The Next Best Thing to the Rapture: Tebow Named Broncos Starter

 

“We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.”

– H.L. Mencken

The stadium was rocking and rolling just like old Mile High used to last Sunday after a loss that dropped the woebegone Denver Broncos to 1-4 and only a bad Marvin Lewis call and a fourth down stop away from winless the place was going fucking berserk.  You would have thought that the Broncos had just won the AFC Championship Game. Back in the day when it actually meant something to be a diehard Bronco fan any loss would have had a surly crowd booing and looking for blood as they filed out of the place, the parking lots would be full of mean drunks and there would be fights and arrests. They used to take their football real seriously in the Mile High City and the Broncos were like a religion to many but that is a bygone era. Today it has degenerated into a freakish stew of yuppies, know-nothings and religious pilgrims more interested in a cult of personality than any of the real action on the field.

The jubilation was because the new Christ, Timothy Richard Tebow had finally been able to banish that reviled Kyle Orton to the bench and had come into the game to throw for a whopping 79 yards as the Broncos rallied from behind to put a scare into the haughty Phillip Rivers and the hated division rival San Diego Chargers. Orton was absolutely hideous, managing only 34 yards passing and a pick before he was given the hook. Let’s face it, there iss just no way to defend the guy anymore, never a playmaker to begin with his psyche had been crushed weeks ago by the incessant torment of the Tebow worshippers. Once in the game, never mind that Tebow looked pathetic until late when San Diego was in playing not to lose mode. It took an ESPN play of the week type acrobatic catch by soon to be ex-Bronco, Pro Bowl receiver Brandon Lloyd as well as an official review to keep that last drive alive. Lloyd for his part has now officially been placed on the trading block, his earlier critical comments about the “Tebow thing” were likely deemed to be of sufficiently blasphemous nature to have him exorcised from the locker room. Tebow finished 4 of 10 for 79 yards, 28 on a dump off pass to Know-show Moreno for a TD, another 31 to a wide open receiver while San Diego was in the prevent defense and the 20 to Lloyd. Otherwise the great one competed one pass to Eric Decker for no gain. Jesus Fucking Christ has the bar been set low in Denver since the John Elway days. Tebow did run for a score which is about the only goddamned thing that does well; any lesser being coming out of college ball would have been converted to H-Back, an area of sore need for Denver anyway. Nonetheless, the place was going amok because the larger battle had been won and the Religious Right had their man in his new role and the accompanying national media swoon would ensure that stadiums across the country would be their pulpit.

One loon actually conjured up the Roman legend of Horatio or Publius Horatius Cocles, the 6^th Century army office who held back the invading hordes of Clusium at the Pons Sublicius bridge. Horatius Cocles valiant stand became legend, somehow in their innate ignorance and usual stupid overestimation of their own self-importance the hordes of Jesus freaks in their number 15 orange jerseys seem to have created some sort of alternate universe where usurping the hapless stumblebum Kyle Orton is equivalent. Orton has been fucked from the get go, it was a losing battle and like Sisyphus he had one hell of a rock to roll. The rock started to roll back on the poor clod well before his phantom fumble against the hated Raiders in the season opener and had already crushed the hapless bastard into pulp by the time that he was given the hook after throwing for a miserable 39 yards against the Chargers on Sunday. Defenses looked into his eyes and saw a haunted and doomed man, at the time of his ouster he was tied for the NFL lead in interceptions with the notorious dog murderer Michael Vick. The doomstruck Orton was trying to hold back a force of nature, something that is still badly misunderstood by the sports analysts but to those who deal with the menace of Christian fascism on a regular basis it is crystal clear. The chants of TEBOW are at least somewhat understandable in Denver where other than during the John Elway era the backup quarterback is always the most popular guy on the team. Orton’s immense failure would have fans in any city bellowing for him to be pulled, but when the chants erupted in the waning minutes of a road loss to the Packers at hallowed Lambeau Field it should have been obvious to all but the blindest of blind what this is really all about.

While the newspaper columnists in Denver, notably the longtime reigning king of local sportswriting Woody Paige of the Denver Post sang the praises of Tebow, gloating and in even placing the onus on whether the most overrated college quarterback to turn pro since Akili Smith would be successful on the coaching staff. Paige has had a colossal hard-on for new coach John Fox for some reason, likely Fox wasn’t sufficiently deferential to the great one as well as having some sort of maniac interest in promoting Tebow at the expense of the team itself. It will be interesting to see how the rest of the season is spun so that every Tebow turnover, every into the dirt or otherwise errant pass and every stalled drive isn’t really poor Timmy’s fault at all, you see, when you have been anointed by God himself there are growing pains. Even Jesus Christ wandered in the wilderness for years before he emerged as the messiah and old Moses himself was raising sheep for an extended period before he smited Pharaoh and parted the Red Sea. As long as the Broncos win 3 or 4 games the rest of the year it will be the greatest moment in Broncodom since Elway hoisted the Lombardi Trophy in Miami.

There have been dissenters though, heathens and non-believers and questioners of the power of the shrine. Take for example this by a Fox Sports guy named Jason Whitlock, his email box must have been assaulted by a plague of locusts over these words in his piece Don’t Let Tebow Hype Fool You:

Maybe Tim Tebow is a football force of nature, the answer to Denver’s mile-high longing for the next John Elway. But it’s going to take more than a screen pass, a 12-yard TD scramble, constant fist-pumping and yelling and a moral victory to convince me.

I hope I don’t get struck by lightning or my Tebow-loving, FOXSports.com colleague Jen Engel for writing that.

I’m not for or against Touchdown Timmy. I’m a Kansas City-fed, Show Me State, fence-sitting skeptic when it comes to the religious symbol/Broncos quarterback. You have to show me more than a 4-of-10, 79-yard passing half to get my heart racing about a Tebow Era.

I was stunned Sunday night when none other than Tony Dungy declared on NBC’s “Football Night In America” that Denver coach John Fox had to start Tebow in two weeks after Denver’s bye in the aftermath of the Broncos’ 29-24 close loss against San Diego. Dungy, while a religious zealot, is a stone-cold football man, a methodical, by-the-books, measured coach. He’s not given to succumbing to emotion or public sentiment.

But he’s now apparently caught Tebow religion thanks to a screen pass that Knowshon Moreno turned into a 28-yard TD scamper, a Tebow run for another score and the intangible-reliant belief the Broncos played harder when Touchdown Timmy was yelling and screaming.

Dungy fell for the hype. It makes sense. He’s removed from the fire. He’s on TV now. He’s like the rest of America. We believe that whatever the last entertaining thing we saw on the boob tube is infinitely better than whatever we saw before.

Sorry. I’m in a very cynical mood today. Touchdown Timmy reminds me of the AMC drama “Breaking Bad,” the show idiots claim is on the verge of replacing “The Wire” as the greatest in television history. “Breaking Bad” aired its Season 4 finale a couple of hours after Tebow flung his final incomplete pass into the end zone.

Yelling, screaming and fist-pumping are intangibles and motivational techniques best used by assistant coaches and middle linebackers. They have limited value on the offensive side of the ball. Defense is emotional. Offense is intellectual. Ray Lewis can’t play quarterback. And Peyton Manning can’t play middle linebacker.

In a pass-happy league where Cam Newton came out of the box throwing for 400 yards, let’s not get carried away because Touchdown Timmy threw for 79.

Denver doesn’t have a quarterback controversy. It has a QB crisis.

