Creepy Pastor from Calvary Temple Sure Knows How To Rake in the Dough

Because God Wanted You to Spend Thousands of Your Disciples Money on a Mid-Life Crisis

As a disclaimer, I'm not religious, but I don't have anything against how people choose to worship and I understand our society is sort of based on Christian-Judeo ethics. However, I have everything against psychotic whackjobs and people who exploit the misery of others to fund their crooked little schemes. Hilzoy directs our attention to Pastor Star R. Scott who runs a Pentecostal church out in Virginia. The dude preaches a strict interpretation of the bible, which is probably where he came up with the idea for his out-of-print book "Adam's Rib". The description:

Contrary to what many psychologists and leaders of the current men's movement say, there is no place for role reversal in marriage. In this book, Pastor Scott gives straightforward counsel on what the Bible says about the roles of the husband and the wife. God ordained the husband to be the head. The woman was created for the man. The husband is to love, cherish, and honor his wife. The wife is to undergird, support and give balance to the man.

Not sure what planet this guy is living on, but saying "thou art my undergirdle" to any woman in this modern age would more than likely get you smacked upside the head. The Washington Post exposes more of his spiteful teachings, which he claims all derives from the Bible, and even talks about how he spends some of the 15-20% tithing members of the church are required to chip in:

County building department records show what many former members describe: a 2,400-square-foot garage on church property where he stored the vehicles. Until last year, when he quit going on the road, Scott carted the vehicles to shows and races across the country in a huge trailer attached to a motor home with granite floors and plasma TVs, said Star Scott Jr., who added that he traveled for years with his father to car events. The son said that his father would be on the road for weeks and that Calvary would pick up the tab, which sometimes included snowmobiling, casino gambling or attending concerts.

He said his father lives off church-paid credit cards, and 2005 card statements he provided to The Post, addressed to Calvary Temple and sent to Pastor Scott's house, show personal spending of $10,000 to $13,000 a month. Items include $2,377 to a company that makes wheels for Harley Davidson motorcycles, $1,450 to a sports memorabilia firm and $544 to a winter sports rental center in Lake Tahoe.

The NASCAR evangelical outreach program or whatever this thing is can be found at the website Finish the Race. The site features multiple pics of Star R. Scott speeding around a race track and it's unclear where the evangelicals are supposed to flock to lest they be run over at 180 mph. Jesus might have built some hot rods (cf. Ministry), but he certainly didn't drive around in one like an asshole. This pastor is a low-grade hustler seeking to fund his lifestyle by saying he's a "man of God". Don't buy into it, even if he claims you're going to hell.

Jonestown Massacre: Spreading the Hate in '78

Almost 30 years ago was when 900+ members of the People's Temple cult, led by the vile Jim Jones, committed "revolutionary suicide" by ingesting cyanide-laced Kool Aid in Guyana. Today, Tim Reiterman writes of how Jonestown thugs shot at him when he came with a team of reporters and Congressman Leo Ryan to investigate the cult. Ryan has been the only congressman to die in the line of duty, as he was not as lucky as Reiterman. Interestingly, many big-wig politicians in the Bay Area supported the sexual abuse and fraud of Jim Jones prior to the mass suicide, including former SF mayor, Willie Brown, who said "Jim Jones is a rare, rare specimen. Jim Jones is a symbol of what we all ought to be about. . . Jim Jones is, in my opinion, a true human being. The U.S. government even dispensed welfare and social security checks to the cult's members so that it could stay afloat. How could we have been so fucking stupid to support these people?

Like Hitler said, people are more willing to fall for a big lie than a small one, and this is a tragic event in American history that shows how economically depressed people can succumb to mass hysteria. Fortunately, easy access to information has kept cults like the Church of Scientology on the defensive, but I fear the tough times ahead might make Americans more ready to fall victim to a demagogue.

Director of White Aryan Resistance Endorses...Obama?!?

What in the Hell?!?

