I have read Sir Percy on other boards.
Posted By: Lila on 2006-06-09
In Reply to: Sir Percy showed up on the C-board Y-day - ???
His posts are disturbing, and I absolutely do not mean they are disturbing in a thought provoking way.
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Oh, I see now that was to Sir Percy. sm
My eyes are playing tricks on me :)
I agree with you Sir Percy. sm
I read your responses on the conservative board too and I like your way of thinking.
Even though things can get out of hand with insults when the boards mix, I personally over the years have learned a lot by debating conservatives, the respectful ones. It seemed to me though some of the conservatives were determined not to come to any common ground with us liberals. And I'm guilty of that too to a certain extent. When I'm passionate about an issue there's no room to waver.
What we all need though is to realize this is not a game. These politicians especially need to realize this. That's the ones with an ounce of integrity. It's not about who wins or loses. Because if either side loses, we all do, so finding common ground is important.
My moniker is Democrat to #1. Be consistent and #2. Because I have been a registered Democrat since I could vote. That doesn't mean I have never voted for a republican congressman that I respected or thought was the beter candidate. There are some issues I am conservative on and I'm liberal on others. It's impossible to follow a party's idealogue down to the letter. We all think and feel differently.
The democratic party needs more powerful models like Murtha, Gore (albeit late), and Obama in order for me to gain the respect back I once had. I don't know what he's up to nowadays but Dean has proven to be a political disaster as the head of the DNC. It's coming to the point where all I see is a bunch of BIG DOGS who are willing to say any and everything to get that next vote so that can lead us all to hell in a hand basket.
Back to the media, let's face it the media does determine who will be in the political office. If you don't get the exposure no one knows about you, thus they don't vote for you. I met a Veteran for Peace member at the courthouse last month. He was an independent running for Alabama congress. He had petitions to get his name on the ballat. I read his agenda which included things like *exit strategy for the war in Iraq, immediate armor and equipment assessment for soldiers on the ground* and other social issues (I wish I could find the card). But I agreed with him and signed the petition. The truth is he probably won't make it on the ballat because of funding which means lack of exposure. It's all about the dollar, *the elite*, and if you don't have none then chances are you wont make it far.
Sir Percy showed up on the C-board Y-day
and said this:
*The real terrorists are in the WhiteHouse.
And his murder will only spawn a replacement.
Do you think for one second they are going to roll over for the imperialist invaders?
How soon do you think WE in America would stop fighting an invader?
Please - try to crack open your mind, just a sliver.*
Sounds like. S.P. is a little hopeful he will be replaced. I mean, S.P. thinks the real terrorists are in the White House, so he or she obviously is on the terrorists side.
You know there are extreme leftists in this country, and some occasionally show up on these boards hoping that someone takes the country down. You know it. You can deny it all day, but it's true.
I know Sir Percy and I'm sorry. I feel into one of Ann's well woven traps....sm
She really doesn't deserve the attention she is given. She feeds off of it.
I am afraid Sir Percy was on a roll and just had to get all that hate out! nm
I don't make the rules, Sir Percy. The Administrator was. The fact is. sm
I agree with you. But this board has a history and as you can see, on both boards, the minute an opposing point of view comes on board, the moderators are summoned. It's a fact. This used to be a combined board but it was separated because of constant insults and failure to behave as mature adults.
It has already been demonstrated that the two boards cannot mix.
To answer your question, no, I don't like to hang out with people who espouse my point of view, but the sniping was totally out of hand and no logical debate was taking place. I go to other web sites for that kind of debate.
That is if political boards like this are
allowed to remain in existence when Obama's regime takes over.
I posted it on some other boards that
I visit that have a lot of traffic, so hopefully that will get a lot of signatures. I also forwarded it to my friends & family & asked that they sign & forward it. So many people have no idea this is happening. One comment on the petition site said something to the effect of we shouldn't start doing that... 'START' doing it! They have no idea how long it's been going on!
Okay. Thanks. I understand now. Different rules for different boards.
nm
The administrator did not say we could not post on other boards. sm
She said to be respectful. Tell me where in my post I was disrespectful. Why not get off of this and start an intelligent debate instead of whole threads crying about being kicked out of the sandbox.
I never called anyone on these boards a liar. SM
That word is used and abused by many on this board though. Not by me.
What exactly does this have to do with lying on chat boards. nm
Some truth about ISP and message boards
Hey Observer, you are right to be concerned. ISPs are certainly available to administrators so that they can ban certain parties if they want to. This is not normally a problem if the administrator and monitors are fair and impartial, and posters stick to the rules.
We've seen in the past here however that certain folks had the ear of the Politics moderator and this led to vindictive bannings that shouldn't have happened in a fair forum. Some people were allowed to get away with abuse while others were banned for simply asking that they not be abused.
In all fairness to the moderator and administrator, however, they devised this new forum format and since that has happened, there's been very little interference and things seem a lot more equitable. I admit I haven't read down the posting list yet to see what you're referring to, so we'll see about that:)
I think the tighy Righties got very used to being able to bait, insult, and then kick off anyone they wanted and they really enjoyed it. Now they're screaming because people can actually talk back to them and give them a few doses of their own sour medicine. Regardless of what the posts below say, I for one thank the administrator and moderator for making this fairer play possible as much as they have.
That's why there are 2 boards for the conservatives who like the "yes man"
debates. I suggest to the people who don't like liberal ways go there. They will be able to high five and keep hope alive with the Bush yeppers and congregation.
I have visited a lot of chat boards.
But I have to say that of all the venomous and hateful posters, you are the winner. Most of the boards I frequent would have banned you a long long time ago. And that is left and right. It's says something about the administrator and fairness that they allow you to continue to post. I have no problem with differing viewpoints, it's just that you state yours in immature and horrific ways. I never say someone so consumed with hatred. It really must suck to be you.
The administrator came on ONCE not REPEATEDLY and she came on all boards.