The reference to Tony Dungy is of interest since the former Buccaneers and Colts coach has managed to  somehow become a revered sort of football oracle. Never mind that Dungy’s Tampa Bay teams were never able to get over the hump under the great football leadership of the man mockingly referred to by some locals as “the black Spock”. Dungy’s defenses in Tampa were of all time great quality but his inability to ever figure it out offensively doomed him to exile after his team quit on him in the playoffs for the second year against the Eagles in that concrete rat trap in Philly. Dungy was snapped up by the Indianapolis Colts to replace Mr. Coors Light Commercial Jim Mora. In Indy despite having Peyton Manning as his quarterback his teams racked up exactly one Super Bowl win, and that one should have an asterisk because Rex Grossman was the opposing team’s quarterback. Dungy is a sanctimonious sack of shit, a religious fanatic who in the past has lent his name to virulently anti-gay organizations and a media whore. He is no authority on the Tebow thing, his piety and failure to ever find a quarterback in Tampa other than Trent Dilfer or Shaun King disqualifies him as anything but another asshole with an opinion.

So Tim Tebow’s shepherding of the Broncos will ironically begin next Sunday in the same stadium where John Elway won Super Bowl XXXIII and then retired from playing football. If there is a seriously winnable game on the Broncos schedule the remainder of the season this is it. Miami is a disaster, earlier in the year rumored as a potential partner in a Kyle Orton trade that would have left Tebow the starter from the get go the Dophins have stank up the place this season. The key free agent acquisition, former Saints running back Reggie Bush, more famously known for the monstrously unseemly scandal during his college days at USC than his NFL accomplishments has to put it diplomatically sucked. The Dolphins also lost their starting quarterback Chad Henne to a season ending injury and likely will trot out journeyman backup Sage Rosenfels under center. Miami is 0-4 pending Monday night’s game in the New Jersey swamplands against Rex Ryan’s Jets, a team looking to unload a very serious can of whup ass on someone after three straight crushing road losses. The Dolphins will be lucky to get out of there alive and will surely have the living shit beaten out of them by a Jets defense looking to emerge from it’s recent funk. They will be getting Denver on a short week and at home where they are in inexplicable 1-9 over their last ten games in Sun Life Stadium.It gets worse quickly after that, the resurgent Lions come to town as do the Jets and Patriots. Really the only other sure win on the slate is a week 13 game against the dismal Vikings. In an interesting note Jay Cutler, whose petulance and pouting set into motion the chain of events that led to Tebow being given the keys to the team comes to Denver on December 11, it would be a huge humiliation if he is able to beat the Broncos. But humiliation and a masochistic tendency for self-destruction are now requirements to be a Broncos fan, it is going to take years of being a league doormat and wandering in the football wilderness led by Tebow before anything changes. For the NFL, the networks and owner Pat Bowlen it all comes down to merchandise, concession and ticket sales, if they can sell the place out while putting out a product with the collective talent of an arena league team then they will do it. And the suckers in their number 15 jerseys will eat it up and empty their wallets.

Tebow’s Florida Gators championship teams will also be honored at the Dolphins game, it is damned near assured that there will be a national television audience and it should be practically a guaranteed win for the Broncos. It’s a game that not even Orton could have fucked up so what barring serious injury will be the opening game in a long and dark period in Broncos history under Tebow should be a certain victory no matter how badly that Denver plays. The real nightmare for real Broncos fans will be if Tebow is able to win several games and finish 6-10 or so. There is no way in hell that Elway and Fox will be able to draft a quality starting quarterback in next April’s draft because now that they have already surrendered to the Tebow cult they will forever be enslaved by it.

 HORATIO

Sucky Fucky: That would pretty much describe Kyle Orton and the already floating in the shitter Broncos season but it brings to mind lurid tales from the past as well, it was the “Horatio” comparison that did it.

I used to have a buddy named Horatio Hicks, or Horace Hicks, which was the name on his birth certificate. He was a tall, lanky piece of work, a real oddball who always wore hiking boots, heavy metal band t-shirts and denim overalls and had slicked back hair, he went through the pomade in a day when letting it grow out was fashionable. He also had a schnozzle so big that we called him “Horse” which he dug. He always would boast that his penis was as big as a horse’s and when the mood hit him, he would on occasion unzip his jeans, extract it and wave it around. He loved to go through fast food drive through windows with it out and if it was late enough, after a night of heavy boozing and doping he would play with it until it was erect and then laugh hysterically when the poor night girl at Jack In The Box would notice. It was actually pretty repulsive but in this sorry day of foul social deviance, rampant boy-buggering by once respected institutions like the Catholic Church and the proclivity of perverts and freaks to engage in not only sexual crimes but often murder and dismemberment it was in a way quite innocent, at least by 2011 standards.

He was another of the miscreants from the old days, a childhood friend who I happened to hang around with well into my early adult years. Horse was a party animal with a mean streak, one day he drop-kicked his own father in the balls over some money that he had borrowed from the old man – Horse used it to buy pot of course.  He was a dopehead to the nth degree, hell, a lot of my old friends were, we grew up in the 1970s, the last decade when Americans actually were taught to think critically and challenging authority of the lemming colony wasn’t deigned to be tantamount to treason.  Horse was into the tittie bars too. He pissed away nearly all of his money at Denver area flesh emporiums like Shotgun Willies, P.T.’s, Boogie Down, The Landing Strip, Pecos Junction and Doug’s Place. Many of these are likely now long defunct but Shotgun Willie’s was the Mecca of Mile High City gentleman’s clubs and still is. Horse would get good and jacked up on Yukon Jack and devil weed (he also was a speed freak), stuff his overall pockets with a roll of one dollar bills and hit the circuit. The girls who knew him loved him, he was a tipper who reliably could be counted on to piss away all of his money on lap dances and ogling enormous sets of the pink-nosed puppies being massaged an inch in front of his face. He would disappear for long stretches of time during his soirees, likely to go and jack off in order to bleed off the pressure lest he explode in his fruit of the looms.

One night I was with Horse at a place out in Commerce City on the way to the old Stapleton Airport called the Landing Strip. This was one of the raunchier tittie bars on the circuit, the girls there weren’t as managed as they were at some of the other more prominent clubs who were not about to run afoul of the law by allowing actual physical contact to occur. The majority of them were biker chicks and their old men were often in the place drinking, there was no problem as long as they were not molested or groped in any serious way by the patrons. For some reason “Horse” had a particularly nasty gleam in his eye that night, maybe he was backing down the Yukon Jack with black beauties or something. As the heavy metal music blared, Horse was violating the rules of strip clubs, he was going for it, flicking his tongue at nipples and at one point he even grabbed a handful of ass. I was watching the table of four or five leather clad, bearded dudes who looked like the thuggish roadies of the early day Allman Brothers Band (there is a picture of them on the insert inside the Fillmore Concerts cd) the one who seemed the most pissed off bore more than a passing a resemblance to Gregg Allman himself.

I often wondered what Horse would have been like were he to have ever visited Subic Bay in the Philippines as I did back when I was a youngster in the U.S. Navy. Club Jolo sat at the end of Magsaysay Drive, the long main drag of Olongapo City running from the Subic Bay Naval Base over the infamous Shit River and populated by hundreds of bars/whorehouses. Of all of the nastiest of the nasty dives in the P.I. this one was by far the gold standard. It was totally nude dancing in front of one of those psychedelic style back screens where hippie style swirls and lights were interspersed with some of the sickest porn that existed. There were 8 mm projections of a woman fucking a pig, a series of various objects being crammed into anal and vaginal orifices and even a toilet cam style scat view. Of course the stuff was so perverted that it really was a turn off but it served to reinforce Club Jolo’s legendary among Pacific fleet sailors as the raunchiest bar of all. They would actually have girls who would come table side, stack pesos on a beer bottle, squat and suck them into their cooze. That act  was a huge hit with the customers, all of them U.S. military members, drunk off of their asses on the fabled local concoction mojo and eager to engage in primal style fornication with the “little brown fuck machines (LBFM’s) that made Subic Bay the top port of call. Horse would have run absolutely amok in the adult “Disneyland” as it was known to those in the U.S. Navy.

