Here's the thing: you can't get "Left Behind" anti-Christ imagery without using standard Christ imagery. According to the series*, Carpathia came clothed in the symbolism and outward appearance of a savior, which is why he was able to rise to power.

What that means for those of us who aren't living in the "Left Behind" universe (read: all of us) is that the McCain campaign is using Christ-like imagery and iconic film representations of miracles to play up the "Obama as messiah" angle reeking from his campaign and followers. In other words, it's sarcasm.

Leave it to the Democrats to not get the joke. But maybe I shouldn't complain; at least this once they're not calling the ad "racist."

* or at least the first book, which is all I could stomach.

Almost OT, but this really cracks me up:

the "antichrist isn't going to be an American, so it can't possibly be Obama ... he's going to be from an obscure place, like Romania."

Americans are soooo funny sometimes.

How desperate is John McCain? His strategy is to claim that Obama is too popular.

On a certain level this might resonate with a specific audience. The idea would be to scare the far-right into voting for McCain because Obama is so freakin' popular that he'll...(shudder)...win. It's important to remember that while claiming that Obama is the Antichrist seems laughable to us, there is a serious chunk of America who believe that:

a) There is an Antichrist waiting in the wings
b) America could not survive another Clinton in the White House. Really. They don't think it would suck, they really do believe that the Republic would fold if Hillary took office. I've met these people and they really exist.
c) John McCain is too liberal to be trusted but may have to be suffered in order to keep us safe from Terrorists and Communists.

McCain's ad, as hilariously desperate as it seems, isn't aimed at us. It's aimed at people who read www.raptureready.com and regard it as a valuable news source. It might well resonate with some of them. I don't imagine it'll resonate with real biblical scholars, as the Antichrist is supposed to rise from the east and Chicago isn't exactly the mysterious east. It'll take some tortured logic to make that one stick.

Interestingly, while researching the signs of the Antichrist I found far more things that remind me of George W. Bush than Obama. I'll leave the bulk of the list to be a silly pointless exercise for the reader. There is one, however, that stood out for me:

From the first book of Timothy, Chapter 4, Verse 3:

They forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.

First off, let's get the translation right. Considering the number of Bibles there are, all claiming to be the literal word of god, and the dangers inherent in translating from Hebrew and Aramaic to Greek then English, we oughta check the various translations to see if this is an orphan translation or consensus. For all we know, "foods" might be a mistranslation of a word that originally meant "feasts" or "baked goods" or "pie". Scripture.com shows us a few dozen translations from various sources and above translation seems pretty accurate. Let's accept it.

Turning to the current political environment, one would have to look for Obama's statements and beliefs on diet to see if he qualifies. Dude's pretty thin. Maybe he's a vegetarian. I checked around and found only one article claiming that Obama is a vegetarian, going so far as to say that they have a video of him announcing that he'd gone completely vegan. I'll save you all the trouble of watching the video: it's just another Rickroll prank. Obama isn't a vegetarian or a vegan. Clearly the man watches what he eats, but vegan he is not. I don't recall him saying much on the issue of diet except as it relates to health care. It's a non-starter.

This brings us to the intriguing part of the verse: "They forbid marriage". Of the two main political camps, the Democrats and the Republicans, who's done the most to prevent marriage? Who's worked the hardest to forbid couples to marry? As separate groups, which one claims marriage is the bedrock of American society and must be strongly limited and which one leans towards "It's none of the government's business who gets married"? Decision: Bush.

-=Logan
Research, facts, a Republican needs not these things

Please.

No one believes that Obama will solve all the world's problems. Even the man himself doesn't believe that. I would be deeply uncomfortable granting power to anyone who thought they were the way and the light and the one true path to perfection. The assumption that you know all and those who doubt or disagree with your perfect vision leads directly to dictatorship.

The thing is, Obama is our best shot right now at pulling us out of the downward spiral of the last 7 years. A Democratically controlled House, Senate and White House would provide a chance to roll back some of damage that the Republican party has done to America since 2000 and lay the groundwork for fixing some of the GOP's long-term fuckups. Obama's mantra, "Hope", is the right word for the time. After 7 years of the Republican party's fearmongering, we are hoping Obama can make things better.

I have no illusions that by 5pm on January 21st, 2009 Obama will have brought a Utopian golden age with all the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan, universal quality health care for all Americans, an electric car in every garage fueled by solar and wind power, a balanced budget, zero national debt, an end to racism, schools so good that inner city junior high school students will argue amongst themselves about parallels between the cadences of Shakespeare's sonnets and Bach's cantatas while tending the organic gardens they've planted on their rooftops and Paris Hilton will reveal that she is actually Andy Kaufman in disguise and her entire career as a public figure has been the greatest, most elaborate prank in the history of the world. Obama doesn't have much pull with Andy so that'll take a second term.

My hope is that the Democrats have learned from the Republicans. I hope that they've learned that when you have all the power you get all the blame, that when you claim all who dissent are traitors you don't have much room for error and that it's hypocrisy and cover ups that bring you down in the end. You can't blackmail Barney Frank by threatening to out him because he's out already. Mark Foley, on the other hand, was a crusader against child abuse who liked young boys. Newt Gingrich railed against Bill Clinton's alleged extra-marital affair until it was revealed that Newt was doing the exact same thing. And the issue with the dismissal of the US Attorneys wasn't that they were fired, it was that members of the Bush administration lied about the reasons for the dismissals and tried to cover the whole thing up instead of just coming clean about a relatively minor affair.

My hope is that the Democrats and specifically Obama have learned to be forthright and aboveboard and that they really mean it when they say they want to change Washington. We've got a real chance to make things better. I hope that the Democrats see what the GOP did when they had the same chance and refuse to make the same mistakes.

-=Logan
Research, facts, a Republican needs not these things.

The Anti-Christ is here.  The End Times are upon us.  Help bring them about.

OBAMA '08!

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

How stupid do you think fundamentalist Christians are?  OK, OK, wait a second before you take advantage of that obvious set-up.  Here is a line from the memo laying out the case that the ad was a dog-whistle to fundamentalists:

Even the chosen format as an internet ad allows for it to blasted out to targeted religious populations that will immediately recognize its significance and forward it on to others in their community so that the whispers and innuendo can continue in dark corners outside the scrutiny of the general public who would be horrified by such tactics.

These "populations," after seeing the video, will "immediately recognize its significance."  Yes, whereas you, I, and the rest of the sane world need a Democratic consultant to point this stuff out to us, the antichrist references are so plain that these "populations" will pick up on them right away, because they eat, drink, and sleep the Book of Relevations.  You might ask: wouldn't people that attuned to the sport of Antichrist-watching have already considered the question of Obama's antichristness for themselves?  No, silly; the "religious populations" under discussion here do not think for themselves.  Religious people never do, remember?

You might ask, then: why haven't I met these folks?  We are provided the answer: they do not live among us, but in "dark corners," and not just dark corners, but "dark corners outside the scrutiny of the general public."  Oh!  No wonder I have never seen these antichrist-obsessed McCain-worshipping fundamentalist "populations:" they are outside my scrutiny!  

Memos like these tell us nothing about "The One" and even less about how religious people perceive the 2008 campaign.  They do illustrate, however, a disturbing elitism in the purest sense of the term--a belief that the writer is set apart from gullible multitudes lacking in the most basic form of common sense.  Underlying this is the notion that religious people are stupid to begin with, so that they are now just clay in the hands of clever strategists who need only drop a few references to convince them that Obama is the Beast.  Funny, I thought Obama's famous 2004 convention speech was about ending stupid divisions like that.