“Nearly 8 in 10 American voters say they believe prayers helped Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords survive the Tucson shooting, according to a Fox News poll released Thursday.” Well, there you have it. We now know why Giffords has made such an amazing recovery: She was a popular subject of prayers, and if there’s one thing God loves, it’s the popular kids. Has the Fonz ever gotten sick? Nayyyyyy. The question is, if Giffords won the prayer sweepstakes — and she has, based on the prizes so far — who lost it? Probably a lot of people who weren’t prayed about very much. Also, when prompted by Fox to do so, most people said they “think the people who commit these kinds of acts will always find the guns to commit violent acts.” Wait, is God providing weapons to murderers too?
Seventy-seven percent of voters believe prayers helped save Giffords, while 17 percent don’t believe that. The remaining 6 percent are unsure.
We’re glad the news media always finds time to consult the experts, the American public. Did God write this blog post? Would we have come up with the word “celebutante” even if the ancient Romans never existed? We should poll the people. [Fox News]




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"Some gods claim that they saved Giffords."
Also, Reagan died a slow, lingering death. Just putting that out there.
Yes, but since RR had Alzheimer's he was not aware of it. God wins again.
And every morning Nancy would come into his room and tell him how his Star Wars program zapped all the nuclear weapons away and saved the world. Also that the economy in 1981-1989 was awesome.
While in the White House Reagan got 2 hearing aids, a colon operation, skin cancer, a prostate operation and he was shot. Wonder what he did to God to cheese him off like that?
I was actually praying for all of that. God wins again.
Astrology, that's what.
But wait a sec. Doesn't she believe in the wrong G-d? How does that work? Have Jahweh and Jesus merged into one corporate entity and when can I buy stock?
nah, they all believe in the same Daddy…it's just if or how many son's He fostered on us that they kill each other over…
Heaven's like the Koch family?
actually they got a whole threesome thing going on with some chic/dude named "spirit. It's good to be God!
Lately I'm thinking Jesus goes both ways. Not that that's bad. Just sayin'
The FCC (Faith, Cabala, Communion) hasn't approved the merge yet.
Lisa Edelstein, the toothsome, cougarish actress who plays Cuddy on "House, MD," was once characterized as a "celebutante." It says so on her Wik-uh-pedia page, which she or her publicist most likely wrote. Is such a thing possible? Discuss.
Would that make Snookie a "celebutard?"
Discussion follows: I'd hit it.
God is a fickle bitch.
Prayers help people live through illness. Just ask Jim Henson….Did I just go there? OH YES I DID!!!
Prayers from puppets don't count.
how about masturbating with puppets…that count?
Only if:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpDPuVEiB3c
It's not easy being green.. *wet hacking cough*
Thank goodness, no need for gun control then.
Maybe we need better wording, like they way the Right so successfully dresses issues with inflammatory words like, partial-birth abortion or the job-killing health care bill. . .
Gun Muzzlement? Gun Light? Diet Gun? The Big Stick Movement? Big Sticks for Guns Program?
And Judge Roll lost, I guess.
Surprising since he attended mass everyday. Did people not pray hard enough for the sweet little girl?
Focus sheeple! God and Space Jeebus do good things, like save Giffords,make nice weather for a picnic, let the dog survive the tornado. They do not do bad things like allow a crazy man shoot people, let a sunny day become a drought, send a tornado.
You forgot the part about when Space Jeebus lets the nice church lady drown in a flood, he didn't actually hate her guts, he just wanted her "home." Religion, apparently, is all about parsing a sentence.
gotta wonder if missing mass that one time in 1997 came back on him, you know?
I thought the story was that he was on his way to mass, and detoured to see his friend Gabby, instead of going to mass.
There ya go.
<IMG> <a href="http://;http://www.anorak.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/elie-wiesel-holocaust-winner.jpg” target=”_blank”>;http://www.anorak.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/elie-wiesel-holocaust-winner.jpg
I call shenanigans: those numbers add up to100.
