Category Archives: NADA – New American Dark Ages

New American Dark Ages

Dump Duhbya

Those in Power are Slanderous and Smug

Dana Milbank – A Reprise of the Grand Old Party Line By Dana Milbank

“I listen to my Democrat friends, and I wonder if they’re more interested in protecting terrorists than in protecting the American people,” House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said.

One of his listeners, offering Boehner the chance to rescind that charge, asked if he really meant to accuse Democrats of treason. “I said I wonder if they’re more interested in protecting the terrorists,” he replied, repeating more than clarifying. “They certainly don’t want to take the terrorists on in the field.”

The majority leader’s charge of treachery was no accident. Two months before Election Day, Republicans have revived the technique used with great success in 2002 and 2004: suggesting that the loyal opposition is, well, not so loyal.

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) seemed to have the same talking points yesterday. In a fight for his political life, Santorum worked himself into a rage on the Senate floor, hollering: “If you listen to the Democratic leader, our lesson is: . . . Let’s put domestic politics ahead of the security of this country. That’s the message.” …

The aid-and-comfort line may not work as well this time, if only because polls show broad disenchantment with Bush and congressional leadership. And, unlike in 2002, Republicans have unified control of the government and find their security agenda being hamstrung by GOP holdouts as well as Democrats. But don’t discount the influence of Treason Season: A Zogby poll released yesterday showed Santorum closing the gap with Democratic challenger Bob Casey.

As is often the case, Vice President Cheney launched the current round of sedition suspicions. The idea “that we should withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq,” he told NBC’s Tim Russert on Sunday, “validates the strategy of the terrorists.” …

Santorum said Democrats “can’t face the reality that we have a dangerous enemy out there, an enemy that wants to destroy everything we hold dear.”

Boehner, giving reporters an off-camera briefing in his office, was decidedly calmer. In shirtsleeves and sipping a Diet Coke, he told the group coolly: “I have no fears about losing our majority. None.“
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MTP Transcript for Sept. 10 – Meet the Press, online at MSNBC

Cheney: So you look at situation today in Afghanistan or even in Iraq, and you’ve got people who have doubts. They want to know whether or not if they stick their heads up, the United States, in fact, is going to be there to complete the mission. And those doubts are encouraged, obviously, when they see the kind of debate that we’ve had in the United States, suggestions, for example, that we should withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, simply feed into that whole notion, validates the strategy of the terrorists. …

MR. RUSSERT: But this stuff here is real important. This article says that in 2002, the U.S. pulled its Special Operation forces out of Afghanistan and, and really did lower down the volume in seeking—in going after Osama, which is at the exact time that President Bush said, “I don’t spend much time on him,” talking about bin Laden.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: He’s not the only source of the problem, obviously, Tim. If you killed him tomorrow, you’d still have a problem with al-Qaeda, with Zawahiri and the others. But bin Laden has been a top priority for us from the very beginning, he continues to be a top priority today. That hasn’t changed.

NADA - New American Dark Ages, The Atheist's Pulpit

Evangelicals promote school ‘exit strategy’

Rutland Herald: Rutland Vermont News & Information By DAVID CRARY The Associated Press

“The infusion of an atheistic, amoral, evolutionary, socialistic, one-world, anti-American system of education in our public schools has indeed become such that if it had been done by an enemy, it would be considered an act of war,” [D. James Kennedy, pastor of 10,000-member Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. and host of a nationally broadcast religious program] said in a recent commentary. …

Yet even … [R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who last year said the denomination needed an “exit strategy” from public schools] says there will be a cost to America if the call is widely heeded.

“One of the great missions of the public schools was to bring together children of divergent backgrounds — I benefited from that,” he said. “There is a loss in this.”
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Capitol Hill Blue: Abandoning our public schools is not the answer By JOHN M. CRISP

The great failure of public education is that our society has been unwilling to provide the same access to quality education at all schools that we provide at our best schools. Therefore, our schools appear to stumble from crisis to crisis amid periodic calls for their replacement with voucher programs and more homeschooling.

Abandonment rather than improvement of our public schools would be an unfortunate choice. I’m attracted to the ideas of the late Neil Postman, who argues in his book “The End of Education” that to the extent that our nation enjoys a common shared culture, that culture has been developed and is passed on from generation to generation at least partly by means of the shared knowledge and ideas that we acquire during our common experience in the public schools.

