German anti-Nazi activist, Pastor Martin Niemöller:

In Germany they first came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me —
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

• Religious freedom....not for long. - Froggy went a courtin
  • Connecticutt considers bill that sidelines - Backwards typist
    • German anti-Nazi activist, Pastor Martin Niemöller: - A.Nonymous
      • Thanks for that. As soon as I heard the news, - Backwards typist
        • No problema... - A. Nonymous
  • LOL.....(sm) - Just the big bad
    • Couldn't have said it any better myself! - sm - Topaz
    • Funny how the very people - Unbelievable.
      • Yeah, I remember the "Catholics for Bush" signs during the 2004 election - Mrs. Bridger
      • No, what is it with YOU people? - Topaz
      • Clarification....(sm) - Just the big bad
        • Amen, sister! - Mrs. Bridger
  • Starting at the top and working their way down........sm - m

The messages you are viewing are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select the boards given in left menu

I wanted to address an exchange below that occurred between myself and a couple of others on the board (just the big bad and another poster who did not use anything to identify herself) last night.  In response to my post about the righteous prevailing meaning the Israeli's would prevail because they are the "righteous", just the big bad responded "So was Hitler righteous?"  She was likening the Israeli's treatment of the Palestinians as being akin to Nazi Germany's treatment of the Jews.  I then pointed out her anti-Semitic rhetoric.  To which I was blasted for accusing an anti-Zionist as being an anti-Semitic.

I want to point out to many of you who hold strong opinions regarding the Israel/Palestinian conflict, there is a very fine line between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, a line that was very clearly crossed when just the big bag posted her Hitler remark, a line many have crossed in this discussion by likening the Gaza Strip to a concentration camp.  When you say these things you have become an anti-Semitic.  Below is an excerpt from an article written by Ami Isseroff:

If you judge a Jewish state by standards that you apply to no one else; if your neck veins bulge when you denounce Zionists but you've done no more than cluck "well, yes, very bad about Darfur";

if there is nothing Hamas can do that you won't blame 'in the final analysis' on Israelis;

if your sneer at the Zionists doesn't sound a whole lot different from American neoconservative sneers at leftists;

then you should not be surprised if you are criticized, fiercely so, by people who are serious about a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians and who won't let you get away with a self-exonerating formula "I am anti-Zionist, but not anti-Semitic" to prevent scrutiniy.  If you are anti-Zionist and not anti-Semitic, then don't use the categories, allusions, and smug hiss that are all too familiar to any student of prejudice.   

I think that sums it up.

I'm someone who believes in minding my own business.  What others do in their family lives is none of my business.  There hasn't been one single (or married) gay person who has ever hurt me.

On the other hand, the policies of the last eight years have hurt me a great deal.  I don't have health insurance, so McCain can't tax mine, but he will tax everyone else's.

I want a President who can speak English (for a change), one who is intelligent and even tempered, and one who not only acknowledges that there is a huge problem with the middle class but whose entire platform has been devoted to solving that problem.

One day, McCain says the "fundamentals of the economy are strong."  The next day, he's canceling a debate to rush back to Washington to fix the "crisis," except that he doesn't really "rush," and he didn't cancel the debate.  He's running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

Obama's slogan has always been change, from the very beginning, and McCain has stolen that slogan.

I'm just personally sick and tired of politicians who are pro-corporations and anti-Americans.

Corporate tax breaks simply don't work.  The beneficiaries of these breaks pocket the money.  They don't create jobs; they outsource them.  As MTs, we should know that more than anyone.

Obama wants to reward businesses who KEEP jobs in America.  That's why I voted for him, along with the other reasons above, and that's why my daughter and son-in-law also voted for him, so he has received three votes from this household alone.

The "trickle-down" theory doesn't work and depends on the non-existent benevolence of greedy executives.  It's time to try the "trickle-up" theory, IMHO.

Everyone is so upset at the thought of rising taxes.  I wish someone would tell me just HOW we expect to pay for all Bush's wars, as this will fall to the next President, along with the present financial fiasco.

Can we say brown shirts?  How about SS?  Gestapo may be a more familiar term?

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt2yGzHfy7s

That's where its going.

The state of Hawaii has backed Andy Martin. CNN, Factcheck.org and Obama campaign exposed as liars.

http://contrariancommentary.blogspot.com/

Barry is lying to the people and they don't care.  They don't care that the constitution is not being followed. 

Whether Barry wins or not I believe Hillary should file lawsuit to sue him and the DNC chair for covering it up.

Decided to post this because it fits so much to today.  Same old media tactics too. 