But I digress….

I looked over at Horse and was horrified to see that in between the dancers that he had stood up and had actually extracted his cock. He had laid it out on the little buffer area behind his pack of Marlboros and his beer, you couldn’t see it unless you were either right next to him or looking down. Even more distrubing was that Goddammit, the crazy fucker had pasted a set of those little googlie eyes that you buy at arts and crafts store on the head of his dick!  I muttered something and immediately started eying the clearest path to the exit. He was just standing there leering with a dollar bill folded up and extending from his mouth as the bleached blonde girl on stage slowly gyrated her way towards him, her meat globes a bouncing. She sashayed over to Horse and closed those things over the dollar bill, she then looked down, noticed his crank on the stage padding, recoiled and screamed. The bikers were up and split into pairs, with military like precision two of them cut through the pool table area to come at us from the right and the others through the restroom area to descend from our left. I grabbed Horse by the back of his overalls and growled “LET’S GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE NOW!!!” while I started to violently and quickly pull him towards the door, his dick was still hanging out and there was about ten dollars in ones sitting there as we bolted. He quickly saw the writing on the wall and we both broke into a sprint, out the door and into the parking lot. We were in the car, a 1984 Dodge Daytona throwing up gravel on the way out of the lot as those biker dudes emerged from the place along with another longhaired dude in cook’s whites who was brandishing a large meat cleaver, it was the blue neon lights glint off of that fucking potential murder weapon that haunts me to this day. Fortunately the I-70 highway access ramp was only a block or from the bar so by the time that they would have been in hot pursuit we were already long gone, laughing madly at the entire situation.

I lost touch with Horse over twenty years ago and have made no attempt to contact him since because some things and people are best left in the past, especially when it comes to hardened reprobates like Horse. For all that I know he is doing time in Canon City for waving his dick at little girls on a playground, frankly given his deep degenerate streak it wouldn’t surprise me a bit. The last time that I talked to him, not long after the escape from what would have been a brutal beating in the parking lot at The Landing Strip he was managing a combination arcade/headshop out on East Colfax and dealing dope out of the back door, he also dabbled in burglary and got a real kick out of preying on gays and the elderly. Were I to venture a guess I would certainly say that no good came of him, he was a seriously twisted dude. Then again, perhaps he ‘reformed’ himself and found God, as the saying goes, “religion is the last refuge of a soundrel”, he may even have been in attendance at Sunday’s game wearing an orange Tim Tebow jersey. Who the fuck knows… and in the end who the fuck cares?

So why the fuck am I going off on this riff about Horace Hicks in the first place? It was just that the dysfunction on the Broncos and the fairly recent DUI bust of Denver kicker Matt Prater on his way back home from Shotgun Willie’s dredges up the corpses of the past. The present is the time when the serious monsters are on the prowl, they have taken over the political system and the vomitous torrent of cultural sleaze that emanates from the electronic crackpipe is only surpassed by the militant societal perversion of American Cristendom. This potent mixture is exemplified by the Great TebowCrusade and the swarming of what passes for a sports media to descend upon it like buzzards or more appropriately heathen bastards worshipping their false idols and golden calves. As a force they are not to be trifled with, just ask Kyle Orton whose elderly years will likely be spent wracked by cold night sweats and the nightmares thanks to how the animals treated him over the last four months. I have no doubt that many of them prayed for the death of his new child just so Tebow could be anointed the starter, that’s just the way that the putrescent fuckers are. They are pro life but worship war, the death penalty and have no qualms with poor children starving to death, I often wonder what Jesus would think of this scum… I sure as fuck know that they wouldn’t have been down with his long-haired, liberal ass.

Hell, what is more hypocritical than Pastor Ted getting plowed up the back forty on a regular basis while denouncing gays like an establishment version of the cruder Fred Phelps? Or Reverend Gary Aldridge, my all time favorite homophobic Christer who was found dead, suffocated in a Pulp Fiction style Gimp leather suit with a massive dildo stuffed up his asshole. Really, these rotten Christers, especially the Tebow worshippers are as full of shit as Reverend Aldridge’s lubed up anus was full of pink vulcanized rubber. The triumph of Tebow is a tale of the triumph of a very militant element that has existed within this country, on of enormous political power and on that the average American Joe has no true idea even exists. Of course her in Der Heimat, circa 2011 the Average Joe is a jacked up on anti-Muslim hatred, self-centered, willfully ignorant rock-headed buffoon like Joe the Plumber so none of this resonates nor could it. Jesus Tebow’s ascension is especially significant in that it came in the exact same venue that the loathed BLACK man in the WHITE House claimed the nomination for the Democratic Party back in 2008. While Americans in general seem to be doomed to never realize one of the central tenets upon which the United States of America was founded – that religion and politics don’t mix, perhaps by the end of the season Bronco fans will realize that neither do religion and football.

Rick Perry: There’s A New Neocon Sheriff In Town

 

“If everything isn’t black and white, I say, “Why the hell not?”

-John Wayne

Ever since dude ranch desperado George Felix Allen’s presidential ambitions were blown up back when he was caught on video taunting a dark skinned man with a racial slur the fascist Republican party has been missing that cowboy archetype that played so well to the masses of asses. The whole allure of the hallowed Ronald Reagan and later George W. Bush was to roll out the ass kicker in chief riding upon a trusty steed, Stetson cocked back and ready to enforce the rule of the west on opponents that evoked celluloid heroes such as John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. It worked too. George W. Bush, a man who was allegedly terrified of horses was somehow packaged into a real live Murkan cowboy. This despite his much touted Crawford, TX ranch being nothing more than a stage set which was rolled out in 2000 just prior to the election and conveniently put up for sale in late 2008 when Bush decided that a tony suburb of Dallas would be his future home. The western myth runs deep in this lemming colony where the real truths of greed, exploitation, violence and the genocide of the indigenous population are ignored while the John Wayne style of revisionist history has come to be the accepted ‘truth’. The neocons, being disciples of Leo Strauss who embraced the big fib or the “noble lie” as a cover story for raw imperialism had experimented briefly with tough talking harpies like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann (last seen performing simulated fellatio on a corndog the size of a horse’s penis in Iowa) pandering to fat, ignorant, racist white assholes but it just didn’t resonate like the western iconography. So with the ridiculous Tea Party re-branding  of the party base along with it’s costumed freaks experiencing a downward spiral in it’s national perception it was time to go back to the well. The new sheriff in town would be Texas Governor Rick Perry, a silly and shameless buffoon who appeals to the dregs of society and can serve as the perfect bridge between the flagging teabaggers and the traditional Christian fascists who are the party’s shock troops. Perry also gets a bonus for already being a killer, his Texas reign has racked up a record number of executions, a big plus to the haters.

Perry is the perfect successor to George W. Bush. He is of course from the Lone Star State which is chock a block full of religious fanatics and Meskin’ hatin’ teabaggers as well as the home to the big oil money that has so toxically polluted our politics. Even with the Republican 2012 presidential field full of loons, crazies, frauds and one token Negro pizza king there is no way that any of the assclowns will be able to beat a weakened and self-destructive Barack Obama. Mitt Romney and John Huntsman have zero chance because they are Mormons trying to nail down the nomination in a party that is comprised of Christian bigots and Ron Paul is invisible as far as the media is concerned for  his antiwar, pro-civil liberties principles. With Perry, they have a bonafide southern fried motherfucker who will have the party base swarming like a plague of maggots over a five day old bowl of menudo. That Perry has been quietly groomed by none other than arch-neocon Douglas J. Feith, he of the former Pentagon Office of Special Plans or the “Lie Factory” that provided the Bushreich with the false information justifying the attack and occupation of Iraq, a country that posed no threat to the United States. Doug Feith is one of the slimiest bastards of the neocon cabal that included Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, propagandist William Kristol, Iran-Contra criminal Elliott Abrams, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and too many other vermin to waste any more time listing here who embraced the PNAC doctrine of global conquest that has mired this country in war for the rest of our lives. Feith, who along with many of the other dual citizens of the neocons is an ultra right-wing Zionist was instrumental in producing the notorious policy paper for Bibi Netanyahu entitled A Clean Break that would provide the ideological heft for the fascist transformation of Israel as it carved out lebensraum with the backing of the U.S establishment that continues to subsidize the butchery to this day.

