I know far too many people who have bought the GOP as a brand, and have blinded themselves to their party’s real agenda.
*cough* Log Cabin Republicans *cough*
Xopher, Brian is correct. It's not merely about suppressing the Democratic vote--you don't hear reps from the (overwhelmingly white) suburbs of the metro-Detroit area talk about suppressing the Ann Arbor vote, even though Ann Arbor is full of Lincoln liberal voters who don't much like Bush.
I have no trouble whatsoever believing that a representative from Troy would want to suppress voting in Detroit even if Detroit was lukewarm on Democrats..
Religions have not adapted to our new knowledge
Religion is not science any more than the works of Shakespeare are. That doesn't make it valueless or wrong, any more than the works of Shakespeare are.
I'll grant you that one cannot be too looneytunes for Oregon, but I thought it was full, too.
Sure, the wet parts. Lots of room in Harney County. But at the rate Californian transplants die off from SAD, there should be a decent turnover.
where would all the looneytunes Yankees go then?
Oregon. You can't possibly be too looneytunes for Oregon.
In my conspiracy-nut moments, I imagine that state officials like this one have a handshake deal with the local chapter of the ACLU.
"Bob, fundraising's been kinda thin lately. Think your office could do something blatantly unconstitutional?"
"You know, Barbara, that asshat from the local Eagle Forum's been breathin' down my neck about letting the liberal Catholic group use City Hall for a meeting, so I believe I can come up with a solution that'll make her happy AND take care of your fundraising problem. I'm a little worried some of your people are gonna harass my family, though."
"I'll be sure to get the word out that you were pressured by higher-ups. I really appreciate it, Bob."
(Xopher, technically it's illegal in every state to shoot somebody in the back to recover your DVD player from them. Getting the cops to arrest you, a grand jury to indict you, and a court to convict you is a different matter, of course.)
I'm in awe; everything in that spam was spelled correctly.
Yahweh the Storm God/Jehovah of the Thunders is the Victorian war god
The Victorians never called him YHWH, as I recall, thought they did mistranslierate his name as Jehovah. Lord of Hosts, and some strains of the Hebrew Bible (you didn't really believe all that stuff about it being one book, did you?) are militaristic. Some aren't. I don't know many Storm God followers these days, unless you mean the Asatru.
Yahweh the Storm God has way too many believers, and I don't care to be one of them.
Storm God? I think that's Zeus. We're only 2% of the population, so I'm not sure that's "way too many", but of course YMMV.
We're all going to lose our temper at idiots sometime. When we do, far better to feel obliged to say something original that addresses the specific circumstance, rather than simply spewing boilerplate cliches that make nobody smarter.
This would be the "lesser of two evils" argument?
Another take would be that it's actually worse to be witty and original, because you're candy-coating it and perhaps making its effects worse. We've all seen people hide poisonous words by saying "geez, it's a joke, lighten up!" and certainly an insult is more likely to be remembered and repeated if it's funny.
Jesus did flip out at the moneylenders in the temple, and didn't have much patience for hypocrites, but I'm pretty sure he didn't indulge in Limbaugh-style name-calling, and I'm positive he said that calling your brother a fool was not on God's happy list.
Of course we all screw up; we're human, and from the Christian point of view we're all sinners. Seems to me the response to that is to try not to sin, and to make amends when we do--not because we want to be nice to the right wing, but because that's what God asks of us.
(I realize, Patrick, that you were being a bit tongue-in-cheek. It's just that holding one's bile is one of those virtues that right-wing Christians conveniently ignore because it's not as satisfying as, say, telling gays that God hates them. I like to think we can be more Godly than that. For one thing, it annoys the ever-loving snot out of 'em.)
While on a base level I know that insults and incivillity can be pretty funny, for many of us--I'm thinking of Jews and Christians specifically--that kind of behavior is wrong. Not because it will make the Right be nice to us. Not because it will elevate the level of political discourse. But because it is immoral to be mean to other people. Jesus didn't say it was OK to call your brother a fool as long as you were witty about it.
And by the by, did anyone notice that Nicholas Kristof said *exactly* the same thing today in the NYT?
Molly Ivins has been saying the same thing for years.
Without the liberal tradition that produced those people
I believe you meant "without the First Amendment," which was not a product of modern-day liberalism, nor of anti-religious bigotry.