Tom Metzger, who runs a friendly organization with games for children on its website called "Shoot the Fags Before They Rape You" and "Don't Let Those Spics Cross the Border", has decided to tell Esquire who he feels will best support his vision of a racially segregated society. As a side not, his son was part of the skinhead rabble on Geraldo during the famous Ouch, My Nose episode that saw Geraldo get hit in the face with a chair. Obviously, he's a swell guy, so here's his endorsement and the rationale [Esquire]:

The corporations are running things now, so it’s not going to make much difference who's in there, but McCain would be much worse. He’s a warmonger. He’s a scary, scary person--more dangerous than Bush. Obama, according to his book, Dreams Of My Father, is a racist and I have no problem with black racists. I’ve got the quote right here: 'I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother’s white race.' The problem with Obama is he’s being dishonest about his racial views. I’d respect him if he’d just come out and say, 'Yeah, I’m a black racist.' I don’t hate black people. I just think it’s in the best interest of the races to be separated as much as possible. See, I’m a leftist. I’m not a rightist. I hate the transnational corporations far more than any black person.

Obviously this doesn't say anything about Obama or the majority of his supporters, but it's an odd commentary on how politics make some fucking strange bedfellows.

Freaky Christian Zionists Invade My Mailbox

Luckily, their literature makes for a good coaster

So I usually never get anything good in my old-school mail, except the occasional coupon from Deja Vu on a 2-for-1 lap dance, but I was totally ecstatic to get this creepy propaganda on the coming end of the world today. It seems to be from one of these eschatology groups (see Blumenthal's Rapture Ready for a good explanation). Basically, they advocate starting a nuclear war between Iran and Israel to bring about the end times and the second coming of Jesus. Transcribed:

Worldwide upheaval will lead to the rise of the "Beast", which is the world dictator and a council of ten leaders (with three removed). They will have power on a global scale. He will, for a time, bring order to chaos. He will appear to resolve world problems. He will make a 7 year peace treaty with Israel, but after 3.5 years he will break that peace and invade Israel.

I don't even know what the hell these people are talking about, but it's either an anti-Obama 527 or a prelude to Maiden's new album. It keeps going (and then some):

Israel will suffer greatly at the hands of its enemies but at the end of this 7 year tribulation period, God will sovereignly interven: the armies of the world will ultimate go to war against the Lord himself. But the Lord, who is called Faithful and True, will bring swift judgement against the Antichrist, the one world government, and the armies of the world. He will utterly consume them all.

It's not sounding like a very good time to make long-term property investments, but fortunately for us, Jesus eventually shows up:

Jesus Christ Himself, the Prince of Peace, will rule over the nations, and He will restore the earth to its original beauty and balance.

I'm not really anti-religion or even against people putting this craziness in my mailbox, but when some of our leaders seem to advocate foreign policy based on beliefs like this, I understand why there is separation of Church and State.

The website the literature invites you to visit is BibleGateway.com, which is advertised by this little fat kid talking about how it's fun to rock out to Bible verses. The website hardly seems malign or political, and I'm just not understanding how the Bible can be taken to advocate such an extremist foreign policy.

Proof That Jesus Died in Vain: Obamaerobics

The fact that dorky white people can't dance cannot be overstated. One only needs to attend a local wedding to understand that drunk people "shaking their booty" to a Mambo Number 5 remix is a precursor for stabbing yourself in the face with a soldering iron. The young African-American members professing their admiration for Obama in military fatigues registered about a 0.2 on the outrage scale for myself, primarily because I know black fraternities are into that sort of thing and they have some rhythm for God's sakes. These retro/emo/hipster weenies are total embarrassments with an accompanying website that doesn't even have a hint of irony. Please stop the madness before a spandex-clad and menopausal Olivia Newton-John teams up with this abomination.