In other words, because our public schools are a place where we develop a set of common stories, myths and experiences — George Washington crossing the Delaware, Betsy Ross sewing the first flag, even the fear of being sent to the principal — they encourage a sense of a shared heritage that helps pull our country together.

Homeschooling and vouchers for private schools … tend to pull us apart. All in all, our public-school system has served us well; it would be better to repair its faults than to abandon it.

NADA - New American Dark Ages

What would Jesus drive?

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Som evangelicals, environmentalists unite by Jeff Bayard

Many evangelicals have dismissed environmentalists as liberals unconcerned about the economic impact of their policies to fight global warming. Long-standing distrust between the two camps over issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage has discouraged evangelicals from joining liberals on the environment.

But shared concerns over global warming and protecting the Earth are bringing together the two groups in ways that could make the Republican Party more eco-friendly and lead some evangelicals to vote Democratic. …

[E]vangelicals will not call themselves environmentalists.

“They are going to call themselves pro-life,” he said. “But pro-life means life in the Arctic, the life of the atmosphere, the life of all the people under the influence of climate change.” …

Much of the old guard remains unmoved.

The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the country, adopted a resolution in June denouncing environmental activism and warning that it was “threatening to become a wedge issue to divide the evangelical community.”

Focus on the Family leader James Dobson admonished evangelicals to remain focused on stopping abortion and gay marriage.

The Interfaith Stewardship Alliance, which includes Christian leaders with close ties to the Bush administration, argues that if humans are responsible for global warming, the costs of preventing it outweigh the harm it causes, said spokesman Calvin Beisner.
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A Greener US One Year After Katrina: “What Would Jesus Drive?” – International – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News By Markus Becker

Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed New Orleans and killed hundreds of people, has made US citizens far more aware of the environment. Green has become fashionable even among conservative politicians and the religious right.

Four words illustrate where debate about climate change is headed in the United States: “What would Jesus drive?”

They are part of a campaign devised by the Evangelical Environmental Network which describes itself as an environmental group of biblically orthodox Christians. Their aim is to find “new ways to love your neighbor as we strive together to reduce fuel consumption and pollution from the cars, trucks, and SUVs we drive.”

That may sound cute but the US government should be paying close attention to campaigns such as this. The sudden eco-awareness of the religious right, which culminated in a demand for stricter environmental laws in February, is just one of many indications of a growing environmental awareness in the United States. …

The US oil industry still occasionally runs disinformation campaigns such as “Carbon Dioxide – – they call it pollution, we call it life” by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free trade lobby group.
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Right cross by Cate Terwilliger

[I]n this election season, Christians who have claimed Calvary as right-wing real estate face an increasingly powerful opponent that originates outside any “gay agenda” to destroy the traditional nuclear family and with it — in the view of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson — Western civilization.

This “enemy” comes from within. It’s another Christian army, one whose vision of Jesus Christ and biblical truth could scarcely be more different than that of the religious right. …

Bush and his ilk, [Pastor Robin] Meyers told the peace rally, are “make-believe Christians.”

“I have watched as the faith I love has been taken over by fundamentalists who claim to speak for Jesus, but whose actions are anything but Christian,” he said. “I’m a great believer in moral values, but we need to have a discussion in this country about what constitutes a moral value. …

“I’m tired of people thinking that, because I’m a Christian, I must be a supporter of President Bush, or that because I favor civil rights and gay rights, I must not be a person of faith.” …

A group of Democratic leaders, including Tennessee Sen. Roy Herron, just this week tried to make a connection by launching FaithfulDemocrats.com. The mission of the “online Christian community” is to help readers “put their faith to work for the common good, holding our nation and the Democratic Party to their highest ideals.”

Then there’s the recently formed Network of Spiritual Progressives, whose statement of purpose challenges “the misuse of religion, God and spirit by the religious right.” A committed faith, the group says, should manifest itself not in moral rigidity, but in activism aimed at bringing about peace and social justice, alleviating poverty and protecting the environment. …

“The religious right has always been moralistic,” White says. “Usually, they’ve focused on genital sins, but there have been times when other issues dominated — like alcohol, Sunday store closings, divorce. …

“But people on the religious right like to shop in Wal-Mart on Sunday, and they like their beer when they watch football, and they get divorced at higher rates than atheists do. So you can’t condemn that; it won’t sell.