I'm not talking about people who are surprised that I don't eat treyf. I'm talking about people who think it's stupid and retrograde, partly because it's a mark of religious belief, and partly because, let's face it, there are plenty of bigots who simply drape their emotional overreactions in blue rather than red.
Suspicion of dominant, supercessionist thinking is a Good Thing. Lumping all religious beliefs together, as you do, is just plain dumb, especially when you ascribe characteristics of some of those religious beliefs to everyone.
Wait a minute. What lefty group would that be?
Perhaps one of the groups that disinvited Rabbi Michael Lerner from a speaking at an anti-war protest after he raised concerns about criticism of Israel bleeding into liberal anti-Semitism?
But frankly, liberals who believe religion is the opiate of irrational, stupid people don't much care what religion it is. Sure, they may only be thinking of Christianity, but I have gotten my share of disbelief and "You don't *really*....." if I pass over the coconut shrimp or say I have to attend religious services.
Rich, expecting a liberal tradition of anti-religiosity does not excuse it. "Well lots of Christians are assholes!" That sounds like the line racists give: it's OK to hate blacks because so many of them are criminals.
Graydon, the liberal sorts get attention the same way the conservatives have; insults and yelling. Hence the sudden shocked, shocked chattering from the Right about the death of civility and political discourse.
Of course it's understandable that Canadians are worried about Fox-style discourse coming to Canada, but c'mon--if Americans didn't have wackaloons you guys would have to invent them.
There's a reason that Jews and other religious minorities in the U.S. don't tend to get too concerned about people who are anti-religion.
When the "anti-religion" purely refers to "anti-Christian"? Sure. There are a lot of people who are convinced it's not their ox being gored so there's no point in caring. Add to that the fact that many Jews, as another poster noted, are themselves anti-"religious" and think of Judaism as a cultural/ethnic identity, while scorning the religous aspects.
If you hang out with a lefty group and tell them you're a Jew, they probably won't start on the anti-religion screed. If you let them see that you *practice Judaism*, watch out for the rants about Patriarchal Monotheistic Religions (tm) to fly.
then what we’re declaring war on is world conservatism: the attachment of people everywhere to their land, their family, their established way of life
Isn't the fighting about whether it is "their" land in the first place, and if not, whose it is?
The Bible has plenty of descriptions of things that we find horrible or inexcusable today. I'm rather surprised at the idea that the story of Samson means we should not condemn suicide bombers.
If I (social liberal, non-Xian by choice) deride the not-so-right-but-Right Revs. Falwell and Robertson for their claim that NYC invited 9/11, I am disparaged as being "anti-religious."
Disparaged by whom, please? Falwell and Robertson were roundly derided--by the right as well as the left--for their 9/11 bullshit and crawled back into half-apologies. They have no credibility beyond their own tiny communities. There is no mainstream support for either of them.
I don't expect the discussion to get anywhere because of the folks so mired in angst about their past dealings with nutbar fundies that they Don't Get It and never will, but:
Problem #1 is the conflation with "religious" and "Christian," and even with "right-wing Christian." The people doing it probably aren't even aware that they've been reared in a Christian culture that treats all other religions as invisible and are aping it. They're also handing the Right a goal on a silver platter: painting the Left as enemies of all things Godly.
It's especially appalling when you consider the liberal Christians who have been, quite literally, silenced by right-wing enemies for daring to claim that God wants us to be nice to people. (Nothing seems to inflame the Right more than being reminded that Jesus told us to give away our money and help the less fortunate.)
There is, indeed, a bias in the Left against Christianity specifically and religion in general--because so many of us desperately want the comfort of hateful bigotry that being liberal otherwise denies us, so picking on "the religious" is a safe, self-congratulatory safety valve.
I won't even get into the far left types who seize on Israeli politics as an excuse for their anti-Semitism.
No, Graydon, O'Reilly is a public face of our country--but then so are Al Franken, or Larry King, or Michael Moore. (Unfortunately the liberals aren't such good fodder for the Canadian national pastime of tut-tutting about those wacky Yanks, eh?)
is a sarky profile anything like a shirty article
Well, a "sark" is an old word for a kind of dress or tunic, so come to think of it, yeah. (At first I thought it was a misspelling of snarky. But I like this better.)
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