Nope, that's just a rounding error in this case.
I did some Nate Silver shit and looked into the methodology of this particular poll: conducted in a public polling place (church) within three days of a normal polling day (Sunday).
So, yeah. It's legit.
8 of 10 in Ugg tribe wonder how these people learn to walks upright.
Thank God they don't have shoes to tie.
You're here, too?
Or did TPM finally kick you out?
Har har har. No. Ugg just trolling for trolls. So many rock to fling, so little time. Har har har.
Good to see you over here at Wonkette, Ugg! (May I call you Ug?) You're half the reason I go to TPM.
He is good. Unfortunately, he's not an example for other (non-troll) commenters. Instead, TPM comments are earnest like Kos, without the hyperbole, or HuffPo, without the priapism.
Uh oh. Ugg need dictionary to comment here. This going be har har har HARD!
Please, call me Ug for short. Har har har.
p.s. Why avatars so fuzzy here?
Cousin Ugg! Long time no see. How are things on the Neaderthal side of the family?
Har har har. Rock on, cousin.
p.s. Call me Ug for short.
So according to the poll, 77% of Americans are superstitious morons; sadly that seems about right.
Actually, I would read that as 77% of Faux viewers are superstitious morons, which seems kinda low…
So why is Obama still in the White House? More than a few holes worn in the knees of pants over that one.
Knees?
Knees. You thinking somewhere else?
I wonder what the poll results show for people that believe their prayers for Democrats to be shot in the head, came true and prove that God exists?
I guess that's why Haiti has completely recovered from the earthquake, Indonesia from the tsunami and New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina.
Don't you know anything about God? The 700 Club told me that those Haitians made a deal with the Devil. YOU DON'T DOUBT THE ALL MIGHTY PAT? WELL DO YA?!
Bleeding heart prayers go directly to prayermail. Jesus screens.
Prayermail sounds like some Christian email service that I wouldn't be surprised, at all, it it actually existed.
This hardly makes up for "God" answering the prayers of the righteous and putting Bush in the white house in 2000 and 2004. Although the four hurricanes that hit Florida in 04, one for each year of Cheney-administered misery, should have been understood as Divine shock and awe.
is that the same God who ignored the prayers of the righteous and put this Kenyan street thug terrist in the presidency?
Our prayers have paid off. Not only is Giffords sitting up, stretching and giving her husband blow jobs, yesterday she was able, for the first time, to take small arms target practice at a gun range outside Tuscon (sic). Fortunately, the Houston rehab center to which she will be moved shortly, has an indoor firing range and a mechanical bull.
Pix or STFU!
I think really good medical care helped her- but for sure, let all GOP house members use prayer and give up their congressional insurance- because "Let go and let God".(one of the stupider bumper stickers I see)
Haha, belief is funny.
Looking at the box score, though, any rational person would have to conclude that if there is indeed a sentient being controlling the lives of all of us here on the planet, that being is a cruel vicious murderous sociopath.
Psst. Don't say that too loud.
Leave Herman Cain out of this.
Wait. What? Xtians preying for a Jooish person to Jeebus. How in the holy hell does that work?
Massive alt-text win on this one, Jack.
If only someone had bothered to pray for that little girl . . .
We are a nation of morons!
It is spelled 'Morans' you moran…
Oh sure, she's saved for now, but at the Rapture (in May!) the Jew gonna be left behind.
I thought the non-believers get disintegrated and the believes go up. Who gets left behind? Hurry – I need to know what to pack for Judgment Day, 05-21-2011.
I think the non-believers get to hang around for awhile and kill each other and stuff. Good packing tip: roll up your socks/undies and put them in your shoes. Also, always use tissue paper to fold your sweaters and blouses around – you don't want to look shabby in heaven, should you be so blessed.
God answers all prayers, but sometimes the answer is no. And sometimes it's, "Reply hazy, try again."
