paid heed to his requests for donations ("He gets paid pretty well with the way he lives!") Her birthday was Feb. 17th and if she had lived, she would have been 92. Happy belated birthday, mom!

Evelyn Mrazek Vojir

Feb. 17, 1916 - Jan. 21, 1989

Colts, Fillies and Televangelisti Horses' Asses

Yep, they're still out there, folks!

Back in 1838, when Sam Colt thought of a filly, he probably thought of riding a young horse out in the fields shooting at rabbits or buffalo with his new revolver. Over 150 years later, when Jimmy Swaggart thought of a filly, he thought of shooting something else. Enter prostitute Debra Murphree. Oh, he cried and cried and cried in front of his congregation, but the defrocked him anyway.

All hail to leftist-commie-pinko wikipedia.com for these other juicy bits of information (ah sorry, I mean propaganda):

On February 21, 1988, without giving the details of his transgressions, Swaggart tearfully spoke to his family, congregation, and audience, saying, "I have sinned against you, my Lord, and I would ask that your precious blood would wash and cleanse every stain until it is in the seas of God's forgiveness." (On a New Orleans morning news show four days later, Murphree stated that while Swaggart was a regular customer, they had never engaged in intercourse.)*

Against the ruling of the governing body of the Assemblies of God, Swaggart returned to his television pulpit long before his three-month suspension expired. He stated, "If I do not return to the pulpit this weekend, millions of people will go to hell." Believing that Swaggart was not genuinely repentant in not submitting to their authority, the Assemblies of God immediately defrocked Swaggart, removing his credentials and ministerial license.

Hypocrisy still pays good dividends:

Jimmy may have come down in the evangelical world, but he's definitely not out: at the age of 72, he heads Jimmy Swaggart Ministries and hosts tv and radio programs heard in 22 states (the irrepressibly red ones).

Watch the video below where said he would kill any homosexual he met. (Did he ever meet Ted Haggard?). See if there's anyone you know in the background. Is there anyone you'd LIKE to know?

He later credited his comment as a joke, but remember what we said about the Elmer Gantrys and the Elmer Fudds of this world: "Yes, we can all laugh with Bugs about how stupid Elmer Fudd is, but until he takes that gun (and that hatred) away from Fudd, someone's going to die."



*Shades of Ted Haggard: "I only got a massage"

Funny, It Doesn't Taste Like Ken Copeland!

What Has Been the World's Greatest Source of Spam?

If you take into account all of the propaganda created by religion in the forms of tracts and apologetics, not to mention requests for donations and fliers for the choir's bake sale, the Bible is history's greatest source of spam. When the great tsumani hit Indonesia and India, Jerry Falwell had 600,000 Christian tracts printed up to accompany the care packages - to Muslims and Hindus. Now THAT'S spamming - and, insulting. But come to think of it, isn't ALL spam insulting? Doesn't spamming assume that you're deficient in some way? That you're gullible? That you're too lazy to find out things by yourself? That the spammer knows something you don't? The Bible thumper on the street assumes that everyone who passes by is a sinner because, well, he's a sinner. He's spamming you without your consent. He's creating noise that does nothing but overload your senses.

The average cable television viewer sorts through channels and programs like so much junk mail. Only some of them are looking for Pat Robertson's 700 Club. Proselytizing has become a mind-numbing assault - an assault on the senses and (as Al Gore would put it) an assault on reason. Television "spam guards" would sell like hotcakes. Sure, your fingers on the remote
act as a kind of censorship but you can't actually erase that televangelist. Even while watching "The Discovery Channel, you KNOW he's there waiting for you to tell you how much you need God - and him. And just what he really thinks of you, well, you just don't want to know. These people are all filled with "The Holy Spirit" and to a televangelist you're just another one of them (with money to donate of course):

WARNING: watching this video may not make you lose faith in God, but it might make you lose faith in the sanity of mankind.

