Arkansas Blog

Don't you just love the current revival atmosphere going on in the conservative movement?

It certainly brings to mind the Queen anthem of "Another One Bites the Dust!"

OMG! A sinner has been found in our midst!

Not making light of a tragic situation, but there are plenty of hypocrites out there - and everyone, EVERYONE sins - probably daily! For a Christian, sin is a big deal. For non-Christians, its no big deal for them personally, but it is a great tool to use to knock the Christians around with.

But when a leader takes a public stand, he/she has invited inspection and accountability. A good leader surrounds himself/herself with a team that holds the leader accountable to his/her beliefs. From the article, it is not apparent whether Mr. Haggard had this accountability or not.

Like any other scandal, this looks like it is still in the allegation stage and timed perfectly for maximum impact on voters, so I will sadly shake my head and wait for the investigation to report the facts. Unfortunately, his resignation, rather than just an outright denial lends credibility to the allegations.

If he committed these acts, then his consequences are grievously deserved. If, after the election, it is found that these claims are bogus, there will be no way to make it right - how sad for us.

It's especially sweet when it's ones, like Foley and this Haggard, who have tried to come across as anti-gay marriage, anti-civil union, anti-gay period.

And it's not just the leaders of the religious right who keep doing this. I think their holy ranks are full of pedophiles, wife beaters and drunks, just like the rest of society...maybe even more so.

I've always been suspicious of people who come across as too religious, invoking Jesus' name at every turn. Elmer Gantry, if you ask me.

If I were a Republican, I'd just stay home in disgust, frustration, and spite next Tuesday. Dump all the current messes in those damned Democrat's laps and let them see how THEY like it for a while.

Assuming Kerry and Gore and other high-profile Democrats stay in hiding*, I predict the fabled Republican get-out-the-vote machine may fall a little short this time.

*I don't include Clinton in this bunch. We need him working hard right up till the polls close!

MARs has a link to the Denver TEEVEE station with an interview of the male hustler.
www.MatildaintheRock.blogspot.com

While the man has been accused, there is currently no proof of any relationship. It's only hypocritical if the man is actually guilty. The hustler could claim he had sex with Howard Dean as well, but that wouldn't make it true.

If the accuser has any proof, let him bring it forward. It's awfully convenient to claim you have proof (i.e. letters and phone calls), but then refuse to bring it forward.

The best proof of all is a confession:

"The acting senior pastor at New Life, Ross Parsley, said Haggard acknowledged some of the accusations were true.

"I just know that there has been some admission of indiscretion, not admission to all of the material that has been discussed, but there is an admission of some guilt," Parsley told KKTV-TV of Colorado Springs."

If I had to guess, he admitted buying meth from the guy but didn't really have sex with him.

Of course, that could depend on how you define "sex." He may have calls into Clinton right now to learn if a blowjob counts or not.

I just read that he saved the messages on his answering machine and that they are pretty incriminating.

When will the conservatives ever catch on that these guys, Haggard and his weekly phone-buddy Bush and all those in between, are fleecing them out of their money and their votes, then laughing at them behind their backs?

At least we progressives have the courtesy to laugh in their faces.

{{For non-Christians, its no big deal for them personally, but it is a great tool to use to knock the Christians around with.}}

Keyhotay, you imbecile, you miss the whole point.

The point is not that Haggard did what he is accused of.

The point is, if he brayed like a jackass that doing what he did was a sin and a crime, then did it anyway, he is WAY more guilty than the poor schlub who did the same thing but never accused anyone else of doing it and being a sinner/criminal/pervert/devil.

It is so obvious that the ones that are hollering the loudest about gays and same sex marriage are the ones that is most insecure. Mr. Haggard, put himself in a position of leadership. Two warnings, you should be careful who is leading and when your finger is pointing at someone, your thumb is pointing back at you.

who do people think that gay and lesbians are a threat to society when they are living their life open and honest...unlike some people who like to throw flames....hmmm....I'll pray for them.

Next week Haggard will stand up and declare himself to be "a gay American" ala Jim McGreevey, who once upon a time was against gay marriage, too.

I have no idea who this fellow is. I have never heard of him and have no oppinion of him.

What I can comment on is that I find it VERY ODD that this fellow folded up his tent and went home when some nobody claimed he had been naughty.

That is not the way I would expect an innocent fellow to respond.

Man if everytime someone said something false about me I threw in the towel I'd have run out of towels long ago.

Now on another tack, if this fellow has been claiming he is not gay or bi and claiming all gays should be shunned, then he is despicable

If he has been helping people to work through their own rough spots and helped them to become better people then he should continue.