I think I've linked to this article before, but it is appropriate:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/god-answers-pray…
God Answers Prayers Of Paralyzed Little Boy
'No,' Says God
Did Fox ask the dead 6 how that faithy/prayey thing is working for them?
Actually, I just talked to god and he said he didn't intervene to save Giffords because he was too busy tallying which football teams' fans prayed harder for that weekends playoff games, and said "Why do you dumbass morals keep wasting my time with this petty bullshit?"
Was it the Steelers? Did God say they would they would beat the spread by more than 5? I need to call my bookie to get a bet in by the end of the day.
I'll just be happy when God focuses on picking the Stanley Cup champs for this year.
Chicago won't won because Obama said that if they do he's going to the Superbowl. Yeah, good luck getting a ticket!
One of those geezers from the Visa ad will "die".
God delegates some of the sports forecasting grunt work to other sentient beings, like Paul the Octopus. Hoomans are too stoopid.
So God is Nate Silver?
Welp, that explains the Seahawks playoff malaise. Football towns don't get much more atheist than Seattle.
Once again, I feel incredible guilt. If I hadn't misplaced my keys and been worried about the mistress' late period that day, we'd probably still have judge Rolls and that little girl here with us. As with erections, I abuse my prayers terribly.
Actually, when I talked to God, he said he had time to help Gibby because it's the off-season in NASCAR.
Buddy of mine, upon discharge from the service, was on the job-hunt for quite a while trying to find something that his training qualified him for. His bible-thumping family continually let him know that they were praying for him to get a good job. He finally got fed up and told them if they were going to waste their time praying for him, they should just pray that he win the lottery so he could stop looking for work.
Heh. Every time some one in my mostly-Catholic extended family says they'll pray for me, I say, "Well, that couldn't possibly hurt."
and "Bless your heart".
Gotta have some beliefs…just this morning I drove thru 20 red lights in His honour
Thank you Jesus
Thank you Lord
I'm having a very serious morning, so here is my undesirable serious response: the woman is going to have serious brain damage and terrible difficulties with living no matter what–she will be a shell of her former self (she got shot THROUGH the brain), it might have been more noble-hearted to pray for her death.
Yes, my morning has been that bad.
I've been thinking the same thing but haven't had a morning as bad as yours lately, so haven't posted it.
We're all praying for you.
Brains are weird. There appear to be certain specific areas that have specific functions, and if the bullet blew through one of those, Giffords will be seriously compromised. But there is a large volume that seems to be associatively connected, and in which damage is routed around, like we used to hope the internet could do.
She might recover a substantial fraction of her former capability. Or not.
What I don't like is that focus on her prospective recovery steals attention from the other victims and from the entire impact of the shooting. Even if she has a full recovery, the other dead people are still dead. I sense that our wonderful media are already modulating this fucking evil and explainable mass shooting into just the background for Giffords recovery.
Believers of the world: next time, consider using your life-saving prayers BEFORE a person gets shot in the head! Also, improve your aim; you "missed" the six people who died.
But, but, but, how can this happen? She is a jew! How can christian prayers save a hebe?
mysterious ways, baby. Kinda like when you're on meth or sucking anonymous cock in an airport bathroom and then after you climax you talk to Jesus and he says, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, that wasn't the true You because You're Not Gay." And you're like "Sweet. Thanks J-Dog". And he's like "Mysterious Ways Mutherfucka." $Ka-Ching$
Allocating my prayers among many the victims was a tough choice. Ultimately I went all in for Giffords and in in retrospect this was the right decision. It's tragic that the Judge and that cute little girl had to die, but that's the way it had to be. There's only so much Jesus to go around, folks.
I pray that Glenn Blech farts daily out of his pie hole, so I guess there's something to that "poll".
That photo is from Jesus's outlaw country period. & if you only know Him from His pop-country comeback — Golgatha Dancer — then you don't know Jesus.
I've always preferred Rough Trade Messiah ("on your knees and take it, sinner") to True Muscular Jeebus ("yeah, you like that, don't you?").
