The Unholy Cult of Trump

As the White House gets weirder and the stink of corruption and treason gets stronger the superChristians only get louder in their praise for Donald Trump. God help us.

From the LATimes: Trump’s base believes he is their blessed savior sent by God. We are being governed by a cult leader who believes this… All the elements of cult worship are there.

A leading Trump-supporter, pastor, and conservative writer for the Federalist says God was answering the prayers of the victims of the bloody Texas church massacre by letting them be murdered. Reported by RawStory

This was also the story told Monday on Fox And Friends––which is Trump’s daily briefing on events, the source he always believes and parrots––that this is how every good Christian would want to die, gunned down in a church where he or she is close to God.

Video here

From Newsweek we get the following disturbing confirmation that the White House is becoming a weird cult...

“…The man who advises President Donald Trump’s nine fundamentalist Cabinet members has shared his favorite superstitions, including that Earth was created in six days, that women can’t teach men, that the U.S. government is required by God to “moralize a fallen world through the use of force” and that Trump is “an adjudicator of wrongdoing.”

"Ralph Drollinger, a former NBA player who founded Capitol Ministries (CapMin) 20 years ago, preaches a flinty fundamentalism that dispenses with Jesus’s teachings about compassion, love and tolerance in favor of a more tribal, Old Testament world view in which God disapproves of government aid to the poor, and of liberals in general."

From the Daily Beast we get a frightening inside look at the "superChristian" life of the Walmart Killer. He lived alone with a stack of Bibles and no furniture...

From The New York Times we learn that some of the Russian paid ads on Google and Twitter told Americans that voting for Hillary meant voting for Satan

Your Daily Trump––Sympathy For The Devil

This election is being shaped by something I call The General Theory of "Murder She Wrote”.

That program was widely popular across middle America. It was also very influential on that subliminal level where Americans make judgments of good and evil, safe and dangerous. It taught millions of Americans that the person who appears least likely to be a monster is the actual monster, and the most monstrous person is actually completely good and decent. Our judgment has been clouded ever since.

Which might explain why the whole news media is now behaving like the right wing nut jobs at Breitbart News.

Te Nehisi Coates explains at the Atlantic.

The Canadians believe we are insane and wonder what has happened to American news reporting.

The Canadian newsmagazine Maclean's examines the bizarre double standard of coverage.

New York magazine reports that more than half of Trump supporters believe Obama wasn’t born in the U.S.

Mic.com reports that almost half of Trump supporters in Iowa think it was a good idea to put Japanese Americans into camps during WW2.

Meanwhile the pro-Trump governor of Kentucky said that if Hillary is elected that patriots will have to murder the tyrant. Reported by VOX.

Martin Shkreli, the wealthy hedge fund wizard who got rich by jacking up the cost of medications is acting as a guerrilla Trump surrogate. The reliably right wing NYPost has this story.

Trump Trolls may not constitute half of Trump voters but there are plenty of nasty Trumpsters out there eager to slur a columnist who has a Hispanic last name. Reported from Cleveland.

Speaking of double standards, remember when W lost 20 million emails and nobody investigated it. Reported at Newsweek.

Your Daily Trump––The Corruption The Media Doesn't Bother To Report On

Trump’s long history of corruption is well documented. Why do voters not care about this? Why do news organizations ignore this?

From the Washington Post Plum Line column. Their headline tells the story: "Trumps history of corruption is mind-boggling, so why is clinton supposedly the corrupt one/?" In Trump's "bible" the proverb is "he who throws the first stone is usually believed."

Faced with lawsuits over his Trump University [sic], which was a scheme to defraud students, Trump bribes Florida and Texas AG’s to back off.

The Orlando Sentinel Broke this story last week.

In Texas a former staffer in the Attorney General's office says Trump got them to back off in the same way. CBS reports.

James Fallows reports on the Trump Florida bribery case in the Atlantic.

At Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall gives his analysis, calling it about as clear cut a case of corruption as you can find.