With the Palin Project now on the rocks thanks largely to the idiosyncratic nature of the wild Alaskan dingbat that has turned her into a national punchline it was imperative that a new host be prepped for the parasites. With Netanyahu and the maniacal Avigdor Lieberman over in God’s chosen land itching to nuke Iran but opposed by the recalcitrant Obama administration a more pliant and receptive type who would eagerly follow orders from Givat Ram to launch WW III is needed. Perry is a natural and his appeal to the Rapture death cult that has so well served neocon and extreme right-wing Israeli war freaks is a huge asset. The neocon Whermacht that is the now fully jacked up on crazy tea served out of Kool Aid vats Christian cultural war machine will be mobilized and foaming a the mouth come the months leading up to next November. Hell hath no fury like a death-worshiping Christofascist who was recently burned by Harold Camping’s Rapture that failed to materialize and they are already in a masturbatory frenzy over the coming jihad against the infidel Obama. As I stated in my recent piece Norwegian Tea: Will Anti-Muslim Crusade Bring Blood to America For 2012? the GOP and their neocon backers and gearing up for an onslaught of hate unprecedented in American history. With Perry as their champion and operatives like Glenn Beck over in Israel honing his chops this week the beasts are ready to take to the streets here in Der Heimat on a blood scent and a scorched earth mandate.

Perry’s appeal to the crazy Christers provides the neocons with what they lacked since Bush left Washington, the new sheriff in town lookin’ to lead the posse and string up all those deemed to be their enemies for a public lynching. Despite the fact that he is just another useful idiot and fraud and is pegged as such by Antiwar.com’s always spot-on Justin Raimondo as such in his recent piece entitled Rick Perry, ‘Hawk Internationalist’ from which I excerpt:

Just look at who’s been giving him foreign policy advice: according to Josh Rogin, over at Foreignpolicy.com, he’s been in meetings “sometimes for hours” with the likes of former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith, former NSC “strategy guru” William Luti, and a host of other neocons from the last administration, many of whom were instrumental in lying us into war in Iraq. Feith and Luti were the nexus of a disinformation network which fed false “intelligence” to the Congress, the White House, and the public to justify a disastrous invasion which we are still paying for in lives and treasure.

Oh, and what a surprise: it turns out the Perry-neocon lash-up was brokered by disgraced former Defense Secretary Donald “Known Unknowns” Rumsfeld.

Another clueless Texas Governor surrounded by the same Praetorian Guard of conniving neocons who led us down the road to imperial overstretch and fiscal ruin last time around – isn’t that just what the GOP needs right now?

Raimondo is despised by the neocons. For years he has refused to back down while casting light on the entire fetid nest of neocon cockroaches that are the Israeli extremist right-wing’s American fifth column. This is likely why antiwar.com is now the subject of an FBI investigation, the true targets of the phony war on terror as I have been saying for years have ALWAYS been American dissidents who oppose the warfare state.

As for Rick Perry, the all-American cowboy archetype has led to nothing but trouble, revisionism and an excuse to engage in mayhem in lands where brown people live. Neocon imperialism as exemplified in the infamous PNAC manifesto Rebuilding America’s Defenses is just reverse engineered John Wayne who once remarked that:

“I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.”

Just substitute “Indians” for Iraqis, Iranians or Afghans are as the right-wingers like to lump them all together A-rabs, mix in a holy Christian crusader narrative and you have the recipe for more ruinous and never-ending wars of murder and  resource theft. This is the American dogma that brought us our very own four horsemen of the apocalypse in George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, John Wayne and the Marlboro Man and Perry is sharpening his spurs as the next gun for hire. John Wayne also once remarked “life is tough but its tougher when you’re stupid”.

Perhaps he had the teabaggers and their ilk in mind….

The Great Tebow Crusade: A Sports Metaphor for a Delusional Nation

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable…. A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass: he is actually ill.

– H L Mencken

Tim Tebow as a successful starting NFL quarterback? Michele Bachmann as the next U.S. President? Jesus Christ! Of course both of these scenarios are a fantasy as well as a product of a form of non-reality based magical thinking that has come to define American society over the past three decades. There is a deeply entrenched national unwillingness to own up to systemic problems, grossly immoral wars of aggression, a miserably failed economic system that has been falsely pimped off as being a “free” market and the inability to take an honest look at the history of the American empire that hasn’t been revised, sanitized and strained through John Wayne’s dirty underwear have all contributed to our current plight. This is a land where despite massive poverty, joblessness, homelessness and rampant inflation where people actually believe that they too can become a millionaire. This is a land where in true Orwellian style war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength and God is on our side. Americans for the most part still believe that they are free despite the growing police state that surrounds them, that their nation is prosperous rather than on the verge of bankruptcy and that all will be alright despite the evidence that things will never be “right” again.

The illusion is perpetuated by the “media hologram” as the late, great social critic Joe Bageant referred to the ever present electronic propagandizing that allows for the facade of the mythical and now forever lost American dream to be promoted. Old Joe pegged our national media as “a feast of bullshit and spectacle”, the Romans referred to a pre-technology version of the distractions that masked the decline of their mighty empire as “panem et circenses” or as it is more commonly known “bread and circuses”. The national infatuation with pure fantasy and triviality that serves to distract and to make one forget is exemplified not only by movies, video games and cheesy tabloid celebrity scandals but in the ongoing games that are played, gladiatorial epics for the modern age. In this country, no sport is revered as much as professional football and no sports league is as saturated with the underlying cultural indoctrination of warfare, capitalism and patriotic fervor as the NFL. Now, the already overpowering affirmation of the glorious, capitalist warfare state is about to get religion as well. The story of Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow, a champion to radical American Cristendom and the coordinated push to transform a man child of mediocre talent into an orange clad savior, national celebrity and to likely serve as a springboard into national politics is a fascinating cultural study of an America gone horribly awry and steeped in a dangerous and terminal denial.

I must admit, I have a serious interest in the ongoing Tim Tebow melodrama for several reasons. First and foremost I fear the forces behind him and understand all too well the power of those who have been most accurately described by writer Chris Hedges as the “American Fascists”. I also have been deeply disgusted, dare I say ashamed of the ongoing infantilization and dumbing down of America over the last several decades, it has only become worse largely due to a corrupt, consolidated corporate media. I have come to despise the loathsome transformation of what was once the most powerful economy largely thanks to a robust and vibrant middle class into a sucking black hole of despair for the majority of the population due to the rise of the looter class and the new feudalism. Finally, I have always had a serious jones for professional football, not only the now fully corporatized NFL but for the Denver Broncos in particular. I grew up and lived a large chunk of my life in Denver where local team has long been a revered symbol of local if not regional pride. From my earliest days I have followed the Broncos. I have seen the good, the bad and the ugly, still bleed Bronco orange and have hated the goddamned Oakland Raiders since childhood. The great Tebow crusade that is ongoing gives me a chance to not only take a detour from my trademark political screeds into the sports world but also to point out that the entire ongoing drama is just a microcosm of all that is currently wrong with this society. The tale of the young wunderkind, a wholly manufactured celebrity right up there with the Kardashians and the masses of adoring fans who have anointed the youngster as the second coming of John Elway despite the inconvenient truth that Tebow couldn’t consistently hit a horse in the ass at ten yards with a tight spiral is the story of a delusional nation itself.