I was thinking it's Mormon Jeebus.
Jesus, Texas Ranger.
Excellent.
If only God could help these Buddhists move out of God's house…
http://bit.ly/hsEiHo
I find that Prayers are far more effective when you continually change the Prayer to more closely reflect the actual outcome of the event.
Example:
From – I pray that the Hurricane doesn't hit Haiti.
To – It's truly a miracle that more people weren't killed. God was truly listening.
If God decided what to do based on prayer, why is Obama president? God needs a Ken Blackwell and Karl Rove up there. I'll pray for that.
He's waiting for Kissinger to die.
People are dumb. That is all.
I see some snarky Wonketeer was brave enough to troll the FuxNews board:
"The surgeons' skill and steady hands saved Giffords; prayer had nothing to do with her survival"
The angry wingtard responses are even better.
The Tea Party health care doctors may not be 'certified' or have completed "residencies" or any and all of em elitist fancy hoo-ha rigmarole, but they did stay at a Holiday Inn once. On some State or Federal dime certainly.
Point me in the right direction here.
I'm disappointed – I thought it had been you all along! http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/01/20/fox-ne…
Yeah I post over there anytime there's an article about evolution or the speed of light – I quote stuff from the AnswersinGenesis site, supporting a young earth. They love me.
Gabby Giffords: prayer saved her!
the 6 dead: God works in mysterious ways!
I guess God has some PR work to do after offing 230,000 people in the Indian Ocean tsunami.
Either you accept that God who has his/her hand in everything and is credited or blamed for the "miracles" or tragedies of the world, or he/she is non-existent or impotent to do anything but gasp and gag at humanity's course. This is not a buffet to pick from where you can vacillate between "he brought a miracle to us because he approves of us" and "bad things happen, God didn't do it."
Gifford's progress has more to do with the quick thinking of a gay, Hispanic intern, timing and quality of her medical care, and her own ability to heal and bounce back.
But that (inter)national designated day to pray away Trig's Down Syndrome didn't work?
I just don't understand how all this works. . .
Don't misunderestimate Trig – wait'll you see his E-Trade Super Bowl ad.
It did work! But his parents will undo it through the miracle of home schooling.
This is just a continuation of the Bush doctrine. Since medical care is expensive, and running the NIH costs money, if you convince folks that prayer is as good as medicine, you can pull research funding, gut the NIH, and go kill more people in foreign wars. Which is exactly what Bush & Co did.
Faith-based
initiativehealthcare ftw!Given that the House passed the Pre-Existing Condition Restoration Act, America will now switch to a Single Prayer system.
What's wrong with Repubicare: Saying "no" makes you feel better.
My friend Mike left after 2 years in the monastery after not getting a good answer to this very question.
If God is so great and ommniscient, why would he need our prayers to get good things to happen?
Mike went into more concrete careers, such as martial arts and software engineering. Much less prayer there, also.
Monastery/buttsecks joke.
If you ask the morons if prayer was involved, they're going to say yes, but not because of any thought. They're simply programmed to say "oh, yes" every time someone asks them a question about prayer. So don't ask them.
If God has a plan for everything, and knows everything that's going to happen, then does he change the plan whenever a bunch of people pray for the same thing? Or did he know ahead of time that everyone was going to pray and made that part of the plan, thus making the prayers themselves meaningless?
Someone please explain.
God invented prayer so he could justify saving some people and not others, by making them more popular retroactively. He'd already planned to save the ones he knew the God-Botherers were going to pray for. It's ingenious.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster never gets credit for anything.
I believe that it was His noodlie appendages that disarmed said shooter…praise be to pasta….
77% of voters believe prayers helped save Giffords, while 17 % believe that the Federal health care helped save Giffords. PEOPLE SPOKE AGAIN: REPEAL OBAMACARE!
Didn't you ever see "Ghostbusters?"
Get down on your knees and PRAY, asshole!
