If we have televangelist Robert Tilton, who needs ObamaCare??

I love this guy. 
This is Televangelist Robert Tilton.  If it sounds like he's speaking gibberish, it's because he is.  He thinks that he has the gift of "tongues", spoken of in the book of Acts.  If you have the gift of discernment, you can interpret his gibberish, and use it as a guide for your life.  Or something. 

This video is only 40 seconds long. 

If you can make it from the .20 to the .30 mark without laughing out loud, you're a better person than me. 

If Obama's Drug War has lost Pat Robertson....

From Hot Air....

Quick: What do Pat Robertson and Ron Paul have in common? Yep, that’s right — they both think marijuana should be as legal as alcohol. Robertson made waves on the issue in the past when he said he thought marijuana-possession convictions shouldn’t end in mandatory prison sentences. He’s making waves again with the outright call to legalize the controlled substance.

Mr. Robertson’s support for legalizing pot appeared in a New York Times article published Thursday. His spokesman confirmed to the Associated Press that Mr. Robertson supports legalization with regulation. Mr. Robertson was not made available for an interview.
“I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol,” Mr. Robertson was quoted by the newspaper as saying. “If people can go into a liquor store and buy a bottle of alcohol and drink it at home legally, then why do we say that the use of this other substance is somehow criminal?”
Mr. Robertson said he “absolutely” supports ballot measures in Colorado and Washington state that would allow people older than 21 to possess a small amount of marijuana and allow for commercial pot sales. Both measures, if passed by voters, would place the states at odds with federal law, which bans marijuana use of all kinds.

This debate seems to have no direction to go but in the direction of legalization; as Robertson said elsewhere in the article, “This war on drugs just hasn’t succeeded.”

The picture of Robertson having a psychedelic experience came from here. 

Touched by an invasion

Here's a close approximation of the Neocon response to Obama's decision to go into Libya....

Blackbirds are dying because of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal. They died because of your sins.

A few days ago I posted something about the dead blackbirds in Bebe, Arkansas.
Here's an update, from televangelist Cindy Jacobs, with a fresh coat of Whitening to Radley Balko. 

James Dobson, Barack Obama, and the latest heresy hunt

Dr. James Dobson, of "Focus On The Family", has grown weary of living outside the political limelight, so he's going to be attacking Barack Obama sometime Tuesday. He'll be claiming that Barack Obama has distorted the Bible, and if elected, will distort the Constitution.

The basis of this attack will be a speech that Obama made in 2006 to a liberal Christian group named "Call To Renewal".

According to the link above, Dr. Dobson will claim that Obama, a former constitutional law professor, has a "fruitcake" view of the constitution.

For anyone interested, I've posted Obama's entire speech here. It's a good one.

If the Dobson response to it goes online in a timely manner, I'll link it also.

Just for grins and giggles, here's a link to a previous Dobson jihad against Spongebob Squarepants, who Dr. Dobson thought favored a pro-homosexual, pro - gay and lesbian, pro -diversity worldview. (After all, Spongebob is often seen holding hands with Patrick the starfish.)

Many people will give Obama's religious views as much (if not more) scrutiny than his views on the economy, healthcare, Iraq, or Social Security.
Talk Radio junkies will hear and read about this all day Tuesday. I promise.
Just wanted to get ahead of the curve on this one.

Update from Tuesday, June 24th 7:00 p.m. Here is a link to the audio broadcast. I sat down with good intentions. I was going to type out the Internet's first transcript of this discussion between Dr. James Dobson and his right hand man, Tom Minnery.

My fingers wouldn't do it. They went on strike. They refused to type some of those sentences. And I don't think it'll ever be done. You couldn't outsource this horrific task to Burmese typhoon orphans. They'd turn up their noses and walk away, since they still have their pride. Lord have mercy, what a mess.

First, Dobson tries to get offended by Obama's statement about " if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson's, or Al Sharpton's?"

They try to infer that Obama was equating Dr. James Dobson and Rev. Al Sharpton.

Well, he wasn't equating them, you dogmatic twits...

He was contrasting the two, portraying them as being on opposite ends of a very wide continuum.

Then they attack his percentages, and his statement that 70% of Americans identify with an organized religion. Their point is that Obama coulda said "Christian religion" instead of "organized religion". That was enough to send them running for the Smelling Salts.

It goes on from there. Mostly downhill. They get into why the Hebrew scriptures (also known as The Holy Word of God that is without error) don't apply in certain times and situations like....here and now. They talk constitutional law. They talk about religion vs. morality.

