"a country founded on the bible" ???

a friend of mine claimed once again today that "the foundation for American society is the Bible". He made this claim in defense of the ideology that passes for Christianity these days...the Pat Robertson type.

This is my response:

My point is that to claim the Deists of Virginia, the Calvinists in
Massachusetts, the religious toleration (and belief in complete separation of
Church and State) of Roger Williams in Rhode Island, the tenets of the Quakers
and William Penn in Pennsylvania, the secular capitalism of the Dutch in New
York, the Catholics in Maryland and assorted Jews, Muslims, atheists, Mennonites
and whoever else, agreed on religion’s role in society and government is to show
an ignorance of the history of this country.

They couldn’t even
agree on what the Bible said, let alone that is should dictate how society
should operate (Rhode Island banned slavery on religious grounds before the
Revolution, and yet the Southern states defended slavery on religious grounds
until 1865 and beyond)

And they sure as shit didn’t agree
with the current crop of “Christians” led by the intolerance and hatred of the
Pat Robertsons and Eric Rudolphs that believe they hold a monopoly on what
Christianity means today, while acting in very Unchristian ways. After all
these are the ones who do all the chest beating about the down trodden majority
and how they are so oppressed while they shout it from their TV networks,
Magazines, newspapers, the floor of the Senate and a ranch in Crawford.

While I believe “the media” is very often incompetent and generally lazy (and gutless when it comes to this administration) I think most often the reason for their lameness is the desire to sell the story. Think about the missing pretty white girl in Aruba, contrasted with the thousands of other missing children in America. But I digress.

In recent (and especially in the past couple of) years there have been a series of bad hurricanes and the media has been quick to look for answers in the “dramatic increase” in hurricane activity. So, as I was browsing the National Hurricane Center’s website, I came across this:

Hurricanes by Decade:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastdec.shtml

You’ll notice it appears we have come out of a period of relative calm in this area. Look at the 30’s and 40’s, it would appear that we are about on pace to match those, not dramatically increase the totals. So, I think this shows the media’s lack of knowledge of history and it’s love of sensationalism.

But I’m sure some will find a conspiracy, but methinks it's more ignorance and laziness.

With "moral authority" like this...who needs "godless liberals"

So, I go on some business trips and vacation and Pat Robertson shows his true colors again. Not only mixing his politics with his religion (how DOES his group maintain a religous organization designation?) and while dispensing with the Sixth Commandment.

Maybe Pat should fight to have the 10 commandments installed in his home and his TV studio instead of trying to put them in my kids' classroom. Then he wouldn't call for the murder of people he "don't like".

Really, it's not like we didn't know him and his cabal of similar "Christians" are hypocrites, especially after the "prayer-in" to have God strike down some Supreme Court Justices.

Do you REALLY think Jesus wants this hypocrite speaking for him? I've had trouble finding the biblical passage where you turn the other cheek, unless you happen to be a South American Government Executive, maybe someone could show me that passage? Or the asterisk next to the 10 Commandments?

Anyway, good to be back.

Maybe we can teach that the world is flat too?

Maybe that the sun revolves around earth?

This is just religion dressed up in pseudo-science. This man’s disconnect from reality is truly amazing. This just proves the mythical nature of religion. Religion has always been based on saying “God” or Thor or Vishnu or whatever exists because we don’t know why X happens.

This is just the latest modern creation myth. No different than the one I learned about the Native Americans whose reservation I lived a mile from:

Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Creation Myth
The Iroquois creation myth is a fascinating one, it tells of a world inhabited by all living things, all except humans... It is interesting to note that they tell of the earth being covered by water, and that these waters are inhabited by monsters. Perhaps the story was passed down from generation to generation, from the prehistoric Iroquois on... As the story goes, the birds which fill the air witness a woman falling from the heavens, and prevent her from hitting the water by spreading their wings as a safety net. But then the monsters in the water also try and prevent her from the dangers of the deep, but realize they cannot help her, so they send a giant tortoise to carry her across the waters. the tortoise magically begins to grow, until it becomes an island; an island upon which the woman gives birth to twin sons, a Good Spirit, and an Evil Spirit.
The Tortoise continues to grow, covering the earth, and when it moves, the earth quakes. Years pass, and the Sky-Holder decides to put humans upon the earth, so he creates six pairs of humans to populate the planet; the first are the Mohawk, the second the Oneidas, the third the Onondaga, the fourth are the Cayuga, the fifth are the Seneca, and the sixth are the Tuscarora.

