A Modest Proposal

My proposal:  "Congress shall enact a bill declaring that from now until his death, every word uttered by Pat Robertson is irrelevant, mean spirited and devoid of spiritual significance."

As we should have expected, Pat Robertson has weighed in on the Pulse nightclub shooting here in Orlando. While not actually blaming President Barack  Obama, he did blame the USSC for "legalizing" Gay marriage. We should have known it would happen. we've had more than three decades of warnings!

This venal, wicked man has, for far too long,  sold his personal style of  vindictive and evil faux Christianity for the sake of monetary gain.  He has done this with the connivance of people close to him who should have years ago simply said,  "Pat, shut the F**k up!"  

Robertson is hardly  a novice at pretending to read the mind of the cosmic muffin. Below are just a few of the times he's been really, really wrong. I'd add the times he's been right, for fairness, but he hasn't ever been right!   

Each year Robertson takes to the airwaves with something he calls "Words of Knowledge", predictions that he says come from God. Here are a few of the doozies Robertson has floated over the years, and never really come back to revise, revisit, or review.

1980 - Robertson predicted that the USSR would invade the Middle East.

1981 - Robertson predicted global economic collapse, and that the USSR would invade Israel, control all the oil in the Middle East, and foul up the world economy.

1988 - Robertson said God told him to run for President. Apparently God did not tell him to win.

1996 - God told Robertson that Bill Clinton would not be elected for a second term. He also said that a terrorist with a nuclear weapon would strike within the United States.

1998 - Robertson said God would strike the United States with tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, and "maybe even a meteor" due to Orlando, Florida's city council voting to fly rainbow flags during a Gay Pride celebration. Orlando was never hit, though Virginia Beach, Robertson's home, was.

2005 - Robertson said God told him that George W. Bush would pass Social Security reform, tax reform, and that the Supreme Court would end up packed with conservative judges. He also said there would be a wide scale conversion of Muslims to Christianity.

2006 - Robertson said God told him that tsunamis would ravage the coasts of the United States.

2007 - Robertson predicted that there would be a massive terrorist event aimed at the United States that would result in "mass killing" during the second half of the year. "The Lord didn’t say nuclear, but I do believe it’ll be something like that - that’ll be a mass killing, possibly millions of people, major cities injured," Robertson said.

2012 - Robertson said God told him who would win the Presidential election that year, but he would not tell. However he later said, "I won’t get into great detail about elections but I sure did miss it."

2012 - Robertson also said that 2012 would bring about a collapse of the American economy. This information came only after a question and answer session with God that included Robertson asking if the disaster would be the result of an "EMP blast" or a "Mayan galaxy alignment", all of which God took a pass on.

2013 - For this year, Robertson revisited some older financial themes again, saying that a financial reckoning is coming, debts called in, money devalued, people on fixed incomes will suffer. Creditors will seize assets to pay back debts.

So who really is this false prophet moron?

         Before I amplify on this, I swear that every word I write about Robertson is true and documented. Born a Senator's son, Marion (yes, that's right) Robertson led a fairly normal life, but it got a bit shaky when as he claims he went Korea and was decorated in combat three times.   You see,  former Republican Congressman Paul "Pete" McCloskey, Jr., who served with Robertson in Korea, wrote a public letter which said that Robertson was actually spared combat duty when his powerful father, a U.S. Senator, intervened on his behalf, and that Robertson spent most of his time in an office in Japan. According to McCloskey, his time in the service was not in combat but as the "liquor officer" responsible for keeping the officers' clubs supplied with liquor. Robertson filed a $35 million libel suit against McCloskey in 1986, dropped it in 1988, before it came to trial and Robertson paid all McCloskey's court costs. So we have established a pattern of lying early on.

Although a grad of Yale Law (same school as "W", weird, huh?) Robertson soon saw the money to be made fleecing the flock via radio and TV as a Baptist minister. Out of deference to real Baptists, many of whom have distanced themselves from him, as stated above, Robertson claims to have regular conversations with God and at least once predicted the "end of days", saying the Lord told him so . (Relax, it was to start in 1982 and be over by 1989!)

  Robertson is also an advocate of Christian dominionism — the idea that Christians have a right to rule.(The World!)  In several  published writings, especially his 1991 book The New World Order,  Robertson  has offered  theories about a worldwide Jewish conspiracy,  plagiarizing  chapter and verse from well-known anti-Semitic works.

