Anti-antichrist

Why the Antichrist Matters in Politics

The left is in disarray while libertarianism is on the ascent. A new generation of evangelicals — well-versed in organizing but lacking moderating influences — is lining up behind hard-right anti-statists. While few of the faithful truly think that the president is the Antichrist, millions of voters, like their Depression-era predecessors, fear that the time is short. The sentiment that Mr. Obama is preparing the United States, as Roosevelt did, for the Antichrist’s global coalition is likely to grow.

Barring the rapture, Mrs. Bachmann or Mr. Perry could well ride the apocalyptic anti-statism of conservative Christians into the Oval Office. Indeed, the tribulation may be upon us.

Well this is good to know, now that President Obama has been proclaimed the Antichrist. (Is that like anti-matter? Unseen, mysterious, and explosive?)

If cats reported the news

No. Not for a long time, kitty. Oil in your seafood from the Gulf or radioactive isotopes in your fish from the Pacific?... neither one, thank you.

Dr. Susan Shaw - Marine Environmental Research Institute from Blackbird Media on Vimeo.

Schwarzenegger's scandal and his actual screwing of California. Thanks, Ahnuld. And speaking of sexual oopses .... 19 best unintentionally sexual church signs (h/t to Marcellina of The Practice Room)

Research Suggests Weight Gain Is Contagious

Congress to vote on extending Patriot Act

Threatening kids who want to debate the Constitution?

Partisan teachers:

When it comes to grading, Republican and Democratic professors at one unnamed elite university put their ideologies into practice, a new study finds: Republicans welcomed inequality, handing out more very high and very low grades, and Democrats’ grades grouped more tightly around the average.

Republicans also gave black students lower grades than their colleagues. In both cases, the researchers stressed, there was no way to know which approach better reflected students’ performance.

The reason behind the Rapture prediction. And after apologies, Camping is now giving another date....

Well... rats.

Does this mean I won't bag a new car?

The satisfaction of telling people 'I told you so'

Even when you are serenely safe in Heaven just doesn't sound very Christian to me....

If millions of Christians suddenly disappear from the face of the Earth as the opening act for Armageddon, Threat Level thinks most nonbelievers will be too busy freaking the hell out to check their e-mail. But if they do log in, now they can be treated to some post-Rapture needling from their missing friends and loved ones, courtesy of web startup YouveBeenLeftBehind.com.

For just $40 a year, believers can arrange for up to 62 people to get a final message exactly six days after the Rapture, that day when -- according to Christian end times dogma -- Christians will be swept up to heaven, while doubters are left behind to suffer seven years of Tribulation under a global government headed by the Antichrist.

"You've Been Left Behind gives you one last opportunity to reach your lost family and friends for Christ," reads the website, which is purportedly run "by Christians, for Christians."

I thought God was the God of Love and Forgiveness not Schadenfreude...

Exposing our worst side to our friends

The former British Ambassador to the Republic of Uzbekistan, Craig Murray discovers what we have been fighting against for years in the United States... the insidious theocrats:

Last year I delivered a talk on Central Asia at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. As I sat preparing my lecture, I had the television on low in my hotel room because I don't like complete silence. Gradually I found myself listening intently to an evangelical preacher, telling his TV congregation that they should not worry about casualties in Iraq because the Bible showed us that there had to be a great and bloody conflict in the Middle East before the Second Coming of Christ. So the more people who died in these wars, the closer we are to Jesus.

Now that message would be acceptable to very few people in the UK - just Tony Blair and his immediate friends, really. I related this astonishing thing I had heard to some American lecturers over lunch. They told me that at least a third of their students would believe this stuff. And this was Ann Arbor, not the Deep South. It is essential that we all wake up now to the fact that the US is a deeply disturbed and psychotic society, and by far the biggest danger to world peace.

Sorry, Mr. Murray. The fundamentalists were promised a seat at the high table by the Bush administration. As soon as we get a Democrat back in the White House, we will attempt to put them back in their cages. It won't be easy because they've tasted power and money and want more.

Update:


And Bush did it all just so he could get elected.

It doesn't fit their vision

Of what our 'Onward Christian Soldiers' should be doing when not fighting the holy Rapture war to the death.

Steve Benen of Crooks and Liars:

Don Wildmon and the American Family Association have a new obsession: U.S. troops’ access to adult materials.

Ten years after Congress banned sales of sexually explicit material on military bases, the Pentagon is under fire for continuing to sell adult fare, such as Penthouse and Playmates In Bed, that it doesn’t consider explicit enough to pull from its stores.

Dozens of religious and anti-pornography groups have complained to Congress and Defense Secretary Robert Gates that a Pentagon board set up to review magazines and films is allowing sales of material that Congress intended to ban.

“They’re saying ‘we’re not selling stuff that’s sexually explicit’ … and we say it’s pornography,” says Donald Wildmon, head of the American Family Association, a Christian anti-pornography group. A letter-writing campaign launched Friday by opponents of the policy aims to convince Congress to “get the Pentagon to obey the law,” he adds.

It's so hard to have your end of the world fantasies destroyed by the soldiers who are supposed to be fighting for the glory of God actually not giving a damn about this being the war of biblical proportions, the war predicted in Revelations. The Bible didn't mention soldiers getting to read Playboy...
Has anyone told these fanatics that soldiers are often ... *gasp* Democrats, too? Maybe gay? Divorced? Unwillingly there? Human? And not at all interested in dying for a holy war?

What do Delay, Santorum, and Lieberman have in common?

They came to support the Christians United for Israel Tour that eagerly awaits the Rapture and the second coming.