Alterman on : Wouldn't it be nice if the Bushies were held to a standard

Speaking of an inability to distinguish between fact and fiction…

Great Quotes in History or, Why Can’t Life be More Like Baseball?

"I have never intentionally used steroids. Never. Ever. Period."

The guy who said that was slapped with a ten day suspension. But what about these guys?

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." Dick Cheney Speech to VFW National Convention, Aug. 26, 2002.[i]

"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons." George W. Bush Speech to U.N. General Assembly, Sept. 12, 2002.[ii]

"We know they have weapons of mass destruction … There isn't any debate about it." [It is] beyond anyone's imagination" that U.N. inspectors would fail to find such weapons if they were given the opportunity. Donald Rumsfeld, September 2002.[iii]

"If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world." Ari Fleischer Press Briefing, Dec. 2, 2002.[iv]

"We know for a fact that there are weapons there." Ari Fleischer Press Briefing, Jan. 9, 2003.[v]

"We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more." Colin Powell Remarks to U.N. Security Council, Feb. 5, 2003.[vi]

"We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have." George W. Bush Radio Address, Feb. 8, 2003.[vii]

"So has the strategic decision been made to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction by the leadership in Baghdad?... I think our judgment has to be clearly not." Colin Powell Remarks to U.N. Security Council, March 7, 2003.[viii]

“Does Saddam now have weapons of mass destruction? Sure he does. We know he has chemical weapons. We know he has biological weapons. . . Defense Policy Board Chair, Richard Perle, speaking to a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing, March, 2003. [ix]

"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." George W. Bush Address to the Nation, March 17, 2003. [x]

"Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly... all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes." Ari Fleisher Press Briefing, March 21, 2003[xi]

"There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction." Gen. Tommy Franks Press Conference, March 22, 2003. [xii]

"We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." Donald Rumsfeld ABC Interview, March 30, 2003. [xiii]

"I'm absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there " Colin Powell Remarks to Reporters, May 4, 2003. [xiv]

From Salon

Don't anybody tell Dick Durbin

Do you ever feel like you don't recognize your country anymore?

Maybe the moment came for you when five Republican justices on the U.S. Supreme Court handed a presidential election to one of their own. Maybe it came when the president took America to war based on pretenses that turned out to be false. Maybe it came when you saw those photographs from Abu Ghraib, or when you learned that the man who helped orchestrate America's torture policies would become its attorney general. Maybe all of those things built up in your mind until your idea of America started to seem a long way off from the reality around you.

Maybe that hasn't happened to you yet. And maybe it will when you read about the plight of two young men from China who have spent the last three years locked up inside the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay.

Abu Bakker Qassim and A'del Abdu al-Hakim are Muslims who left their homes in China to flee religious persecution there. As their lawyer has told the Boston Globe, Qassim and al-Hakim met each other at a market in Kyrgystan right around the time of the attacks of Sept. 11. They decided to make their way together to Turkey, where they apparently planned to set up new lives for themselves and the families they hoped would follow. Instead, Qassim and al-Hakim were arrested by Pakistani police, who thought they might be al-Qaida members. The Pakistanis turned them over to the United States -- apparently in exchange for a $5,000-per-head bounty. And the United States shipped them off to Guantánamo Bay, where they have been held ever since.

Why? Well, for no reason at all, it turns out. In March of this year -- which is to say, three years after the United States took Qassim and al-Hakim into custody -- a U.S. Combatant Status Review Tribunal concluded that the two men were not enemy combatants but merely had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the America in our minds, that means that they were released immediately with the nation's apologies, with something approaching fair compensation and with a guarantee of safe passage back to wherever it is they wanted to go. But that's not what happened in the America in which we're actually living.

Although Qassim and al-Hakim were cleared in March, the United States didn't bother to share that fact with anyone outside Guantánamo. And having been denied contact with their lawyers or their family members, the men had no way to spread the word themselves. So for four more months, they sat in Guantánamo, cleared but not freed.

