The Zero Hour of Rick Santorum

It's beyond scary that Rick "Unprintable Other Definition" Santorum is actually surviving this long in the primaries. The man is the worst type of Republican. If you hear him talk about religion, he is the exact type of Christian that Jews should be afraid of, and most definitely the type of Catholic that the Protestant majority of this country hates.

For example, this case (formatted quote from WashPo):

“To say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes you throw up. What kind of country do we live that says only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case? That makes me throw up.”

-Rick Santorum on “This Week,” February 26, 2012, in defense of remarks made in October against President Kennedy’s famous speech on Catholic identity and public policy.

A few points from this charming quote:

1. "That makes me throw up"? Really Rick? It's bad enough that you look like a teenager, you have to speak like one? You were a Senator! Get serious enough to act like you should be given executive powerhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif.
   
2. Rick probably does not understand why JFK made those comments, and why Rick's repudiation is so dangerous. JFK ran for president before Vatican II. V2, in short, made Catholicism more acceptable to liberal Western democracies; making Catholicism feel a lot like Protestantism (for a correlation, see "Reform Judaism"). JFK had to explain to America how he did not intend to take marching orders from the Pope etc. Well, Rick Santorum may not listen to the pope - he strikes me as the type of sanctimonious prig who listens to nobody - but he clearly allows his religion to attack every aspect of modern civil society (see below for more). So when he says: "we look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it." combined with his rejection of JFK, then he's stepped off the safe path.

There's so much crazy in Santorum that it's hard to catch up.

However, his attack on public schools did spark a thought in me. Rick, like me, is a religious family man who declines sending kids to public school out of a religious obligation. Now, I don't attack public schools - quite the opposite, really. As a grandchild of immigrants, I realize how free public schools have been the bedrock of the American Dream (no joke). Good free schools means everything for a good, safe republic.

What I find weird (in this case) about Santorum is that he chose to home-school and not send his kids to the generally well-regarded Catholic school system? As an orthodox Jew, I look at the CAtholics as the other major religion who shares my need for parochial schools. This is a case that makes me feel that Sanctimonious Rick is possibly more Catholic than the Pope (or in this case, the arch-diocese).

Another point bounces off this reaction to Santorum by the remarkably still alive Dick Cavett::

And what is the argument for it? For some, is it to protect their innocent ones from hearing words like, oh, “sex” and “contraception”? From forced association with those less desirable ethnically? Maybe it’s to keep them safe from radical notions like the idea that fossils and carbon-dating aren’t put there by the Devil to fool the scientists, but prove the world has billions, not thousands, of years on it.

Cavett notices that for Rick to not send his kids to *any* school (even Catholic school, as I add) smacks of something creepy. I agree.

There's the internal illogic about home schooling; i.e. that a parent is incapable of tweaking their child's education. I do this all the time with my kids, and they go to Maimonides. You can always educate your child at home, when they return from school, about what you should believe. If the Santorii are willing to spend the hours to home-school, they can't spare the few minutes a day to correct the wackiness that EVERY school teaches?

Ah well, we'll see what happens with the GOP. In some sense, maybe I'm glad the religious wacko is Santorum and not Huckabee. Huckabee is charming, rational sounding, and has actual moments of sane compassion. Yet also a Bible thumper who could erode the wall of church and state. Santorum is so obnoxious and horrible that I imagine he wouldn't get as far as Huckabee would.

Which is the Most Goyish Holiday?

Depends what "goyish" means. Most people think it's a synonym for "Christian," or just "non-Jewish antgonist" but I'd say the range would be from 'another religion that's not Judaism' or 'super-duper pagan.' Christianity and Islam are serious monothesitic religions and so their most serious days could be the most 'goyish' but they also have pagan aspects (especially Xians). So the most goyish could be Easter on one side and possibly Halloween the other. See above for Citizen Dog's take on Halloween.

Why Don't They Just Leave?

