A New Day Post

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You don’t have to be a Hebrew or a Christian or a Muslim for these images to stir complex emotions. As a wise friend of mine recently said to me, “History usually dawns on us after the fact; we are not used to looking it right in the face, and knowing that we are doing so.”

If there’s one thing Bill Maher and I disagree on, and there is, it is the importance that faith plays in the life of some believers. That being said, Maher is about as close as it gets to the ideal fusion of humor and honesty. Though I think Bill can tend towards a closed mind on maters of the spirit, I give him the benefit of the doubt to have done some thoughtful, sociologically relevant, and hilarious work in his new film.

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It’s hard to believe that a publication as respected as the New Yorker would allow something like this to take place. In looking at the controversial cover and listening to the back and forth in the media over the issue, I kept asking myself how many people had to have signed off on this before it went to print. How many experts, how man people with experience, how many editors, thought this was appropriate? The answer: enough, enough for this piece of “satire” to grace the cover of the New Yorker.

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Here again we have people using their “faith in God” to try to obscure their racism and failing. The Jonesville church of God Pastor Roger Byrd cant seem to understand why all the controversy over the sign that he says was meant to “make people think” . Read more here  

Get your “If you want to catch Osama you’ve got to vote Obama” bumper sticker here

             It has now been five years since the United States military invaded Iraq to stop Saddam Hussein from using weapons of mass destruction, which he didn’t have, to help terrorist who he wasn’t connected to. That’s not liberal spin, but the conclusion of the bi-partisan Iraq Study Group co-chaired by the former Sec. of State republican James Baker. Now, according to the Department of Defense 3992 Americans have died in the war. Despite Bush adviser Paul Wolfowitz’s prewar assurance that with Iraq, “We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction”, Estimates say that the cost of the war is between $700 billion to $2 trillion. Reporting on the issue of Iraqi civilian dead has been shamefully poor but 1000000 is an often pointed to figure. And of course, Osama bin Laden is still at large in Pakistan..

             Five years on, with 97% of the US deaths coming since the president declaired declared “Mission Accomplished”, and with all the original justifications for the war proven false, and the Bush administrations unraveling credibility having left the American people with a true crises of leadership, we as a nation are no closer to an idea of what victory in Iraq would look like. The policy  makers on the war still have no time tables and misses their own benchmarks casually. As Eric Kleefeld of talking points memo points out George Bush’s popularity has fallen 40 points over the five years of the Iraq war. Now as the race to replace Bush heats up, the republican nominee still doesn’t quite have the facts straight. While visiting the Middle East John McCain repeatedly states that Shia Iran is training Sunni Al-Qaida. Not one to be over shadowed, McCain’s Iraq traveling buddy Dick Cheney, when asked by ABC about polls that show two thirds of Americans think the war is not worth it said “so?” that before leavening to go fishing on the yacht of the Sultan of Oman.

TPM.com on the war and McCain

          This goes to show the effect the type of campaigning the Clinton’s have engaged in can have in a country where so many still think Saddam was behind 9/11.

Go to original A New Day Post story “Clinton: Obama not a Muslim, “as far as I know”

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          Some in the media and opposition operatives have been working hard to bring into focus Barack Obama’s connection to Jeremiah Wright, his retired pastor from the United Church of Christ in Chicago, whose controversial comments the senator has denounced. But in a time when Obama’s connection to Wright, is coming to be a big story we should remember the role that neoconservative ideologues and evangelical fanatics played in the approach of the Bush administration. If the media and rival campaigns think that the political integrity of a candidate’s spiritual adviser is worth investigating, then they should look closer at the people from whom John McCain is taking council.

            For seven years now the foreign policy of the United States seems to have been loosely based on one organizing principle, ‘don’t’ mess with Texas’. Now that the Bush years are drawing to a close, many around the country are hopeful that our next president will have a more sophisticated world view than does the current occupant of the oval office. Most people assume that the next Commander-in-chief will bring to the office, an understanding of the world that is more nuanced, one painted with more shades of gray and less black and white; not so fast.

