Brian 1:2 So spake the Fool in prayer before the angry masses on that 11th Day of October 2008, the year of our Lord: "there are millions of people around this world praying to their god—whether it's Hindu, Buddha, Allah—that [Barack Obama] wins, for a variety of reasons. And Lord, I pray that you will guard your own reputation, because they're going to think that their God is bigger than you if that happens."
Brian 1:3 And lo, the huddled mob—rabid with loathing and stricken, like others before them, with a fear of change and leaders of color—praised the Fool with applause. And both were pleased in their ignorance. The fool in question of course is Arnold Conrad, former pastor of Grace Evangelical Free Church, pleading with God at a John McCain rally in Iowa. However, unlike the shrewd fools in literature from Socrates to Shakespeare, this one is anything but wise. For the sake of argument, let's ignore the fact he's a pastor and alleged scholar of religion and give the Fool the benefit of the doubt. After all, an imbecile can't reasonably be expected to know that Hindu is not a god (or even a proper noun for that matter), Buddha isn't a deity either, and neither are prayed to by anyone. Anywhere.
And of course, while any average idiot—except this one apparently—knows Allah is the same God prayed to and worshiped by Christians and Jews, we needn't require Pastor Arnie to understand these or other religions and cultures. Why? Because, despite his Doctor of Ministry degree, that brand of cultural sensitivity and theological understanding is anathema to a myopic and intellectually incurious fundamentalist. The pomposity of this self-righteous dolt notwithstanding, I'm always amazed by proselytizers who pray, prattle and pontificate with the arrogant assumption they know who God is rooting for—as if God has a stake or interest in a particular candidate.
Prayers like Pastor Arnie's are futile of course and as patently absurd as asking the almighty to intervene in the Superbowl. But the obvious silliness doesn't stop so many evangelicals from so frequently contending Republicans are the party of God and John McCain (R-Nazareth) is Christ's personally vetted nominee for President. Their presumption is as comical as their worldview is provincial. My personal hunch is that God doesn't much care about American electoral politics but, if s/he does, I doubt s/he'd be categorically opposed to a Democrat. Barack Obama is a Christian. He was "saved," he was baptized, and he was a regular congregant in a Church of Christ for over 20 years. Besides—from the right to universal health care, nondiscrimination, and racial/gender equality to the eradication of poverty, earning of a living wage, dealing with AIDS and tax relief for those who actually need it—Democrats and their standard-bearers have traditionally favored policies uniquely more suited for and geared towards the middle and working classes and the poor/disenfranchised. In other words, Obama's policies tend to support the very people that the foolish pastor's God named "the Salt of the Earth" in the best-selling book s/he "authored" thousands of years ago. Christ didn't say much in favor of the free market, unprovoked war, assault weapons for "hunting," or tax-cuts for the rich and he was completely silent on those "cardinal sins" of abortion and gay marriage. But he did have an abundance of opinions about equality, justice, compassion, tolerance, forgiveness and love, as well as leaving judgment of others to God and taking care of our neediest brothers and sisters. So frankly, Pastor Arnie, I still don't think God is rooting for either candidate, but if s/he is, given their agreement on the issues, my money's on Obama. I'll give you 5:1 odds on your money for McCain, but I'd call that a Fool's Bet. Matthew 25:40 "And the King answering shall say to them, 'Verily, I say to you, Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it to me.'"
It becomes more apparent by the day that the choice of Sarah Palin may come to haunt the McCain campaign this November. It has now come to light that Moose-ah-lini used her private yahoo email account to conduct state business--flagrantly circumventing Alaska laws requiring all state-related correspondence to be archived and saved. And we recently learned that the self-titled pit-bull's private lawyers (or, more accurately, McCain's) are suing to stop the ethics inquiry she welcomed and the Republican-dominated, bipartisan Legislative Council unanimously decided in July to initiate. Talk about being before the investigation before she was against it. But of course all that was before Obama's choice of Biden and his subsequent convention bounce, and well before McCain realized he was absolutely fucked in November without someone or some way to get evangelicals excited about him--or at least some Republican. As it turns out, now that she's the Republican VP nominee, she'd rather have the investigation conducted on her turf by a "Personnel Board" answering only to her administration. Here's the best part: she filed an ethics complaint against herself--the only way to constitutionally get said Board to investigate--and her appointed, non-elected Attorney General instructed state employees not to cooperate with the Legislative Council supboenas. I guess her brand of government reform is ignoring it altogether when it proves politically inconvenient to her ambitions.
There's a very distinct possibility no laws were violated or ethics impinged, but I generally tend to think that where there's smoke there's a good chance of fire. The bottom line, of course, is McCain's glaring hypocrisy. How can he convince any lucid American he's going to "reform" Washington when he's running as a 25-year veteran of said institution whose running-mate is fleeing from her own ethics inquiry and doing whatever she can to shut it down?
McCain took a risk in picking such a political amateur, but he'll do well to stop her making more sophomoric mistakes so early. It does little good to run as an agent of change and government reform when your running mate agrees to cooperate with a bipartisan ethics investigation and then, six weeks later, does all she can to derail it. I hope Sarah's family enjoys moose-stew as much as she does because, frankly, that's about all she's qualified to nuke.
Forget about linking John McCain to George Bush. Barack Obama would benefit from telling Americans that Sarah Palin is every bit as vacuous and unskilled as President Dubya ever was, and she's equally evasive of the media.
I'm shocked by the lack of confidence McCain continues to have in his insulting and dangerous choice of Sarah Palin. Aside from her abuse of power by intervening in personnel matters in Alaska, the blatant lie about opposing the "bridge-to-nowhere," and her laughable claim to be against congressional earmarks when Alaska is the leading per-capita recipient of those very same congressional funds, why don't we hear more from this co-maverick of his?
If Palin is ready on day one to be a heartbeat away from the most powerful job in the world, then why quarantine her from reporters while sending her out speaking the same stump speech on teleprompter she gave at the convention? I could hazard an intelligent guess, but there's clearly no need to discuss that or any pressing, relevant issues now that McCain has a token, pandering ploy of a runningmate. Who cares if she's competent when she excites the base (particularly the men) and values the "culture of life"--except of course the life of animals she wears around her neck and those she "field-dresses" for a novel snack (moose stew, for the record, is the puppy chow of choice for this self-described pit bull). I have a friend who is an Emmy-winning actor on a long-running daytime soap opera. He said yesterday that he was still dumbfounded he has "given more interviews to the press than Sarah Palin." Isn't this the woman that, if elected, could be one second away from having her trigger-finger on 'The Button?' With less than two months left until the election, don't Americans deserve and need to know where McCain's number two stands on the issues that really matter in our everyday lives? Not likely, it seems, since campagin manager Rick Davis admitted two weeks ago this campaign wouldn't be about issues, it would be about personalities. Hmm. Well, the problem with running a campaign on personality is twofold: a) McCain doesn't seem to have much of one without Palin; and b) the person-we'd-rather-have-a-beer with already had a crack at running the country and it didn't turn out so well, remember? For for all his good-ol' boy charm--never mind he was the very New England born, silver-spooned, prep-school, Ivy League elitist he likes to mock--and despite his [apparently] endearing inability to formulate two thoughts into a coherent sentence, these last eight years have been so disastrous to our economy, military and global credibility that we will be spending the next eight years just starting to clean up the mess. And although he loved Jesus, guns, and white people and appealed to the fundamentalist base, he's still not appealing--even when disguised in a skirt and lipstick with a Cracker-Barrell updo.
