Pat Robertson is any saner than Fred Phelps.

Wikipedia has some great stuff, and I find them to be more accurate than I would have believed a free entry encyclopedia could be. 

Here are some quotes about Pat Robertson:http://en.wikipedia....

Former Republican Congressman Paul "Pete" McCloskey, Jr., who served with Robertson in Korea, claimed that Robertson was actually spared combat duty when his powerful father, a U.S. Senator, intervened on his behalf, claiming that instead 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.

And, shades of ambassador Tobias:

Paul Brosman, Jr., another veteran who had served with Robertson, claimed in a deposition that Robertson had sexual relations with prostitutes and sexually harassed a cleaning girl.

Robertson has denied these allegations.

Another unrelated item -- Robertson as faith healer:

In the 1970s and 1980s Robertson was a faith healer, and [famous skeptic and fraud exposer James Randi] *** commented that "in 1986, soon after the full importance of the AIDS epidemic began to become evident, Robertson was attempting to cure it" by proclaiming people cured after prayer.  Randi commented, "Gerry Straub, a former associate of Pat Robertson and his television producer, pointed out in his book Salvation for Sale the astonishing fact that God seemed to time miracles to conform with standard television format," and "God would stop speaking to Pat and stop healing exactly in time with the theme music.".

I find Robertson to be nothing but a huckster preying on the credulous and vulnerable.  I respect true religious conservatives even when I don't agree with their philosophies, when I see how faith comes from their heart.  Robertson is a three dollar bill phony.  Robertson is not a Christian, and it's time to call this fraud what he is.

on behalf of all the non-televangelist residents of Virginia Beach.  What you are seeing, unfortunately, is the end result of the local Democratic practice of allowing "Republican" seats to go unchallenged year after year.  The resulting one-party state mentality ensures election of such embarrassing individuals as Thelma Drake, John Welch, Leo Wardrup, Nick Rerras, and yes, Bob McDonnell, whose main claim to fame is his monetary support from Pat Robertson.  The funny thing is, before these seats were supposedly solidly Republican, they were solidly Democratic.  This unfortunate practice is finally changing this year.  We have great Democratic candidates with excellent chances of winning.  It's wonderful to live in a democracy again.

A) The Attorney General is catholic, folks like Jon Stewart and Bill Maher ought to be really careful before they cross into some bad territory going after a catholic because of his religion,

B) Virginians definitely don't like intellectual elitism, saying that because Bob went to the closest law school to his home, ON THE GI BILL, he is unfit for office, well that won't play with most Virginians,

C) AG McDonnell went to Notre Dame undergrad.. who wants to question that schools academic credentials, and

D) It doesn't matter where the AG went to law school, he is... Attorney General. In 2009 he won't be applying for his first job out of law school, he will be running for Governor. All voters will care about is how he did as AG, and with 60 of 64 bills passed, anyone can tell you Bob McDonnell is doing an excellent job.

E) Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Speech...isn't it ironic that these two wonderful rights are being employed before our very eyes....cable talking heads using the later as a pretext to openly assault the former.

Whose abusing civil liberties now? Jon Stewart and Bill Maher. They are religious bigots.

When you say "folks like Jon Stewart and Bill Maher ought to be really careful" that sounds like anti-antisemitism laced with a physical threat.

If you mean Catholic as in Roman Catholic, please use a capital C.

McDonnell is one record as saying why he went to that sorry excuse for a school.

Stewart mocked and Maher mocked and they are cable talking heads AS MY POST STATED...that is THE only similiarity I used to link the two. Don't stretch to invent drama, you truly show your ignorance when you do that. There is no express or implied threat to anyone and just because you say that does not make it true or right.

Maher and Stewart gutlessly used the pretext of freedom of speech to attack the freedom of religion, how ironic.

Maher and Stewart basically attacked a man who chose to go to a religious oriented school and they tried to pass it off as humor. Maher and Stewart are sorry excuses for comedians. Stewart and Maher used words to mock a school where a good man went to law school. I thought Democrats were for education?

Sure, Notron, living in Virginia Beach I can tell you that the biggest problem we have is all of the persecuted right-wing Christians who are afraid to stand up for their beliefs because of oppression from "folks like" Jon Stewart and Bill Maher.  Why, it's not as if Pat Robertson has a t.v. show, a television network (complete with spin-offs), a corporate conglomerate at the edge of our city, a well-funded undergraduate and graduate school, a real estate development scheme, numerous political allies within the local Republican party, clones in other community organizations, subservient politicians dedicated to his bidding, including, as requested, a highway exit to nowhere, allied churches, millions and millions of dollars, and unquestioning adherents.  The poor man's just doing his best to live after the example of Christ.  With all this religious persecution, it's a wonder Pat Robertson can even come out of hiding long enough to open his mouth.  Way to stick up for the little guy.