Special to Fundamentalists: There IS a Difference Between The New Yorker and The Communist Manifesto

Aaaah...Is there a resemblance?

Today, February 21st, marks the publishing of the Christian Right's two most hated publications:

The Communist Manifesto (1848) and The New Yorker (1925).*

Neither of them are displayed on the coffee tables of double-wides.

Why are so many Christo-Fascists afraid of people who think? As the erstwhile King of Siam would have said "Tis a puzzlement!"

*The New York Times is in a different league altogether: it's Demonspawn!

Campaigns Go Postal!

How Green Is Your Candidate?

According to 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Save The Earth:

1. Each year, 100 million trees are used to produce junk mail.

2. 250,000 homes could be heated with one day's supply of junk mail.

3. Americans receive almost 4 million tons of junk mail every year.

4. The yearly production and disposal of junk mail consumes more energy than 2.8 million cars.

It's almost impossible to guess just how much mail this campaign is costing the planet. Yes, there will be political spam and recorded messages with the candidates' voices, but the amount of paper consumed and postage spent will likely brake records.

The nation's Post Office Department was created exactly 216 years ago.* Will it be up to the task of sorting out all the mail from John McCain, Barack Obama, as well as all the peripheral material the campaign will generate? I've just gotten (by their mistake, I assure you) a '08 Values Voter National Survey from the Family Research Council along with an official super-duper FRC Action Membership Card (I would have preferred a decoder ring). The whole package weighed in at 6 oz. and even with Tony Perkins' non-profit status it must have cost $millions to produce. All of it to help you to vote against something (same-sex marriage and hate crime laws top the bill).

Between now and November, the postal service will probably experience the workload of ten Christmas seasons. The ubiqiutous eagle might start looking like this:

*Other little-known facts about our beloved Post Office:

The USPS employs more mentally ill people than any company in the United States except Wal-Mart. It employed 790,000 personnel in 2003, dividing the number into offices, processing centers, and actual post offices. Most USPS employees are divided into two categories:

Mail handlers and processors often work in the evening and night to prepare junk mail and bulk goods for the carriers to deliver. Work is physically strenuous, especially for mail handlers; many mailbags loaded from and onto trucks weigh as much as 70 pounds (32 kg).

Letter Carriers, also referred to as mailmen or mail-carriers; are the public face of the USPS. As the front line, carriers are routinely pressured to move faster, work harder, and perform more tasks in a timed manner. The most stressful of crafts, carriers are watched, timed and inspected more than any other employees.

Happy Japanese Internment Day! (AKA Michelle Malkin Day)

FEMA Couldn't Have Done It better!

Oh, those were the days back in 1942 when it took only three days to sell your house! Of course, you had to be Japanese and you had to sell it for pennies along with all your other property because people thought you "might" be a threat to national security.


On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, an event that spurred one of America's darkest and most anti-American hours: the internment of thousands of Japanese-Americans. 110,000 men, women and children were sent to hastily-built "relocation centers." Numbers later revealed that 65% of those who were forcibly relocated were American citizens.

Living conditions in the camps were anything but stellar:

According to a 1943 War Relocation Authority report, internees were housed in "far paper-covered barracks of simple frame construction without plumbing or cooking facilities of any kind." The spartan facilities met international laws, but still left much to be desired. Many camps were built quickly by civilian contractors during the summer of 1942 based on designs for military barracks, making the buildings poorly equipped for cramped family living. In other areas, the internees had to build the barracks-like structures themselves.*

The Ann Coulter Wannabe, Michelle Malkin (nee Maglalang - ironically a daughter of Filipino immigrants) wrote a book entitled: In Defense of Internment: The Case for 'Racial Profiling' in World War II and the War on Terror. Today must be her "holy day".

