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Take Five (2014 and All That edition)

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Take-FiveONE: Bzzzzzt!

While another clod named Robertson has been hogging headlines, Pat Robertson just keeps on keeping on, a one-man dick dynasty of the old school variety. Despite his years, the octogenarian still packs more five-star dumb into a typical week than a teenager with a beer bong, a tube of airplane glue, a carton of fireworks and a boxed set of Jackass movies.

The good folks at Right Wing Watch have been busy trying to keep up with Robertson’s recent blather, which included a few things about Barack Obama, most of them scurrilous, some of them ridiculous, all of them wrong. Robertson is among the last conservative chowderheads still desperately pushing the stale “Obama’s in over his head” meme. Conveniently skipping past the President’s largely successful half-decade of experience in geopolitics as head of state of the most powerful nation on Earth, Robertson claimed:

“[Obama] doesn’t understand what these things are, he’s never been in the military, he doesn’t understand it, he doesn’t understand geopolitics.”

The charge is especially rich coming from a guy who believes that his stint as a “liquor officer” in Korea somehow constituted combat experience. But Robertson’s cognitive problems pale in comparison to his fondness for just plain old lying about stuff:

“But he has a prism on the world that was shaped by his radical father and he has a prism that was shaped by some of his friends who were radical leftists and his spiritual mentor who at one time hated America; that’s who is running our country.”

That, of course, was in reference to the father whom the President barely knew, the Chicago acquaintance who co-founded the Weather Underground before becoming a respected academic and non-violent activist for progressive causes, and the pastor very publicly and painfully repudiated by then-candidate Obama in a landmark speech on race relations, respectively. Robertson went on to compare America to Lemuel Gulliver and said the nation was being “held down by these pygmies,” although he prudently left unspecified the identity of said pygmies. A scant 24 hours later, just as these inanities were beginning to draw ire, Robertson spread mustard and relish on his other foot and shoved it deeply into his mouth:

A viewer named Catherine told the TV preacher that she had recently reconnected with a childhood friend, who was a lesbian. She invited the friend to meet her children but became concerned when she asked to bring her same sex partner…

Robertson advised the woman not to “shun” her friend, “but at the same time, you don’t want your children to grow up as lesbians.”

“That’s what you’re talking about,” he said. “You don’t want to show them that that’s an acceptable lifestyle for your family.”

President’s a radical leftist, nation’s being held down by pygmies, sexuality is simply a lifestyle; what does a guy who’s wrong about everything he sees do for an encore? Be wrong about the future, of course! Robertson ended the year by retreating to the mountains, where God (or the thin air) revealed to him what 2014 has in store: Iran getting nukes, Islam “in retreat,” some sort of “credit crisis” involving China, and the usual vague tut-tutting about chaos. Oh, and some more spectacular idiocy about Barack Obama:

… I think that the President is going to be severely, severely hampered. I think that America is going to turn against him much more so than now, as that Affordable Care thing starts biting hard as it is, he’s going to be discredited terribly. As a process, I think that he is going to withdraw. He likes Hawaii, he spent a lot of time in Hawaii and he probably figured, ‘Okay, I’ve done my thing, now let’s go surfing.’ I mean really, he’s got a big airplane to ride around in, he’s got a big staff, he’s got a big expensive limousine to ride in, he can just go bopping around the world and he doesn’t have to govern and I don’t think he’s going to because he can’t get anything through.

You can find a nice rundown of asinine Robertson predictions from previous years here. I especially love the 2005 one about mass conversions by Muslims to Christianity, the 1996 one about Bill Clinton becoming a one-term President, and the 2007 one about a huge terrorist attack that could kill “possibly millions” of Americans. And I’m still tickled by one I commented on two years ago, when Robertson warned of imminent economic collapse. (Hey, don’t blame Pat that it didn’t happen; God assured him it would.)

So what are the odds of his 2014 predictions having any accuracy? As of year-end, over 2.1 million people have enrolled in “that Affordable Care thing” via state and federal exchanges, and almost 4 million more are newly eligible for Medicaid or CHIP. So bite that, Pat. Hard.

TWO: Camping with God

Speaking of being wrong, I’d be remiss not to note, belatedly, the passing of Harold Camping, who died on December 15. Camping was a fellow who raised being flat-out mistaken into an art form, as noted in previous editions of this column.

