Let’s hear it for Wiley Drake!

The pastor of the First Southern Baptist Church of Buena in Buena Vista, Calif., has lashed out at fellow religious conservative posing as a moderate Rick Warren.

The Orange County Register reports that Drake sent an e-mail blistering Warren for accepting President-elect Barack Obama’s invitation to give the invocation at Obama’s swearing-in ceremony.

Drake is refreshingly venom-filled, unlike the back-pedaling Warren, who, in the wake of criticism over his selection, has disavowed so many of his anti-gay statements, not to mention scrubbing the Saddleback Church website of anti-gay statements, that it’s hard to keep track of all his flip-flops.

Drake tells it like it is, and is merely speaking out loud what a lot of religious conservatives are thinking, even while trying to soften their stance like Warren.

Much easier to deal with a wolf acting like a wolf than one wearing the sheep’s guise.

Consumer confidence didn’t drop as much as anticipated this month.

There’s no mystery to this supposedly unexpected result. The explanation is simple: president-elect Barack Hussein Obama.

Nothing like electing a sharp, talented, educated adult to the nation’s highest office to jumpstart people’s faith that better times eventually will prevail.

Guess what showed up on Texas television the night before Election Day?

None other than the National Republican Trust PAC’s television spot of Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

This odious piece of political theater shows clips of Wright at his most fiery in the pulpit. It then claims that since Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama never objected to any of his former pastor’s rhetoric, Obama is too radical to be U.S. president.

This ad targets voters in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. So why did it air in a supposedly safe Republican state?

Could Texas be about to swing purple?

The morning of Election Day, the Lone Star state is leaning toward Obama 62 percent to 38 percent, according to the 7-Eleven coffee cup poll that was accurate in the 2004 and 2000 presidential elections.

We’ll see in just a few short hours.

John Dean, formerly counsel to president Richard M. Nixon, writes about authoritarian conservatives at AlterNet today. 

I know the type only too well. The rulers of  Azgard and their high-level supporters displayed the same traits that Dean ascribes to authoritarian conservatives. These sorry and dangerous personality characteristics include amorality, bullying, cheating, dishonesty, militant nationalism, vengefulness, and so on. 

The most critical point in Dean’s excellent article is this observation from Canadian social scientist Robert Altemeyer about the devoted followers of authoritarian conservatives:

“They are not going to let up and they are not going to go away.”

Prescient words of warning to all those who hope that an Election Day landslide or even just a strong showing by Democratic candidate Barack Obama will put an end to all this divisive and nasty nonsense.

It won’t. They’ll be back. And if GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has anything to say about it, she will be their standard-bearer in 2012.

Top-ranking Republican Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama for U.S. president today.

People are greeting this like the miraculous parting of the Red Sea.

So what? The Democrat is ahead in the polls and U.S. newspapers are falling all over themselves to embrace his candidacy. Even a high-profile conservative talk-show radio host, Michael Smerconish, has lined up for Obama, while other right-wing pundits have taken to blasting John McCain’s choice of running mate, Sarah Palin.

It’s a few days late and several dollars short, General. It would have been far more impressive had you come out for Obama while it was still risky–say, when Ted Kennedy embraced him at the start of the year.

Powell may be trying to buff up his image. But his halo is tarnished for good thanks to his claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist and non-existent nuclear capabilities before the United Nations in February of 2003.

“I am not a crook.”

                                                             Richard M. Nixon, November 1973

“I am not President Bush.”

John S. McCain, October 2008

The senator from Arizona protested too much, just as another Republican did a generation ago.  The very fact that McCain even brought up the point to denounce it was a minor victory for the other side.

Yes, Senator, despite your denials, you are joined to Bush at the hip, and that is precisely your problem in this election. The voters have finally tired of Bush and his dismal record of malfeasance, mendacity, corruption, and sheer incompetence.

If McCain did anything during these excruciating 90 minutes, he reaffirmed his image as an angry old man seething with petulant disdain for his cool young opponent. It didn’t work the first time, or the second, or in this final installment.

Barack Obama was far more on target when he pointed out that the two campaigns could spend the rest of this election cycle attacking each other, but voters really care more about the specifics of what each side proposes to do for them and the country.

Thank goodness. The final debate of this endless presidential campaign is behind us.

Forget Gallup or CNN.

Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama at present is the runaway winner of the 7-Eleven coffee cup survey conducted in 30 states across the country.