If you watch the news you have sat through endless stories about empty and disproven allegations against the Clinton Foundation. But you have not seen much about Trump’s Foundation, which doesn’t deserve the name, barely giving any money to any worthwhile cause. Trump did use large checks from his foundation to persuade the attorney general of Florida to back off on the lawsuit over the Trump University fraud scheme.

The media is focused on pulling down the decent and honest candidate and covering up for the corrupt and dishonest one.

The Ghetto Idea Is Enjoying A Renaissance

I came across a disturbing story on NPR today. It describes how the poor can be conveniently put in a box and forgotten.

By divvying people into rich (good people) and poor (bad people) conservatives can justify their greed and their habit of looking at people’s vulnerabilities as business opportunities.

But outside of nailing them to make their profits, the rich conservatives would rather pretend poor people don’t exist. They’ve been lucky and they seek to insulate themselves from the unlucky people.

Many of the less fortunate have gotten that way after encountering the sharp edge of rich people’s business schemes or political policies. But it’s hard to blame the rich. They can’t help themselves. Maximum profit and minimum responsibility is their religion.

The rich conservatives would like to avoid all responsibility for other people. Other people are there to profit from but never to be helped or looked out for. They’d rather put them on an ice floe and send them out to sea.

This selfishness has penetrated down into the working middle classes, whose margin of financial security has gotten thin. People in the striving middle classes are taught to emulate the rich in order to achieve financial security. Join the club by rejecting the poor.

We’ve become a selfish, uncaring society. Recent policies make poverty inevitable, inescapable and perpetual. These policies have mostly emerged from conservative and libertarian circles.

They put it more gently, but the philosophy is basically this: “I’ve got mine, fuck you.”

Oh, and "Praise Jesus."

Hypocrisy In The News

The Republican Secretary of State in New Mexico was elected on a Stop Voter Fraud platform. She is now under indictment on 65 counts including fraud, embezzlement and money laundering. She is also being charged with identity theft. Hm... It’s a shame Republican voters don’t understand irony or hypocrisy... The LATimes has the full story.

The state of Alabama was very pleased when the Supreme Court said nobody needed to enforce the Voting Rights Act anymore because bigotry and prejudice were over with. So Alabama did two things. They added a requirement that all voters have a photo ID to vote, and they closed offices where these photo IDs could be obtained in majority black counties. Hm… Anybody phoned Chief Justice Roberts for comment? Maybe just phone the Department of Justice... The Root has a full report on this story.

A hurricane just dropped several feet of rain on South Carolina causing the dozenth “thousand year flood” in the past few years. All their Republicans in Congress loudly demanded disaster relief, and they’ll get it too, because it’s what Americans do to help other Americans in trouble. Trouble is, when Hurricane Sandy hit New York, New Jersey and the rest of the northeast every one of these South Carolina Republicans voted against federal aid. Hm… Sometimes hypocrisy is so ripe you have to hold your nose... This story is all over the news; here's Salon's article.

Is Michele Bachmann Right After All?

World Net Daily (always fascinating) reports Michele Bachmann blames/thanks Obama for triggering the End Times. Hooray! Now Jesus will come!

A priest on FoxNews says we can't trust our "atheist president" because he isn't afraid of eternal damnation.

The Dallas Morning News reports Texas Governor Abbott has called out the National Guard to keep watch on U.S. Military maneuvers which he thinks are a secret plan to take over the state of Texas.

(This is from way last year) Tom Delay, unseated corrupt Republican Speaker of the House, explains how God wrote the U.S. Constitution.

In Kansas, a new law permits prosecutors to put teachers in jail for assigning books they disapprove of.

In Texas, the state has approved a new history textbook for schools which includes Moses as one of our Founding Fathers.

The Guardian makes an interesting observation: in most American cities police can be put in jail for shooting animals, but not for shooting people.

Speaking of the Baltimore riots, New York Magazine published this interesting list of times white people have rioted, burned and looted over stupid things like basketball teams winning games.

On Fox'N'Friends a black woman put in a leadership post in the Miami police raises fears she might be a dangerous Muslim terrorist.

…maybe these are the End Times.

