Too Radical For PAT FREAKIN' ROBERTSON!

First, a blast from the past:

• "Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians."


• "You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist. I can love the people who hold false opinions but I don't have to be nice to them."


• "Many of those people involved with Adolph Hitler were Satanists, many of them were homosexuals -- the two things seem to go together."


• "There is no such thing as separation of church and state in the Constitution. It is a lie of the Left and we are not going to take it anymore."

This cornucopia of wingnuttery is brought to you courtesy of Pat Robertson, the televangelist's televangelist, the grand high poobah of the Religious Right, the Dark Lord of American Radical Fundamentalism himself. There are few names more respected by the lockstep brigade or feared by the reality-based community. And here's what he has to say about Bush's detachment from reality:

Robertson, in an interview with CNN that aired Tuesday night, said God had told him the war would be messy and a disaster. When he met with Bush in Nashville, Tenn., before the war Bush did not listen to his advice, Robertson said, and believed Saddam Hussein was an evil tyrant who needed to be removed.

"He was just sitting there, like, 'I'm on top of the world,' and I warned him about this war," Robertson said.

"I had deep misgivings about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, 'Mr. President, you better prepare the American people for casualties.' 'Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties.' 'Well,' I said, 'it's the way it's going to be.' And so, it was messy. The Lord told me it was going to be, A, a disaster and, B, messy."

The White House is calling Pat Robertson a liar. Let me repeat that for emphasis: The White House is calling the most famous and prominent fundamentalist televangelist in the world a liar:

• White House and campaign advisers denied Bush made the comment, with adviser Karen Hughes saying, "I don't believe that happened. He must have misunderstood or misheard it."


• "Obviously, we already had casualties in Afghanistan at the time. If you look at that, that (the comment) was not consistent with what was going on," [Hughes] said.


• White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, "Of course, the president never made such a comment."

All from the article quoted above.

Now, it would neither shock nor dismay me that one of these vile, despicable leaders is a liar. Still, it is, IMNSHO, deeply telling that a) Pat Robertson would feel a need to create potential distance between himself and Bush's Folly, and b) the White House is so scared and desperate regarding any blowback on said Folly that they're willing to risk alienating Robertson's legions of fundie sheeple by directly contradicting him.

Then again, things are already looking touchy between the political and religious lovebirds.

Influential American evangelist Pat Robertson said Monday that Evangelical Christians feel so deeply about Jerusalem, that if President George W. Bush were to "touch" Jerusalem, Evangelicals would abandon their traditional Republican leanings and form a third party.

Maybe there's some payback going on here. Maybe a rat's hearing "Nearer My God To Thee." Maybe someone's eager to try out his political muscle on his own. Regardless of the reasons, Robertson looks willing to ditch God's Own Party, or at least God's Bush...because this bunch is too whacked even for him. Bush, meanwhile, is poised to make his biggest mistake of the election season: alienating his base.

Feel the love.

(/) Roland X
Kerry/Edwards 2004: Vote While You Still Can

Why You Should Vote Kerry

The latest on DemocracyMeansYou.com from Roland X:

Why You Should Vote Kerry
(Hint: He's more than just Not Bush)
(First of a three-part final push into Election Day)

It is heartening for me to see progressives -- former Nader supporters in particular -- line up behind John Kerry. No matter how much they might like Nader, Cobb, or other great leaders on our side, they see the danger of a Bush administration and want to help take our country back. And certainly, the complaining has subsided somewhat after the way Kerry demolished Dubya in the first debate.

Read the rest...

The Purity Brigade

Thus Endeth Ralph Nader:

His candidacy, he argues, should be measured by the purity of his ideas and ideals, not his chances of winning.

Purity.

Pat Robertson and Ayatollah Khamenei believe in religious "purity." The Chinese government believes in ideological "purity." The KKK believes in racial "purity."

Holy Mother, haven't we had enough of purity for one species' lifespan?