This is me, the Diaspora Jew, thinking. Every kind of oppression that's been suffered, currently and in the past, by some minority group has been subjected to my people. Slavery (although, true, it was a while ago), genocide, marriage restrictions, forced conversions, etc. But this is the 21st century, and if any of those things happened to me and my people, especially if its from a Western nation, I would get up and leave. That's what we always did, and it's even easier to do now.

I'm setting aside Israel, even, as a possible destination, even though that's why it was created. But if Israel didn't exist, and it's the 21st Century, and I'm living in a country with freedom to travel (e.g. unlike Iran/USSR), and my home country was persecuting Jews - then I would leave.

This is my gut reaction whenever I hear someone - in America or another Western nation - decry their treatment by the home country. I guess this is why all 4 of my grandparents - especially my father's father - just got the heck out of Eastern Europe in the teens/twenties. They said, to paraphrase Cartman:

Cases where this came up: Jehova's Witnesses who are shocked and appalled that they're forced to give their children blood transfusions (even though it says explicitly in the Old Testament not to eat blood). The Styx's response to the JW: hey guys, just leave America! If you don't like our religious oppression, then act like the Jews and go to Micronesia or Somalia or some other place.

Another case: Gays in America. Evidently, we're terrible for gay rights in America. OK, so if Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, South Africa, Canada, Norway, and Sweden have legalized gay marriage, then why don't you become citizens of those countries?

Note - very important caveat - I am not saying that these groups should 'go back where they came from' or to 'leave America to real Americans' or some other white supremacist stuff. My whole point is that when the white supremacists start attacking you, that's a sign that it's probably time to move.

So, I'm not saying that the gay community shouldn't try to change America's laws - all power to them! - I'm just trying to understand the strange (to me) impulse to stay in a country which oppresses you.

This could be why Jews have generally survived over the millennia in the Diaspora, because we don't think that a particular bunch of painted rocks in an arbitrary latitude and longitude needs to be our permanent locale. I just find that view to be fundamentally un-Jewish.

Note, this is also why I react negatively when some bunch of congregants insist that they need to stay in some dying neighborhood in some decrepit city. Sure, I understand the limits of poverty; that many people - especially senior citizens - can't move for practical reasons. I'm down with that. What I'm rejecting is the *ideological* arguments I hear about staying in some neighborhood. Again, the Styx reaction: You're in the Diaspora, Just Move!

And, of course, you will ask: what about the land of Israel? Aren't those painted rocks sacred? Of course they are. But I'm also with Rebbe Yochanan Ben Zakkai on this - Israel is sacred, but the Torah and human life is more sacred. I reject land-for-peace deals because they're usually impractical and dangerous, not because I believe a clump of dirt is inherently worth a human life.

Again, to state clearly: Land for Peace has worked with some countries (e.g. Egypt, for now), and Jordan) and that is a good *practical* argument for the tactic in the future. Land for Peace has totally failed in Gaza, and was a fiasco with Lebanon, and hasn't worked well with Jericho. So my general wariness to Land-for-Peace is on practical grounds, with a bit of ideology thrown in (basically that Israel should exist, small stuff like that). But I opposed the ideological doctrine that one must die before ceding an inch of Israel. I claim that it is avodah zarah and goyish to think that wood and rocks is worth more than a human life.

Pic from here.

Sexual Abuse Among the Amish

{Backpost: From October 18, 2007, 11:33 am. All I had was the link}

This is an instructive story for those in the frum community who cannot understand that sexual predators are found everywhere. Charedim and Amish are often compared (mainly because they share wardrobes) and the lessons about predators in their midst are the same:

1. There's an irreducible percentage of the population that is just plain bad-crazy. Total immersion in Chumash, Shas and Mussar will not change crazy. Removing outside/secular influences will not change crazy.

   
   

2. All you can do with crazy is be vigilant and stop the sickos with the early warning signs. Halakha tells us this, ya know.
   

