Fresh off of my previous post, I read Frank Rich’s most recent OpEd piece for the NY Times, which took note of the backlash associated with Obama’s ties to the batshit crazy Jeremiah Wright and the less intense furor surrounding McCain’s (admittedly less spurious) ties to John Hagee, leader of Cornerstone Church and founder of Christians United for Israel.

Rolling Stone’s political satirist, Matt Taibbi, had two very enjoyable pieces in the magazine’s May 2008 edition.  The first one recounted his undercover stint as a member of Cornerstone Church, the Texas megachurch dedicated to the idea of Christian Zionism headed up by John Hagee.  If it isn’t already, I’m hoping this turns into a regular update series detailing his misadventures as a fake member of Hagee’s flock.  This particular story tells of Taibbi’s experience during a church-sponsored weekend of Christian fellowship called “Encounter Weekend”.  Taibbi provides us with a humorous take on the experience, which included the following among many other delights:

Fortenberry then started in on a rant against science and against scientific explanations for cycles of sin. “Take homosexuals,” he said. “Every single homosexual is a sexual-abuse victim. They are not born. They are created — by pedophiles.”  The crowd swallowed that one whole. One thing about this world: Once a preacher says it, it’s true. No one is going to look up anything the preacher says, cross-check his facts, raise an eyebrow at something that might sound a little off. Some weeks later, I would be at a Sunday service in which Pastor John Hagee himself would assert that the Bible predicts that Jesus Christ is going to return to Earth bearing a “rod of iron” to discipline the ACLU. It goes without saying that the ACLU was not mentioned in the passage in Ezekiel he was citing — but the audience ate it up anyway. When they’re away from the cameras, the preachers feel even less obligated to shackle themselves to facts of any kind. That’s because they know that their audience doesn’t give a shit. So long as you’re telling them what they want to hear, there’s no danger; your crowd will angrily dismiss any alternative explanations anyway as demonic subversion.

Taibbi’s second article took aim at Hillary Clinton and her penchant for pork, which I thoroughly enjoyed given my general distaste for the woman.  Entitled “The Queen of Pork”, the article paints a not-so-pretty picture of Clinton’s largess, particularly when it comes to individuals well-placed to lend her badly-needed political support of one form or another.  While most politicians dabble in the practice of securing earmarks that benefit their constituents, Clinton is apparently infamous for her profligate ways in dispensing said pork.  While there were several anecdotes attesting to Clinton’s status as a big, morally-ambiguous spender, I particularly enjoyed the one about how she helped Lockheed Martin secure a massive contract to build a new Marine One helicopter, which got her a nice campaign contribution and lots of free flights on their aircraft:

…the Pentagon confirmed in March that the helicopter Hillary made sure would be built at Lockheed’s plant in Owego, New York, would, in fact, cost $400 million per unit — more than the modified Boeing 747 used as Air Force One. You heard right: $400 million for a single fucking helicopter.