Mosques and Obvious Lies

Emmett Tyrell's latest article concerns the Mosque issue, and particularly Obama's decision to speak out on it. It's a common response; Obama is inexperience and stupid and out of touch or he would never have gotten involved in this particular SNAFU. While Tyrell pretty clearly attacks the Cordoba Center, at least he isn't calling Obama a secret Muslim.

Still he does tell a bit of a fib.

It put me in mind of his inability to defuse the controversy over health care. Any sensible president would have relented as opposition to health care reform grew to the majority position. He would have settled for some sort of compromise, but not the community organizer turned president. He wanted it all. He lunged on and created among the electorate a row over national health care that divided the nation and put some of us in mind of a civil war that continues to rage.

What a nasty lie. In fact Obama abandoned single payer immediately, and abandoned the public option not long afterwords. Yes the Health Reform bill improved a few things, but to pretend that the White House was unwilling to compromise is just to deny reality. They compromised enormously, and frankly more than they should have based on how many Republican supported the final bill.

As for the Mosque issue, and Islam in general, check out this post at the Slactivist, and consider who nice it is to be a Christian when it comes to the apology department.

Back to the Bible

Briefly, at any rate. Slactivist (who does the very good review of the Left Behind books) has taken note of this project as well, and has some thoughts on it.

It may be a bit surprising that the folks at Conservapedia are so enthusiastically transparent about the project -- that they have so few qualms about editing, redacting and altering their alleged scripture so that it no longer condemns their ideology and their idol. But it's not surprising that they've come to this point.

This point is on the line and following that line leads, inescapably, to this point. It was unavoidable.

So I want to take a closer look at this project. It's ridiculous and extreme and brazenly blasphemous and colossally illiterate, but this is the future of the religious right. This is what's next. Don't think of it as a point further out along an ideological spectrum, think of it as a point further along in the inevitable chronology of American evangelicalism.

Now it does strike me that Slactivist takes it a little further than I would think this warranted. However, I have to admit he's part of that community, and I am not. So perhaps he is right.

Government Behaving Badly

A pair of posts from other blogs that are well worth reading.

Let me repeat that: Gov. Rick Perry of Texas wants to put in charge of his state's public schools a woman who wants to destroy those schools.

Perry doesn't just want to hire the giggling firebug, he wants to make her the fire chief.

Slactivist

What Obama is saying is this: we'll give real trials only to those detainees we know in advance we will convict. For those we don't think we can convict in a real court, we'll get convictions in the military commissions I'm creating. For those we can't convict even in my military commissions, we'll just imprison them anyway with no charges ("preventively detain" them).

Glenn Greenwald

On the plus side Gov. Rick Perry may not appoint the giggling firebug. Hard to find an upside in the Greenwald story, though.

Sarah Palin Unleashed

Sarah Palin sat down with William Kristol, New York Times Columnist, and they chatted. Then Kristol wrote an article about the interview. Apparently we are going to get to see the real Sarah Palin in the coming month.

As for the campaign, Palin made clear — without being willing to flat out say so — that she regretted allowing herself to be overly handled and constrained after the Republican convention. She described the debate on Thursday night as “liberating,” and she emphasized how much she now looked forward to being out there, “getting to speak directly to the folks.”

Hmmmmm. So she wants more of a chance to speak directly to the American people. Presumably without anybody asking her any annoying follow up questions. The American people don't need any specifics. They just need to know that she hates the media and loves her kids. And that Obama is a radical who has creepy friends.

On that note we are going to be hearing a lot about Obama's supposed relationship with Bill Ayres over the next few weeks. Slactivist has a great post exposing this particular nonsense.

Life is Strange

I usually read Slactivist for their funny and biting review of the Left Behind books. But his other posts during the week are quite good, and there's a post up today that is a scorching attack on McCain for attacking Obama's support of a law to make it more difficult for predators to sexually abuse children. In McCain's world, this apparently qualifies as sex education. Anyway it's a bizarre look into a strange campaign season.

