Hell Throws Big Welcome Party for Jesse Helms

(Image Source: The Onion) (click to enlarge)

Noted racist, sexist, homophobe, Confederate-sympathizing, poor-hating, anti-communist nut job senator from North Carolina, Jesse Helms, has died. I know we are supposed to be respectful when someone dies and not speak ill of them, but I can't say I'm too busted up over this loss. In fact, I hope he is in the segregated section of Hell... you know, the section that is particularly fiery. The section set aside for particularly obnoxious and unyielding defenders of the unjust status quo. I hope he is having to do grueling, back-breaking manual labor for a whole slew of black angels. I hope he is having to wash the naked bodies of elderly black saints, scrub the floors and make food for an African American celestial choir. I hope he is under constant orders by black males angels with white angel wives. And, to cap it off, I hope he must spend all his downtime being massaged with oil by hundreds of fabulously gay men while listening to militant feminist diatribes on his ipod!

So, who was Jesse Helms? If you want to read more measured analysis, here is what the New York Times wrote.

I won't go through his whole biography, but I will note that Helms was widely known, inside and outside his party, as a mean-spirited, cantankerous, uncompromising man. He was born into an extremely racist culture in Monroe, North Carolina,Klan country near the S.C. border, the son of another obnoxious racist, Jesse Helms, Sr. In his award-winning account of Robert Williams, a Monroe civil rights leader, historian (and my academic advisor and friend!) Tim Tyson explains that it was Helms, Sr.'s racist brutality that initially brought Williams face-to-face with racial injustice. As Tyson explains, as an 11-year-old in 1936, Williams saw a white policeman, Jesse Helms, Sr. beat an African-American woman to the ground. Williams watched in terror as North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms' father hit the woman hard and "dragged her off to the nearby jailhouse, her dress up over her head, the same way that a cave man would club and drag his sexual prey." So, the apple clearly did not fall far from the tree...

Jesse Helms, Jr., was one of these sugar-sweet "southern gentlemen" who is actually a hate-filled person who liked to see other people suffer. In the grand southern tradition, Helms blocked so much legislation his colleagues called him "Senator No." And, because he was such an unrelenting jerk and general pain in the ass, the chairman of the Democratic Party once dubbed Helms the "Prince of Darkness."

Helms came to politics late, getting his start working on the 1950 campaign of Willis Smith, a campaign some called the most overtly racist campaign in the U.S. since the turn-of-the-century. Helms crafted an attack ad, which included this narration: "White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races." Another ad featured photographs Helms himself had doctored to illustrate the allegation that Graham's wife had danced with a black man. After they won election, Helms worked for Smith in Washington before leaving to work for the segregationist presidential campaign of Sen. Richard Russell of Georgia.

In 1960, while also serving as a city council member in Raleigh, Helms rose to prominence as a tv news commentator railing against the civil rights movement, the supposedly liberal media and peace churches that were critical of American foreign policy. In the typical bluster of the racist Right from the 1950s and 1960s, Helms claimed the civil rights movement was infested by "communists" and “moral degenerates.” He called Social Security, the most popular social program in American history, “nothing more than doles and handouts.” He described Medicaid, which provides basic health care for the poor, as a “step over into the swampy field of socialized medicine.” You get the picture...

Helms claimed he wasn't racist, yet he dedicated the bulk of his life to opposing any and all forms of justice for people of color and promoted a legislative agenda that was overtly hostile to the interests of the poor and most people of color. In 1963, he wrote, "The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that's thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men's rights." In 1983, playing on long-standing racist stereotypes of black criminality, he wrote, "Crime rates and irresponsibility among Negroes are a fact of life which must be faced." Helms often used racial cues and code words to inject his campaigns with the divisive politics of race. The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other prominent black leaders were frequent targets of Helms’ speeches and fund-raising letters. He worked in the Senate against civil rights legislation, such as extension of the Voting Rights Act, and domestic programs favored by black voters. Helms sponsored measures barring court-ordered school busing for integration, and was the leading Senate supporter of the apartheid regime of South Africa. In 1983, Helms made headlines throughout the country when he put forth sensational charges as he waged a filibuster against an effort to make King’s birthday a national holiday. Helms's biographer, Ernest Furguson wrote in 1986, “All his public life, he has done and said things offensive to blacks, and to anyone sensitive to racial nuance.” At the time Helms retired, David Broder of the Washington Post wrote, “What really sets Jesse Helms apart is that he is the last prominent unabashed white racist politician in this country — a title that one hopes will now be permanently retired... What is unique about Helms – and from my viewpoint, unforgivable – is his willingness to pick at the scab of the great wound of American history, the legacy of slavery and segregation, and to inflame racial resentment against African Americans.”