I haven't been able to read it yet, but I'll cite an Amazon reviewer:

"This book is a thinly veiled attempt to put President Bush's own internment camps into historical perspective. However all this book does is showcase the authors own ingnorance of history, miltary strategy and logistics. No credible military historian or anyone else with a passing knowlege of military tactics would ever try to justify what Roosevelt did to these loyal American citizens. .. Malkin who based on her editorial columns, is an unabashed defender of George W. Bush and the security state seems to have another goal here. I think the entire purpose of this book is to try to convince people that the governments current internment camps are as necessary as the ones previously used to imprison American citizens of the wrong color in WWII. In that point I am in 100% agreement. This book isn't politically incorrect. It's just idiotic.


Malkin's conservative ideology seems to have a slightly hypocritical bent: like her compatriot, Ann Coulter, she uses gender equality advances to persue her ultra-conservative goals (she probably never watches Pat Robertson's "700 Club"). As of 2004, her husband Jesse Malkin, a Rhodes Scholar and former economist for the RAND Corporation, stays home and raises the two Malkin children.



In other words, Michelle keeps him in internment.

Why, she doesn't look Asian at all!

*This is, of course, a quote from the ultra-liberal Wikipedia:

What Went Wong?

This Country Was Sailing Along Beautifully,

Then suddenly, and without warning, we mistakenly elected:

THE CLOWN

(Pictured giving his infamous "One Fingered Victory" Speech)

*Warning: watching this video may turn you into a Liberal and may cause occasional bouts of thinking, sanity, compassion, and other serious side effects.

Pat Robertson's WORST Enemy: Thomas Jefferson

OMG! Our Third President was

DEMONSPAWN

and a CONFEDERATE OF THE ANTI-CHRIST!!

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State."

And that irreligious little serpent James Madison (see below) supported Jefferson!:

"... no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish enlarge, or affect their civil capacities."

George: you have only 336 days to make like Ronnie Reagan and tear down that infamous wall! So what if it was established by Jefferson - he was always suspected of being a foul athiest! (The proof is that he converted to the heretical Unitarian Church only a year before he died - sent immediatley to hell, no doubt!). Why, he actually LIKED the French! How un-American can you get?! He and Madison were pacifists, for Chrissake!" We have to MAKE everyone in the world Christian!

"In winning a nation to the gospel, the sword as well as the pen must be used" (Gary North, Christian Reconstructionism, p. 198).

James Madison and the Sacred Trinity Bush is Trying to Destroy

George: If You Don't Like Checks and Balances,

Blame Little Jimmy!

James Madison is often called the "Father of the Constitution" - a title he heartily disliked. But the "withered little applejohn" (he was our shortest President at barely 5'4" and weighed a scant 100 lbs.) really did write much of the Constitution and also the Bill of Rights. He patterned the framework of our government after his own Virginia Plan and was very proud to see the first rulings of the Supreme Court.

"He envisioned a strong federal government that could overrule actions of the states when they were deemed mistaken." * He was not exactly a "man of the people" (he was a disdinguished property owner and had slaves), but he was no pluralist. He was the biggest champion of Separation of Church and State.

Our current leader, George II, like Mike Huckabee, would like to make changes to Mr. Madison's magnum opus:
*Wikipedia

Bush's Lies and Washington's Honesty

For President's Day Weekend:

GWB compared to some lesser Presidents

#1: Two Georgies: One honest and the other....

Historians tell us that George Washington never said "Father I annot tell a lie..."He did, however, tell the truth when it came to foreign affairs: he did not want any more wars and took the steps necessary to keep the U.S. out of foreign conflicts. For example, he composed a Proclamation of Neutrality in 1793. He also favored a strong central government, a national bank, and an effective tax system.

He was also strong supporter of complete religious toleration. Once when hiring men for a construction project at Mount Vernon, he voiced what kind of workmen he wanted: "If they be good workmen, they may be from Asia, Africa, or Europe; they may be Mohammedans, Jews, or Christians of any sect, or they may be Atheists." In 1790, he wrote a response to a letter from the Touro Synagogue, in which he said that as long as people remain good citizens, their faith does not matter. *(Wikipedia)

Washington sounded more like a Democrat than anything else.

