Category: Politics

The Death of Christianity?

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Orcinus had an interesting analysis of a new study by the Barna group, an Evangelical research group.

The picture is stark:

Basically, it shows that Christians in general, and Evangelicals in particular, are losing the youth in a very profound way.

Here, I think is the money quote:

Roughly a quarter of both the Christians and non-Christians in the under-30 group also mentioned — without being prompted — that “Christianity has changed from what it used to be,” and that it “no longer looks like Jesus.” Their sheer frustration level over how far the modern Christianity had deviated from its roots took Kinnaman by surprise:

In our interviews, we kept encountering young people – both those inside the church and outside of it – who said that something was broken in the present-day expression of Christianity. Their perceptions about Christianity were not always accurate, but what surprised me was not only the severity of their frustration with Christians, but also how frequently young born again Christians expressed some of the very same comments as young non-Christians.”

(emphasis mine)
Basically, the public face of Christianity, and by that I mean the Fallwells, Robertsons, etc. who have the shows and get the face time with politicians, have alienated the youth with their hate.

I don’t understand the finer points of Christianity, but I do understand how the pursuit of secular power corrupts religion. One only has to look at Iran to see that.

To the Christians reading this, you need to figure a way to convince people that the current public face of Christianity are not the preachers of hate that seem to appear on every talk show, and who dominate the religious air waves.

Mitt Romney Loses Nevada Straw Poll…To Ron Paul???????

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Yes you read that right Paul beat Romney, and he beat him handily: Paul 33%, Romney 16%, Hunter 15%, “Undecided” 11%, and the rest were in single digits.

It should be noted that it was a small conference, about 430 people, and Paul was not at the conference, but Romney and Hunter were.

While a part of it might be attributed to the libertarian streak of western Republicans, I think that a lot of has to do with the fact that polling shows that most Republicans favor us leaving Iraq too.

Ron Paul will not be the Republican nominee. Some of his positions regarding “social issues” and “law and order” are out of sync with the party.

That being said, the first mainstream Republican who says, “George W. Bush, Kiss My Ass, We are Leaving Iraq” would sweep the primaries. He might even have a chance in the general.

But no one running has the guts to do that.

George Bush Would Be Wetting His Pants

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Well, Vladimir Putin will be going to Iran, even though there is information indicating an assassination attempt may be in the offing.

Say what you will about Vladimir,but George Junior would refuse to go, and the right wing pundits would say how brave he was, lying on the ground in the fetal position sucking his thumb.

One interesting note, the attempt is supposed to bey by “suicide attackers”, and the Shia have not been doing suicide attacks. It’s more of a Sunni thing.

There are Sunnin in Iran, but they are typically not “Persian”, but Arab and other minorities, who are getting clandestine aid from the US (read Sy Hersh), so if this threat is real, and it could be an attempt by Putin to burnish his image with the Russian people, we would be in some way behind it, and Vladimir, ever the KGB agent knows this.

Quote Of The Day: Schadenfreude Edition

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There is a story about Larry Craig attempting further appeals. It’s unremarkable, except for we may now know why the Republicans are not going after him too hard, he is one seriously mean SOB.

“I was very proud of my association with Mitt Romney,” Craig told Lauer. “… And he not only threw me under his campaign bus, he backed up and ran over me again.”

I know it’s not nice to get joy from someone else’s misfortune, but Senator Craig’s circumstances have me riveted the way that some cheap celebrity antics do for the mainstream press.

Gore Derangement Syndrome

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I love that Paul Krugman is no longer behind the NY Times firewall, because he just took a marvelous shot at the wingnuts, and in particularly at Charles Krauthammer*, when he described their reaction to his Nobel Piece Prize as, “Gore Derangement Syndrome“.

Just go read it. Hell, go read everything that Krugman writes.

*Krauthammer coined the term “Bush Derangement Syndrome”, one of his many violations of the canon of ethics for a psychiatrist, which prohibits this sort of long distance diagnosis under the color of professional authority.

‘Phants Realize that Bush is Millstone About Their Necks

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The Republican leaders, from left, Senator Mitch McConnell, Senator Trent Lott and Representative Roy Blunt, after a meeting with President Bush on the children’s health insurance program.
Note picture: Trent Lott, who was knifed by Bush, is front and center, he is front and center to show that Congressional Republicans are not happy with Bush.

