Day: November 2, 2006

Pastor Who Resigned over Gay Hooker Claims Is Bush’s ‘Spiritual Consigliere‘

Jon Ponder

Rev. Ted Haggard, who counsels Pres. Bush on a weekly basis and has been called his spiritual consigliere,” resigned today as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and as pastor of the megachurch he founded in Colorado Springs because a gay prostitute says he’s been having sex for pay with Haggard for more than three years.

Rev. Haggard is closer to the president than his better-known rival, Dr. James Dobson, head of the anti-gay nonprofit group, Focus on the Family, which is also headquartered in Colorado Springs:

The press tends to regard Dobson as the most powerful evangelical Christian in America, but Pastor Ted is at least his equal.

Whereas Dobson plays the part of national scold, promising to destroy politicians who defy the Bible, Pastor Ted quietly guides those politicians through the ritual of acquiescence required to save face.

He doesn’t strut, like Dobson; he gushes. When Bush invited him to the Oval Office to discuss policy with seven other chieftains of the Christian right in late 2003, Pastor Ted regaled his whole congregation with the story via email.

“Well, on Monday I was in the World Prayer Center,” New Life’s high-tech, 24 hour-a-day prayer chapel, — and my cell phone rang. It was a presidential aide; “the President,” says Pastor Ted, wanted him on hand for the signing of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.

Pastor Ted was on a plane the next morning and in the President’s office the following afternoon.

“It was incredible,” wrote Pastor Ted. He left it to the press to note that Dobson wasn’t there.

Mike Jones, the male escort, says he did not know Haggard’s identity until he saw him on television. Jones says he has voicemails and other proof of his relationship with Haggard and will release them tomorrow.

In an interview excerpted on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann tonight, Jones also said that Rev. Haggard used methamphetamines during their sexual encounters.

Haggard was in the news in September when he disavowed his appearance in the controversial documentary “Jesus Camp,” which exposed the indoctrination of children into Christian nationalism at a summer camp in the Midwest.

Florida Prosecutors Might Help Ann Coulter on Her Mission to Go to Jail

Trish

Ann Coulter must want go to jail. She’s cutting off any options for Florida prosecutors but to pursue a felony conviction for her voting fraud in a Palm Beach election earlier this year.

Elections Supervisor Arthur Anderson said his office has been looking into the matter for nearly nine months, and he would turn over the case to the state attorney’s office by Friday…

Anderson’s office received a complaint in February that Coulter allegedly voted in the wrong precinct during a Feb. 7 Palm Beach town council election. Since then, Anderson said he has made repeated attempts to resolve the matter with Coulter and her attorney but has been rebuffed.

Anderson, a Democrat, said an initial letter was sent to Coulter on March 27…

Three more letters were sent to Coulter and her attorney over the next several months, but she has yet to respond with the information requested, Anderson said.

As you may or may not recall, Coulter said at the time that she can’t reveal her true address for fear she’ll be killed by the people she tries to destroy in her books. “Should we get my stalkers on the line with my address and apartment number?” she asked on the Sean Hannity show.

The problem is that the law doesn’t actually make exceptions for hateful harpy skanks that need to be protected from their own hateful harpy skankiness. Covering up your address to vote in a different precinct, or more than once, or where you like best is still a third degree felony that’ll get you up to five years in prison.

Macaca Thugs: Sen. Allen Blames Opponent for His Goons’ Assault on Mike Stark

Jon Ponder

This is rich:

Allen blamed Webb’s campaign, not his supporters, for the incident [in which men wearing blue “Allen for Senate” stickers wrestled a bogger named Mike Stark to the ground after Stark asked Allen to confirm or deny reports that he spat on his first wife].

“It was typical of the Webb campaign, wanting to provoke an incident,” Allen said. He did not say why he believes the Webb campaign provoked the stunt.

Webb denied involvement.

“I don’t even know what happened yesterday. I don’t even know this individual. But I certainly regret the conduct of certain people there yesterday,” Webb said.

Video of the incident was shown often on cable news networks and circulated widely on the Internet, posing a late-campaign distraction for Allen just as he was trying to make his final push to the Nov. 7 election.

Stark, the blogger, filed a criminal complaint Tuesday with police in Charlottesville, but said he did not know the names of his attackers.

