I was talking via email with an American friend the other day – and this was someone I already knew to be a conservative Republican – when he threw me by saying that he ‘really feared Obama’. And the ‘really’ was capitalised. We don’t usually talk politics and I am not about to do so with someone who does not want to but I would have liked to have heard just what the basis of this ‘fear’ is. There have been, and still are, people who get themselves into power and damn well should be feared. Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin and, more recently, Sadam and Mugabe are just the tip of the iceberg. But Barack Obama? What can be so scary about him? Bush is scary. Cheney is scary. But Obama? I don’t get it.

If you really need someone scary then look no further than Sarah Palin, VP running mate of the not really that scary John McCain. This is one scary woman. This woman is so delusional that not that long ago she would have been locked up.

The vast majority of Americans are ordinary people. They live normal lives, they work, they raise everyday families and are, on the whole, decent people just living their lives. Politically they might lean towards the Democrats or sway a bit more right towards the Republicans and that’s all good for the mix. Many of them are members of their local church and follow a Christian path and there is nothing wrong with that.

Then there are the right wing fanatics who may call themselves Christians but are disowned by the majority of Christians around the world. These people, these vicious, nasty people are extremists of the worse kind – often racist, often advocating violence – they have taken the Christian message and distorted it beyond recognition to the point where if Jesus Christ himself were to return and wander into one of their church meetings he would be lucky to escape with his life. Exactly what motivates these people is beyond me although I suspect an enormous feeling of insecurity and a low IQ both play a big part which leaves them vulnerable to being sucked in by one of the hate-mongering, evangelical ‘Christian’ corporations.

Their God, and apparently, Sarah Palin’s God, tell them things that He doesn’t tell other, ordinary believers. For the majority of Christians the world over, the message is about peace, tolerance, love and respect. It is about living a good, honest and productive life, about helping those less fortunate, about fairness and selfless behaviour. For Palin and others like her, their religion is about hatred and intolerance, about war and conquest, about loathing those that are different and about money. In short, it is built on outrageous hypocrisy. These people sent troops to fight in the Iraq war on a “task that is from God.” And it is, apparently, “God’s Will’ that a gas pipeline be built across Palin’s state of Alaska.

Anyone that believes their God cares about such things as a gas pipeline is either seriously deluded or, as I suspect, is using the name of God to claim a moral high ground to sucker these fanatics into a vote. And to suggest that the Christian God of peace and tolerance personally directed the USA to invade another country is just an attempt to use religion to mask something rotten and sick within the core of the current American political administration.

Bush is scary because he has proved himself inept, corrupt and quite plainly fairly stupid. Cheney is scary because, at the end of the day he is little more than a political thug in the pocket of corporate America. I now find McCain scary for the simple reason that at his age, if he dies in office he will leave the White House in charge of someone who is, perhaps, scarier than all of them.

The only reason I can see that people would fear Obama is the very reason he would make a good choice to heal the self-inflicted wounds of the Bush years. And this is that he is a highly intelligent and honourable man with a strong set of moral values that the Christian extremists claim as their own while proving, with their every action and incantation of Gods name, they are actually completely bereft of.

Is anybody there? How about Tacoma? Portland? Eugene? Is the beautiful little town of Yoncalla, Oregon still there? What about the south coast then; did anything come along this year and finish what Katrina started? Is Florida devastated? Has the Mississippi burst it’s banks and swept everything away?

Back in May of this year, I wrote up a little weather-related piece (And God Said Let There Be Hurricanes), relating the forecast for the storm season by none other than, well, God himself. At least, it was God’s weather forecast as given to the human cockroach, Pat Robertson, TV Evangelist, friend of The Shrub and, he tells us, God’s chosen conversationalist. Huge storms were going to lash the south coast of the USA, we were told. But even worse, a possible Tsunami was going to be unleashed on the North West Pacific coast.

So, as the end of 2006 approaches with the hurricane season well and truly behind us, I was just wondering about Seattle. Was it so bad that nobody knows it’s not there anymore? Has anyone heard from anyone in Seattle over the last month or so? What about Alabama? Anyone been there lately. Did you need a boat to get around?

It’s possible, I suppose, that God was lying to Pat – or perhaps playing a little game with him. But I don’t believe that for one minute. Why would a supreme deity and omnipotent being bother with a lie? Or even a sudden sense of humour? Maybe Pat misheard God. Well – that’s a possibility I guess although if he is so chummy with his maker you would think that God would have pointed this out the next day.

