Satan's Sidekicks: The Marriage of Rudy Giuliani and Pat "Your Blood, MY Diamonds" Robertson

Wow.

The great savior (of his own ass), Pat Robertson, who pretends to be a preacher and philanthropist so he can smuggle blood diamonds out of third world nations via his missionary and "humanitarian aid" planes, has thrown his complete support behind Rudy Giuliani for the GOP presidential nod for 2008.

I mean, if you were the Repug candidate, wouldn't YOU want a man like Pat, who blamed 9-11 on gays and liberals, who has threatened the U.S. Supreme Court and suggested institutions like the U.S. State Department SHOULD be blown up to fulfill God's will (threats that would get the rest of us serious prison time, btw), and who spouts nothing but hateful invective toward anything NOT Pat Robertson-centric?

Actually, if offered the financial and moral support of Pat Robertson vs. being boiled alive in oil, let me be the first to climb in that big vat. Pat's support holds sway only with the most extreme of the Christian fascists.

The old Rudy - the REAL Rudy - would have run from such an endorsement. But this is the Giuliani whose career was considered over on September 10th, 2001 and the very next day, on his way to being raised as a national hero AND a billionaire based on a total litany of noun-verb-911.

Paul Krugman: "For God's Sake"

Somehow, I believe that God, if He gave press conferences, would completely disavow any relationship with Bush, the Bush Administration, or any of his so-called pals: but here's Krugman in The Times on April 13th (I know, I know: I'm catching up):

In 1981, Gary North, a leader of the Christian Reconstructionist movement - the openly theocratic wing of the Christian right - suggested that the movement could achieve power by stealth. "Christians must begin to organize politically within the present party structure," he wrote, "and they must begin to infiltrate the existing institutional order."

Today, Regent University, founded by the televangelist Pat Robertson to provide "Christian leadership to change the world," boasts that it has 150 graduates working in the Bush administration.

Unfortunately for the image of the school, where Mr. Robertson is chancellor and president, the most famous of those graduates is Monica Goodling, a product of the university's law school. She's the former top aide to Alberto Gonzales who appears central to the scandal of the fired U.S. attorneys and has declared that she will take the Fifth rather than testify to Congress on the matter.

The infiltration of the federal government by large numbers of people seeking to impose a religious agenda - which is very different from simply being people of faith - is one of the most important stories of the last six years. It's also a story that tends to go underreported, perhaps because journalists are afraid of sounding like conspiracy theorists.

But this conspiracy is no theory. The official platform of the Texas Republican Party pledges to "dispel the myth of the separation of church and state." And the Texas Republicans now running the country are doing their best to fulfill that pledge.

Kay Cole James, who had extensive connections to the religious right and was the dean of Regent's government school, was the federal government's chief personnel officer from 2001 to 2005. (Curious fact: she then took a job with Mitchell Wade, the businessman who bribed Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham.) And it's clear that unqualified people were hired throughout the administration because of their religious connections.

For example, The Boston Globe reports on one Regent law school graduate who was interviewed by the Justice Department's civil rights division. Asked what Supreme Court decision of the past 20 years he most disagreed with, he named the decision to strike down a Texas anti-sodomy law. When he was hired, it was his only job offer.

Or consider George Deutsch, the presidential appointee at NASA who told a Web site designer to add the word "theory" after every mention of the Big Bang, to leave open the possibility of "intelligent design by a creator." He turned out not to have, as he claimed, a degree from Texas A&M.

Read the rest here.

Apparently John McCain's Loyal Constituents Are Getting Tired Of His Rapid Mood Swings, Too

There was a time when John McCain - and other one time moderates like former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani - would openly mock the miserable likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and others who piously smile while they spew radical hate. Now, of course, John - and Rudy - can't embrace the Falwells, the Robertsons, the Dobsons fast enough - and that alone should send a very loud warning bell ringing for all.

From Max Blumenthal writing at The Nation:

Just as the presidential nomination process begins in earnest, Senator John McCain has suffered a stinging defeat in his home state. For the Republican media darling declared recently by Chris Matthews to be the one candidate who "deserves the presidency," it was an unlikely loss, and so far it has gone unheralded by the national press corps that McCain once half-jokingly called "my base." This defeat was the handiwork of his presumed actual political base--a ragtag band of local conservative activists led by a 65-year-old retired IBM middle manager named Rob Haney.

Who is Rob Haney? He is the Republican state committeeman in Arizona's District 11, McCain's home district. In the past, Haney and his fellow committee members would meet from time to time to review their annual budget, vote on bylaws and pass resolutions. If anyone represents Arizona's Republican Party, advancing the causes of faith, family and freedom, it is the folks from District 11. Yet their importance, let alone their existence, seemed to matter little to their state's famous and ambitious senior senator.

All that changed when Haney organized a revolt that hardly needed encouragement. "People would be calling in to [state committee] headquarters every week, absolutely enraged, threatening to leave the party because of some comments McCain made," Haney told me. "The guy has no core, his only principle is winning the presidency. He likes to call his campaign the 'straight talk express.' Well, down here we call it the 'forked tongue express.'"