Tim Tebow is the latest version of the University of Florida quarterback (eg: Danny Wuerffel, Doug Johnson, Rex Grossman) who largely due to the spread offense run by the Gators has immense success in college but is poorly suited for the big time. Despite leading the UF to two national championships, largely because of his size and running ability Tebow was not deemed to be a top pro prospect, he was a “project”, better suited to play a position other than quarterback and was likely only a third rounder even to the most optimistic. His last meaningful game for the Gators was a butt ugly 32-13 mugging by the Alabama Crimson Tide in a game that wasn’t nearly as close as the score indicated. Tebow was crying as he left the field, the tracks his tears cutting swaths through his trademark biblical verses inscribed in eye black (the NCAA would ban such displays with the “Tebow Rule”), his dreams of NFL stardom potentially crushed. While playing in the Senior Bowl for the South team in an offense not tailored to him Tebow stunk the place out, the problems with his throwing mechanics were exposed, further damaging his pro prospects. But then the miracles began to be manufactured, thanks to a colossal public relations offensive Tebow would work diligently to change his throwing motion.

Enter the canny NFL traveler Jon Gruden who despite having never had the patience or wherewithal to develop young talent during his coaching gigs had somehow managed to get anointed as some sort of guru. Gruden stated with a strait face that Tebow could “revolutionize” the pro game and he himself would assist with polishing the turd pre-draft in order to ensure that Tebow would be drafted in the first round. Another former Tampa Bay Buc coach, the sainted Tony Dungy also spoke out on Tebow’s greatness, note that Dungy’s quarterbacking savvy was on display with Trent Dilfer and Shaun King, he inherited Peyton Manning when he was run out of Tampa after his team quit on him in the playoffs for the second year in a row. At least Dilfer eventually won a Super Bowl by riding the swarming Ravens defense, Gruden however has only journeyman Bruce Gradkowski to claim as his most successful pupil. Now with the woeful Bengals who are his fifth team, Gradkowski is still more known for his involvement in a federal gambling investigation from his college days at Toledo than for his actual on field achievements or more appropriately, the lack thereof. With the Christian right-wing propaganda machine and a big name like Gruden onboard Tebow’s NFL draft potential was in the full blown perception management stages. Despite naysayers like Dallas owner Jerry Jones who drew fire for stating that “he’d never get on the field” when commenting on whether the Cowboys would draft him and draft prognosticator Mel Kiper who projected him as an H-Back as well as another Eric Crouch a former Cornhuskers college star who couldn’t play quarterback in the NFL . So the table was set for the draft. All that Team Tebow needed was a sucker, and they found one in then Denver Broncos coach Josh McDaniels.

The Josh McDaniels era will forever live in infamy among Bronco loyalists. Two time Super Bowl winner Mike Shanahan whose legendary status had taken a big hit in the post-Elway years was sent packing after yet another disappointing season. Despite the availability of several better prospects owner Pat Bowlen picked the 33 year old Bill Belichick disciple right down to the game day hoodie. McDaniels immediately alienated incumbent starting quarterback Jay Cutler, himself a colossal asshole and the town wasn’t big enough for the two of them. The relationship became so strained that Cutler was shipped off to the Chicago Bears for a package of high draft picks and QB Kyle Orton. It was the first in a series of botched personnel decisions that would come to define the McDaniels reign of error. The Broncos had an immediate opportunity to hit it big in the draft by using the picks on quarterback Josh Freeman who is looking like a franchise player in Tampa and All Pro linebacker Clay Matthews but ended up with a running back with happy feet in Knowshon Moreno and linebacker Robert Ayers who was already looking like a bust by midseason. Not only did McDaniels waste those picks on schmucks but also traded away a future draft pick to move up in the second round and draft cornerback Alphonso Smith who was so bad that he was shipped off the next year to Detroit for scrub tight end Dan Gronkowski. That was a pretty piss poor acquisition for what would have been the 14th overall pick in the 2010 draft. It was a harbinger of what was to come under McDaniels.

Early on the Broncos were the surprise of the season in going 6-0 out of the gates. Orton was playing better than Cutler and Bowlen was looking like a genius. The high water mark of the McDaniels era was when the Broncos, dressed in their throwback mustard yellow uniforms with the infamous vertically striped socks bested Belichick’s New England Patriots 20-17 in overtime in the giant corporate cistern that is Invesco Field. Chock up a rare win in San Diego the next week and the Broncos went into their bye week with a full head of steam. Then the wheels came off. There were four straight losses, three of them to playoff teams but one to the heinous Redskins, one of the worst teams in the league. Orton couldn’t make a play to save his life and the defense blew up, by the time that the dust settled the season was over and the Broncos were 8-8. The worst indicator of just how much of an illusion that the 6-0 start had been though were two miserable home losses to hated divisional rivals to close out the season. In a 20-19 loss to the Raiders the Broncos gave up 241 rushing yards, 83 or so on 3 consecutive plays. They also did the impossible by making the lamentable failure that is Jamarcus Russell into a hero, the former top pick threw the winning touchdown in the waning seconds. Two weeks later in the season finale Denver was steamrollered by the Kansas City Chiefs, giving up 317 rushing yards, 259 of them to Jamal Charles in a humiliating 44-24 loss.

With a 2-8 death spiral largely being the result of a porous defense you would think that shoring up the D would have been a priority in the offseason. The Broncos finally were able to unload chronic malcontent receiver Brandon Marshall for more draft picks and despite the 2009 draft debacle were still standing well in terms of being able to reload. It would instead be the capstone that would come to define the McDaniels legacy, and it would hang over Denver like a brown cloud after his departure. But first, another notable McDaniels personnel move, he traded fan favorite running back Peyton Hillis who had rarely see the field in 2009 to Cleveland for the disappointing quarterback Brady Quinn, a former Notre Dame star whose NFL career has been a bust. Not only was Quinn buried on the depth chart but Hillis went on to be a star with the Browns, rolling to 1,177 yards, 11 touchdowns and landed on the cover of the mega-selling video game Madden 12. The 11 scores by Hillis were six more than Denver non-quarterbacks would tally all year.

In the 2010 draft McDaniels was wheeling and dealing, trading up and down like his mentor Belichik only that the average Madden player had more football sense. The Broncos despite their porous defense inexplicable spent their first five picks on offense before picking cornerback Perrish Cox, a sex offender. The first pick was spent on WR Demaryius Thomas who has yet to prove he can do anything but fumble and get injured. Then, with the 25th overall pick McDaniels grabbed Tebow away, despite the fact that several quarterback starved teams took a flyer on the Gainesville wonder. Also notable from the 2010 draft was an offensive lineman named Zane Beadles chosen 45th overall despite the fact that he wasn’t even listed in the fucking Sporting News draft guide. To the Christers it was mission accomplished, they had been successful in getting their Manchurian candidate into the first round, number 15 Bronco jerseys led the league in merchandise sales and there was jubilation in the virulent snakepit of hatred and homophobia Focus the Family headquarters that was about 2 hrs south of Denver via I-25. Radical cleric James Dobson’s organization had been behind the Tebow Super Bowl ad where he was trotted out to give a toned down anti-abortion, anti-women’s rights message during the big game. In Tebow they had planted the flag in order to in the words of Jon Gruden “revolutionize” the game by making it a showcase for their bastardized version of Christianity. Not that the NFL doesn’t encourage the promulgation of political memes (as long as they don’t come from guys like Rashard Mendenhall) in that damned near every contest – especially the big ones are a showcase for militarism and empire.