A Time to Break Silence

By Rev. Martin Luther King

By 1967, King had become the country's most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his Beyond Vietnam speech delivered at New York's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 -- a year to the day before he was murdered -- King called the United States the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.

Time magazine called the speech demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi, and the Washington Post declared that King had diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people.

Here is where the racial tension at the heart of Mr. Obama's campaign flared into view. He either shared these beliefs or, lacking good judgment, decided it politically expedient for an ambitious young black politician trying to prove his solidarity with all things black, to be associated with these rants. His judgment and leadership on the critical issue of race is in question.

While speaking to black people, King never condescended to offer Rev. Wright-style diatribes or conspiracy theories. He did not paint black people as victims. To the contrary, he spoke about black people as American patriots who believed in the democratic ideals of the country, in nonviolence and the Judeo-Christian ethic, even as they overcame slavery, discrimination and disadvantage. King challenged white America to do the same, to live up to their ideals and create racial unity. He challenged white Christians, asking them how they could treat their fellow black Christians as anything but brothers in Christ.

When King spoke about the racist past, he gloried in black people beating the odds to win equal rights by arming "ourselves with dignity and self-respect." He expressed regret that some black leaders reveled in grievance, malice and self-indulgent anger in place of a focus on strong families, education and love of God. Even in the days before Congress passed civil rights laws, King spoke to black Americans about the pride that comes from "assuming primary responsibility" for achieving "first class citizenship."

Last March in Selma, Ala., Mr. Obama appeared on the verge of breaking away from the merchants of black grievance and victimization. At a commemoration of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march for voting rights, he spoke in a King-like voice. He focused on traditions of black sacrifice, idealism and the need for taking personal responsibility for building strong black families and communities. He said black people should never "deny that its gotten better," even as the movement goes on to improve schools and provide good health care for all Americans. He then challenged black America, by saying that "government alone can't solve all those problems . . . it is not enough just to ask what the government can do for us -- it's important for us to ask what we can do for ourselves."

Mr. Obama added that better education for black students begins with black parents visiting their children's teachers, as well as turning off the television so children can focus on homework. He expressed alarm over the lack of appreciation for education in the black community: "I don't know who taught them that reading and writing and conjugating your verbs were something white. We've got to get over that mentality." King, he added later, believed that black America has to first "transform ourselves in order to transform the world."

But as his campaign made headway with black voters, Mr. Obama no longer spoke about the responsibility and the power of black America to appeal to the conscience and highest ideals of the nation. He no longer asks black people to let go of the grievance culture to Transcend racial arguments and transform the world.

He has stopped all mention of government's inability to create strong black families, while the black community accepts a 70% out-of-wedlock birth rate. Half of black and Hispanic children drop out of high school, but he no longer touches on the need for parents to convey a love of learning to their children. There is no mention in his speeches of the history of expensive but ineffective government programs that encourage dependency. He fails to point out the failures of too many poverty programs, given the 25% poverty rate in black America.

And he chooses not to confront the poisonous "thug life" culture in rap music that glorifies drug use and crime.

Instead the senator, in a full political pander, is busy excusing Rev. Wright's racial attacks as the right of the Rev.-Wright generation of black Americans to define the nation's future by their past. He stretches compassion to the breaking point by equating his white grandmother's private concerns about black men on the street with Rev. Wright's public stirring of racial division.

And he wasted time in his Philadelphia speech on race by saying he can't "disown" Rev. Wright any more than he could "disown the black community." No one has asked him to disown Rev. Wright. Only in a later appearance on "The View" television show did he say that he would have left the church if Rev. Wright had not retired and not acknowledged his offensive language.

As the nation tries to recall the meaning of Martin Luther King today, Mr. Obama's campaign has become a mirror reflecting where we are on race 40 years after the assassination. Mr. Obama's success has moved forward the story of American race relations; King would have been thrilled with his political triumphs.

But when Barack Obama, arguably the best of this generation of black or white leaders, finds it easy to sit in Rev. Wright's pews and nod along with wacky and bitterly divisive racial rhetoric, it does call his judgment into question. And it reveals a continuing crisis in racial leadership.

What would Jesus do? There is no question he would have left that church.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120726732176388295.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

WEST BEND, Wis. (AP) - Thirty-three pastors in 22 states used their sermons to make pointed recommendations about political candidates today.

The effort was orchestrated by the Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund.

The conservative legal group plans to send copies of the pastors' sermons to the Internal Revenue Service with hope of setting off a legal fight and abolishing restrictions on church involvement in politics.

Critics call it unnecessary, divisive and unlikely to succeed.

