I found a scary article over at Mark Crispin Miller’s blog. In “Why They Chose Sarah Palin”, Mark asserts that Palin is just a convenient cover to mask voter fraud. He alleges that there aren’t enough fundies to explain Bush’s 2004 reelection. Bush’s disapproval rating was too high, and the numbers don’t add up. Instead, the election was stolen through tampering with the electronic voting machines (among other techniques). As the media were trying to come up with an explanation for how the pre-election polling could have been so wrong, the Bushkavites advanced the story that his win was due to a last-minute surge by the so-called “values voters”. McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin is intended to cover the same vote tampering in this election.

I don’t know how true this is. The vast majority of mainstream news outlets are all owned by just a few giant corporations, so no investigative reporting ever comes out of them anymore. That just leaves the smaller independents, who usually don’t have the resources to do all of the digging required to break these stories. Even when they do, it doesn’t get covered by the mainstream media, so the vast unwashed masses never find out and vote accordingly.

In the comments to my last post, Brian posted a link to an article at the Huffington Post. The article is titled “An Open Letter to All Republicans from a Former Religious Right Activist”. It is written by Frank Schaeffer, a moderate Christian and ex-fundie. It’s an excellent article. He discusses the damage done to this country by the three selfish factions of the Republican party: fundies, neocons, and big-corporation fatcats.

I urge you to read the entire article. I have excerpted below the section directed at the fundies.

The Religious Right came about for one reason and one reason only: it was a reaction to Roe v. Wade and the legalization of abortion in 1973. The Supreme Court essentially created the culture wars. (A state-by-state approach to legalizing abortion would have been better and resulted in much the same situation we have today in terms of the availability of abortion.) Take Roe out of the political mix and there would be no Religious Right.

That said — certain power-hungry individuals (Dobson, Falwell, Robertson, Rove, Reed et al.) took the energy of our original pro-life movement and used it to build a hate campaign reminiscent of the early momentum that drove European Fascist parties in the mid-1920s through the mid-1940s. Fear of the “other” gays, immigrants, intellectuals, artists, the media, feminists, etc., morphed into a general critique of “the elite” which turned out to be anyone with an education or even big city dwellers. The Religious Right became a crude populist movement pitting the resentful rubes against the rest.

Take a hard look at yourselves. Play back this year’s Republican convention and you’ll see an all-white crowd of people screaming for offshore oil drilling — fat lot of good that will do! more carbon! more pollution! — and essentially reacting like starved hyenas when presented with a piece of juicy carrion. At the convention Sarah Palin and others produced nothing more than a snide list of smart ass put downs aimed at the really dumb, with so little substance that former conservatives such the late William F. Buckley, for instance (let alone my late father) would simply have been ashamed to be in your company. You have become a hate-filled rabble proud of your ignorance and resentful of the rest of your own country, resentment that’s exceeded only by your maudlin (and false) sense of victimhood.

People that hate half the population of their own country can scarcely be called patriots. On the contrary, people who exult in mocking as their only way to “contribute” to solving our huge environmental, energy, military and economic problems are true subversives.

The smell emanating from your convention was that of a beer hall putsch circa 1930s, not anything remotely like participation in a democracy. Now you all know what it felt like to be in a lynch mob minus the hanging. You should be ashamed. But shame is something that apparently Republicans are no longer capable of feeling, at least when you get together in a mob.

If you could feel shame there would have been a series of contrite public apologies at your convention for the incredible fiasco of non-governing that has typified the Bush administration. My pension, other people’s pensions, our homes, jobs and economy are in chaos because of you. Young Americans are dying in Iraq because of you. The world is a more dangerous place because of you. America is hated because of you. Yes, that is you personally. I blame all of you.

You are the people who gave us eight years of Bush. My Marine son fought in his wars. Cowards, where were most of your sons and daughters? The President’s daughters were getting arrested for under age drinking and harassing their Secret Service detail. The rest of you were shopping.

Far from saying you’re sorry for the state our country is in you’re trying to change the subject by reviving a culture war that has nothing to do with the principled fight against abortion of the 1970s that my dad and I began, and everything to do with simply hating people not like yourselves. The ultimate irony is that you’re doing this in the name of Jesus Christ, someone, by the way, whom I try to follow as a Christian. You have become blasphemers by dragging our Lord into your political games.