So the Jesus juice was flowing and the second season of Josh McDaniels was to begin with not only a putrid defense but a festering quarterback controversy. There would be no 6-0 start in 2010, the McDaniels death watch officially began with a for the ages 59-14 degradation at home against the Raiders that would all but knock the Broncos out of playoff contention by the time that trick or treaters began to make their rounds. By the time that their record reached 3-9, aided by an asinine “Spygate” style filming of the 49ers practices prior to a week loss loss in Wembley, England where McDaniels was nabbed imitating Belichik (who at least won when he cheated) Pat Bowlen pulled the plug on Little Napoleon. The interim coach, Eric Studesville handed the reigns to Tebow who delighted the zealots with his running ability in posting a win and a near win against stricken teams that had already given up the ghost. The larger motive in the Tebow promotion was likely the desire of Bowlen to sell seats in the final games, a 3-11 team with a pitiful defense that would give up a whopping NFL worst 471 points isn’t a very good draw. When Tebow ran for the winning TD against Houston on the day after Jesus’s fake birthday it was the high-water mark of his pro career. After another loss to the Chargers in which Tebow ran for 94 yards the season was mercifully over and the wreckage began to be sorted through.

Desperate for positive public relations Bowlen brought in John Elway to run the team’s football operations. The new leadership then brought in John Fox, a proven adult head coach and did the right thing in drafting for defense, landing top defensive prospect Von Miller with the first pick. The lockout though put the fate of the season in the balance and halted all player transactions. This allowed for the further fermentation of the Tebow meme as the media and the Christian subculture exalted that their champion would be running the team when the season finally got under way. The television networks nor the sponsors would feature Tebow prominently and as often as possible to juice ratings and bring in advertising dollars, their new Christ was ascending the mount. That was until reality set in. The lockout eventually ended, there being far too much money at stake for it not to and the teams reported to their respective training camps. Once in session it became very apparent to anyone but the Tebow cultists that their boy sucked, his heralded throwing motion change had yet to take hold and the lack of an off season conditioning program didn’t bode well for development. I mean you can only get so much work on the arm trolling the nation’s Wal-Marts and other gathering places for boobus Americanus to autograph copies of your best selling autobiography. According to those in the know, Tebow was throwing the ball in the stands, dirt and everywhere but where the playbook dictated. Then he did what many of his entitled generation did – he sulked. In a recent column by longtime Denver sportswriter Woody Paige Tebus whined that the starting quarterback job had been given to him but was “grabbed back away”. This of course was immediately amplified by the media and was decried by Tebow Nation as nothing short of heresy and they swarmed to his rescue. Even King James bestowed his blessing on Tebow; LeBron James that is, the perennially pouting overpaid, underachieving Prima Donna last seen quitting on his team a few months back in the NBA finals. As the saying goes, with friends like that…

And it has been on ever since. Chicago Sun-Times sports columnist Rick Morrissey has ensured that his email box will be filled with hateful diatribes from teabagging Tebow cultists by daring to publish the following piece of smoking blasphemy entitled Worship of Broncos’ Tim Tebow making for a dilemma in Denver from which I excerpt:

There are two competing groups when it comes to public opinion on Tim Tebow.

The first group thinks Tebow is God’s gift to humanity and that his NFL quarterbacking skills will catch up to his holiness if the Denver Broncos ever give him a chance.

The second group is creeped out by the first group.

AND –

But armed with the irrefutable evidence that somebody out there, or up there, believed Tebow was worthy of being a first-rounder, his supporters became emboldened. It’s why there’s a quarterback controversy in Denver right now for no good reason.

This is what happens when you reach to take a player who has a bigger reputation for piety than he does for touchdown passes. The pressure on John Elway, the Broncos’ new vice president of football operations, is significant. Tebow is much, much more than a football player. He’s a symbol for a large swath of people who see him as the best of what Christianity has to offer.

His autobiography, Through My Eyes, has been on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list since it came out eight weeks ago. His jersey was the third-highest seller in the NFL last season, despite the fact he started only three games.

There is nothing wrong with any of that. The people have spoken, and they like Tim Tebow. A lot. But the people shouldn’t decide who gets to play quarterback.

Elway, much like President Obama moved into his new office to immediately find a bag of flaming dogshit parked on the doorstep by his predecessor. Obama only preceded to make the disaster worse by stomping up and down on the bag, spraying liquefied dogshit everywhere by not only failing to correct the damage done by the Bushreich but further cementing his policies, escalating his wars and exacerbating the damage to the economy by catering to the whims of right-wing scum. Whether Elway will choose the same path in caving in to vicious thugs and mouth breathing, bible pounding swine by trading the vastly superior Orton away in order to go all in with Tebow has yet to be seen. The pressure will be intense and the national media spotlight which always seeking out controversy to drive ratings will be pointing the way towards Dove Valley like the Star of Bethlehem. 

By far the greatest challenge of Elway’s football career will be in just how he handles the weapon of mass destruction parked in his locker room with the “Tebow Thing” In dealing with not only the national media parasites but also local hack columnists such as the Denver Post’s Mark Kiszla’s man crush on Tebow. I excerpt this vomit inducing portion of a recent column entitled DenverBroncos Must Let Tebow Be Tebow:

 

Tim Tebow is not a paint-by-numbers quarterback. So why do the Broncos seem bent on turning him into Brian Griese, your plain vanilla game manager and the football equivalent of a certified public accountant?

The extreme makeover of Tebow has revealed a clumsy robot in need of a system reboot. It’s pure folly to recast an improvisational player as a pocket passer.

Tebow needs to be Tebow.

After feeling the heat from criticism this summer, Tebow repeatedly expressed a desire Wednesday to “have fun.”

But where did the unpredictable fun in his game go? Whatever happened to the instinctive rambler who wore No. 15 for the Broncos? While it sometimes appears that Tebow’s technique has regressed since his rookie season, maybe the real problem is lost identity.

Basically this horses ass is proposing that the Broncos just do away with the offensive playbook and let Tebow play fucking sandlot ball. I understand that Christianity is a primitive and simple-minded form of thinking best suited for Neanderthals and other half-monkeys. The entire premise of letting Tebow freelance is ludicrous and dishonest, ever since a couple of guys named Flintstone and Rubble were chucking the rock around there has been a need for at least some sort of coherent offensive philosophy. Kiszla really bares his chops later in the column for comparing the orange clad 23 year old messiah with none other than Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway, something that got the pouty, overrated loser Jay Cutler vilified for. 

More from Kiszla:

 

Here’s the funny thing. When worry lines crease the face of Broncos executive John Elway as he wonders how long it might take Tebow to realize even an improvisational master must learn to win games from the pocket in the NFL, old No. 7 starts to look and sound a little like Dan Reeves.

Nobody who remembers houses in Denver painted orange can forget. Reeves gave Elway the fourth quarter to become an NFL legend of the comeback drive, but only after forcing the Stanford grad to operate at 5 mph under the speed limit for the majority of games during the 1980s.

The conservative approach by Reeves irked Elway. It contributed to the demise of a relationship between a frustrated superstar and his stubborn coach. Denver sided with Elway. Reeves departed.

Is it just me, or does the apprehensive sweat on the back of Elway’s neck as he contemplates handing Tebow the car keys smell like karma?

No, actually it smells like bullshit and Kiszla should know better than to toss Tebow’s salad like that. While Dan Reeves offensive philosophy stank and did much to adversely affect Elway’s career stats, allowing petulant, lesser talented losers like Dan Marino, Brett Favre and Peyton Manning to dominate the record books at least Reeves HAD an offensive philosophy. The problem with the Reeves era is that the personnel around Elway sucked. When you are counting on running backs named Sammy Winder, Gerald Wilhite, Gaston Green and Steve Sewell to execute a conservative ball control based attack you are going to have serious problems. Couple that with receivers the likes of Vance Johnson (the best by far in Elway’s early career), Mark Jackson, Ricky Nattiel and Clarence Kay, a porous offensive line and a consistently inconsistent defense  and you have the real reason why Elway had to deal with the weekly stress of having to perform like (to steal it from Tebow) Jesus Christ in performing fourth quarter miracles. John Elway only became a Super Bowl winner when the level of talent around him was vastly upgraded in the final years of his career. 

