Stop Me Before I Have Another Facelift!

We already know that Pat Robertson doesn't have any Juevos. He proved that four years ago after 9/11, when he shared the TV screen with Jerry Falwell - another mental midget - who proclaimed that God was attacking our country, "because of the gays, and the lesbians and the abortionists, and the ACLU..." Robertson sat there nodding and grinning like some leatherette Walmart knockoff of Charlie McCarthy. Later, when he briefly came to his senses, Falwell actually apologized for the remark, yet Robertson spent the time backing and filling and trying to claim that he never said anything.

Now the man is facing into his battery of TV cameras on what they have the audacity to call the "Christian" Broadcasting Network, speaking to his multi-million person audience of true believers and directly calling for the assasination of the duly elected leader of a sovereign nation! Why? He says why! Because he's "sitting on a big pool of oil." Robertson wants someone to assasinate Chavez, not because he has attacked the U.S. Not because he has advocated attacking the U.S. Not because he lives in a country that will likely become "a launching pad for... Muslim extremism," as he puts it. In Venezuela, 92% of the population are baptised Catholics!

He wants him whacked for oil!

I'm sure that if Pat were questioned on the matter he would be incapable of seeing the similarity between this "Fatwa" issued by a Christian (rather than Islamic) fundamentalist wacko (namely himself) and Fatwas issued by various Islamic (rather than Christian) fundamentalist wackos regarding the murder of everyone from Salman Rushdie to George Bush, or any other set of "unworthy" people. Not only is he a hypocrite an idiot and a coward, but it seems to me that the man has gone completely insane! Assasination is not simply a cheaper method of reducing the price of gasoline, it is international aggression, it is murder, it is ANTI-Christian, and, even though we have clearly been known to use it as a method, it is UN-American.

Robertson, Falwell , Dobson and their millions of followers have become, as Cenk Uyger calls them, the American Taliban. They are no more Christian than the Taliban are Muslim. Neither of these groups represents the "better... natures" of their chosen religious models. They are a menace to true spirituality and they are a menace to American society. We can't kill them, and frankly we can't even shut them up. But we don't have to listen to them, we don't have to give them the time of day, and we CAN send them into exile where they belong.

As best I can figure from the evidence in the picture above, Robertson has simply had so many facelifts that his brain has been sucked out the back of his head and the only remaining goal for his life is to see if he can transform his face into a mirror image of that other marvelously cosmeticized fundamentalist wacko, Tammy Faye!



Now the only thing is, I may have been wrong about Pat up above when I said he had no Juevos. Clearly he has more balls than Bush who can't even bring himself to acknowledge his lies, come clean on the real reason for our war in Iraq and meet with a lowly housewife from Vacaville who is mourning the loss of her son in Bush's War for Oil. Ol' Pat just comes right out and says it.

On the other hand, Bush's main occupation seems to be peddling around the ranch with the one guy allowed into his circle who we actually KNOW has a ball!

It's Good to be King

Bush and Lance went riding around the ranch on Sunday.

On the Huff Post, Bob Cesca projects a little on the conversation.

It makes one wonder what Sheryl's thinking. Too bad Cindy Sheehan had to go to LA to be with her mom. Maybe we could have had a shot of Sheryl and Cindy and Joan, while the boys were peddling the ranch.

The big news is that it looks like Dubya was able to remain upright on the bike this time... Talk about Hard Work!

Head coming back together... need coffee

In the light of morning, and a reading of a more reasoned perspective on the same NPR website, I am feeling a little bit better about the fact that the people who have made an idiot like Al Mohler the "president" of a formerly legitimate educational institution do not have control of all religious perspective (or even Christian perspective) in U.S. The piece by Dr. Katharyn Jefferts Schori is a well reasoned and well explained example on what is actually possible to believe as a thinking person with christian proclivities in a contemporary society.

Another of the accompanying articles, this one by Rabbi Brad Hirschfield does a marvelous job of explaining the possibility of holding more than one position simultaneously. Rabbi Hirschfield even addresses the issue of why the debate raises so many hackles on both side (mine for instance). His statement that, "The increasingly nasty debate between believers in Darwinian evolution and advocates for intelligent design theory hinges on the fact that most creationists relate to evolutionists as if they have no soul, and most evolutionists relate to the creationists as if they have no brain," is pretty accurate. He then suggests that a better perspective would be to acknowledge that we all have both.

