Month: November 2006

Evangelical: Pastors Turn to Gay Sex Because Their Wives Are ‘Dowdy’

Jon Ponder

One more about Haggard: One of Pastor Ted’s colleagues — Pastor Mark Driscoll of Seattle’s Mars Hills megachurch — believes he knows why ministers seek sexual relations outside the home. It’s their wives’ fault:

“Most pastors I know do not have satisfying, free, sexual conversations and liberties with their wives.

At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness.

A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be helping him either.”

Yeah, that must be it. Pastor Ted regularly bought sex from at least one male prostitute because his wife Gayle is a frump.

Kuo on Haggard: Jesus Never Mentioned Homosexuality

Jon Ponder

David Kuo has gone from the number two person in charge of President Bush’s faith-based initiative to the Republicans’ worst nightmare: One of their own who has seen the light. Here is his take on the Pastor Ted Haggard scandal:

“The evangelical obsession with homosexuality makes this especially ironic. For many evangelical leaders, anything related to homosexuality is this special, dark sin. But that’s not what the Bible says,” says Kuo. “Really it’s a sin like gossiping to your neighbor. Jesus doesn’t even mention it at all.”

And:

“At the end of the day, this comes down to bringing Jesus into politics,” he says. “Right now, it’s not Ted Haggard on trial. It’s Jesus. This is about the God he represents. When you make yourself a public figure and you fall, you bring the perception of your God with you.”

“Jim Dobson’s response was particularly telling,” Kuo says of leading evangelical James Dobson. “He basically blamed the controversy on gays and Democrats. When evangelical leaders can’t see beyond Tuesday on any question, what on earth is happening?”

Pastor Ted Confesses: I Have a ‘Lifelong Sexual Problem’

Jon Ponder

Pam Spaulding says:

No you don’t Ted; you like to do it with men. The problem isn’t sexual, it’s your inability to psychologically reconcile your desires with your relentless internal self-loathing and your hypocritical public pious, judgmental against people who don’t have an issue with their orientation…

You can’t pray away the gay, but feel free to keep on trying. If it vexes you so much, please get yourself to the nearest ex-gay facility, where you will learn those desires simply won’t go away.

The bottom line — stop hurting your wife and kids. Or, more appropriately, get real counseling if you want to explore what really motivated you to throw your life away for some pole-smoking and meth. Accept that you can, in fact, be gay and there’s nothing wrong with that — until you start hurting others with your deception, lies, and unethical behavior. Where is the confession about his purchase of illegal drugs?

Media Continues to Flog Kerry’s Gaffe While Giving Pres. Bush a Free Pass

Jon Ponder

On his CNN show this morning, media analyst Howard Kurtz did two segments on John Kerry’s verbal gaffe. This is such an nonstory by now — Kerry made the misstatement six days ago — that there could only be one reason Kurtz, who is married to a Republican operative, would continue to flog at it: He was obviously and blatantly doing his best to keep the story alive two days before voting starts.

Some are suggesting that Kerry’s slip of the tongue will knock him out of contention for the Democratic nomination in 2008. Even though I’m convinced he does not believe the military is only for stupid and uneducated people — after all, he was a Yalie who volunteered to go to Vietnam — I would prefer that he shelve his presidential ambitions for good.

But the fact that Kurtz brought in two different sets of talking heads to discuss Kerry’s gaffe underscores the fundamental unfairness of the media’s coverage of Republicans and Democrats. After all, President Bush screws up public statements all the time — so frequently, in fact, that his screw-ups are routinely ignored by folks like Howie Kurtz and the Gang of 500 in the D.C. punditocracy.

I found this nice archive of Bushisms and have pulled a few of his less often repeated mangling of the language just for fun. Enjoy:

[…]

The Cost of Hanging Saddam

Jon Ponder

Today, to no one’s surprise, an Iraqi court found Saddam Hussein guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to death.

This verdict cost the United States the lives of 3,000 of its military men and women and $340 billion, to date — not to mention the lives of 600,000 Iraqi children, women and men who have died as a result of our invasion and occupation.

Back in 2002, all of the reasons President Bush and his administration gave us for changing the regime in Iraq have proven to be false. There were no WMDs (and they knew it), and there was never a chance a democracy would flourish there.

Their real motive, of course, was to secure access to the oil fields for western corporations. The trial and execution of Saddam Hussein is just a very expensive sideshow.

Poll: GOP Loses Momentum in Latest Newsweek Survey

Jon Ponder

Newsweek:

Republican candidates are falling further behind Democratic rivals, according to the new NEWSWEEK poll. While the GOP has lagged behind Democrats throughout the campaign season, the trend in the past month—when NEWSWEEK conducted four polls in five weeks—had suggested the Republicans were building momentum in the homestretch.

