Friday, March 31, 2006

Think about it!

"With the election of 2000, he (George W. Bush) and his cohorts arrived in Washington like atheists taking over the Vatican; they had come to run a government they don’t believe in."
Bill Moyers

Is Racism at Heart of the Disdain for Public Schools?

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Monday, March 27, 2006

Clear and Present Dangers

'American Theocracy,' by Kevin Phillips - The New York Times Book Review - New York Times

This is powerful stuff - and right on the money!

This man's ranting is truly a demonstration of satanic power.

Media Matters - Not to be outdone by Robertson, Mohler claimed that Buddhism, Hinduism, and Marxism are "demonstration[s] of satanic power": "Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and host of the daily Christian radio show The Albert Mohler Program, defended Pat Robertson's recent claim that Muslims are 'motivated by demonic power,' and expanded on Robertson's comments, saying: 'Well, I would have to say as a Christian that I believe any belief system, any world view, whether it's Zen Buddhism or Hinduism or dialectical materialism for that matter, Marxism, that keeps persons captive and keeps them from coming to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, yes, is a demonstration of satanic power.'"

'The Left Hand Of God'

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Sunday, March 26, 2006

Christian Justification of Torture is Satanic

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The Religious Right is Losing Control

written by Jim Wallis in the latest issue of "Sojourners" email-zine

For more than a decade, a series of environmental initiatives have been coming from an unexpected source - a new generation of young evangelical activists. Mostly under the public radar screen, they were covered in places such as Sojourners and Prism, the magazine of Evangelicals for Social Action. There were new and creative projects such as the Evangelical Environmental Network and Creation Care magazine. In November, 2002, one of these initiatives got some national attention - a campaign called "What Would Jesus Drive?" complete with fact sheets, church resources, and bumper stickers. The campaign was launched with a Detroit press conference and meetings with automotive executives.

Recently, more establishment evangelical groups, especially the National Association of Evangelicals, also began to speak up on the issue of creation care. Leading the way was Rich Cizik, NAE Vice President for Governmental Affairs, who, on issues like environmental concern and global poverty reduction, began to sound like the biblical prophet Amos. Cizik and NAE President Ted Haggard, a megachurch pastor in Colorado Springs, were attending critical seminars on the environment and climate change in particular and describing their experiences of "epiphany" and "conversion" on the issue. Cizik was quoted by The New York Times as saying, "I don't think God is going to ask us how he created the earth, but he will ask us what we did with what he created." In 2004, the NAE adopted a new policy statement, "For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility," which included a principle titled "We labor to protect God's creation."

When the same New York Times article, written in March 2005 by Laurie Goodstein, noted that "A core group of influential evangelical leaders has put its considerable political power behind a cause that has barely registered on the evangelical agenda, fighting global warming," the politics of global warming changed overnight in Washington, D.C. Previously, advocates around climate change and other environmental issues were simply not a part of George Bush's political base and their concerns were not on Washington's political agenda. But the NAE constituency is mostly part of the Republican base and the new environmental concern was not unnoticed by the White House - the very day the article came out the White House called the NAE to ask what policies they were most concerned about.

The next year saw NAE participation at many major climate change and environmental meetings - both domestically and internationally - and a series of press stories about the new evangelical environmentalists, including a full page interview with Rich Cizik in The New York Times Magazine.

In January, the Religious Right reared its head. In a letter addressed to the NAE - signed by 22 of the Right's prominent leaders, including James Dobson, Charles Colson, Richard Land, and Louis Sheldon - they said, "We have appreciated the bold stance that the National Association of Evangelicals has taken on controversial issues like embracing a culture of life, protecting traditional marriage and family." They then went on to say, "We respectfully request, however, that the NAE not adopt any official position on the issue of global climate change. Global warming is not a consensus issue." It was a clear effort to prevent the NAE from taking a stand on environmental issues and even to veto the whole effort. Stick to our core issues they implied - meaning abortion and gay marriage. Five years ago, so powerful a group of conservative Christian leaders probably could have tamped down this new evangelical effort that served to broaden the range of moral values and issues of biblical concern. But not this time.

A month later, on Feb. 9, a full page ad appeared in The New York Times with the headline: "Our commitment to Jesus Christ compels us to solve the global warming crisis." The striking ad announced the Evangelical Climate Initiative, and was signed by 86 prominent evangelical leaders, including the presidents of 39 Christian colleges. I was speaking at one of those schools shortly after the ad came out and talked to their president who was one of the signers. "I'm tired of those old white guys telling us what to think and do," he said. He is a younger white man who decided to take a stand, even if it was against the old guard of the Religious Right.

The Evangelical Climate Initiative is of enormous importance and could be a tipping point in the climate change debate, according to one secular environmental leader I talked to. But of even wider importance, these events signal a sea change in evangelical Christian politics: The Religious Right is losing control. They have now lost control on the environmental issue - caring for God's creation is now a mainstream evangelical issue, especially for a new generation of evangelicals. But now so is sex trafficking, the genocide in Darfur, the pandemic of HIV/AIDS and, of course, global and domestic poverty. The call to overcome extreme poverty abroad and at home, in the world's richest nation, is becoming a new altar call around the world - a principal way Christians are deciding to put their faith into practice.