Our current George has not quite gotten the hang of telling the truth while in office. He was certainly blase about not being able to find WMDs - the premise about which we went to war in Iraq:

So, there you have it: the First George tried desperately to keep us out of war, while the last one tries desperately to keep us in it.

* Can you imagine George II saying this in front of his good friend and advisor, Pat Robertson?

GANGSTERS HAVE HEARTS TOO! But Do Televangelists?

Rat-a-tat-tat!

Happy Valentine's Day... Massacre!

Call me old fashioned, but I think that on February 14th, we should honor the people who did more for the violin case than any musician:


Al Capone - Fred "Killer" Burke - Jack "Machine Gun" McGurn - Fred Goetz. Together, they attempted to execute Bugs Moran, the boss of a rival gang, from Chicago's North Side. And while they didn't succeed in killing Moran, they earned for themselves a place in history that capped The Roarin' Twenties (it took place in 1929). Capone himself was not present - he was "vacationing" in Florida - but he was the mastermind. Capone's image, by that time, was so infamous that everyone knew he orchestrated the massacre. This image has lasted even into today's perception of the typical "gangster", but did you know that the great "Scarface" started a program to provide Chicago school children with daily rations of milk? And during the Depression, Capone sponsored many soup kitchens for the poor and homeless.

So gangsters have hearts, too. Maybe some of them are made of brass slugs, but they're there.

And who are today's gangsters? Are they carrying violin cases or...bibles? One of our earlier posts was on the people we call "televangelisti". They threaten your soul's alienation from God if you don't "contribute." Televangelist Paul Crouch (TBN Broadasting) even sounds like an old gangster in his death threats:

God, we proclaim death to anything or anyone that will lift a hand against this network and this ministry that belongs to You, God. It is Your work, it is Your idea, it is Your property, it is Your airwaves, it is Your world, and we proclaim death to anything that would stand in the way of God's great voice of proclamation to the whole world. In the Name of Jesus, and all the people said Amen!

Crouch and his network have many people cowering in fear: reprisal in the form of a bullet is one thing, but death coming directly from God is another. Crouch could have given lessons to Capone.

If you want to "give from the heart" on Valentine's Day, I suggest you steer clear of someone who is telling you that God blessed him with a 10,000- square-foot mansion and a private jet and that if you give to his/her ministry, you will receive "tenfold". I just happened upon what looks like a fairly worthy faith-based charity: FRC Ministries (http://fhcministries.blogspot.com/). It's very new (and, honestly, fairly green), but it looks a hell of a lot more respectable than any of today's televangelists.

Or, check out Ministry Watch (http://www.ministrywatch.com/) where you can figure out just how much of your money goes to the homeless or towards a new Rolls Royce.

In any case, have a Happy Valentine's Day by avoiding the twenty-first century America's version of the gangster.

Are Fundamentalists and Evangelicals Permanently in the Dark?

Would Noah Have Appreciated a General Electric Stove?

Electricity on Noah's Ark? Hell, the Bible doesn't even mention a wood-burning stove. Forty days (or, in some interpretations, 140 days) is a long time to go without any form of cooked food. Did the inhabitants of the Ark have disentary as a result? Whoa! Too much non-information here! Anyway, Noah, as a good God-fearing, science-hating man would not have approved of advanced technology such as electricity, so I guess Noah's family had to make do with a "natural" diet.

Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me -- the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love -- He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us -- nature did it all -- not the gods of the religions.

That was Thomas Edison, inventor of the first incandescent light, the world's first phonograph and a man who held the astounding sum of 1093 patents. In theological terms, Edison was NOT an atheist but a deist who strongly agreed with another Thomas - Paine.