She did not say to stay off the boards. She said not to slam posters. Now, if you can manage to take a second of your time and check out the conservative board, you will see the same thing is taking place there. The only difference is that they are not whining about it. Get real.
From looking on both boards, both sides are guilty.
,
Things are dead on both these boards
because posters who have any interest in rational debate have either been driven away or have easily found better places to go for discussion. Congratulations.
Already been discussed on both boards. Catch up. nm
x
boards and splinters my friends
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1024927/The-wife-John-McCain-callously-left-behind.html
There is a separte board for that. How many boards
The political posts have remained buried in between and under these posts since lunch time.
Then all boards should be combined as one - see message
Because you are bring "gab" issues to the political board, and as far as what I can see others are sick of it too.
Take the juvenile subjects of Bristol Palin and her boyfriend to the gab board - that is where it belongs.
Maybe there should be a whole new subject board for sick issues like how to be joyful when other people are going through hard times as long as it involves a relative of a republican politician.
Again, take the discussion of Bristol Palin and her boyfriend to the gab board, then we don't have to read the juvenile posts!!!!
Survey: How many hours a day do you spend on these boards? Please?! Thx. nm
.
This isn't new but it explains a lot about some of the ignorance found on these boards.
I think Bush has two kinds of supporters, from one extreme to the other. The ones who are quiet and don't resort to posting menacing messages on free message boards are usually oil company executives and other high-income people who are too busy counting their money and wouldn't embarrass themselves by publicly supporting this goofball in the White House.
The other kind, as we often see on these boards, is as described below.
The rest of the country seems to be sandwiched between these two extremes and is reasonable, sane, nonjudgmental and tolerant of others.
**********
Bush and the Christian Right: Going Backward to a Future Right out of the Middle Ages
Bush kicked off his campaign with his State of the Union Address, trying to use it to make the reality of the war in Iraq go away; and pretending, for the umpteenth time, that his tax cuts were about to lead to the creation of new jobs. And, of course, of course, of course, to talk about terrorism, posing as a defender of an America under siege.
The real force of his campaign -- although Bush didn't talk about it -- will come from the enormous campaign chest that he is accumulating; already it stands at 100 million dollars, which is more than any candidate ever collected in total before. It's clear he has the support of the biggest corporations in the country, and not just the oil and energy industries, but, what is more important, high finance.
But whatever else Bush will do in this campaign, his main concern will be to mobilize the voting block that put him in the White House in 2000, the so-called Christian Right. It was to that Christian Right that Bush was directly speaking at the conclusion of his State of the Union Address, when he hinted he might agree to their demands for a constitutional amendment preventing homosexuals from marrying, or when he proposed to campaign for teen-age abstinence, or when he promised to open more federal money to religious based charities.
Looking to the Faithful
Bush's re-election rests essentially on his ability to mobilize that section of the population which was the single most solid voting bloc in the last election, the so-called Christian Right, the home-grown version of the religious fundamentalism that has overtaken large parts of the world during these last few decades.
Vague though the term may be, Christian Right nonetheless carried enough meaning that almost 20% of the electorate in the last election identified themselves as such in exit polls. And 84% voted for Bush in 2000.
The difficulty in saying what the Christian Right is and what it stands for comes from its diversity. It is made up of literally thousands of little Protestant sects, each in its own particular corner, as well as a few bigger ones, like the Assemblies of God, the fundamentalist faction of the Southern Baptist Convention and the Church of Latter Day Saints, which is particularly strong in the Mountain West. Then there are all the radio and TV ministries -- the modern day equivalent of the old tent revival meetings with their huckster preachers touring the country, promising to heal the afflicted with a laying on of hands -- while the hands were in fact reaching into the pockets of the afflicted. The big difference today is the scale on which the huckstering is carried out, witness the wealth once collected by Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker (before their fall from grace when it was discovered that Jim -- of all people! -- had had a tryst with his secretary, then used ministry funds to pay her off). Or witness the appeals for money by Pat Robertson on his TV show, the 700 Club, which were often helped along by his regular ventures into long distance faith-healing via TV signal, praying for an unnamed listener out there who had a back problem or hemorrhoids, for example, claiming his prayer had healed the affliction.
There are also all those organizations which have mobilized around particular political and social issues, but who use a religious rhetoric to justify their demands. The most active -- although not the only ones -- are the ones that have carried out a fight against abortion rights practically since the 1974 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. Close behind in their activity were all those defend the family organizations that pushed to block passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, arguing that equal rights for women would destroy God's design for the family.
Finally, there are political action groups like the Christian Coalition, headed in its heyday by Pat Robertson. The Christian Coalition, like Falwell's Moral Majority before it, in reality is a kind of electoral machine, using religious language and references to mobilize voters, whether for Robertson and other activists from the Christian Right or for Republican candidates.
There is no single person or group of persons who speak for this whole. And there are important differences between the fundamentalists, the evangelicals (or born-agains) and the pentecostals -- the three big categories, into which most of the churches fall. Nonetheless, there are certain ideological common denominators that tie this loose grouping together. The vast majority of its ministers claim to follow the Bible literally -- in many cases even in so far as explaining the universe, the solar system and where this planet fits into the scheme of things; as well as how all of this, plus the animals, plants and especially human beings, came into existence, six thousand or so years ago, depending on the sect. This view, known as creationism, has often expressed itself in activity to change the curriculum in the schools, opposing creationism to well-accepted scientific theories about evolution or plate tectonics or the formation of the universe, for example, while pushing the educational book publishers to include the Biblical creationist explanations in science texts. And many of the Christian Right leaders advocate that their followers leave the public schools. In 1979, Jerry Falwell declared, I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, there won't be any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. It's still a goal of most of the Christian Right organizations, which today push for public moneys to go to religious schools. As for the early days Falwell talks about, when there were no public schools, only religious schools, those were the days when the children of working people did not go to any school at all.
