Long after his death, the mouldering corpse of Pat Robertson will continue to twitch and shriek, "Help! I'm being oppressed!"

Of course they're getting hysterical with things like this. All the Republicans have to offer is distraction. They have no positive input to give, so they must distract people with a circus sideshow. I hope the administration counters this with "It's part of our return to the rule of law -- this bill protects religious activities from unnecessary lawsuits."

I hope that, within a few days or a week at the most, President Obama schedules a national address on network TV to speak directly to the American people. He's got the bully pulpit; I want to see him use it in a big way.

On a related topic, Kevin has a nice post on the dreaded "honey bee insurance" provision cited by Mitch McConnell and David Vitter as evidence of overreach by the evil democrats. The only problem is that the program is really about agriculture insurance, it is part of the normal ag program and Mitch McConnell and David Vitter voted for the program twice last year, including once to override Bush's veto.

This anti-stimulus bill crap has gotten out of hand. It is time we took a good look at it and instead of leaving the field free from Republican mischief. It is time for a truth squad to speak up loud and clear. Frankly, there may be things that need to be trimmed from the bill, but probably less that 2%.

They are NOT hysterical, but supremely cynical. Granting these reptiles ideals vastly overestimates their place in the food chain. They're scavenging the grease from an abandoned tenement kitchen, and if you wonder how they can sleep at night, the answer is damned well on silk sheets provided by trusting souls on fixed incomes.

Malheureusement, our friends on the religious right will go on repeating this BS forever, because they will never see or hear the rebuttals.
It's impressive how they have failed to notice that Obama is a Christian. As a thoughtful, compassionate and sensitive man who has worked among the needy, Obama would be a far better Christian model for them than his Bible-thumping, war-monger moron of a predecessor.
But spirituality has apparently become a question of a few hot-button issues, and these folks will hark to no other music.

It's a good thing we have the liberal media on our side; if it weren't for the fact that they have sharp Democrats on all the time to clear up Republican disinformation, why, people might actually believe all the stuff the right wing fabricates.

Oh...wait.

It's just a continuation of the religious right's culture of victimhood. They see "anti-Christian" discrimination where none exists.

You say tiresome, I say dangerous! -Kevo

I am watching this exact same thing happen on a different issue, and I have to say, if I hadn't watched it develop, I wouldn't have believed it. They just scream things, and then the next person screams and adds a few words, and then there's more screaming, and then it's a fact.

Amazing. I still can't figure out why I bother to do research.

While it might be giving them too much credit, I would assume that this is an attempt to force a change in longstanding law with which they have disagreed, and not an instance of being confused. Add a soupçon of diversion from economics, and you get more of the true motivation behind these machinations.

The neverending mouth breathing wingnut outrage is making the planet warmer. Scientists at the Soros funded Marxist Institute of Wack-a Doodle Science have confirmed this phenomena.

Why do republicans and so-called christians hate America so much that they want to see our economy collapse?

I wish it was enough to laugh these kinds of incidents off and shake our head at the stupidity of wingnuts, but it's not. Too many people will see the faux outrage and assume that the televangelist or talk radio blowhard they trust so much must be on to something. They feel oppressed because they are poor or lower-middle class, but because the message is drilled into their head over and over they assume they are oppressed by "anti-Christian" bigots. I mean, Christ was oppressed too, right, and if the most perfect person in history was oppressed by these "lieberals" what chance does Joe the Plumber stand?

We need to find a way to counterprogram this stuff. If we don't, there's every chance that the stimulus bill will fall prey to some cowardly red state Democratic Senator who "must vote his conscience". No way we can allow that to happen.

Why is everybody always picking on me?

It might be time for Obama's first primetime address to the nation. If this is as important as he says, he needs to use all the power of his office to drown out the GOP and get this bill done.

Ron Byers, Thanks for mentioning that KD thread at MoJo about "Honey Bee Insurance" - Yes, both Mitch and Vitter voted once for that bill and, then, voted to override Shrub's override. However, this is more than some Ag insurance. Disease has seriously reduced the honey bee population. Large bee hive operations and honey production plants have closed, especially, in the Pacific Northwest - It has become so serious in Canada, that producers have had to buy from South America, while, they still attempt to use the word "Organic" on their labels. However, one, very serious, side effect for this is smuggling of tainted honey from China. Reports in the Seattle P-I about the widespread buying of smuggled tainted honey so producers can stay in business. This stimulus provision is part of attempting to help production facilities stay in business and retain their workers. The States involved have no money for proper inspection of the plants. Washington State Ag only inspects for cleanliness, once a year. Only the Feds have busted smuggling operations. The chemical used in China is banned, but, small producers use it in order to survive. Then, they smuggle it to the US.

Forgot to mention, the chemical used in China, and the name escapes me, destroys our immune system, thus rendering anti-biotics worthless. But, yeah, guess this would be fun and games to Cavuto and his FAUX followers.

I use the far-right religious nuts as evidence that God does not exist.

