My personal opinion is whenever anyone says that God has forgiven them, I want to see the signed affidavit from God before I accept their claim.
I’m not even saying that people can’t have genuine conversions and genuine repentance. Of course they do. But in my experience, the ones who are sincere don’t sugarcoat or gloss or avoid owning up to their previous behavior. They don’t use their conversion as shield.
I was actually going to open a pit thread about this myself just now, until I saw this one.
The guy is a complete jackass. That excuse was insulting, craven, dishonest, and showed that he has no strength of character. Also, for a guy who is supposed to be smart, that answer was stupid. Haven’t politicians learned by now that the best way to get past a scandal is simply to cowboy up and admit you screwed up?
The guy’s one bimbo away from the full Jimmy Swaggart, tears and all. The sooner he gets off the political stage, the better.
And to think I actually liked him once.
He’s not stupid. He has some political talent and acumen. He’s just completely amoral and egoistic.
To flesh things out a bit more,
when you arrive at the Landover site, the t-shirt and bumper sticker sales, the bizarro sermons, etc, all add up to a fairly transparent parody.
The Landover forum (deeper in) is a little different in it’s conception and execution.
(btw, there are essentially different administrations handling these 2 aspects of Landover, and they coexist on a not entirely amicable basis)
The forum essentially is governed by 2 fundamental (sorry for the pun) rules, the 1611 King James Bible, is entirely accurate and totally free from any error, it is God’s perfect word for everything. The second rule is, when ever Republican (and of late, Tea Party) dogma conflicts with the King James 1611 Bible, Republican dogma trumps the Bible.
Something the Landover True Christians take pride in, is that since there are so many conflicting Bible passages, they have the ability to take positions 180 degrees opposite each other in adjacent threads. Of course, conflicts in Biblical truth are never, never acknowledged, and they have a plethora of canned responses to anything that comes up.
Now curiously, since Biblical accuracy is lauded at Landover, when Bible verses are posted, they are quoted 100% accurately (their forum software can automatically insert Bible verses when chapter and verse are entered in a post) and the level of Biblical scholarship is quite high. When Landover maintains that women are to be confined to menstrual hits during their ‘time’, or that women MUST marry their rapists, they are 100% correct in pointing out the Bible demands just that. When posters attempt to point out that Jesus did not mean that, they ALWAYS have more Bible verses that show that he DID, in fact, mean just that.
Landover Forum really isn’t a parody, it is simply the rigid application of Biblical truth. (excepting the Republican waivers) That the ‘True Christians’ running the forum are all actually atheists in real life is irrelevant, they are making exactly and precisely the points that ‘real’ Christian literalist and Innerantist posters would make. It makes ‘Poes Law’ a moot point, the parody and the real thing are EXACTLY the same thing.
I would contend, in all seriousness, that should ‘Judgment Day’ in fact occur, and God overlooks the 'insincerity of the Landoverians, He will nevertheless grant them salvation, simply because they were, in fact, correct in 100% of all their assertions. And that will not happen to the Catholics, the Westboroites, the Methodists, the Hindus, the Mormons, the Moslems, etc.
Ever wonder why the ‘Fundamentalist Christian community’ never decried Nancy Reagan consorting with an ACTUAL witch??
Ever wonder why the ‘Fundamentalist Christian community’ is never up in arms over Newt’s infidelities??
Ever wonder why the ‘Fundamentalist Christian community’ never castigates Rush Limbaugh for being a drug addict??
Because Republican dogma DOES trump Biblical truth!
It’s a good thing gay marriage is not allowed. We wouldn’t want to take away from the sanctity of Newt’s third marriage.
Nitpick. He did not serve his first wife with divorce papers while she was in the hospital with cancer. According to his first wife and their daughter, he showed up with their 9 year old daughter and a legal pad to discuss terms of their divorce right after she had gotten out of surgery, and was still doped up on medication.
I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader as to which is more assholish.
Trying to take advantage of incapacity to trick someone into an agreement is… well, consistent with Newt’s character. As Bill Maher put it, actual newts aren’t this slimy.
So by this logic, Tiger Woods must be, like , 17 times more patriotic than Ol’e Newt.
Technical point - I believe Clinton did apologize and take responsibility for the Lewinsky stuff. I recognize lots of Democrats and Republicans both do not take responsibility, and see rules as things that apply to ‘everyone else,’ but Clinton apologized.
I note bemusedly Newt is now Catholic.
Did he not realize how this would complicate the situation regarding wives number 4, 5, and 6 ??
If he wants to get married six times, maybe he’ll follow historical precedent and create his own church.
In case you’ve forgotten it, while Newtie was cheating on one of his wives, he was also acting all self righteous and moral…over Bill Clinton’s cheating. In fact the Repubs have this kind of hypocrisy down pat. So how come John Edwards isn’t running for Prez—and Newt is.
Nope, nope, nope. You don’t get to do that. Repubs and Dems are not equivalent in these matters. Not only do Repubs campaign on religion and family values, they legislate their so-called religious beliefs. Also, without their family value/ religious bullshit, social conservatives have no reason to vote for them. (Well, besides the racism and sociopathic selfishness.)
Oh and the Repubs impeached a President for a blow-job and a gotcha ya ‘perjury’.
You people with your Stalinesque liberal bias have no sense of humor. All Gingrich meant was he calls his dick ‘America.’
Ahem,
Old Newt Gingrich was a good ol’ man
He jumped out the window with his dick in his hand
He said, “'Scuse me, ladies, I’m doing my duty.
Won’t you pull down your pants and gimme some booty?”
That would be like building an Islamic community center on the hallowed ground of the former Burlington Coat Factory…
As a Republican and a polyamorous person, I am repulsed by ol’ Newtie. I have some regrets, I have behaved in ways I am not proud of at times, but I never ditched a girl with cancer. This guy is scum.
And he won’t be getting the nomination.
Correct me if I am wrong but to be married in the Catholic Church the previous marriages must be declared invalid or he could not be married. If that is the case by Catholic standards and Newt the newly devout convert he was only married once, to his current wife.
What I would love to hear just one journalist ask Gingrich (or Barr, or Beck, or Limbaugh, or Chuck Norris, or Anita Bryant, or any of about umpteen million other “gay marriage is against the Bible!” folks to whom this applies) is how they reconcile their supposed beliefs with the fact that while Jesus said Jack squat against/for/about gay relationships, yet in three different Gospels (more than mention the Magi, the Beatitudes, more than agree on his last words, etc.) he condemns divorce and remarriage.
There are other scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, saying essentially the same thing. Most damning perhaps is Malachi:
How do they reconcile this with their own divorces? Or for that matter how do they reconcile “Thou shalt not commit adultery” with “but gay marriage is worse of course”?
Sickening interpretations I’ve heard are “Jesus was only speaking to Jews” (?!?!?!?!- he was Christ, therefore I think his words are relevant to Christians). Personally I’m not Christian so I don’t care if the Bible says divorce is wrong or right or okay so long as the husband does the Chicken Dance backwards while playing castanets while the wife plucks a banjo, but how do the anti-gay-marriage and anti everything else other people are doing reconcile this with their own lifestyles? You can play with the words and context all you want to but there’s just not a lot of wiggle room.