Not only do the leaders of the Christian Right espouse the most non-scientific ideas, they are also the fount of some of the most socially backward views of society and the relations between human beings. Witness a statement Jerry Falwell sent out in 1999 in a fund-raising letter: these perverted homosexuals ... absolutely hate everything that you and I and most decent, god-fearing citizens stand for.... Make no mistake. These deviants seek no less than total control and influence in society, politics, our schools and in our exercise of free speech and religious freedom.... If we do not act now, homosexuals will own America!
Literal though their Biblical references may be, the activists and ministers are also highly selective, digging out precisely those Biblical quotations that justify the most reactionary prejudices found in current day society, including racism, the relegation of women to an inferior role, the despising of homosexuals, the exacting of revenge by the death penalty, etc.
A belief that has been widely spread and carefully maintained throughout this disparate Christian Right is the assertion that religion generally and Christianity specifically is under attack. The growth of a secular society is said to be paving the way for a new Armageddon, that is, the colossal final battle between the godly and the ungodly. When Armageddon came along -- or at least September 11 -- one of the leaders of the Christian Right, Jerry Falwell, couldn't resist the temptation to develop this idea more specifically: The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this.... throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million innocent little babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face, and say, `you helped this happen.' To which, Pat Robertson, on whose 700 Club show Falwell was appearing, replied, I totally concur.
Paying off Political Debts
George W. Bush may have won the vast majority of the Christian Right in his last election, but he won with only 48% of the total vote, and his camp knows that there is a part of the Christian Right that has become disappointed with the Republican party. Karl Rove, Bush's political handler, in discussing the 2000 election pointed out that four million fewer voters owing allegiance to the Christian Right went to the polls in 2000 than voted in 1994. A big part of Bush's activity over the last three years has been aimed at bringing these lost sheep back into the fold. On the one hand, he has worked to integrate the activists of the Christian Right much more thoroughly into the Republican Party apparatus; on the other hand, to convey, in the words of Tom DeLay, the second ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, that he has been put in the White House by God to promote a Biblical world view.
Among Bush's first appointees was an obstetrician/gynecologist who opposes prescribing contraceptives to single women. He made his name writing a book, Stress and the Woman's Body, which recommended the reading of specific scriptural passages as well as prayers for headache and premenstrual syndrome. This charlatan was appointed to chair the FDA's panel on women's health policy, which was scheduled to take up such issues as hormone replacement therapy and distribution of RU-486, a pill that can induce abortion in the first weeks of pregnancy. Two more of Bush's appointees to agencies dealing with abortion, family planning and reproductive rights of women were conservatives who opposed any federal funding for any kind of contraception, not to mention abortion.
A woman nominated to the National Advisory Committee on Violence against Women was the head of Independent Women's Forum, an organization that had opposed any investigation of violence against women. A nominee for the President's Advisory Committee on HIV and AIDS was a conservative evangelical who called AIDS, the gay plague.
A nominee for the NLRB was a board member for American Vision, which favored, among other things, putting the United States under biblical law, that is, turning it into a theocracy. It goes without saying that this organization opposed any rights for women.
Bush appointed a panel to write new guidelines to allow prayer in the public schools -- with a view toward sneaking in the backdoor, what the courts had already kicked out the front door.
And who could forget Bush's born again attorney general, John Ashcroft, who anointed himself with cooking oil before taking his oath of office, just as the Saul and David (of Old Testament fame) did when they assumed their administrative duties, -- as Ashcroft took great pains to explain.
Of course, Bush was doing what all winning politicians do: handing out posts to supporters. But, he was also using his appointments to legitimize the reactionary social attitudes of the Christian Right.
Pandering to a Reactionary Social Agenda
Whatever has been on Bush's real political agenda in support of the wealthy, he has made it a policy to appeal to and reinforce some of the most socially backward and vicious views, even if he often does so in a kind of coded language. It's enough for him to declare in the State of the Union Address, for example, that he pledges to defend the sanctity of marriage, for all those people who agree with Falwell's description of homosexuals to hear Bush talking to them, reinforcing their prejudices.
One of Bush's very first actions on taking office in 2001 was to cut off funding for international family planning organizations that even mention abortion. Among other things, he has since imposed severe restrictions on stem cell research -- stem cells come from aborted foetuses -- impeding research into Alzheimer's and other such degenerative diseases. He pushed to eliminate funding for sex education if it doesn't push abstinence, in place of birth control methods -- turning back the clock on the reduction of early teen-age pregnancy, accomplished over the last decades precisely because there was more ready information about, and access to, condoms and other birth control methods. His administration pushed through a bill recognizing an unborn foetus as a crime victim, if a pregnant woman is attacked. There are already laws that recognize such actions as crimes -- but this one was written so as to give implicit legal standing to the idea that a foetus is a person, opening the door to charge a doctor who performs an abortion with murder. The administration also introduced and pushed through bills making a late-term abortion procedure illegal -- without any exception for situations when a woman's life, health or well-being are endangered by continuation of the pregnancy. In fact, this is the only time that such late-term abortions are ordinarily legally available now. By closing down the exception, Bush was giving support to the most backward ideas about the role of women in society, that is, chattel, whose own life and health count for little.
Another of Bush's initiatives has been to call for the extension of vouchers -- the programs that force the public schools to give students money to attend private schools, almost 90% of which are religious-based schools. The federal government, however, is not in the position to impose this directly on school systems, which are locally controlled. Nonetheless Bush in 2002 proposed, but failed to get through a national system of vouchers. In 2003 he used his budget to do essentially the same thing: proposing a $2500 tax credit to parents of students in failing schools, which parents could collect on if they transferred their children to other schools, including private schools -- that is, religious schools -- or if the parents would home school their children.
