I finally took a few minutes to read Obama’s Greatest Religion Speech Evah, and it’s at least as atrocious as one might expect. The really amazing stuff comes toward the end (no fair peeking!).

Annotated for your (and the First Amendment’s) protection.

Remarks of Senator Barack Obama
As prepared for delivery
Tuesday, July 1st, 2008
Zanesville, Ohio

You know, faith based groups like East Side Community Ministry carry a particular meaning for me.

Oh, we know, we know!

Because in a way, they’re what led me into public service.

I was betting on blind ambition, but that’s cool.

It was a Catholic group called The Campaign for Human Development that helped fund the work I did many years ago in Chicago to help lift up neighborhoods that were devastated by the closure of a local steel plant.

If we pray really hard, maybe they’ll help lift up neighborhoods that were blighted by Tony Rezko’s slums?

Now, I didn’t grow up in a particularly religious household.

You’re going to look a gift-horse in the mouth here, aren’t you?

But my experience in Chicago showed me how faith and values…

“Faith and values.” They go together like “Saddam Hussein” and “9/11.” All you gotta do is keep conflating ’em, and it will be so!

… could be an anchor in my life.

Which way do you mean “anchor”? Something that holds you back, or something that drags you down?

And in time, I came to see my faith as being both a personal commitment to Christ and a commitment to my community; that while I could sit in church and pray all I want, I wouldn’t be fulfilling God’s will unless I went out and did the Lord’s work.

With all due respect to the World’s Greatest University, couldn’t Harvard Law have a class that advises you not to listen to invisible friends?

There are millions of Americans who share a similar view of their faith, who feel they have an obligation to help others.

Help each other find deprogrammers?

And they’re making a difference in communities all across this country – through initiatives like Ready4Work, which is helping ensure that ex-offenders don’t return to a life of crime; or Catholic Charities, which is feeding the hungry and making sure we don’t have homeless veterans sleeping on the streets of Chicago; or the good work that’s being done by a coalition of religious groups to rebuild New Orleans.

Let’s definitely shift our tax dollars to Catholic Charities. So long as activist judges don’t insist on them offering services equally to gay people, because then they shut down their operations rather than have to cater to that kind of clientèle.

You see, while these groups are often made up of folks who’ve come together around a common faith…

Really, are church groups “often” made up of people with the same superstitions? Who knew?

…they’re usually working to help people of all faiths or of no faith at all. And they’re particularly well-placed to offer help.

Let me think. I know of another kind of organization that’s well-placed to do that… oh, yeah, it’s called the government.

As I’ve said many times, I believe that change comes not from the top-down…

So, can we put Hillary on the ballot instead? I think she intends to change some things from the top. Seems like a weird thing for a president to do, I know.

… but from the bottom-up, and few are closer to the people than our churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques.

Suffocatingly close.

That’s why Washington needs to draw on them.

Using Sharpies, or something washable? Actually, I think some religions are opposed to that sort of thing.

The fact is, the challenges we face today – from saving our planet to ending poverty – are simply too big for government to solve alone.

Fortunately, we have an all-powerful sky God!

We need all hands on deck.

What about the sky God?

I’m not saying that faith-based groups are an alternative to government or secular nonprofits. And I’m not saying that they’re somehow better at lifting people up.

Of course you’re not saying those things. You’re just planning to make them the law of the land.

What I’m saying is that we all have to work together – Christian and Jew, Hindu and Muslim; believer and non-believer alike – to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

I know one we can work on together! Educating ourselves out of our deadly addiction to ancient hokum!

Now, I know there are some who bristle at the notion that faith has a place in the public square.

Like a lot of these jerkoffs.

But the fact is, leaders in both parties have recognized the value of a partnership between the White House and faith-based groups. President Clinton signed legislation that opened the door for faith-based groups to play a role in a number of areas, including helping people move from welfare to work. Al Gore proposed a partnership between Washington and faith-based groups to provide more support for the least of these. And President Bush came into office with a promise to “rally the armies of compassion,” establishing a new Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

That’s the beauty of post-partisanship. If both parties pander by squandering money, paying tribute to phantasms, feeding ignorance, and defiling the First Amendment, you don’t have to think twice about keepin’ on keepin’ on.

But what we saw instead was that the Office never fulfilled its promise. Support for social services to the poor and the needy have been consistently underfunded. Rather than promoting the cause of all faith-based organizations, former officials in the Office have described how it was used to promote partisan interests. As a result, the smaller congregations and community groups that were supposed to be empowered ended up getting short-changed.

Yes, yes. The problem with Bush’s faith-based office was that he wasn’t funneling enough of our tax dollars into it. You’ll be sure to hand out the Christianist coin even more guilelessly.

Well, I still believe it’s a good idea to have a partnership between the White House and grassroots groups, both faith-based and secular. But it has to be a real partnership – not a photo-op.

I mean, really, how many times can you have your picture taken in front of a pipe organ or stained-glass window?

That’s what it will be when I’m President. I’ll establish a new Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. The new name will reflect a new commitment. This Council will not just be another name on the White House organization chart – it will be a critical part of my administration.