Elway has become famous in NFL lore for “The Drive” comeback against the cursed Marty Schottenheimer’s Cleveland Browns in the 1986 AFC Championship game. But it wasn’t his greatest comeback, that was on January 4, 1992 in the old Mile High Stadium against the Houston Oilers (now the Tennessee Titans) in the divisional playoffs.

It was colder than a witch’s tit that day and myself and my buddies Rockie and Big Johnson were well prepared. We had scored four tickets in the legendary south stands for the game earlier in the week. The Broncos were coming off of a surprising 12-4 season and the first playoff game was against the AFC Central champ Oilers. We were well prepped for the game, like a mini-version of the loaded trunk of Hunter S. Thompson’s Chevy convertible in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas we were well stocked with booze, herb and other intoxicants. Having been running on very little sleep and still hung over (and in Big Johnson’s case badly so) from the night before we were nipping at the hair of the dog as we rolled into the outer parking lots. We were smoking dope and nursing Big Gulp cups filled with red beer (having stopped off at King Soopers on the way to the game for tomato juice) to gradually ease into the other stuff. The lots around the stadium were already filled with tailgaters and the smell of roasting meat hung in the January air. We grabbed a spot and began to get into battle dress, being back in the days before America became a proto-fascist, greed fueled police state where the ever present phony threat of “terrorism” gave license to avaricious owners to subject fans to everything but a body cavity search on the way in lest they smuggle in their own beverages and cut down on $9 beer sales we could get away with practically anything. We all carried those seat cushions only they contained cans of beer instead of foam stuffing, flasks of Jack Daniels sippin’ whiskey to take the bite off of the cold later in the game as dusk would fall. We also had also backloaded our cigarette packs with a number of marijuana joints. That would be good enough to get us through the afternoon; the only way that we could run short would be if the game went into overtime. After the game we would go and eat some good Mexican food and hit the titty bars.

We got to our seats just before kickoff and settled in for the game and it didn’t start out well, the Oilers had taken the opening kickoff 70 yards in less than two minutes. A good amount of fans were still milling around trying to settle in and the Broncos were already down a score. The first Denver possession resulted in nothing other than a punt and the Oilers promptly drove for a second score. By early in the second quarter the loyal fans in Mile High were restive as Houston quarterback Warren Moon or “Warren Coon” as the shamelessly fucked up Rockie and Big Johnson were heckling him, much to the delight of many in our vicinity in the south stands quickly grabbed a 21-6 lead. Rocky and Big Johnson had recently discovered the Rush Limbaugh show and like many angry white male losers the siren song of the grand poobah of white cultural populism they were easily ensnared by the trolling net. Myself, being apolitical at the time really had no understanding that they were in the early stages of a disease that would come to define our country for the coming two nightmarish decades. A new form of country that would later be exemplified in the rise of Tim Tebow as a bizarre sort of Elway doppelganger to Broncos fans.

By the fourth quarter Denver had closed the gap to 24-23 thanks to a botched extra point by kicker David Treadwell. The Bronco defense, after a horrific start had held Houston to only a fourth quarter field goal in the second half. By the time the Broncos got the ball for the last time, they were pinned at their own two yard line by a Houston punt. Then it was Elway time, a mixture of skill, desperation and improvisational wizardry that was the real deal, not the sort of bullshit that Mark Kiszla writes in advocacy of Tim Tebow. John Elway converted two fourth downs on that drive, the first time escaping a near sack and running for the marker on fourth and six to get a new set of downs with 1:38 left. After three straight incomplete passes due to a heavy pass rush, and with clutch receiver Michael Young having been injured on the drive, on fourth and ten Elway scrambled, held up and launched a strike to Vance Johnson who took the ball to the Oiler 21, a 44 yard pass play, a good deal of it on a run past the stunned Houston sideline and a sickly looking Warren Moon. After a ten yard Steve Sewell run Treadwell atoned for his missed extra point by kicking the winning field goal with 16 seconds left. The place erupted in pandemonium, Big Johnson jumped up, already hoarse from shouting at “Warren Coon” for the entire game and vomited on the couple in front of us who we had earlier been passing around a doobie with. Those were the days when Elway often had to win the games largely by himself and there is no comparison – zip, nada, zilch to the fallacious argument made by Mark Kiszla and the Christian Right P.R. machine that Tebow is just a younger version of John Elway. The first ballot Hall of Famer racked up five Super Bowl appearances, two of them wins, he also racked up 148 total wins, 300 passing touchdowns, 51,475 passing yards, 3,417 rushing yards, 47 fourth quarter comebacks, nine Pro Bowl appearances. And John Elway was the consensus top quarterback prospect in the NFL draft his rookie year, not a product of wishful thinking and public relations.

But I Digress…..

I too remember the days when fans painted their houses orange, died their lawns orange, sat in sub zero temperatures on the capitol steps in Denver immersed in a vat of orange jello to win Super Bowl tickets, dined on orange pancakes and orange and blue tortilla chips. My time as a fan preceded Kisla’s tenure as the resident Denver Post ass-suckler and I remember the bad old days before the miracle season of 1977 when the Broncos went 12-2 and to their first Super Bowl. Their quarterback was a Christian then too but Craig Morton didn’t flaunt it and use it as a raison d’être but back in those days Christians for the most part were humble and followed the actual teachings of Christ, not the devil’s gospel of Timothy LaHaye, John Hagee, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and their ilk more concerned with their political agendas than anything uttered during the Sermon on the Mount. Morton could also win football games in the NFL and had the league been a corporate juggernaut in those days he too would have led the Broncos in jersey sales. 

While Tebow couldn’t carry Elway’s jockstrap (despite what his cult may believe) hope springs eternal in Denver after the nadir of 2010. There are already whispers that the Broncos will be targeting a young gun in next year’s draft and if he falls perhaps Stanford’s Andrew Luck would be a great fit. It is obvious that Kyle Orton is not the long-term solution and Tebow is an albatross and the media circus only ensures that he will be a distraction that will ultimately split the locker room. In the new era of Elway and Fox it is already apparent to all but the delusional that Tebow, like the rest of the cancer from the McDaniels era must be cut out, the sooner the better. Miami needs a quarterback and Tebow could be a nice fit in the Wildcat offense that the team utilizes, he would also be back in the sunshine state and would sell tickets. The show would be also be very entertaining as he tries to mesh with former Bronco receiver Brandon Marshall who is already on the outs in South Florida. The answer though is that Tebow must go and the sooner the better, even if the Broncos get nothing in return, look at the first rounder for Dan Gronkowski, just chalk it up as another McDaniels failure, eat the loss and move on. That’s really the only way at this point, anything else will only delay the recovery.

As with so many things in this torn apart country the great Tebow debate comes down to those who live in a reality based world and a world of make believe. I never said that Tim Tebow wasn’t a good guy, only that he is a false idol who will never be a successful quarterback on the NFL level. Those who use the young man to shove their hateful religion down the throats of the masses are obscene, loathsome and cynical and in the end they are ultimately damaging Tebow himself. Then these are the type who could care less about compassion, empathy, fairness and human decency, the things that that long-haired liberal Jesus Christ preached about. They would just as soon burn everyone who disagrees with their hijacking of a religion at the stake using green wood, the bible warned of these people and they are legion, their burning hatred only surpassed by their failure to acknowledge that which is reality.  