Apart from the obvious support for religious schooling, this tax credit was a way to play to one of the pet projects of the Christian Right, which sees home schooling as a way to remove young children from the nefarious influences that they perceive percolating to their children via the public schools -- including no doubt, a scientific view of the world, not to mention the sex education that lurks in the background of health classes. To protect children from these influences, the Christian Right is ready to sacrifice their education, their socialization with other children, leaving them in the hands only of their own parents, who are not qualified to give them even the most basic grounding in mathematics, composition and the ability to communicate their ideas, as well as a scientific approach to studying the world, not to mention teaching them about the great literature of the world, history, advanced scientific studies, languages, art, music -- most of which the parents have never mastered themselves. It's a way to condemn children to backwardness.
At the same time, Bush has made a series of attempts to reduce the Head Start program, one of the most successful federal social programs, which provided support for early pre-school training for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. If this program has been so successful in improving the school performance of children from disadvantaged backgrounds, it's precisely because the children are brought together with their peers at an earlier age than ususal and are given training and education their parents aren't able to give them.
And although Bush has not gone so far -- yet -- as to propose that creationism be taught in the public schools, several of his appointees have required the National Park Service to sell a book in NPS stores that explains the creation of the Grand Canyon by linking it with the Old Testament flood of the Noah story. The author's introduction to the book includes the following sad passage: For years as a Colorado River guide I told people how the Grand Canyon was formed over the evolutionary time scale of millions of years. Then I met the Lord. Now I have a different view of the Canyon, which according to a biblical time scale can't possibly be more than a few thousand years old.
One of the most disgusting of Bush's campaigns has been carried out by cooking-oil-self-anointing Attorney General John Ashcroft: to reimpose the death penalty in all those states that have done away with it. George W. Bush in Texas had already made a name for himself by refusing to intervene when he was governor in any death penalty case, no matter how egregious the circumstances surrounding the case. This is particularly significant, given that Texas alone has accounted for 38% of all executions carried out in this country since the death penalty was reinstated. If there are a handful of other states that have also put quite a few people to death, including Florida where Brother Jeb Bush holds sway, most of the country is very hesitant about capital punishment. Ashcroft set out to change this by finding pretexts to file capital murder charges in cases that by rights should have been handled by the states. Significantly, every single one of the capital murder charges that Ashcroft has filed since taking office were in states (or Puerto Rico) that either practically or legally have foresworn capital punishment. Ashcroft's campaign hasn't been notably successful so far, with juries refusing in all but one of Ashcroft's 20 trials to return the death penalty. But this hasn't stopped Ashcroft, who currently has filed 25 new federal capital charges in cases that should fall under state jurisdictions, plus intervening in 12 cases where the Justice Department's own prosecutors had not asked for the death penalty.
It's nothing but a blood-soaked pandering to the oft-repeated call of the Christian Right for the Old Testament's vengeful demand: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
Finally, there was Bush's so-called faith-based initiative, which he referred to in his State of the Union address. Using various pretexts, Bush has ordered federal funds for social programs to be dispersed through religious-based charities and churches. Of course, the problem with social program funds today is not a lack of places to disperse them, it's a lack of funds to be dispersed, thanks to the continuing attacks on social programs, an attack that Bush has carried out in particularly vicious fashion.
This is not a social program -- it is nothing but a barely veiled proposal to direct some money in the direction of all these little churches whose ministers supported Bush -- and at a significantly higher rate than even their parishioners did in the last election.
While visiting a church in Louisiana in January to push for his faith-based social programs, Bush declared: This country must not fear the influence of faith in the future of the country. We must welcome faith in order to make America a better place.
The future Bush is preparing for this country comes straight out of the 19th century, when there were no social programs -- other than the charities run by churches or benevolent associations -- only the poor house, which was nothing but a jail to which impoverished people were sent when their jobs disappeared. Bush's future is 19th century capitalism, its horrendous exploitation reinforced by cultivating backward ideas, prejudices and religious superstition from the Middle Ages.
George W. Bush Is Himself Anointed Leader of the Christian Right
In December 2001, Pat Robertson resigned as president of the Christian Coalition. Gary Bauer, a leader of the Christian Right who ran against Bush in the 2000 Republican primary, explained it this way to the Washington Post: I think Robertson stepped down because the position has already been filled. [The president] is that leader now. There was already a great deal of identification with the president before 9-11 in the world of the Christian Right, and the nature of this war is such that it has heightened the sense that a man of God is in the White House.
But George W. Bush had not always been such a man of God, and the milieu of evangelicals, Baptists, fundamentalists, etc., had not always voted Republican.
The milieu which produced the Christian Right had long been concentrated among poorer whites in the South and border states, especially in rural areas, and in those industrial states like Michigan and Illinois that had attracted migration from the South. If in a more distant past, this evangelical milieu had been part of the base of Southern populist movements, since the 1930s, it was a traditional support for the Democratic Party. At the same time, the Christian fundamentalists provided a milieu in which the Ku Klux Klan had to some degree sunk roots. For decades, the Democratic Party, while using a populist language to address the poor whites of the South, was the chief enforcer -- and politically the beneficiary -- of Southern segregation. But with the development of the Civil Rights Movement, the break-down of Jim Crow in the South, and the apparent support for civil rights by the Democrats in the North (more apparent than real), the Republicans began to play the race card to attract this milieu and resurrect the Republican party in the South. In fact, the resurrection of the Republican party depended in good measure on the defection of part of the Southern Democratic Party apparatus, which went over to the Republican Party as a way to maintain their positions in the face of a growing black mobilization. The Democrats-turned Republicans pulled after them much of the Democratic Party's voting base. It is probably that by 1960, the majority of Christian fundamentalists -- upset by changes in Northern segregation and appalled at the idea of a Catholic president -- had shifted from the Democrats to the Republicans. By 1972, with the newly constituted Republican Party making the coded racist appeals in which Southern Democrats had long excelled, Nixon got 80% of the Christian fundamentalist vote, even though he personally did almost nothing to reach out to them.