In places such as the U.K., Christians are rallying around the call to "Make Poverty History." Many are comparing that call to the cry of British Parliamentarian William Wilberforce and an earlier generation of evangelical revivalists in the 18th and 19th centuries who changed history in England and America by their steadfast commitment to end slavery. For many, poverty is the new slavery. Again, this is especially true for a new generation of Christians. The connection between poverty and all the other key issues - the environment, HIV/AIDS, and violent conflicts around the world are increasingly clear for many people of faith.

The sacredness of life and family values are deeply important to these Christians as well - yet too important to be used as partisan wedge issues that call for single issue voting patterns that ignore other critical biblical matters. The Religious Right has been able to win when they have been able to maintain and control a monologue on the relationship between faith and politics. But when a dialogue begins about the extent of moral values issues and what biblically-faithful Christians should care about, the Religious Right begins to lose. The best news of all for the American church and society is this: The monologue of the Religious Right is over, and a new dialogue has just begun.

Monday, March 20, 2006

Why we will never leave Iraq!

Biggest Base in Iraq Has Small-Town Feel

Can you understand a little more why the world is growing to hate us more and more? The neo-cons have planned four such bases all along and they are not being built for temporary use!

Another reason to consider this man incompetent!

CNN.com - Rumsfeld's�Iraq-Germany analogy disputed - Mar 19, 2006: "'Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis,' Rumsfeld wrote in an opinion piece published Sunday -- the third anniversary of the beginning of the U.S.-led war in Iraq -- in the Washington Post."

Friday, March 17, 2006

Franklin Graham Reaffirms Anti-Islamic Views

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He sure knows how to make his daddy proud; at least one member of the family knows what Jesus taught - but it is surely not the son!

Breaking News!

In an attempt to thwart the spread of bird flu, George W. Bush has just ordered the bombing of the Canary Islands.

Washington heard us on Darfur!

The U.S. House of Representatives passed an amendment providing $50 million to immediately bolster the peacekeeping mission to stop genocide in Darfur, Sudan. That is faith in action, as thousands called our Representatives and signed the Million Voices for Darfur campaign.

The amendment passed by a narrow 213-208 vote (complete roll call available here - check to see how your Representative voted: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll046.xml) after a furious call-in campaign organized by the Save Darfur Coalition that included Faithful America (an interfaith program of the National Council of Churches) the American Jewish World Service, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Jewish Council of Public Affairs, and the Sudan Advocacy Action Forum, among others.

A key member of the House called to express his gratitude for people of faith, saying, "the tremendous grassroots advocacy (by people of faith) helped make possible this victory for the people of Darfur."

My representative, Charles Taylor, voted against the bill - why am I not surprised!

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

I sure wish I had said that!

Day of Reckoning for the Current Occupant
By Garrison Keillor

Spring arrived in New York last week for previews, a sunny day with chill in the air, but you could smell mud, and with a little imagination you could sort of smell grass. I put on a gray jacket, instead of black, and went to the opera and saw Verdi's "Luisa Miller," a republican opera in which love is crushed by the perfidiousness of government. A helpful lesson for these times. I am referring to the Current Occupant.

The Republican Revolution has gone the way of all flesh. It took over Congress and the White House, horns blew, church bells rang, sailors kissed each other, and what happened? The Republicans led us into a reckless foreign war and steered the economy toward receivership and wielded power as if there were no rules. Democrats are accused of having no new ideas, but Republicans are making some of the old ideas look awfully good, such as constitutional checks and balances, fiscal responsibility, and the notion of realism in foreign affairs and taking actions that serve the national interest. What one might call "conservatism."

The head of the NSA under President Reagan, Lt. Gen. William Odom, writes on the Web site NiemanWatchdog.org that he sees clear parallels between Vietnam and Iraq: "The difference lies in the consequences. Vietnam did not have the devastating effects on U.S. power that Iraq is already having." He draws the parallels in three stages and says that staying the course will only make the damage to U.S. power greater. It's a chilling analysis, and one that isn't going to come from the Democratic Party. It's starting to come from Republicans, and they are the ones who must rescue the country from themselves.

I ran into a gray eminence from the Bush I era the other day in an airport, and he said that what most offended him about Bush II is the naked incompetence. "You may disagree with Republicans, but you always had to recognize that they knew what they were doing," he said. "I keep going back to that intelligence memo of August, 2001, that said that terrorists had plans to hijack planes and crash them into buildings. The president read it, and he didn't even call a staff meeting to discuss it. That is lack of attention of a high order."

