Douchebag Of The Year

It's only August, and I believe we've already seen the prime candidate for this coveted award. And, believe it or not, it's not George Bush.

It's Pat Robertson.

It's rather hillarious to listen to my lineup of liberal talk radio hosts this week. Every last one of them seems to get a rise out of playing his first quote, when he said that the United States should assassinate Chavez. You know, this one:

"You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don't think any oil shipments will stop. But this man is a terrific danger and the United ... This is in our sphere of influence, so we can't let this happen. We have the Monroe Doctrine, we have other doctrines that we have announced. And without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us very badly. We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."

Back-to-back with the quote where he denies saying that the United States should assassinate Chavez. You know, this one:

“I didn’t say ‘assassination’. I said our special forces should ‘take him out’. And ‘take him out can be a number of things, including kidnapping; there are a number of ways to take out a dictator from power besides killing him.”

I see. So, 1) Robertson is a bald-faced liar, and, 2) Robertson thinks that endorsing kidnappng over outright murder is an acceptable way to backtrack. Nice.

Unfortunately, it's not very profound to just compare the quotes and go, wow, what a douchebag. His comments made me curious. What does Pat Robertson have against Chavez? Let's take a look.

Last year, Chavez called President Bush an asshole. In Spanish. In public. Heh-heh. He's a communist who embraces Cuba and Iran, and he sits on top of a whole lot of oil. One could argue that he wields more political legitimacy than President Bush: He is a rather authoritarian leader, but he survived a recall vote last year that was given the thumbs-up by international observers. All this cribbed from Time.

CBN has an entire, um, "news story" about why Chavez is such a terrible guy. I'm not linking to it. Google it if you want to read it. But here's a quoth: "Internally, Chavez has already rewritten the constitution, stacked the courts and begun throwing political opponents into jail. And some say he is now looking beyond Venezuela's borders. With billions of dollars in oil profits, Chavez is buying advanced Russian fighter planes and helicopters, dramatically increasing the size of his armed forces and integrating it with Cuba's."

Essentially, I think Robertson's dislike of Chavez boils down to one little fact previously mentioned: He's a commie. And, goodness knows, we can't have commies in Central America. Such a thing might cause a president to illegally sell arms to a militantly Islamic nation, to launder the profits, and then to deliver the laundered dough to an ongoing illegal war to fight the commies.

Wouldn't it be fascinating if our foreign policy grew another leg, one that returned to the good ol' Cold War days, and then we'd be fighting a "War on Terrah" at the SAME TIME we're fighting the commies? Wouldn't that be great?

Now, watch as the United States government does nothing about Robertson, a former and unexplainably successful presidential candidate who has said we should assassinate a democratically elected leader. They won't do anything, but I will: Pat Robertson, I do hereby declare you as the inaugural nominee for the first annual Ketchup Is A Vegetable Douchebag of the Year. Please put on your funny hat and go sit in the corner. Thank you. Douchebag.