Letter to a Radio Host on the topic of "The Lazy Poor"

Dear [ ],

I heard you on the air talking with Congressman [ ]. I live in his urban district, but I grew up in the suburbs. In fact I was a Republican until I was around thirty. My problem with what I heard you saying doesn't come from a doctrinaire lefty mindset. I got where I am after an embarrassing period when I learned how unsavory and selfish and extreme Republicanism and the comfortable suburban mindset were becoming. It isn't Eisenhower's party anymore.

I heard you referring to lazy people gaming the system to get federal handouts. And I'm pretty sure you weren't referring to ExxonMobil.

I cringe a little when I hear this old chestnut rolled out on local radio. Usually it's confined to the more right wing talk stations, where racism and hatred of the poor is expected.

I can't remember who said it in the Bible, but the quote often goes "The poor will always be with us." If it was Jesus saying this you can bet he wasn't implying that there was no point in bothering to help them out. Jesus (pardon me if you're not a Christian) was pretty clear that our treatment of the poor was the key to everything, that if we failed to help them we were not to expect salvation. But the most aggressively "Christian" among us these days sound the least like Christ in this respect.

Then I hear people like Paul Ryan, who grew up and prospered because he was an early beneficiary of the federal safety net, saying the safety net is becoming a hammock. I can think of no more colossal gall than this. If it is a hammock now it must have been a full service hotel when Paul Ryan was growing up with federal help.

There is a habit among media personalities like yourself to avoid being impolite, to avoid admitting that some of the people in elected office these days are heartless hypocrites. But they are. They are deeply unChristian while pretending to be superChristian. They run endless interference for the huge subsidies given to the enormously profitable corporate farmers and Wall Street banks and oil companies while working just as hard to gut programs intended to help the helpless. To avoid saying this you end up saying the opposite is true. Or you smudge the clear moral difference between the two parties.

Because radio people like yourself are so polite you go through all kinds of mental gymnastics to avoid saying that one party is by and large responsible for this systematic heartlessness. Namely the Republicans. To the extent that Dems are cutting aid to the most vulnerable, they are only doing so to try to get within bargaining distance of their GOP counterparts. And the media's rule of false equivalency is what forces them to do this.

Lazy people on Welfare? Do you realize the hard work it takes to collect Welfare? The Scrooges among us (the same ones who want govt off people's backs) make darn sure that every recipient of government largesse (but only those with a net worth less than a million dollars) gets the stink eye, gets endless scrutiny and probing insulting questions, is made to jump through endless hoops and fill out endless forms, and wait in endless lines. Not only is it unkind but it is expensive and inefficient. Anything to avoid helping the less fortunate...so more is left to help the corporation that needs a freer ride.

Consider that there are some people WHO EMPLOYERS SIMPLY WILL NOT EMPLOY. Persons with limitations, with disabilities (physical and mental) that will not go away. Many of them veterans with the wounds earned in our service. Public works jobs programs might help some, but those are stubbornly opposed by Republicans. If some corporate CEO is going to give a million dollars to a congressman to cut unemployment or other benefits perhaps he should obligate himself to hire the people who are losing aid. It won't happen. These people will not be hired because some people are simply unsuited for work. The reasons are rarely laziness or criminality, but that is the reason radio people trot out to gratify their smug and comfortable listeners--whose own benefits are sacred. Of course, to some being poor is criminal enough.

So, please: stop resorting to the worst kind of class stereotypes. The hardest working people are the poor who have to cobble together several jobs to raise themselves up to the pathetic minimum. The laziest? Perhaps it's people Mitt Romney clubs with, who are rich from being rich. Who make money from the pot they were born with. In Romney's case we have learned how the companies he took over were made profitable at the expense of the people working in them. That is what arbitrage is. Buying a company with its own assets, most often by looting the pension fund of retired workers. Legally of course.

Stereotype? The predatory model of the extremely wealthy is more prevalent than the much remarked "lazy model" of the poor. Just as criminality and psychopathy and sociopathy and greed and corruption and ungenerosity is more typical of the very rich than the very poor. (Jesus was on to something.)

