Ok I give, how is the hate-crimes bill "utter evil"? I'd have thought anyone with an iota of religion would think the hate crime was evil.

The millennial unease and fears that allowed the religious nuts to hit their high-water mark are fading away. They can't see the waters they swim in. Their time is over. That much at least they get.

Steve, you have just made my day. Best news ever. Thank you!

I will shed no tears for Dobson and his ilk. Their era of hate-mongering is coming to an end. I thank my secular god for that.

Ahhh, the sweet, sweet sound of wingnut despair. Welcome to our world for last 8 years, you useless sack of sh*t.

Dobson was never about being a christian. he has always been about wielding power and control. Now that he's lost any semblence of the control and power he once had hopelessness has set in for him.

My Goddess, can you imagine their apoplexy if Obama were an actual progressive?

But I agree, Pray away Dobson followers ( aka moral degenerates) - just keep your prayers and your version of God away from the State house.

Ok I give, how is the hate-crimes bill "utter evil"? I'd have thought anyone with an iota of religion would think the hate crime was evil.

It means that calling teh gay "spawn of the Devil" is something you shouldn't do.

As you sow, so shall you reap.

Succinctly put: Yay!

there is simply no limit to what the left can do at this time

If only that were so...

Having to fight to get the Senate to confirm an outstanding and qualified OLC nominee (who just happens to be pro-choice) hardly seems like a sign of the left's unbridled power.

This is just an version of Dobson's typical "help, help, I'm bein' oppressed' scam, modulated into a different key. Now it's "OMG, they've won, and we can't do anything! OMG!" It's still playing the victim, and it's still BS.

This scares me much more than all their hubris when they thought they controlled the world. This not only has a wounded animal quality to it, but worse, it will panic the flock and make them feel desperate. And desperate people do desperate things. People turn to terrorism when they feel they no longer have any legitimate outlet to express themselves in; which is exactly why the Federal Building in Oklahoma was blown up.

As much as possible, we need for these people to feel like the system can still work for them and they're not voiceless. Dobson, Limbaugh, and many others on the right don't want that, which is why they're so eager to make their flock feel powerless. At least with Limbaugh, he's such a manipulator that he's trying to make his listeners feel like he's the only voice they have. Dobson sounds like maybe he means it and is refusing to be their voice. This is the sort of thing we need to be scared of.

And btw, this is why I always supported Obama's bipartisan approach. Yes, Republicans weren't going to play nice, but the more we looked like we were steamrolling them, the more voiceless these people would be. Even as it is, conservatives feel like they need to work outside the system to be heard (hence the "tea parties"). As much as possible, we need for them to feel like they're being heard, even if they're not being obeyed. Not because we're nice guys who need to be bipartisan, but because we don't want these people blowing shit up. Desperate people do desperate things.

Certainly one of the other factors that has Dobson and friends freaked is the slowly dawning realization that they have been steadily alienating their followers.

Many, many protestant churches (even evangelical ones) have come to see that the over-arching Republican message is in direct conflict with the actual values Christians are supposed to live. The Republicans' constant shitting on the poor, disregard for the health and well-being of God's green Earth, and loud-mouthed espousal of war, torture, death, and hatred make it hard for Christians to stay with the movement. Dobson and friends know this, but also realize that their whole schtick now comes down to simply despising liberals and amassing cash--Jesus? Not so much.

Huh. One would think that if there really were some omnipotent entity who was opposed to the liberal agenda, it could not possibly be the case that "there is simply no limit to what the left can do at this time."

Sounds like someone needs to reassess his assumptions.

BURMA!

Why'd you say 'Burma'?

I panicked.

many protestant churches (even evangelical ones) have come to see that the over-arching Republican message is in direct conflict with the actual values Christians are supposed to live.

Unfortunately, there are countless others for whom the abortion schtick is their only rallying cry as far as politics is concerned. Somehow,they feel all the other stuff you mentioned is in God's hands, not theirs.

Remember the calls of "kill him!" and "Off with his head" heard at the McCain/Palin rallies when they were libeling Obama and calling him a terrorist sympathizer and a socialist? The rabid right is a mad mob scene waiting to happen, and scumbuckets like Dobson know it. Create an image of being stuck into a corner with no way out, and desperation ensues. If he can create mass hysteria and enough chaos, he can significantly disrupt progress. I agree w/ Dr. B above. This is not a good thing.