The fact that Republicans in Congress are unhappy with Bush on S-CHIP is to a large degree an artifact of the fact that Bush is delusional:

At the White House, administration officials urged Congressional Republicans to try to remain positive and ride out the current turmoil. Ed Gillespie, a senior adviser to Mr. Bush, told the visitors, according to multiple accounts, that had Republicans sided with Democrats on the health program, they would have opened themselves to withering criticism from conservatives and been in a worse position than they are now.

This is crap. They are in a bad position because they are denying health care to children of hard working parents.

They have been owned on this issue because the facts are clear, and the press is covering the facts.

The Fight Over White Space

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Microsoft and Google, on the same side for once, are in in a tussle with commercial TV stations over “white space”, the unused channels in broadcast TV.

Basically, Microsoft sent a prototype to the FCC which was supposed to automatically detect white space, and use the spectrum for (very) high speed connectivity, but it failed because Microsoft never gets anything right the first time.

Broadcaster’s heads are exploding over this proposal, with claims of severe interference, technical problems, and that it will make your daughter date a biker.

While part of this is no doubt a result of the proprietary feelings that broadcasters have regarding “their” (it belongs to all of us) spectrum, I think that another part is that they do not want to have a competing use.

If there is a competing use, at some point regulators might give priority to that use, as opposed to broadcasting reruns of “my mother the car”.

Afghanistan Clamps Down on Mercenaries Private Security Firms

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These guns for hire are not just a problem in Iraq, they are a problem in Afghanistan, where authorities are clamping down on unlicensed, incompetent, and excessively violent security contractors.

Two of the main problems are the US and UK, where many of these firms are based, and which have not signed the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries, which is why all the companies we hear about are from the US and UK.

Contact your congressman about getting the us to ratify this convention.

Charles Krauthammer Endorses Hillary Clinton

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Seeing as how this guy is wrong about everything, it does not bode well for Hillary’s possibilities. She will be unable to make the economic changes necessary to fix our economy, and she will not stand up to the “very serious people” in DC who think that we should use our military whenever possible.

As an aside, he also makes the comment, that her savings proposalss are “the perfect vehicle for a future conservative administration to use for shifting from the current, unsustainable government-controlled program to a privatized system such as the one in Chile.”

For those of you who don’t know, the privatized system in Chile is a disaster, which is why the military is still in a public one. Similar efforts in Argentina were the single largest cause of the collapse there.

Moron.

90 Congressmen Have Signed Letter to Defund Iraq War

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In July, it was 70 Congressmen, and now it’s “nearly 90”, and the letter is still being circulated.

The interesting thing is that with about 25 more signatures, over ½ of the Democratic members of congress will have signed this. What does the leadership do then, because it can only pass with Republican votes, and more Dems opposing than supporting.

What do the craven elements of the house leadership *cough* Steny Hoyer and Rahm Emmanuel *cough* do then?

This is a good sign.

Text of letter below:

The Honorable George W. Bush
President
United States of America
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President:

Seventy House Members wrote in July to inform you that they will only support appropriating additional funds for U.S. military operations in Iraq during Fiscal Year 2008 and beyond for the protection and safe redeployment of our troops out of Iraq before you leave office.

Now you are requesting an additional $45 billion to sustain your escalation of U.S. military operations in Iraq through next April, on top of the $145 billion you requested for military operations during FY08 in Iraq and Afghanistan. Accordingly, even more of us are writing anew to underscore our opposition to appropriating any additional funds for U.S. military operations in Iraq other than a time-bound, safe redeployment as stipulated above.

More than 3,742 of our brave soldiers have died in Iraq. More than 27,000 have been seriously wounded. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed or injured in the hostilities and more than 4 million have been displaced from their homes. Furthermore, this conflict has degenerated into a sectarian civil war and U.S. taxpayers have paid more than $500 billion, despite assurances that you and your key advisors gave our nation at the time you ordered the invasion in March, 2003 that this military intervention would cost far less and be paid from Iraqi oil revenues.

We agree with a clear and growing majority of the American people who are opposed to continued, open-ended U.S. military operations in Iraq, and believe it is unwise and unacceptable for you to continue to unilaterally impose these staggering costs and the soaring debt on Americans currently and for generations to come.

Sincerely,

Obama Finally Starts Mentioning Clinton by Name

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I think that one of my concerns about Barack Obama is that he suffers from “Adlai Stevenson Syndrome”, where he thinks that the rough and tumble of politics is somehow beneath him.

