Quote of the Day

“Televangelist Pat Robertson said he wishes Facebook had a ‘vomit button’ he could push whenever someone posts a picture of a gay couple kissing. Of course, the other option would be for Pat Robertson to stop searching online for gay men kissing.” –Conan O’Brien

Wingnuts Say The Darndest Things: Pat Robertson Gives Marriage Advice

So this is what conservatives mean by family values?

Responding to a question from a viewer, Robertson said that married men “have a tendency to wander” and it is the spurned wife’s job to focus on the positive and make sure the home is so enticing, he doesn’t want to stray.

“I’ve been trying to forgive my husband for cheating on me,” the viewer writes. “We have gone to counseling, but I just can’t seem to forgive, nor can I trust. How do you let go of the anger? How do you trust again?”

While Robertson’s co-host hedged on the question, calling forgiveness “difficult” and spousal infidelity “one of the ultimate betrayals,” Robertson got right to the point.

“Here’s the secret,” the famous evangelical said. “Stop talking the cheating. He cheated on you, well, he’s a man.”

The wife needs to focus on the reasons she married her spouse, he continued.

“Does he provide a home for you to live in,” Robertson said. ‘Does he provide food for you to eat? Does he provide clothes for you to wear? Is he nice to the children… Is he handsome?”

And some people were surprised that Mark Sanford was reelected in a Republican district.

In related news, The Hill reports that John Edwards is hitting the speaking circuit, although they only mention one event. He  will address PMP Marketing’s annual client retreat in Orlando. I doubt liberals will have much interest in hearing more form him, but perhaps he can start speaking to evangelicals. The religious right probably would have no problem forgiving Edwards for cheating on his wife, but they would have difficulty forgiving him for running with John Kerry.

Pat Robertson Claims Atheists Want To Steal Your Holiday Away From You

Yet another report that the War on Christmas is underway in the imaginations of the deranged right wingers, this time from Pat Robertson (video above):

“It’s, well, Christmas all over again. The Grinch is trying to steal our holiday. It’s been so beautiful, the nation comes together, we sing Christmas carols, we give gifts to each other, we have lighted trees, and it’s just a beautiful thing. Atheists don’t like our happiness, they don’t want you to be happy, they want you to be miserable. They’re miserable, so they want you to be miserable. So they want to steal your holiday away from you.”

Hat tip to Right Wing Watch

Time to go fire bomb some candy cane fields and pull of Santa’s beard.

Previous reports of a War on Christmas this season here and here (and check the tags for older posts–both on the War on Christmas and Pat Robertson).

Even Pat Robertson Agrees That The Republican Party Has Moved Too Far To The Extreme Right

It is a bad sign for the Republicans when Pat Robertson has become the voice of sanity in the Republican Party, warning that they are taking positions which are too extreme to win a general election. Think Progress summarizes the video above:

On his show The 700 Club, Robertson warned that the GOP base is pushing their party’s presidential nominees to take such extreme positions that they will be unelectable. “I believe it was Lyndon Johnson that said, ‘Don’t these people realize if they push me over to an extreme position I’ll lose the election?’” he said. “Those people in the Republican primary have got to lay off of this stuff. They’re forcing their leaders, the frontrunners, into positions that will mean they lose the general election…They’ve got to stop this! It’s just so counterproductive!”

Pat Robertson says Crack In Washington Monument Is A Sign From God

Pat Robertson in the video above: “Ladies and gentlemen I don’t want to get weird on this so please take it for what it’s worth. But it seems to me the Washington Monument is a symbol of America’s power, it has been the symbol of our great nation, we look at that monument and say this is one nation under God. Now there’s a crack in it, there’s a crack in it and it’s closed up. Is that a sign from the Lord? Is that something that has significance or is it just result of an earthquake? You judge, but I just want to bring that to your attention. It seems to me symbolic. When Jesus was crucified and when he died the curtain in the Temple was rent from top to bottom and there was a tear and it was extremely symbolic, is this symbolic? You judge.”

We might compare this to the fictional, but equally implausible, explanation seen on last season’s television show, The Event. Aliens created destruction in Washington, D.C. as a warning to the American government.

Pat Robertson: God Will Destroy America Due To Allowing Marriage Equality

Pat Robertson warns that God will destroy America for allowing marriage equality:

I think we need to remember the term sodomy came from a town known as Sodom and Sodom was destroyed by God Almighty and the thing that they practiced was homosexual activity and even they tried to rape angels who came down there, so that’s the kind of people they were. But beyond that, Jesus when He spoke of Sodom He didn’t say anything about the homosexuality he talked about just the fact that business was as usual until God decided to destroy it. And He sent an angel down there and He said to Lot and his family, ‘get out now because I’m gonna destroy this whole area.’ That’s where sodomy came from, we use the term sodomy and it means Sodom. What’s it like? We’re heading that way as a nation. In history there’s never been a civilization ever in history that has embraced homosexuality and turned away from traditional fidelity, traditional marriage, traditional child-rearing, and has survived. There isn’t one single civilization that has survived that openly embraced homosexuality. So you say, “what’s going to happen to America?” Well if history is any guide, the same thing’s going to happen to us…

It’s not a pretty world we live in right now, and we need all of God’s help we can get. And I don’t think we are not exactly setting ourselves up for His favor.