In 1990 and 1996, a black architect, Harvey Gantt, ran against Helms for the senate. Gantt had successfully desegregated Clemson University in South Carolina in 1963. South Carolina was the last state to hold out on desegregation of higher education. because Helms was such a polarizing figure, both elections became big national news. During the 1990 campaign, Gantt was polling well with a couple of weeks to go, prompting some to predict a grand upset over Helms. Yet, Helms had his own trick up his sleeve: the race card. At the last minute, the Helms campaign ran an ad featuring ominous music backing images of white hands crumpling a rejection notice for a job as an ominous narrator says "You needed that job and you were the best qualified, but they had to give it to a minority. Is that fair? Harvey Gantt says it is." The ad was a smashing success. Despite the strong polling data for Gantt, Helms ultimately won the election, prompting many to point out that whites seem to be more willing to tell pollsters that they would vote for a black candidate than to actually go out and vote for a black candidate on election day. As a result, it has become basic political practice now to assume that a black candidate against a white candidate must have at least a 5 point advantage to be considered even in the race. "The tension that [Helms] creates, the fear he creates in people, is how he's won campaigns," Gantt said several years later.

Here is the infamous Harvey Gantt "Hands" ad:


And his racism continued throughout his life. For example, in 1995, when a caller to CNN's Larry King Live show praised guest Jesse Helms for "everything you've done to help keep down the niggers," Helms' response was to salute the camera and say, "Well, thank you, I think." What makes Helms unique among his generation of hardline segregationists is that, unlike George Wallace or Strom Thurmond, he never moderated his views on race. "I can't think of many other examples of major opponents of the civil rights movement that didn't modify their view on civil rights," says William Link, a professor at the University of Florida and a Helms biographer. "He was very much a man of the times and his generation ... of North Carolina whites (who) grew up with segregation." According to Merle Black, a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta, "Helms operated as though African-Americans didn't vote. He was unlike other politicians, who tried to expand their original basis of support. Helms never did that."

For good measure, here are a few of Helms' greatest rhetorical hits. Note that he hated a whole lot of people, not just black folks:

• "To rob the Negro of his reputation of thinking through a problem in his own fashion is about the same as trying to pretend that he doesn't have a natural instinct for rhythm and for singing and dancing."
-- on African Americans

• "No, I do not. And neither do the people in the armed forces. Mr. Clinton better watch out if he comes down here. He'd better have a bodyguard."
-- When asked in 1994 on CNN if he thought President Clinton was "up to the job" of serving as Commander-in-Chief

• "Let me adjust my hearing aid. It could not accommodate the decibels of the Senator from Massachusetts. I can't match him in decibels or Jezebels."
-- After Ted Kennedy made an emotional speech to let foreigners with HIV become US citizens, 1993.

• "Many support the the court's abortion decision do so by describing the constitution as a "living document" which the court must be permitted to interpret with the widest possible flexibility. But, when they say the constitution is a living document, they really mean that the constitution is dead, and that the Supreme Court as a supreme undertaker may dispose of the corpse as it pleases."
-- At the National Pro-Life PAC Banquet, Chicago Illinois, May 5, 1975

• "The New York Times and Washington Post are both infested with homosexuals themselves. Just about every person down there is a homosexual or lesbian."
-- 1995

• "If God had wanted us to use the metric system, Jesus would have had 10 apostles."

