Move over Godsman Huckabee. Apparently McCain actually showed up in the Senate a few days ago to grandstand vote. His campaign pitch effort: halt pork-barrel spending. He lost, 71-29 vote. McCain later said “We were voting on major issues of profound consequences with no discussion, no debate and 10 minutes to vote.” A fair opine. But then the 4-term senator said this:
“Anyone who had the misfortune of watching it will know how hard it is to do the Lord’s work in the city of Satan.”
We already know that he sold his soul with his recent vote-for-torture. We know that he has greedliy accepted the endorsement of any fundie he can find, be they anti-gay, anti-catholic, anti-islam, pro-massacre Rod Parsley, John Hagee or others. What we don’t yet know is, has he totally lost his mind, or is he just testing for his black belt in Disgustingly Craven Politician?
h/t TP
…the climate in the City of Satan is quite nice this time of year. And the history! Does Jet Blue have any direct flights from Logan? I need a vacation. What time is last call there?
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p>Is the City of Satan in the rust belt? I bet if the economy wasn’t heading into recession and there were more jobs created it would be far easier to do the Lord’s work. But I heard the Lord pays peanuts anyway.
book your train now!
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p>btw, i was assuming that by “lord”, mccain meant the lord of darkness.after all, this is the sort that hagee, parsley et al. like to conjure up…or conjure for.
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p>but it all begs the question – why is obama being raked over the coals for a few sermons of one man, while mccain is apparently in the free and clear partying with well-known hate mongers and snake oil salesmen?
…race.
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p>Wright said some controversial things, but the sermons would be far less controversial if they weren’t coming from an angry Black man. Put the same words in a soft-spoken White pastor and this is a minor story.
i think also that bushco has trained us to equate the gop with bizarre pseudo christianity. the press is habituates, as is much of the electorate. if it hadn’t been for ellen degeneres, would the msm ever have picked up the sally kern story? doubt it. bushco has inured us to anything crazy-hateful as long as it is nominally cloaked in christianity.
Many members of the Press just enjoyed an excellent BBQ at the McCain residence. McCain has made a special effort at co-opting the press and it has largely succeeded.
…he says Costco’s are the best. I wonder if rib donations can be found on the FEC website, lo?
Cheney is Emperor Palpatine- McCain might be Vader, though
McCain is anti-everything, inotherwords. That’s probably true. Regarding anti-catholic: Isn’t John McCain a Catholic?
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p>As much as I’m not exactly bowled over by any of the candidates running for t he 2008 Presidential election, I also believe that McCain would be an absolute disaster as POTUS. He’d be far more likely to keep us in Iraq indefinitely, and to wage war on Iran than either Obama or possibly Hillary Clinton. Unfortunately, neither H. R. Clinton or Obama are the ideal candidates eiether; they, too both made mistakes regarding our war on Iraq; Hillary voted for authorization and continuation of the war, and Obama also voted for funding our occupation of Iraq. Yet, at the same time, I believe that Obama might be more likely to begin a withdrawal of our troops from Iraq. An Obama presidency won’t undo the damage done by the G. W. Bush Administration overnight, nor would it undo more than 200 years of virulent racism that’s been deeply ingrained and immeshed into the very fabric of our society & culture since
day one. However, a McCain Presidency would definitely be a disastrous continuation or worsening of our situation under the Bush Administration.
is laughable.
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p>Why weren’t you going all over Obama in that video about his racist former pastor when Obama was all about Jesus there? Don’t tell me you’re saving all your anti-Fideist blathering for just the Republicans! There’s enough to go around for everyone!
slip of the hand, I meant “Anti-American”.
seems to be the most offensive line. Because being damned isn’t like being reproached or given a time out, damning is forever, and it’s expressing absolute disapproval, not mere “it should do better” but “it should be wiped off the map”.
is as fair as quoting jesus as saying “cast the first stone!”. context is important, wouldn’t you agree?
I thought I explained… It’s about the judgment he’s making about America, it doesn’t matter how he arrived at that judgment at all. He’s saying America is thoroughly appallingly absolutely bad and should be hated by God and all who love God. The President obviously cannot hate the country he’s asking to lead.
Do you subscribe to Hyperbole Illustrated?