The radio evangelist first calculated that the world would end in 1994, later chalking up its failure to do so to an error in his math. After fixing May 21, 2011 as the new end date, Camping told a newspaper he was “flabbergasted” when the day passed without eschatological incident. Undaunted, he and his wife holed up in a motel while Camping ran his numbers again, determining that the actual this-is-it date was October 21; May 21 was simply the day on which Jesus judged the world, and He would be taking out the trash in the fall.

Well, it’s the darnedest thing, but Harold Camping turned out to be wrong again. I know, right? Weird. Worse still, Camping’s precarious health had prompted him to step down from his ministry and his radio pulpit, Family Radio Stations Inc., only a week before October’s Apocalypse Not Now. If Camping made any further attempts to forecast the end of the world, he apparently kept them to himself.

Tragically, he suffered a fall at home on November 30, and never recovered. The world – this world, at least – has ended for Harold Camping. Wherever he is now, in whatever form, I wish him well, but I do hope God will have a word with him about his math skills, or lack of them.

THREE: Separation of What, Now?

It sent a shiver up my spine when I heard that Tom Hayden has declared 2014 the “Year of the Bible,” but then I learned that the Tom Hayden in question is not the author of the Port Huron Statement, but just some doofus whom the citizens of a Texas town were silly enough to elect as their mayor. Hayden made the announcement (video here) at a town council meeting on December 16 (transcription mine):

“… tonight I’m going to do something that’s a special proclamation. And the idea of this is to encourage our community to discuss the Bible, to discuss it with your kids, discuss it with your family. So if I could, I’d like to read this special proclamation:

Throughout the history of the United States, one of the most important influences that has shaped our country into a distinctive nation, none may have been more profound or enduring than the Bible;

And whereas early settlers sought fortitude in their religious convictions found in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, and their communities were centered on a deep devotion to their Christian principles that helped provide comfort and strength and was a source of faith that they could long endure in a new land and a new home called Texas;

And whereas the framework of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution was modeled and influenced by the teachings found in the Bible;

And whereas the values put forth in the Bible have been the foundation of our country and belief that all people, all individuals, are bestowed with inalienable rights, that all are created with equality in the eyes of the Creator and the laws of our land;

And whereas the teachings of compassion and love for our neighbors has inspired institutional and governmental expressions of benevolent outreach, the encouragement of private charity, the establishments of schools and hospitals, and abolition of slavery;

And whereas it is true and correct our nation was not founded on any particular religion, not is it mandated by any government in the United States that any individual should observe a particular religion;

However, the fiber of our Founding Fathers and the people that have made up our nation, from all walks of life, have expressed their deeply held Christian beliefs…

Today our country, our town, is faced with many challenges, challenges that are beyond our own abilities, that require wisdom, grace and compassion from God. As many of our greatest national leaders, among them Presidents Washington, Jackson, Lincoln and Wilson, have recognized the influence of the Bible on our country’s development, and as plainly stated by the President, Andrew Jackson, who referred to the Bible as “the rock on which our Republic rests,” I ask that you join with me, Tom Hayden, Mayor of the Town of Flower Mound, Texas, in proclaiming 2014 to be “the Year of the Bible” in Flower Mound, Texas, and encourage all residents in their own way to examine the principles and teachings found in the Bible.

Inspired directly by Hayden’s suggestion, allow me to quote John 11:35:

“Jesus wept.”

FOUR: “And verily they didst smite one another, and also the television…”

I do hope Flower Moundians can get through Hayden’s “Year of the Bible” without getting hurt or arrested, unlike Carolyn Unfricht and Daniel Camarda of Cartersville, Georgia, whose examination of “the principles and teachings found in the Bible” went badly awry a few days before Christmas.

The two were apparently discussing the 10 Commandments over recreational beverages in a motel room when Unfricht took offense at something Camarda said and hit him in the face with a Bible. Unfricht told police that Camarda then slung her into a table and a TV set. An attending officer reported that he found blood on the carpet, and that the amateur Bible scholars were “highly intoxicated with slurred speech and having some difficulty walking.”

Happily, the two were taken into custody before either could violate the Sixth Commandment.

FIVE: PS

The DFP Blog wishes our readers, our wonderful contributors and DFP’s forum members a happy, healthy, Democratic 2014!


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