ROBERTSON: [S]omething happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. Napoleon the Third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, “We will serve you if you get us free from the prince.” True story. And so the devil said, “OK, it’s a deal.” They kicked the French out, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free.

The problem with Pat Robertson isn’t his insane ranting of gibberish about a mythical devil. We have bums on street corners ranting nonsense about demons, swarms of bats or aliens in their pants everyday as they hector us for spare change. (Which, by the way, is all Robertson is doing.) This isn’t the first time he’s spewed outrageous, incendiary speech to get his face on as many networks as possible so he can fleece the faithful once again. Remember his proclamation that Katrina was god’s judgment on abortion? Yeah, he’s always been a raving nutcase conman, one who makes backdoor deals with scum like Liberian dictator Charles Taylor while begging for money to send “relief”. The only difference between him and Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter is that Robertson doesn’t have love and hate cynically tattooed on his knuckles, but apart from that, they are both predatory animals using their wiles to get the almighty dollar.

No, the problem isn’t Pat Robertson and the thousands of other faith-based flim flam artists we’re infected with.

The problem is us.

The problem is that we were raised to treat anyone who drapes themselves in mythology and calls it “faith” with respect. Instead of laughing in their lying faces, we put them on television. Instead of holding them to task for their hypocrisy we write checks. We take them seriously.

Why? Because our raising tells us to. Because society tells us to. Hell, even our money tells us to. In God We Trust.

Now, like most people who take an active role in maintaining their grip on reality, I don’t watch cable news, so I don’t know how much press this ponzi scheme slinging hysteric got, but I gather quite a bit. And from what I’ve read, people are debating what he said as if he wasn’t some gibbering fool on a street corner, but rather a serious person discussing serious things. We take at least a passive role in continuing his delusions out of the “respect” for “people of faith” instilled in us from birth.

This respect turns a blind eye to a church that devotes its energies to sheltering child molesters, instead of shutting them down via the RICO act, as we have done with other criminal conspiracies such as the mafia.

This respect allows fundamentalists to clog our courts with battles to erect statues to their delusion on the courthouse lawn, instead of prosecuting them under statutes against frivolous lawsuits and fining them into silence.

Our respect continues the discrimination against gays championed by people who supposedly follow the golden rule.

No, the problem isn’t the actively vile speech of Pat Robertson and his ugly ilk. It’s the passive silence we give to the mass hysteria of faith via our respect. It’s the credence we give to shared delusion that is the problem. Its the acceptance of unreality in lieu of reason, faith over fact, that opens the door to anything. Just as a simple paper cut opens the body to infection, this respect for the unbelievable opens our minds to an infection of falsehood. Put another way, if you believe in this, you’ll believe in anything.

Until we remove the unwarranted suspension of reality that our “respect” fosters, we’ll never be rid of the Pat Robertsons of the world. Gays will still be second class humans. Palestinians will still be subject to apartheid by the “chosen people”. Children will continue to be violated by perverts with no real recourse. Young men will still strap bombs to their chests and blow up their brothers. This is a myth that kills.

And we’re supposed to respect it? That is perhaps the ultimate delusion.

Google Threatening To Leave China Over Hacking, Email Leak

SAN FRANCISCO — Google Inc. will stop censoring its search results in China and may pull out of the country after discovering that computers hackers had tricked human rights activists into opening their e-mail accounts to outsiders.

Google disclosed in a blog post that it had detected a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China.” Further investigation revealed that “a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists,” Google said in the post written by Chief Legal Officer David Drummond.

Finally. Gee Google, you surprised that a regime that routinely tramples the civil and human rights of its citizens (actions that you assisted with in censoring search results for years at their bequest) turned its hackers on you?

Silly Google, but glad to see something finally stops you from abetting totalitarian governments.

Well no duh, its in her DNA. In fact, it may well be ALL of her DNA:

Editor suggests group Liz Cheney fronts is bogus

The editor of a prominent progressive magazine has suggested that Liz Cheney’s political pressure group may be a bogus front that gives news networks an excuse to put the younger Cheney on TV.

This isn’t the first time that Cheney’s group has been accused of being a fraud. In October, radio host Bill Press said that the group is “a total media creation.”

Why is this hectoring harpy constantly on TV slinging bullshit?