(h/t Slog)

Kim Jong Illin' To Join Zombie Horde

Any speculation on whether or not the ronery Kim Jong-Il has kicked the bucket to team up with Zombie Castro? The story was big last week, but seems to have dropped off the radar in the American media in lieu of Palin's sexy tanning bed. However, I did find an interesting article from The Independent:

In North Korean biographies, Mr Kim's birth in 1942 (or 1941) was foreseen by a swallow and marked by a double rainbow and a new star. Movies extolling his great mental and physical prowess record that he came from the heavens, accompanied by a huge snowstorm. "When he shouts, huge storms happen," said one.

What the fuck man, no one gave me a double rainbow!

75,000 Misguided Drones Celebrate the Leader in Portland

Just caught a slideshow on Youtube of Obama's zombie fest in Portland, and I honestly fear for humanity. Despite the fact that there were some babes in attendance with "Change" T-shirts, the whole event represents the false belief that a sheisty politician is going to save America from foreign threats, poverty, and the looming specter of death. The My Barack Obama page is an Orwellian maze of L. Ron Hubbardesque photos of Obama surrounded by happy youngsters celebrating their leader in a section called "Generation Obama". How can we be short-sighted?

This optimism reminds me of the creepy cult-like love for "The Leader" in the Movementarian Simpsons episode. We just need Obama's campaign people to teach the blue collar denizens the Leader chant to the tune of Batman. We allow government to exist and give it power to ensure that we don't end up in a Somalia-like state with ruling warlords terrorizing the citizens and hording all the resources. But somewhere down the road, we thought it would be a swell idea for the state to tell us where we needed to go to school, what we could watch on TV, and how our retirement fund was going to work so we could be part of a Ponzi scheme before we kicked the bucket. All of the worst genocides in the 20th century were perpetuated by totalitarian governments (Mao's China, Stalin's USSR, Hitler's Reich, and many others). Our list of presidents in the last 30 years have all been utter disgraces, frequently lying to the American public to hold onto power and suck at the bottomless troff of tax dollars and money funneled in from corporate interests. Why are people thinking anything will change?

Being skeptical of sleazy politicians is as American as apple pie, and an overabundance of zeal for a candidate coupled with the cult of self-help feel-goodism ravaging our nation will ensure that the powers that be can do whatever they want to us. Tax the shit out of us, enact disastrous foreign policies, continue on an unsustainable course of resource consumption, as long as we feel good about ourselves. Bullshit.

More Fun Policing from MADD (The Video Game Edition)

The angry ladies over at MADD have seen fit to save humanity once again. This time by chastising the new game, Grand Theft Auto 4. From a MADD press release (h/t Reason):

This is why MADD is extremely disappointed by the decision of the manufacturers of the game Grand Theft Auto IV to include a game module where players can drive drunk. Drunk driving is not a game and it is not a joke. Drunk driving is a choice, a violent crime and it is also 100 percent preventable.

Where have these people been the last twenty-plus years that video games have been around, hiding in some booze-free convent? If entertainment consoles had any bearing or influence on real life, I would've grown up to eat mushrooms all day and shoot fireballs out of my hand at the hammer brothers. There is absolutely no link between video games and violence, and the busybodiness and self-righteousness of MADD is really going to anger a lot of their would-be supporters. Besides, if MADD thought that a pixelated game imitated life so much, wouldn't they want to combat some of the more egregious social ills in the Grand Theft Auto series like shooting people in the face and beating the shit out of hookers with a baseball bat.

Root of What Plagues Society

Proselytizing My Crazy Beliefs To Young Soldiers

A young Specialist (an E-4) was hassled by a Major (an O-4) for his atheist beliefs in Iraq according to this New York Times article. Generally speaking, impressing political or religious beliefs in a coercive fashion is strictly forbidden and highly unethical in normal officer-enlisted relations. This is due to the fact that the authority held by officers in the military hierarchy should not fall outside of rigidly defined aspects that are essential to the mission. However, if this Major goes unpunished, that would finally set the precedent for me to force my religious beliefs on every Joe in theater!