Some fudamentalists point to the fact that Thomas Edison was home-schooled by his mother. They fail to mention that the textbook she used was RG. Parker's School of Natural Philosophy and that later on, Edison was educated at the famously scientific Cooper Union in New York. In its 162 years, this school has had almost nothing to do with religion.

Over his desk, Edison displayed a placard with Sir Joshua Reynolds' famous quote: "There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking." That, of course, includes the Creation Museum in Kentucky which states: "Don't Think - Believe."

Happy birthday, Tom. You would have been 161 years-old today. Would that you could have lived so long for us. But it would have been bad for you- I don't think you'd like today's anti-science movement.

Vote Bill the Cat for President! (A Vote for Bill is a Vote Against that B***ch Hillary!)

Hating Hillary: The Typical CINO Knee-Jerk Response

I googled "I Hate Barack Obama" I came up with about 25 sites.

I googled "I Hate John McCain," and came up with 32 sites.

I (naturally) googled "I hate Huckabee." 46 sites.

I googled "I Hate Hillary."

Over 400! Even T-shirts and bumper stickers are beginning to pick up on the sentiment. That's an awful lot of hate. Read the rather ill-placed logic of one conservative commentator:

"Liberals are picking up on this Hillary talk and trying to create an anti-hillary sentiment like the anti-bush crowd was blasted for. It won't work. We are anti-hillary but it's mostly for the reasons listed below. She is hated mostly because she personifies liberalism. Yes it's her policies. It's her name. It's her stupid smirks and her pride. Her carpetbagger ways and her socialist tendencies. Oh and also her husband. It's the families insistence that they are always right, even when they are wrong. (reminds me of a quote from Scarface,"I always tell the truth, even when I lie.") Too bad for democrats they elected the wrong clinton to the white house because I don't think this country can take two of them."

Hating Hillary vs. Bush Bashing:

Most Bush bashing was done in the form of jokes because, let's face it folks, he gave us a LOT of material to joke about! Comedians should honor the President with a gold medal - he kept so many of them in business. His faked "local down-home" image and his cluelessness made for some of the most hilarious moments in the history of the Presidency. Hell, for at least six years, I thought he was Dan Quayle in disquise! People actually hosted "Bush bashing" parties.

Hillary hating, however, takes on an entirely different tone. Certainly no one would host a party joking about how stupid Hillary Rodham Clinton is. She has been called crafty and even sinister, but the current criticisms imply that she is indeed inteligent.

If we look deep into all the "I Hate Hillary" statements and blogs, I think we might just find some that are pretty flimsy in motivation. These are people who NEED to hate someone. And unless you got to this blog by mistake, we all know who those people are: anti-Hillary rants will come from pulpits and bake sales, closed-minded school board meetings and people who are truly ecumenical in their hate: i.e. Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coultergeist.

The I Hate Hillary League has sprung up much like the detrators of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code - too fast, too shallow and too rabid. If Berk Breathed's cartoon character, Bill the Cat won the Republican nomination, CINOs would say "As long as it's not Hillary, because I hate Hillary!!"

A reasonable rationale, on the other hand, was never a strongpoint for some Christianists.

THIS:

.... Or THIS

To Mike Huckabee: NICE GUYS DON'T GET LAID!

And Maybe People Shouldn't Vote for Them

Dear "Aw-Shucks" Huck:

I've just read where some people in the state of Utah don't like you (gasp!). I know that seems impossible given your image as the man everyone likes, but it's true. Read it here if you don't believe me.

It's the Mormons, the feminists and the gays, you see. They're the ones slandering you so much. Demonspawn to be sure, but if you don't watch out, others of real importance will start to question things. Things like why you still haven't met with Ryan White's mother and why you won't let people read any of your old sermons. By the way, did you really say that Mormons believe that Jesus and Satan were brothers?