There appears to be some signs of hope on this, Obama is now criticizing Hillary Clinton by name on her the Iran Revolutionary Guard resolution.

Additionally, I think that both Edwards and Obama have held off on attacking Clinton out of concern that it would drive primarily benefit the one not in the fight, though Elizabeth Edwards has wisely functioned as a proxy in this issue.

I think that Clinton is far to concerned about proving her toughness, and as such, it undermines her strength. Basically, she feels a need to act like one of those “very serious” people from the Council on Foreign Relations, who to this day say that we should stay in Iraq.

That would be her weakness as president, and I think that it can be shown to be her weakness as a candidate.

Quote of the Day, Rachael Maddow

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She said the following on Olbermann:

Maddow: “Twelve year old Graeme Frost, meet Cindy Sheehan, meet 9/11 widows, meet Staff Sgt. Brian McGough, meet Michael J. Fox, meet the kids who were targeted by Mark Foley, meet Jack Murtha. I mean, Graeme Frost as a twelve year old now joins an esteemed list of Americans who have been personally attacked, personally slimed, called liars and cowards and frauds, and threatened for daring to publicly espouse a view that the right disagrees with. I mean, just when you think you’ve found the person who they can’t possibly slime, I don’t know, say a twelve year old kid just out of a coma, turns out yeah, the bar does actually go that low, it’s just astonishing.”

We need to realize that there are elements on the right wing who are simply psychotic, and that they are very much in the mainstream.

So Now the Right Wing is Going After a Twelve Year old Boy and His Family

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This is outrageous, and people should be outraged, about what these people are doing to 12 year old Graeme Frost and his family. They are being stalked and threatened with violence simply because he went on the air and told how his life was saved by S-Chip in response to Bush’s radio address..

That being said, there are people out there who do outrage better than I do. Heck, they just plain write better than I do, people like Ezra Klein, Lower Manhattanite of the Group News Blog, Jim Henley, Tbogg, John Amato of C&L, and pretty much anyone else on the internet.

Instead, I want to look at causes, and precedents, and I founc a very old one, Maenadic rites, the charismatic worship of Dionysus, where “The mysteries of Dionysus inspired the women to ecstatic frenzy; they indulged in copious amounts of violence, bloodletting, sexual activity, self-intoxication, and mutilation.”

There were no drugs. A large group of women woud get together in the woods, and begin to pray, and chant, and laugh, and sing, and slowly, as a group, they would work themselves into a frenzy, and then they would then typically find some animal or animals, and rip them to pieces and eat them raw.

There were no drugs, nothing but music, dancing, group hysteria, and catharsis.

Once they were finished, they would look at themselves, and see their bodies covered in blood, and they would be relieved, but they would also be ashamed. It provided release, as ancient Greek women lived very secluded and regimented lives, and needed release, and it created shame, which kept them in line.

It was central to how the Greeks controlled their women, and the Romans, with a far more emancipated role for women, eventually prohibited the worship of Dionysus by more than about a dozen women at a time, because they neither needed nor wanted this form of bondage for their women.

The right wing has created its own Maenads, and it is not a pretty site.

In fact, it is their model for the United States, and its citizens for the future.

The Problem With Hillary

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For once, Maureen Dowd gets it right. Her thesis is that Hillary Clinton is too focused about her being a woman, and so she will vote for anything bellicose to show that she has the balls to be presieent.

…….

When Hillary voted to let W. use force in Iraq, she didn’t even read the intelligence estimate. She wasn’t trying to do the right thing. She was trying to do the opportunistic thing. She felt she could not run for president, as a woman, if she played the peacenik.

By throwing in with Joe Lieberman and the conservative hawks on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard issue, she once more overcompensated in a cynical way. She’d like to paint Obama as the weak reed who wants to cozy up to dictators, while she’s the one who will play tough. It was odd, given her success in the debates conveying the sense that she is the manliest candidate among the Democrats, that she felt the need to man-up on Iran.

But maybe she knows that Rudy will hurl thunderbolts at her, as he did in the debate yesterday, suggesting that she doesn’t have the guts to use a military option to stop Iran from going nuclear.

Voters seem more concerned with Hillary’s political expediency — which the vote underscored — than with her ability to be manly.

Her camp seems to think her vote was a safe one because W. and Cheney do not have the time or support to bomb Iran, and that Bob Gates can stop it. But she may be underestimating W. and Cheney. She should be at least as paranoid about that pair as she was about an Iowa Democrat.

She nailed it.