Month: May 2010

Why Is God Smiting the Deep South?

Jon Ponder

photo-tepra-bagging-for-jesusWhen cataclysmic disasters strike, it usually doesn’t take long for TV prophets like Pat Robertson, John Hagee and the late, unlamented Jerry Falwell to pronounce them portentous signs of God’s wrath. Equally predictable: God’s punishments are always closely aligned with the prophets’ right-wing political views.

It’s notable then that with the biggest-ever oil slick bearing down on Gulf Coast beaches and a spate of deadly tornadoes and floods across the South over the past few weeks, interpreters of divine vengeance have been eerily quiet.

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Verbatim

Buck Banks

He told me that it is the most liberating thing. He was right. I’m much happier now, to be perfectly candid.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, quoted by National Review Online about a conversation he had with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) that helped convince him to run for U.S. Senate as an independent.

Verbatim

Trish

“The oil that is leaking offshore, the oil that is coming onto our coast threatens more than just our wildlife, our fisheries, our coast. This oil literally threatens our way of life.”

— Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, on May 1, 2010, commenting on the BP oil spill, which is shaping into the worst environmental disaster in the country’s history.

“For 30 years, opponents of American energy have cloaked their arguments in an environmental apocalypse. They have tried to make the argument that no matter what we do, it will destroy the environment…The people who work in oil and gas, their jobs are in the Middle East or Canada. We have exported their jobs. If this amendment passes, we are going to send the rest of them.”

— U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal, on June 29, 2006, explaining his vote to lift a 25-year moratorium on offshore oil and gas drilling in environmentally sensitive areas.

Verbatim

Jon Ponder

I repeat the slogan “drill here, drill now” not out of naiveté or disregard for the tragic consequences of oil spills – my family and my state and I know firsthand those consequences. How could I still believe in drilling America’s domestic supply of energy after having seen the devastation of the Exxon-Valdez spill? I continue to believe in it because increased domestic oil production will make us a more secure, prosperous, and peaceful nation.

– A posting to Sarah Palin’s Facebook page attributed to her but obviously written by someone else