As it did in 2004 and 2000, the nation’s largest convenience store chain is offering java drinkers a choice of blue cups for Obama or red cups for GOP contender John McCain.

The results as of 1:30 p.m. Central time on Oct. 14: on a national basis, blue is beating red by 59 percent to 41 percent of cups sold.

State-by-state results are even more fascinating. In the “safely” red state of Texas, Obama is pummeling McCain by 60 percent to 40 percent.

In the key swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, Obama is on top by  68 percent to 32 percent and 61 percent to  39 percent, respectively.

The GOP hopeful picks up just three states: New Hampshire, North Carolina, and West Virginia. Even McCain’s home state, Arizona, goes blue, by 57 percent to 43 percent, while Obama’s state of Illinois goes his way 61 percent to 39 percent.

Why should we care about these results?

Although this poll is not conducted in a scientific manner, it has been accurate in the last two presidential elections. In 2004, the cups went for George Bush  51 percent and John Kerry 49 percent–very close to the vote counts in many states.

In 2000, the Bush cup outsold the Al Gore version by just 1 percentage point, a mirror of that close race.

The patrons of 7-Eleven still skew predominantly male and blue collar, although the company has done an outstanding job of upgrading its food offerings to appeal to other demographics, like women. Its coffee is as good as any of the fancy chain brews and a lot less expensive. My personal 7-Eleven favorite: blackberry coffee.

It’s not over unil the votes are counted and certified, but the coffee cup poll points to a Democratic blow-out next month–at least at the presidential level. Let’s hope that voters will hand the Democrats control of the U.S. Senate as well.

Then we can get back to the business of government of the people, by the people, and for the people, to quote a president from Illinois.

Sarah Palin survived tonight’s vice presidential debate without a major gaffe. But she didn’t distinguish herself, either.

She started out as taut as a spring in an old watch that was wound too tightly. Then she exploded in fast-paced run-on sentences almost impossible to follow because her train of thought kept going off track. She was just throwing words out there hoping some of them would stick and sound good.

Perhaps that’s all part of the non-answer approach to political debates.

Palin also often refused to respond to specific questions from the moderator, Gwen Ifil. When asked about bankruptcy, Palin switched back to taxes. Then discussing Iraq, she jumped to energy policy.

When queried about what promises her administration might have to draw back on due to the cost of the bailout, Palin declared “I’ve only been doing this for five weeks, folks. I don’t have any promises.”

This is a reason to vote for her and John McCain?

Her emphasis on being tolerant of gays/lesbians also was rather interesting, especially since that was not the question she was asked. Recall that George Bush also promised to be a uniter and pursue a humble foreign policy devoid of nation-building. When pols go out of their way to stress a point, it usually signals just the opposite.

Before Republicans heave a huge sigh of relief and break out the bubbly, however, the initial reaction of an Ohio audience featured on CNN heavily favored Democratic vice presidential candidate  Joe Biden over Palin as the debate winner.

Now that a GOP campaign ad casts Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in the role of anti-Christ, maybe it’s time to acknowledge that the impact of religious extremists isn’t quite as dead as mainstream media keep reporting.

The John McCain ad, ‘The One,’ playing on YouTube not so subtly paints Obama as the anti-Christ for adherents to an extreme interpretation of Revelations. This YouTube spot stokes these believers’ worst fears of global conflagration in an ultimate war between God and the devil.

McCain’s spin doctors want to scare these people into voting against Obama by casting a ballot for the Arizona senator, even if they don’t like McCain all that much.

Although mainstream media articles keep declaring the death of religious conservatism, religious conservatives obviously could impact this year’s election outcome. Otherwise the McCain camp would not bother to try to scare up their votes.

It’s so eery–and alarming. My fantasy saga chronicles what happens when politics and piety collide, just as they have in U.S. elections since 2000, all of which have been marred by extreme divisiveness and bitterly contested vote counts.

The fictional theocrats try to wrest power from the secular government of an island nation called Azgard, just as Christian Dominionists seriously seek to impose religious totalitarianism on the United States, and Islamic extremists want to impose a Caliphate on the Middle East. The fictional power struggle leads to civil war, eventually resulting in the destruction of the country and most of the world.

What might happen in real life if extreme religious viewpoints continue to influence the elections as well as public discourse and policies? Consider McCain’s statements about U.S. troops in Iraq for 100 years and supposedly joking comments about bombing Iran.

There is little humor and much to be alarmed about in any type of militant religiosity–Muslim, Christian, Hindu or whatever.