Well... you're a better man than I am Gunga Din. I'd really like to be that broad minded, but when someone like the good "dr." Mohler abdicates the use of his brain in such a clear manner it is my perspective that, like any muscle consistently ignored, his brain has likely turned to mush.

For another example of the phenomenon all one needs to do is look toward Crawford this week to find a man who may have allowed BOTH his brain and his soul to atrophy. Perhaps we just need to wait for him to fall off his bike... again.

All hope is not quite lost.

Exploding head... Watch for shrapnel

NPR has decided that the process of considering all things means giving people who claim to be things that they are not the attention they might deserve if reasonable people accepted their claims of authenticity.

Weighing in on the "debate" about evolution and "intelligent" design is R. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisvile, KY a school that in days gone by was considered the "liberal" outpost of Southern Baptist life.

NPR has decided to give "dr." Mohler the opportunity to express an equal time type of opinion on the "evangelical baptist" perspective regarding the issue.

There are so many things wrong with this, before we even get to the question of whether the term"evangelical baptist" is redundant or an oxymoron, that I just want to run naked and screaming down St. Charles Avenue. Actually, it's so bleeding hot that I really wouldn't mind running naked (and screaming) down St. Charles Avenue, so I probably shouldn't go blaming that proclivity on poor "dr." Mohler.

In any case... there will be more forthcoming on this matter, as my recent move back to the south has, for some strange reason, pushed me back into the arms of my old southern baptist tradition, but with a new and absolutely unrelenting perspective on what that all means... and doesn't mean.

The Pomo of Crawford

While George Bush avoids Cindy Sheehan and makes pronouncements about creationist education, Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic offers a fabulous analysis of the issues that are really alive in the "Intelligent Design" absurdity.

Check out his article here. If you aren't already registered with The New Republic you'll have to jump through their little hoops, but it's free and it's worth it.

You might also want to have a look at the Jerry Coyne article on the Harrisburg Pennsylvania school case (where's Clarence Darrow when we need him?) that launched this rickety ship.

Since when did religion become scientific theory in the modern world and when ever did accurate science actually do harm to a true and reasoned faith? These realities don't speak to the same part of the human animal. Something I learned a long time ago in seminary (before the extreme fundamentalists gutted anything that could actually be mistaken for education) was that Science and Faith are NOT mutually exclusive, but you better not try to make them explain the same things. They don't let them teach that any more since the reactionaries took control of the SBC, but that doesn't make it any less true.

Opening Salvo

So... I've long thought of doing a political pontification blog, but I've never really bothered to broadcast my opinions anywhere except as a blow hard down at the local pub.

The thing is, I come by my political inclinations honestly... I was raised with the understanding that I am as close a relation to George Washington as it is possible to be (a first cousin seven generations removed). After doing some of my own research, I'm not completely sure that claim is totally accurate, but I'll post more on that later. The main point is that I have been given that label (and the attendant charge) all my life. Hell, I even sang Yankee Doodle Dandy on TV when I was 6 years old. I was doomed to showbiz or poilitics from the start, so as a compromise, for a short period of time that has subsequently scarred me for life, I became a Southern Baptist preacher... a little bit showbiz, a little bit politics, a whole lot of God on my side. One of the best things about that "calling" was the fact that with GOD on my side, who could possibly be against me; not the bullies down the block, not the government, not my mother, not anyone. GOD was my ultimate authority and GOD talked to me directly. That fact that this GOD might actually be talking to other people, and that to those other people he might be saying something different than what he was saying to me, was sommething that I never even considered, let alone seriously entertained.

At this point in my life I don't believe I have any special knowledge of God's dealings with humanity, and whatever it is She might be saying, I am fully prepared to accept that the message for me is possibly, even probably different than the message for somebody else. This is one of the things (besides not being president) that makes me different from George W. Bush. When I hear from God these days, I usually notice that God has a tendency to be speaking to me through the mouths of other people. Sometimes that person is a homeless guy on Market Street, sometimes he's the Dean of a grand cathedral. Sometimes its in the words of a song. Sometimes, God speaks to me through the lips (or the email fingertip tappings) of my daughter and sometimes I hear the "still small voice" like Elijah; not in the wind, not in the earthquake, but in the quiet, when I sit down and shut up.

So... in this blog, despite it's clearly political intention, I will endeavor not to speak for God, or anyone else. I'll just try and speak for me.


Dubya says that God told him to strike Iraq.

Sometimes God speaks from strange locations... and usually to "lesser vessels" and maybe the president should be listening to one of them.