   
   

3. You must understand that to the twisted, diseased brain of a predator, sheltered religious communities are Candyland. The victims have been taught to not question authority, and the predators are hidden by a cloud of systemic respectability (a rabbi wouldn't molest! A parent wouldn't harm his kid!) As such, even if you think that the percentage of sickos are going to be reduced because of the healing light of Shas, Poskim, and Rashi on Chumash, the predators from the outside will be drawn to these communities and the internal home-grown predators will thrive.

There is a difference between the Amish and Charedim, as the news story illustrates as seen in this quote about a victim: "Mary's father was killed in a buggy accident when she was 5."

{Amazing picture from this - totally unrelated story - on this blog.}

Oh, Those Wacky Catholics

Bishop Richard Williamson, one of the fun loving Bishops de-excommunicated by Pope "ex-Hitler Youth" Benedict, in his own words denying the Holocaust:

This video came via Christopher Buckley's blog (which I found via Sullivan, as is often the case). And, if you don't mind reading harrowing impressions of a visit to Auschwitz (something I generally avoid), here's Buckley's (Irish ex-Catholic) memoir of his visit in 2001.

Obama's Repudiation of Wright

Yesterday Obama (finally) cut off any relationship with his former pastor, the Rev. "Al Sharpton" Wright. Full transcript here (NYTimes). Key passages below, and the video from MSNBC:

"You know, I have been a member of Trinity United Church of Christ since 1992. I have known Reverend Wright for almost 20 years. The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago. His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church.

They certainly don't portray accurately my values and beliefs. And if Reverend Wright thinks that that's political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn't know me very well. And based on his remarks yesterday, well, I may not know him as well as I thought, either.

Now, I've already denounced the comments that had appeared in these previous sermons. As I said, I had not heard them before. And I gave him the benefit of the doubt in my speech in Philadelphia, explaining that he has done enormous good in the church."

[snip]

"What we saw yesterday out of Reverend Wright was a resurfacing and, I believe, an exploitation of those old divisions."

We get these points from the repudiation:

1. Wright acted like a different man when Obama sat in the pews.
   
2. Hence, Wright's current diatribes are not the voice of Obama's religion.
   
3. Moreover, Obama's claiming that Wright's behavior is not like the greater Black church experience.
   
4. Obama was trying to be nice and respectful to his "crazy uncle" Wright throughout the campaign and especially in the Philadelphia speech. But since Wright repaid the courtesy with selfish rudeness, Obama is no longer going to tolerate him.
   
5. The 'exploitation' line is my favorite because it sounds like Obama is painting Wright as a newly born Al Sharpton - someone who now has tasted the limelight and won't go away.

Those Wacky Sudanis

As you've probably read today (e.g. this NYTimes story) the government of Sudan has convicted British schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons of Crimes Against Islam for allowing her 7 year old students name a teddy bear Mohammad (which, according to the Wiki, was chosen because its the name of a boy in the class). The punishment for Gibbons could have been death or whipping, instead she got 2 weeks in jail and deportation.

Today, hundreds of Sudanese protesters called for Gibbons' execution.

Now, I won't take the time to explain why this situation is disgusting. It does underscore just how dangerous it is to be a first grade teacher. Parent teacher conferences with radical Islamicists must be tense. I can imagine that there's heavy grade inflation.

But the real issue is that the people of Sudan are asking their government to execute this woman for her crimes against Mohammad. Because we all know he needs all the help he can get. However, this is also the same government that's in part responsible for the genocide in Darfur.

As the State department, uh, states:

The Sudanese government’s disastrous decision to arm, direct, and pay Northern Arab tribes, now called the Janjaweed, as their proxies in the war against Darfur’s rebels led to genocide and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and the destruction of their villages and livelihoods

I just find that you need to have your priorities *seriously* out of whack when you consider a crime against a Teddy Bear to be of graver concern than ethnic cleansing.