Because the people that run the networks- and you- need her to continue the fictions that:

There is a war on terror

And people like her big dicked daddy are better at “fighting” it than some coon from Kenya.

Pathetic, dangerous and fictional. That’s our media, our government, and our nation. She’s just the blonde bimbo propped up to blather it at the moment. If you prefer brunettes, Governor Dingbat is now on Fox.

An Invitation to the Tea Parties to Join the Fight

The Wall Street Journal writes today about how the tea party movement might be turning on Wall Street. I don’t really believe it, but I’m excited by the possibility. Could the tea party guys actually be legitimate? Well, there is one way they can prove it.

But now, I’d like to change course and welcome them in. I believe portions of the movement are redeemable (we’ll find out soon enough if I’m smoking crack on this one). Yes, some of them are full-blown crazy with their birther theories and lunatic signs about holocausts and fascism. A lot of them are actually mad because they think they have lost their privileged position in the country (hence, the cries of “I want my country back”). But many of them are populists that have simply been led in the wrong direction.

I believe this to be the case, and as more and more people realize that Obama isn’t the Great Chocolate Hope they had convinced themselves he would be, I see great potential for a mass joining of the ranks, united in the belief that we’re being led to ruin by bankers, Washington and “the powers that be”.

Tanks in the streets baby, tanks in the f’n streets.

“Governor Palin has captivated everyone on both sides of the political spectrum and we are excited to add her dynamic voice to the Fox News lineup,” said Bill Shine, executive vice president of programming.

If by captivated you mean “held captive”, yes, everyone can agree with that. Now Palin’s propaganda will be displayed on a teleprompter so she can just mouth the words…none of that pesky keeping up with events anymore. Celebrity stupid. Coming to a white house near you.

Iraq invasion in 2003 was illegitimate: Dutch probe

The 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq lacked legitimacy under international law, an independent commission probing Dutch political support for the still controversial action said Tuesday.

The commission’s report said the wording of UN resolution 1441 “cannot reasonably be interpreted (as the Dutch government did) as authorising individual member states to use military force to compel Iraq to comply with the Security Council’s resolutions.”

Gee, I’m sure this is all Obama needs to shut the war down now.

Ha.

Is hip-hop a crime? Army imprisoned soldier over lyrical ‘threats’

Is hip-hop a crime?

“Hall planned to leave the military at the end of his contract on February 27, before his commander, Captain Cross at Fort Stewart, moved to have him incarcerated for the song,” Dahr Jamail wrote on the political blog t r u t h o u t. “The military currently intends to keep Hall in pre-trial confinement until he is court-martialed, which is expected to be several months from now.”

Taser’s new weapon: mobile phone monitoring

Stun gun maker Taser wants to help parents, not with jolts of electricity but with a tool which allows parents to effectively take over a child’s mobile phone and manage its use.

The phone application, called “Mobile Protector,” allows a parent to screen a child’s incoming and outgoing calls and messages, block particular numbers and even listen in on a conversation.

Huh. Wonder how billions of people managed to raise their children before all this.

Window cleaning chemical injected into fast food hamburger meat

If you’re in the beef business, what do you do with all the extra cow parts and trimmings that have traditionally been sold off for use in pet food? You scrape them together into a pink mass, inject them with a chemical to kill the e.coli, and sell them to fast food restaurants to make into hamburgers.

This ammonia-injected beef comes from a company called Beef Products, Inc. As NYT reports, the federal school lunch program used a whopping 5.5 million pounds of ammonia-injected beef trimmings from this company in 2008. This company reportedly developed the idea of using ammonia to sterilize beef before selling it for human consumption.

Yummy, tasty. I wonder if the windex helps your eyesight?

Three Approved GMO’s Linked to Organ Damage

In what is being described as the first ever and most comprehensive study of the effects of genetically modified foods on mammalian health, researchers have linked organ damage with consumption of Monsanto’s GM maize.

The data “clearly underlines adverse impacts on kidneys and liver, the dietary detoxifying organs, as well as different levels of damages to heart, adrenal glands, spleen and haematopoietic system,” reported Gilles-Eric Séralini, a molecular biologist at the University of Caen.

Ah, but Monstanto is making a profit, hence, all is well.