• "I was with some Vietnamese recently, and some of them were smoking two cigarettes at the same time. That's the kind of
customers we need!"
-- at a 1996 dinner promoting the tobacco industry

• "I know Mark's death was a devastating blow to you. As far as homosexuality, the Bible judges it, I do not. As for Mark, I wish he had not played Russian roulette with his sexual activity. I have sympathy for him and for you. But there is no escaping the reality of what happened."
-- Response to a conservative, Republican supporter - Patsy Clarke - in North Carolina after her son died of AIDS and she wrote Helms asking for some compassion. Clarke was horrified at herself when she realized her son had suffered alone until the very end of his life in large part because of the policies she and people like Jesse Helms had advocated.

• "The University of Negroes and Communists"
-- Reference to the University of North Carolina devised by Mr. Helms when he worked for Willis Smith's 1950 U.S. Senate campaign.

• "I've been portrayed as a caveman by some. That's not true. I'm a conservative progressive, and that means I think all men are equal, be they slants, beaners or niggers."
-- February 6, 1985

• "I've never heard once in this chamber anybody say to the homosexuals, 'stop what you're doing.' If they would stop what
they're doing there would not be one additional case of AIDS in the United State."

• "This bill attempts to make sure that President Clinton is not allowed to do by Executive Order what Congress has declined to enact in the past two congressional sessions namely, to treat homosexuals as a special class protected under various titles
of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
-- Jesse Helms, introducing an anti-gay bill in January, 1999

• "What is really at stake is whether or not America will allow the cultural high ground in this nation to sink slowly into an
abyss of slime to placate people who clearly seek or are willing to destroy the Judaic-Christian foundations of this republic."
-- Helms opposing funding for the National Endowment of the Arts

• "All I know is that D'Aubuisson is a free enterprise man and deeply religious."
-- Responding to evidence that Roberto D'Aubuisson directed Salvadoran death squads that murdered thousands of civilians.

• "Your tax dollars are being used to pay for grade-school classes that teach our children that CANNIBALISM, WIFE-SWAPPING and MURDER of infants and the elderly are acceptable behavior."
-- Fund raising mailer, 1996

• "I’m so old-fashioned I believe in horse whipping.”
-- During a debate in 1991 on an AIDS-related amendment.

• "...in the l8 years and 5 months I've been in the senate, none, none have been more capable than Dan Quayle."
-- on the former, much maligned Vice President

• "Democracy used to be a good thing, but now it has gotten into the wrong hands."

• "All Latins are volatile people. Hence, I was not surprised at the volatile reaction."
-- After Mexicans protested his visit in 1986

• "It's their deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct that is responsible for the disease."
-- Justifying his refusal to give financial support to families of AIDS victims.

• "Atheism and socialism -- or liberalism, which tends in the same direction -- are inseparable entities. When you have men
who no longer believe that God is in charge of human affairs, you have men attempting to take the place of God by means of
the Superstate."
-- on liberalism

• "Homosexuals are weak, morally sick wretches."
-- 1995 radio broadcast

• “The nation has been hypnotized by the swaying and gesturing of the watusi and the frug.”
-- WRAL Viewpoint, 1966

• "They should ask their parents if it would be all right for their son or daughter to marry a Negro."
-- In response to Duke University students holding a vigil after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, 1968

Helms had a particular hatred for gays and lesbians. Over the years, Helms regularly referred to gays and lesbians as "degenerate" and "weak, morally sick wretches." He clashed with gay activists throughout the 80s and 90s over AIDS, which he thought was a plague against gays and lesbians. He said, "If homosexuals would only stop doing what they're doing, there wouldn't be any more AIDS." In a 1988 tirade highlighting his routine opposition to AIDS research funding, Helms lashed out at the Kennedy-Hatch AIDS bill: "There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy." It is this type of reprehensible, Bible-looney thinking that allowed that disease to spread unchecked for many years, costing untold numbers of lives. In 1993, when then-President Clinton sought confirmation for an openly homosexual assistant secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Helms registered his disgust. "I'm not going to put a lesbian in a position like that," he said in a newspaper interview at the time. "If you want to call me a bigot, fine."

