It’s on!

4 11 2008

AFP:

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Americans opened the voting in their historic election on Tuesday, with front-running Democrat Barack Obama seeking to become the first black president and his Republican rival John McCain hoping for a poll-defying comeback.

After an epic campaign , voters could also spark a political realignment in Washington, with Democrats targeting big gains in the Senate and House of Representatives after eight turbulent years under President George W. Bush.

Polls opened in the northeastern state of Vermont at 5:00 am (1000 GMT), an electoral official at a polling station in the town of Bennington told AFP by telephone.

History’s longest, most costly White House campaign ended with Obama the hot favorite, enjoying wide leads in national polls and the edge in a string of battleground states which could swing the election either way.

[. . .] Read the rest of this entry »





Quote of the week: commenter “James”

21 10 2008

The GAY RIGHTS movement, is like the womens right and african american rights movement — to serve the purpose of EDUCATING the IGNORANT and INTOLERANT. Those women and men were this countries true REFORMERS!! REAL MAVERICKS!!





“Just look at the bloodlines”

12 10 2008

Times have changed. Time was when an Ann Coulter could spout off a line like “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity,” or muse dreamily about what might have been if Timothy McVeigh had bombed the New York Times, and it would barely have raised more than a guffaw among the right-wing chattering classes. It certainly wouldn’t have harmed Bush’s re-election prospects.

In 2008, the ritual brainfarting that ensues each time a drooling authoritarian follower decides to open its mouth is embarrassing the Republican presidential team. Said team, of course, executed the initial shooting of itself in the foot with its desperate attempts to link Obama to terrorism. As this footage of a McCain rally in Ohio demonstrates (and where you’ll hear the “bloodlines” soundbite), where authoritarian leaders lead, authoritarian followers follow, with consequences by turns outrageous, racist and stupid:

There’s even more in this NBC report, in which political analyst Richard Wolffe advises the Republican team to take a leaf out of the Australian conservatives’ playbook and engage in dogwhistle politics rather than foghorn politics which, he suggests, will turn off the swing voters and independents.

As you can see, much has changed since 2004. The fallout from the Obama=terrorist smear campaign now has McCain and Palin at loggerheads.

HT to OK WASSUP and Evolutionary Middleman.





Conservatives on Palin

4 09 2008

Some conservative commenters don’t seem all that comfortable with McCain’s eleventh-hour VP pick:





I see your Hagee and raise you a Kalnins

3 09 2008

Months after John McCain dumped the anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic Rapture-welcoming televangelist John Hagee from his campaign, it appears that his would-be Vice-President Sarah Palin has a Hagee-sized albatross of her own to hang around the neck of the Republican Presidential hopeful. Ed Kalnins, senior pastor of the Wasilia Assembly of God, of which Palin was once a member (and which she addressed as recently as June), has preached that

critics of President Bush will be banished to hell; questioned whether people who voted for Sen. John Kerry in 2004 would be accepted to heaven; charged that the 9/11 terrorist attacks and war in Iraq were part of a war “contending for your faith;” and said that Jesus “operated from that position of war mode.”

[. . .]

“I hate criticisms towards the President,” he said, “because it’s like criticisms towards the pastor — it’s almost like, it’s not going to get you anywhere, you know, except for hell. That’s what it’ll get you.”

Kalnins, who claims to have received direct revelation from God, believes hundreds of thousands will flock to Alaska in “the end times”, and he has “asserted that Palin’s election as governor was the result of a “prophetic call” by another pastor at the church who prayed for her victory.” Thanks to John Evo for the heads-up. Read the rest of this entry »





John McCain: theocrat

9 06 2008

Republican presidential candidate John McCain shows his true colours on the separation of church and state:

[McCAIN:]I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation.

I think the number one issue that is in the selection, that which people should make a selection of the President of the United States is, “Will this person carry on in the Judeo-Christian principled tradition that has made this nation the greatest experiment in the history of mankind”?

I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles that, I, that, that’s a decision that the American people would make, but personally, that’s, that’s just, I prefer someone who I know with a solid grounding in my faith.

I just feel that, that, my faith is probably a better spiritual guidance, a better spiritual guidance. I just would, I just feel that that’s an important part of our qualifications to lead.

We welcome the poor, the tired, the huddled masses, and, but they, when they come here, they shouldn’t, they know that they are in a nation founded on Christian principles.

