God Never Apologizes. ... But Don't You Think It's About Time He Did?

Keith Olbermann gave an insightful special commentary concerning the Rotten Rhetoric that has engulfed politics. I think everyone should view it: he raises some good points and he even apologizes to viewers for using the same kind of militaristic, gun-related rhetoric. Furthermore, it should be pointed out that Olbermann included both Left and Right in his speech and transcended the image of crosshaired gun sights by condemning all violent political rhetoric. It seemed quite inclusive. However, it did not include a vital component of today's American society.

It did not include God.

No, I'm not going all batsh*t-crazy, at least not in a theological sense: with a God who has been the instigator of all things good and bad, apologies are not on the table. Explanations aren't even considered. "He works in mysterious ways" has been the ubiquitous reason why bad things happen to good people. It's lame, but God gets away with doing things simply because He's ...God.

And He's done some pretty horrendous things: drowned innocent animals in the Great Flood, commanded genocide (slaying of the Moabites), condoned slavery, toyed sadistically with Jonah on a bet with Satan, and created the Texas Board of Education. But perhaps the worst thing God has ever done to humanity is to create hypocritical and corrupt apostles, prophets and preachers who will never apologize either: as "representative" "anointed"  even "beloved" shepherds of God, they and their chosen feel they are exempt from guilt, hence, without consciences and are to able to do most anything as long as they rationalize it as "God's will." 

The sins that have been committed against humanity and in the name of God are, like Satan's followers, Legion. History looks a lot like the infinite expanse of dead and dying soldiers in Gone With The Wind: religious strife litters humanity's past and "Peace On Earth, Good Will Towards Men" seems like a bad joke. And it will stay that way as long as there are "men of God" campaigning for the sake of righteousness.

BEYOND WESTBORO

The instance of Jared Lee Laughner's horrendous assassination attempt of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has prompted the MSM to analyze just how much politicians and pundits exacerbate violence with their speech and actions. Notice, however, that not one commentator mentioned anyone within the Religious Right communities: Giffords has weighed in as a pro-choice, pro-ENDA and pro-Health Care Reform. There are over 500 churches in the Tucson metropolitan area, with Baptist (approx. 80), Mormon (90+) and Catholic (100+) churches. What are the chances that none of them campaigned vitriolically against Giffords? Have any of those churches apologized?

Hardly. Not a peep out of any of them. Religious demonizers, like God, never apologize.

And how many of those churches supported Giffords opponent Jesse Kelly who, BTW, sponsored a campaign fundraiser* wherein people could shoot an M-16 for sport? Those churches and the rest of the Religious Right, if called on the carpet, will probably refocus the debate by pointing to entities like Westboro Baptist Church (who have announced that they will picket the funerals of those killed in the shooting). They will use stark contrast to deflect criticism or they will simply take an how-DARE-you stance, like when Tony Perkins ludicrously told the nation that the Religious Right had absolutely no culpability in the suicides of gay teens:

There is an abundance of evidence that homosexuals experience higher rates of mental health problems in general, including depression. However, there is no empirical evidence to link this with society's general disapproval of homosexual conduct.

Perhaps the most insipid lack of remorse for extremely violent message content lies in everything done by a group named Repent Amarillo. I've written about it before, but its last publicity-grabbing escapade deserves to be reiterated: the execution of Santa Claus. "Santa" was really a pinata (to placate critics, of course), but the guns and ammo used were real...in front of a group of children ...who will  probably develop psychoses larger than that of Jared Lee Laughner. No one rushed forward to accuse them of emotional child abuse because they were, of course, acting in the "name of the Lord." 

Rampages like Laughner's help develop a serious time of reflection as to their causes. Violent rhetoric, militaristic terms, virulent attack modes can come from pulpits as well as politicians. We live amidst a slew of God's self-appointed emissaries who have never apologized for their organized religion's crimes and never expect to apologize for their Rotten Rhetoric now or in the future. They may indulge themselves in vicious platitudes of the worst kind while thinking themselves totally unaccountable.

After all, righteous arrogance has its privileges. Just ask God.

 

 * Flier blurb: "Get on Target for Victory in November Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly."

Bring Forth The Gays! Bring Forth The Jews! And.. RELEASE THE KAGAN!!

  

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
 Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
 His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
 The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
 About his shadowy sides; above him swell
 Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
 And far away into the sickly light,
 From many a wondrous grot and secret cell

 - from The Kraken, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

OK, I got the idea for the title from Jon Stewart's take on the Right's reaction to the nomination of Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court. Watch it below. He is, as always, spot on. Any fan of fantasy and science-fiction films is familiar with The Kraken, a mythical beast of the sea sometimes physically depicted as a giant squid. The Right takes Kagan's nomination as an  attack, directly hitting its "left" flank in the culture war.

