Religious Right.... They're Baaack!

It's downright spooky.

As journalist Christine Wicker exposes today in "Evangelical Leaders Using God Like a Hired Gun" (HuffingtonPost) when the branding of Barack Obama as the anti-Christ, palling around with terrorists, and a secret Muslim didn't work, they started "using God like a hired gun to terrorize the town's people, the evangelical Christian mullahs are declaring that Obamageddon is at hand....

"...using that very word and asking as the Religious Right/Republican Townhall magazine did in a September headline, 'Could We Survive a Barack Presidency?'

"Evangelical publisher James Strang answers the survival question by warning his readers that people who hate Christianity will take over the country once Obama is elected.

"In fact, 'life as we know it will end,' Strang writes."

You can hear the wind howling, sense the ghouls skulking in wait, the Four Horsemen bearing down.....

Wicker continues, "Last week Focus on the Family's James Dobson added his own doomsday predictions with a 16-page rant about evils that will befall the United States by 2012 if Obama is elected."

But young evangelical leaders are resisting using God as their hired gun. Dobson blames misguided young evangelicals for elevating Obama. Wicker points out, "It's them he's hoping to scare most. But they and emergent church leaders such as Brian McLaren, who endorsed Obama, have broken ranks and won't be coming back.

"A great mass of other evangelicals, who never followed the evangelical mullahs and never will, are also going for Obama. Maybe Dobson thinks they'll listen to him."

But that's not likely, they're already off pursuing their own causes, and "won't be convinced by Dobson's scare tactics. They're more likely to agree with a new bumper sticker popular in Colorado, where Focus on the Family is based.

"It reads, 'Focus on your own damn family.' "

Dobson, sure that he could shoo Republican primary voters away from the Senator, said in a Focus on the Family press release that McCain "is being touted by the media as a man of principle, yet he was involved with other women while married to his first wife, and was implicated in the so-called Keating scandal with four other senators.

"He was eventually reprimanded by the Congress for the 'appearance of impropriety.' The Senator reportedly has a violent temper and can be extremely confrontational and profane when angry. These red flags about Senator McCain's character are reminiscent of the man who now occupies the White House."

"The man who now occupies the White House".... oh yes, the last guy the Religious Right elected.

And Dobson didn't leave out of that release McCain's love of alcohol and gambling.

Wicker, shining light in dark places, explains "When Dobson saw that threats to take his toys and go home didn't keep McCain from winning the nomination, he forgot his previous scruples. Now Dobson sees McCain as God's man. It's Obama who's the devil. And under God's direction, as he always is, Dobson is speaking out again...."

In his current sixteen-page delusional tirade against Obama, Dobson channels the things that could happen if Christians don't unite behind McCain.... the same McCain he branded as an adulterous, profane, violent, scandal-tainted, drinker and gambler who he is now anointing to preside over the most powerful elective office in the world.

It almost the bewitching hour. Hopefully the Religious Right's false soothsayers will be defanged and return to being merely pompous pumpkins. God must be so proud....

Vote! It matters.

Keeping the Faith Honest

If you have nothing to hide....

Despite vigorous protests from the secretive White House, "Secret Service Logs of White House Visitors Are Public Records, Judge Rules."

Administration lawyers have been arguing that the logs recording visitors to the White House or the vice president's residence are presidential records and outside the scope of the Freedom of Information Act. But the decider on this issue is U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth who ruled they are "agency records" subject to disclosure.

Records of the visits of nine conservative Christian leaders including James Dobson, Jerry Falwell and Gary Bauer are ordered to be released.... and Lamberth will also rule on visits by disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Now, Judge Lamberth, how about the names of the attendees at VP Cheney's stealth energy policy gathering....

GOP Gay Glass House

Republican conservative policymakers must be reeling.... their "moral authority" shtick and gay bashing hypocrisy are laid bare once again as "GOP State Rep Resigns Amid Sex Scandal." (WaPo)

Washington State lawmaker Rep. Richard Curtis, who voted against gay rights, resigned Wednesday after "he was quoted in police reports as saying a man he had sex with after they met at an erotic video store was trying to blackmail him."

And, according to police reports, he didn't have gay sex at just any old place, but at a hotel room in Spokane during a GOP retreat. The blackmail? According to the other man, Cody Castagna, Curtis reneged on his promise to pay him $1,000 for the sex.

Following the lead of other GOPers caught out.... Curtis, married with children, now declares that sex was not involved and "he was not gay."

On the lunatic right fringe of the GOP, more gay bashers are getting their comeuppance. "$11M Verdict in Funeral Protesters Case." (WaPo)

This fundamentalist Kansas sect pickets military funerals waving placards bearing vile messages like "Thank God for dead soldiers" and "God hates fags."

The courts have at last acted against their hate speech.... they have been ordered to pay nearly $11 million in damages to the grieving father of a fallen Marine after their protest intruded on his private funeral ceremony.

The sect.... the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka.... led by Fred Phelps and his two daughters, believe that U.S. deaths in the Iraq war are punishment for the nation's tolerance of homosexuality, and hide behind the First Amendment to justify their vitriolic behavior. No more.

The far-right "religious" czars in the GOP need to sit up and take notice.... their days as the self-promoting gay-bashing hacks of the "moral majority" are over.... their clay feet have been exposed, and real "values" upheld by the courts.

Eyes were opened with fundamentalist mega-church leader Ted Haggard's revelation of his gay activities, sending shock waves though out the conservative movement. From creepy page-stalker GOP Rep. Mark Foley of Florida, to GOP Sen. "Widestance" Craig of Idaho.... the mounting gay-baiting hypocrisies have washed up on the beach of their pretensions.

The current crop of self-annointed gay-baiting GOP power brokers.... like "Third Party Threat" Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council; Gary "humping in corporate accounts" Bauer of American Values; and James Dobson of Focus on the Family and SpongeBob-SquarePants-is-pro-homosexual fame.... are nothing more than shallow, opportunistic money lenders in the political temple.

Evangelicals and the Republican party would do well to drive them out.