Make Shit Up Illustrated
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p>I’d also like a direct quote from Obama saying he hates the country he’s asking to lead. Find me evidence of Obama hating any country, let alone the US.
and that was Wright’s quote. It doesn’t mean Obama agrees with it, and Obama has said he doesn’t, that he rejects it, etc. With that, it should be over. But you seemed to be saying that he needn’t have done that, because you couldn’t think of any of Wright’s quotes that needed repudiating in order to be President. That one did, agreed?
you just made up your own verbiage. not very reality-based of you.
…because Americans only hear and react to soundbites and refuse to engage in any measured and sophisticated criticism of the actual and contextualized statements. So yes, I agree Obama must repudiate.
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p>I know what Wright said, but I think it is impossible with any certainty to extrapolate your interpretation that Wright is asserting his belief that America is “appallingly absolutely bad”. Unless of course you can find a direct quote of Wright saying exactly that.
to keep the conversation off of mccain.
it is total. It isn’t just a little constructive criticism, it is a final judgement of total hatred. Something tells me you two don’t want to understand.
while McCain is actively being supported by some bona fide perverters of christianity. and not a word out of you about it. why it that?
I totally agree with him. But Obama can’t, not if he wants to be President. I don’t know anything about McCain’s religious advisors, I always thought of him as not religious.
you had better get on the stick and inform yourself about his religious affiliations. then come back and tell us how terrible obama is in comparison. if you can without crossing your fingers behind your back.
Your argument here is effective, but only with those who are already ideologically disposed to the left anyway. Otherwise, it may fall flat. Most of us have become slightly immune to crazy talk emanating from the evangelical pulpit– Falwell, Robertson, et al. because their every silly statement (Robertson on 9/11; Falwell on the Teletubbies) is widely covered. Outrage is therefore diluted at this point. General public outrage on evangelical opposition to abortion or SSM is simply not reality, at least in 2008.
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p>Crazy talk emanating from the left side of the spectrum is simply not very well covered, and is therefore going to be much more of a shock to 90% of the actual voting public.
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p>I agree that it would be useful to lash McCain to as many right wing nuts as possible. I just think that any such effort will require twice the effort to deliver half of the zing of these Rev Wright videos.
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p>So far, the most coherent argument among Obama supportes that is made is that the questioning of the Rev. Wright or Obama’s ties to same is racist or “race baiting.” At least thus far, this does not inspire confidence that the Obama campaign can react effectively to this sort of thing, and raises the specter of a November drubbing.
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p>We ought to be rooting for Obama to get up off the mat. He won’t do so, at least not without tanking any November potential he has, by whining about the unfairness of it all.
-Quote of uncertain historical accuracy spoken by Danny Huston (as Sam Adams) in last night’s “John Adams, episode 2” on HBO.
I would say that puts the Vatican in line with Reverend Wright. Does that mean that the Catholic Church in America is an anti-American organization?
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p>Reverend Wright:
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p>Pope Paul VI:
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p>Vatican Council II:
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p>U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response, 1983, no. 302:
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p>If America committed a “crime against God” such as “killing innocent people” in the course of “indiscriminate destruction of whole cities”, might not “God damn* America”?
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p>*damn |dam| verb [ trans. ] condemn, esp. by the public expression of disapproval : intellectuals whom he damns as rigid doctrinaire idealists.
a good rationale for McCain to sign on with “Rev” John Hagee, who calls the Roman Catholic Church “The Great Whore”.
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p>(I put “rev” in quotes because i can find no evidence that he is an ordained minister. i’m happy for confirmatory information in either direction, with citation.)
He had to distance himself because of statements like this one. Everyone assumes it was about contraception or abortion, but it was also because of statements like that one.
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p>And, note that it’s the acts that are condemned by the Church, not the country, so a Catholic President would presumably try to avoid doing more such acts and still hold out hope for God’s blessing. As to whether God has damned America, dude, God has already damned everyone, and only through his mercy are some people spared justice.
Where does the Catholic Church say that they separate the country and its government from its actions in its condemnations? You’ll need some textual examples to back up your assertion.
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p>I also like the leap of logic where on one hand you are willing to compartmentalize and separate the condemnation of the acts of August 1945 from the country that ordered those attacks, but on the other hand, because Wright – who used language similar to Pope Paul VI’s and Vatican II – said something in an angry tone, you’re willing make the jump and lump Obama into the hate America crowd.
I don’t think Obama hates America, I don’t even think Wright hates America, I think he just said some words to make a point that had to be repudiated. A president, or even a pope, can’t say “god damn america”, but a pastor or blogger can, even though its inflammatory and offensive. It’s not mere parsing that “God Damn America” is very different than “God condemns killing innocents”. Surely you can see that.