My religion involves a modern, 21st century version of the Heaven's Gate sect, who courageously killed themselves with Nikes and bags packed in 1997 to get on the spiritually divine spaceship hiding amongst the Hale-Bopp comet. To meet up with our brothers, we will be looking at a 2009 departure to Jupiter where we will take a space truck to Alpha Centauri, which has a plethora of hot alien babes and free parking. All E-4 and below will be required to attend the weekly meetings on base or else they will have to clean latrines and they won't be allowed to use the phone bank.

Strap on those Nikes and join the party!

Justifying the Raid on the FLDS

More on the practice I could never afford here

Coming of age during the Clinton administration instilled in me a healthy fear of the US Government using heavy-handed tactics (I understand the irony that I'm now in the military...thanks). The gestapo-like tactics and incendiary rounds used by the ATF to take out the Branch Davidians in Waco 1993, Randy Weaver's wife getting shot at Ruby Ridge, the whole Elian Gonzalez fiasco, etc. So I expressed a lot of the same anxieties as Pat Dollard did when this whole raid on the Polygamist FLDS compound was shaping up. But instead of churning up a plot with my separatist militia group, I decided to read a little bit more about it!

I would be hard-pressed to justify a military-style raid against someone for their choice of lifestyle. Even if that involves living in a compound and dressing like the characters from The Handmaiden's Tale. But Orcinus points out that clearly these women are being coerced, and their testimony and interview on Fox/CNN gives a stark sense of brainwashed abuse that any freshman Psych major could point out. There's a website dedicated to exposing the criminality of this cult called Help The Child Brides, which is worth a visit. There's personal stories of Khmer Rouge style "re-education" if any of the women act up, and a sad story of a 14 year-old girl that was married off to her step-brother. Watching the interviews reminded me of stories my aunt, who's a cop, used to tell me. She said she frequently responds to domestic abuse cases (usually phoned in by the neighbor), and sometimes the battered woman will come to the door and make excuses for her drunken, criminal of a husband. It's a phenomenon I just don't understand. That's the same impression I got from these interviews with the women of the FLDS. So are the raids justified, yeah, probably. It's upholding the law, and committing abuse isn't exactly a viable choice of a lifestyle, since it harms someone else. Any libertarian would agree with me.

Creepy Shit

Just to prove I was watching CNN, here's a commercial geared towards it's aging demographic

Malaise and Links to Better Things

Not sure what the subject of this post will be, since there's a lot of stuff is swimming around my mind. I try to write some more "intellectual" commentary on VetVoice, but it usually degenerates into various rants. The second-half of any deployment is marked by a zombie-like state associated with your very existence. I feel bad since we have a new Major in the office, a good dude, but most of us are so "put out to pasture" that it's difficult to put on a happy face. But I'm not concerned, since I've got access to the internet and whole lot of learning and ranting to do (much different than the last two deployments out to sea). While I get my head on straight, here's some goodies to sink your fangs into:

• Kaboom has a got a great article on the Sahwa movement in Iraq, which you can chase down with the NYT article to get some perspective on what might be the greatest hope for Iraq.
• Last of Iraqis talks about brutality in the midst of conflict, not for the feint of heart
• Captain's Journal talks about electricity and counter-insurgency, can't understand the logic, go check it out.
• Those clowns at Westboro Baptist Church are planning a protest of Heath Ledger's funeral (h/t to Sniper). There was some punditbabes like Ham and Banderas talking about this very issue on Fox's Red Eye. Just as an aside, I find Fox News using very deceptive tactics to convince desperate guys like me to buy into their spiel by using babes like Malkin, Banderas, and Ham to run a campaign of misinformation. Ham has said some very idiotic things in the past (see "The Power of Jonah Goldberg's Book" to get a flavor), and BillO seems to have a creepy obsession with her reminescent of a dirty old man at a Montreal strip joint. I don't even want to get into Malkin. But Banderas slammed the Westboro Church, so good for her!
• One of my favorite sites, OYE, has got something new up. I haven't watched the video yet, but I gotta have something to look forward to after work.
• New milblogger in Iraq, Ms. Jackie over at Defiant Compliance, has got a groovy video of rolling on a convoy through the Shi'ite heartland. Cool stuff. None of that "Soldiers of Heaven" deathcult from Basra in the video, but we're all glad it was safe travels for her.

