Quote of the Day

"I've repeatedly said I don't question the president's faith. I've repeatedly said that I believe the president's Christian -- he says he's Christian. But I am talking about his worldview, the way he addresses problems in this country, and they're different than most people view it in America."

-- Rick Santorum on CBS's Face the Nation this morning

That follows this little gem spouted off to, of course, a Tea Party rally in Ohio yesterday:

"It's not about you. It's not about your quality of life. It's not about your jobs. It's about some phony ideal, some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology."

Now take a look at the clock on your computer screen, or on your phone, or grab a calendar and remind yourself what the date is. What the year is. Force yourself to confront the fact that in the year 2012 a supposedly rational human being -- a man running for the highest office in the United States and not a fucking mental patient strapped to a bed in a padded room -- is taking his directives from a 2,000-year-old magic book and criticizing the man currently holding the highest office in the United States for supposedly not doing the same.

Sure, there are other countries where this much deference is given to superstitious nonsense by government and governmental leaders. You know what we generally call those countries? The Third World. Or the Middle East. Ironically, the areas Santorum and the rest of the right try to subtly and not-so-subtly paint Barack Obama as being from and beholden to.

Just four months ago I mentioned how this was coming -- yet again.

"Faith No More" (Originally Published 10.11.11)

I'll try to make this quick, since as I said I'm kind of pressed for time right now.

Chances are by now you're aware of the fallout from last week's Values Voters Summit, the annual event in which the hard-right Evangelical nutjob segment of the electorate gathers to throw King James Bibles at the feet of Republican leaders to see who will be the last one standing after beating his or her competition to death with one. This year, everybody seemed to be gunning for one guy: Mitt Romney. Poor Mitt got it hard from both ends, so to speak, as his place on the speaking roster happened -- through what I'm sure was complete coincidence -- to fall between Dallas megachurch demagogue Pastor Robert Jeffress and psychopathic talk radio host Bryan Fischer, both of whom have railed against Romney's Mormon faith as an insult to the one, true God.

Jeffress, who astonishingly is the cuddlier of the two, merely referred to Mormonism as a cult while lavishing praise on Rick Perry for supposedly being a trustworthy follower of Jesus Christ; Fischer took it three or four giant steps further, saying not only that a proven Christian and a proven Christian alone should be our next president, but that Sharia law is coming to take over our courts, homosexuals are a threat to the public health and the reason we haven't seen a successful attack on the contiguous 48 since 9/11 is that crowds sing "God Bless America" during the seventh inning stretch at major league baseball games. And no, I'm not making that last one up.

Romney, to his credit, tried to take the high road in his reaction to all the hyper-pious pummeling. Of course at something like the Values Voters Summit, the high road doesn't need to be very high; the Lincoln Tunnel towers over the discourse at this thing.

So is Mormonism a cult? Was it, for the most part, the brainchild of con-men and has it been perpetuated by the power-hungry and adhered to by the weak and desperate? Is it a lunatic belief system that should have no place influencing American politics? Yes on all counts. But here's the thing: That makes it no different than any other faith-based religion.

Fischer and Jeffress have always been despicably hateful fuckers whose opinions needed to be pushed so far to the fringes that they practically vanish into the ether. But at this point more than any other in our recent history, this country does not have the luxury to concern itself with with ridiculous contrivances like which ancient superstition a candidate aligns him or herself with -- whether he or she passes some religious purity test by properly genuflecting before the right god.

Over the next few months, as the campaign ramps up, you're going to start hearing a lot more proclamations of faith from those running for the highest office in the world. They'll talk about how their belief in Jesus or whatever-the-hell guides them, and what's more, they'll do it largely as a theatrical act of indulgence, as a means of cynically pandering to those they feel they need to pander to in order to get elected. Their command performance may not always be at the whim of blatant sociopaths like Jeffress and Fischer, but it will certainly be as a show of respect to the supposedly benign faith of which these men have become extremist purveyors and arbiters. And that faith, while something I disagree with wholeheartedly as a rational human being, should at the very least be a personal choice and a personal choice only -- it should be something that at all times is excluded from American politics.

At this fragile point in our nation's history, the fact that our presidential candidates will feel that they have the latitude, even for a moment, to gush metaphysical politics-as-usual platitudes is simply terrifying. Discussing something as abstract and ineffectual as faith at this moment is akin to extolling one's own favorite lottery numbers. Neither offers a concrete method of action. Faith will never defend this country's people from the ongoing threats to their livelihood. God won't save us from the mess we're currently in.

We need something more than wishful thinking, and we don't have the time to talk about anything less.

Adding: Matt Osborne digs up and expounds on a Santorum speech from four years ago in which God's Favorite Candidate® enlightens us to the real threat facing the United States of America during this tumultuous period in our history. You guessed it: Satan. Again, please keep in mind that someone who believes that a fallen angel, a creature now residing in hell and responsible for all the bad in the universe, is at war with a heavenly creator and is now seeking to control the destiny of our country -- this guy is considered completely sane. Not only sane, he's the current frontrunner for the Republican nomination for President of the United States. People who believe nonsense like this are usually put on Thorazine drips.