The provision in the bill is just the standard legal language, reflecting nearly four decades of law.
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Illiteracy. It's not a bug, it's a feature!

I am interested in the fact that this isn't an ideological battle in the sense that I'd expect; this isn't about conservative values in opposition to liberal values. Liars like DeMint demonstrate very clearly that the right wing has adopted cynicism as a platform. Liberals and Democrats, some of whom may oppose anything that smacks of government-sponsored religion, would generally fight to the death for the right of private citizens to practice their own religion or lack thereof.

Over the last thirty years, conservative Christianity (I don't use the word "evangelical" to describe these folks because it degrades the meaning of the word) has been the privileged religion in the US. Anytime anyone says or does anything to suggest that they are privileged, there is a temper tantrum on the part of some conservative Christian public figure.

I really miss the days when the debate could be about policy, but I may just be idealizing the past in my dotage. The debate these days is all about positioning, posturing and the emotional manipulation of the public. That's all this is; I can't believe that there's a sincere bone in the bodies of people who go on television and say that the stimulus package is "an attack on people of faith."

Nevertheless, the question of what to do about it is a quandary. We have one major party committed to achieving its ends by any means possible, including lying, manipulating and obstructing. We have another major party divided between those who say we should lower ourselves to their level or we're just as bad as they are, and those who say if we don't fight fire with fire, we'll lose. Isn't their some other path to follow?

All the more reason to re-instate the 'Fairness Doctrine'.

Over the last thirty years, conservative Christianity (I don't use the word "evangelical" to describe these folks because it degrades the meaning of the word) has been the privileged religion in the US. Anytime anyone says or does anything to suggest that they are privileged, there is a temper tantrum on the part of some conservative Christian public figure.

Not to mention their hijacking of the term "Christian" as synonymous with far-right fundamentalism, intolerance and downright hate. Heck, many of them don't even think of Catholics as Christians -- and setting aside the abortion issue, much of Catholicism has a philosophy of social justice that probably scares many of these Babbitt fundies to death.

Nevertheless, the question of what to do about it is a quandary.

Obama needs to go on the offensive and call out these people for what they are. If I were him, I would see if I could give a commencement address this spring at a university aligned with a mainstream Protestant denomination, such as Baylor or Texas Christian (but not one perceived as "elite" -- you don't want to be seen as preaching to the converted), and use that bully pulpit to discuss religion and how these right-wingers are perverting true, genuine Christianity. In potential impact, this could well be his next equivalent of the Philadelphia "race" speech.

He could do that, Vincent, but I wonder if it would really contribute to the solution. I'm not certain that the President has any business discussing what he thinks "true, genuine Christianity" is . . . I certainly wouldn't have wanted his predecessor making theological speeches. Maybe it would be better if he stuck with what it means to be the United States of America, where an argument could be made that these people have done just as much damage as they have done to Christianity's image in the world. The whole thing could be very positive: the founders valued liberty, and those who oppose religious liberty are eager to mingle church and state.

As for the fact that many conservative Christians are explicitly anti-Roman Catholic, I suspect there is hay to be made with it, but I don't want the President to be the one to do it. The fact is that conservatives, whether political or religious, are always trying to weed out those who aren't fully on board. They will always draw smaller and smaller circles until those who've been left out band together and regroup. That may be the only advantage liberals have over them, but it's also a worry; we have a hard time working together because our tent is so big, so sometimes it seems we're ineffective against the smaller but more unified conservative machine.

"The far-right can be awfully tiresome at times." Yes, they are the reason I got out of politics (I used to be a Republican, as were my parents etc etc etc) but when they started taking over, and the moderates did NOTHING, I found them to be incapable of governing, rigid in thought, and rather dated (in oh so many ways)and they loved Rush Limbaugh.

To quote REM "Withdrawl in disgust is not the same as apathy." Had I not abandoned them, I could have accomplished nothing and would have worn my self to a frazzle.

The past 16 years have been depressing as hell, the Republicans now stand for everything I oppose but mostly they stand for insanity -- by their belief in a rigid universe, black and white reasoning, and that "power flows from the mought of a gun."

It's been a tough 16 odd years and there is a lot to fix.

"The far right can be awfully tiresome at times."

no, they're awfully tiresome all the time.

The really scary thing is that Redstate thread. I had missed it, but I linked through from this post and read the comments. I was just stunned. Some guy there named PD was pointing out the factual errors in Erick's post, and when they chided him for not backing up his assertions with links, he linked to something like ten different laws that used the same language.

The response of the natives? Sneering at a bunch of "Clinton-era laws" that are apparently thereby part of the same secularization of America plot as this bill.

Why should I read The Onion anymore, when there's fresh crazy on Redstate every morning? The genuine article, people, not a spoof. About the only thing missing is more reliable web servers.

I reread the 4 Gospels the other day. The very idea that any of these conservative political groups are really "Christian" or have any relation to the actual teachings of Jesus is offensive to me. Hypocritical, greedy scumbags.