I watched both the Daily Show and Real Time segments on Regents Law School.  Neither show attacked the religion of the Attorney General or the attendees of Regents Law School.  What they attacked was the Bush Administration's practice of hiring graduates of that school, a school rated in the lowest tier of all law schools by U.S. News and World Report (not a bastion of liberal bias). 

Why is it that a very young Regents graduate can rise to one of the top spots in the Dept. of Justice when she has never tried a criminal case?  It is not about her religion, it is about the undue influence one segment of the Republican Party has over the current administration!

If you think Stewart and Maher were attacking their religion you need to open your eyes.  They were attacking the administrations preference for people with political pedigree over people with ability.  That is why we had Brownie in charge of FEMA when Katrina hit.  That is why we had some hypocrit at the State Department in charge of Condom distribution while he was patronizing the DC Madam.

I suspect what you call "elitism" I would call "having standards".

It's not enough for the bills to pass through the House of Delegates.  If they're bad bills, maybe it would be better if they didn't pass.

I can't say that I'm particularly impressed by the A.G. performance as A.G.  And I know, among the legal profession that the A.G.'s legal judgment is not held in especially high esteem either.

In the case of both Warner and Tim Kaine you have two men with fairly distinguished professional careers before they got involved in politics (in Warner's case an exceedingly distinguished professional career).  Not surprisingly both have produced well as Governors.

On the other hand you have Jim Gilmore.  You also have Bob McDonnell, whose great achievements seem to have been personal ones--good man, good father, good neighbor--and winning elections.

I'm not electing a neighbor.  I'm electing a Governor. 

If Virginians care about results and performance, than they better care about professional standards.  Especially in cases where my tax dollars are involved, I want to get the best return for my money and future generations.  I don't want a repeat of the Gilmore years.  Fool me once.

  So, Notron, did you join RK yesterday just to defend Bob McDonnell?  William and Mary, Jon Stewart's alma mater, is also within an hour of Virginia Beach.  Why didn't Bob McDonnell go there?  Regent is the worst law school in Virginia, period.  It's not intellectual elitism to point that out.
  Pat Robertson is a money-hungry, power-hungry fraud who shamelessly uses religion to advance his own personal interests.  Bob McDonnell went to the unaccredited Christian Broadcasting Network School of Law, for crying out loud, and you think that it's ABUSING CIVIL LIBERTIES to point out that embarrassing fact.  No one is "assaulting" freedom of religion except perhaps those who misuse it for their personal gain.  This is merely a long-overdue discussion of FACTS that I am sure Mr. McDonnell would prefer to obscure or avoid.  "By their fruits you shall know them."

people into not digging into the bigotry and other issues swirling around Pat Robertson by throwing out as many red herrings as possible (anti-Catholic, elitist, whatever). Typical right-wing tactics that would are as predictable as Rush Limbaugh falling off the wagon again, or playing "Barack the Magic Negro" one more time, or ridiculing Hillary Clinton because she's a woman, etc., etc.  When you have no ideas and when your party is going down to potentially historic levels of defeat and disgrace, that's what you do, attack the person ad hominem in the crudest, most vile terms.  It won't work, but they're going to go down trying...

This quote may have been lost to the readers in the long list you gave us previously:

On January 14, 1991, on The 700 Club, Pat Robertson attacked a number of Protestant denominations when he declared: "You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist."

http://en.wikipedia....

Whatever Maher and Stewart are selling about this guy, I'm buying.

Calling out McDonnell for attending a religous whackjob school is akin to attacking Catholicism? This is the line of thinking that made criticizing Bush akin to hating freedom.

is also up there.  When was the last time that people in this country were lynched or blocked from voting on the basis of religion?

It's also possibly that NotRon is having some flashbacks to the 1960 election when he was telling his buddies: "Hell, no I'm not going to vote for that Papist John F. Kennedy."

Perhaps by carrying the torch of anti-Catholic bigotry 47 years later, when it no longer matters, he thinks he is atoning for those previous sins?  LOL.

Anyone remember Katrina and FEMA designating charities?  And #2 on the list was Robertson's Operation Blessing?  At least until the blogosphere, and the mass media, brought up the fact that the whole "charity" was suspect?  FEMA took the charity down from its website rather quickly -- as did the Washington Post in its published list.  (I remember this well because I complained to their ombudsman.)