Tebow may yet find quarterbacking success in the Mile High City, perhaps with the coming Arena Football expansion team that Denver is expected to land.

Republicans Vs. Jesus

“He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone..”

Jesus Christ

Quite possibly the only thing on the planet that is more gut-wrenchingly nauseating than seeing an endless parade of Republican chickenhawks painting their fucking fingers purple, wrapping themselves in the flag and braying their approval for sending poor bastards off to die ostensibly in the service of their country in a foreign land (while most of those gutless scum ever even bothered to wear the uniform themselves) it is their sheer blasphemy and callous disregard for exploiting Jesus Christ himself to mount their jihadist terrorist assault on the United States of America. The idiots in Congress are only the standard bearers for those who are the far more nefarious puppeteers behind the movement to replace democracy with theocracy.

The Republican party and the religous zealots who effectively control it have hijacked the Christian religion and have transformed Jesus Christ into a ‘new and improved’ product that can be sold to the flocks of consumers who regularly pack their goat barns or as they are more commonly known, their mega-churches. This label comes from the biblical parable puts it that Jesus will divide his sheep from the goats amongst them, he also dispenses some very good wisdom about prayer:

“And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say to you that they have their reward.”

“But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly”


That’s Matthew: 6, Verses 5 and 6 by the way, look it up. I am not exactly a biblical scholar or theologian but it seems to me that Christ is alluding to the fact that it is not exactly necessary to run down and join your neighborhood mega-church in order to curry favor with God, you can actually save a bit of coin on the gas and retreat to your own cramped closet at home to offer up prayers. I know that the militant fundamentalist ‘Christians’ have this connotation that closets somehow are equated with homosexuality which according to their radical clerics must be eradicated but it just seems to me that Jesus is actually calling out those who gather in temples of worship to be seen is a form of hypocrisy. It’s a shame that the true teachings of Jesus Christ the prophet, liberal and he who preached compassion towards the downtrodden is so often eschewed in favor of the vengeful, materialistic, warmongering character that the fanatics of the Religious Right have transformed him into for their own benefit. I mean when was the last time that James Dobson, Timothy LaHaye, Jerry Falwell or for that matter George W. Bush took the time to wash the feet of a poor man?

GOP Jesus, the gay-hating, free-market preaching, Social Darwinist avenger who now pilots a fighter jet because his more traditional donkey was unable to carry enough incendiary devices or precision guided bombs to drop on brown skinned children rules the mega-churches. He is a staunchly pro-American warrior and those who proudly display their little yellow ‘support the troops’ ribbon magnets on their gas guzzlers as a tribute to GOP Jesus are legion, hell I even saw a sticker the other day with an angry looking Christ with blazing eyes and a broadsword, what in the fuck ever happened to “blessed are the peacemakers”? Probably the same thing that happened to the blessed meek who were to inherit the Earth, the dogma of GOP Jesus is summed up by the harlot of hate Ann Coulter who once said: “Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours”.

GOP Jesus also disdains the causes and care of the poor and downtrodden who were the biggest concern for Jesus Christ for the praise of the wealthy who delight in the accumulation of earthly treasures which are all the better to show how successful and blessed by God that they are to their fellow ‘goat barn’ members. Earthly possessions are not a burden to holiness as Christ seemed to indicate when he said in the book of Matthew (3:19-3:21):

Lay not up yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

The religious right instead has a far more Calvinist style view in that God bestows favoritism through materialism, this meshes very nicely with capitalism and it’s no wonder why the GOP’s holy warriors who serve as the palace guards for the elite who remain cloistered in their gated communities and Wall Street ivory towers have such a cozy, symbiotic relationship.

The coming holy war leading up to the November elections will be viciously fought and no quarter will be given, not with the providence of the Bush kingom of God on the line, Israel on the attack and the Middle East aflame, the rapture clock is nearing the long awaited moment. No, there is too much at stake now to not use the goat barns as garrisons for the soldiers of the army of GOP Jesus.

I can practically hear the shrillness of cornered animal Karl Rove desperately barking orders:

“Mobilize the Base! I want the abortion clinics and gay bars stormed, I want to see rubber fetuses on pitchforks, what the fuck is wrong with you people…don’t you understand what is at stake here?”

When it is all coming apart there is nothing like whipping up the masses of ignorant activist thugs with plenty of free time on their hands. These are the ones who comprise the standing army of the party base of the legions of hate. Millions of venom spewing, poisonous, regressive little toads who have been duped by megalomaniac televangelists and sleazy political operatives into supporting a party that conscripts them into a war against a phantom enemy and forces them to sell their souls as well as the very future of their children in order to wage total jihad for a cause that is the very antithesis of what Jesus Christ actually stood for.

The moral rot and corruption of the Republican party is anything but a just cause and it’s message much like Hitler’s proclamation of ‘Got Mit Uns’ distorts religion in order to pander to the basest of the evils and fears of humanity so as to allow them to justify anything in the name of what they have been fraudulently sold as the will of God.

The rise of the radical religious right in America and it’s takeover of the Republican party has a been the equivalent of watching a trainwreck in slow motion, unable to avert your eyes from the horrible scene.
The majority of our population of sheeple go about their daily lives while completely oblivious to the growing danger of the increasingly malignant cancer of radicalized fundamentalist religion that continues to metastasize through the body of secular, democratic society. The media being the craven corporate monolith that it is remains firmly in the corner of the administration, the neocons and the theocratic jihadists, fearful of any legislation favorable of monopoly being stalled or of any further deregulatory standards that would impede their profits being derailed. The media is also terrified of the sort of mass, well organized boycotts against their sponsors that would result in a loss of profits so they won’t touch the menace posed ty the theocrats with a two hundred foot long pole. The bastardized nature of their illicit union with the sad remnants of what was once the party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt is as shameful as it is unholy.

And how preposterous it is for one of the world’s major religions to proclaim a mandate of superiority at the expense of others, to preach to the ignorant the gospel of providence. Does it not occur to the pathetic wretches that no one, person or religion has exclusive rights to God? The evangelical Christian movement in America uses good old fashioned jingoism and nationalism to reinforce their message of theocracy and exclusion, of hate and illusion. Christ warned about the danger of following false prophets who would be as goats among sheep as well as the ultimate fate of trees that bear bitter fruit but this does not hinder a movement indoctrinated to a particular militant translation of the gospel and scriptures

Then again, this movement is not about God, it is not about morality, it is not about Christ, it is about raw institutional power, to ever believe anything else is foolishness. A good look at the Texas Republican Party platform is a glimpse at the Mein Kampf of our modern times. It is a playbook that Karl Rove will be using almost exclusively in the coming days as he launches a scorched earth campaign to distract and deceive and chart a course out of the wilderness for the unholy administration of emperor Bush and his besieged minions. Make no mistake, these people are the enemy within and are determined to overthrow the legitimate government, re-write the constitution through legislative terrorism and judicial fanaticism and enforce their cruel extremism on all who are not members of the cult.

Rove is now massing his army for an all out assault and the hell with whatever the damage ultimately may be, then again when in the hell have the America haters on the extremist right ever cared?

Were Christ to return to earth tomorrow he would be decried as a treasonous liberal by the GOP state controlled media, would be denounced as a long haired, anti-American peacenik who supports the terrorists, hates freedom, is a commie and is unpatriotic. Then after the electronic crucifixion would be arrested as an enemy combataant and would be just another Middle-Eastern man in an orange jumpsuit locked up in a tiny cell in Gitmo.

You see, GOP Jesus and today’s Pharisees and moneychangers have successfully chased Jesus of Nazareth’s ass out of the temple and he sure as hell ain’t ever coming back as long as they have anything to say about it.

“We will fuck him. Do you hear me? We will fuck him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fucked him!”

-Karl Rove