We all know churches are full of sinners. They are the only ones that would need to go to church. So finding a sinner in church is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Maybe this is (yet another) good example of why the government should get BACK to the business of governing and OUT of our personal lives, relationships and bedrooms. One would think that conservatives would want the government doing as little as possible, yet our current neo-cons can't find enough of our lives to want to regulate and stick their nose in.

Where's chasv on this issue? He's always been one who likes to sit in judgement and he prefers fire, briimstone, smiting, stoning, and other forms of heavenly entertainment to make the miscreant's life more damning.
I guess he's out casting his squirrels before winos.

On the whole, it does look like the Pharisees are getting some righteous punishment for their hubris and mockery of their fellow human beings.

The Republican Party is set on Self-Destruct and the world is becoming a safer place with every one that falls.

Don and Severus and the Nony Desk see a vast left-wing conspiracy of people telling lies against good people. The fact that they think the Democrats are that organized shows their disconnect with reality.

I personally think the crash and burn of the Republican Party and their sick twisted supporters has more to do with the little rocks of wisdom our parents dropped on us in our childhood. You remember...things like, what goes around comes around. If you never lie you don't have to have a good memory. Or what a wicked web we weave when we first practice to deceive.

The lies and sins, hypocrisy and corruption have finally drug down the sorry bastards on the right. It's like that guy on the old Ed Sullivan Show that kept a long row of plates spinning at the end of thin poles....even experts can only keep all the plate spinning for a little while and then one by one they start crashing to the ground.

I don't believe in God and I can't even say I believe in karma, but I do believe people up to no good finally get weighted down with their own evil until most of them are crushed by the weight.

Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Baaker, the Catholic Church with it's silly rules of abstinence. Clinton and Monica, Henry Hyde, Tim Hutchinson, Jesse Jackson, Mark Foley, Tom DeLay, Cunningham, Ney, Abramoff, Jeff Gannon/Guckert and now Rev. Ted Boy in Bed of Colorado joins the long list of people whose sins (for lack of a better word) have brought them down.

We don't know yet if Huckabee or Asa have penis problems, but I predict their future will be dimmed by their endless greed. The smartest bad guys do bad things once with great skill and then sneak out of town. No one can keep those plates spinning forever.

The Republicans have been spinning plates since Newt announced a new Republican Day in America 12 long miserable years ago. Their hypocritical, crooked, disastrous and deadly reign of terror is about to end and the world will rejoice. Listen.....hear the crashing of the plates?

And when will thier flocks learn all thier "leaders" have feet of clay. Those who protest the loudest have the deepest secrets to hide. How much better if those communities were really Christian-like and could accept a good preacher and leader who was also honest about his sexuality. Sad, sad, sad, all around.

Haggard's accuser fails lie detector
By Mike McPhee
Denver Post Staff Writer
Article Last Updated:11/03/2006 09:21:34 AM MST

Ted Haggard's accuser failed a polygraph test early this morning about the truthfulness of his accusations that he had had a three-year homosexual affair with the influential Colorado Springs minister.

The test was given to Michael Jones, 49, an admitted male prostitute, who made the allegations on the Peter Boyles Show on radio station KHOW Thursday morning.

The shocking allegations were denied by Haggard, who told KUSA-9News he never took part in a homosexual affair and had always been faithful to his wife, with whom he has 5 children.

So Boyles invited Jones to take a polygraph test at 5 a.m. this morning.

The test administrator, John Kresnik, said Jones' score indicated "deceptions" in his answers. However, Kresnik said he doubted the accuracy of the test he administered because of the recent stress on Jones and his inability to eat or sleep, according to KHOW producer Greg Hollenback.

Kresnik suggested that Jones be re-tested early next week after he was rested.

Haggard's accuser fails lie detector
By Mike McPhee
Denver Post Staff Writer
Article Last Updated:11/03/2006 09:21:34 AM MST

Ted Haggard's accuser failed a polygraph test early this morning about the truthfulness of his accusations that he had had a three-year homosexual affair with the influential Colorado Springs minister.

The test was given to Michael Jones, 49, an admitted male prostitute, who made the allegations on the Peter Boyles Show on radio station KHOW Thursday morning.

The shocking allegations were denied by Haggard, who told KUSA-9News he never took part in a homosexual affair and had always been faithful to his wife, with whom he has 5 children.

So Boyles invited Jones to take a polygraph test at 5 a.m. this morning.

The test administrator, John Kresnik, said Jones' score indicated "deceptions" in his answers. However, Kresnik said he doubted the accuracy of the test he administered because of the recent stress on Jones and his inability to eat or sleep, according to KHOW producer Greg Hollenback.

Kresnik suggested that Jones be re-tested early next week after he was rested.

Nice try Sev...but wait until the answering machine messages are played back on every news outlet in the nation....except for Fox News of course.