(/) Roland X
Member, Non-Idiots for Kerry

The John-John Win-Win

A quick look at the debates.

There's not much to say about the Kerry vs. Bush showdown. It was the Hero vs. the Chimp, and it showed. Bush got in a couple of shots, sure, and Kerry missed a couple of chances to refute a gross distortion. Overall, however, Big John obliterated the Naked Emperor.

Captain Sunshine vs. Dick Luthor was somewhat more interesting. I thought Edwards won on style but Cheney on, um, "substance" isn't the right word when so much of his defense was outright lying, but I had to admit that he did it well, and with so many lies to refute, Edwards had to pass on a lot of them. I figured Cheney would look okay.

Poll after poll has Edwards winning big time, however -- not all of them, certainly, and many of them are non-scientific blog polls -- but damn, did I see a different debate? Even not-so-crazy Andy thought Darth Cheney stank up the joint, and he punted on the Hate Amendment (the one thing I'll give Cheney props for; even the comic-book Lex loves his daughter).

On almost everything else, of course, Dick lied through his Lex Luthor sneer. But he also messed up big time on something important: fact checking.

He told viewers to check out factcheck.com for the straight dope on the bad things that mean ol' Edwards was saying about him and his old company Halliburton. Problem is, he probably meant factcheck.ORG, a site dedicated exactly to what you'd think from its name.

The people who own factcheck.com, as it happens, are not fans of the
Bush/Luthor ticket. So they redirected the link to...wait for
it...georgesoros.com.

Meanwhile, factcheck.org posted a response saying that Cheney was full of it.

At the same time, Captain Sunshine was just beaming. He was the nicest pit bull you'll ever meet. I thought he let Cheney get away with too many falsehoods at the time, but with style meaning so much he just rode his charm to victory. I now think it was a deliberate strategy to let the post-debate debate handle the lies, a strategy that seems to have worked magnificently.

So did Cheney learn not to mess with the Internet? Probably not. This is a
man who continues to push a Saddam/al-Qaida connection, mind you (while
hilariously arguing that he never made an Iraq-9/11 connection). Still, it's
nice to see someone get what they ask for. Especially when it's exactly what
they deserve.

(/) Roland X
Personally, I prefer to go straight to Daily Kos. But that's just me. *G*

Why We Must Win

I turned 35 today.

Now, my birthday has nothing to do with why we have to win. It's going to take me a bit to get there, so please bear with me.

I went to work this morning fully expecting my co-workers to spring something on me, but I was totally unprepared for the outpouring I received. Several nice presents, a delicious double-chocolate birthday cake, a wonderful lunch, and decorations all around my cubicle. From the moment I arrived, my team -- my friends -- went to considerable efforts to make sure I enjoyed my day, especially with several painful changes taking place.

Unfortunately, none of us, except for our supervisor, knew just how painful one of those changes would turn out to be.

A couple of hours into the morning, we were called in to a meeting, all of us but one. We learned there that she was being laid off due to a "lack of work," as part of a mini "right-sizing" going on. No one's fault. Just business. The people upstairs felt it "had to be done."

The last time someone was laid off from our department, it was almost a blessing. She really wanted to leave. This time, though...this time, the victim was a sweet, hard-working woman who really struggled to get and keep this job. I like to think I helped her get it, but ultimately I don't know how much influence I had.

One of the others who was fired is a newlywed. Wonderful in a completely different way from my immediate co-worker, sassier but always had a smile. She wished me a happy birthday while she was literally walking out the door. Damn near broke my heart.

In spite of this very depressing period, everyone who came by was supportive and polite, and we all used the celebration to try and lift our spirits. While the day was good for me personally, melancholy and happiness switched places all day.

So, what does this have to do with November 2, 2004? Simple: our votes matter. Our choices matter. Elections matter, both in abstract terms like "chilling effects" and in the so-called real world of life in the trenches of the daily grind.