          Lest you think all religion and no job make Robertson, like most Protestant ministers, a man of average means, be advised  that his personal fortune is estimated between $200 million and $1 billion.  How does he do it, you say? Much of his  income comes from sales of  commercial time and the fleecing of viewers from his 700 Club TV show. 

Much of  it also comes (or came) from blood diamonds. What??? Blood Diamonds - Not our Pat?  Yep : Robertson had extensive business dealings with former Liberian president (and genocidal maniac) Charles Taylor. Taylor gave Robertson the rights to mine for diamonds in Liberia's mineral-rich countryside. According to two Operation Blessing (Robertson's  "cover" for his money making schemes) pilots who reported this incident to the state of Virginia for investigation in 1994, Robertson used his Operation Blessing planes to haul diamond-mining equipment to Robertson's mines in Liberia, despite the fact that Robertson was telling his 700 Club viewers that the planes were sending relief supplies to the victims of the genocide in Rwanda! 

 When the United States Congress passed a bill In November 2003 that offered two million dollars for his (Taylor's) capture. Robertson accused President George W. Bush of  "undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels to take over the country." At that   time Taylor was harboring Al Qaeda operatives who were funding their operations through the illegal diamond trade.  On February 4, 2010, at his war crimes trial in the Hague, Taylor testified that Robertson was his main political ally in the U.S! It is not known if any Blood diamond money financed Robertson's other favorite murderers - The Nicaraguan Contras, but it is a matter of record that when  Ronald  Reagan and Oliver North needed a way around the Boland amendment, Robertson funds provided it.

          As if these talents weren't enough, Robertson has also demonstrated clairvoyance, control of the elements, insider knowledge of the mind of God and an incredible well of hatred and bile. It's fun for me to describe his pronouncements, but I think you need to hear it from the devil himself. ladies and gentlemen, the lad himself in quotes.

On January 4, 2012, Robertson reported that God had spoken to him and "He showed me the next president" but wouldn't name who it is. He did give an indication that it wouldn't be President Obama since Robertson said God told him Obama's views were at "odds with the majority"  Really? Quick question here Pat. Was God wrong, or are you just full of hubris and bullshit?

"It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-biased media and the homosexuals who want to destroy all Christians." (don't tell my Christian gay friends)

"Lord, give us righteous judges who will not try to legislate and dominate this society. Take control, Lord! We ask for additional vacancies on the court." (Robertson calling in a divine air strike on the USSC)

"(T)he feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians." (I'm a feminist and I did not approve this message)

"the ACLU has to take a lot of blame for this" in addition to "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays, and the lesbians [who have] helped [the terror attacks of September 11th] happen." (who could have guessed Al Qaeda even knew what the ACLU is?)

"I would warn Orlando that you're right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don't think I'd be waving those flags in God's face if I were you, This is not a message of hate -- this is a message of redemption. But a condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It'll bring about terrorist bombs; it'll bring earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor." referring to  

"gay days" at Disneyworld (oh the horror, the 
horror!)

          Of course, we all know that if you are a man and your wife has Alzheimer's, it's ok to divorce her (what would be the advice if the genders were switched? Any bets?) Likewise, of Course general Petraeus had an affair, he's a man, she's a girl, June, Moon, alone at the drive in. It's natural (for men).

          And now something that hasn't made the media. Years ago, when Robertson still was a preacher in the VA tidewater area, a young man, a foster child, was hospitalized after being badly beaten by his foster father and mother (for running away, imagine that.)  The foster father had two cards to play; he was an ex Navy commander, and they were members of  Robertson's church , quite a big deal at the time in the area. Robertson , as a character witness, pled with child services to overlook the violence and return the boy to the foster home. They did and within several months the child was dead, abused to death by Robertson's parishioners. I guess God wanted the kid dead, huh?

  A doctor friend of a very close friend once described Robertson as "The embodiment of evil."  On a lighter note, I think it best to include  one last quote from Pat Robertson, although I know when he said it he didn't mean it to be used like it is being used on his behalf these days.

 "I have a zero tolerance for sanctimonious morons who try to scare people." - Pat Robertson.

Truer words have seldom been used against the speaker. I think the late Christopher Hitchens must have had a Robertson, Osteen, or  Huckabee  in mind when he said, “We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid.  Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience.”

As usual, Hitchens was, at least in Robertson's case, absolutely correct.