Gatekeepers

Mark Roberts has a very thought-provoking take on some of the ridiculous statistics on the fraud perpetrated by “victims” of Hurricane Katrina on the people of the United States as represented by the federal government. The stats are pretty frustrating, but I think he does a good job of pointing out the core problem (hint: it’s not government inefficiency)
FEMA Scandal: The Untold Story

Who would have thought these two would have anything in common? John Mark Reynolds explains. This is pretty much in line with my thoughts on Pat a few days back.

Wow the amount of quotes out of context in the whole Pat Robertson-Ariel Sharon thing is amazing! Far be it from me to defend Pat Robertson, by I can’t seem to find anywhere that he said “God gave Ariel Sharon a stroke for dividing Israel”. You would think he must have said something like this by looking at the headlines and even reading the MSM articles. It appears what he actually said was: Sharon “…was dividing God’s land and I would say woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the EU (European Union), the United Nations, or the United States of America”.

You can be the judge of whether those are the same. Both sound pretty stupid to me. What’s equally lame is the spin doctored explanation from Robertson’s PR gal: that he was “simply reminding his viewers what the Bible has to say about efforts made to divide the land of Israel.” Apparently the reference ol’ Pat was using here was Joel 3:2, which says: “I will gather all nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. There I will enter into judgment against them concerning my inheritance, my people Israel, for they scattered my people among the nations and divided up my land.” I must have missed the part where he talks about punishing Jews for giving away their land.

I guess it’s all about sound bytes these days, but doing that with the Bible is a dangerous thing.

On another note, why is it that Robertson is still presented as a leader of the evangelical community? Is it just because he has a TV show? I really wish people would start quoting this guy or, even better, this guy (c’mon he’s good enough to be on Larry King pretty frequently) when they want a quote from someone representing true evangelical Christians. What would be the fun in that though, when you can get Falwell or Robertson to make some ridiculous quote (or make one sound ridiculous) and get a couple of days of “Ha ha, stupid Christians” stories on the news.