Politics: Evil Day!

I've got several leads on some super-evil goings-on today. Therefore, from the Washington DC offices of the Liquid List, we bring you the all-evil edition!

We'll start with this nutty, nutty entry from one of evil's greatest hits, Tom DeLay.

Representative and Majority Leader DeLay, whose days are normally filled with low-key stuff like thwarting a child tax credit for low-income folks and selling his influence to the highest right-wing bidder, is taking some time out of his busy schedule to inject his loathesome brand of partisan politics into the Middle East Conflict. DeLay will walk the Levant, visiting Israel, Jordan and Iraq to spread the message that the Palestinians aren't ready for statehood. But DeLay's reasons are best stated in this quote from a New York Times piece offered as he prepared to depart on his trip:

"I'm sure there are some in the administration who are smarter than me, but I can't imagine in the very near future that a Palestinian state could ever happen," he said in an interview today, as he prepared to leave for a weeklong official tour.

"I can't imagine this president supporting a state of terrorists, a sovereign state of terrorists," he said. "You'd have to change almost an entire generation's culture."

And you may wonder why DeLay is so anti-Palestinian?

As an evangelical Christian, he is the most prominent member in Washington of the Christian Zionist movement, a formidable bloc of conservative Republicans whose support for Israel is based on biblical interpretations, sometimes putting them to the right of Israeli government. His persistent skepticism about Mr. Bush's peace initiative indicates that the president may yet have to wrestle with his right flank in pursuing a plan that ultimately calls for a Palestinian state.

In fact, DeLay and several other bible-thumping elected officials believe that eratz Israel must be completed in order to hasten the coming of the messiah. So we're talking about, just in case anybody left their scorecards at home, the fiery death in eternal hellfire and damnation of everyone who hasn't repented and taken the Lord Jesus Christ as their one true savior, including all the Muslims and the Jews in Israel for whom Mr. DeLay roots so fervently.

However, the Israeli government is supporting Bush's "Road Map" to peace. How did DeLay take the news?

"You could have knocked me over," he said, when Mr. Sharon declared in May that the time had come to divide the land of Israel with the Palestinians, a position that Mr. DeLay has long abhorred with much of the same thunder that used to be Mr. Sharon's trademark.

Even now, he said, he thinks that the Palestinians must go much further in renouncing terrorism before a meaningful peace can be achieved.

"So far, I can't be critical, but I do have grave concerns," he said. "I have watched peace process after peace process after peace process, which is what happens when the process drives everything, not the peace. When they talk about a road map, I question whether this is a road map based on the president's speech, or a road map based on some State Department concept of another peace process."

That's it. Must be those State Department idiots, right, Tom? They've only spent their entire careers learning how to negotiate with people, rarely using heavy weaponry or calling the police when they don't get their way.

But we don't need negotiation, chit-chat and State Departments, do we Tom? We just need power, right?

"In the Arab world before 9/11, they thought the United States was a paper tiger," said Mr. DeLay, who will also make a brief visit to military commanders in Baghdad next week. "We had a president at the time whose retaliation at terrorism was throwing a few bombs in the desert. They laughed at that. And now they see this is real stuff and real power. And they respect power. If the experiment going on in Iraq comes off, it will have a huge, huge impact in the Arab world, showing people who want freedom and self-government and education that they can have it."

Freedom from torture, random killings and detentions, Tom? Because Amnesty says we're doing that in Iraq, picking up where Uday and Qusay left off. Is it freedom of speech? Because our soldiers putting their lives on the line in Iraq don't have that. Or do you mean freedom of the press? Nope, we took care of that as well.

I told you it would be evil day, didn't I?