{"id":195534,"date":"2008-07-02T17:24:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-02T22:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/07\/02\/my-first-reaction-was-to-say-barack-obama-can-kiss-my-shiny-metal-ass\/"},"modified":"2008-07-02T17:24:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-02T22:24:00","slug":"my-first-reaction-was-to-say-barack-obama-can-kiss-my-shiny-metal-ass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/07\/02\/my-first-reaction-was-to-say-barack-obama-can-kiss-my-shiny-metal-ass\/","title":{"rendered":"My First Reaction Was to Say, &#8220;Barack Obama Can Kiss My Shiny Metal Ass&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Because when he talks about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/07\/02\/us\/politics\/02obama.html?_r=1&amp;oref=slogin\">expanding Bush&#8217;s faith based initiative<\/a>, it seems to me that he is giving the imprimatur of bipartisanship to what has been a disgraceful, and anti-constitutional, spoils system for Republican supporting churches.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">little<\/span> better when one looks into it though.<\/p>\n<p>The organizations will not be allowed to discriminate, as they can under the Bush program, at least for federally funded work:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>\u201cIf you get a federal grant, you can\u2019t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can\u2019t discriminate against them \u2014 or against the people you hire \u2014 on the basis of their religion,\u201d Mr. Obama said. \u201cFederal dollars that go directly to churches, temples and mosques can only be used on secular programs.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Needless to say, the Talibapitsts are freaking about this, because they think that the right to discriminate is what makes them &#8220;distinctive&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>I would note that Obama&#8217;s statement seems to allow discrimination, just not with public funds.  I disagree with this.<\/p>\n<p>Religious groups should held to the same standard as the secular organizations if they take public money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Because when he talks about expanding Bush&#8217;s faith based initiative, it seems to me that he is giving the imprimatur of bipartisanship to what has been a disgraceful, and anti-constitutional, spoils system for Republican supporting churches. It&#8217;s a little better when one looks into it though. The organizations will not be allowed to discriminate, as &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[978,977,1021],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-presidential-campaign","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195534"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195534\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}