Here's the ABC News story on that travesty:  http://abcnews.go.co...

Charity leaders say this FEMA recommendation is a huge boost for Robertson's charity.

"It could be worth tens of millions of dollars," said Richard Walden, president and founder of Operation USA, a non-governmental organization specializing in disaster relief.

However, as Robertson hosted his daily television show in Mississippi this week, other charity leaders were questioning why FEMA had recommended Robertson's operation and left others off the list, including Walden's Operation USA.

"I was shocked," said Walden upon seeing Robertson's charity so prominently displayed on the FEMA Web site. "It stuck out for a reason because of Pat Robertson's activities over the years."

***
Seven years ago, those activities led Virginia investigators to say there was evidence to prove Robertson "willfully induced contributions from the public through the use of misleading statements." Robertson denied the allegations. He then personally reimbursed Operation Blessing. No action was taken.

No action was taken by Mark Earley, who received contributions from Robertson.

"Based on their track record, I would say that, as an individual, I would not give to Operational Blessing," admitted the Rev. Charles Henderson, a Presbyterian minister, who is the executive director of the Association for Religion and Intellectual Life.

I'm not sure people realize how lightly regulated charities are.  (For one thing, the FTC does not have jurisdictions over non-profits, which is a political travesty.)  So you have situations like this with Robertson:

According to its most recent filing with the Internal Revenue Service, Operation Blessing gave more than half of its yearly allocation of cash donations -- $885,000 -- to the Christian Broadcasting Network, or CBN, of which Robertson is also the chairman.

"There is no accountability when you have two boards working hand in hand like this," said Henderson. "One never knows when you're contributing to Operation Blessing whether the money is really going to the hurricane victims, or whether it's going to pay for some more television time for Pat Robertson's television show."

I wrote an earlier diary about Robertson's relationship with alleged war criminal Charles Taylor of Liberia.  Here's a digest of the story about Robertson's business deals with Zaire's dictator, using Operation Blessing:

A decade ago, the evangelist befriended another notorious African dictator, President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now Congo). A onetime darling of the West during the Cold War, Mobutu had become an international pariah by the 1990s, reviled for looting his country's treasury and committing human rights abuses. That didn't stop Robertson from speaking out on his behalf and calling for an end to U.S. sanctions against his regime. In 1994 The 700 Club carried frequent reports on the humanitarian work being done in Zaire by Operation Blessing, Robertson's international relief organization. Typically, the reports were accompanied by appeals for donations.

What Robertson didn't tell viewers was that he also owned a for-profit company, African Development Co., which, with Mobutu's blessing, was doing exploratory mining for diamonds in Zaire.

Also unreported-- until two pilots came forward with the story in 1997-- was the fact that Operation Blessing's tax-exempt cargo planes were used almost exclusively for Roberton's diamond-mining operation, not for humanitarian purposes. A subsequent investigation by Virginia authorities turned up evidence for charging Operation Blessing with violations of the state's charitable solicitation law. But the office of Virginia Attorney General Mark Earley, who had received a $35,000 campaign contribution from Robertson, declined to prosecute. Robertson reimbursed Operation Blessing for the use of the planes, and the charity agreed to tighten its financial controls.

http://www.msmagazin...

If McDonnell runs for governor, we have some very interesting questions to ask him.

Right, JPTERP.  Also, if you read the quotes above, you will see that Pat Robertson attacked MY lifelong religion by describing it as the "spirit of the Antichrist."  So I guess when he comes before our Bishops and explains himself and apologizes, I might see it differently.  Until then, I cannot help but notice that the only religious intolerance I see or hear in Virginia Beach emanates regularly from Pat Robertson's corner of Kempsville.

The right wing likes to attack everyone as an "anti-Christian bigot," yet they themselves constantly attack other peoples' religious faith (or lack thereof), whether it be Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Episcopalian, Agnostic, Atheist, Humanist, or whatever.  But WE are bigots and they're not?  Only in a world where up is down, the earth is flat, and basic science like evolution is not true.

I don't remember that Creigh ad.  I'm sure that ad would have won the campaign with just a few more airings.

As you read through the sanctimonious posts above and on a related thread, be sure to keep in mind the derivation of the moniker NotRonJeremy:

http://en.wikipedia....

So good to know these guys have appointed themselves as the morals police.  More proof of how safe our children are under Republican rule.

"Ron Jeremy attended Cardozo High School in Bayside, Queens; former CIA director George Tenet was a classmate."