Helms wasn't a fan of women's equality, either. Once, Helms remonstrated ten female members of the House of Representatives to "act like ladies" when they interrupted a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing to demand support of a U.N. treaty against gender discrimination, and subsequently had them removed from the hearing by Capitol police. Or, another time, he equated women's right to control their own bodies with the Holocaust and the Sept. 11 terror attacks. And in a 1993 episode that mixed his infamous racism with his infamous sexism, Helms sang "Dixie" in an elevator to Carol Moseley-Braun, the first African-American woman elected to the Senate, bragging, "I'm going to make her cry. I'm going to sing Dixie until she cries."

And, finally, Helms was a fanatical anti-communist, a position that led him to support many tyrannical regimes. As FAIR has detailed, Helms offered strong, consistent, if sometimes shadowy, support for violent, anti-democratic forces abroad, from South Africa to El Salvador, yet few mainstream media outlets probed his ties to groups that would accurately be described as fascist. One exception was an editorial in the Boston Globe: "Helms' role in supporting foreign thugs such as Roberto D'Aubuisson, the cashiered Salvadoran major who ran death squads responsible for savage political murders, did lasting harm to America's good name. In South Africa, Argentina, Mozambique, Honduras, and Nicaragua, Helms cooperated with racists and fascists who have nothing in common with the ideals of American democracy." Moreover, according to Steve Clemons, "Helms, who served as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, seemed to despise globalists in general, would have loved to wreck the United Nations and other international institutions, and reified an American nativist jingoism that he helped sell with beguiling Southern charm and linguistic twang."

But, despite the brief litany of Helms' transgressions that I have posted here, the current Republicans love them some Jesse:

• According to President George W. Bush, “Jesse Helms was a kind, decent and humble man and a passionate defender of what he called ‘the Miracle of America.’ So it is fitting that this great patriot left us on the Fourth of July.”

• "It's just incredible that he would die on July 4, the same day of the Declaration of Independence and the same day that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died, and he certainly is a patriot in the mold of those great men," said former North Carolina GOP Rep. Bill Cobey, the chairman of The Jesse Helms Center in Wingate, N.C.

• "America lost a great public servant and true patriot today," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said.

• "Today we lost a Senator whose stature in Congress had few equals. Senator Jesse Helms was a leading voice and courageous champion for the many causes he believed in," Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement.

• In 2005, another kook from the far Right, Jerry Falwell, said, "I've had two heroes in my life: Jesse Helms and Ronald Reagan." He said it was people like Helms who "prevented the country from going to hell in a handbasket.”

And, sadly, because he was "an architect of modern conservatism," we will be doing battle with the Helms legacy for years to come. The damage of his policy views continues to reverberate throughout our society, taking its toll on countless real live human beings each day. It is important to remember that Helms was not some fringe lunatic, but one of the most revered members of his political party. He was a key leader of the new conservative movement that emerged in the 1970s. That says something about the recent history of the Republican Party and the New Right, I'd say.

So, there you have it, my equivalent of a 21-gun salute to one of the bigger reactionary jerks our country has produced in recent times. Here's to you, Jesse. Don't let those pearly gates hit you in the butt on your way down to the basement of eternal damnation...

Is John Hagee the Anti-Christ?

Following Tim Russert's attack on Barack Obama in the last debate over supportive remarks made by the anti-semitic leader of the Nation of Islam, Minister Louis Farrakhan, an attack that has been amplified in other media outlets and picked up by a number of Republican groups in an effort to smear the Democratic front-runner, there is a new controversy brewing over John McCain's unwillingness to "reject or denounce" the support/endorsement he has received from lunatic Christian fundamentalist minister, John Hagee. Hagee is "pastor" at the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas.

Please read the following and ask yourself why Obama has been pilloried (no, I did not write "Hillary-d"!) about Farrakhan, who Obama has consistently repudiated, but the media has been slow to focus the same criticism at McCain for his acceptance of Hagee's endorsement.