But the Right seems confused in its counterattack: lesbian? no experience? anti-military? Harriet Miers? Intelligence? As Stewart put it: "She's a recordless entity with no paper trail."

The comparisons to Harriet Miers are, of course, ridiculous: Miers committed THE public relations suicide of the decade when she said of George Bush, "He's the most brilliant man I have ever met." So much for judgment. She also received her law degree at Pat Robertson's Regent University, so you could pretty well determine the direction of her  stances, especially concerning gay rights. Anyway, after her fifteen minutes, she was put back in her cage for two years, during which she was constantly  pressured by Johua Bolton to resign. She now works for the Dallas law firm known as Locke Lord Bissell Lamp, Liddell.  

Any comparisons come from desperate Right wingnuts or people who get their news from Fox. 

We Fear What We Don't Know

The Judicial Crisis Network is just coming out with an ad requesting that the Obama administration make every effort to make all of Kagan's records (and thoughts) from the Clinton administration public. They are obviously scared of what they don't know. That's understandable. What's not understandable is taking a "pre-emptive strike" stance by unleashing a video that calls into account her limited experience and her stance against military recruitment on college campuses. The latter is akin to a tempest in a teapot. Her knowledge of the Constitution and American law are never questioned. Neither are her presentations to the Supreme Court as Solicitor General.

The Intelligent Lesbian

The moment I saw a picture of Elena Kagan, I thought "Well, this will be interesting." Afterwards, I was struck by her impressive background and realize that Tony Perkins had a right to be afraid of her: she might become the most intelligent of the justices. Say what? An intelligent President picking an intelligent SCOTUS justice?  Horrors!! OMG! She's a shorter, stouter Rachel Maddow! What will become of us!

So with the looming passage of ENDA, the Christian Right has come forth in battle armed with the question of moral fitness: Elena Kagan is gay and she'll swing the Supreme Court towards acceptance of gay marriage and gay rights in general. It makes no difference that Kagan has already been quoted as saying she does not believe that the Constitution supports gay marriage, but the mere possibility that she might be gay makes her totally unfit in their eyes. And any position that she has taken is skewed toward the far left:

"As the Harvard Law School Dean, Elena Kagan tried to bar the military from recruiting on her law school's campus during the height of the Iraq War based on her opposition to the federal law restricting homosexuals in the military. 

"...Ms. Kagan's incredibly hostile view of the military suggests she is out of touch with mainstream sensibilities and obedience to the rule of law. President Obama promised a nominee committed to the 'rule of law,' but, instead, he appears to have nominated a hard-left activist to the Supreme Court.

Of course, Bryan Fischer of American Family Association is apoplectic:

... [They want] an activist on the bench, a crusader, and knows that a homosexual judge will tilt the playing field on behalf of the legalization and social endorsement of sexually aberrant behavior.

The day a homosexual is elevated to the bench, the end will have come for the principle of sexual normalcy, the rule of law and the supremacy of the Constitution. That's too big a price to pay.

So left, center-left, center, center-right? Like a chess player who can't make up his mind, the Right is all around the board with Kagan. The problem the Right has is that some of their clan support Kagan's nomination: she has been sympathetic to the woes of big business. The Court might find itself in  the position of deciding regulation or deregulation of businesses like British Petroleum, so the fate of the environment can rest in Kagan's decisions.

And then there's Pat Buchanan's take on the nomination: not enough African-Americans on SCOTUS and too many Jews:

If Kagan is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats.

So there we have the Right's precise, well-informed, analysis of Elena Kagan's nomination to SCOTUS: she's a too-intelligent, military-hating, allegedly lesbian Jew who never saw the inside of a courtroom. 

Hey, that's better than Scalia, isn't it?

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Release the Kagan
www.thedailyshow.com

Arizona: The Right's New War Zone - Because The Right Wants War - ANY War!

Civil War. Culture War. Immigration War. Race War. Genocide. Regicide. 

Pick one...or all.

You'd think that George Bush's taste for war would have slated any hawk's thirsty aggression, but it seems that our American species of hawk is never really satisfied. We gave them Iraq and Afghanistan to drink from, but besides an enormous bloodlust, hawkish Right-wingers have a kind of ADD that affects their leaders and journalists: "Wars? What Wars?" When's the last time you saw FOX News carry anything substantial about the Middle East NOT involving Israel or Iran?

Come to think of it, have you ever known a rabid Right-winger who was not a hawk?  Maybe it's in the genes: close-minded aggression seems to ooze from their pores. They were meant to bark orders as well as take them. Maybe it's in their traditions (check out the elite all male Hampden-Sydney College to get a taste of the mawkish-but-hawkish preppy life that has managed to survive).