Dear Jesus,
Please say it's not true! But just in case, please forgive Rev. Haggard for poking a gay man in the butt after paying him money. Please forgive Mark Foley for going down on underage boys no matter how yummy they are. Please forgive Pat Robinson and Jerry Falwell for wanting other people who do not agree with them to die. Include Axis Annie Coulter too.

Jesus, please forgive Bush and Cheney for killing hundreds of thousands of people for oil and world domination. Please forgive Congress for being totally corrupt on both sides of the isle. Please protect our troops who still haven't got enough armor out of Rummy to fight this war for oil.

Please forgive the news organizations who have accepted payoffs from the Bush administration. Thank you Lord for the Dixie Chicks, Jon Stewart, Steven Colbert, Paul Newman and Keith Olbermann. And thank you for protecting us from Asa, Holt, Delay and Boozman. In the name of Ken Melman I pray. DBI

Bring forth the evidence and play those tapes. Let's see/hear the evidence. So far Haggard insists he has never been unfaithful to his wife, although he may have purchased methamphetamine from the gay prostitute/drug dealer. (By the way, I hope that gay prostitute and drug dealer has been charged for his crimes.)

Let's assume that Haggard had sex with the male prostitute for the sake of argument, and so far there is no evidence for this. He would be guilty of a grave betrayal of his wife and his church. Whether with a gay man or female, having sex outside of his marriage is wrong. Even if he had the affair, it doesn't make gay marriage right. There is a big leap from being accepting of gays/lesbians and perverting the definition of holy matrimony.
While there may be civil unions of some sort available to all Americans some day, don't expect there to ever be support for gay marriage.

This is the pertinent e-mail message mentioned earlier in which Rev. Ted confesses to the truth of some of the allegations.

Dear New Lifers and friends of New Life Church,

Many of you have expressed concern about today's news regarding our pastor. Thank you all for your prayers and support, and for your concern for our church family.

As you've likely heard by now, Pastor Ted has voluntarily placed himself on administrative leave as New Life's senior pastor to allow our external board of overseers to work effectively. Below is the statement that we released to the media on Thursday afternoon.

Since that time, the board of overseers has met with Pastor Ted. It is important for you to know that he confessed to the overseers that some of the accusations against him are true. He has willingly and humbly submitted to the authority of the board of overseers, and will remain on administrative leave during the course of the investigation.

I am serving as the acting senior pastor of New Life Church. I met with the pastoral staff and elders Thursday night, and I assure you that the leadership team is strong and united. We remain resolute in our commitment to serving New Life Church and the people of our community.

Please continue to keep Ted and Gayle and their family in your prayers.

I love serving God with you all,

Ross Parsley

Note: Haggard is probably on of the few evangelicals who is less strident about gay unions and you would not classify him with an overtly anti-gay ministry.
There is some mystery here. Haggard confesses and the accuser fails a lie detector test. Having had a lie detector expert speak to my class a few years back, he made it quite clear that such tests are not that reliable. In fact, he said some people could lie and still pass a lie detector test with flying colors.

Now Haggard is hedging a bit:

Evangelist Ted Haggard admitted Friday that he bought methamphetamine and received a massage from a gay prostitute who claims he was paid for drug-fueled trysts by the outspoken gay marriage opponent.
Haggard resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and step down as leader of his Colorado megachurch while the two groups investigate the allegations.
He denied the sex allegations but told reporters outside his home that he did buy the meth because he was curious, but he said he threw it away.
``I bought it for myself but never used it,'' he said. ``I was tempted, but I never used it.''
Haggard, 50, said he never had sex with Mike Jones, a 49-year-old male prostitute who sparked the scandals when he told a radio station he had had a three-year sexual relationship with the minister.
Haggard said he did get a massage from Jones after being referred to him by a Denver hotel.

I'm sure more than this will come out in the wash.

Haggard's board said this afternoon that he admitted to some of the homosexual activities.

Another Bible thumping, hate- spewing hypocrite...I'm not shocked. Heck, history is replete with examples of the worst 'sinners' leading the charge against the rest of us heathens. And the current group of Republican zealots are some of the most hate filled bigots I've witnessed. So it makes perfect sense that Karl et al need to come out of whatever sin closets they've been hanging in.

I wish the American public would read more history...me too.

"when your finger is pointing at someone, your thumb is pointing at you"

Huh? I get the gist of the comment, just not how that might work anatomically. Don't try to make this work at home, kids.

Atlas, it's a well-known fact that most hypocritical anti-gay evengelicals are double-jointed.

So ... Rev Ted BOUGHT the gay sex, but didn't use it, right?

``I bought it for myself but never used it,'' he said.
********
Spoken like a man aspiring to presidential status-kind of like smoking marijuana but not inhaling it?

Where have I heard that before . . .?

Scrolling thru the old comments from the typical GOP apologists that troll these threads (Severus and Don and other$) has me in stitches!