Republican Update: Bob Jones

In the scant few hours between when I wrote yesterday's post about the Republican candidates for 2008, Bob Jones III has come out to endorse Romney, saying:

This is all about beating Hillary. And I just believe that this man has the credentials both personally and ideologically in terms of his view about what American government should be to best represent the rank and file of conservative Americans. If it turns out to be Giuliani and Hillary we've got two pro choice candidates, and that would be a disaster.

What do we learn from this:

• Hillary is public enemy number one to the GOP, but like their overblown wedge freakshow, it may actually be over-the-top
  
• Being a pro-choice Christian is actually worse than a pro-life 'Cultist'

Hattip: TPM

St. Bush

During the Bush Honeymoon Period (from 9/11 until Katrina), when he seemed unstoppable, triumphalist Christers would state proudly that they love the fact that a devout Christian was in the White House. Even back then, I was advising them to not adopt him as their own as he appeared to be a mean and stupid person. We can't always choose who will be successful from our ethnic/cultural subgroup, but we can choose to adopt the person as a hero. As a Jewish-American, I want to adopt Albert Einstein (even though he wasn't very religious) and not Jonathan Pollard (who has found Jehovah in prison, I've been told). So it is with religious Christians and Bush... don't adopt him! - he's a cruel moron! - but I'm not sure they've gotten the message yet.

Here's a list of 50 quotes from Bush about his religious faith from the Aug 8 2007 London Times, compiled by their Religion reporter Libby Purves.

In the list are famous lines (like #17 "I couldn't imagine somebody like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Hanukkah" - White House, Dec. 10, 2001), but also just inane statements of his "simple" faith. I say simple because he seems as committed to religious terminology but not religious behavior. He probably likes praying because it's done alone and in direct communication with his chosen, self-defined Deity. As such, it is an act of egotism, not devotion. Minyan forces you to pray with others, to depend on others. Kneeling on your rich carpet to communicate one-on-one with Heaven as if you were a modern-day Moshe Rabbeinu is barely tolerated in halakha.

And outside of prayer, what does Bush do that can be called religious? I doubt he gives much to charity (I'm trying to find the numbers online; download his disclosures here). And let's not forget about the last president who was gloriously touted as a religious man who'd bring Christian principles to bear on White House policy: James Earl Carter.

Prager INRI

More and more I am deciding that certain people cannot be listened to anymore. It's the extremity of our times - the stakes are high, people are more extreme, and true colors are being shown. Some people like to ignore that our Executive Branch has engaged in criminal activities and possibly crimes against humanity. Some of those who deny these crimes have so sunk their fate with Bush & Crew that they need to get even more extreme.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that Dennis Prager has lost any early merit he had; his fine mind now twisted into saying absurd, hatful things.

Yesterday, he published a column where he argues that Ellison, the first and only Muslim to serve in Congress, should be prevented from using a Koran to swear into his oath of office.

Prager was educated in yeshiva. And yet, like many Jewish Republicans, he has forgotten that freedom is good because its good and because it has saved Jews from prosecution.

Prager supported Mel Gibson's movie, "The Passion" and naturally needed to defend Mel after his drunken tirade against the Jews. So now he's letting his GOP validated self-hatred devolve into total Christianist racism.

Prager in fact demonstrates how any solid belief in the GOP will require a definition of America as (fundamentalist) Christian. As he says:

[Ellison] should not be allowed to do [use the Koran] -- not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American civilization.

Dennis, dennis, dennis. Why don't you convert out, already, let your family and fans sit shiva, and save us further grief.

The Pope and the Muslims

This article from the Zenit News Agency proves my point on why Ratzenberg was elected: Papal Address at University of Regensburg, "Three Stages in the Program of De-Hellenization." That is, that his record is as a right-wing strict Catholic who will strengthen the core of the religion in Europe - and then the rest of the world - against the encroachment from both secularism and of Islam. He's a fighter, and his expected short term (he's pretty old) will be one of religious conflict.

Pic of Pope Ratzi from here. Backpost finished 2009-12-07.

