Hampton Roads' Resident Buffoon, Pat Robertson Gives Petraeus a Pass for Adultery

Is it just me or is the frequency of Pat Robertson's outbursts of verbal diarrhea increasing?  The man has always been an embarrassment to this region (and actually carries a very high negative view with locals) and made many of us groan.  Now, the man who proclaims that gays should suppress their sexual orientation and remain celibate or better yet pray away the gay says that David Petraeus' adulterous affair is excusable.  After all, he's a man and a sexy woman through herself at him.  RightWing Watch looks at Robertson's latest batshitery.  Here are highlights:

Yesterday on the 700 Club, televangelist Pat Robertson seemed to portray CIA Director David Petraeus as the real victim of the growing sex scandal involving him and his biographer, Paula Broadwell. He described Broadwell as an “extremely good-looking woman” who is a “marathon runner, she’d run Iron Man triathlons and so she’s out running with him, and she's writing a biography,” and Petraeus simply couldn’t help himself: “The man’s off in a foreign land and he’s lonely and here’s a good-looking lady throwing herself at him. He’s a man.”

Get Ready for a GOP Cat Fight between Bolling and Cuccinelli

With Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli's announcement yesterday that he's running for governor of Virginia in 2013, the stage has been set for a monumental cat fight among Virginia Republicans. One the more deranged side will be Kookinelli and the forces of Christianist evil, if you will, and on the other will be Bill Bolling and his mentor Governor Bob McDonnell. While Bolling will try to "out conservative" Kookinelli, I suspect that McDonnell realizes that Kookinelli is simply too crazy and extreme to win in the 2013 general election - especially if the Democrats field a well financed candidate who is NOT from Southwest Virginia. Here are highlights from the Washington Post on the coming contest:

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, who has said for years he would support Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling for governor in 2013 said Thursday that he plans to continue to do so despite news that Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli would jump into the race.

“Since early 2008, I’ve been clear that I will strongly support Bill Bolling for governor in 2013,’’ McDonnell said in a statement. “Bill is a trusted adviser and a close personal friend. As lieutenant governor, Bill has been a key member of our administration. Serving as our chief job creation officer, Bill has been tireless and successful in his work to bring more jobs and economic opportunities to the commonwealth. I look forward to supporting Bill in his campaign for governor.”

Meanwhile the snipping has begun among conservative blogosphere. Too Conservative has this to say about Kookinelli's "narcissism":

The timing of this “announcement” by Cuccinelli is disgusting and extremely self serving and selfish. He does this right before The Advance when people would have been otherwise fawning all over Bill Bolling with his new found power as the Senate tiebreaker. Or maybe Bob McDonnell and his election as RGA Chair. Instead Cooch takes this particular moment to upstage Bolling so people will talk about this all weekend and fawn all over Cuccinelli. Cooch has always been all about Cooch before anything else, so this really shouldn’t surprise anyone.

Think about it, he leaks out a non-announcement “announcement”, saying he’ll make a more formal announcement later after all these other things happen so as not to divert attention from those important things. And in doing so he creates a media frenzy surrounding himself right before the big annual state GOP GTG. Completely narcissistic self promotion. But that’s the Cult of Ken Cuccinelli for you.

On the other side of the GOP spectrum - the side even less in touch with objective reality - Mason Conservative unleashes a broadside at Bolling:

The panic spreading across the social mediaverse I've been watching the last 24 hours is frightening if you hope to support Bill Bolling. The Bolling people clearly were not ready for this to happen this early and have been caught flat-footed and have not thought before expressing their reactions.

Just as a little history lesson for those out there who don't know. The deal brokered by McDonnell and Bolling in late 2008 was between them and nobody else. Ken wasn't part of that . . . in fact, he has reason to hold it against them. It was McDonnell and Bolling that got John Brownlee in the race for AG to *keep* Ken off the ticket because they thought he would be a drag. For proof I point to both logic and Phil Cox was Brownlee's consultant throughout the campaign. So for these guys to suddenly express "regret" that Cuccinelli has changed his mind is laughable. Secondly, for the line of McDonnell and Bolling showed us how to win is only a half-truth. Ken was a key to that sweep, and he got more votes than Bolling statewide, by about 15,000.