Even if it were rare for a billionaire to be rich by less than ethical means, one billionaire guilty of theft will end up with more than all the petty criminals combined, and he (as seen in the case of Jamie Dimon) will be the one who isn't required to do time. He will be the one who is allowed to deduct his government penalty from his taxes.

If you can get your head around this, perhaps a more enlightened and tolerant and generous point of view will creep into your conversations on air. Not insulting rich or poor, but showing a bit more tolerance toward the unlucky people who are down and a bit less latitude toward the lucky ones who already have all the advantages of money, access, power, influence and the paid up ownership of politicians on their side. Jesus was a stern critic of smugness. We should remind ourselves of that.

Pasquino

Hedge Fund Billionaires are Saints and Schoolteachers are Greedy Bastards

So, let's try and understand this...

Fifth grade teachers and firefighters who rescue kittens from trees are greedy bastards.

And hedge fund billionaires are saints devoted to the wellbeing of the community.

I will pause while your mind explodes.

This is really happening. Voters in Rhode Island have elected a fearless crusader who is going after the greedy schoolteachers on behalf of the heroic hedge funds.

The people who worked their whole lives on behalf of the community, teaching children, fighting fires, cleaning streets, policing parks, taking less pay in exchange for a pension, are actually terrible selfish greedy monsters who must be reined in and their retirement must be confiscated by the good, honest, crusading friend of Wall Street who is working diligently to return those pension dollars to the offshore bank accounts of the brave, honest hedge fund billionaires who know best what to do with that money.

Up is down. Good is bad. Greed is admirable. Unselfishness must be punished. Jesus was wrong. Hitler was right. ...Wait a minute, Obama is Hitler... I'm confused.

What do we know for certain?

Questioning billion dollar bonuses for Wall Street bankers is like lynching. We know that. It was in the papers the other day.

ObamaCare is like what Hitler did to the Jews. That was in the paper the other day too.

The CEO of Goldman Sachs is more saintly than Mother Teresa. That was also reported this week.

Mr. Rogers, who talked about kindness and unselfishness, was a sick individual who sapped the life force from two generations of Americans. I heard that on FoxNews.

And, yes, public school teachers and firefighters are horrible greedy bastards. It's been widely reported.

It's so hard to keep a solid grip on reality, on our values. Luckily America has talk radio to tell us what to believe.

Niall Ferguson is Nasty, Brutish and Tall

Niall Ferguson believes that Keynes didn't care about future generations because he was gay and didn't have children. That's the reporting from Tom Kostigan from the Altegris Conference in Carlsbad, California.

"[I]n front of a group of more than 500 investors, Ferguson responded to a question about Keynes' famous philosophy of self-interest versus the economic philosophy of Edmund Burke, who believed there was a social contract among the living, as well as the dead. Ferguson asked the audience how many children Keynes had. He explained that Keynes had none because he was a homosexual and was married to a ballerina, with whom he likely talked of "poetry" rather than procreated. The audience went quiet at the remark. Some attendees later said they found the remarks offensive. ...

"Ferguson, who is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, and author of The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die, says it's only logical that Keynes would take this selfish worldview because he was an "effete" member of society. Apparently, in Ferguson's world, if you are gay or childless, you cannot care about future generations nor society."

Meanwhile Ferguson's heroes have spent the past 30 years stealing the livelihoods from working people and beggaring their children... Why are right wing pundits such nasty, selfish, self-serving, ill-informed bigots? And what does it say of their "moral" universe? That it ends at their property line, perhaps. That it's as large as the inside of their safe deposit box on Grand Cayman. Among today's investor class there is very little regard for Burke's social contract ideas, so why did Ferguson make the comparison?

Speaking of swinish right wing punditry... There is a useful summation of the bully boy world of the late Andrew Breitbart by James Wolcott in the new Vanity Fair. The title of the piece is apt. The right wing in this country has all the human kindness of a Roman emperor watching Lions vs. Christians at the Coliseum.

Romney's Party Boat Flew A Cayman Islands Flag

In Tampa there are a lot of exclusive parties where the super rich meet to lay plans for a post-Obama tax climate. It was interesting to learn that the Romney party yacht at the GOP Convention flies a Cayman Islands flag. What's the message here? ABC broke this story.