Bornography

I don't have a lot of time today -- although you may have noticed that I woke up extraordinarily early this morning, by accident really -- but there's so much happening with the GOP's ongoing lemming-like race toward the edge of Contraception Cliff, that I wanted to maybe touch on a couple of points quickly if I could.

1. Greg Sargent over at the Washington Post has an interesting piece up right now laying out the Republican case for why a fight over birth control is one worth having and isn't, in fact, a political and cultural third rail that's going to electrocute them, en masse, during an election year. According to GOP strategist Whit Aryes, the issue isn't about contraception but -- wait for it -- personal freedom. He says the key is to frame the fight, at least optics-wise, as being less about birth control for women and more about the government attempting to trample on religious liberties. For those who've been paying attention, Darrell Issa has made this same basic assertion when it comes to the supposed goal of his little "Very Religious Men" dog and pony show that happened on the Hill yesterday.

The problem with this tack, of course, is that it still lays out almost flawlessly both Republican hypocrisy and the reality of the conservative mindset, at least insofar as where the American right's priorities lie when it comes to which freedoms should be protected and which can be safely sacrificed. The translation of the Aryes/Issa model goes something like this, and there's really no other way around it: Safeguarding the right of people to adhere to the tenets of an ancient superstition and not to offend their magical sky spirit trumps the right of real-world women to control of their own bodies and to easy access to something that grants them safe and healthy reproductive freedom. While the Republicans are trying to cast it as a threat to religion by governmental intrusion, it can just as easily be viewed the other way around. And while both religion and, ostensibly, personal freedom is protected by the Constitution, sorry but we've reached a point in the history of this planet where the needs of the sky spirit should never be allowed to supersede the needs or even wants of people who can, you know, be proven to actually exist.

2. Once again on the ways that this fight tips the GOP's hand when it comes to how staggeringly out-of-touch its thinking is, Matt Osborne put together a pretty good little post on what he calls the "Grandiose Old Patriarchy." The salient quote:

"(Right-wing rhetoric) always poses a zero-sum proposition: if women control their means of reproduction, men are supposedly 'diminished' from their hallowed throne at the family godhead. A perceived loss of privilege always drives resentment politics. In this case, men’s privileges under the antiquated values of the 19th Century are supposedly at risk — which is hilarious, because those values are largely extinct in our culture, even among self-described conservatives. The 'war against religion,' as Darrell Issa defines it anyway, was already fought and lost decades ago. Second point: this is another lost cause being resurrected."

Meanwhile, Irin Carmon over at Salon dissects what Rick Santorum bankroller, Bayer aspirin advocate and crazy old white guy Foster Friess's recent comments say -- loudly and unequivocally -- about the Republican worldview (read: its arrogant patriarchy):

"It’s worth looking at what he said right before (the Bayer comment): 'I get such a chuckle when these things come out. Here we have millions of our fellow Americans unemployed, we have jihadist camps being set up in Latin America, which Rick has been warning about, and people seem to be so preoccupied with sex that I think it says something about our culture. We maybe need a massive therapy session so we can concentrate on what the real issues are.' This is deeply ironic, and not just because Friess has chosen to back a candidate whose singular obsession with state regulation of sexual behavior has helped bring the more extreme stances of the anti-choice movement to the forefront. It bears repeating that Santorum said as recently as October, 'Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that’s OK, contraception is OK. It’s not OK. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.'"

And how are things "supposed to be?" Exactly the way Jesus the Magic Savior dictates. Never forget that.

3. If you've managed to get through most of the blustery right-wing rhetoric on birth control and what's best for women -- and remember, we're not talking about a minority group here, we're talking about half the population -- without getting sick all over the living room floor, there's this bit of conservative pseudo-intellectual masturbation: a "think piece" in the Daily Caller that attempts to get to the bottom of that whole woman problem by asking the troll-baiting question "What Are Women For?" It's ponderous and condescending pretend existentialist horseshit from beginning to end. Feel free to give it a look -- it's so Onion-like that it's not even worth an excerpt.

4. Finally, a standing-o for Carolyn Maloney and Eleanor Holmes Norton for asking the pertinent question about Darrell Issa's -- as Cesca called it -- "He Man Woman-Haters Club" hearing, then basically telling Issa where he can shove the whole thing. Maloney asked, "What I want to know is, where are the women?" of the all-male, all religious leader/scholar panel, not long before she and Norton got up and walked out.



Suck it, Issa. You smug prick.

Trust Issues

A couple of weeks back, I wrote a piece that ran here and at the Huffington Post that decried the inevitable pandering each and every presidential candidate was going to willingly do to America's craven supplicants to Christ as election season really ramped up -- the ridiculous religious purity test they'd all eventually have to take and pass to get elected. Well, at the very least most of those people wouldn't already be in positions of real power -- simply gunning for them. They wouldn't already have the monumental responsibilities of being part of our nation's government the way, say, the current members of the House of Representatives do.