…and I’ll have to paraphrase because I am not willing to watch those hateful videotapes again.
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p>”Hillary doesn’t know what it’s like to have to be TWICE as good to get HALF as much, because she is a white woman in a country run by rich white men.”
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p>Any woman Hillary’s age first looked for a job in a newspaper listing Help Wanted Male and Help Wanted Female (guess wherre the better paying jobs were?). ANY woman over fifty was given a lesser title, was asked to train her boss, and was given less pay because men had FAMILIES to support.
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p>To say that women don’t know what it’s like to have to be exceptional in order to be considered equal is insulting – and racist.
…but not racist. Yes, Wright’s comments were insulting to women in that diatribe.
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p>Last I checked most of the wealth and power in this country was held by “rich White people”. There is certainly a White skin privilege in this country that Hillary probably has benefited from. And to further address Wright, it is probably true that “Hillary ain’t never been called a nigger”. So, in a racial respect, I don’t see anything incorrect there.
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p>I will say Rev. Wright is tragically off base in the fact that yes, Barack and other Black politicians have probably faced extra obstacles because of their race, but Wright totally ignores the struggle women of any age, especially women 50 or older. Wright is wrong in not acknowledging that struggle that Hillary the Woman has had to face.
…but was she called a slut?
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p>Was she called a harpy? A bitch? A ball-breaker?
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p>Strident? Shrill? Aging?
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p>And I’m sorry, blade, but it IS racist because Wright implies that she was immune from these things by virtue of being white. He wouldn’t have said that about a black woman.
…I’d bet that Hillary has been called to her face names vile names like “bitch”, “shrill”, “cunt”, and any other sex-based slur one can imagine. My comment above doesn’t say anything that would dispute that.
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p>And we don’t know what Wright would say about a Black woman because we don’t have any quotes from Wright regarding Black women, unless you have some or can read his mind. It is very possible that Wright is not sensitive to the plight of women and he would fail to acknowledge the sex-based discrimination and slurs a Black woman might face – we don’t know until there is textual or audio/visual evidence to say one way or the other. So all we have to go on is his actual words; what Wright actually says is Hillary is immune to the racism that Barack Obama has had to face because her skin is White – it’s not racist to point that out.
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p>As I said above, Wright fails to address the sex-based discrimination and slurs Hillary has had to face. But put the shoe on the other foot. Let’s say Hillary’s hypothetical female preacher said something like the following, which is loosely based on Rev. Wright’s sermon that I linked in the above comment:
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p>“Hillary (as woman) cares what I’m going through. Cares what a woman goes through every day in a culture dominated by men. People are hating on Hilary because she doesn’t fit the mold of being a man. Barack Obama never had male boss make rude sexual remarks. Barack never was made to feel as if he’d loose a job for reporting sexual harassment. I am sick of women who just don’t get it. Barack was not a girl raised in a time when the main goal of college was finding a good husband, Hillary was. Hillary knows what it means to be a woman living in a country and a culture dominated by men. Barack has never been called a bitch.”
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p>That is roughly analog to what Wright said about Obama, but flipped to apply to Hillary. It would be neither incorrect or racist to make those statements. They are true statements. It’s not wrong to point out that Barack has had a radically different American experience than Hillary because of his race just as it isn’t wrong to point out Hillary had a radically different American experience because of her sex. What’s wrong here is Wright loosing sight of the entire context that both have had to face levels of discrimination and not including women – White, Black, Asian, Gay, or otherwise – in the struggle for true equality.
there’s been no criticism of obama on this here blog!!! boy, have you nailed us! LOL! you know, honestly, i wonder at why BMG criticizes him so much more consistently than does RMG.
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p>i don’t think anyone, especially mccain, is trying to call mccain an evangelical. i think it is pretty clear what i’m calling him. i’ll let you re-read the diary (or read for the first time) yourself to find out.
…it would be an interesting question to direct at McCain (and perhaps Obama and Clinton), “Do you consider yourself an Evangelical Christian”?
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p>I wonder what McCain would say?
since he implies that rod parsley is a spiritual guide of his.
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p>do you know what version of baptist he says he is, southern or american?
McCain has stated that he attends North Phoenix Baptist Church. The Pluralism Project at Harvard University categorizes NPBC as a 6,000 member Southern Baptist church.