Video above via Right Wing Watch

Question of the Day

Glenn Beck is calling the disaster in Japan a message from god. Is he allowed to so blatantly steal from Pat Robertson’s act?

Pat Robertson and Marijuana Laws

I don’t often agree with Pat Robertson, but he is certainly right on marijuana:

“I’m … I’m not exactly for the use of drugs, don’t get me wrong, but I just believe that criminalizing marijuana, criminalizing the possession of a few ounces of pot, that kinda thing it’s just, it’s costing us a fortune and it’s ruining young people. Young people go into prisons, they go in as youths and come out as hardened criminals. That’s not a good thing.”

Unfortunately he walked back his words after this as his initial words were true. I hope that Democratic politicians do not want to be to the right of Robertson on this issue and back decriminalization of marijuana.

Religious Right Showing Increasing Influence on Tea Party Movement

Initially the tea baggers (at least at times) sounded like they came more from the libertarian wing of the right as opposed to the religious right. Unfortunately it was a populist sort of anti-government viewpoint which lacked understanding of the issues. Such an intellectually weak movement risks being taken over by those who better understand their goal. The American Prospect describes how the religious right is infiltrating the movement:

Next month’s Tea Party National Convention has been making news for the fat fee Sarah Palin is commanding — $100,000, according to many reports. But the gathering, to be held at Nashville’s Opryland Hotel, is interesting for another reason as well: It marks the attempt of the old-school Christian right to take over the tea-party movement. Speakers joining Palin include Rick Scarborough, Roy Moore, and Joseph Farah, men who are radical even by religious-right standards. Their presence shows that the tea-party movement is no longer merely populist, libertarian, or anti-government, if it ever was. It is theocratic. Indeed, after several months in which the religious right seemed lost and dispirited, it has found a way to ride the tea-party express into renewed relevance.

From the beginning, of course, there’s been overlap between the tea parties and the Christian right. Both have their strongholds in the white South, and both arise out of a sense of furious dispossession, a conviction that the country that is rightfully theirs has been usurped by sinister cosmopolitan elites. They have the same favorite politicians — particularly Palin and Rep. Michele Bachmann, who is also speaking in Nashville. Glenn Beck, the media figure most associated with the tea-party movement, has a worldview deeply shaped by apocalyptic Mormonism; he is contemptuous of the idea of church-state separation and believes the United States was founded to be a Christian nation…

Naturally, enterprising theocrats would look to the tea parties for salvation. And Scarborough, for one, is nothing if not enterprising. For years, the Baptist minister has been positioning himself as a next-generation Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson. In 2002, he left his post as pastor of Pearland First Baptist Church to form Vision America, a group dedicated to organizing “patriot pastors” for political action. That year, Falwell identified him as one of the new leaders of the Christian right. The author of books like In Defense of … Mixing Church and State and the pithier Liberalism Kills Kids, Scarborough spent the Bush years organizing conferences that brought together conservative Republicans with preachers and activists working for the imposition of biblical law.

The fall of Scarborough’s closest political ally, the once-formidable Tom DeLay, eroded Scarborough’s political influence. So did the broader decline of the religious right. “His group has been puttering along with a tiny budget, and he has practically no national presence,” says Rob Boston, assistant director of communications for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “His goal was to be the next Jerry Fawell, and it has not worked out. The tea-party movement could be the vehicle to give him a much-needed boost.”

Bizarre Right Wing Response to Earthquake in Haiti and Keith Olbermann’s Response

The earthquake in Haiti has brought out some real craziness from Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh. Pat Robertson attributed the earthquake to a pact with the devil:

The Rev. Pat Robertson is offering his own absurd explanation for why a quake hit Haiti: Many years ago, the island’s people “swore a pact to the devil.”

“Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it,” the controversial televangelist said during an interview Wednesday on the Christian Broadcasting Network.

“They were under the heel of the French…and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French.'”

Robertson continued: “True story. And so the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.’ They kicked the French out. The Haitians revolted and got themselves free. Ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other.”

Robertson went on to note that though Haiti shares the same island with the Dominican Republic, it remains desperately poor while its neighbor is “prosperous, healthy and full of resorts.”

“[Haitians] need to have a great turning to God, and out of this tragedy, I’m optimistic something good may come,” Robertson said.

Rush Limbaugh found bizarre ways to play politics and use the earthquake to attack Barack Obama.

Keith Olbermann responded: