In January, televangelist Pat Robertson told 700 Club viewers that in his annual New Year’s “conversation” with God, the Almighty had revealed to him who the next president would be. Up through Election Day, Robertson harshly criticized President Obama and the Democratic Party while praising Mitt Romney. Then, Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network predicted a GOP sweep, leaving Robertson utterly confounded by Obama’s victory.
Today, responding to a question from a viewer who wondered why her business is struggling since she thought God told her it would be successful, Robertson admitted that he sometimes misses God’s message. “So many of us miss God, I won’t get into great detail about elections but I sure did miss it, I thought I heard from God, I thought I had heard clearly from God, what happened?” Robertson replied, “You ask God, how did I miss it? Well, we all do and I have a lot of practice.”
Why does anyone listen to these idiots ever?
Hannity Hussein
Moron Loves Company
The Dangerman
Superstorm Sandy was an act of God (literally or figuratively, depending on your Beliefs or lack thereof); Roberts missed the storm apparently. Too bad for him (and what became of all that canned soup that Romney collected in Ohio?).
cathyx
Her business is struggling because she listens to Pat Robertson.
Chris Wolf
Hey, when this idiot ran for President, he was actually polling pretty well for a while. And that was the beginning of the end of the Republican party.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Because the first rule of God – even this atheist knows this – is that He does what he wants, not what you want.
me
God’s just fucking with Pat.
Baud
God told Pat he wanted the real Christian to win, and Pat got confused.
#kidding
Carnacki
Pat hears voices and he thinks President Obama’s supporters are crazy
Hal
Years and years ago, I would watch The 700 Club in parts here and there, sort of entertained by what an obvious fraud Robertson was. One day, he was ending his show on a Friday and said God had spoken to him, and something huge was going to happen this weekend. He then told his viewers, I shit you not, he be back Monday “if we’re all still here.”
Also, every time I see him, I picture Al Franken doing his you’re all going to burn impression of Pat Robertson.
http://religiousfreaks.com/2006/06/30/church-lady-and-pat-robertson/
Joshua Norton
The call is coming from inside your head.
Wrye
I suspect if there is a God, She’s gonna have some words for Robertson eventually, and the message will be hard to miss. Oh my, yes. Jesus was not in fact a pro-millionaire sort of cat.
BTW John, tomorrow you should just relax and enjoy Thanksgiving – just throw up an open thread and leave the mocking of these tools to your international readership. We’ll take care of it.
Linda Featheringill
Pat Robertson has been talking for a long time like he had God tucked away in his shirt pocket. Well trained, that god is, like a good dog. Comes when called. Speaks when commanded.
Rev. Robertson always reminds me of the argument that what people actually worship is a projection of themselves.
But this time, if Pat’s telling the truth, he was really surprised when the god he has created in his own image didn’t know any more than Pat did. Hmmm.
On the other hand, there is a Mystery with a capital “M” that actually does exist. I don’t think that The Mystery is obedient to anyone’s beck and call.
So I’m agnostic.
JPL
Maybe Pat needs some Tammy Fay in his life.
ChrisNYC
I’m going to be really sad in 2016 when Obama gives up the reins (to anybody) but it will be fun to watch these people who have just totally ordered their world around opposition to him be completely and totally disoriented. “Where is my touchstone? Where is my raison d’etre? Why should I get up in the morning, Pat?”
Cain
Pat is a buffoon..
now when are we going to have our dougj themed party?
mai naem
Hey, John how come you kept this little gem from us from your little part of these United States of America. Another Republican nut. Guns don’t kill people. Wingunuts kill people.
http://wvgazette.com/News/201211190147
Scotty
“Now stay with me on this one folks. Sally Struthers has a Tiberian junker, which is the favored ship of the Huts, and she has trapped our new CBC ship in a, uh, positronic tractor beam. So we’re going to need an ionic tractor disruptor. Not a regular ionic tractor disruptor, but a negative ionic tractor disruptor to help spread the word of Jesus”
Felonius Monk
Some people seek power through wealth. Others seek it through politics. And then you have assholes, like Robertson, Falwell, etc. who seek it through “religion”. Their only religion is money and political power. They are all very wealthy and seek ever more wealth. They rely on their believers, who are usually the low info kind, to finance them. The closest any of them have come to true Christianity is ? — well, I guess they never have been close.
mai naem
@ChrisNYC: It’s a pity there isn’t a super gifted Gay Democratic Muslim African American Female politician ready to run for Prez(heck, I would even take a VP) because,oh, to see the wingnuts heads explode during an inauguration would be just awesome.
Schlemizel
The Bible is VERY CLEAR on how to identify false prophets. If they foretell the future & are wrong they have been sent by the devil. If they have been sent by the devil they are to be put to death.
I am waiting for the bible believing Christians to put this useless baster to death as their God has commanded them to do.
JPL
@mai naem: that was funny
amk
@Baud: Nah, god told that pos punk that he is going with that muslin.
JWL
“Why does anyone listen to these idiots ever”?
God only knows.
But it is funny to think that “God’s just fucking with Pat”.
Mike in NC
@Felonius Monk: See also, “Reed, Ralph”
Carnacki
@Schlemizel: Yeah it that would require them knowing their bible and their bible is all about tax cuts for the rich and hating gays and keeping women subservient and Jesus loving guns
DPS
Why does anyone listen to these idiots ever?
“These idiots” = Pat Robertson and God?
arguingwithsignposts
Why don’t you like us on Facebook, Cole?
Forum Transmitted Disease
Robertson cannot possibly believe in the version of God that he’s spent his lifetime pimping. Diamond-smuggling billionaires who spend their lives robbing the ignorant and gullible of their hard-earned cash don’t end up in a nice place when they depart the physical plane.
That is, of course, if you buy that afterlife horseshit. Since we all end up rotting in the ground, while Mr. Robertson may have not led an exemplary life, he has led one that certainly is in his own best interests. Guess he’s smarter than I.
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
I guess that there are simply a certain number of people in life (27%?) who will remain — despite all efforts to educate them — stunningly, staggeringly stupid.
Look, I’m not saying I’m some brilliant person, but I can recall (somewhere around 5th grade) pondering the story of the great flood and Noah’s ark, and just thinking that it sounded very strange. What sort of omniscient god is totally vexed and pissed off upon discovering his “children” are incredible disappointments and must all be drowned? How did Noah (by himself or with the help of several enterprising sons) manage to round up two of everything? Where’d he get the wood to build a vast ark? Was he a seaman? Can’t imagine it was easy (even with providential intervention) to pilot a gigantic behemoth of of a boat over a roiling sea. These are questions that my 11-year-old self asked; how is it educated adult fail to do the same?
Why do people believe in a Pat Robertson? They are thoughtless, frightened knuckleheads who believe the pablum they’ve been spoon-fed since they were in diapies, I guess.
Bob In Portland
As an atheist I want to make true Christians listen to The Smiths, especially “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”.
Bob In Portland
As an atheist I want to make true Christians listen to The Smiths, especially “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”.
Rafer Janders
@Schlemizel:
“But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded him to say, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, must be put to death.” Deuteronomy 18:20.
redshirt
Yeah, I just got done talking with God. First, He says He’s never talked to Pat and that poser has been trying to join his posse for years now, and won’t take no for an answer. Two, God says He’s hungry and asks His followers to go to their local Kwik-e-Mart and pick up some cheetos. Leave them at a local church that’s been converted to luxury condos.
Also, God still wants his 40 bucks – you, Joe Anderson! He was talking to you.
Joseph Nobles
And God said, “Damn.”
Just Some Fuckhead
Clearly Nate Silver isn’t talking to God, or God would have known.
redshirt
Related, check out this article on Buzzfeed: Louisiana Education.
Scary stuff – we’re raising legions of brainwashed, uneducated zealot zombies.
Suffern ACE
@Rafer Janders: Yeah, but there’s an out – If you read Samuel – Kings, you see that the Lord often gives prophesies that appear to be immanent, and then puts them off for a generation or two. The cursed person, their household and their tribe are all really interchangeable.
Comrade Dread
Some people assume that a minister is holier or more in tune with spiritual things simply because they’ve supposedly dedicated their lives to teaching the bible.
And that sort of thinking is encouraged by the very hierarchical structure of many churches where the pastor has power and authority over the flock.
It is, in my humble opinion, completely daft and any pastor that encourages it is, also in my humble opinion, in ministry for completely wrong reasons.
J R in WV
Practically speaking, these preachers and fundamentalists are all still on the level of the authors of their holy books – rural, uneducated, sheep herders. Now, 3000 years ago, that’s understandable, since there was nothing more to know than how to herd sheep back then. Well, and gardening was beginning to be important too.
But after about 2000 years, people started accumulating facts. When someone accumulated some facts that weren’t in a holy book, they got stoned, or burnt at the stake, or impaled, or otherwise gently shown the error of their ways.
But over time, facts began to accumulate a weight of their own. Especially when the facts helped build useful things. Like canons and bombs – BOOM, and the Duke’s front door is gone. That’s some powerful facts there.
Then people started writing down things they saw in the sky, like comets, and planetary orbits. Others started using numbers to analyze real-world events, like eclipses and cometary return orbits. The religious leaders burnt some more folks at the stake, or rolled them in rugs and ran horses over them, but then the comet came back right when foretold!!!
That made it harder for the religious to use flames and ropes and such to punish thinkers.
But here today, the religious leaders of most religious believers are still on the intellectual level of those ancient goat herds (and the sheep, don’t forget the sheep, they’re very important! Sheep smell better than goats!) and still expect everyone to fall in line and pay up for them, and do as they’re told by G-d – or his holy messengers.
When we don’t get in line and pay up, they get hot and bothered, and send around guys with guns and pipes to squeeze money from us… wait, that’s the mob. Well, in some places it’s the religious. They send around gangs with stones, some places, and bomb belts other places.
Glad we didn’t elect someone who promises us that he talks with G-d every night (or whatever name Romney uses late at night, in private).
Wish all the religious had to have PhDs in evolutionary genetics and high-energy physics AND speak fluent Aramaic to boot in order to preach or donate. Then we’d see some wailing and gnashing of teeth!
Dream on, Hillbillys, dream on! At least we got a bright and well-educated guy for President!
Dexter's new approach
“To win? I said “place”! …That horse is gonna run second!” -God (2012), Kid Twist 1936
Don K
@me:
Just like he was fucking with Santorum, Bachmann, and Perry when he told them all to run for President. I guess he figured he needed a good laugh.
Lavocat
I really wish Pat would listen much more carefully to God, because God has been saying to him – clear as a bell – “Pat, just eat the gun already and c’mon home!”.
Fucking bible-thumping wanker!
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Felonius Monk: Not a new phenomenon:
Well the preacher preached for gold and not for souls.
That’s how he’s got the poor man in a hole.
We can hardly catch our breath,
Taxed and schooled and preached to death.
How can a poor man stand such times and live.
stinger
@Just Some Fuckhead: LIKE
Kathy in St. Louis
Makes you wonder who Pat HAS been talking to all these years. It should make Pat wonder, too. Could it be…..Satan? Has he really been doing the bidding of ….Satan? Only the Church Lady knows for sure.
grandpa john
@Comrade Dread: Well of course the problem is using Pat as an example, they are teaching their version of the bible, not what it actually says. I find it amazing how many of these supposedly bibical scholars seem to completely ignore the New Testament parts where Jesus commands that we are to care for the poor, the needy, the sick. We are to love our brothers as our self, or as he told the rich young ruler,” sell all they possessions and give to the poor”
JohnyBGood
@ChrisNYC: That’s where Hillary Clinton comes in to fill the void.
Razz
God the Prankster!
The Day God Punk’d Pat Roberston
http://wp.me/p18r3p-JY