Before I get into the really insane stuff, let me point out that Hagee is a hukster who has become rich off of his hate-filled teachings. He believes "poverty is caused by sin and disobeying the Word of God." And, like most other prosperity preachers, Hagee believes that "poverty is a curse." Surprise, surprise, Hagee follows these kinds of remarks with exhortations to fill his coffers: Christians achieve prosperity through giving, asserts Hagee. "When you give to God, He controls your income. There's no such thing as a fixed income in the Kingdom of God. Your income is controlled by your giving." According to Hagee, Christians grow prosperous through giving because "God created a universe where it is impossible to receive without giving. Everything that God controls, gives. . . . Givers gain. You do not qualify for God's abundance until you give." Again, of course, you are to give directly to Hagee and his "church." And, not shockingly, Hagee ignores the many passages of the Bible that run directly contrary to these views, like when Jesus Himself said, "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. . . . But woe to you who are rich . . ."

Anyway, let's move on to the really bizarre-o stuff: According to Sarah Posner at The American Prospect, "Hagee's view of current affairs is animated by his view of the end-times, and his belief that godly forces are engaged in spiritual warfare with satanic forces. The bible foretells, he believes, plagues, natural disasters, and nuclear war. So all those things should be cause for celebration, since they demonstrate the biblical prophecy of the events preceding Christ's Second Coming are taking place in our lifetime."

In the Fall of 2006, Hagee gave a speech at the late Jerry Falwell's church, where he shared the stage with Tim LaHaye, another Christian lunatic and co-author of the best-selling Left Behind series of novels. "How close are we to the second coming of Christ?" Hagee asked. "The Bible clearly states that heaven and earth shall pass away. … The signs of his coming are very clear in Scripture. If you listen closely, you can hear the hoofbeats of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, racing toward the battle of Armageddon."

So, what are some of Hagee's so-called "Christian" views? Here is just a taste:

• On Catholicism: "Most readers will be shocked by the clear record of history linking Adolf Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church in a conspiracy to exterminate the Jews." [Jerusalem Countdown by John Hagee] In his relentless war against Catholics and the Catholic Church, Hagee also regularly calls it the "Harlot Church," "The Great Whore," an "apostate church," the "anti-Christ," and a "false cult system." In case you don't believe me, here is Hagee preaching against the Catholic Church:



• On Hurricane Katrina: "All hurricanes are acts of God because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that." [NPR Fresh Air, 9/18/06] And, "The newspaper carried the story in our local area that was not carried nationally that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades. So I believe that the judgment of God is a very real thing. I know that there are people who demur from that, but I believe that the Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the day of judgment." [NPR Fresh Air, 9/18/06]

• On Islamic Beliefs: Fresh Air host Terry Gross asked if Hagee believed that "all Muslims have a mandate to kill Christians and Jews," to which Hagee replied, "Well, the Quran teaches that. Yes, it teaches that very clearly." [NPR Fresh Air, 9/18/06]

• On African-Americans: The San Antonio Express-News reported that Hagee was going to "meet with black religious leaders privately at an unspecified future date to discuss comments he made in his newsletter about a 'slave sale,' an East Side minister said Wednesday." The Express-News reported: "Hagee, pastor of the 16,000-member Cornerstone Church, last week had announced a 'slave sale' to raise funds for high school seniors in his church bulletin, 'The Cluster.'" And, "The item was introduced with the sentence 'Slavery in America is returning to Cornerstone" and ended with "Make plans to come and go home with a slave." [San Antonio Express-News 3/7/96]

• On Women: "Do you know the difference between a woman with PMS and a snarling Doberman pinscher? The answer is lipstick. Do you know the difference between a terrorist and a woman with PMS? You can negotiate with a terrorist." [God's Profits: Faith, Fraud and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters, Sarah Posner] Or, "[T]he feminist movement today is throwing off authority in rebellion against God's pattern for the family." ["Bible Positions on Political Issues," John Hagee]

• On Iran: "The coming nuclear showdown with Iran is a certainty," Hagee wrote [in 2006] in the Pentecostal magazine Charisma. "Israel and America must confront Iran's nuclear ability and willingness to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons. For Israel to wait is to risk committing national suicide." [The Nation, 8/8/2006, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060814/new_christian_zionism] He has also said, "military confrontation with Iran is foretold in the Bible as a necessary precondition for the Second Coming." (http://blog.prospect.org/mt-tb.cgi/67989)