This is such great news. Bush was just throwing a sop to the Religious Right, but you’re going to actually make the destruction of the wall between church and state a “critical part” of your presidency. Maybe you can put the Army Corps of Engineers to the task.

Now, make no mistake, as someone who used to teach constitutional law…

Actually, as someone who used to teach constitutional law, you’re making a lot of mistakes.

…I believe deeply in the separation of church and state, but I don’t believe this partnership will endanger that idea – so long as we follow a few basic principles.

Just tell me what to believe about what you believe and I’ll believe it! I gotta gotta gotta have faith. Or so I’m led to believe.

First, if you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can’t discriminate against them – or against the people you hire – on the basis of their religion. Second, federal dollars that go directly to churches, temples, and mosques can only be used on secular programs. And we’ll also ensure that taxpayer dollars only go to those programs that actually work.

I have another plan for making sure those problems don’t occur: don’t fucking earmark government money for fantasy-based groups.

With these principles as a guide, my Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships will strengthen faith-based groups by making sure they know the opportunities open to them to build on their good works. Too often, faith-based groups – especially smaller congregations and those that aren’t well connected – don’t know how to apply for federal dollars, or how to navigate a government website to see what grants are available, or how to comply with federal laws and regulations.

I guess with the Constitution, economy, and military in tatters and a choice between “hope is a plan” accommodationism and madman authoritarianism, maybe we should take a flyer on bulking up those faith-based groups.

We rely too much on conferences in Washington…

How about, instead, we talk to a guy who’s been dead for 2,000 years? Proven results, and no Powerpoints!

… instead of getting technical assistance to the people who need it on the ground. What this means is that what’s stopping many faith-based groups from helping struggling families is simply a lack of knowledge about how the system works.

Technical assistance that fills a lack of knowledge? You mean like science? Actually, I think some religions are opposed to that sort of thing.

Well, that will change when I’m President. I will empower the nonprofit religious and community groups that do understand how this process works to train the thousands of groups that don’t. We’ll “train the trainers” by giving larger faith-based partners like Catholic Charities and Lutheran Services and secular nonprofits like Public/Private Ventures the support they need to help other groups build and run effective programs. Every house of worship that wants to run an effective program and that’s willing to abide by our constitution – from the largest mega-churches and synagogues to the smallest store-front churches and mosques – can and will have access to the information and support they need to run that program.

If we’re going to tap into the power of immortals, here’s some information they could surely use.

This Council will also help target our efforts to meet key challenges like education. All across America, too many children simply can’t read or perform math at their grade-level, a problem that grows worse for low-income students during the summer months and afterschool hours. Nonprofits like Children’s Defense Fund are working to solve this problem. They hold summer and afterschool Freedom Schools in communities across this country, and many of their classes are held in churches.

There’s a lot of evidence that these kinds of partnerships work.

Like teaming up with the Radical Right on abstinence education?

Take Youth Education for Tomorrow, an innovative program that’s being run by churches, faith-based schools, and others in Philadelphia. To help narrow the summer learning gap, the YET program hires qualified teachers who help students with reading using proven learning techniques. They hold classes four days a week after school and during the summer. And they monitor progress closely. The results have been outstanding. Children who attended a YET center for at least six months improved nearly 2 years in reading ability. And the average high school student gained a full grade in reading level after just three months.

Does that sign say “St. Francis? Great, this is the one. So many churches these goyim have! OK, we’re here, little Chaim! Have fun in church school today! Give your bubbe a kiss. Oh, is that your friend Abdul in front of the rectory? You don’t know what a rectory is? Well, let’s just hope you don’t find out.

That’s the kind of real progress that can be made when we empower faith-based organizations. And that’s why as President, I’ll expand summer programs like this to serve one million students. This won’t just help our children learn, it will help keep them off the streets during the summer so they don’t turn to crime.

But if they do turn to crime, we got them covered.

And my Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships will also have a broader role – it will help set our national agenda.

Holy fucking shit, a religious council is going to “help set our national agenda”!

Because if we are going to do something about the injustice of millions of children living in extreme poverty, we need interfaith coalitions like the Let Justice Roll campaign standing up for the powerless. If we’re going to end genocide and stop the scourge of HIV/AIDS, we need people of faith…

Because God told us that condoms are off the table.

… on Capitol Hill talking about how these challenges don’t just represent a security crisis or a humanitarian crisis, but a moral crisis as well.

We’re having a moral crisis here, pal, and you’re it. Just imagine the disturbance in the leftysphere if John McCain said that a “Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships… will help set our national agenda”!

We know that faith and values can be a source of strength in our own lives.

Saddam, 9/11. Saddam, 9/11…

That’s what it’s been to me.

Absolutely. It’s not like you could disown your Uncle Jeremiah!

And that’s what it is to so many Americans. But it can also be something more.

It can be your government, too!

It can be the foundation of a new project of American renewal. And that’s the kind of effort I intend to lead as President of the United States.

Voting for you is the kind of effort I don’t intend to make.