Over the course of time, the Current Occupant has been cruelly exposed over and over. He sat and was briefed on the danger of a hurricane wiping out a major American city, and without asking a single question, he got up from the table and walked away and resumed his vacation. He played guitar as New Orleans was flooded. It took him four days to realize his responsibility to do something. When the tsunami killed a hundred thousand people in Southeast Asia, he was on vacation and it took him 72 hours to issue a statement of sympathy.

The Republicans tied their wagon to him and, as a result, their revolution is bankrupt. He has played the terrorism card for all it is worth and campaigned successfully against Adam and Steve and co-opted whole vast flocks of Christians, but he is done now, kaput, out of gas, for one simple reason. He doesn't represent the best that is our country. Not even close.

He openly, brazenly, countenanced crimes of torture at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram. He engaged in illegal surveillance, authorized the arrest of people without charge and "disappeared" them to foreign jails. And he finagled this war, which, after three years of violence, does not look to be heading toward a happy ending. And now it's up to Republicans to put their country first and call the gentleman to account.

The Current Occupant is smart about handling a political mess. The best strategy is to cut and run and change the subject. You defend the Dubai ports deal in manly terms until you lose a vote in a House committee and then you retreat - actually, you get the Dubai people to do it for you - and that's it, End of Story.

Harriet Miers was fully qualified one day and gone the next. Social Security was going to be overhauled to give us the Ownership Society, and then the stock market went in the toilet and Republicans got nervous, and suddenly it was Never Mind and on to the next new thing.

Let's bring the boys home. Otherwise, let's send this man back to Texas, and see what sort of work he is capable of and let him start making a contribution to the world.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

sound familiar?

"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side." -- Aristotle

Monday, March 13, 2006

He's at it again!

Americans United: Americans United Deplores TV Preacher Pat Robertson's Inflammatory Attack On Islam

Evangelicals Split Over 'A La Carte' Cable TV

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I find this rather curious and somewhat hilarious! The TV egomaniacs like Falwell, Robertson and Crouch realize that if people have a choice they are not going to purchase their garbage!

God Told Me to Invade Iraq, Bush Tells Palestinian Ministers

In Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs, a major three-part series on BBC TWO (at 9.00pm on Monday 10, Monday 17 and Monday 24 October), Abu Mazen, Palestinian Prime Minister, and Nabil Shaath, his Foreign Minister, describe their first meeting with President Bush in June 2003.
Nabil Shaath says: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …" And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.'"
Abu Mazen was at the same meeting and recounts how President Bush told him: "I have a moral and religious obligation. So I will get you a Palestinian state."

VA Nurse Investigated for 'Sedition' for Criticizing Bush

Following is the definition of "sedition":
1. conduct or language inciting rebellion against the authority of the state.
2. insurrection; rebellion
3. an illegal action inciting resistance to lawful authority and tending to cause the disruption or overthrow of the government.

Here is what the nurse's letter said:

"I am furious with the tragically misplaced priorities and criminal negligence of this government," it began. "The Katrina tragedy in the US shows that the emperor has no clothes!" She mentioned that she was "a VA nurse" working with returning vets. "The public has no sense of the additional devastating human and financial costs of post-traumatic stress disorder," she wrote, and she worried about the hundreds of thousands of additional cases that might result from Katrina and the Iraq War.
"Bush, Cheney, Chertoff, Brown, and Rice should be tried for criminal negligence," she wrote. "This country needs to get out of Iraq now and return to our original vision and priorities of caring for land and people and resources rather than killing for oil. . . . We need to wake up and get real here, and act forcefully to remove a government administration playing games of smoke and mirrors and vicious deceit.
Otherwise, many more of us will be facing living hell in these times."

Friday, March 10, 2006

O'Connor Warns of Dictatorship!

O'Connor Decries Republican Attacks on Courts

Newly retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor took on conservative Republican critics of the courts in a speech Thursday. She told an audience at Georgetown University that Republican proposals, and their sometimes uncivil tone, pose a danger to the independence of the judiciary, and the freedoms of all Americans.

She used the word "dictatorship" twice to describe what is potentially happening with the leadership in this country.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

The integrity of the Bush administration

Q: How many Bush Administration officials does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: None. There is nothing wrong with the light bulb; its conditions are improving every day. Any reports of its lack of incandescence are a delusional spin from the liberal media. That light bulb has served honorably, and anything you say undermines the lighting effect. Why do you hate freedom?

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Bush knew exactly what was coming in New Orleans

At the August 28th briefing, the president was told exactly what to expect:
  • The chief scientist of the National Hurricane Center warned that a major levee breach was "obviously a very, very grave concern." Bush lied to the entire nation about this point just 5 days later.
  • Michael Brown told the president that if New Orleans flooded the Superdome emergency shelter would likely be under water and short on supplies, creating a "catastrophe within a catastrophe."
  • Experts and officials implored the President to prepare for, as the AP described it, "devastation of historic proportions."

President Bush didn't ask a single question during the briefing. In the next two days he campaigned, attended birthday parties and played guitar while the worst natural disaster in American history killed over 1,300 people and displaced hundreds of thousands.