These guys are done. Finished. They and their ilk have had a shot at fixing things in government since the Reagan era, and they've been weighed in the balance and found wanting (to pull a quote from the Book of Daniel). The glory has departed (to yank a verse out of 2nd Samuel).

If anyone can email me a link to a transcript of this thing for future reference, I'll send $10 to the charity of your choice.

I don't think Barack Obama is ready to be President of The United States. If he were to enforce his stated economic policies, it would be disastrous. I think he's lived in an academic/government bubble for too long (read the article about Mr. Obama's Neighborhood in The Weekly Standard).

But on Church and State issues? General religion issues? Obama's my man. That speech he gave to the Call To Renewal group is borderline brilliant, and he probably had no idea it would eventually be broadcast all over the world.

The Republicans really need to think twice before they send out any more Witch Doctors of James Dobson's ilk to attack Obama.

That era is over.

Senator Charles Grassley Asks Ministries To Turn Over Financial Records Within One Month

The Lord has blessed....

Senate Panel Probes 6 Top Televangelists, Sen. Charles Grassley Asks Ministries To Turn Over Financial Records Within One Month - CBS News

CBS News has learned Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, is investigating six prominent televangelist ministries for possible financial misconduct. Letters were sent Monday to the ministries demanding that financial statements and records be turned over to the committee by December 6th.

According to Grassley's office, the Iowa Republican is trying to determine whether or not these ministries are improperly using their tax-exempt status as churches to shield lavish lifestyles. The six ministries identified as being under investigation by the committee are led by: Paula White, Joyce Meyer, Creflo Dollar, Eddie Long, Kenneth Copeland and Benny Hinn.

Three of the six - Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland and Creflo Dollar - also sit on the Board of Regents for the Oral Roberts University.

Good enough. For more on info on the unrelated scandal going down at Oral Roberts University, click here. Yes, I'm still irritated because Oral Roberts didn't heal my grandmother.
But can you imagine an Oral Roberts University Board of Regents meeting with that ghastly crew?
Has anyone ever had the nerve to call in sick?
Not with all those Alpha-Male Faith Healers taking your illness as an affront to their powers. Oral, Richard, Benny, Kenny, and Creflo would drop everything, fly to your bedside, lay hands all over you, and not cease praying till you were 100% healed.

Otherwise, people would talk.

Here's where it gets interesting, and not for the reasons you might think. There's a Dallas-based watchdog group that has been funneling information to the investigators for years:

The letters sent Monday were the culmination of a long investigation fueled in part by complaints from Ole Anthony, a crusader against religious fraud who operates the Dallas-based Trinity Foundation, which describes itself as a watchdog monitoring religious media, fraud and abuse. "We've been working with them for two years," Anthony told CBS News. "We have furnished them with enough information to fill a small Volkswagen."

Ole Anthony is also publisher of a satirical religous magazine called "The Wittenburg Door". This magazine was hilarious 25 years ago, but has lost something in the interval.

Here's some more info about Ole Anthony, linked here from a Dallas Observer article of about a year ago. I happened to read it shortly after it was published, and maybe that's why I don't think "The Wittenburg Door" is very funny any longer:

....allegations that Trinity is a cult began as early as the late '70s and have surfaced numerous times since, often by members' families, sometimes by the media. In 1989, Jeffrey Weiss of The Dallas Morning News wrote, "there are times when even to its members the foundation looks like a cult of personality."

More than a dozen former Trinity members interviewed by the Dallas Observer agree that Trinity bears many cult-like traits:
• Zealous commitment to a domineering leader not accountable to any authority.
• Discouragement or punishment of dissent and doubt.
• Use of mind-altering techniques such as denunciation sessions--the infamous hot seats.
• Dictation by leadership of how followers should act, sometimes in great detail.
• Breakdown of personal boundaries, such as denying members permission to marry.
• Encouraging a sense of elitism or special status for the group.
• Fostering an "us vs. them" mentality.

There's more. I think Ole Anthony is simply trying to tear down his more succesful role models:
ABC had accused (Robert) Tilton of manufacturing tears; people were noticing Anthony had the same skill. "I think Ole is a classic sociopath," Larry Ferguson says. "I don't think he knows what real emotions are."

But the biggest issue was the far-fetched stories. Anthony always had a new tale: In addition to being a spy, he'd been a helicopter pilot and crashed when he had a backpacking and survival company in Montana, and he was also in Vietnam setting up nuclear test stations and in Colombia trading coca leaves for intelligence and on and on.

The next question: Who is going to investigate the investigators?

Update from November 25, 2007.....You can click here for an update on The Oral Roberts University investigation.