"I think it's ironic they do this aboard a yacht that doesn't even pay its taxes," said a woman who lives aboard a much smaller boat moored at the St. Petersburg Municipal Marina.

Romney defends his secret bank accounts in tax havens, saying: “There was no reduction -- not one dollar reduction in taxes -- by virtue of having an account in Switzerland or a Cayman Islands investment.” Why not keep his millions in American banks then? And why are these places––the Caymans, Switzerland, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Luxembourg––called "tax havens"? Romney's words don't square with common sense or Americans' sense of fairness. This story appeared in the LATimes.

If you want to look more closely at Romney's complex tax evasions, Gawker has posted the most complete information about Romney's tax schemes online.

Gawker's John Cook: "Almost all of them are affiliated with Bain Capital, the secretive private equity firm Romney co-founded in 1984 and ran until his departure in 1999 (or 2002, depending on whom you ask). Many of them are offshore funds based in the Cayman Islands. Together, they reveal the mind-numbing, maze-like, and deeply opaque complexity with which Romney has handled his wealth, the exotic tax-avoidance schemes available only to the preposterously wealthy that benefit him, the unlikely (for a right-wing religious Mormon) places that his money has ended up, and the deeply hypocritical distance between his own criticisms of Obama's fiscal approach and his money managers' embrace of those same policies. They also show that some of the investments that Romney has always described as part of his retirement package at Bain weren't made until years after he left the company."

All of this may explain Romney's nervous chuckle on the stump.

But as much as we focus on Romney's tax secrecy, it's his plans for our taxes which ought to concern us most. His plan would lower his own already very low tax rate and put the burden onto the rest of us who work for a living. The story appeared in the Washington Post.

Romney responded to the criticism, but his response didn't add up either. A good analysis appeared in the Post.

There's also a very well researched analysis in the August Vanity Fair magazine.

There's a lot here about his various offshore schemes, but the most mystifying may be his IRA account.

"Mysteries also arise when one looks at Romney’s individual retirement account at Bain Capital. When Romney was there, from 1984 to 1999, taxpayers were allowed to put just $2,000 per year into an I.R.A., and $30,000 annually into a different kind of plan he may have used. Given these annual contribution ceilings, how can his I.R.A. possibly contain up to $102 million, as his financial disclosures now suggest?"

How indeed.

Andrew Sullivan, a died-in-the-wool conservative finds the tax evasions of rich people like Romney to be repugnant. (Should we rename them The Repugnant Party?)

Sullivan: "Conservatives, it seems to me, should care about all of America, rather than seceding from it. Social and economic inequality are dangerous threats to social stability and democratic legitimacy. That is a conservative belief - and one utterly alien to the fanatics who now run one of our two major parties. If conservatism is to recover, this version of the GOP must be defeated. It's the only language they understand: the language of power." Amen. Remove this Republican Party and give us back the one Eisenhower presided over.

Tax evasion isn't the only theory about Romney's secret taxes. The other theory, reported in the Guardian newspaper, is that Romney is hiding evidence of voter fraud. Was he really living in his son's basement when he voted in Massachusetts? With six large houses do you really think he lived most of the year in a basement? With six houses it has to be a lot of work establishing residency.

Krugman Explains the Ryan Plan

Paul Krugman points out the hypocrisy and dishonesty in Paul Ryan pretending to be a deficit hawk. But he also points out the eager gullibility and laziness of the Washington opinion writers and policy thinkers who are supposed to study and analyze plans like Ryan's. They haven't done this. All they've done is seize Ryan as a plausible "conservative" (which he isn't; he's a radical) and a thoughtful policy person (he isn't; he only pretends to be) with a substantive plan to attack the deficit (it isn't and it doesn't; quite the reverse, it makes the deficit much worse at the expense of working people, while slashing taxes on rich people who own stocks for a living, Friends of Mitt who have already profited enormously from the economic crisis.)