            If John McCain is elected the country might be in for more of the same. Though he is known as a reformer and a maverick, and though conservatives are quick to point out all the ways he has failed to tow the party line (on immigration, torture, campaign finance, tax cuts or the rich), indications are that McCain may not be free from the type of absolutist dogmatic ideology that ruined the Bush administration.

            Recently Rod Parsley, one of the evangelical preachers who McCain counts as an spiritual adviser, said that America should aim to destroy Islam. Now that really is a daunting goal, perhaps not as daunting as when George W. Bush’s pledge to wipe evil of the face of the earth; he couldn’t even get it out of his White House.  But Islam is the one of the world’s largest religion with over a billion adherents. Maybe that is what McCain has in mind for the troops he says he might keep in Iraq for the next hundred years. However most educated adults understand that a war with Islam is the last things anyone should want.This is the stuff that makes s everyone from Ron Paul to Ralph Nader go nuts. This is just an idea, but what if we keep the American Government out of the business of regulating what people believe about what happens after you die.

            As David Corn of Mother Jones points out, Parsley calls Islam an “antichrist religion” and charges that Mohammad “received [his] revelations from demons”. Perhaps somehow there is still some debate about the inherent ethnocentrism, foolishness and disrespect contained in those words, but this must is for sure, it clearly makes you politicaly dangerous for a Presidential Candidate to stand with.

           Parsley is not the only fundamentalist fanatic that McCain has courted in his attempt to win over the  Republican party’s evangelical fringe. We shouldn’t forget about McCain spiritual adviser John Hagee, who called the Catholic Church “the great whore”. If Sen. McCain wants to have any chance of appealing to moderate voters in the general election, he must distance himself from these phonies who use their ‘spirituality’ as a front for their hateful, intolerant, bigotry. What do you know? Here’s one of those things that really is black or white; either you reject the political support of hateful Fanatics or you don’t.

Read David Corn’s article in Mother Jones mentioned above

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          The ugliest campaign tactics so far this season have been seen in the mailings and internet sites that question Sen. Obama’s Christian faith, and patriotism. It has been a whispered misconception that Obama took the oath of office on the Koran and that Obama doesn’t pledge elegance to the flag, but the favorite fabrication of fanatics, racist and fear-baiter alike is that claims that Obama is secretly a Muslim.

          This week on CBS’ 60 Minuets Hillary Clinton had an opportunity to send a signal to anyone in her campaign who might be spreading these reprehensible lies, but she passed on that opportunity. When Steve Kroft asked Clinton if she believe that Obama was secretly a Muslim She said, “No” but when pressed added the caveat, “as far as I know”.

            Hillary knows very well that Sen. Obama has been a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago for 20 years. She also knows that this misconception on the part of some voters benefits here politically, so she lets it stand, some might say even encourages it. The Clinton Campaigns “kitchen sink” approach sows the seeds of her destruction when she has this on her hands. It is possible to kneecap the most promising young democrat on the national stage in a generation, it is not possible to do it an simultaneously appear likeable and presidential.

“That’s right. Osama bin Laden hasn’t been captured, much less killed, and Gen. Musharraf’s reign over Pakistan is on the brink of chaos, but we still rely on him to find bin Laden in that nation, and still, until now nobody here has found time to mention it. And now, you’re supposed to be embarrassed for having suggested that if Musharraf won’t act, you will? Nonsense.  Prior to your discussion of the subject, Sen. Obama, I reviewed the transcripts of the first seven presidential debates (almost 15 hours!) and could find only one substantive question about Pakistan put to any of the candidates, and that came from someone in the audience. That’s why I blame the other candidates for not talking in detail about what they would do to find bin Laden if elected, and shame on the media for giving those candidates a free pass.  

I certainly don’t profess to have the answers about what we should be doing in Pakistan to finally find and kill bin Laden, and I don’t know whether you do, Sen. Obama. But I welcome your attempt at leading the discussion.”

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 “If You Want to Catch Osama You’ve Gotta Vote Obama”