Bolling comes out of the Richmond machine of Tom Bliley that has given us Jim Gilmore, Eric Cantor and a plethora of state legislators and I would expect better from them. They need to take a deep breath, inhale . . . exhale . . . inhale . . . exhale. Its a long way away and I can't believe they weren't ready for this because it was always going to happen. They've had six years of preparation for this run, if not one person ever gave thought and had a plan in place for a primary challenger then they all need to be fired.

The coming drama, back stabbing and back biting is going to provide high entertainment value. With luck, Kookinelli and Bolling will greatly damage one another and ultimate help their Democrat opponent. And with the two of them trying to be more conservative - read reactionary and insane - than the other, there should be a lot of batshit craziness flying around that will make for great Democrat ad material.

Vatican Exorcist Says Yoga and Harry Potter are Satanic

When not busy covering up the sexual abuse of children and youth, the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy continues to focus on total batshitery - like finding "satanic" elements in all number of things. The bitter old men in dresses have it backwards, of course - it is they themselves and their feudal style rule of the Church that are satanic. A case in point in the lunacy that passes for serious discussion comes from Father Gabriele Amorth, a former exorcist for the Vatican, says yoga and Harry Potter are tools of the devil. Yoga's big sin is that it might lead to Hindu-like thoughts on spirituality. Amorth also claims that the Harry Potter books convince children to believe in black magic - Amorth's own stock in trade. It's amazing that children can separate fictional stories and fantasy from reality but the nasty old men in Rome cannot. Here are highlights from the Daily News on this insanity:

The Vatican’s former chief exorcist says yoga and Harry Potter are tools of the devil. “Practicing yoga is Satanic, it leads to evil just like reading Harry Potter,” Father Gabriele Amorth said this week.

Those seemingly “innocuous” Potter books convince kids to believe in black magic, he said. “In Harry Potter the Devil acts in a crafty and covert manner, under the guise of extraordinary powers, magic spells and curses,” said Amorth.

As for yoga, it leads to Hinduism and “all eastern religions are based on a false belief in reincarnation,” the 86-year-old priest said.

Amorth made the hellraising remarks at a film festival in the Italian city of Umbria, where he was invited to introduce a movie about exorcism called “The Rite,”

“Satan is always hidden and what he most wants is for us not to believe in his existence,” he said. “He studies every one of us and our tendencies towards good and evil, and then he offers temptations.”

Science can’t explain evil, added Amorth, who claims to have performed 50,000 exorcisms before retiring in 2000. He is both founder and honorary president for life of the International Association of Exorcists.

While the Jesuit’s remarks might strike many as the ravings of a man possessed, Pope Benedict once warned of “subtle seductions” in the Potter books that “dissolve Christianity in the soul.” The Pope has also warned that yoga “can degenerate into a cult of the body.”

I ask again, why does anyone listen to much less treat these nutcases with difference?

What Do You Call This??

I saw this photo over at Joe.My.God and it was just too good to pass up. As "Linda Richmond" would say on SNL, talk amongst yourselves and share your thoughts. :) I wonder what "Marcia" Bachmann has to say about it!

