Godly Politics

From the look of things it seems God is a little partial to dumb Texas governors who like to wear their religion on their sleeves. Rick Perry (you know, the guy who wants to be president of the country from which he wants to secede) recently held a prayer event in a football stadium (Matthew 6:6) to ask for God's help in dealing with the problems our nation faces. Guess what? To my complete and utter surprise, according to Rick Perry, God wholeheartedly endorses Rick Perry's political ideas. Might as well spill out the goat entrails and see what Ba'al has in mind for 2012.

When you mix your politics with your religion, you wind up with a toxic stew that is poison to both; your religion inevitably gets corrupted by the lying and deceitfulness inherent in the politics and your politics must be perfect and unquestionable because it comes from God. Could the right wing political co-opting of religion be a contributing factor to why American church attendance is going down by about one million per year? When exactly did God anoint the GOP as His chosen people? If God chose George Bush as President, as many, many swore He did back in 2000, then surely God must have known that George was going to make an awful mess of the economy, so what conclusions can we draw about God from this choice? Religion and politics don't mix well because when your Godly politics fail, as they inevitably will (because they actually come from partisan humans), it calls into question your religious beliefs; it pulls your religion down into the muck of politics. If God chooses a president or a political ideology, then God owns the outcome. But according to almost all Christian doctrine, the whole point of our existence is to exercise free will, so if God is choosing our presidents, or steering hurricanes or causing earthquakes or in any other way interfering in human affairs, then we don't really have free will; Do we? So maybe God really isn't partial to dumb Texas governors; maybe it is actually people that don't understand the point of their religion that are partial to dumb Texas governors.

America Held Hostage

The Republicans are doing everything in their power to sabotage the economy and force us into a double dip recession because, as they have openly admitted, it will greatly enhance their chances in the 2012 elections. According to most economists, the debt deal recently forced on Obama at gunpoint will result in about 1+ to 2.0% decrease in GDP which in turn results in 0.5% to 0.7% decrease in employment according to Okun's law. Since current employment is 150 million, the result of the deal will be a loss in the neighborhood of 750k to 1 million jobs in 2012. Republican speaker John Boehner chortles, “I got 98% of what I wanted.” Republican senate leader Mitch McConnell admits, “I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting, most of us didn’t think that. What we did learn is this — it’s a hostage that’s worth ransoming.” To top it off, not only will the spending cuts forced on a weak economy probably push the economy back into recession and result in weaker revenue, actually increasing the deficit, but these cuts have already cost us more in projected future interest payments than the cuts were supposed to save in the first place. A lose, lose, lose situation for the nation with the only winner being the Republican Party.

So, in summary: Republicans, behaving like terrorists, hold the American economy hostage with a gun (in the form of threatening a US default on its debt) and swear they will pull the trigger if the president doesn't give them everything they want. Obama, being the reasonable moderate sort of nice guy that he is, pleads with them to release the hostage until the last minute but then gives in to almost all of the Republican demands in order to save the country (1 Kings 3:16). The Republicans, knowing that no president has ever been reelected when the economy is in recession and unemployment is rising, get rewarded with a double dip recession and higher unemployment in an election year. Evil wins.