Oops.
Never mind, I'm thinking of this little deity. Action figures available.
No joke.
Repent, bitches; REPENT!
Well, if you believe in an afterlife, and you believe that it will be paradise where everything is wonderful and the all-you-can-eat buffets are open 24/7, and the marvelous visage of Jeebus will be there for you to adore, why would you pray for someone not to go there? I mean, Giffords was **THIS CLOSE** to making it out of this shit hole, but no!
Franklin and I could not agree more with this post, and the very intelligent comments.
"Religion is the Opiate of the Masses," as one of our fellow TrueLiberal Sages once wrote. Any belief in "God," or any "Higher Power"[1], is a sure sign of stupidity, inbreeding, and Just Plain Idiocy — or worse, a non-TrueLiberal belief system.
The only non-logical/non-fact based beliefs that are acceptable to Wonketteers are those based on crystals, pyramid power, the Sainted Shirley McClaine — and of course, TrueLiberalism.
Cordially,
Eleanor
[1] Including that referenced in the court-ordered AA classes most of us had to attend as a result of our DUI convictions.
And drugs, don't forget drugs.
Pyramid Power Activate! Form of… a teatard!
I feel so bad…I don't believe in any of the above. Oh wait I don't feel bad at all.
Wait a mo. In Cali, you generally don't get the AA class until your SECOND DUI. Are you trying to tell us something?
Prayer is not the enemy. People believing that prayer is something akin to the American Idol Verizon text voting system is the enemy.
nicely put.
It was actually the Indian spirit prayer at the memorial that saved her. This is bad medicine for John McCain.
FTW
All this blather brings to mind termites in the bowels of a basement 4×8 discussing the potential for the existence of Architects, Plumbers or Builders.
Did a carpenter save me from choking on a splinter? 77% of Termite News viewers say yes.
The Pretzel God is the worst, all Dubya got was a owy on his puss.
I guess this is why good surgeons develop a god complex and deep wells of bitterness.
"Well, Ma'am, it took me 14 hours, but I managed to save your husband from his bypass complication."
"Oh, thank God!"
This reaffirms my abiding faith in the fucking stupidity and intellectual dumbfuckery of religious people everywhere. I find that strangely satisfying.
I never realized that Tab Hunter could be Jesus' double.
Obviously this is a flawed poll, as God doesn't believe in Jews.
And, while we are at it, what is God's position on Christine O'Donnell's failure to masturbate? If we were a good Christian nation, shouldn't we all gather together and pray that Christine rub a good one out soon so she can relax a little?
Well, at least all their numbers added up to 100 this time. But are they saying that the judge and the 9-year-old and the rest of them weren't worthy of saving or prayer?
Though who were these people praying to – God or Jesus? Do they realize that as a Jew, Gabby thinks Jesus was an interesting person but hardly a god? Don't most of them preach that you have to believe to be saved?
Eh, there I go again, expecting logic from Fox viewers.
The little girl was killed because something even worse was going to happen to her. The pious judge got killed because God decided to give him his prize now, instead of 15 years from now. Nobody retcons like a Bible-believin' Christian! I'll bet they could explain why Peter Parker has been a young college student since 1965.
Now, Parker graduated from college in the mid 70s, it only took about ten years; since then he's finished grad school, changed to a full-time photographer, gotten married and sold his marriage in a deal with the devil that erased it from history in exchange for saving Aunt May's life.
Fuck you, Joe Quesada.
I never get tired of the picture of Sven the Norseman Jesus.
I like Gabby as much as the next person, but I'm saving all my prayers for the Pittsburgh Steelers. They had a little fall from grace this summer, so they need more help than usual.
So long as you don't pray directly for Big Ben, I can't fault you. But you pay for that serial rapist, and I'll save all my curses for you.
No, I will pray that the Steelers win in spite of him. Is that axing 2 much??
No, not at all. The Steelers are my second favorite team after my hometown.
Yes. But I admit to bias.
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