Max Blumenthal:

But CUFI has an ulterior agenda: its support for Israel derives from the belief of Hagee and his flock that Jesus will return to Jerusalem after the battle of Armageddon and cleanse the earth of evil. In the end, all the non-believers - Jews, Muslims, Hindus, mainline Christians, etc. - must convert or suffer the torture of eternal damnation. Over a dozen CUFI members eagerly revealed to me their excitement at the prospect of Armageddon occurring tomorrow. Among the rapture ready was Republican Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. None of this seemed to matter to Lieberman, who delivered a long sermon hailing Hagee as nothing less than a modern-day Moses. Lieberman went on to describe Hagee's flock as "even greater than the multitude Moses commanded."

...I was forbidden from asking Hagee about statements he made in his book, "Jerusalem Countdown," that appeared to blame Jews for their own persecution. After doing just that during a press conference, I was removed from the conference by off-duty DC cops summoned by members of Hagee's family.

I have covered the Christian right intensely for over four years. During this time, I attended dozens of Christian right conferences, regularly monitored movement publications and radio shows, and interviewed scores of its key leaders. I have never witnessed any spectacle as politically extreme, outrageous, or bizarre as the one Christians United for Israel produced last week in Washington. See for yourself.

Rapture Ready: The Unauthorized Christians United for Israel Tour from huffpost and Vimeo.

Update: Maha of Mahablog has more on the history of Christian fundamentalism.

The rights of your religion stop

Where my thoughts begin.



Having grown up in a religious household and being 'religious' for a large percentage of my life, I have great love and respect for those who are sincere in following their beliefs. But I do not believe only one religion is the right one. I do not believe those who try to be and do good and search for ways to benefit humanity would be ignored by a loving God. I do not believe a God of Love would create the Rapture. Frantically joining a religion because of fear of agony and death is bizarre and wrong.

As Martin Luther said: "Unless I am convinced by proofs from Scriptures or by plain and clear reasons and arguments, I can and will not retract, for it is neither safe nor wise to do anything against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen."

All you can do is be honest and true to who you are. Anything else is dishonest and cannot stand.


Update: tripped over this interesting site while getting Luther's quote.

The infestation of christianists

In the Bush administration who graduated from Regent University number 150. The only qualification they hold for the jobs they have is that they have a christianist agenda: Dissolve the separation between church and state.



Paul Krugman (via jurassicpork at Welcome To Pottersville):

Today, Regent University, founded by the televangelist Pat Robertson to provide “Christian leadership to change the world,” boasts that it has 150 graduates working in the Bush administration.

Unfortunately for the image of the school, where Mr. Robertson is chancellor and president, the most famous of those graduates is Monica Goodling, a product of the university’s law school. She’s the former top aide to Alberto Gonzales who appears central to the scandal of the fired U.S. attorneys and has declared that she will take the Fifth rather than testify to Congress on the matter.

The infiltration of the federal government by large numbers of people seeking to impose a religious agenda — which is very different from simply being people of faith — is one of the most important stories of the last six years. It’s also a story that tends to go underreported, perhaps because journalists are afraid of sounding like conspiracy theorists.

But this conspiracy is no theory. The official platform of the Texas Republican Party pledges to “dispel the myth of the separation of church and state.” And the Texas Republicans now running the country are doing their best to fulfill that pledge.

[snip]

One measure of just how many Bushies were appointed to promote a religious agenda is how often a Christian right connection surfaces when we learn about a Bush administration scandal.

There’s Ms. Goodling, of course. But did you know that Rachel Paulose, the U.S. attorney in Minnesota — three of whose deputies recently stepped down, reportedly in protest over her management style — is, according to a local news report, in the habit of quoting Bible verses in the office?

Or there’s the case of Claude Allen, the presidential aide and former deputy secretary of health and human services, who stepped down after being investigated for petty theft. Most press reports, though they mentioned Mr. Allen’s faith, failed to convey the fact that he built his career as a man of the hard-line Christian right.

And there’s another thing most reporting fails to convey: the sheer extremism of these people.

You see, Regent isn’t a religious university the way Loyola or Yeshiva are religious universities. It’s run by someone whose first reaction to 9/11 was to brand it God’s punishment for America’s sins.

How close are we to the lusted after theocracy in America? Will these power-hungry religious leaders look the other way while allowing an ever-so-convenient terrorist attack that would hurtle the citizens of the United States into the arms of these religious extremists?

I mean... if you've waited and waited for the Second Coming all your life, wouldn't you be tempted to ... help it happen?

Pat Robertson predicts mass killing

Oddly, he is not on the list. Via Rook's Rant, Pat spews on:
""The Lord didn't say nuclear, but I do believe it'll be something like that — that'll be a mass killing, possibly millions of people, major cities injured," Robertson said."There will be some very serious terrorist attacks," he added. "The evil people will come after this country, and there's a possibility — not a possibility, a definite certainty — that chaos is going to rule." Robertson did not say where the terrorism would occur."

So. Pat. Your God predicts a horrible event with much suffering. Do you think a prediction like this would make me join a religion that offered horrific predictions with only your type of praying to save me? This is the God of love? This is the God of peace? You are practically drooling at the thought of the Rapture, not for your own salvation, but to gloat over those who thought you are a bloated gasbag of hate. You like the idea of the Rapture? You like the idea of those left behind? Do you want it to occur like ...now? or maybe.... now? No, not then, but ..... now?

Are you actively trying to make the Rapture come? Even if it wasn't the time for it? What if the Rapture is supposed to happen in ..like... 3097? Would you still try to make it happen now because you are so ready? Like saying inflamatory things in the media? Like trying to encourage people to be divisive and hateful to people of other religions, countries, sexualities, attitudes? Is that what your God asks of you?

Or is it because you are actually a bloated gasbag of hate?