The Evangelical Manifesto

Pointing you towards Slactivist's discussion of this document. He finds a lot to like in it and other things he is not so keen on, but his analysis does seem well reasoned.

The other bogeyman word here seems to be "secularism." Making this a bogeyman word leads to some serious confusion in the section of the manifesto subtitled, "A civil rather than a sacred or naked public square." What they're advocating here is secularism, but they've decided they can't call it that, so instead we get a page and a half endorsing secularism and the separation of church and state while simultaneously condemning "secularism" and the "strict separation of church and state." It isn't pretty.

Well worth reading.

Romney's Miscue

Two responses to Romneys speech on faith from last week, the first from Townhall.

In a December 6-9 Gallup poll, nearly half of the respondents endorsed an even stronger anti-atheist statement, saying they would refuse to vote for "a generally well-qualified person" of their own party "who happened to be an atheist." The corresponding number for a Mormon candidate was 17 percent, about the same as before Romney's speech.

Romney tried to build on this advantage, wrapping together all religions, except for "the religion of secularism," in a warm, fuzzy package. "Any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me," he said. "We do not insist on a single strain of religion; rather, we welcome our nation's symphony of faith."

Americans who have never "knelt in prayer" clearly should not bother auditioning for the "symphony of faith." Romney conspicuously failed to address the question of whether they also are excluded from his circle of friends and allies.

That's by Jacob Sullum, who brings up a pretty obvious question, one which Romney should answer. I mean if he believes that Freedom Requires Religion, what does he think of the non-believer?

The second is from Slactivist, who you should be reading regularly anyway.

Romney's gambit here comes straight from the school yard. As a Mormon, he is an outsider, getting picked on by the bullies of the religious right. Instead of standing up to the bullies, he sucks up to them, trying to prove his loyalty and win their approval by acting like them and picking on the other outcasts and outsiders. "You guys want to pretend that 'secular' and 'profane' are synonyms? I can do that. Look, I'll even beat up this atheist kid for you. See? I'm just like you guys!"

This desperate, canine obsequiousness infuses his sniveling speech with fearfulness and flopsweat. Romney is pleading, begging to be allowed to serve as the bullies' toady. As far as that goes, he has probably succeeded. Eager-to-please toadies can come in handy, so the bullies will probably be willing to accept him in that capacity.

But as useful as they may sometimes be, toadies are never liked, respected or admired by the bullies. Nobody likes or respects or admires an unprincipled coward. And the characteristics of a successful toady don't fit with anybody's notion of the characteristics of a potential president. A toady can't get elected president (the best he can hope for is a Connecticut senate seat).

I don't think he's wrong.

Who can you Insult?

Slactivist has a very good post about who you are allowed to insult in this brave new world of Republicanism. It covers the Kurrent Kerry Konflict as well as Rush Limbaughs jousting at the windmill of Michael J. Fox. Hey you gotta pick your windmills these days.

He's also returned to his Left Behind review - thank goodness.

The Christian Ghetto

There's an article over at Townhall about the release of the new Left Behind movie which is being aimed at specifically Christian Audiences. Mark Joseph writes that this is a worrying trend, and compares it to the history of Christian Rock.

Many executives who populated the music industry in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s were all too willing to have devout artists leave their industry and make their statements of faith in the cultural gulag of Christian rock, where they would be sentenced to cultural obscurity. It was the pop culture equivalent of being shipped off to Siberia and being put to work breaking up rocks, a tactic effectively used to shut up freedom-loving Russian intellectuals in the former Soviet Union.

What resulted was two decades of nearly unbroken absence of serious religious faith from the mainstream of pop music.

This is kind of a warped version of the story. First of all, subjectivity aside, the artists who ended up in specifically Christian context usually were the ones who couldn't compete in a larger context. That's how they got there. If a Christian Artist could move units he or she would break through.

Secondly, I think it's just a little arrogant to consign all mainstream recording artists who commented on matters of faith as not "serious."

Frankly I'm pretty sure that if Left Behind could compete in this market, it would. Apparently it can't.

On a side note, if you haven't checked out Slactivist's review of Left Behind, there's no time like the present.