“You can sell something that people are not. You can say, “The problem is outside; it’s other than me.’ Terrorists, communists, homosexuals, liberals — whatever it may be. But it’s someone who’s not me.” …

Some liberal Christians interpret the current rift among believers as the result of radically different responses to the anxieties of modern life.

“The religious right responds to modernity as a threat, and the best response is to look back to a time that seemed to be, at least in collective memory, idyllic and safe,” Broadbent says.
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Global warming film unites preachers and politics By Carey Gillam, Reuters

Evangelical Christian leaders have embraced the cause and are now helping spur momentum before both midterm elections in November and the 2008 presidential election.

“In the past, white evangelicals have been largely Republican and the environment has traditionally been a Democratic issue … so there are political implications in terms of alliances,” said Joel Hunter, who serves on the National Association of Evangelicals board and as senior pastor of the 12,000-member Northland Church in Longwood, Florida.

“But there is no doubt about the mandate of scripture here. We need to do what we can to care for the Earth,” Hunter said by telephone. “We want to lead people into the arena where it will have an affect on how they vote.” …

[A]ccording to a July survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, more than 70 percent of people of faith polled believed global warming was occurring.

But the movement to turn that devotion into a political power base on global warming is only now getting under way. Advocates said they intended to put pressure on both Republicans and Democrats to be more active in seeking to reduce global warming.

A national rollout of “The Great Warming” at U.S. cinemas starts in October. The plan also calls for more than 500 sermons on global warming and lists of questions for church members to ask political candidates. …

“I am what you call a green Republican … and there are a number of us out there,” said Troy Helming, founder of the Kansas-based Krystal Planet alternative energy company, which also backs the film. “It is unfortunate that the party … has kind of lost its way in terms of environmental issues.”

mjh’s blog — scripture-based justification for anti-environmentalism

Dump Duhbya

Remembrance of Things Lost

At one time, I thought that every year 9-11 should be commemorated by grounding all air traffic. Those days after 9-11-01 were made even more surreal by the absolute quiet. (Why do we put up with so much noise everyday?)

My feelings have changed since then. I would still support a freeze on air travel for the tenth anniversary, but in between now and then, I think we need to move on — and most of us are. 9-11 was a monstrous act by a tiny handful of sick madmen who represent a tiny tribe of medievalists. We have let that tiny band of fanatics change every day since 9-11. Worse, we’ve increased their numbers a thousandfold through our actions since that day. We’ve spent a trillion dollars in 5 years to wage war on a few thousand loonies with donkey carts and box cutters. Oh, sure, they also have video cameras and websites. Behind it they have an idea, however mad, and you can’t kill an idea, though an idea can kill you.

Here at home, you’re more likely to be physically attacked for appeasement (hey, you, where’s your flag lapel pin?! Communist! Feminazi! Islamo-fascist!) than to be arrested by the piety police. We’re coerced to face Washington, not Mecca, 5 times a day in obeisance. We never speak of the irony of our band of religious fanatics dragging us into war with their band of religious fanatics. (God Bless America!) At least our fanatics haven’t beheaded anybody yet (just killed a few doctors, homosexuals and foreigners). We do have the higher ground morally.

Although we did the right thing in Afghanistan 5 years ago, we’re now loosing ground there. The Soviets took a decade to give up fighting the rebels we armed. The Taliban is still alive and kicking, shooting us with our own guns (perhaps we should fund the war through taxes on gun manufacturers). The official Afghan government is looking into restoring a morality police.

As for bin Laden, a few years ago Duhbya said he never thinks about bin Laden (only Hussein). That is until 2 months before an election, when he mentioned bin Laden 17 times in one speech. The War on Terror, the War Without End, is all that matters and justifies that terrible war of choice in Iraq, where we deposed an enemy of bin Laden’s and Iran’s. All part of the birthing of democracy or the End of Days. Those democracies seem likely to elect ayatollahs and willingly adopt sharia even as we elect our own conservatives.