Cheers!

Red Eye talks about that stupid f'n church and a shot of some punditbabe's legs

Ideological Groups That Really Suck

One thing that I've learned from being in Iraq is that sometimes you have to adopt a pragmatic approach that compromises various conflicting ideas to reach some sort of practical solution. I think this may be known as the Hegelian dialectic, but I'm certainly no braniac. I just think the reason that I'm such a moderate on political matters is because ideological groups suck ass. Here's some examples:

Code Pink (link)

These yahoos storm into the Petraeus/Crocker September testimony with stupid signs and funny looking hats to insult a 4-star general in the name of "supporting the troops". Geez, Code Pink, I think the guy might know a thing or two about "the troops" having been in the Army since you were smoking pot and getting it on at swingers parties during the 70s. These hippies are just looking for any cause to stir up trouble and, conveniently for them, there's a war going on, so that they can leave their mark before they zip off into the cosmos or whatever aging hippie douches do once they croak. (SGT Freedom eloquently explains)

Lyndon Larouche Democrats (link)

These guys seriously freak me out. When I was in college, they used to always have a leaflet table set up with very poorly patched-together signs that made absolutely no sense about how we were headed for an economic depression and that the only thing that could save us was Roosevelt-style socialism and building choo-choo trains through Africa. My friend was brainwashed by them and invited me to their "compound" out in LA once to get some "education". They verbally assaulted me for supporting Thomas Jefferson-style democracy and claimed I was some sort of British agent or maybe even a "speculator". What these insults meant still haunt me to this day. Good thing they didn't get my name. Some other groups many years ago weren't so lucky, since the Larouchers attacked them with nunchucks during something known as Operation Mop-Up. Creepy.

9/11 Truthers (link)

You ever wonder why the world is run by old white dudes in masonic hoods who control the world's banks and engineer wars and famines to stuff their coffers with gold. Well, after being on this planet for 27 years, I have realized that no one is that smart to pull off a ruse on that magnitude. Good god, some of our leaders can barely tie their shoes let alone manufacture 9/11 to start a global conquest under the pretense of fighting terrorism. Think about it.


Westboro Baptist Church (link)

And you wonder why I'm a tad vigilant against religious fundamentalism creeping into politics. These crazies think it's a good idea to spread the righteous word that "God Hates Fags" by protesting the funerals of our fallen brothers and sisters. Apparently, since the US accepts homosexuality, God is punishing our military by killing us with IEDs. The logic is absurd and that old bag in charge of the operation, Betty Phelps, needs a boot in her face.


Maybe you can now see where I'm coming from. Feel free to add your own as I'm gonna pop in a movie right now and have a chilled out Saturday night. Viva the Moderate Revolution!

Crazy Doomsday Cult Runs Amok in Southern Iraq

The interesting news never stops in this place. A group known as the "Soldiers of Heaven" is battling it out with Iraqi Security Forces in the southern provinces of Nasiriyah and Basrah. I remember hearing about them last year, something about attacking Shi'ite religious leaders in the hopes of attaining salvation for the coming apocalypse. All very creepy stuff. This blog whole-heartedly supports the Iraqi Security Forces (now responsible for Basra province) in bringing these crazies to justice by any means necessary and to sustain a peaceful Ashura for all the not-so-crazy Shi'ite pilgrims. It's strange to see how Iraq is becoming similar to America in bringing out all the yahoos: Scientologists, Heaven's Children, Lyndon Larouchers, ahh... the joys of democracy.

Update: Things have settled down as of now. Talisman Gate has some keen insight into how the clashes were quelled, and Juan Cole praises the violence with "the sectarians seem to have put up an impressive fight in Nasiriya, where they killed and wounded officers of the Iraqi security forces", Juan, what a swell guy!

I wonder if the "Soldiers of Heaven" were wearing the same Heaven's Gate style Nikes