Our Founding Fathers were concerned about church being part of the state such as had been in England and the imposition of a certain type of Christianity imposed on people. So, they didn’t mean, in my view, separation of church and state, that there is no place for God or a Superior Being, a Creator. They also continued to emphasize the Christian principle, “In God We Trust”, “created equal.” Every statement that they made had to do with the belief in a Divine Creator.

We are a nation which is uniquely designated in many respects. But I think it was Man implementing the teachings of Christ. [Emphasis added. Transcript from a commenter at Atheist Media Blog]

So not only does he believe (or, given the likelihood that he’s pandering to fundamentalists, purporting to believe) that the US Constitution founded America as a “Christian Nation,” he also believes that there should be a religious test for public office. Via Pharyngula.





Will the real Antichrist please stand up?

4 06 2008

It is high time the lunatic fringe of Christianity made up its mind about who the Anti-Christ is supposed to be.

On the one hand, a commenter by the name of “Mister Truthful” this morning made a very sound case for Barack Obama being the Anti-Christ:

IF WE ADD UP THE LETTERS IN HISFIRST, MIDDLE & LAST NAME, WE

WILL GET 666 IF WE USE SOME UNDERSTANDING!

**SO HERE IS THE FORMULA:

HIS FIRST NAME IS BARACK.

HIS MIDDLE NAME IS HUSSEIN.

HIS LAST NAME IS OBAMA.

BARACK HAS—————6 LETTERS

HUSSEIN HAS—————7 LETTERS

OBAMA HAS—————-5 LETTERS

NOW 6 PLUS 7 PLUS 5 EQUALS 18.

AND IF WE BREAK DOWN THE NUMBER 18.

WE WILL GET 6 PLUS 6 PLUS 6.
AND 666 IS THE MARK OF THE BEAST!

And he wrote that in ALLCAPS, so it must be true.

(UPDATE: BTW, nice work, Satan!)

On the other hand, former McCain endorser Pastor John Hagee has advanced the thesis that the Anti-Christ will be a Jewish gay homosexual: Read the rest of this entry »





Things they’d have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City XV

25 05 2008

The week in fundie . . .

Image via Haiku Circus

  1. Presidential candidate John McCain has dumped Christian Zionist Pastor John Hagee from his campaign, after it came to the light that the latter had claimed in a sermon that God sent Hitler to persuade the Jews to move to Israel. (via Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion)
  2. My old buddy Malott has made it onto Fundies Say The Darndest Things with a post claiming that God gave Senator Ted Kennedy cancer because of his support for abortion, TEH GAY AGENDA and the separation of church and state. Good work!
  3. Of course, there’s much worse in store for humanity if TEH EEEEEEEEEEVIL GAY AGENDA is carried through to its fruition. If that erstwhile paper of record WorldNetDaily is to be believed (and is there any reason why it shouldn’t?), God sent the Flood because people in Noah’s time practiced same-sex marriage. And considering that “4,000 out of 5,000 prophecies have already occurred exactly as the Bible predicted they would, you might want to pay attention to the rest.” For God so loves the world that he’s prepared to drown the lot of us, men, women and children, if we dare give those filthy sodomites equality before the law. It’s a good thing the Australian Government is heeding the warning, huh? (Via Fundies Say The Darndest Things)
  4. Regarding the whole gay marriage –> end of the world thing, we’re also fortunate enough to have the President of Gambia on the case. He’s promising to cut off the head of any homosexual found in his country. (Via Fundies Say the Darndest Things)
  5. The Jamaican Prime Minister is a bleeding-heart liberal by comparison. He simply doesn’t want gay people to play a role in any Cabinet in his country. (Jamaica Observer)
  6. Two stories on the Abrahamic internecine warfare front. The first concerns Orthodox Jewish youths in Israel burning hundreds of New Testaments that had been distributed by missionaries. (AP)
  7. The second concerns retired Australian Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, who in the nineties took a leading role in encouraging the Catholic Church to face up to its responsibilities regarding sexual abuse. He’s currently on a speaking tour in the United States in support of his recent book, Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church, and has been denied permission by the Cardinal Archbishop of Los Angeles, Roger Mahony, from speaking on church property in his territory. Cardinal Mahony has previously been caught telling lies about his awareness of sexual abuse within the Church. (Via The Religion Report)