The men were finally allowed to meet with the lawyers in late July, and they were able then to reveal the news that they had been cleared. The government confirmed that fact for the lawyers last week. So are the men free now? No. Their lawyers asked a federal judge in Washington to order their release yesterday, but the government is resisting. The U.S. says it can't send the men back to China because it fears they'll be persecuted there, and it hasn't found any other country that is willing to take them. Why not release them into the civilian population at Guantánamo until something better can be arranged? Can't do that, either, the government says. "They have been detained in here with some very bad people, under some very bad influences," Guantánamo spokesman and Army Maj. Jeff Weir tells the Globe. "We can't just release them into a hotel amongst the civilians on the base ... We understand the point of what the lawyers are saying, but it's an impossibility."

Of course, Qassim and al-Hakim weren't surrounded by "very bad people" and "very bad influences" until the United States purchased them from the Pakistanis and locked them up at Guantánamo. Maybe we're naive, but it seems to us that the United States had a moral obligation to find a good solution for Qassim and al-Hakim four months -- if not three years -- ago. U.S. District Judge James Robertson seems to be thinking the same way. At a hearing yesterday, Robertson said he may order the Bush administration to deliver the two men to his courtroom in Washington in order to get them out of Guantánamo Bay -- or at least require that the men be moved outside the barbed wire of Guantánamo's detention facility and into housing the U.S. provides there for Cubans and Haitians who are seeking asylum in the United States.
That would be a start toward making things right -- and a small step toward making this nation something like the one we remember.
-- Tim Grieve

The President's Best Friends

Bush vowing his continued support of one of the most repressive regimes in the world:

Saudi Arabia will continue to pump oil "to the best of our capability, with a
reasonable price" under its new leader, King Abdullah, a top Saudi diplomat said
Monday. Saudi Arabia holds a quarter of the world's known oil supplies, and
crude futures set a new record of $61.57 a barrel on news of King Fahd's death.
President Bush said: "I have spoken today to the new king, and the United States
looks forward to continuing the close partnership between our two
countries."

And Russia proving Freedom doesn't have to be in the march once Bush has looked into your leaders eyes and seen a good man.

http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/08/909d8cf2-3f4d-4cd8-9aa6-5d40efca4578.html

Why do these AF officers hate America?

From Salon:


"A fraud on the American people"

Just last month, John G. Roberts joined two other federal appellate judges in a decision that cleared the way for the Bush administration to use military tribunals to try detainees at Guantánamo Bay. Here's a question an enterprising senator might pose to Roberts in his upcoming Supreme Court confirmation hearings: If he knew then what we're learning today, would he still have subjected the detainees to the military tribunal process?

As the Wall Street Journal is reporting today, two Air Force lawyers quit their jobs on the Guantánamo prosecution team last year in protest over trials before military tribunals that they believe were rigged against the detainees. Read that last bit again: The lawyers quit their jobs on the prosecution team. These weren't defense lawyers, from whom one would expect to hear -- and, in fact, from whom one has heard -- complaints that the military tribunal process is unfair. Maj. John Carr and Maj. Robert Preston were Air Force prosecutors, and they quit their jobs on the prosecution team because even they thought that the tribunal process amounted to a kangaroo court.

In e-mail messages provided to the Journal and to the New York Times, Carr and Preston accused their superiors of rigging the tribunals against the detainees and charged their fellow prosecutors with ignoring allegations of torture, failing to protect evidence that could have exonerated some detainees and withholding information from their superiors.

In one March 2004 e-mail message, Carr said that Col. Frederick L. Borch, then the chief Guantánamo prosecutor, had "repeatedly" told the prosecutors who worked for him "that the military panel will be handpicked and will not acquit these detainees and we only needed to worry about building a record for the review panel" and academicians who would study the cases later. Preston said in another e-mail message that moving forward with the tribunals would be "a severe threat to the reputation of the military justice system and even a fraud on the American people." Preston wrote: "I lie awake worrying about this every night ... writing a motion saying that the process will be full and fair when you don't really believe it will be is kind of hard -- particularly when you want to call yourself an officer and a lawyer."

What if you want to call yourself a Supreme Court justice?