Gloat, gloat, gloat! Yay! Weeeee!!!!!

Poor guy, he has diminished to praying, the horror. No more blaming all the social minorities for the world's problems, what is a christian leader to do, pray ?

What Doctor Biobrain and IWRC said.

This isn't panic or defeatism. It's a calculated means of encouraging the flock to go outside political channels to resolve their unhappiness with the election results. Telling individuals they have no power to effect change politically because they're being oppressed is not only a lie, it's an indirect incitement.

Some of his followers will probably see this as a literal call to arms.

Ha, Ha!

Oh joy. Now the "religious right" will turn to domestic terrorism to get their way.

Feh.

The tables have turned, and now the hard-right are feeling as frustrated and helpless as we did immediately after the 2004 elections when Bush announced his intention to use his 'new' capital, and we all wondered just what was coming next.

Eight very difficult years. We suffered through it, and now they will too.

the American Taliban is armed and dangerous and we are ready to rock.

Doctor Biobrain is correct-- this isn't true despair so much as just another tactic to inflame the base. They believe in zero-sum power struggles, so saying 'the evil godless left has defeated us' is simply meant to activate the come-from-behind, David v. Goliath narrative, not actually throwing in the towel.

Now the "religious right" will turn to domestic terrorism to get their way.

True, but on the bright side, they no longer have the power to get the country involved in any more wars. In other words, they're fighting us over here because they can't get us to fight someone else over there.

God creates matter, man creates impressions.

I've always been a bit stunned by Christians who are impressed with the Crusades and imagine themselves as Christian soldiers against the heathen hordes. Such a congregated impression is antithetical to all we know about Jesus of Nazareth, and may very well cause whole flocks to decend downward upon their demise.

WWJD in light of offering all Americans legal safety to help them live unharmed lives? WWJT to get to a ticking time-bomb before it explodes? What stupid questions to have to ask, and what a focus Dobson's group could put forth if it retreated into the actual tenets espoused by JC!

Dobson's latest suggestion, seemingly out of desperation, is what he should have been going with all along! -Kevo

Their opposition to abortion is not going to go away, but the comment that a lot of Christians are wising up to the profoundly unChristian aspects of Republicanism is absolutely correct. If a way could be found to deal with the abortion issue, many Christians would become Democrats with whom they agree on many, many issues. Alas the issue seems intractable. The Democrats would do well to put up a big inviting tent. Ask the Christians to join them in fighting hunger, genocide, global warming and pollution.

It might be a statement of defeat, or an invitation to pick up a gun and start building fertilizer bombs. What are the implications of riling people up against the supposed moral evils of certain policies, trying to convince them that those policies are terribly dangerous to them and their values -- and then telling them that there's nothing at all they can do WITHIN the existing system of government?

I've gotta go with the crowd -- this is Dobson encouraging domestic terrorism, not actually expressing defeat. And yet when something happens, he'll deny all culpability.

Of course they're afraid of the hate-crimes bill - haters are usually very afraid of being called publicly on their bullshit.

Come 2010, we will finally bury the American Right the way the German Right was buried in 1945.

I've always been a bit stunned by Christians who are impressed with the Crusades and imagine themselves as Christian soldiers against the heathen hordes.

It's even worse than that. On the heels of their describing, with unimaginable callousness and stupidity, our illegal invasion of a country that hadn't attacked us as a "crusade," the whack right has lately compared Obama to a leader of the Children's Crusade.

Just this week, one of our less intellectually gifted trolls, who's made sort of a part-time job of expressing his untutored fear of all Muslims worldwide, tried on this brilliant metaphor. Irony is not this fellow's strong point.

does this mean the rapture is imminent? or is there still time for evangeliban suicide bombers?

This scares me much more than all their hubris when they thought they controlled the world. This not only has a wounded animal quality to it, but worse, it will panic the flock and make them feel desperate. And desperate people do desperate things. People turn to terrorism when they feel they no longer have any legitimate outlet to express themselves in; which is exactly why the Federal Building in Oklahoma was blown up.

I don't recall Tim McVeigh blowing up the Federal Building for religious reasons. It was my understanding he was an agnostic. He was protesting what he saw as a tyrannical federal government, and seeking revenge for Ruby Ridge and Waco. If there was a religious component, I never heard about it.