In reality, of course, the answer is far simpler. Pat Robertson made it up. He lied. Like all rational people everywhere knew he did back in May.

World Net Daily reported today that in exchange for the release of Fox News employees Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig, who were kidnapped in the Gaza Strip last summer, Fox News – the 24 hour US conservative brown-nosing news channel – handed over $2 million to their terrorist kidnappers.

The terror leader, from the Gaza-based Popular Resistance Committees, said his organization’s share of the cash was used to purchase weapons, which he said would be utilized “to hit the Zionists.” He said he expects the payments for Centanni and Wiig’s freedom will “encourage Palestinian groups to carry out further kidnappings”. The payment was confirmed by officials associated with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Jim at Irregular Times has an interesting take on this story. He points out that under the provisions of the recently passed, and Bush sponsored, Military Commissions Act, the FOX News executives who authorised the money transfer are now “unlawful enemy combatants,” under the following provision of the law signed by George W. Bush:

(1) UNLAWFUL ENEMY COMBATANT- (A) The term `unlawful enemy combatant’ means–

(i) A person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents who is not a lawful enemy combatant (including a person who is part of the Taliban, al Qaeda, or associated forces);

“Material support” is specifically defined in section 2339A(b) of title 18 of the U.S. Code:

The term “material support or resources” means any property, tangible or intangible, or service, including currency or monetary instruments or financial securities, financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safehouses, false documentation or identification, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, lethal substances, explosives, personnel (1 or more individuals who may be or include oneself), and transportation, except medicine or religious materials.

Leaving aside for a moment the appalling consequences of dumping £2 million into the outstretched hands of a terrorist knowing you and your countrymen are on his list of legitimate targets, it is all rather amusing. Especially when you consider that Fox is the most rabidly right-wing news service the USA has ever seen or – as Jim puts it – ‘the most gung-ho, kill-them-Ayrabs, kiss-ass-Republican, Bush-is-God, Stop Questioning Authority, Christian reconstructionist bunch on the airwaves‘!

Andrew Sullivan, not someone I usually spend too much time reading, published a fascinating analysis of the relationship between The Shrub and Shrub Senior at Times On Line yesterday.

Entitled That Way Son, the piece is well worth a read and explains in detail the web of connections between Bush Senior, Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Gates (Rumsfeld’s replacement nominee) and George W.

In fact, if your history of the Senior Bush White House period and the first war against Iraq are a little sketchy, Sullivan’s piece will put it all in perspective for you and after you’ve read it you’re sure to come away thinking that it explains a lot of what has transpired in the last 6 disastrous years. But what I, living as I do in England, didn’t realise, was that this web of people and their petty hatreds and plans for revenge, actually goes right back to the mid-1970’s and the Gerald Ford administration. Thinking about it, perhaps we can blame it all on Nixon!

Last week the dream collapsed in the sands of Anbar and the voting booths of the Midwest. The first son, who always wanted to make a name for himself, to escape the suffocating legacy of a presidential father, was forced by the American people to go back to Poppy (family name for Bush Senior).

BY nominating Robert Gates to the Pentagon, Bush Jr was reduced to asking one of his father’s closest friends to clean up the mess.

None of the Bush clan come well out of this, with the possible exception of Barbara. And maybe the dog.

Let me start right out and say a big thanks to the American people (see previous item). The rest of the world is proud of you.

I know we all have two more years of the Shrub but I have to say I rather enjoyed his press conference today, watching him desperately trying to avoid saying that he’d thrown Rummy to the wolves. I thought he looked a little, shall we say, harassed. And in some ways, when he eventually goes, I shall miss him – like I miss a good comedian when his act ends. And in the same way I shall miss Rummy who, in between trying to tear the world apart , also gave good value in front of the press. Indeed, I am even the proud owner of a copy of Pieces of Intelligence – The Existential Poetry of Donald H. Rumsfeld – you could call me quite a fan!

Seriously though, on top of the election results, removing Rumsfeld was a must and it is good to see that the Shrub sometimes shows some common sense. My wife came across this quote today and passed it along to me. It seems somewhat apt in summing up the Shrub and Rummy double act:

“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”

And who said that? Herman Goering at his trial at Nuremberg.