Another day with the barking mad ...

The pond usually doesn't do snippets - we leave that sort of gadfly behaviour to the likes of the Bolter and Tim Bleagh, padding their blogs up by linking to the works of others ...

But really, the completely loonatic world of the United States is irresistible, and we just wanted to note Mchele Bachmann, who was at one time running for the Presidency of the United States:

"This happened and as of today the United States is willingly, knowingly, intentionally sending arms to terrorists," she said. "Now what this says to me, I’m a believer in Jesus Christ, as I look at the End Times scripture, this says to me that the leaf is on the fig tree and we are to understand the signs of the times, which is your ministry, we are to understand where we are in God’s End Times history.” 

"Rather than seeing this as a negative, we need to rejoice, Maranatha Come Lord Jesus, His day is at hand," Bachmann added. “When we see up is down and right is called wrong, when this is happening, we were told this; these days would be as the days of Noah.” (more here under the header Bachmann: Obama Funding Al-Qaeda Proves 'We Are in God's End times')

Barking mad.

Now Bachmann was pitching to her demographic, a Christian radio show, but all that shows is how barking mad and widespread the rapture movement is ...

And if that isn't enough for you, how about this profile of Antonin Scalia, In Conversation with New York's Jennifer Senior:

Senior: Can we talk about your drafting process—
Scalia:[Leans in, stage-whispers.] I even believe in the Devil. 
You do?
Of course! Yeah, he’s a real person. Hey, c’mon, that’s standard Catholic doctrine! Every Catholic believes that. 
Every Catholic believes this? There’s a wide variety of Catholics out there …
If you are faithful to Catholic dogma, that is certainly a large part of it.
Have you seen evidence of the Devil lately?
You know, it is curious. In the Gospels, the Devil is doing all sorts of things. He’s making pigs run off cliffs, he’s possessing people and whatnot. And that doesn’t happen very much anymore.
No.
It’s because he’s smart.
So what’s he doing now?
What he’s doing now is getting people not to believe in him or in God. He’s much more successful that way. 
That has really painful implications for atheists. Are you sure that’s the ­Devil’s work?
I didn’t say atheists are the Devil’s work. 
Well, you’re saying the Devil is ­persuading people to not believe in God. Couldn’t there be other reasons to not believe?
Well, there certainly can be other reasons. But it certainly favors the Devil’s desires. I mean, c’mon, that’s the explanation for why there’s not demonic possession all over the place. That always puzzled me. What happened to the Devil, you know? He used to be all over the place. He used to be all over the New Testament. 
Right.
What happened to him?
He just got wilier.
He got wilier.
Isn’t it terribly frightening to believe in the Devil?
You’re looking at me as though I’m weird. My God! Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the Devil? I mean, Jesus Christ believed in the Devil! It’s in the Gospels! You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the Devil! Most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the Devil.

Barking mad. (And more on the Catholic devil here for hair shirt lovers)

What's even more astonishing is that Scalia is on the Supreme Court of the United States, and poses as an originalist, but it turns out that he's actually a medievalist ...

Of course as any barking mad evangelical will tell you, it's the Catholic church whore of Babylon and its deluded followers that are under the influence of Satan, but that, as they say, is another barking mad story ... (Satan Masquerading as an Angel of Light)

The pond merely reports and you decide on the most Satanic of the religions ... if in doubt, why not ask Satan for help?

Unfortunately Senior didn't ask the crucial follow up question, as posed by Huffington Post here:

He's got a point there. 
While hell is not as popular as heaven and the devil is not as popular as God - an easy majority of Americans believe in both hell and the devil. 
 However, they are not all on the Supreme Court of the United States of America. Unfortunately, Ms. Senior missed the obvious follow-up question: 'How does belief in the Devil influence Justice Scalia's Supreme Court opinions?' 
 The world may never know.

Actually the world does know. Scalia's opinions, dressed up as originalist, routinely verge towards the medievalist ... and clearly it's Satan wot done it ...

There are many other examples of why the United States - as it heads down the path to financial disaster - is truly stuffed in the head, and it's a tragedy that all the rest of the world can do - as it waits to be stuffed by the stuffing of the United States - is shake its head and marvel in wonder that a country currently exploring the surface of Mars could also feature as key parts of the political and legal landscape the likes of Bachmann, Scalia, Cruz and Boehner ...

(Below: Ruben Bolling at Boing Boing)