Arizona Do Or Die

Today's most fertile ground for aggression is, obviously, the southwestern state of Arizona. And the war zone's headlines for today were truly chilling: it's new "papers or else" law is old news. Now it has gone as far as banning ethnic studies and firing teachers who have heavy accents. And the Southern Poverty Law Center has discovered that the lawyer who drafted Arizona's new racial profiling law is himself part of an anti-immigration hate group. The group is, ironically, called FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform), but has nothing to do with fairness: some of its employees are registered members of the Pioneer Fund and various other white supremicist groups. The lawyer, Dan Stein, went head-to-head with Rachel Maddow, so it wasn't really a "fair" battle, and he came out looking very angry and on the "you're just trying to smear us" defensive. Maddow's  determination to get to what FAIR was founded upon is truly is awesome. Watch it below.

Battlecry for Texas: "Nullification First!"

Say what you will about the Right's "war fever, " it's systemic in some states. One year ago, Governor Rick Perry said this:

We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, who knows what may come of that? But Texas is a very unique place, and a pretty independent lot to boot.

But today's Texas-line-of-reasoning from the website, Texas Secede! is more cautious (but nonetheless sinister):

Right now, unlike any other time in US history, a nullification movement has taken hold — and is growing — in most of the US states, including Texas. This means there is a strong, public-centered, and legally-informed opposition to the bloated despotism reigning in Washington, and a growing intent to invoke the Consitution itself to tell both the White House and Congress that their "federal laws" are null and void wherever they cross the line drawn by the Tenth Amendment.

A Rasmussen Reports poll found that 48% of Republicans in Texas favored secession. Polls of the nullification movement should prove to be even more enlightening.

Righteous Assasination

Lately, the rhetorical weapon espoused by the new "social conservatives" is anything but conservative: Republicans are calling President Obama everything from "monster" to "Anti-Christ." Ministers have openly prayed for the death of Obama and Supreme Court Justices as well. Name-calling, however, is probably the most cowardly weapon of choice for today's Right: when violence actually does ensue, they conveniently (and ludicrously) look the other way. The fact remains, however: rhetoric can kill. Today's legal minds have a name for the results of purposely inflamatory speech: righteous assasination.

"I am dedicating my life to the death of Obama and every employee of the federal government," the posting said. It ended with a call to arms: "This is war. Join me. Or don't. I don't care. I'm not laying down anymore."

This message was posted on Craiglist under the heading "Obama Must Die" by one Brian Dean Miller of Dallas, Texas (what is it with Texas?) He later stated that it was "fiction" but the Secret Service has not treated it as such. His mother has stated that Brian suffers from depression.

And on Twitter, several weeks ago, self-styled conservative blogger Solly Forrell openly called for the assasination of Obama, but then backtracked immediately to correct the act. 

Both threats were supposedly based upon the authors' disapproval of Obama's efforts on healthcare reform. Neither of them had read anything about the reform bill except from posts by right-wing activists. 

If You Don't Like 'Em, Deport 'Em, Or ...

By now, everyone knows that the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer wants to see every Muslim in the U.S. deported (including ones who are U.S. citizens), but he has also come out with a statement that Arizona's new immigration law is ...Biblical. That's right. God has sanctified it:

Arizona's governor Jan Brewer explained to Greta Van Susteren this week that she signed this bill into law because, as governor, she has a responsibility to protect the safety and security of Arizonans. You can't get any more biblical than that.

Now, use of the Bible as a weapon in warfare is almost as old as the Bible itself, but like incendiary rhetoric, it's very cowardly. Simply put, it's a don't-blame-me-blame-God defense against critics of aggression. The problem that humanity now faces: the Right's religious battalion has been exporting its aggression to Africa. The "kill-the-gays" bill of Uganda has emboldened Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice to assist Zimbabwe and Kenya in re-drafting their constitutions. In the matter of abortions. As in no legal abortions even if the mother's life is in danger. 

And The Greatest Weapon of All: FEAR

As early as next week, the House Education and Labor Committee will start debating a bill that could do permanent damage to American liberty as we know it. Under this bill, the government will order businesses, including religious ones, to stuff their personal beliefs and hire gays and lesbians--even if the organization considers the lifestyle immoral. .... At the very least, it will force people out of business. At its worst, it will bully into silence every American who disagrees with homosexual behavior.

                                 - from "The War To ENDA All Wars" by Tony Perkins, President,                                            Family Research Council

Tony Perkins may have made his mark upon English literature with such awful-pun-headlining, but he is still considered by the Christian Right to be its knight in shining armor. In fact, his image will probably be immortalized on the side of a mountain (does it matter which one?) depicted as the valiant St. George slaying the dragon (Barack Obama). His daily missives have been full of sturm und drang about everything liberal, everything Obama, everything homosexual. And he knows that abject fear is the best source of donations. His acolytes, however, are even more virulent (and ultimately more violent?): Bill Donohue, Bryan Fischer,  Peter LaBarbera,  Janet Porter, and the ever-hoarse Lou Engle. 