• On Science: "The knowledge explosion," said Hagee, "has produced a generation that is dying of AIDS, abortion, enslaved by drugs, homosexuality, Satanism, and witchcraft, and the collapse of the traditional family with the celebration of abortion. Why? Because knowledge without God only produces an intellectual barbarian." (http://blog.prospect.org/mt-tb.cgi/67989)

• On the possibility of nuclear war: Hagee claimed that "I had a congressman sit in my office the other day and say that the CIA now believes that nations hostile to Israel have purchased submarines from cash-hungry Soviets to attack Israel from the Mediterranean Sea. That U.S. Congressman said we have missiles that are missing, and we don’t know where they are. . . . Ladies and gentlemen, nuclear war is coming to the Middle East, and it will engulf the world. That was a mystery that was not known just a few years ago. But now it is known with Bible clarity." (http://blog.prospect.org/mt-tb.cgi/67989)

• On Jerusalem under Jewish control: Hagee maintained that "Satan wants Jerusalem for his messiah, the Antichrist. God has promised it to King David, that his seed, Jesus Christ, shall rule over it forever and forever. People ask why can’t the Arabs and the Jews get together over this city. Listen to me: it is not about the two-state solution. It is not about money. It is not about land. It is about theology. . . . Muhammed taught a theology of triumphalism . . . .for Islam to rule the earth. The problem is that sitting in the throat of Islamic nations in the Middle East is Israel, who has an unconditional blood covenant with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that the land shall be theirs forever and forever. God did not loan the land to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He gave it to them by blood covenant, and the Book of Genesis and that covenant still stands. It is there regardless of what the United Nations wants. It is there regardless of what the U.S. State Department thinks. It is there in spite of what the Arab nations want. It belongs to Israel. . . . I am telling you there will be no lasting peace in the Middle East until the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, returns to that sacred city and sets up his eternal kingdom." (http://blog.prospect.org/mt-tb.cgi/67989)

• On secular humanism and deception: Hagee said that "secular humanism is deception. Secular humanism says there is no right there is no wrong. Secular humanism says man is the master of his fate. What nonsense that is. You can’t guarantee your next breath. Only God can give you life. . . . You are the master of nothing! There is one master, he is King Jesus, the son of the living God, and there is no other." (http://blog.prospect.org/mt-tb.cgi/67989)

• On pestilence: Asserting that we don't have a cure for AIDS, and that earthquakes are "a tool God has of communicating with those who are hard of hearing spiritually," Hagee claimed that "God will announce the coming of Jesus Christ with the biggest earthquake the world has ever seen when the islands of the sea will disappear, and the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount will be collapsed, and the Mount of Olives will split in half and Jesus will come and say, I am the Lord, and there is none like me, and he will set up his throne on the Temple Mount and rule from the throne of his father King David, of his kingdom there will be no end." (http://blog.prospect.org/mt-tb.cgi/67989)

So, let's review. This so-called Christian is racist, sexist, anti-science, anti-Catholic, hateful toward gays and Muslims, a war-monger trying to scare up nuclear war in the Middle East, and arrogant as hell.

Uh... can't you just feel the Christian love and compassion oozing out of every pore in Hagee's body??!!!?!?!?!??!! Ummmmm.... doesn't the Bible say something about the anti-Christ being cloaked in the garb of righteousness?

But, wait, WAIT! Before you dismiss Hagee out of hand as some fringe crazy, note these stats:

Again, quoting from Sarah Posner's article, "A 2002 Time magazine poll found that 'fully 59% [of Americans] say they believe the events in Revelation are going to come true, and nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the Sept. 11 attack.' A 2007 AP/Ipsos poll found that one quarter of Americans believed that Jesus Christ would return in 2007 and 46% of evangelicals believed that it was 'somewhat likely.' A comprehensive study of Pentecostals and charismatic evangelical Christians conducted by the Pew Center on Religion and Public Life in 2006 found that 'Pentecostals have particularly strong views on "the rapture of the church," the teaching that before the world comes to an end the faithful will be saved and taken up to heaven.' According to the survey, 90% of American Pentecostals held that belief, while 69% of charismatics and 59% of other Christians did." So, there are a lot of lunatics walking around out there pretending to be sane people...

