Don't blame me, I voted for (insert losing Republican candidate's name here)

I normally don't wax political in this blog, mostly because I am forced to maintain my sobriety here in the desert. But waking up to The Announcement this week was hardly a surprise to me. I predicted several months ago to some friends that if Obama got the nomination he was a lock, and even last week told a buddy that Obama would win in a landslide.

I must admit that I am not anywhere nearly as dismayed as my conservative influences think I should be. President-elect Obama is either the Antichrist or the Messiah, depending on who you ask. There are a few things about this entire process that concern me, however.

First, because I didn't vote for Obama, I am a racist. I also predicted months ago that the left-leaning media would at least imply this. For the last several weeks, they did more than that.

Secondly, an alarming number of conservatives predicted all sorts of calamity if McCain didn't win. I even got a plethora of emails forwarded to me from some so-called "prophets" who either wrongly predicted that McCain would win, even going so far as to proclaim various "moves of God" were that to occur, or predicted that God would punish America if Obama won. One particular crackpot even went so far as to say that God told him in 2000 that not only would Bush serve two terms, but we would suffer an economic crisis toward the end of his second term. ("I'm not telling you who to vote for, but if Obama gets elected, God's gonna be really pissed!") Well, thanks a lot for sharing your incredible insight with us back then, pal! We could have voted someone else in back then and perhaps avoided all this mess. How much money did you make selling all your Freddie Mac and Countrywide stock earlier this year, by the way?

Most of this drivel was little more than recycled versions of Pat Robertson's book, "New World Order," that predicted similar woes -- in 1992. These sorts of things seem to have a nasty habit of creeping up whenever it looks like a Democrat is already ordering drapes for the White House.

The most disturbing feature during this election has been the calls for assassination of Obama -- even from audience members at Republican campaign speeches. Why these asshats aren't in Gitmo right now is beyond me, but had I noticed it before sent in my ballot, I would have changed my vote on that alone. I sure didn't see any condemnation of it by McCain or Palin, much less any conservative press.

So what happened in the election -- did God suddenly throw in the towel and decide sometime on Tuesday, about 9:45 p.m. EDT, that not enough Christians prayed for McCain to win? The prophets are thus far silent, but I'm sure when all the post-mortem analysis is over, we'll find that more people voted for McCain than for Bush in either 2000 or 2004. But McCain didn't lose because Christians failed to meet some pre-ordained prayer quota -- he lost because his campaign was too negative, too closely allied with Bush, and kept reminding us ad nauseum of the five years he spent in NVA captivity. Sarah Palin didn't help his campaign much either. Well OK, let's be real -- he lost because he got fewer votes.

I've never been on the "Obama is a communist, Moslem, terrorist-fist-bumping Antichrist" bandwagon that the false prophets are driving anymore than I believed Palin to be the inexperienced, backwater, religious wingnut (update: clueless hillbilly) that the left-leaning media did a pretty good job of portraying her to be. I'm not saying Obama should be immortalized on Mount Rushmore just yet, but I certainly don't believe any of these doomsday prophecies about him.

For the last century or so, Christians have been sheepishly deluded into thinking that America is God's second chosen nation after Israel, as if we've mystically achieved some heavenly Most Favored Nation status. I am equally unconvinced that God doesn't have better things to do than worry about how many Christians prayed for candidate X, anymore than he cares about high school football game scores. The God I believe in isn't that petty. There is not one shred of scriptural evidence to suggest that Jesus even cared about politics (or the almighty dollar) almost 1,800 years before America was formed -- so it seems to me that if God really does care enough about American politics that He wants to use only Republican Presidents for good in the world, then things sure would be a whole lot different today. Or at least they should be.

Am I really supposed to believe the world is about to be cast into hopeless turmoil just because a black Democrat got elected as President? Should I start buying my own generators and stockpiling supplies to prepare for the impending Great(er) Depression? I'm sorry, I just can't bring myself to swallow that -- anymore than I swallowed all the failed Y2K doomsday prophets about 10 years ago. Republicans have screwed things up for years now, even when they had the White House and with or without a majority in Congress -- maybe the Democracts can do something. Let's just hope they don't screw things up more, or even worse, continue to do nothing.

As unprecedented numbers of people voted this week, surely millions of true believers cast their vote for Obama despite all the desperate, eleventh-hour "warnings from God." After weeks of sitting on the fence, and marking unknown local Republicans for office, last month I finally sent in my absentee ballot for McCain -- regardless of whether or not it was actually counted, doesn't that score me extra points with God?

More importantly, since I seem to be so prescient, maybe I should be elevating my own prophetic status. Just start sending me all your money now.