Maybe you should re-strategize. Everyone was diappointed when they found out George Bush was NOT Will Rogers. (He's only been trying to channel wise old Will - unsuccessfully.) And people are starting to question the whole Southern Baptist thing. The Mormon/Utah thing really goes back to the time the SBC convention was unwisely held in Salt Lake City and some 2200 SBCers went door-to-door terrorizing (uh, sorry preaching) to Mormons that they weren't really Christians.

So, Huck, people are getting a bit suspicious. "Nice guys" and "friendly next-door-neighbor" types just aren't as popular as they once were. Politics is truly a place where nice guys finish last. They don't get laid, either.



Will Rogers, the good ole' cowboy who "never yet met a man I didn't like." The picture shows that the only hat that fit him was a Stetson.

He was popular enough for people to beg him to run for public office (governor of his native state, Oklahoma). To him, being a humorist was easy: "There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you." He was, however, a stalwart of FDR often saying "I don't belong to any organized party. I'm a Democrat."

"Born Again Barbie" Wants to Settle Down - Not with Ken, but Tony Perkins!!

If Tony Perkins' wife, Lawana, doesn't look like this,

their 21-year-old-marriage might be in trouble!

The astoundingly beautiful lady to the left is Barbara Millicent Roberts, aka Barbie. She was born in March, 1959 (yes, she certainly looks good for her 49 years!). Her mother was Ruth Handler and her father was believed to be the CEO of Mattel, the world's largest and most influential toy manufacturer/public relations company. Her measurements are an unbelievable 36-18-33 (a bit like Scarlett O'Hara's). Her worldwide celebrity has resulted in her likeness being sold two times per second!


Ms Roberts has led a glamorous and peripatetic lifestyle: she has had over 80 careers and has even run for President (then again, hasn't everyone?). Her long-time boyfriend, Ken, was not able to keep up with Barbie's celebrity and the two broke up several years ago. Her wardrobe is not to be believed! Rumor has it, however, that despite all that glitz and glamour this jetset icon now wants desperately to settle down. And since Barbie never settles for the mundane, she has set her sights on the one person who's middle name is "family": Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council.

And what of the erstwhile Ken?

In an interview with the beloved lady, Barbie told the press that Ken has been denounced as a sinister mole for the homosexual agenda. "He used me," she said simply. "I need a family and God. Not in that order, of course, but I want to be Tony Perkins' little wifey! I know God will approve, even if Tony's wife, Lackawana (sic) won't."

Mr. Perkins had no comment. This is not surprising since in his milieu, divorce is one family factor a good Christian does not discuss. Then there's the imprimatur of the Vatican; not the one in Rome, but the one in Colorado Springs: would his holiness, Dobson I, approve? Perkins may also be afraid that marriage to a megastar would prove very difficult: would FRC be able to raise enough in donations to pay for Barbie's spectacular array of outfits? Could he continue to be a chaste and devout Christian husband? Would Born Again Barbie be Christian enough - or, at least, sell to the American Christian market? Or would they both spiral down to become what most of Perkins' constituency really is. Here's actual police footage of an event in the life of a "has-been" Barbie:

Only time will tell!

Versus Versus Versus!

Why, our my little 'ole brains would bust

if we thought of all the possibilities!

Even though the field of candidates has dwindled, we Americans still have plenty of sides to choose from. You think it eventually boils down to two parties? Guess again:

Clinton vs. McCain - Steel Magnolia vs. the War in Iraq

Clinton vs. Romney - Woman vs. Man

Clinton vs. Huckabee - Woman vs. Southern Baptist Preacher

Obama vs. McCain - African-American vs. War in Iraq

Obama vs. Romney - African-American vs. White Wealthy Man

Obama vs. Huckabee - Race vs. God

Then we have:

Liberalism vs. Value Voters

Focus on the Family vs. Same Sex Marriage

Illegal aliens vs. White Supremicists

Globalization vs. Ostrich head-in-the-sandism

Secularism vs. Christianism

Ann Coulter vs. Everyone

etc. etc. etc. into infinity! And until November (FOREVER!)