Ryan promises to share key details, crucial mathematics that his plan doesn't explain, at some unspecified future date. I've not seen such empty promises since Nixon's secret plan to end the Vietnam War. Nixon had no plan, and the war did not end until we surrendered Vietnam after he left office in disgrace. What Nixon did do (and it's similar to what Romney and Ryan and the other Republican leaders have been doing for four years) was sabotage LBJ's peace talks, promising the South Vietnam government a better deal if they refused to participate. There was no better deal. In similar fashion the Republicans in this Congress have spent four years sabotaging every effort to repair and restore the economy and their motives are the same: if they can foul the economic gears and talk about secret plans they hope to regain power. There is a word for this kind of cynicism: criminal. Another word comes to mind: treasonous. Like Romney's business model which made him a billionaire: buy companies promising to help them, loot their pensions, gut their employee pay and benefits, borrow heavily against the worth of the company, take enormous management bonuses, then send the shell of the company either to Asia or the bottom of Boston harbor.

Mitt Romney Praises Israel's Socialized Healthcare System

"When our health care costs are completely out of control. Do you realize what health care spending is as a percentage of the GDP in Israel? 8 percent. You spend 8 percent of GDP on health care. And you’re a pretty healthy nation.” ~Mitt Romney praising Israel's socialized healthcare system, reported in FORBES

Romney In and Out of Uniform

The Boston Globe reports on a serious contradiction in Mitt Romney's carefully crafted personal saga. Today Mitt Romney says "he longed to be sent to Vietnam" when he was draft age. That he wanted to take an active part in the war he supported so vigorously. Not true. Romney actually sought and received multiple and extended deferments.

Is it a lie to say you longed to take part in the war you supported (and protested in favor of) when you actually did everything you could to avoid serving? What else would you call it? And his story has changed from admitting he didn't want to go to Vietnam to saying he longed to be in combat. His changing stories should raise concerns too.

News media avoid reporting this kind of damaging story about Republican candidates. They stonewalled coverage of Bush's elaborate draft evasions and reporting on it ended Dan Rather's career. They downplayed the stories about McCain's bizarre record as a navy pilot and his erratic behavior since. But you can imagine the blanket coverage a story like this would get if it were about President Obama or any Democrat. Even bogus stories about a Democrat always receive serious attention and refuse to die even when debunked. Real ones about Republicans are barely reported.

This story from the National Memo is potentially more troubling: an alleged history of impersonating police officers. What kind of personality engages in this behavior for kicks? And because it's criminal behavior, what could it mean to Romney's candidacy?

The New Pharisees

As Newt Gingrich said about himself, it's exhausting work bullying Americans into being better people. He got so involved in it, and loved his country so much, he had to take a mistress. It's a novel defense.

What was the work he was so involved in that he didn't have time for his marriage? Investigating the infidelities of others, notably Bill Clinton. The Savanarolas-in-chief who tried to hound Clinton from office, Gingrich and his sidemen Livingston and Hyde, had their own women on the side. Gingrich's solution was open marriage. It's a bit like a bad country western song, which may be why it obsesses and appeals to the people inhabiting the geographic belt associated with that kind of music and the Bible. God forgives the sinner as long as he or she is busy informing on others. It's all very Republican. Republicans give people medals for this.

It's an old story and there's a long list, this GOP and SuperChristian roll call of misbehaviorists. Gay bashers who are gay in private. Puritans and God-botherers who peek in other people's windows but keep their own blinds drawn. There are also a lot of warmongers who refuse to serve in combat.

Liberalism never had this much appetite for sleaze, nor did it engage in hunting it down. A dirty mind needs an obsession, and what better than scolding and attacking others for the misbehavior you engage in yourself. When outed, attack. When accused, smear the accuser. When you are defending marriage, keep the loosest interpretation for your own convenience. And keep that righteous posture no matter what. The glass houses/stones rule doesn't apply to you. Jon Stewart does the best job of dissecting the strangeness. But is laughing at hypocrites enough?