Michele Bachmann's Holy War

Rolling Stone has a lengthy piece on GOP loon and Christofascist Michele Bachmann (seen hiding while spying on gay rights activists at left) . The picture that it paints is none too pretty. In my view, Bachmann is a clear and present danger to constitutional government and in some ways I find the woman even more frightening than Sarah Palin. The big question to me is one of whether or not the trained circus dogs in the main stream media will break loose of their leashes and advise the general public as to just how looney tunes Ms. Bachmann is in fact. So many bad things have happened - e.g., the Iraq War - and continue to happen - the GOP threats to the poor and unemployed while seeking further tax cuts for the obscenely wealthy - because the MSM no longer does its job. Investigative reporting - as opposed to mindlessly parroting sound bites from the GOP and the Christian Right - seems to be a lost art. Here are a few highlights from the Rolling Stone article (read the whole article):
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Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and, as you consider the career and future presidential prospects of an incredible American phenomenon named Michele Bachmann, do one more thing. Don't laugh.
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It may be the hardest thing you ever do, for Michele Bachmann is almost certainly the funniest thing that has ever happened to American presidential politics. . . . .
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But don't laugh. Don't do it. And don't look her in the eyes; don't let her smile at you. Michele Bachmann, when she turns her head toward the cameras and brandishes her pearls and her ageless, unblemished neckline and her perfect suburban orthodontics in an attempt to reassure the unbeliever of her non-threateningness, is one of the scariest sights in the entire American cultural tableau. She's trying to look like June Cleaver, but she actually looks like the T2 skeleton posing for a passport photo. You will want to laugh, but don't, because the secret of Bachmann's success is that every time you laugh at her, she gets stronger.
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In modern American politics, being the right kind of ignorant and entertainingly crazy is like having a big right hand in boxing; you've always got a puncher's chance. And Bachmann is exactly the right kind of completely batshit crazy. Not medically crazy, not talking-to-herself-on-the-subway crazy, but grandiose crazy, late-stage Kim Jong-Il crazy . . . .
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Bachmann's story, to hear her tell it, is about a suburban homemaker who is chosen by God to become a politician who will restore faith and family values to public life and do battle with secular humanism. But by the time you've finished reviewing her record of lies and embellishments and contradictions, you'll have no idea if she actually believes in her own divine inspiration, or whether it's a big con job.
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Young Michele found Jesus at age 16, not long before she went away to Winona State University and met a doltish, like-minded believer named Marcus Bachmann. After finishing college, the two committed young Christians moved to Oklahoma, where Michele entered one of the most ridiculous learning institutions in the Western Hemisphere, a sort of highway rest area with legal accreditation called the O.W. Coburn School of Law; Michele was a member of its inaugural class in 1979.
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Bachmann was mentored by a crackpot Christian extremist professor named John Eidsmoe, a frequent contributor to John Birch Society publications who once opined that he could imagine Jesus carrying an M16 and who spent considerable space in one of his books musing about the feasibility of criminalizing blasphemy.
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Bachmann says she believes in a limited state, but she was educated in an extremist Christian tradition that rejects the entire notion of a separate, secular legal authority and views earthly law as an instrument for interpreting biblical values. As a legislator, she not only worked to impose a ban on gay marriage, she also endorsed a report that proposed banning anyone who "espoused or supported Shariah law" from immigrating to the U.S. (Bachmann seems so unduly obsessed with Shariah law that, after listening to her frequent pronouncements on the subject, one begins to wonder if her crazed antipathy isn't born of professional jealousy.)
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The woman is truly crazy and in my view, her followers need some serious mental health intervention (as does Bachmann herself). Perhaps we need to ship her to Iran or Saudia Arabia. She wants a religious extremist government,? Then let her live under one for a while.

Is John McCain a Bush Clone Homophobe?

Wow, John Aravosis at America Blog has two posts that are pretty much must reads. The first found here tracks some really bat shit stuff McCain - or maybe I need to switch to McCrazy - said about his captors in Vietnam: "A lot of them were homosexual." That's what McCain said in a 1973 interview with U. S. News & World Report. Here's a quote from the 1973 article:

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Now I don't hate them any more—not these particular guys. I hate and detest the leaders. Some guards would just come in and do their job. When they were told to beat you they would come in and do it. Some seemed to get a big bang out of it. A lot of them were homosexual, although never toward us. Some, who were pretty damned sadistic, seemed to get a big thrill out of the beatings.

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Here's what John had to say about this whacked out statement (the more I see of McCain, the more I shudder at the though of him as president):

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How did POW McCain know they were gay if they weren't gay "toward him"? Were the homosexuals the ones who enjoyed the beatings or were the sadists a separate category? We have lots of unanswered questions here. Like—how come he mentions how gay the North Vietnamese were but leaves out that inspiring tale of the cross on the floor he mentioned last weekend?

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The second post can be found here and looks at Jack Cafferty's comparison of Bush and McCain. The comparison is scary. Here are a few highlights:

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It occurs to me that John McCain is as intellectually shallow as our current president. When asked what his Christian faith means to him, his answer was a one-liner. "It means I'm saved and forgiven." Great scholars have wrestled with the meaning of faith for centuries.....One after another, McCain's answers were shallow, simplistic, and trite. He showed the same intellectual curiosity that George Bush has -- virtually none.

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John McCain graduated 894th in a class of 899 at the Naval Academy at Annapolis. His father and grandfather were four star admirals in the Navy. Some have suggested that might have played a role in McCain being admitted. His academic record was awful. And it shows over and over again whenever McCain is called upon to think on his feet. He no longer allows reporters unfettered access to him aboard the "Straight Talk Express" for a reason. He simply makes too many mistakes.

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Bush goes bumbling along, grinning and spewing moronic one-liners, as though nobody understands what a colossal failure he has been.I fear to the depth of my being that John McCain is just like him.