The Republican Party and the Religious Right have become “Christian” warmongers who applaud the use of torture, start needless wars, fight against civil rights for gays and other disadvantaged Americans, and perhaps worst of all, in terms of the long-term impact, have literally turned your hands against God’s creation.

You have a little fool for a vice presidential candidate who says she doesn’t believe that human beings have anything to do with the phenomena of global warming and the endangering of all human life on this planet. Dream on. This fool claims to know what she knows because of an absolute “I don’t blink” confidence in herself. So on top of everything else this fool who says she is a Christian, proves she is not. She lacks any shred of decent humility, the most basic biblical virtue.

This is one of those weeks I’ve been busy, so I’ll just phone it in today. Here’s a video!

Here’s a psychology test. Look at the following inkblots. What do you see? Choose the answer that is closest to your own reaction.

Image 1

a. Two people enjoying a nice day in the backyard.
b. Two artists creating a sculpture.
c. Two drug addicts, each with a monkey on his back.
d. That’s vile, disgusting hardcore pornography! How dare you bring that filth into my home!

Image 2

a. A fat man, lying on a beach.
b. John McCain, lying in a speech.
c. A giant ant-man coming to destroy us.
d. That’s vile, disgusting hardcore pornography! How dare you bring that filth into my home!

Image 3

a. Two people about to kiss.
b. The oil stain on my garage floor.
c. Give me another minute. I’m sure if I look at it long enough, I’ll be able to see the Virgin Mary in there somewhere.
d. That’s vile, disgusting hardcore pornography! How dare you bring that filth into my home!

Image 4

a. Six young people enjoying at day by the pool.
b. I wish I could be that thin.
c. Bad 90s television coming back to terrorize us again.
d. That’s vile, disgusting hardcore pornography! How dare you bring that filth into my home!

Answer Key

If you answered a, b, or c for all of the images, congratulations! You’re normal!

If you answered d for all of them, congratulations! You’re Bill Johnson of the American Decency Association!

I’m merely guessing what his answers to images 1–3 are. However, I know for a fact what his answer to image 4 is. His answer was so important that he felt he needed to email it to me.

Yes, our old friend BJ sent me an email titled “No friend to me or you: this kind of ad”. (The email itself didn’t contain the filthy picture. I guess he doesn’t want to be accused of distributing pornography. You have to go to his website to see it. In fact, he split his diatribe into two pages on his site, with the smutty graphic only available to you by clicking the link on the first page. He doesn’t want anyone to stumble upon the picture and see it accidentally!)

He starts with:

I will place no wicked thing before my eyes.
[Psalm 101:3a]

OK. That actually sounds responsible. If you don’t want to look at anything you deem wicked, then don’t look at it. BJ is in favor of personal choice and responsibility! Oh, BJ! I never should have doubted you! You finally came to your senses!

Or maybe not. Read what he says next:

This kind of imagery below featured in this weeks [sic] Grand Rapids Press TV Guide….

It’s actually TV Week. Just once, I’d like to see a fundie bother to get his facts straight.

…is just one of the many kinds of images that are foisted in front of the faces of you and me - day in and day out.

Umm … OK … Six beautiful people showing a lot of skin. This is the softest of softcore. The only place where this picture would be considered indecent is the Taliban-controlled parts of Afghanistan.

I’m thankful that my wife and I share the same concern regarding television in our household.

I am too. I can’t imagine how insufferable being married to you would be. Fortunately, she’s as insufferable as you!

We simply don’t use one.

What? Did I miss something? BJ doesn’t have a TV? Then why is he offended by what’s on television?! In this case, he’s whining about a print ad, but what the hell is he doing even looking at the TV listings? And why does he organize advertiser boycotts and letter-writing campaigns targeting television?

It used to be that you could say to these fundies “If you don’t like it, change the channel!” BJ doesn’t even have a TV!

It’s ironic (of course; everything about fundies is ironic). Republicans are always decrying that liberals want to impose a “nanny state”. Most fundies are Republicans. So what is BJ trying to impose here?