I'm not going to say that this couldn't have happened in a Democratic administration. All economies ebb and flow, and this was just a particularly odd current. Beautiful waves on the surface with a nasty undertow. Still, it was far more likely under Bush. He promotes "personal responsibility" while cutting taxes like a madman and throwing billions into corporate welfare. Exactly what "personal responsibility" does one of the hardest working women I've ever known have when she's downsized -- f*ck it, let's be honest and call it being fired -- because the company wants to run as lean and mean as possible?

Sure, if we were in serious financial trouble, I can understand the need as a last resort, but I haven't seen any indications of trouble in a while. And if our government were operating by the ideals of the Democratic party, I wouldn't be worried about her being able to pay her bills. But in Bush's world, CEOs and stockholders get a bigger bonus and people who make their livings doing the grunt work get axed. Then those same bigwigs get a tax break while the poor have less and less to scrape by with. That's the way of the modern robber barons running our country.

This is not to say that all Republicans are like that. One of the co-workers who did the most for me today is a deeply religious person who will undoubtedly be voting Republican this year for all the reasons you'd expect (though maybe not for Bush; she's made the occasional noise indicating that she sees what an incompetent fool he is). While I mourn what happened to others, I take comfort in what was given to me today, not because of the physical gifts I received but in the much more ephemeral and precious gift of friendship. There was an empathy among us today that was powerless against the grey, clanking machine of business but not in the quiet hours we were given.

Nevertheless, there is a point here. The point is, one party wants to make sure these people won't die financial deaths of a thousand cuts because of one hardship, and the other wants to give massive tax cuts to billionaires. One party will use intelligence and discretion in waging war, and the other will use invasion and death as a political tool. One party wants to protect the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat, while the other wants to protect businesses from inconvenient regulations. One party wants to give our children a future, and one party wants to mortgage it. And one party works (imperfectly but consistently) to guarantee our Constitutional rights, while the other wants to use it to light the fire that burns our democracy to the ground.

In short, one party wants to help and lift up everyone, and one party wants to turn America into a theocratic plutocracy. Empathy and balance, however flawed, are pitted against power-hungry radical greed.

Now, I'm sure that some people will protest that there are more than two political parties in this country. That is true but irrelevant at this moment in history. Only the Big Two wield any real power in this country; members of the others are either busy trying to build the strength to play in the big leagues, or busy tearing their alliances apart in idiotic purity tests that would have given a Communist the willies. Anyone who can look at the enormous, substantive differences between the Democrats' positions and the Republicans' and say there is no difference between the two is simply beyond the reach of logic and sense. It is certainly excusable to disagree on whether or not that gap is wide enough to suit we progressives, but it is inexcusable to do Rove's work in spreading the obscene lie -- yes, lie -- that there is none.

We are facing a stark choice this year. We can choose to elect the current President for the first time, allowing him to do incalculable damage to the Republic. We can choose to elect a good man, a hero twice over in our worst war -- once as a soldier and once as an activist, fighting for his country both times -- who will be at least a good president, and maybe a great one.

Or we can choose to waste our opportunity by voting for ideological purity, or worse, not voting out of personal ideological purity.

Our choices matter, our votes matter, in the lives of real people struggling to survive, in the battles real people wage to preserve liberty and justice, in the quiet hours that define the pursuit of happiness. It is easy to turn one's nose up at a choice between the "lesser of two evils." It is much harder to admit that maybe, just maybe, we use the word "evil" too lightly, that personal purity is less important than doing what's right, that one choice isn't evil at all, merely distasteful to some.

I used to be a Green. I wanted to believe that we could make a difference, that we could break in without selling out. Well, maybe I'll rejoin the Greens again, but not today. Today, my color is blue. Blue for sadness, blue for working people, blue for my party. Blue for the "vigilance, perseverance, and justice" it represents in our flag. Blue for the only color that can return us to liberty and justice for all.

I've made my choice. Will you?

(/) Roland X
"The penalty good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by men worse than themselves." --Plato