He had signaled his intent to provoke Allen on two left-of-center blogs before the incident. On the liberal Daily Kos blog, he noted his involvement in stunts intended to embarrass Republicans. “Recently I’ve been thinking about how to put these `guerrilla tactics’ to use where it matters: winning elections.

Republicans Fail to Fool Blacks; Democrats Just Plain Fail Them

Trish

They gave it their best shot, using everything from fear-based radio ads telling blacks that Democrats want to “snuff their seed,” to trotting out the tiny numbers of black Republicans at campaign stops and displaying them prominently. But new polls show the GOP hasn’t really reached black voters.

It seems like white Democratic candidates get healthy black support but the reverse is not always true

Black voters are far less likely to approve of the way President Bush is doing his job than voters generally and they are more likely to feel that the country is on the wrong track…

In what could be a particularly bad sign for Republicans in next week’s midterm elections, black voters also are more likely to say that the Iraq war was a mistake and that recent disclosures of scandal and corruption in Congress will be very important to their vote, according to an Associated Press-AOL Black Voices poll conducted Oct. 23 through Monday.

You can’t blame the Republicans for trying. Many black Democrats feel taken for granted and ignored so Repubs hoped they were ripe for picking.

And having personally just worked on a campaign for a black state representative, I have to say it seems like white Democratic candidates get healthy black support but the reverse is not always true. Unless you’re talking about Barak Obama, of course, and then people of every hue can’t gush enough.*

But black Democrats find themselves in the same pickle as white fundamentalist Christians — what cha gonna do? No matter how much the Republicans take evangelicals for granted, or how pissed off the Christian right gets, it’s not like they’re going to come over to our team instead.

So we’re all stuck. The Democrats are stuck with morons like John Kerry and the candidate Republicans love to hate most — Hillary Clinton. The Republicans are stuck with George Bush and John McCain and George Allen. And third parties keep coughing up hairballs like Ralph Nader. We’re all screwed.

* Including me.

John Kerry Does It Again

Buck Banks

Lost loser: Okay, so it was supposed to have been a joke, John. Right. Instead, it gave the Repugs something to beat on that just might motivate the morons to vote against every damn Democrat in every damn race in the Benighted States of America.

So why couldn’t he just stand up there and read the script? Didn’t he learn anything from New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s infamous “chocolate city” off-the-cuffer? Didn’t he learn anything from blowing his presidential bid two years ago?

Apparently not.

To John Kerry from all of us who are sick and tired of Bushco’s lies and incompetence — JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP FOR THE NEXT FIVE DAYS!

Wingnut Crackpot Encourages Crystal Balling – Flood his Web Site, Please

Buck Banks

Right of right: Our favorite Goldwater conservative, Richard Viguerie, has issued a challenge to the dozen or so idiots who subscribe to his e-mail newsletter (disclaimer: I just do it for Pensito Review) to gaze deeply into their crystal balls and predict the outcome of the midterms. If you’re a good prognosticator, you’ll get your name posted on Viguerie’s Web site (a dubious achievement sure to wreck your future career opportunities, love life and social network).

So, gentle reader, go to the Vig’s site and lodge a ludicrous prediction (Mark Foley ascends to the presidency! John Kerry doesn’t blow the election for the Democrats!) to consume bandwidth and hopefully aggravate Richie’s hemorhoids. Come on, it will be fun! Let’s get out there and betray some conservatives, kids!

Dear Concerned Citizen,

Regardless of how you’d like the November 7th election to come out, what do you think the results will actually be?

Go to the Conservatives Betrayed website at http://www.conservativesbetrayed.com/survey_110106.php and make your predictions on the key races around the country for Senator, House of Representatives, and Governor.

The top five predictors can have their names and pictures on the websites to recognize their abilities and election seers.

Good luck in predicting the outcome of the elections!

Cordially,

Richard A. Viguerie

GOP Leader Boehner Blames Military for Iraq Fiasco

Jon Ponder

Here we have the double standard in American politics writ large. Sen. John Kerry is misinterpreted when he says that Pres. Bush’s stupidity got us stuck in Iraq and it leads the news.

Conversely, Republican House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Tobacco) means what he says when he blames the quagmire in Iraq on military leaders, rather than President Bush or his secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and his comments barely make a blip:

In an interview Wednesday on CNN, Boehner said, “Let’s not blame what’s happening in Iraq on Rumsfeld.”

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer replied, “But he’s in charge of the military.”

“The fact is, the generals on the ground are in charge, and he works closely with them and the president,” Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said.