And yet, with 14 million people out of work, millions more underemployed, people taking to the streets in protest, and the United States still at war in a foreign country, what immediately pressing issue did the House debate and vote on yesterday?

Whether or not "In God We Trust" should be "reaffirmed" as our national motto.

The measure, it almost goes without saying, was floated by a southern Republican, the only kind of idiot who would really be deluded enough to firmly hold that political policy and the very good of the country flows top-down from heaven. Rep. Randy Forbes, in speaking on the floor of the House, said this:

"Unfortunately, there are a number of public officials who forget what the national motto is, whether intentionally or unintentionally. There are those who become confused as to whether or not it can still be placed on our buildings, whether it can be placed in our school classrooms."

Once the vote came, the resolution passed 396-9. Of course putting a measure like this before a U.S. lawmaker is like putting an obvious punji spike pit three steps in front of him or her -- you may as well ask Congress to vote on banning the extermination of all puppies and kittens.

Still, this thing got introduced in the first place -- so there you have it. That's what's important to our lawmakers. Not you, not me, not the real-world problems each of us is facing or the jobs millions of us don't have -- but whether or not we're paying enough tribute to God.

You know, speaking of numbers, I've got one for you: 9. That's the percentage of Americans who think Congress is doing a good job. Just 9%. A 9% approval rating. And this kind of horseshit is what they think they have the luxury to debate on company time.

If there's any justice in the universe, not even God will be able to save these assholes come election day.

Gods and Monsters

That New York Times article dissecting the Tea Party -- the one I published a quote from earlier today -- is revealing on so many levels that it's worth referencing more than once. While the first excerpt I posted highlighted a fact that shouldn't surprise anyone -- namely that, while loud, the Tea Party isn't very big and it's certainly not very popular -- another finding within the story is even less surprising. It answers the question, "Just what is the Tea Party made of?"

Remember that the people who wrote the article have been studying the rise of the movement that would ultimately become the Tea Party since 2006.

"So what do Tea Partiers have in common? They are overwhelmingly white, but even compared to other white Republicans, they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do.

More important, they were disproportionately social conservatives in 2006 — opposing abortion, for example — and still are today. Next to being a Republican, the strongest predictor of being a Tea Party supporter today was a desire, back in 2006, to see religion play a prominent role in politics. And Tea Partiers continue to hold these views: they seek 'deeply religious' elected officials, approve of religious leaders’ engaging in politics and want religion brought into political debates. The Tea Party’s generals may say their overriding concern is a smaller government, but not their rank and file, who are more concerned about putting God in government."

What does this mean? Simple: the Tea Party is basically nothing but the hard-right, conservative Christian wing of the GOP as it has existed for years. Again, no surprise there at all. This is why for all the shouting about how smaller government and controlled spending are at the top of the list of their demands, the tea baggers as a group have been engaging in horseshit misdirection pretty much since the beginning. When George W. Bush was throwing taxpayer dollars around like he was President Diddy, the then non-existent Tea Party didn't give a damn -- that's because Bush was a white, conservative Texan who may as well have been wearing a giant diamond-encrusted Jesus piece around his neck, his religious affiliation was so obvious. He was forgiven his transgressions -- hell, they weren't even considered transgressions -- simply because of who he was and how comfortable he made the usual suspects among conservative America. It's only after the guy in the White House morphed, against their divinely inspired will, into a black, multi-cultural, progressive "elitist" who represented the kicking down of the castle gate they'd always taken for granted would be in place to protect their dominion that they collectively decided to raise holy hell.

Incidentally, in a somewhat related item, I continue to get amusingly irate e-mails from people who remain less than pleased with the crack I made about Sakina Mengle's role in the Tea Party movement; for those who don't remember, Miss Mengle is the black woman featured on the "Diverse Tea" website and someone who contacted me and called me out for my admittedly juvenile joke at her expense.

Miss Mengle and I had a very nice conversation, if you recall. Her Tea Partying supporters aren't quite as magnanimous.

Behold, Pierre:

"You are a disgusting turd! The Tea party is made up of all sorts of people who are concerned for America's future. And I am quite confident each of them is more intelligent than you and more informed, and less filled with racial prejudice. It is an inclusive group which is positively focused and doesn't make disparaging remarks about someone of color who supports, and is entitled to support, another point of view. Learn about American democracy and get a life!"

Yes, Pierre. The Tea Party doesn't make disparaging comments about someone of color who supports other points of view besides its own. Unless, of course, that person happens to be the President of the United States.

Big fan of anything, though, that calls somebody a turd and still manages to be pretty articulate.

Gimme Shalt-er

Looks like somebody's looking for a way to stave off God's wrath this hurricane season.

TPM: Louisiana House Green-Lights Ten Commandments Monument at Capitol/6.8.11

The bill will now go to Bobby Jindal, who will, I assume, sign it with one of his blue Vishnuian arms while the other three multitask.