“He is Bill Clinton without the baggage,” delighted Frank Rich of the New York during the Democratic primary race. Obama’s “patriotism” was like “Kryptonite” against attacks by Hillary Clinton and the Republicans, he said.
Contrast this adolescent gibberish with his latest column, blasting the God-Child-Elect’s decision to cast Rev. Rick Warren for the inaugural invocation. It isn’t at all surprising that the first serious criticism of this man would be surrounding actions that any reasonable Christian would take: choosing to swear an oath to God on Lincoln’s Bible, asking a Christian Reverend to give the invocation. However, it would be hardly accurate to call any of the criticism “serious.” Attorney and physician Michael Newdow gained fame trying to remove references to God from the Pledge of Allegiance. This week, he is targeting the inaugural oath.
Reasonable people can debate whether God should or shouldn’t be placed on American currency. Not because it constitutes an establishment of religion, but rather because it seems somewhat superfluous. I digress, but the idea that God must be stricken from the Pledge of Allegiance, inaugural oath, military prayers, or prayers at high school foot balls games on the basis of a violation of the Establishment Clause is not reasonable. Most people believe in God. It is a general belief in a higher power which I, as a Roman Catholic, share with Jews, Muslims, Hindus, pagans, and, conservatively, 90% of all religions. But, there are those who feel (“think” would be an inappropriate characterization of the act) that when or wherever one mentions the being “God” they have “established a religion.” It gives me great pause to consider the number of churches headed by a wrathful God I have personally established simply by the number of occasions I’ve stubbed my toes. Seriously, we really need to dispense with the whole nonsense that mentioning, referring to, or invoking God in any public square constitutes an establishment of religion.
Nevertheless, it is not at this which Frank Rich takes issue. It seems President-elect Obama has chosen Rev Rick Warren of Orange County, writer of the Purpose Driven Life to give the inaugural invocation. Warren held a debate between John McCain and Barak Obama last summer in which Obama famously answered the question ‘at which point does a child gain rights’ by saying that the question was ‘above his pay grade.’ Let’s see how that bump up to $400,000 works on his conscience. Warren is pro-life, anti-gay marriage, but concerned about global warming and AIDS in Africa: A ‘dichotomy’ according to some glib journalists who have referred to him as a ‘new kind of Christian.’ Since when was fighting AIDS, poverty and disease in Africa not on any ‘standard Christian’s’ things to do list? At least Frank Rich sees this point. What I’m sure he doesn’t understand is that the best way to fight AIDS, poverty and disease is to, at the very least dispense with the Global Warming mythology of Al the Gore. It is a fact that a leading pollution related cause of death in Africa is by smoke inhalation which leads to respiratory infections. Most African homes burn fires for lack of central heating and lighting. Another is dirty water which gives rise to diseases like malaria. How do we solve these crises? The same we did in the West: development; technology; industry; infrastructure; efficient farming to fight malnutrition. How is this done? Solar panels and recycled toilet paper? Probably not….
All the hundreds of billions, perhaps trillions the Western world has spent to “fight” Global Warming could have financed the creation of a virtual paradise in Africa. Instead, our initiatives to fight what amounts to the Sun, cyclical and unstoppable climate changes, volcanoes and cow flatulence has helped to cripple developing nations by cutting off the industrial and technological tools that we ourselves have used to develop the West.
That was my tangent. What I meant to discuss was Frank Rich’s double-speak. Why is Rick Warren so objectionable? Because he is supposedly anti-Gay. First, I’m not a Rick Warren advocate, per se. I know very little about the man. He seems nice enough. He also seems like a bit of a fence sitter trying to please too many people. I’ve discovered that the best test for evaluating a fence sitter is to ask whether we we’re talking about a social-conservative who speaks out about Global Warming. Bingo! I understand when the radically-left or even center-left get behind Al the Gore. What I’ve recently discovered is that anytime a non-lefty (not simply those on the right) decide to ‘speak out’ about climate change, the statement they are really making is ‘look, I’m cool! Trust me. We gotta get that Sun!’ Take John McCain, George Bush, Bill O’Reily and every other Neoconservative. I digress again.
How about Warren’s record on Gay rights? Who cares? How about Obama’s? I’ve already said I don’t think it’s a legal issue, it’s a social and religious one. Marriage needn’t be defined by the state, at all and religious institutes should be free to define marriage however they will. But Obama, on that same debate in Warren’s mega-church last summer, gave an answer to the marriage question that was IDENTICAL to John McCain’s with some added caveat about Gay tolerance. Anyone who opposes Rick Warren on this issue has no intellectual argument to condemn Obama for picking Warren unless they oppose Obama as well.
Still, Frank Rich has decided to finally criticize the God child. Back in the primaries he had ‘no baggage.’ Who would have guessed that Obama’s affiliation with some religious figure would finally do him in with the left, at long last? And, to take Rich’s column-archive on the New York Times website as an example, it’s not like any crazy reverends had ever made Obama look questionable before.
Yo be fair, Obama’s bag doesn’t included sleeping with, molesting and groping numerous women, lying to grand juries about it, doctoring affidavits, selling secrets to the Chinese, selling seats on the Commerce department, selling Whitehouse access to foreign investors, selling pardons to white collar criminals, selling the Lincoln bedroom to campaign donors, or illegal pyramid schemes. But Obama certainly has some hefty baggage. We’ll give him some time on the getting to some of the aforementioned scandals. Those are just the things Clinton was into as president.
Now, forgetting that Obama’s bag is in fact stuffed with crazy’s to the left of him, Rev. Jeremiah Wright alone would have been enough to merit, maybe, one whole column from Mr. Rich. Instead, he barely discussed the man who is on tape spewing hate, race-batting and nonsense in his best moments, who went on national television for us to marinate in his lunacy, who Obama LIED about by saying in one interview that he hadn’t been in church to hear the crazy statements, and another saying he had been (I guess Rich missed that whole thing – its hard to see CNN, FOX, and MSNBC when you’re busy masturbating to your own private Obama-shrine). Rich treated Wright like most of the Obama-media: its done; a tired question; already answered; Obama answered it; he took care of it all. No, he really didn’t. And even if had, did Rich ever question Obama’s integrity after finding that he’d sat in a church for 20 years which was pastured by a man who brought Obama to Christianity, married him and his wife, baptized his children, who was his key spiritual adviser, and whom he befriended for the whole twenty year period? A man whom Obama suddenly, by mystical revelation, decided to throw under the bus as soon as people found the tapes of him making crazy, racist and un-Christian (to say the least) statements during numerous “religious” services which Obama says he both ‘was’ and ‘was not’ at. But, I guess speaking in tongues is a typical trait of high holy prophets like the Obama.
No really, but this Rick Warren guy has got to go; lest Jesus Obama tarnish his holy reputation of perfection in all things.