Listen here.

It just wouldn’t be the Christmas season without a group of religious conservatives barricading themselves behind a creche on the grounds of a courthouse somewhere. This year, that courthouse is in Athens, Texas — seat of Henderson County — and the Athenians are in full martyr mode:

The hope for this is to bring together as many evangelical Christians as we can in our county to say, regardless of whether they take our plastic nativity scene, they can’t take what’s in us. We want to make a statement, not just to East Texas. . .literally to the nation, that we have a group of people willing to stand for what we believe in.

With all due respect to this WalMart William Wallace, these aren’t trampled subjects of a distant king. They’re citizens in a secular republic and members of its dominant religious group.

If the courthouse nativity-pushers were interested in celebrating Christmas, they’d put the decorations on private property. But they’re not. Knowing that the Constitution forbids government-sponsored religious displays, they’re interested instead in picking a fight with the law to exploit their perpetually outraged constituents and advance their agenda of destroying the wall of separation between church and state. When the Constitution prevails, they can rend their garments and enjoy Steve Doocy’s Fox & Friends celebration of them as the secular left’s latest innocent casualties in the War on Christmas. It’s a cynical act.

It doesn’t matter that most of Henderson County isn’t offended by the nativity scene. It wouldn’t matter if every single citizen of Henderson County speaks in tongues and anoints their children with oil before homeschool every day. Henderson County voters could approve the courthouse nativity scene by 99.9% and it still wouldn’t matter. Government advancement of religion violates the Constitution.

Attorney General Greg Abbott (who has “quietly made it known that he wants to run for governor“) sent a pandering letter to the county in which he advised that it “has no legal obligation to remove a nativity scene from the courthouse grounds during the Christmas season.”

Abbott’s clearly a better politician than lawyer since he doesn’t seem to be able to locate what attorneys like to refer to as “the law.” The Supreme Court doesn’t have that problem:

[G]overnment may not engage in a practice that has the effect of promoting or endorsing religious beliefs. The display of the creche in the county courthouse has this unconstitutional effect.

The Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, apparently more aware of applicable law than our own Attorney General, wrote Abbott in response:

The imprimatur of the county of Henderson, and now the imprimatur of the Texas Attorney General’s Office, are being used to endorse Christianity. When the county allows this manger scene to be erected as the sole focus of a display dominating an entire corner of the County Courthouse Square, it conveys an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.

On Monday, Scott Braddock moderated a debate over Henderson County’s official depiction of Jesus’ birth between former Texas Republican Party Chair Cathie Adams and me on News 92FM:

Are you Fed Up! with our comrade-in-chief’s attacks on faith? Have trouble comprehending what’s generally referred to as “the news?” Understand intuitively that the War on Christmas is real?

Do you remember what pre-Obama America was like — before he issued an executive order converting all houses of worship (except Jeremiah Wright’s church and Louis Farrakhan’s mosque) into gay bathhouses?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you might be exactly the kind of paranoid Rick Perry’s looking for.

According to an ad he released today, Perry isn’t “ashamed to admit that [he's] a Christian” in a country where a mere 78% of the people are Christians too. He’s also prepared to lead the persecuted masses in saving the country from Barack Obama’s homosexual-backed “war on religion.”

As if to draw a contrast between himself and the man waging war against believers, Rick Perry delivered an unmistakably sectarian Christmas message:

More than 2,000 years ago, a child was born to two faithful travelers who could find rest only in a stable, among the cattle and the sheep. But this was not just any child. Christ’s birth made the angels rejoice and attracted shepherds and kings from afar.  He was a manifestation of God’s love for us. And He grew up to become a leader with a servant’s heart who taught us a message as simple as it is powerful: that we should love God, and love our neighbor as ourselves. . .

So long as the gifts and the parties are happening, it’s important for us to keep in mind the central message of this season, and keep Christ’s words not only in our thoughts, but also in our deeds.

Except that’s not Perry’s Christmas message, it’s the President’s. Obama’s Kenyan anti-colonial contempt for Americans of faith really drips from the page.

And here’s Rick Perry encouraging people to indulge their paranoid persecution fantasies so he can be in charge of the nuclear codes:

[youtube 0PAJNntoRgA]

Not only is Rick Perry a man of faith and a proven leader with good hair and a nice barn jacket, he’s also uncompromising in his values and goals. He believes the President is persecuting religious people, which also means that Rick Perry is a real imbecile, a French word meaning “Strong.” He’d appreciate your vote.

  Partisan Gridlock with Geoff Berg, 11-4-11 by Geoff Berg

“I don’t know if it can be proved up or not,” Mr. Perry conceded, “the young man’s name was Jeremy and he was 38 years old. But he said, ‘We got here at 9 o’clock, and those people, this was in Toronto, I think Bay Street is their comparable [Wall Street], he said those bankers that we came to insult, they’d already been at work for two hours when we got here at 9 o’clock, and when we get ready to leave, you know, they’re still in there working. I guess greed just makes you work hard.”

Anti-American socialist hippies hoisted on their own unwashed petards by working-man hero Rick Perry. Except:

[T]here is no “Jeremy.” The quote was from a satirical piece by columnist Mark Schatzker, entitled “Occupy Toronto: The one-week anniversary party.” Above that headline was the word, “Satire.”

Oh. Well, Perry will always have that time in Iowa when he tore the feds a new one for imposing a regulation on farmers that would have made it impossible for them to drive tractors:

“If you’re a tractor driver, if you drive your tractor across a public road, you’re gonna have to have a commercial driver’s license. Now how idiotic is that?” he thundered to the fair crowd in Des Moines, with the rejoinder, “What were they thinkin’?”