Racist appeal has been a stock in trade of the Republicans ever since then. We could recall Senior Bush's use of the black criminal's picture in his 1988 campaign or Trent Lott's statement last year in a private Republican affair (When Strom Thurmond ran for president [on a segregationist platform], we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all the years.) But racist appeal alone was not enough for the Republicans to maintain this Southern electorate.
This electorate, which the Republicans pulled from the Democrats in the 1950s and '60s, had a mixed social composition. If there has always been an important part of the evangelicals, etc., made up of small shopkeepers and farmers, there was a significant part who were laboring people, rural or small town, for the most part quite poor. The Democrats since the time of Roosevelt had used a language that appealed to the social interests of the poorer layers of the population (which didn't prevent the Democrats from serving the class interests of the bourgeoisie). The Republicans by contrast had never done so. If the racial issue was enough to pull poor Southern whites over to Nixon, it wasn't enough to keep them solidly in the Republican camp.
Jimmy Carter, a Southern governor and himself a Baptist, retook a sizeable chunk, even if not the majority of the fundamentalist/evangelical vote in 1976 for the Democrats. To get it back, the Republicans began to play the anti-abortion card. That certainly didn't explain everything about the 1980 election -- joblessness was high, and the economic situation seemed to be getting worse. But the abortion issue, along with the possibility that the Equal Rights Amendment would be passed, also played an important part in these elections. To be more exact, the Republicans played on these issues to the hilt, by pushing laws restricting abortion rights and helping to block the Equal Rights Amendment in states. Reagan drew 75% of the fundamentalist/evangelical vote in 1984, Bush Senior, 70% in 1988 and Robert Dole, 65% in 1996.
But as the figures themselves show, the Republican share after the 1983 spurt was declining. Moreover, when Ross Perot ran an independent candidacy in 1992, attacking Bush senior for raising taxes and exporting jobs with free trade agreements, he took 19% of the total vote, including a significant amount from the Christian Right, making it impossible for Bush Senior to be re-elected. The Republicans' stand on abortion and related issues wasn't enough to overcome the population's unease facing increasing joblessness. Even if Bush senior tried to stress his own religious credentials -- inviting both Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, as well as Billy Graham out to the ranch, he was hard-pressed to appeal directly to the Christian Right. Bush Senior, bred to a life of privilege, was part of that Eastern upper class elite whose very way of life, including its high-church religion, was a bone of contention to the Christian Right.
It was George W. Bush who found the way to line up the Christian Right behind the Republican Party again.
Shucking the image of privilege along with his Yale and Harvard blazers, which he replaced with jeans and cowboy boots; dumping his eastern-born and educated accent for a cow country twang; leaving behind the Episcopalianism of his Yankee forebears; presenting himself like a born-again, his religious conversion worn on his forehead like a tattoo, he stepped forward to enter politics. One of the first actions he took was to commission the ghostwriting of a small autobiography to demonstrate his upstanding morality, a book in which he explained that he had been saved by the personal ministrations of none other than Billy Graham. Graham, according to Bush, had convinced him in 1985 and 1986 to give up his previous attachment to alcohol, and perhaps some other sins. Graham had planted a mustard seed of salvation in his soul -- which mustard seed let him sweep under the rug a series of criminal misadventures with drugs and alcohol, not to mention the fraudulent way he got into the National Guard to avoid service in Viet Nam -- actions that otherwise would have been an embarrassment for a politician pretending to stand for morality and family values. Bush has never since missed a chance to testify about his salvation. In a debate before the 2000 Republican primaries, when the candidates were each asked to name their favorite political philosopher, Bush quickly answered,Christ because he changed my heart. In a recent visit to a black church in Louisiana, Bush told of his decision to stop drinking, adding I wouldn't be sitting here if I didn't ask for Christ's help in my heart.
To be more exact, he wouldn't be sitting in the White House if he had not managed to make such a play of religiosity.
It's exactly that religiosity which has helped Bush cobble together a kind of merger between the Republican party and the organizations of the Christian Right. And he did it long before the 2000 election. By all accounts, it was George W. Bush who delivered a big chunk of the Christian Right for his father's 1988 election -- gladhanding activists and ministers from this milieu day after day during the primaries, pulling them away from Pat Robertson who ran as a Republican, continuing on all the way up to November.
Long before the 2000 election, George W. Bush had convinced the Christian Right that he was a man of God and would use the White House in their interests. They gave him their vote, and, as we already said, at a higher rate than to any previous candidate. At the same time, many of the activists were being brought into the Republican Party apparatus. A study done in 2002, printed in the magazine Campaigns and Elections, found that Christian Right activists held a strong position in 18 state Republican parties, and a weak position in only 7 states, with the rest in the middle. This was a significant increase since 1994, when there were 20 states in which the Christian Right influence was weak. It's obvious by the terms used, that the study is not talking about control of the Republican party -- no more than the unions ever controlled the Democratic party in those states where they were perceived to be in a strong position. But the Christian Right was giving the Republican party large number of activists that to some extent could counter the role that the unions have long played in getting out the vote for the Democratic party.
You Can't Lie to People Forever -- Even if Bush Thinks He Can
The Republican Party generally, and George W. Bush specifically, has pandered to the reactionary social attitudes and prejudices that circulate in the population and worked to reinforce them, contributing in recent years to the perception that religion is increasingly dominant.
In fact, the country has been moving for decades in a secular direction. The number of people who are actively religious -- as measured by weekly attendance at religious services -- continues to decline. In 1972, for example, 38% of the population said they went to religious services every week, whereas only 11% said they never went. By 2000, the relative positions were reversed. The non-church-goers had tripled, hitting 33%, while the faithful had decreased to 25%. This is still an enormous weight of backwardness on the population. But it seems much greater only because the politicians continue to push religion to the fore, trying to reinforce the hold it has on the population.
