John Edwards: I'll sue God over world poverty

By Bea Loughnee
Washington Reporter

MANCHESTER, NH -- Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards yesterday said that if elected president he would sue God for neglecting his duties as protector of the poor and the meek and for breaching his contract with humanity.

"How can the Lord Almighty just sit there and do nothing as people in Africa, Asia, and right here in George W. Bush's America go hungry and die every day of disease, war and malnutrition?" the multi-millionaire trial lawyer asked during a speech at St. Anselm College. "Here's the truth: that's just wrong. And I can prove it in court, provided I have an impressionable jury of questionable intelligence and exceptional empathy."

Edwards, one of the most feared trial lawyers in America when he was a practicing attorney, said that if elected president, he would "sue God's robes off."

Among Edwards' claims:

* God has done nothing to follow through on his promise that the meek shall inherit the earth.

* God misled the entire human race into believing that accumulating wealth was associated with negative outcomes.

* God misled the entire human race into believing that their maladies could be healed through prayer, thereby turning millions away from effective medical remedies.

"God said he would provide for you," Edwards said. "But you just have to look at the squalor that exists in Somalia, Albania, or that neighborhood my caravan drove through on the way here this morning to see that he breached his contract. I can hold him to his promises, but not without your support."

Edwards announced that people could go to his Web site and contribute to his Poor Folk of the World Legal Defense Fund if they wanted to help.

Edwards seemed to be most outraged at what he said was God's claim that becoming wealthy was "somehow a bad thing."

"For his own purposes, God encouraged people to remain poor," Edwards said. "We know that poverty is associated with early death. Clearly, God wants to shorten our earthly lives so he can have more souls to keep him company. Here's the truth: That's just wrong. As president, I can do something about that. I am the only candidate who knows how to sue to get those souls back. I can also get God to pay every human being a settlement of at least a dollar, dollar-fifty. Maybe a dollar seventy, if we get the right judge. That might not sound like much, but it'll go a long way in Ethiopia."

Comments

[ptg]

Will this be a class action case? I'm sure I'm due for a cut of the settlement money. Eating nothing but pie in the sky has left me in bad shape.