Yes, that is idiotic, just not in the way Perry means. ”Perry Points to ‘Idiotic’ U.S. Rule that Doesn’t Exist” was how theWall Street Journal put it.

If he keeps this up, Perry’s going to give birthers a bad name.

The top one percent of the population is richer than ever while their taxes are at historic lows. Four hundred people — people — have more money than half the country combined. They’re living it up while the bottom 99% of Americans struggle with unemployment, underemployment and a political class that caters to whoever’s got the deepest pockets.

The Occupy movement is not about redistributing wealth or punishing the rich. It’s about fairness. And because the message is grounded in fact, it resonates. Fifty four percent of people support Occupy — twice the support of the Tea Party.

Right wing propagandists just can’t have that, so they’ve taken up a theme: Occupy’s riddled with Jew-hating Nazis and commies. A typical headline from the wretched Fox Nation, “Anti-Semitism At ‘Occupy Wall St’,” is followed by a video of what appears to be a particularly inarticulate meth addict yelling at a guy wearing a yarmulke.

And that’s just one story. Since they can’t defeat the movement on the merits, the right’s chosen instead just to defame it as anti-Semitic.

It is of course true that Jew-haters, conspiracy freaks and other nutcases have shown up at Occupy events (eg, this hideous human being). Does that make the movement anti-Semitic? Of course not. But that hasn’t stopped people like Sarah Palin fanboi Bill Kristol from pumping out videos like this one in which he demands that Democratic politicians “stand up to the [anti-Semitic] mob.”

Either Bill Kristol doesn’t understand how the Google works or he’s just being dishonest:

People like obnoxious race-baiting blogger Andrew Breitbart think they’ve caught liberals applying a double standard. Breitbart in particular thinks he’s being clever by saying that since liberals called the entire Tea Party racist because of the presence of a few bigots, he and other right wingers are entitled to discredit Occupy as anti-Semitic because a few Jew haters have shown up.

First, if it was wrong when “the left” did it, then it’s wrong now.

Second, most liberals didn’t do what Brietbart accuses them of doing. Breitbart is just giving himself permission to be lazy.

The NAACP, for example, backed by substantial evidence, asked the Tea Party leadership to denounce the “extremist elements” within its ranks. That’s all. But when any criticism is lodged, people like Breitbart wet their pants and claim oppression. Then it just becomes a sad, self-indulgent pity party for the right.

(Incidentally, there is actual scientific evidence that large numbers of those who consider themselves Tea Partiers hold negative views of immigrants and African Americans. No such study exists or is likely to ever exist about Occupy sympathizers, but that hasn’t stopped people like Kristol from trying to make uninformed people believe otherwise.)

But if Tea Partiers like Breitbart and Kristol want Occupy to live by that standard, it’s fine with me. I’d much rather see Occupy fail than see it succeed with the help of bigots of any kind.

When will Kristol and Breitbart demand that Republican leaders make the same statement about people who support the Tea Party like, say, David Duke, or these racists or this maniac or these other racists?

On Friday’s show, we talked about the right’s smearing of the Occupy movement and the transparent double standard applied to the protests by Fox News and other right-wing “news” organizations:
Partisan Gridlock with Geoff Berg, 10-14-11 by Geoff Berg

Last year, Rick Perry refused to debate Bill White unless White released his tax returns for years he wasn’t involved in public service. As the Chronicle reported at the time:

Perry has given White until midnight tonight to release his personal income tax returns for three years in the 1990s or else there will be no debate. White paid no personal income taxes in 1995 because he was starting a business and had no taxable income, but Perry insinuates White is trying to hide something.

The Perry campaign manufactured the tax return excuse so it could say something when asked why it refused to let its candidate engage in public. The true answer — that Perry was ill-equipped to discuss substance with a vastly smarter, better qualified opponent — would hardly have satisfied the few swing voters Texas has left. So Perry stuck with the tax return thing.

And why not? As the debateless election proved, most Texas voters will support a Republican under any circumstances, even when the candidate is Rick Perry.

No such luck for the Governor in the Republican presidential primary. It’s almost sad to see a man beclown himself so thoroughly on national television, receive a merciless pummeling by his party’s most influential pundits, and watch as people who once supported him decide to reevaluate now that they’ve been subjected to their candidate’s debate performances/Texan presidential candidate parody.

But that near-sadness is mitigated by the knowledge that in 2010 Perry purposefully misled and exploited thousands, maybe millions of credulous voters who actually believed his excuse for refusing to debate Bill White.

Some of those gullible supporters may today finally be thinking to themselves: ‘Gosh, maybe he really did make up that tax return thing as an excuse..’

Ya think?

Though I’d love to see Perry get the nomination, I can’t help but wonder whether Republican primary voters are questioning Perry’s credibility. Since he so clearly misled Texans about that tax return thing just to avoid debating Bill White and being exposed as unqualified, what’s he saying now that’s nothing but a smokescreen to hide something else?

Transcript of the Governor’s least lucid performance (so far) follows. Enjoy the Schadenfreude.

 PERRY: I think Americans just don’t know sometimes which Mitt Romney they’re dealing with. Is it the Mitt Romney who’s on the side … against the second amendment before he was for … the second amendment. Was it was before he was before these social programs, um, from the standpoint he was for, uh, standing up for Roe versus Wade before he was against vers… uh, Roe versus Wade, uh, he was for Race to the Top. Uh… he’s … for Obamacare and now he’s against it. We’ll wait until tomorrow and, and, and see which Mitt Romney we’re really talkin’ to tonight.

Geoff Berg Demo by Geoff Berg

And a whole show:

Geoff Berg-KPFT-8-26-11 by Geoff Berg