Munich Madness, part 1

This will need to be brief because I actually have too much to say. Back in 2005, Steven Spielberg, King of the Jews (with all that title entails) decided that his years in higher education (baccalaureate from film school, which, admittedly, is better than Clown College), gives him the authority, nay, the responsibility to comment on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

We know from the fact that he is (1) rich, (2) not-religious, and (3) married a bunch of non-Jewish women, we shouldn't expect that a movie about Israel will not be favorable to the Jewy Jewish State for Jews. And we'd be right.

Munich (2005) is based on a fictional account, written as non-fiction, of the aftermath to the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. But because the book source wasn't false enough, Spielberg needed to fake it up with a whole bunch of stuff that insults the memories of the victims of the tragedy, insults Israel, and all in the service of making a simple grade-school morality point: there's no such thing as good violence.

Well, I didn't have the time to waste watching the film before talking about it from the pulpit. Rather, I adhered to the "Silence of the Jesus Lambs" Rules which state that you don't have to sit through a movie if more than 90% of eyewitnesses, including many you trust from other encounters but including ordinary neutral parties, all agree. People from all walks agreed that The Passion was a blood-orgy of anti-Semitic hate. And even though Mel Gibson was a known tee-totaling philo-Semitic philanthropist, the eyewitnesses spoke as one.

So too with Silence of the Munich. Many trustworthy sources said that it was mean, stupid, hokum. And so I based my sermons on their words, including this fine analysis by Rabbi Benjamin Blech.

The key point of Rabbi Blech is that Spielberg uniformly distorted events, and then just made stuff up, in order to broadcast a dishonest agenda:

Too bad the movie does not include perhaps the single most relevant dialogue in Jonas' book, Vengeance, that served as the primary source for Munich. In assigning the mission, the agents are given clear instructions: If you get all of the names on the list, your mission is an incredible success. Get six or five, we will feel the message has been sent that Jewish blood is not cheap, that we will not sit idly by as the world did during the Holocaust. Even if you get only one or two, it will not have been in vain. But if you will be faced with a choice between killing any one on the list together with an innocent bystander or aborting your mission, your instructions are to do nothing.

That piece of information is probably the most crucial difference between the Munich terrorists and the Israeli hit-squad, yet it wasn't included in the film.

Munich concludes with a final insult: The disillusioned leader of the mission, who cannot abide the ideology of a country that dares to declare that it will no longer idolize the glorification of the Jew as victim, renounces his country and settles in Brooklyn. And so ends the hope of the Jewish people.

It never happened. And it makes whatever message Spielberg sought to bring to the screen indefensible.

Part 2 of this topic will deal with my reaction to actually seeing the movie.

P.S. I do like the fact that after insulting the memories of the victims of the Olympic massacre, Spielberg becomes part of the Beijing Olympics committee. His moral compass was shattered, and who knows when. And, yeah, he pulled out of the committee a few months ago in protest over the Chinese complicity of the genocide in Darfur. Bra-effing-O Steve. You're a real hero.

Backpost finished 4/13/08, 9:11 PM. I had just the link to Blech's article.

More Passion

[This is a draft post from sometime in early March 2004 - I didn't post it because it was unfinished, as you can see from the Roman Numerals at the end of the post... I don't have time to finish it now, either, but I gotta make this blog less drafty!]

Hopefully, the end of this topic

Some last points about the "Passion."

First of all, I want to rationalize why we are spending so much time on it. I happen to believe that it is a significant point in early 21st Century. Yeah, this is just a film; yeah, its a pet project of a lowbrow religious punk - a punk who has been able to manipulate the entire Western World into paying attention to his personal demonology.

The 20th century saw the transformation of Western Culture from Industrial to post-Industrial to Information. We are in the "information age" (for those who're keeping track) and when you recognize that information is all in the mind, you will recognize that anything which directly impacts the mind is both powerful and significant.

In a land that holds free speech as an inalienable right, we have understood even back in the 18th Century that ideas are powerful and significant. However, over those hundreds of years, we've learned that speech can liberate as well as obliterate.