What one learns on the internet . . .LOL.

Not Ron a bully? Coming to discuss issues with online neighbors and somehow, Lowell calls me a bully? Moui?
Do you call a butterfly a tresspasser as he flutters near your trees and do you blame him for breaking and entering if you leave your window open? None of that will obscure this: Religious bigotry should be called out and laid open for all to see, no matter where it comes from. Notron.

Second of all, yes you are a classic, right-wing bully.  You come on here and immediately accuse people of anti-religious bigotry because you don't agree with them.  You have now done it again in this comment.  You are banned.

It's time to stop wasting our time with people who are obviously not here in good faith, only to waste everyone else's time and cause trouble.  From now on, we're going to be much tougher on "trolling."

The continuation of this thread has led me to look into different aspects of Pat Robertson's "ministry."  Conservative Episcopal theologian Ephraim Radner -- http://www.anglicanc... -- has in the past written about some of Pat Robertson's views. 

In a Christian Century article, Radner wrote:  http://findarticles....

IN HIS PUBLISHED WRITINGS, especially his 1991 book The New World Order, Pat Robertson has propagated theories about a worldwide Jewish conspiracy. Michael Land raised the issue in February in the New York Times Book Review, and in April Jacob Heilbrun, writing in the New York Review of Books, cited chapter and verse of Robertson's borrowings from well-known anti-Semitic works. After the New York Ti s and the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith called attention to the matter, Robertson issued a statement denying any anti-Semitic intent***.  Yet neither Robertson nor [his defender Ralph] Reed has confronted the substantive criticisms that have been made about Robertson's writings.

Radner continues:  "An investigation of Robertson's worldview opens an intriguing, if frightening, window on a portion of the American religious mind."

After describing Robertson's financial views, Radner notes:

CONSPIRACY THEORIES and the economics of self-regard have historically lent themselves to social and usually racialist scapegoating. It's hardly surprising that Robertson's preoccupation with interest and debt have led him to link his antiusury principles to a distinct form of anti-Semitic propaganda: the Jew as Shylock, insidious money lender.***

Lind and Heilbrun show how Robertson took over--in some cases word for word--well-worn theories of a Jewish conspiracy In particular, Robertson relied on the work of Nesta Webster and Eustace Mullins.

Nesta Webster (1876-1960) was a British writer*** who became an apologist for Hitler in the 1930s, relied on previous conspiracy "history," but made her own contribution to the genre by injecting an overt anti-Semitic theme, claiming central Jewish involvement in most of the movements and events she described. "What mysteries of iniquity would be revealed if the Jew, like the mole, did not make a point of working in the dark! Jews have never been more Jews than when we tried to make them men and citizens," she wrote in her 1921 book World Revolution: The Plot Against Civilization. (Robertson does not list this book in his bibliography but quotes it in his text. Webster's Secret Societies and Subversive Movement [1924], which includes an approving chapter on the rabidly anti-Semitic fabrication Protocols of the Elders of Zion, does appear in Robertson's bibliography.)

Robertson refers to Webster several times in his book, and, as Heilbrun shows, he has lifted whole paragraphs from her. Significantly, Webster's openly negative reference to the "Jews" are dropped from these texts. Yet Robertson retains everything else, including some gratuitous naming of the Jews in unrelated descriptions of conspiratorial events. He also makes statements about "European bankers" as conspiratorial culprits whom he is not shy in identifying as the Rothschilds and their "associates."

I'm just giving you a sampling of how Robertson thinks, as seen through the eyes of Radner (who I differ from on other matters but who is a highly respected thinker).

Radner points out that

Robertson declares in the New York Times that his book "does not embrace a conspiracy theory of history, and it certainly is not anti-Semitic." This is an odd assertion, given that sections of his book dealing with the conspiratorial material derived from such people as Webster and Mullins have such headings as "The Grand Design" and "To Gain the Whole World."

Radner concludes:

WHAT CONCLUSIONS can we draw from this journey into Pat Robertson's political-economic worldview? First, in The New World Order Robertson has produced a volume whose conceptual scaffolding is irredeemably ugly and damns the preacher's intellectual integrity. If Pat Robertson is not in his heart of hearts anti-Semitic, he has mingled in the circles of those who are.

As to Robertson's belief in the Illuminati conspiracy (yes! he's whacko thru and thru!) Radner questions how Robertson cannot be antisemitic -- "Key to the Illuminati's influence, Robertson hypothesizes--drawing directly on Webster--was their tie to Jewish financial magnates . . ."