Repent - the end is near!

I am beginning to feel that the hysterics of the political and religious fringe this campaign season are an allegory of how the world will end - not  by solar storms, flood , fire or locusts but by shrieks and a torrent of mindless babbling as people discover  that the end is near.  Nowadays, the news cycle is not complete without more reports from one apocalyptic  dead-ender  or another that demons are descending upon our bedeviled planet. And a lot of it  is coming from people once thought to be sane enough to get elected.

From Arizona, for example, came word that the Republican secretary of state suggested he might keep President Obama off his state's ballot unless Hawaii provided irrefutable proof that Obama was not born beyond paradise.  I thought we had been there the last time.  Ken Bennett, the election boss, soon recanted but not before he moved to the top of the most-ridiculed list amid strong competition. The secretary of state, for God's sake!

Folks like Bennett have become desperate in sustaining the moronic  cult of birtherism.  He said he was merely responding to questions from his constituents.  That made no more sense than to revive the old myth that there are alligators sloshing around in New York City's sewers. (They're not?)  Oh, some diehard birthers want us to know in their end of days  scenario that Obama's real father was named Frank Marshall Davis, who, alas,  was a communist.

In Iowa, the so-called Republican Party has prepared a draft platform that calls for proof that a presidential candidate is a natural born citizen.  And they are so impatient to instill purity in the Oval Office they want the proof in time  for the 2012 election. The platform also wants to ban  money for Planned Parenthood, end stem cell research and eliminate all school activities on Sundays or Wednesday nights,  which they contend conflicts with Baptists'  prayer meetings.

(None of this will matter if the planet  disappears before the Republican convention in Tampa. We can hope.)

Alas, there''s more. Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.)  questions Obama's  birth certificate; Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) doesn't think  that Obama is American "in his heart". In North Carolina a preacher named Charles R. Worley has topped the list of homophobes by demanding that gays and lesbians  be penned up behind an electrified fence and  left to die, adding that Obama  was a "baby killer and homosexual lover." Other Obamaphobes  more gently refer to him as a "half-breed".

The hate pouring out of some pulpits and along the circuit  today could bend spoons.  No matter.  Who will need a  spoon when the lights go out on all of us, including the Rev. Worleys,  in the land of the free?





   

Komen says it's not about politics. Oh?

SINCE ENDING ITS support of Planned Parenthood, the Susan G. Komen Foundation for the Cure has been spinning its reason as a simple act of playing by its rules. In short, the Komen leaders insist that politics has nothing to do with its decision. That quickly recalls Seinfeld's George Costanza's excuse that "it's not a lie if you believe it."

Until now Komen has worked closely and nobly with Planned Parenthood in helping to fund breast cancer screenings. However, it has been no secret that anti-abortion groups have been trying to destroy Planned Parenthood with their congressional surrogates, wrongly accusing PP of providing abortions with massive federal funds. If you follow the sequence of how this latest monstrous event came about, check this:

(1)In April 2011, Karen Handel, losing runoff Republican candidate for Georgia governor in 2010 (endorsed by Mitt Romney and Jan Brewer!) became senior vice president of Komen, continuing her pro-life campaign stance to rid Komen of Planned Parenthood

(2).In September, Rep. Cliff Stearns, the anti-abortion congressman from Ocala, Fla., announced that his subcommittee would investigate Planned Parenthood, demanding all of the foundation's records and those of all of its affiliates..

(3)Not long afterward, Komen rewrote its rules and denied funding to any organzation being "investigated" in Congress, while rewarding Stearns and the pro-lifers.

(4)Komen announces that it would have no further dealing with Planned Parenthood and even rejected any appeals for further discussion by the latter.

(5)Komen releases a formal statement, saying: "Grant-making decisions are not about politics - our priority is and always will be the women we serve. Making this issue political or leveraging it for fundraising purposes would be a disservice to women."

(6) Political and religious conservatives shouted "Yippee". Tony Perkins, the oft-quoted president of the Family Research Council, said it was about time that Planned Parenthood stop making a profit from abortions - which, of course, works for the Family Council's anti-abortion profit-making game.

(7)Not about politics? Make me laugh.

P.S. Planned Parenthood has received more than $400,000 in fresh contributions since Komen put a hit on it. You can add to that amount. I just did.

UPDATE: Now make that $650,000!