"Hate speech" is a difficult and nebulous substance that has only been seriously thought out in the late 20th Century. We have the Supreme Court cases that relate to dangerous speech (shouting fire in a crowded room) to hate speech. A watershed moment, I believe, was the Clarence Thomas - Anita Hill case which alerted America that sexual harassment is harmful and is accomplished in the intangible realm of verbal and non-verbal language. The fact that the culprit of the harassment is one of the most powerful people on earth is ironic but understandable when you see him as an antediluvian vestige and an accident of history.

Speech is a weapon; images are weapons. The cultural-conservatives who demand prayer in schools (speech), Ten Commandments in stone in the courthouse (images), no smut on television and radio (both), understand this.

In fact, were you to ask a cultural-conservative and a cultural-liberal what the greatest threat to American society is in 2004, the liberal would say "the near-fascist thuggery of our rapacious and illegally elected government." A conservative would say "Hollywood."

The reason why "The Passion" is so important is because it wages a war of images and ideas using the enormous power of Hollywood and Big Business. It's message - about religion and violence - has been the public discourse for the past 20 years and ever-so-much-more-so in the past 3 years.

That's why I think we need to still discuss it.

II. Why you do not need to see it
III. Christianity is anti-Semitic by definition

The Real Cheese

For those who are skeptical about the dollar value for the hello kitty grilled cheese, see this story in Slate about the $28000 original. Note, I made a cheese sandwich this morning (and am in the process of eating it) and, hey, it looks like a cloud.

Hello Kitty Grilled Cheese Sandwich

Bid quickly - especially if you were outbid on the Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwich, the Hello Kitty Sandwich is still available:

eBay item 5536791340 (Ends Nov-25-04 14:19:11 PST) - A Cute Miracle! Hello Kitty Grilled Cheese Sandwich!

Canada's View of America

Evidently, Canada has been receiving quite a number of investigative requests since Bush's overwhelming crushing stunning majority victory. The Toronto Star suggests that this be the new map of North America.

God Did Not Support Iraq War

OK, prepare for another weird Bush ally reversal. As you may have noticed, Bush does not hold onto allies well. All the decent people of his administration have bolted (except for Powell whose loyalty can be ascribed either to a favor to Bush Sr. or his military ethics). O'Neill, Clarke, my man DiIulio, etc. Now even the wacky are fleeing.

Pat Robertson, the evangelical politician/cleric (dual class!), said on CNN Tuesday night that God was worried about the war but Bush scoffed at the warning.

A key passage:

Robertson, in an interview with CNN that aired Tuesday night, said God had told him the war would be messy and a disaster. When he met with Bush in Nashville, before the war Bush did not listen to his advice, Robertson said, and believed Saddam Hussein was an evil tyrant who needed to be removed.

Considering that Bush is a non-denominational evangelical Protestant superfreak, and so is Robertson, you'd think Bush would listen to a master. Nope.

Robertson, like other Bush allies who utter uncomfortable truths (see Duelfer about WMD and Rumsfeld about the Sadam-Bin Laden link) had to rapidly retract:

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, "Of course, the president never made such a comment."

Robertson released a statement about Bush late Wednesday in which he said, "I emphatically stated that I believe 'the blessing of heaven is upon him' and I am persuaded that he will win this election and prevail on the war against terror in order to keep America safe from her avowed enemies."

I'd be more entertained if I weren't so scared.

The Passion of the W

No, that's not a Sesame Street episode (much to my dismay), but a sad assessment of the popularity of the current President and why he is held in esteem by many. Just as Jews, secularists, and other non-Christians misjudged the eye-bulging power of Gibson's theocide fantasy "The Passion" so the popularity of the first Christian Right President has been misjudged.

George W does not seem to have much of an overt personality; his whole life he's been defined by someone else and by golly he's good at that. He was defined by Mommy, his Daddy, and Jack Daniels. Many non-Christian republicans (I think I know most of them personally) see him as the flag-draped defender of America after 9/11. He isn't, but he fills out a role well. It's the advantage of having an arid brain.

