More Exploitation

It's funny: minutes after I post about fringe Republicans masquerading as orthodox Catholics, I pick up my New York Times to do some more reading and find the most ghoulish statement ever from the church and state desk, one so inappropriate it almost makes me ashamed to be a Christian.

The article was a profile of George Voinovich, the two-term governor of Ohio now in the Senate. Voinovich has earned the ire of his fellow Republicans thanks to his opposition to John Bolton's nomination as US ambassador to the UN. So the Senator only agrees with Bush 99% of the time, and the poor man's being called a heretic and being lampooned on talk radio. Crikey....

I'm going through the piece, and I find this gem:

"Criticizing and undermining the president weakens the war on terror,"
said the Rev. Russell Johnson of the Fairfield Christian Church in Lancaster, a leader of the Ohio Restoration Project, a conservative advocacy group borne out of the last election. "The two senators from Ohio have become the poster boys for the foreign press to beat up our president."

This absolutely scares me. Just as in the church, if you're not completely appalled, you haven't been paying attention.

For the record, I've worked for pro-life Democrats, but I'm pretty even when it comes to my voting patterns. But this Johnson is setting himself up as some sort of Christian mullah. I don't need Preacher (or Father, or any Archbishop) to tell me that the President is being unjustly attacked -- and what does John Bolton have to do with the war on terror, again? The war on terror ended on November 3, 2004.

Thanks to Rev. Lancaster, I will now weaken the war on terror by reminding everyone of this truth: that a senior "Christian" faith-based adviser to the Bush White House basically raped a girl. The Dealiacs might just co-opt the theme song of the John Wesley Hardin Died for You Society, "He wasn't really bad, he was just a victim of his times." Yeah. (And thank you, Molly, for the reference.)

We call Arabs, terrorists, evildoers out for rape and pillage all the time -- whenever the concocted justifications are proven false, the next talking point is "Well, they're bad people"....

But for Republicans with clout, I guess, it's OK -- regardless of what Jesus had to say about it. Jimmy Swaggart's still screaming about abominations.

The Bushies are damn good Catholics, for sure -- they've got the double-standard thing down. "Lovely ladies dressed in pink, telling Catholics how to think...."

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