And not only the politicians. The reactionary prejudices that exist in the Christian Right milieu are consciously fanned not only by the whole Christian broadcasting network, but equally by parts of the mainstream media. Fox News Channel, for example, pushed itself to the top of TV news shows in a few short years through an enormous expenditure of money. The transformation of Fox into a vehicle for radical right wing ideas was the creation of Rupert Murdoch, well known for a vast empire of exceedingly right wing and scandal mongering newspapers around the world. Using part of his many billions to buy up Fox, Murdoch dumped most of the news staff in 1996, then hired Roger Ailes, who had long been in charge of media relations for Republican presidential candidates, to direct Fox News.
It should come as no surprise that part of Fox's agenda has been to back the Republicans. It has done a masterful job as the mouthpiece for every lie that the virtuous George W. Bush ever told, whether about the weapons of mass destruction or his middle-class tax cut.
A recent study that set out to examine how people get false ideas about news events asked people to evaluate a series of statements: for example, the assertion that the U.S. invasion of Iraq had found weapons of mass destruction or the assertion that most people in other countries supported the U.S. war to remove Saddam Hussein. Their answers were correlated with the news source they watched. The more that people watched Fox, the more they believed such obviously false assertions.
But pushing George's lies is not the only game in town for Fox. Another integral part of its agenda has been to reinforce many of the ideas and claims that circulate in the milieu of the Christian Right. Taking advantage of the holiday spirit, for example, Fox devoted a whole week at the end of December that carried the rubric, Christianity Under Attack, asserting among other things that there is a secular conspiracy to prevent children from praying, or to destroy the family.
Pushing people toward religion is an old trick, and one used all the more frequently as the situation of working people becomes more desperate.
Bush's main job in this society is to defend the functioning of an economic system which puts profit before everything else, human life included. Bush flaunts his faith in order to hide this reality, using religion as a drug to anesthesize the population to the dreadful consequences of his own policies.
This is an old and vicious trap, one that bourgeois politicians have long used to keep working people from fighting for their own interests.
Maybe Bush can go on telling lies about weapons of mass destruction; maybe he can go on drugging people with reactionary attitudes and superstitions.
But maybe not. An important part of the Christian Right, even as deformed as it is by its immersion in reactionary ideas, is made up of people whose main social characteristic is the exploitation they suffer at the hands of the capitalist class that controls both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Most of the activists of the Christian Right, along with a part of its electorate may well be managers, small entrepreneurs, disappointed professionals, ministers, etc. -- as some studies have shown. But a significant part of the voting base is still situated among laboring people, whether in the working class or in farming situations. And no more than the Democratic Party has ever been able to answer the most basic fundamental needs of the laboring people who looked toward it, neither can the Republican Party answer the demands of these voters.
The working class can mobilize for its own needs. In so doing, it can at the same time start freeing itself from the prejudices, superstitions and reactionary ideas that people like George W. Bush and his ilk have pushed.
January 25, 2004
Posts seem to get deleted on both boards, Lurker. sm
Pretty equally it seems. I have continued to post on this board, despite the slings and arrows, for some time, though not for awhile since I am in school. I have always suspected many posters here were the same person, so I guess my question is, so what? These accusations have been flying for years. If you get deleted cuz you were bashing on a board, them's the rules it seems.
The rule is that you are requested not to slam on other boards. sm
Conservatives and liberals are welcome to post on each other boards if it is done with respect.
How much time do you spend on both political boards sm
with an opinion to just about every post out there? Seriously. Are you a transcriptionist? Because if you are, you're in the wrong field.
As passionate as you are on our country and all that is going on, you should channel all of this emotional energy towards actually making a difference instead of rebutting every single statement - both Conservative and Liberal, like volunteering for your local conservative chapter or something.
Write a political column.
Run for office.
Hello, ACORN knows that the state election boards...nm
review and verify the applications that are sent in. Anyone with a brain would not have knowing sent them in if they knew they would be rejected. It was pure incompetence and stupidity.
This page is for the use of Liberals. Please do not bash their posts. There are other boards
available. For example, if you are a Conservative, please post on the Conservative forum.
Thank you,
Administrator
Starcat, there have been nameless trolls on these boards for years. sm
Democrat knows it, too. Or she has a very short memory. I am just setting the record straight here, because I am really tired of all this innocent why is everyone picking on us posting here.
It's POLITICAL Board, for MT boards, see Menu on your left.
//
Please post with respect and without personal insult when posting on each other's boards. Thank
nm
Honey, happy people don't throw hissy fits on chat boards. Get
.
This looks interesting. A long read, so will read it when I get home from work. nm
nm
Obviously u didnt read, I said NONE of them are moral. Read the post before spouting off.
I read on CNN (yes, I do read liberal stuff too..hehe)...sm
...that Karl Rove was actually very disappointed in the McCain campaign for airing negative type ads against Obama.
So I would say that Rove is definitely not in the hip pocket of the McCain campaign.
Good research sam - but a lot to read right now so gotta read it later
I've been goofing off too much from work. I appreciate what you wrote and will read when I'm done with work here.
sorry, should read I did not read post that way.
,
All you have to do is read up on Marxism, read up on...
black liberation theology, and look at what Obama is proposing. All of it a matter of public record, most of it from his own mouth. Your denial of it does not change the facts. If you support socialism, vote for him. Certainly your right. You are already wanting to squelch any kind of dissent...what's up with that? If you seriously consider calling someone a socialist a smear, you really need to read up on your candidate. I did not post a smear, I posted a fact. Redistribution of wealth is socialist and he already said he was going to do it...I heard him say it and it is now a campaign commercial. Sigh.
Some on this board can only read what they want to read (nm)
x
READ THE ARTICLE-READ OTHER
READERS COMMENTS!!!
Nan please read what I have to say
I've read your latest posts. You fit the decription of a troll at times, but I don't really care about that. DOesn't matter. What I do notice is that you incite other posters with calculated insults, condescension and twisted and sometimes cruel logic. Then when the object of your insults becomes angry and lashes back you pretend to be an unfairly accused innocent and the object of someone else's crazy, uncalled-for rage.