It'd be funny if it wasn't so poisonous. And we'd be able to get rid of these creeps if they weren't so arrogant and their constituents weren't so easily manipulated. The crowd loved it when Gingrich scolded the moderator for sullying a debate by asking about Gingrich's disgraceful behavior. Is hypocrisy also the sort of thing to be confined to whispers in quiet rooms with doors locked? Add Republican cheers for adultery to the cheers for greed, selfishness, wrongful execution, torture, death to the uninsured, voter suppression and other new Republican ideals.

What creeps me out the most, I think, is how this hypocrisy and turpitude seems to be creeping northward, even into the land of the strong and above average. After two terms of Pawlenty our average has sagged noticeably. The creeps are uniformly right wing, religious and very Republican. When Minnesota Republicans learn to do hypocrisy really big they graduate to the big leagues. It's embarrassing to those who know how rational and decent Minnesotans are by and large. Most of us don't think sanctimonious Christian heterosexual adulterers are superior to gays and lesbians who are faithful partners and good parents.

Jon Stewart on Pathetic Hypocritical Tone-Deaf Pinky-Out Tea-Drinking Elitism on FoxNews

The best coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement has been in the Guardian.

The best analysis of the pathetic hypocritical tone-deaf pinky-out tea-drinking elitism of the talking heads on Fox and other television media has been Jon Stewart's. In this broadcast he's absolutely ruthlessly honest and on target. He helps them damn themselves with their own words.

Please share these links with everyone you know.

The Familiar Anti Christ Rumors

When logic and good sense fail you can always call up the bogeyman. The Republican Party has been working this theme ever since Obama began his run for president. It's one of their dog whistles.

There have been posters of Obama with a Hitler moustache. Obama, the first black president, is "the Other", "Not like us", "Obama isn't an American", "Obama isn't a Christian." (He's both Christian and American born, and having risen from working class roots he's more like us than the patricians running for the Republican nomination, but truth is as irrelevant as logic and good sense.)

Last week someone in the audience shouted that Obama is The Anti-Christ. Which raises the End Times rumors, another useful dog whistle. When Republicans don't want to deal with real problems––joblessness, climate change, financial insecurity, extreme wealth disparity––they call up scapegoats. They blame immigrants, Muslims, African Americans, socialists, communists, Christians of other denominations, unions, children, old people. Satan. The bogeyman. They call the president of another race and political party The AntiChrist (as reported in this NYTimes piece.) They can't handle the present time, so they bring up the End Times.

Is this craziness catching? Is it religion or science fiction? L. Ron Hubbard advised other science fiction writers decades ago that the best way to get rich was to found a religion (as reported in this Wall Street Journal article from 1997) and there have been a lot of strange new "Christian" sects and factions in the past few decades. Many emerged as a way to make money, and fell when the money disappeared, often with the religious leader. But the ride will last as long as the money lasts. (This LATimes article from 1987 will recall the charlatans of that time, Swaggart, Bakker, Robertson and Roberts. Oral Roberts tried to extort $8 million from his followers, saying God would kill him if the money wasn't given to his ministry.)

One of the loopier religious loops out there is the Prosperity Gospel, which preaches worldly riches. (This article from BeliefNet discusses the flaws in this fringe of Christianity.) It appeals mostly to people worried about their security in a time of financial crisis. "If God loves you He will make you rich." The pastor might as well say "rich like me" because the pastors pushing the prosperity gospel are always very prosperous themselves. Big cars, expensive suits, private jets, fancy homes unlike the spartan parsonages most conventional churches provide. These pastors are living proof of their gospel and look prosperous indeed, prosperous out of the pockets of the flock. Michele Bachmann's biggest religious backer, Mac Hammond, has had his own run-in with the IRS which only makes him more beloved by his mesmerized parishioners. Imagined persecution is good for money-raising.

But why preach earthly prosperity when the world is going to hell around you? Why is God making you rich if He's about to take it all away? This is what thinking rational people, even Christians, call a contradiction.

Because the prosperity gospel's flip side is always Armageddon. These demagogues have a private line to the holy truth, a bit like stock touts have an inside line on the next winner. If you've ever heard Michele Bachmann's cooing, bedroom voiced prayer about the End Times, you have to wonder what planet her secret messages are coming from. "God loves the poor––Send me money." It is always tied to a demand for money, for her campaign or the very special pastor who prays for it on radio and TV. Those pantsuits and hairstyles her husband art directs are not cheap.

