The Dish

The Republican partisan blogosphere has had a poll of whom they like and dislike in cyberspace. I’m honored as the "most annoying" right-of-center blogger and I’m just beaten out by Kos as "most annoying" left-of-center blogger. Next year, Kos, just wait till next year and we’ll see who can piss off more conservatives, ok? Bonus feature: LGF wins!

The "Left Behind" video game creates some Christmas controversy. Money quote:

In Left Behind, set in perfectly apocalyptic New York City, the Antichrist is personified by fictional Romanian Nicolae Carpathia, secretary-general of the United Nations and a People magazine "Sexiest Man Alive."

Players can choose to join the Antichrist’s team, but of course they can never win on Carpathia’s side. The enemy team includes fictional rock stars and folks with Muslim-sounding names, while the righteous include gospel singers, missionaries, healers and medics. Every character comes with a life story.

When asked about the Arab and Muslim-sounding names, Frichner said the game does not endorse prejudice. But "Muslims are not believers in Jesus Christ" — and thus can’t be on Christ’s side in the game.

"That is so obvious," he said.

The Anti-Christ as "Sexiest Man Alive"? Who needs South Park?

"You know, this is a fight, when you get right down to the root of it, between Sunnis and Shias – it goes back a millennia of time – over who is the rightful successor to the Prophet Mohammed. That is not our fault. That is not our fight. And that’s not something we can fix …

Moreover, if you think we should be going out and fighting them, you have to answer the question whether the insurgency that this has become is worth doing. If you say yes, it is, then you have to adapt your tactics.

What we are doing – and I have seen this in – with my own eyes in Iraq — what we are doing is sending them out from the Green Zone, clearing, and then retreating back to the Green Zone. Now, I got to tell you, that does not make any sense, if you are fighting an insurgency. History will tell you, to fight and win insurgencies, you have to clear, hold, and then build, so you build confidence in the people there, so that they become the foot soldiers, they root out the terrorists, and they ultimately fight for their freedom. It is not our country. It is theirs," – Senator Gordon Smith.

Either we commit the forces to truly clear, hold and build alongside a fledgling Iraqi army, or we should leave as soon as possible. The worst of all worlds is hanging out in Iraq, and slowly becoming coopted by one side of a raging civil war. Then we truly become a target not just for al Qaeda loons but for either all Sunnis or all Shia. If you really want to give al Qaeda a shot in the arm, join with the Shiites. I’m not surprised in a way that Cheney is moving toward that position. On almost every issue in this war, he has been consistently, disastrously wrong. Why should he change now?

Here’s the text of his address to Rick Warren’s mega-church on World AIDS Day. Best to look past the hype and read his words. They impress me. They give me hope. That’s all for now. And it’s enough for now.

This "devil food is turning our kids into homosexuals". Or so says Christianist website, WorldNet Daily. More analysis here. It reduces the size of your peepee too, apparently.

You’d be surprised. A Catholic effort to raise awareness of cruelty to animals in our society and economy is long overdue, as Matthew Scully presciently saw.

Sebastopol, California, 10 am.

It endures despite all the odds; it survives in the face of cruel ostracism; it speaks with a quiet dignity. Welcome to the world of gay evangelicals. Money quote:

"A lot of people are freaked out because their only exposure to evangelicalism was a bad one, and a lot ask, ‘Why would you want to be part of a group that doesn‚Äôt like you very much?’ But it‚Äôs not about membership in groups. It’s about what I believe. Just because some people who believe the same things I do aren’t very loving doesn’t mean I stop believing what I do."

I know few greater testaments to the power of faith in Jesus, or to the blessedness of being gay.

A reader writes:

If you’ve not yet see it, please check out the Christian Embassy’s video, here. As an American, as an Army officer who has sworn to protect the Constitution – this video, its various recorded endorsements, and the self proclaimed ability of its member to directly affect the "scope" of policy decisions at the highest level is, in a word, terrifying. I only pray (yes, I do pray, but in that personal, Constitutionally protected way) that cooler heads at the DoD prevail at some time in the very near future and stand down the Christianist bullies who have established such a very strong foothold in my – in America’s – Army and the other branches of service in the Department of Defense.

I was once befuddled by the American right’s toleration of torture as an instrument of statecraft and the seeming indifference of so many ‘conservatives’ to Bush’s obsession with ends over means. And then I read National Review’s symposium on the death of Pinochet. It really speaks for itself.