Interesting point that Jon Steward made concerning Hobby Lobby, China, and abortion

[freshwest]

49. Pat Robertson said in the Eighties that doing business with forced abortion China was okay...

Because it's 'their own country and they have to do what they have to do,' or words to that effect. At the same time, he was supporting suppression of any abortions in the USA. In his questionable moral code, 'crimes against the fetus' are determined by borders, and business interests.

I watched Blood Diamond Pat have a meltdown on the air as Charles Taylor fell from power. Robertson was wailing how he'd invested so much of CBN monies in the business. Even his co-hosts were amazed at his very passionate display. I don't remember, but I think he shed some real tears over it.

Then he clothed it all in what a good Christian man Taylor was and being smeared by liberals in the USA. Taylor benefited Pat financially so he supported him. All for Gawd, you know.

Charles Taylor: Pat Robertson was my man in Washington
By Colum Lynch - February 4, 2010



Former Liberian President Charles Taylor, testifying in his own war crimes trial today, said that the American conservative evangelist Pat Robertson was awarded a Liberian gold-mining concession in 1999 and subsequently offered to lobby the Bush administration to support his government.

The revelations came in the midst of a U.N.-backed trial of Taylor at The Hague on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity during Sierra Leone's 1990s civil war. Taylor is accused of directing a Sierra Leone rebel group, the United Revolutionary Front (RUF), in a campaign aimed at securing access to the country's diamond mines. The rebel movement stands accused of committing mass atrocities in the late 1990s in the West African country, including the mutilation of thousands of civilians.

The international prosecutors contend that Taylor offered concessions to Western individuals in exchange for lobbying work aimed at enhancing his image in the United States. The prosecution maintains that Taylor also spent $2.6 million on lobbying firms and public relations outfits in the hopes of influencing the policies of former President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Under cross-examination, Taylor said that Robertson had volunteered to make Liberia's case before U.S. administration officials, and had spoken directly to President Bush about Taylor. He also confirmed that Robertson's company, Freedom Gold Limited, signed an agreement to exploit gold in southeastern Liberia, but that it never generated any profit...

http://turtlebay.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/02/05/charles_taylor_pat_robertson_was_my_man_in_washington

While that article I found from one google search didn't say he made any money, what he said on the air about how he'd lost CBN's money, contradicts that to me. More links:

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/pat-robertsons-gold-deal-african-dictator/story?id=9749341

http://www.thenation.com/article/153980/televangelist-and-warlord

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/01/14/825050/-Pat-Robertson-Freedom-Gold-and-Blood-Diamonds

More about Pat's business deals under the name of charity:

http://www.democracynow.org/2005/9/9/fema_promotes_pat_robertson_charity

I suspect what Robertson really meant about abortion, like Pat Buchanan had the liberty of stating on air and in books, that the reason abortion in the USA must stop was to increase the number of white babies who Gawd loves in the womb. But those Chinese babies, meh.

No priniciples are involved, profits and politics only. What a bunch of frauds. Sorry, I'm not going to be nice to the right wing religious demagogues who want this nation dragged back to the dark ages.

Pat tried to back away from his comments. This from the guy who wanted Chavez killed, who said that Haitians and New Orleans deserved Gawd's wrath visited upon them, that other locales in the USA also should not be helped for not teaching Creationism or having prayers in their schools, etc. This is the kind of Christianity the Hobby Lobby is pushing.

Pat Robertson Remarks on China Abortions
By GUSTAV NIEBUHR - April 18, 2001

The religious broadcaster Pat Robertson told a CNN interviewer on Monday that the United States should not interfere with population- control policies in China, but yesterday, sounding a note of regret, he said he should have emphasized his anti-abortion views...

In the interview, Mr. Blitzer had asked Mr. Robertson how he reconciled his support for close relations with China with complaints by conservatives that China was promoting "so-called forced abortions."

Mr. Robertson said he would not agree with such a policy. "But at the same time, they've got 1.2 billion people, and they don't know what to do," Mr. Robertson said. "If every family over there was allowed to have three or four children, the population would become completely unsustainable."

After saying China risked political upheaval if unemployment made its population restive, Mr. Robertson said: "So, I think that right now they're doing what they have to do. I don't agree with forced abortion, but I don't think the United States needs to interfere with what they're doing internally in this regard."

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/18/politics/18ABOR.html

Nice whitewash by Wolfie. The Hobby Lobby and Pat have profit before people, lucre before life business plans. They should be hit by the IRS for all of this garbage. Just my cranky opinion this morning.

BTW, Sandra Fluke spoke to their game best:

They are corporations who are now saying what laws they will and will not obey, unilaterally, and ordering citizens to obey their religious beliefs, and not their own, which is a violation of the employees' 1A rights...

People do not surrender their rights as citizens when they go to work, like prisoners do. They have committed no crime to need a job. Or have they? Is that what the Hobby Lobby and other groups are saying, if you are not born independently rich, you should be punished by whatever the boss says?

Sure looks that way to me.