Her brethren and sisters

So Sarah Palin's a Christian, huh? So what? Well, this is kind of a hobby horse with me, but it's important nonetheless. McCain could still unexpectedly win this election, then he could drop dead, and usher in the Age of President Palin.

Palin would almost certainly be the Christian Fundamentalist born-again true believer President whom George Bush never was, despite his cynical flirtation with the religious right (and their votes): Palin would truly believe that the clock of time is fast running out on hapless, sinful humanity, and while she might deny it in public, it is very probable that she would not be moved to do much anything about things like climate change, because, if as the Bible says, the planet and most of its inhabitants are soon to be toast, why bother to lift a finger to interfere with God's prophetic whirligig?

At the same time, she'd be hugely over-motivated to get involved in anything involving Israel, the Jews, Arab states, nuclear bombs, warfare, because God has given the true believers like her a blueprint in the Bible for how the End Times will begin and end.

What kind of Christian is Sarah Palin? She's an Evangelical / Fundamentalist type, and she has worshiped at Alaskan churches where belief in Dispensationalism is as important as Santa Claus is to Christmas. They believe in the actual, now, current and ongoing fulfillment of bible prophecy, and at best it can be described as: "and they all died unhappily, ever after [true believers like Palin excepted]."

Anything that is part of our contemporary world, from the Teletubbies to gay rights, from energy policy to earthquakes can be fitted (shoehorned) somewhere into the vague but colorful verses from the book of Revelations and the Prophecy of Daniel:

'Ed Kalnins, the pastor of Wasilla Assembly of God since 1999, recently told a journalist, "Scripture specifically mentions oil instability as a sign of the Rapture. We're seeing more and more oil wars. The contractions of the fulfilment of prophecies are getting tighter and tighter." Larry Kroon, pastor of Wasilla Bible, preached last July that God could destroy the earth as soon as this autumn by raising up "a revived, prosperous and powerful Communist Russia with a web of alliances across the Middle East." The Juneau Christian Center, also dispensationalist, last year played host to John Hagee, the Christian Zionist pastor whose endorsement McCain had to repudiate because he preached that God had used Hitler to drive European Jews to Palestine.' -- Frances Fitzgerald in the New York Review of Books.

In Alaska, Palin has associated regularly with her fellow believers in this dangerous mix of faith and fireballs since her childhood. Now, with McCain putting her on the ticket, they have at least a chance of seeing one of their own finally occupying the most powerful pulpit in the world: the Oval Office.

Here's a cute little cartoon from one of the most popular End Times web sites, which sort of sums up their world view, from the days not long after 9/11. That's Jesus leading a heavenly host into battle on Earth, having just apparently lobbed a 'fireball', or nuclear bomb, right on target into the Middle East. Go Jesus!

Many more scary cartoons can be viewed here. Note that some are actually quite humorous; don't let the humor dilute the fact that this is a deadly, dark, fatalistic and very dangerous world view, and that Sarah Palin almost certainly believes a great deal of this stuff.

[The CUNY Graduate Center in New York City hosted a 2007 conference which sought to bring attention to the "Real Agenda of the Religious Right"].

Peeping and muttering

From the Toronto Zombie Walk 2008, photo by Sam of TopLeftPixel.

"And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead?" -- Isaiah chapter 8, verse 19.

The New York Times recommends B. Obama for all your country's needs

"The United States is battered and drifting after eight years of President Bush’s failed leadership. He is saddling his successor with two wars, a scarred global image and a government systematically stripped of its ability to protect and help its citizens — whether they are fleeing a hurricane’s floodwaters, searching for affordable health care or struggling to hold on to their homes, jobs, savings and pensions in the midst of a financial crisis that was foretold and preventable... Vote Obama or we're really fucked!"

The Times also has an interactive guide to all its Presidential endorsements, ever.

Take that, boss!

NEW YORK TIMES — A federal judge has awarded $4.6 million in back pay and damages to 36 delivery workers at two Saigon Grill restaurants in Manhattan, finding blatant and systematic violations of minimum-wage and overtime laws.

The delivery workers were earning two dollars an hour.

A Paolo Nutini moment

And I thought hello new shoes,
Bye bye them blues,
Take me wandering through these streets,
Where bright lights and angels meet,
Stone to stone they take me on,
I'm walking to the break of dawn...

Barack Obama is probably more photogenic than any Presidential candidate since JFK . Kennedy's big grin was the centerpiece of his charm (my mother remembers that "Kennedy was 'all teeth'), but you don't often see Obama smiling for the camera. Below, a comparatively rare smile.

Talking Points Memo update

New Poll: Obama Has Edge -- On Taxes And Family Values... Bad news for Republicans on two of their favorite issues in the new Ipsos/McClatchy poll: likely voters prefer Obama over McCain on taxes by 8 points, and Obama leads on the issue of family values by the same margin.

Poll: Palin Is Top Concern About McCain

Dow Plunges More Than 300 Points! (Again...)

Old news: Sarah Palin action figure available

The designers worked hard to get her insane Miss Satan stare just right, also her very strange interlocking knee-joints.

Granny takes a fall for the team

[Sorry, I am being way too cynical].

Obama leaving campaign trail to visit ailing grandmother

Barack Obama with his grandmother Madelyn Dunham at his high school graduation in 1979. (Photo: Obama for America, via Associated Press)

Updated | Senator Barack Obama will suspend his campaigning for more than 36 hours this week to visit his grandmother Madelyn Dunham, who is gravely ill in Hawaii.

Mrs. Dunham, 85, all but raised Mr. Obama during his teenage years in Hawaii, and he has spoken of her often on the campaign trail. A campaign spokesman, Robert Gibbs, declined to specify the nature of her illness, other than to say it was quite serious. Mrs. Dunham lives in Honolulu.

More: 

"My grandmother's the last one left," Obama told CBS "Early Show" co-anchor Harry Smith. The senator added, "She has really been the rock of the family, the foundation of the family." Obama didn't get to his mother before she died. "Yeah, got there too late," he says. "You know, I mean, it was sort of like this, in the sense that she had a terminal illness. We knew she wasn't doing well, but you know, the diagnosis was such that we thought we had a little more time and we didn't. And so I want to make sure that I don't make the same mistake twice."