This is compatible with borderline personality disorder. My mother had it, a brother-in-law battles it and I am all too familiar with it.
I did read it.
Not posting the whole article puts the quote out of context. It's not really a way to do things on a chat forum, but then maybe you don't post in a lot of other forums. Those I frequent always post the whole article or at least a link. It would give you a lot more credibility. Take it for what it's worth.
Read this...
Pandora's Box
September 22, 2005
By Ken Sanders
You have to hand it to the Bush administration. No matter how bad things might be in Iraq, and no matter how dim the prospects are for Iraq's future, Bush & Co. still manage to look the public straight in the eye, smirk, and insist that the decision to invade Iraq was a good one. Call them determined, even stubborn. Call them dishonest, perhaps delusional. Regardless, the fact is that by invading Iraq, the Bush administration opened a Pandora's Box with global consequences.
Bush and his apologists have frequently promised that the invasion of Iraq will spread democracy and stability throughout the entire Middle East. That naive declaration could not be farther from the truth. Not only is Iraq itself in the clutches of a civil war, the U.S.-led invasion threatens to destabilize the whole of the Middle East, if not the world. It may have irrevocably done so already.
By most definitions and standards, Iraq is already in the throes of civil war. Whether defined as an internal conflict resulting in at least 1,000 combat-related fatalities, five percent of which are sustained by government and rebel forces; or as organized violence designed to change the governance of a country; or as a systematic and coordinated sectarian-based conflict; the requirements of civil war have long since been satisfied.
While our television screens are saturated by images of chaos and death in Iraq, the stories beneath the images are even more disturbing. Purely sectarian attacks, largely between Iraq's Sunni and Shiite populations, have been rising dramatically for months. According to Iraqi government statistics, such targeted attacks have doubled over the past twelve months. Police in Iraq are finding scores of bodies littering the streets, bodies of people who were blindfolded or handcuffed, shot or beheaded. The Baghdad morgue is constantly overwhelmed by bodies showing tell-tale signs of torture and gradual, drawn-out, agonizing death.
In Baghdad, Sunni neighborhoods live in fear of Shiite death squads like the Iranian-backed Badr Brigade of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), Iraq's leading Shiite governing coalition. Such death squads operate openly, in full uniform, and with the deliberate ignorance, if not outright sanction, of the Iraqi government. On a single day in August, the bodies of 36 Sunni Arabs were found blindfolded, handcuffed, tortured and executed in a dry riverbed in the Shiite-dominated Wasit province.
At the other end, Shiites face each day burdened by the terror and trauma of being the targets of constant suicide bombings. The army and police recruits killed by suicide bombs are predominantly Shia. In Ramadi, a Sunni stronghold, Shiites are fleeing their homes, driven out by murder and intimidation. On August 17, 43 Shiites were killed by bombings at a bus stop and then at the hospital where the casualties were to be treated.
There are less-violent examples of the deepening rifts between Iraq's Sunnis and Shiites since the U.S.-led invasion. By some estimates, nearly half of the weddings performed in Baghdad before the invasion were of mixed Sunni/Shiite couples. Since the invasion and its resulting instability and strife, such mixed weddings are all but extinct. This new-found reluctance of Sunnis and Shiites to marry each other is just another indication of the increasing isolation and animosity between the two populations.
The recently finalized Iraqi constitution does little to bridge Iraq's growing sectarian divides. The culmination of sectarian feuds passing for political debates, Iraq's constitution only ratifies the sectarian divisions of the nation. In the north are the Kurds who long ago abandoned their Iraqi identity, refusing to even fly the Iraqi flag. In the south is a burgeoning Shiite Islamic state, patterned after and influenced by Iran. Both groups have divvied up Iraq's oil reserves amongst themselves. Left in the nation's oil-free center are the Sunni Arabs, dismissed as obstructionist by the Kurds and Shiites. So unconcerned are the Kurds and Shiites with a unified Iraq that they both maintain their own large and heavily-armed militias.
Of course, the constitution still has to be ratified. If it is ratified, it will likely be by a Shiite/Kurdish minority, effectively maintaining the status quo that motivates, in part, the Sunni-led insurgency. If, on the other hand, the constitution is defeated, there's little reason not to believe that the three major factions in Iraq won't resort to forcibly taking what they want. Either way, in the words of one Iraqi civilian, God help us.
The discord in Iraq is not limited to fighting between Shiites and Sunnis. In Basra, for instance, rival Shiite militia groups constantly fight each other. The notorious Badr Brigade, backed by SCIRI, have repeatedly clashed with dissident cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi militia. The Badr Brigade frequently works in conjunction with Basra police and are suspected of recently kidnapping and killing two journalists. Suspecting that the Basra police have been infiltrated by both the Badr and Mehdi militias, the British military sent in two undercover operatives to make arrests. The British operatives were themselves arrested by the Basra police. When the British went to liberate their men, they found themselves exchanging fire with the Basra police, their heretofore allies, and smashing through the prison walls with armored vehicles.
Iraqis aren't merely growing increasingly alienated from each other, as well as progressively opposed to coalition forces. Iraq's estrangement from the rest of the Middle East and the Arab world is widening as well. Seen more and more as a proxy of the Iranian government, the Shiite/Kurd dominated Iraq finds itself at odds with the Sunni-dominated Middle East. For instance, since the U.S.-led invasion, not a single Middle East nation has sent an ambassador to Baghdad. And, despite promises to do so, the Arab League (of which Iraq was a founder) has yet to open a Baghdad office.
There are, clearly, many reasons other than sectarianism for Iraq's estrangement from the Middle East and Arab nations, security being the foremost. However, Iraqi diplomacy, or lack thereof, is also to blame. From chiding Qatar for sending aid to Katrina victims but not to Iraq, to arguing with Kuwait over border issues, to blaming Syria for the insurgency, Iraq's fledgling government seems to have taken diplomacy lessons from the Bush administration. In fact, with the exception of Iran, Iraq has butted heads recently with nearly every Middle East nation.