No more. The new poll finds support for Republicans (and for President Bush) receding.

Over half (53 percent) want the Democrats to take control of Congress, while just 32 percent want the GOP to retain control.

President Bush’s popularity dipped from 37 percent last month to 35 percent now — just two points higher than his all-time-low of 33 percent.

Ted Haggard Fired

Jon Ponder

Ted Haggard has been fired by the megachurch he founded in Colorado Springs. After an investigation, the board of the New Life Church found him “guilty of sexually immoral conduct.”

He should have been fired for looking into the camera and lying — badly: Mike Jones had only given him a massage, not sex. He bought the meth but threw it away.

Meanwhile, as he’s delivering this bullshit into a reporter’s camera, he’s behind the wheel of his car, with his wife beside him and his kids in the backseat.

This guy is a head case.

Scandals Render Partisan Voting Key to Republican Victories

Trish

Never has it been more important for Republicans to vote partisan than this year. In race after race, Candidate A has resigned in shame and been replaced by Candidate B, but Candidate A’s name is still on the ballot.

Democrats tend to actually pay attention when voting so if a ballot read, say, “Mark Foley,” we might flinch from touching the corresponding grimy spot on the screen. But Republicans don’t read the names anyway.

If this were happening to Democrats, we’d have a problem. Democrats tend to actually pay attention when voting so if a ballot read, say, “Mark Foley,” we might flinch from touching the corresponding grimy spot on the screen. But Republicans don’t read the names anyway. They just look for the little “R” that follows, and viola!

This quality will be especially handy in these races:

    Texas U.S. House District 22 – Voters will need to overlook the “Tom DeLay” part and write in another Repug instead.

    Florida U.S House District 16 – Rebooblicans will need to steel themselves to ignore the name “Mark Foley,” relying on the “R” to supply them with Joe Negron.

    Ohio U.S. House District 18 – Remember Ohioans, it’s not really Bob Ney, who plead guilty to conspiracy charges in the Jack Abramoff case too recently to be replaced on the ballot. C’mon, you can do it! Vote Ney!

    Florida House Dist. 102 – Ralph Arza, though released from the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Facility in Miami on felony charges of interfering with a witness – specifically by calling his house in a drunken tirade and calling him a “nigger” and a “bitch” – won’t be up for re-election after all. It will be Arza’s name on the ballot but his votes will go to Eduardo Gonzalez.

Don’t let the names fool you, voters. Just look for the “R” on the label, and we can almost guarantee you’ll get exactly what you’re expecting.

Did I miss one? Leave a comment if there’s a similar race in your area.

Is George Bush Gay?

Jon Ponder

Victor Ashe

I’m not so sure President Bush is queer — and, believe me, we don’t want him on our team — but the Weazl has put together a rather convincing dossier:

President George W. Bush has sent Victor Ashe, the US Ambassador to Poland and a “special” friend since their cheerleader and cohabitation days at Yale University, “candy and flowers” via US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

And:

In what is unlikely to stem the controversy surrounding disgraced White House correspondent James Guckert [also known as Jeff Gannon, who worked as a prostitute under the name, “Bulldog’], the Secret Service has furnished logs of the writer’s access to the White House after requests by two Democratic congressmembers.

The documents, obtained by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) through a Freedom of Information Act request, reveal Guckert had remarkable access to the White House. Guckert made 202 appearances at the White House during his two-year tenure with the fledging conservative websites GOPUSA and Talon News, attending 155 of 196 White House press briefings.

I have to go on the record, however, to say that being a wimp is not a sign of gayness:

[The Memphis Flyer, in Tennessee,] noted the president’s lack of manliness in the 9/11 catastrophe. Bush was to stunned to react for about 9 minutes. Then he spent the rest of the day boring holes in the sky with Air Force One and hiding like a rabbit in a hole in the ground near Omaha, Nebraska.

It ain’t a walk in the park to know that half the world hates you, or to have a huge and powerful political party using your civil rights as a fundraising tool. It’s hard not to take it personally.

There’s more to it than learning not give a shit what the haters think. It takes guts to be gay. That’s why so many people stay in the closet.

David Frum, WH Speech Writer: Bush ‘Just Did Not Absorb Ideas’

Jon Ponder

David Frum is a Canadian-born Republican idealogue who served as a speech writer for President Bush when the “Axis of Evil” State of the Union speech was written. Now he says:

“I always believed as a speechwriter that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words. And the big shock to me has been that although the president said the words, he just did not absorb the ideas. And that is the root of, maybe, everything.”

Was it just two years ago when criticizing President Bush meant you hated America?