True, but on the bright side, they no longer have the power to get the country involved in any more wars. In other words, they're fighting us over here because they can't get us to fight someone else over there.

This made me smile. Nice one.

Screamin' Demon: True, but there's a great deal of crossover between the religious right and the "government is so oppressive when it's not our guys" crowd. And religious fanatics are particularly disposed to love picturing themselves as selfless martyrs.

Dobson in despair, doubting Christ's love. I'll drink to that! Even smart people like Carlos blew themselves up making bombs. If our provincial religious enthusiasts get into bombmaking, their subnormal IQs will be leaving Darwin's gene pool in droves. For every clinic window they break, they'll thin their ranks by 5 or 10 percent. What's not to like?

If there was a religious component, I never heard about it.

IIRC, McVeigh was primarily a white supremacist -- he hoped that the Oklahoma bombing would spark a race war like the one in his favorite book, The Turner Diaries.

"He can teach him to pound a square wooden peg into a square hole in a pegboard. He can even take his son with him into the shower, where the boy cannot help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger." — Rev. James Dobson, on how a father can stave off homosexuality in a son.

"It's the sound of a culture warrior realizing the culture has passed him by."

Bullshit! This is a Christian doing what Christians do best: Playing the victim. They thrive on their persecution complex. What he is doing is stoking that victimhood and laying the ground work for a more energized fight later. Mainly a fight for more cash for his "ministry."

"There is nothing you can do at this time about what is taking place because there is simply no limit to what the left can do at this time. Anything they want, they get and so we can't stop them.

"We tried with [Health and Human Services Secretary] Kathleen Sebelius and sent thousands of phone calls and emails to the Senate and they didn't pay any attention to it because they don't have to. And so what you can do is pray, pray for this great nation... As I see it, there is no other answer."

I see Dobson has come around to my way of thinking on the topic of prayer: praying == doing nothing. This is progress.

I agree with the comments that this is more of a tactic than an admission of defeat. The members of the religious right like to think of themselves as martyrs in part because Jesus says in the Bible that his followers will be persecuted in his name.

The “look at poor us under siege� is a common theme in Christian propaganda. Often when it comes to their pet issues such as evolution and homosexuality they try to paint themselves as being denied the chance to air their views by a society and media controlled by the “homosexual/secular humanist agenda�

"For every clinic window they break, they'll thin their ranks by 5 or 10 percent. What's not to like?"
Posted by: howling void on May 15, 2009 at 12:35 PM

Uh, the likely deaths of innocent people?
I'm typing this entry Brookline MA; within one and a half miles in either direction on Beacon St, someone died about 15 years ago, executed for the crimes of being the receptionists at clinics that provided abortion services.
If that was sarcasm, I'm not quite getting the point.

You're right. It's wrong to blow receptionists apart. No one should get blown to bits. Fortunately with their characteristic low-normal intelligence, christ-crazies are a containable and probably self-limiting threat, like militant Islam only stupider and far less competent. Still, I look forward to media-fueled mass hysteria about mad Christian bombers. Irrational primitives are sensational and frightening.

Religion is caused by any one or more of about half a dozen mental illnesses. The truth about religion can be found in these books:

"The Neuropsychological bases of god beliefs" Dr. Michael A. Persinger MD, psychiatrist 1987 "Religious people are just like my temporal lobe patients"

"The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bi-Cameral Mind" Julian Jaynes Professor, Harvard University 1976 "Religious people are just like schizophrenic patients"

"The Psychiatric Interview in Clinical Practice" Roger A. MacKinnon, M.D., Robert Michels, M.D. W. B. Saunders Co. 1971 "Religiosity is a common symptom [of] schizophrenic patients"

"The God delusion" by Richard Dawkins. "Religion is caused by a kind of computer virus that infects the living computer, the human brain."

"The Science of Good and Evil" by Michael Shermer, 2004 "Morality and Ethics are now in the jurisdiction of Science and greatly improved thereby."

Many books in the new science called "Sociobiology": Morals and ethics are instinctive and they evolved.

"God: The Failed Hypothesis" by Victor Stenger. Scientific proof that god does not exist.

"The God Part of the Brain" by Matthew Alper 1996. "The USA is anomolusly religious because many early founder groups were religiously insane and fleeing prosecution in Europe. Religion is a genetic disorder."