What happens when unabashed Reconstructionists and Right wingnuts who are waging war with the rest of the world get together? They usually stand in front of government buildings and scream at them and the people who are in them (in this case , the backdrop was the Lincoln Memorial - go figure). They then ask God to rain down fire, brimstone, frogs, locusts, pestilence and anything else vial enough to make the American public go ape-sh*t with awe. They look like idiots, but we must always remember that they are very dangerous idiots who love war, need war. 

The clip below is very revealing: they might be "repenting" of sins like electing a Muslim to Congress, but it's clear that they won't repent of the abject hatred for anyone who disagrees with them. BTW - two things marred the event: poor attendance and poor MSM coverage. We'll see who inflates the numbers first.

And so it is: the Right is at war. Their enemies: all liberals, all immigrants, all homosexuals, all Muslims. Their current battle sites: Arizona, Texas, Washington, the entire Middle East, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda. Their rhetoric, their fervor, their money will create more wars.

Sad.

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Hey Kids! It's Time For Tony Perkins' Fear and Confusion Show: ENDA's a DRAG!

Tony Perkins, the endearing don't-I-look-like-a-choirboy? president of Family Research Council is sizzling over ENDA - the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. He thinks that men will come to work draped in hot pink feather boas and secretaries (his term) will be sporting fake mustaches and sideburns. But most of all, he's bent out of shape because of Amanda Simpson's appointment as Senior Technical Advisor to the Commerce Department.

Of course, it makes no difference to people like Perkins that Simpson is almost overqualified for the job: she underwent her sex change over ten years ago while working in Tucson for Raytheon Missile Systems as Deputy Director. BTW: Raytheon is the world's largest producer of guided missiles and the majority of its revenue ($20 billion per annum) is from defense contracts, giving Simpson one hell of a resume (and Perkins one hell of a headache - he can't say she isn't qualified!)

It also doesn't make any difference to Perkins that ENDA has been introduced in every Congress since 1994 (with the exception of 2005-2007 under George W. Bush). Or that the primary goal of ENDA is to curb discrimination in the workplace. Pehaps Tony Perkins thinks he's a prophet of decaying morals: "everyone" will be "potentially" "forced" to hire homosexuals and transgendered people. So the Perkins dog and pony show begins:

From FRC Action Alert:

Stop Obama's Crossdresser Protection Bill

"...the Obama Administration dropped another bombshell in its agenda to radicalize America by appointing its first openly "transgender" person to a high federal post.

The day after Simpson began work, The New York Times reported that the main website advertising jobs with the federal government now says there will be no "discrimination" based on "gender identity"-even though Congress has never passed a law saying that.

This new policy applies only to the federal government. But there is a bill being considered in Congress, the so-called "Employment Non-Discrimination Act" (ENDA), which would require every employer in America to open every position to homosexuals (by making "sexual orientation" a protected category) and "transgenders" (by protecting "gender identity").

The problem with Tony Perkins' harangue is that the current bill under consideration prohibits employers with 15 or more employees from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. And exceptions are made for religious organizations, non-profit membership-only clubs and the military (currently covered under DADT). He frequently engenders fear by confusing his faithful, making them think that drag shows will be performed at every company Christmas party. Perkins also inundates the reader with buzz words in his petition to Congress (to be signed by every Right-thinking American in the country):

Dear Members of Congress and President Obama,

Please do not tarnish the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement by treating a person's chosen sexual behaviors or their gender self-identification as a protected category in the nation's civil rights laws. The choice to engage in homosexual conduct and the choice to adopt a "transgender" identity (sex change or cross-dressing) are not equivalent to the established (and immutable) protected categories of one's race and biological sex, nor are they protected by the Constitution (as is the freedom of religion, also a protected category).

I urge you to oppose the "Employment Non-Discrimination Act," known as "ENDA," and not to add "sexual orientation" or "gender identity" to America's civil rights laws.

And his "Action Alert" states:

All American employers including Christian owned businesses and potentially Christian ministries would be affected.

Don't let Congress and President Obama force American employers to hire homosexuals, transsexuals, and cross-dressers.

Since he brought up the Civil Rights Movement, is it permissible to ask Mr. Perkins which side of the Movement he would have been on if he was time-warped back to the 60s? A southerner with traditional family values? Take a guess.

Perkins is obviously confused on several points: "Christian ministries" are exempt from the bill and transgender does not necessarily mean "cross-dressers." And if he still wants to go there, studies have shown that most "cross-dressers" are heterosexual men.*

Fear and confusion.

That's the Family Research Council way.

*Docter, Richard F., Prince, Virginia (1997). Transvestism: A survey of 1032 cross-dressers. Archives of Sexual Behavior 26(6), 589-605.