But for most of his rabid followers, and the core of the Republican party, George W is the embodiment of a devout Christian; and that makes him durn near infallible. The closest I can get to this view is if I were a Chassid and a fellow Chassid became President.

I say Chassid and not a fellow Jew because we Jews are notorious for attacking our own when they are in prominent positions (we may vote exclusively for Jewish candidates, but I heard too many people shy away from Gore in '00 because they didn't want Lieberman to be VP for "they may hate us" reasons)

The Christians in this country feel like an abused minority even though they consider themselves the "moral majority." They think the media is liberal and antagonistic and they believe there's no voice for them (despite the rabid vapid Right Wing press which is powerful and unapologetically partisan).

Again, see the "Passion" reaction - any attack on the movie was seen as an attack on Jesus H. himself. No matter that the movie - according to reliable reports - was badly made. Who cares about quality?! It's about Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezuz. I see the exact same reaction about Bush. He's a devout Thumper and if you attack his idiotic worldview, his inability to handle contrary information, his profligate past before his rebirth in the blood of the lamb - these are all traits that the Christian Right considers positive signs of a true believer!

Bush's support should thus be seen as rabid. His reaction to 9/11 is seen as a holy war, a crusade, and in the mind's of the Christian Right, that's a good thing! When Bush says that he's following the (direct) orders from God, the XR thinks that's accurate and wonderful. Catholics have the Pope, American Protestants have their Papist-President, Bush II.

Kerry has no chance against that. First, he's an unholy papist… and he's not even that frum! Again, showing that Edwards would have been a smarter choice. And I'm just assuming because he's a smiley gentile from North Carolina that he's frum.

I've said again and again that Jews need to be very careful with the Christian Right. They do what they want and that often means Holy War against those they consider unholy. They appear to celebrate ignorance and intolerance. And Bush is their prophet.

Pic found in 2009 here.

Who is Our Government?

First, Bob Woodward shows that President Bush considers Prince Bandar of Saudi F. Arabia to be a higher ranking official than the Secretary of State.

Then we find out that our policies against Iraq have been orchestrated by Ahmed Chalabi- who quite possibly is an Iranian double-agent.

Now, according to today's NYTimes, we see that Bush is going to the Vatican to help influence American politics (Bush Asked for Vatican's Help on Political Issues, Report Says).

Seriously, any of you Republicans out there, please explain to me why Bush is still a valid leader of the United States.

THE VATICAN!!?!

Back in 1960, Americans were afraid that JFK would listen to the Pope say 'boo.' Now we have the born-again Baptist bonehead in office who actively seeks the Vatican influence on American politics.

What's next for Bush? Who could possibly be more detestable than Prince Bandar, more calumnious than Chalabi, more counter to American principles of religious freedom (and independence from foreign influence) than the Vatican.

I guess the next step is to hire Monica Lewinsky to go after Kerry.

The Best Passion Commentary Yet

I haven't seen "South Park" since the first season (which was groundbreaking, at times funny, in general disturbing, and had enough intelligence and satire to continue surviving.

The most recent episode is Episode 804: The Passion of the Jew. Cartman, the Parker-Stone everyhick who is the butt of most of the satire, has seen the Passion so often that he starts dressing up as Hitler and calling a picture of Mel Gibson "Furher." Kyle, the Jewish character, is chickened into seeing the movie (we see him cowering and vomiting through it) and he feels so guilty for his responsibility in killing Jesus that he has nightmares featuring his joining in with the disgusting Jewish stereotypes stabbing and jeering Jesus.

Meanwhile, Stan and Kenny see the movie and they think it's so bad that they go to Mel Gibson in Malibu to demand their money back. Mel turns out to be a sado-masochistic loony who runs around his house in his underwear, shrieking, and demanding to be tortured.

Over-the-top, but (as usual) the message is very true.