"The Accidental Mind" by David J. Linden, 2007 Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Religion is caused by the extreme klugeyness of the "designed" by evolution brain. In particular, the narrative creation system cannot be turned off. It generates false narratives that are believed by the generating person. This is seen in experiments done in the laboratory. This book has the best explanation of resistance to evolution: "There has also been an assumption that if one accepts the idea that life developed without divine intervention, it necessarily follows that all aspects of religious thought must be rejected. Those who take this line of argument to extremes argue that when religious thought is rejected moral and social codes will degenerate and "the law of the jungle" will be all that is left. It is imagined by religious fundamentalists that those who do not share their particular religious faith are incapable of leading moral lives." These suppositions are not true many times over. Linden later mentions that the creationists [intelligent design advocates] are exactly 180 degrees wrong rather than just a little wrong. Being exactly wrong, they are unable to unlearn their error. See Sociobiology or Sciobio.

"Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and Creationism" edited by Petto & Godfrey, 2007. The ID and creationist crowd are trying to do away with science. They see science as a "godless religion." Science is a process, not a religion.

"Manufacturing Belief" by Lewis Wolpert http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/05/15/lewis_wolpert/

"The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation" by Sam Harris

"Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon", by Daniel Dennett Let's do scientific research on religion and find out what causes it.

"Origins of the Modern Mind" by Merlin Donald 1991 "So what did you expect from a brain that is based on the Chimpanzee brain?

"Atheism, A Case Against God" by George Smith

"God is not Great; how religion poisons everything" by Christopher Hitchens, 2007

Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist" by Dan Barker

The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution" by Richard Dawkins

"Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time" by Michael Shermer. The list author says: "This book explains why on earth your friends and family read the horoscopes."

"Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects" by Bertrand Russell

"Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism" by Susan Jacoby

"Sleeping With Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety" by Wendy Kaminer

"Dogma (Special Edition)" DVD Matt Damon

"Cosmos" Carl Sagan (7 DVD Set)

"Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Special Edition)" DVD Connie Booth

"The God Who Wasn't There" DVD Brian Flemming

"Inherit the Wind" DVD Spencer Tracy. The movie of the Scopes Monkey Trial.

"Complaints and Grievances" DVD George Carlin

As a sophomore undergraduate student in Physics, your homework in Probability and Statistics class may include figuring out when the second coming would be required, assuming that the bible was 100% true in the year zero. That is, when would the bible be down to 50% true? The popular and professors' answer in 1965 was the year 500. The true answer: A friend of mine was born and raised in Budapest, Hungary. As an adult, he came here and stayed. After 25 years, he visited his home town of Budapest. He was unable to communicate with his high school classmates because the Hungarian language had changed so much. The correct answer is 12 years. The first gospel was not written down until 50 years after the alleged events and then in a different language. The people who told the story were at about the same level of civilization as "wild Indians", I mean Native Americans before Columbus got here. We have all played or seen played the game called "Telephone" in which a story is passed down a line of re-tellers. By the Sixth re-telling, the story has no resemblance to the original. The gospel story had to have been re-told at least 6 times before it was mis-translated the first time. [Note that whoever wrote it down the first time was free to write whatever he wanted to. The storytellers were illiterate and unable to check his written text by reading it. Besides that, he wrote in Greek rather than Aramaic.] Conclusion: There is no truth anywhere in the bible, and there never was. There is no way to know what "jesus" or "mohammed" or any other such character actually said or did.

ALL of the jurisdictions that were formerly in the jurisdiction of religion have been taken over by Science. There is no longer a need to debate the issue. Religion is an unfortunate side effect of having evolved from a chimpanzee-like animal in a very brief 6 or 7 million years. "God" will not save us from the consequences of global warming or an asteroid impact or a tornado because there is no such critter as "god.". Ethics and morality are instinctive, not derived from religion. Female instinct has greater force in morality than male instinct because the female is in command of the sexual encounter. Look up "Sociobiology". The origin of the Universe is the subject of Cosmology which is part of astronomy which is part of the science of physics.
Religion is a SCAM. ANY religion, there are 10,000 to choose from at any one time. People keep inventing new religions [for the benefit of the "prophet," of course] and forgetting other religions. ALL preachers, priests, imams, rabbis, iatolas, etc. belong in jail for "grand theft, bunko type".