The Reverend Eric Williams of Columbus has organized 55 religious leaders across the nation to file a complaint about the ADF's challenge.

The minister with the liberal United Church of Christ says churches should stand apart from the government.

The founding pastor of a second Colorado church has resigned over gay sex allegations, just weeks after the evangelical community was shaken by the scandal surrounding megachurch leader Ted Haggard.

Haggard, a gay-marriage opponent, admitted to unspecified sexual immorality when he resigned last month as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and pastor of the 14,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs. A male prostitute had said he had had sex with Haggard for three years.

On Sunday, Paul Barnes, founding pastor of the 2,100-member Grace Chapel in this Denver suburb, told his evangelical congregation in a videotaped message he had had sexual relations with other men and was stepping down.

Dave Palmer, associate pastor of Grace Chapel, told The Denver Post that Barnes confessed to him after the church received a call last week.

The church board of elders accepted Barnes' resignation on Thursday.

On the videotape, which The Post was allowed to view, Barnes told church members: I have struggled with homosexuality since I was a 5-year-old boy. ... I can't tell you the number of nights I have cried myself to sleep, begging God to take this away.

Barnes, 54, led Grace Chapel for 28 years. He and his wife have two adult children.

Palmer said in a written statement that While we cannot condone what he has done, we continue to support and love Paul.

According to dictionary.com, the meanings of the N-word are “deeply disparaging and are used when the speaker deliberately wishes to cause great offense.”  They go on to say, conversely, “it is sometimes used among African-Americans in a neutral or familiar way.”  Since he whispered the statement behind what he thought was a cold microphone, it is highly unlikely that Rev. Jackson intended to cause great offense and his use of the word probably falls into the latter category of usage. 

For example, the N-word can become much less offensive and even assume neutrality within historical discourse, literature, poetry, cinema theater and the like.  One could further argue that within certain contexts (i.e. rap music, conversations within the black households, neighborhoods and businesses, to name a few) connotations of the word can be construed so as to convey a sense of community…even a brotherhood, of sorts.  Language is fluid, dynamic and vital in its nature, not static or one-dimensional.  Context, message, intent, environment, speaker and audience all impact the ultimate nuance of meaning in all forms of communication. 

I agree with you and take deep offense at the use of the N-word, regardless of who says it.  However, I would like to comment on some of the other points you raised in your post.  A careful read of the actual statement shows that Rev. Jackson did not use this epithet to personally attack Obama.  Rather, he was referring to the black population as a whole.  Granted, his choice of words was extremely poor (at least from a white perspective), but the statement was not meant for public scrutiny.  It was spoken from one black individual to another, much the same was that Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s statements were made from black preacher to black congregation. 

As a white person, I do not believe I can sit in judgment one way or another regarding his choice of words when taken completely out of context, in the same way I am not qualified to criticize the sermons of Rev. Wright.  I would like to think that I am intelligent enough to understand that, having lived in the US as a white person both before and after the civil right eras (1948 to present), I have not experienced life in America the same way black people have.  They are entitled to their own “take” on their own lives.  Who am I to tell them how to “tell it like it is?”

One last point.  I am sure that much flap and bruhah will ensue over this unfortunate news.  However, the very fact that Rev. Sharpton, you, I, the media and countless others will be having this debate over our outrage and dismay is a testament as to just how effective Rev Jackson and other early leaders in the civil rights movement were in defining the key issues, defying status quo of his times, enlisting support for the cause, effectively engaging his opposition in ongoing bipartisan initiatives over nearly 4 decades and producing fruitful, far-reaching and substantial bodies of legislation from which today’s black community continue to reap bountiful benefits and blessings.  They weathered storms of protests, incarceration, series after series of setbacks and reversals, and buckets of bloodshed in their efforts to secure the civil liberties and rights that reach far beyond the black community to encompass other forms of discrimination against women, gays, immigrants and the poor, to name a few…all so casually taken for granted and so easily dismissed in the blink of an eye with one ill-chosen, unfortunate slip of the tongue. 

For those of us whose memories reach further back than the latest round of CNN sound bytes and chat room chatter, we probably would forgive Obama should he decide not to denounce Rev Jackson’s support, nor would we feel driven to force him to abandon his own pastor of 20 years for the sake of our own righteous indignation. 

Of course, we all know the Christian Right will haul out the WMDs to slay the messenger, but for the rest of us, this will be a pretty interesting read.  I have not had a chance to completely view the video, but it will be fascinating to see how the Christian Right can bash this Pentacostal Worldview.  Here's the link.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/02/palins-church-may-have-sh_n_123205.html