Perhaps you wonder why John McCain, who clearly does not subscribe to this insanity personally, would accept this endorsement. Oh, and let me be clear, McCain accepts this endorsement:



Later, on Friday, February 29, 2008, McCain said: "Well I think it's important to note that pastor John Hagee who has supported and endorsed my candidacy supports what I stand for and believe in. When he endorses me, it does not mean that I embrace everything that he stands for and believes. And I am very proud of the Pastor John Hagee's spiritual leadership to thousands of people and I am proud of his commitment to the independence and the freedom of the state of Israel. That does not mean that I support or endorse or agree with some of the things that Pastor John Hagee might have said or positions that he may have taken on other issues. I don't have to agree with everyone who endorses my candidacy. They are supporting my candidacy. I am not endorsing some of their positions."

And later that day, with public outrage growing, the campaign released this statement: "Yesterday, Pastor John Hagee endorsed my candidacy for president in San Antonio, Texas. However, in no way did I intend for his endorsement to suggest that I in turn agree with all of Pastor Hagee's views, which I obviously do not... I am hopeful that Catholics, Protestants and all people of faith who share my vision for the future of America will respond to our message of defending innocent life, traditional marriage, and compassion for the most vulnerable in our society." Yet, he refused to "reject or denounce" Hagee and his endorsement.

So, why? Well, that is easy: McCain is desperate for the support of the hard Right in his Party and is apparently willing to do just about anything to get it. In fact, for the last few years, in preparation for his 2008 run, he has pandered to all kinds of right-wing issues and causes and groups, flip-flopping hard in the process. Steve Benen at "Crooks and Liars" has put together a brief list:

* Pander On Tax Cuts: In 2001, McCain was one of just two GOP senators to vote against Bush’s destructive tax cuts. Now, however, McCain makes a point of touting his support for making Bush’s tax cuts permanent.

* Pander On Stimulus: For the past few months, McCain has been declaring that passing an economic stimulus package is at the very top of his agenda. Yet when the Senate voted earlier this month on a generous bill providing increased assistance to seniors and veterans, McCain skipped the vote. The bill fell just one vote short of passage, a victory for the far right.

* Pander To Karl Rove: In the 2000 presidential campaign, Karl Rove launched vicious smear tactics against McCain on behalf of Bush’s campaign. Recently, however, McCain has embraced the right-wing political operative. He said that he has “always respected Karl Rove as one of the smart great political minds I think in American politics” and specifically refused to condemn Rove’s partisan smears.

Those are all excellent recent examples, but if we look back just a little bit further, Sen. McCain’s (R-Pandertown) shameless record emerges in even more detail.

* Pander On Immigration: McCain was a co-sponsor of the DREAM Act, which would grant legal status to illegal immigrants’ kids who graduate from high school. Now, to make the nativist elements in his party happy, he’s against it.

* Pander to U.N. Critics: McCain used to champion the Law of the Sea convention, even volunteering to testify on the treaty’s behalf before a Senate committee. Now, to pander to U.N. critics, he opposes it.

* Pander to Abortion-Rights Opponents: McCain used to say he would not support a reversal of Roe v. Wade. Now, to pander to his party’s base, he’s said the opposite.

* Pander to the Religious Right: McCain condemned radical TV preachers like Jerry Falwell as “agents of intolerance” in 2000, but once he began running for president again, he pandered to the religious right by cozying up to the man who said Americans “deserved” the 9/11 attacks.

* Pander to Iowans: McCain was anti-ethanol before the 2008 campaign. Once on the trail in Iowa, he became pro-ethanol.

* Pander to South Carolinians: McCain was against official promotion of the Confederate flag, but in 2000, hoping to curry favor with South Carolinians, pandered shamelessly on the issue, and later conceded that his position was one of “cowardice.”

So, the questions are:

- How much of a "maverick" and "independent-minded" politician is John McCain, really?

- Why has the media been so hasty to jump on Obama, even though he has consistently denounced the views of Farrakhan, but slow to criticize the white candidate and his hateful white "Christian" endorser?

- And, finally, is John Hagee really the anti-Christ? (wink)

What do you think?