Had enough? Are we going to continue to give power to the incompetent, corrupt and fearful? The same people who promise trillions of dollars and a shredded Constitution will destroy the enemy in another generation or so? mjh

mjh’s blog — ‘I have no idea, and I really don’t care.’

Promise: In 2001, Bush trumpeted that finding Osama bin Laden was his administration’s “number one priority. We will not rest until we’ve found him.”

How Bush backed it up: In 2002, when asked about the whereabouts of Osama, he replied, “I don’t know where he is. I have no idea, and I really don’t care. It’s not that important.”

mjh’s blog — Third Debate Comments
SCHIEFFER: Mr. President?

BUSH: Gosh, I just don’t think I ever said I’m not worried about Osama bin Laden. It’s kind of one of those exaggerations.

NADA - New American Dark Ages

The Pre-action to ABC’s 9-11 Movie

I think members of the Clinton administration made a mistake in attacking the ABC movie on 9-11 before it has been shown. It is understandable to react with outrage to lies and slander. However, one looks foolish and censorious doing so before the lies have come out into full public view. It sounds weak to say “I’ve heard this is claimed…” Let the claims come out, let ABC stand behind those words, then pummel them with the truth.

Lost in the furor is the bigger question: why and how is ABC presenting this movie without commercials? Who is paying for this — the RNC? Did Fox buy ABC and not mention it in a newscast? How is it that a good buddy of Ayatollah Limbaugh wrote the script? I’m not saying that people with strong views can’t express them through bad TV. However, we all know what Republicans would have done with an ABC movie written by Michael Moore. Democrats need to stop following the Republican playbook. Act differently from the Republicans — the country needs some sanity. mjh

NADA - New American Dark Ages

Hell’s Angel: Ayatollah Limbaugh

I watched Lush Limbaugh on CBS News the other night in a segment called freeSpeech (notice the nerd influence). Limbaugh calmly yet forcefully insisted that to disagree with the entire package of The Endless War on Terror is to be unAmerican and unpatriotic. That’s right — if you have questions or doubts or oppose anything our clearly adled leaders insist on, you are unAmerican.

Frankly, I can think of nothing more unAmerican than stiffling dissent and demanding fealty to the government.

It was some days later that these word from American Pie (the song, not the movie) percolated up to consciousness.

And as I watched you on the stage
my hands were clenched in fists of rage
no angel born in Hell
could break that Satan’s spell

That people hang on Limbaugh’s every word and worship him is all the proof one needs there is no god and public education is a failure. mjh

mjh’s blog Search Results for ayatollah

Dump Duhbya

Iraq’s Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties Were Disputed Before War

Iraq’s Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties Were Disputed Before War
Links Were Cited to Justify U.S. Invasion, Report Says
By Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post Staff Writer

A declassified report released yesterday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence revealed that U.S. intelligence analysts were strongly disputing the alleged links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda while senior Bush administration officials were publicly asserting those links to justify invading Iraq.

Far from aligning himself with al-Qaeda and Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Hussein repeatedly rebuffed al-Qaeda’s overtures and tried to capture Zarqawi, the report said. Tariq Aziz, the detained former deputy prime minister, has told the FBI that Hussein “only expressed negative sentiments about [Osama] bin Laden.”

The report also said exiles from the Iraqi National Congress (INC) tried to influence U.S. policy by providing, through defectors, false information on Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons capabilities. After skeptical analysts warned that the group had been penetrated by hostile intelligence services, including Iran’s, a 2002 White House directive ordered that U.S. funding for the INC be continued. …

As recently as Aug. 21, Bush suggested a link between Hussein and Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who was killed by U.S. forces this summer. But a CIA assessment in October 2005 concluded that Hussein’s government “did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates,” according to the report.

“The president is still distorting. He’s still making statements which are false,” said Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), an intelligence committee member. …

In February 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that “Iraq is unlikely to have provided bin Laden any useful [chemical and biological weapons] knowledge or assistance.” A year later, Bush said: “Iraq has also provided al-Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training.” …

“It is such a blatant misleading of the United States, its people, to prepare them, to position them, to, in fact, make them enthusiastic or feel that it’s justified to go to war with Iraq,” said Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the committee’s vice chairman. “That kind of public manipulation I don’t know has any precedent in American history.”