BJ seems to think that the above image is pornography, and that it will somehow … umm … well, it isn’t clear just what he thinks it will do. Most anti-porn fundies seem to think that hardcore pornography leads to sexual deviancy, violence, and the downfall of Western Civilization. That’s a separate topic. BJ isn’t talking about hardcore pornography here. He’s talking about what you can see at any beach in the country. The above image does not lead to sexual deviancy. It’s not even a “gateway” image that leads people to the hard stuff (such as the Sears catalog underwear pages).

The Real Obscenity

Another thing that blew my mind about BJ’s email was that he sent it out on September 3rd. That’s right. While the rest of the country was focussed on the Republican National Convention. Right after John McCain perpetrated the greatest obscenity against our democracy by selecting a thoroughly unfit candidate for VP, the only thing that BJ thinks is obscene is a picture of a few people in swimsuits. In fact, the people in this photograph that so offends BJ were showing no more skin than Sarah Palin did during the beauty pageants she was in!

The Real Damage of These Types of Images

Finally, I would like to point out that BJ is right, but for the wrong reason and the wrong tactics. BJ’s image actually does cause psychological damage in some people. The portrayal of impossibly-beautiful and impossibly-thin women in the media leads to body-image problems in girls, resulting in eating disorders, depression, and other problems. I don’t agree with BJ’s top-down imposition of his standards upon the rest of us. It’s ironic, though, that even when the fundies are right, they’re still completely off base.

BJ, if you want to actually do something constructive with your life, if you want to actually leave the world a better place, why don’t you work on educating people about the effects of media portrayals of what the ideal person looks like? By raising people’s awareness, you’ll help to reduce the effectiveness of this type of ad. These ads will end up doing less actual psychological damage (vs. the imagined damage of your twisted fantasy world).

PZ had this on his site. It’s too good not to show here.

Their web site is here.

I like their lawyer. I’d vote for him, too:

Just how damned are Republicans by their adherence to gods, Reaganomics, and other fantasies? In the latter case, completely and totally. In the former case, not quite as much as I expected.

I had wanted to make a simple table showing the frequencies of popular political buzzwords in the major speeches at the GOP convention, like I did for the Democratic convention. Unfortunately, The Guardian didn’t run their summaries for the Republicans. That seems odd. What sort of bias does that reflect on their part?

Anyway, I wanted to at least see how often God appeared to the Republicans this week. I went to the Republican Convention website (something I am sure John McCain has never done) and snagged the text of every speech. Then I searched them all for the appearance of the non-existent.

The results are a little surprising. I expected a bit more pandering than I found. For example, Sarah Palin only mentioned God twice. In her case, her clinical-grade delusions are so well documented that the Repugs probably thought they didn’t need to call attention to it. Her fundie fans were already in her camp. No need to over-God it and risk alienating the three Republicans who aren’t infested.

In the tables that follow, you’ll notice that I split the Godding into two columns. The first column is how many times they ruined the main part of the speech. The second column is how many times God is mentioned in the obligatory “God bless America” boilerplate that’s tacked on to the end of every political speech in the country. That makes it easier to see who the true panderers are, without the data being clouded by the token pandering.

I’ve broken it out into three tables: Major Speakers, Minor Speakers, and Minor Speakers who forgot to mention God at all and will therefore burn for an agonizing, torturous eternity in Hell for not helping God take over the U.S. government.

Each table is sorted by piety, and then alphabetically within levels of mental illness.

First up are the major speakers:

As the official nominee, it makes sense that John McCain would mention God the most. That’s his flag to carry as the standard-bearer of the Theopublican Party.

It’s odd that Mike Huckabee doesn’t mention God at all. Maybe it’s for the same reason as Sarah Palin. The fundies already know who their people are. No need to call attention to the fact.

Next come the lesser people (I’ve put GWB in here, because the party only gave him a few minutes. They would have been happy to not have him at all.):

There’s nothing too surprising in those results. It’s the sort of numbers I expected to see for all of the speakers. That’s what makes this next table so peculiar:

It’s odd that there are this many people who didn’t mention God at all. Sort of destroys my concept of what a Republican is. It must be some sort of trick! (As we saw with Huckabee above, it says nothing about their own personal piousness, just how much they feel they need to mention it. Don’t fall for it!)

This week’s convention just made one thing abundantly clear:

In honor of John McCain’s official nomination as their candidate for president, here is a campaign poster that summarizes the entire Republican platform.