Iraq's constitution hasn't won it any friends in the Arab world, either. For instance, Iraq drew strong condemnation from the Arab world when a draft of its constitution read that just its Arab people are part of the Arab nation. Only after the outcry from the Arab League and numerous Arab nations, did Iraq change its constitution's offending language. (The argument by Bush's apologists that the Iraqi constitution's alleged enshrinement of democratic principles threatens neighboring countries is unconvincing. Syria and Egypt both have constitutions that guarantee political and individual freedoms. In practice, however, such guarantees have proven meaningless. Why, then, should they feel threatened?)
Iraq's varied relationships with Middle Eastern nations will be immeasurably significant should Iraq descend further into civil war. For example, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Jordan would most likely come to the support of Iraq's Sunnis. (There are already signs that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq has impacted Saudi Arabia's Sunni population. According to a recent study, the invasion of Iraq has radicalized previously non-militant Saudis, sickened by the occupation of an Arab nation by non-Arabs.) Iran would only increase its already staunch support for Iraq's Shiites. Turkey would also likely be drawn in, hoping to prevent any Kurdish success in Iraq from spilling across its border. Moreover, Iraq's violent Sunni-Shiite discord could easily spark similar strife in Middle East countries like Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.
In such a worst-case scenario, Iraq's instability would spread and infect an already unstable region. If the Gulf region were to further destabilize, so too would the global economy as oil prices would skyrocket, plunging the U.S. and so many others into recession.
Put another way, Bush's illegal, ill-conceived, short-sighted, and naive venture in Iraq could reasonably result in total chaos in not just Iraq and the Middle East, but the world over.
A Pandora's Box, if there ever was one.
Sorry, but can you read?
pizza. Don't you think they've thought of moving? It isn't always practical to simply uproot. In this case, there is an elderly family member and children. Again, from the throne passing judgement.
This makes no sense: I'm talking about a certain segment of our society who refuse to learn, refuse to work, and who YOU wish to bring up to an equal place as the rest of society who works hard and earns what they have. Huh? You still missed the point...good grief.
I read that. And then MT goes on
to criticize you for suggesting that posters visit eXtremely Political and is aghast at the post that calls for shooting someone who doesn't agree...... she just FAILS to mention that it's a NEOCON who wants to shoot LIBERALS!!!
This is what she wrote:
Sorry, had to answer this one. There have a Whine to Management option. That is PERFECT for gt. Talking about shooting other posters, atheism and porno. Yeah, that's a great place alright. And now they have THE gt as a member. Does it get any better than that. Although, my thoughts are they won't suffer her long. Those people are pirrhanas.
Well, if that ain't the pirrhana calling the shark hungry!
Perhaps you need to read
No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor... otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief... All men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain their opinions in matters of religion, and... the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities. --Thomas Jefferson: Statute for Religious Freedom, 1779. ME 2:302, Papers 2:546
Our civil rights have no dependence upon our religious opinions more than our opinions in physics or geometry. --Thomas Jefferson: Statute for Religious Freedom, 1779. ME 2:301, Papers 2:545
We have no right to prejudice another in his civil enjoyments because he is of another church. --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Religion, 1776. Papers 1:546
I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendency of one sect over another. --Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1799. ME 10:78
Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle. --Thomas Jefferson to Richard Rush, 1813.
I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others. --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Dowse, 1803. ME 10:378
Our particular principles of religion are a subject of accountability to God alone. I inquire after no man's, and trouble none with mine. --Thomas Jefferson to Miles King, 1814. ME 14:198
and many more: http://www.theology.edu/journal/volume2/ushistor.htm
You need to read that again.
Yes, it is US law, according to the Constitution.
The United States signed the UN Charter -- which is a treaty. Let me repeat:
Article VI of the U.S. Constitution makes treaties into which the U.S. has entered the supreme Law of the Land.
In other words, we made a treaty with a bunch of other countries to abide by certain rules, including the use of force. Since we entered into this treaty with the UN, that makes it the supreme Law of the Land -- US Law.
Sure, you can say, So what? Nobody's going to take us to court. We can do anything we want. But if we as a country aren't going to respect our agreements with other countries and our own laws, why should anybody else? Nobody is above the law, right?
By the way, I think we were fully justified in invading Afghanistan.
I have read this...
So what. At one point you say he was involved with AIM and had a lackey break someone's arm. Now you are providing us with an article that disavows any connection with AIM at all. Which is it? Could it be that some folks who were involved with AIM in the late 60s early 70s are no longer involved, or are dead or have had major disagreements along the way about what should be done. Banks, Russell Means and Peltier don't even speak to each other any more. That is sad, in my opinion. Trudell, on the other hand, is still around. (I had the pleasure of meeting him last Saturday in Hollywood Florida at the Native American Music Awards) and still fights the good fight although his wife and children were burned to death in an FBI arson. There is a video, called simply Trudell. It has aired on PBS stations. It is also available from Trudell's web site. It you get a chance, see it. There is so much information out there that no one seems to care much about as regards the American Indian from Columbus to today. The history is always written by the victor and the American Indian history is distorted.
You can read whatever you want...
into what people say. Some are not very tactful and some, like our president, just can't get a syntax together to save their souls. I still think the sentiment was not that these Americans do not want democracy. I still think they thought we **deserved** to be surprised because we have ignored Middle East history, the British colonization, the politics, the culture, the nature of Islam when, in reality, bearing in mind our support for Israel and our dismissal of the Arab states, it should not have been a surprise. This has been brewing for quite some time. That is not the same thing. I really don't know what those 2 had in their hearts but I truly believe that one saying the US has treated the Arab states badly in the past does not make one a **terrorist** or a communist or a democracy hater. These people attempt to see all sides of things, in all colors, not just black and white. Those are the people who will ultimately garner peace if it is at all possible. It will not come at the barrel of a gun, no matter what has happened in the past.
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