Why do we take any of these people seriously? Money from heaven in one breath and the rain of fire in the next. I suppose it's good television just as creepy movies about demon possession and secret messages in Da Vinci paintings are good television. Whipping up end times fears gets people talking, and fear gets them into the fold. The prospect of these GOP choices puts the fear of God into me.

If he wasn't being sarcastic in the Gospels, Jesus favored the poor and condemned the rich; so why do these "fundamentalist" "Christians" turn the Gospels on their head?

And again, why if "the end-times are near" are these so-called "Prosperity Christians" piling up money they can't take with them? All the GOP candidates cater to the notion that "Jesus Preferred Rich People", either outright or in code. Creating a false picture of Jesus may be the worst kind of blasphemy.

Actually, to give Bachmann proper credit, many leading Republicans worship a goddess rather than a God, and her name is Ayn Rand. You want values? Hers are definitely HOT. It's all about getting what you want, whatever cost to the people around you. If you want the Anti Christ it won't be a centrist liberal like Obama, it'll be someone toting a copy of Atlas Shrugged, with a cross and a flag on his or her lapel.

Hypocrisy-du-jour

Jon Stewart (and his writers) are again the sharpest news analysts in the business, taking apart the hypocrite-du-jour on FoxNews. It's really funny even if it makes you mad.

"We deserve what we get, dammit. But everything everybody else gets is wrong and greedy and unfair." The evil entitlements are those going to other people. Those entitlements not going to attractive, blonde, highly paid FoxNews anchors with attractive children destined for exclusive private schools.

Is this or is this not the core belief of all Republicans?

To put it differently, Republicans who make their living off capital gains are Hard Working Americans. Everybody else is lazy and undeserving and damn lucky Republicans are nice enough to employ them at a poverty wage.

Republicans who make millions off the government are doing so out of selfless patriotism––the millions they receive are accidental. Other people who make a meager living off the government are parasites and Communists.

This is called hypocrisy and Americans would laugh at it if Republicans weren't holding a gun to our head.

I think this is what Mr. Stewart is noticing. Maybe I should do his blogging for him...

A Few Words About Hypocrisy

Never mind that Michele Bachmann can't tell John Wayne from John Wayne Gacy, it's her lies about her own personal government subsidies that should make voters angry. This from the Des Moines Register backs up this from Politico.

("But she's so pretty when she lies, and she seems to believe what she's saying.")

Pork is a big Republican boogeyman, but they love their earmarks. Republicans know how to suck up government spending even when they're busy condemning it. Government spending is wrong except when it's spent on them. Read about it in USNews and World Report, not exactly a liberal magazine.

Even thought they are dead set against government spending and high taxes, Red States pay less in taxes and receive more in government spending. As noted in the Washington Post.

It's called HYPOCRISY.

Republicans shut the "public option" down during the healthcare reform debate. Never mind that they have the Cadillac of public options. It's not socialist if a Republican enjoys it personally. Story from Raw Story.

Republicans holler about the minor misbehavior of Democrats and demand resignation. But they remain in office after far worse. All well reported in The Nation. Was this hypocrisy reported on FoxNews?

On the Republican side, sexual misbehavior is an institution. They have a special church group to cover it up. And notice it's all men. Reported on Alternet (because the main stream media is too afraid of being called liberal.)

Sanctity of marriage? Republican pols have a sorry record of infidelity and still manage to be sanctimonious and point fingers. Reported in Washington Monthly, but not talked about on right wing talk radio.

The culture war was invented by Republicans to "defend" the superior values of the solid Republican south, west and middle west. The problem is these Red States have the worst statistics on teen pregnancy, divorce, murder, poverty and other "values" issues than the so-called Blue States. Again, reported by Alternet because the main stream media is too busy covering Republicans preaching values.

Do Republicans preach values because they lack them? From ScienceBlogs. And again.

It's called HYPOCRISY. I for one have a hard time forgiving this sin.