What are those hard-core evans going to do now? Forgive Ted Haggard? Forgive Mark Foley?

This is hilarious...

"I bought the drugs because I was curious but I didn't take them although I was tempted and I got a massage from a gay prostitute but didn't have sex with him..."

The horny-porny guys at ABC are all over it...

I always thought Clinton's "I didn't inhale" comment was pretty funny, though I supported the guy and thought he was a terrific president. This whole thing, though, is just wild. The funniest thing about it to me is that fact he thought admitting he bought the meth was less of an issue than the homosexual contact, as if his congregation would be cool with the idea he wanted to try meth but not with the idea he might be a gay man that no longer could repress his urges. That's just strange to me.

Remember all the pictures of Foley and W. together? Remember the picture of Jeff Gannon in the White House? Now we have photos of Haggerd and W. together. Click on Cato

Seems like everyone is saying the same thing:

"Rub it in, rub it in!"

The interesting thing about the picture to which Cato linked is that if you look at the bottom of the picture, you can see the news scroll for the real story--the one that should be getting our attention. It turns out that the Bush Administration--you know, the one that claims that Democrats can't possibly keep us safe from the "terrists," had posted the instructions for building a nu-que-lar bomb on a government website. Not just general directions, but advanced technical directions for building triggering devices.

I guess they just want to make sure that the next time they need to start a war, there really will be WMDs to find....

Ya know...in every day normal, real life I don't generally find pleasure in other's misfortunes, even those that deserve it the most. But really...the Bush years have pushed life into clown house mirror proportions that would be funny if it all didn't seem so wrong and dangerous.

This Ted Haggard guy is as over the top as America invading a country based on lies. Abramoff buying Congress. New Orleans being allowed do drown so it can rise as a shining example of a neo-con inspired model city without black people.

What we're supposed to believe now is that Rev. Ted Haggard might hold a penis in his mouth, but he wouldn't suck. We're supposed to believe that a normal person, much less a supposed man of God regularly takes time from ministering to the flock in order to buy some meth, but not use it and hire a gay male prostitute to give him a back rub? Do they honestly think we're that stupid?

My wife wonders why Rev. Ted doesn't just hide in his house and keep his damn mouth shut! In her opinion being accused of horrible things is best served by keeping quiet. Now Rev. Ted has really blown it, (there is a pun here) by making up this unbelievable lie he was dumb enough to think covers his ass. Maybe what he says makes sense to the severely retarded....but it doesn't wash with me.

I think maybe the Bible verse about all having sinned and come short of the glory of God has to do with humans FK'ing up. We all have to some degree and will in the future. As stupid as I have been in the past I can't remember any of it having to do with meth or gay male prostitutes....but I'm not dead yet.

The sin here is Rev. Ted bashing gays and gay marriage while he gets high and buggers another guy he's paid for sex. And yes...it's like Asa pointing his finger at Clinton while listening to his brother banging the hired help in the next bedroom at night. It's like Huckabee saying on my TV that he broke up the old gang that controlled everything in Arkansas and Beebe will bring them back.

Any idiot knows the old gang that controlled Arkansas never left town, never let up, never gave an inch. Huckabee sucked up their gifts like a Hoover upright and became a rich man at our expense. George W. Bush sold our honor and the lives of your youth to profit his backers, the big oil companies, Halliburton, Bechtel and the rest of Corporate America.

FK Cindy Sheehan and all the rest of the grieving mothers in America and Iraq.....the Bush corrupt join him hiding behind the American flag while our children die and are maimed in Iraq. FK the citizens of New Orleans, Donald Trump wants to make money off the misery and he's willing to cut the Bush Buddies in on the take.

Unfortunately 51% of America was snowed, just like 14,000 members of Rev. Ted Boy In Bed's church were fooled in Colorado. Oh sing of America's greatness, but first look around at how horrible we've become.

Columbia the Gem of the Ocean lies at the bottom of the sea today and it is the fault of a corrupt Congress, the fault of perverted preachers, the fault of the big lie known as the Bush administration and the fault of lazy Americans who let the wrong George do it, who can't be bothered to rise up and scream I've Had Enough!

The slide has been so great we may not be able to start saving ourselves this coming Tuesday. But voting smart is absolutely the only chance we have of saving the future for our kids and grand kids. We must have faith in the pitiful Democrats because it is the only option we have on the table.

I will pick the side that is 10% better than the Republicans and hope for a miracle the next 2 years. Pray if you're a pray-er and the rest of us will cross our fingers. We're living in America's darkest hour and the next move will seal our fate one way or the other.

I didn't see this posted here yet. It's a CNN interview where Haggard admits to buying (but tossing) the meth and getting the massage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6GIPt1IPpg

Or, maybe you can click on my name if it's lit up blue.