Bill Moyers eloquent and thoughtful essay (6:26) about the Jeremiah Wright controversy. Note that Moyers references the double standard in the media between black preachers like Jeremiah Wright and white ones like John Hagee with whom I recently spoke to and asked about the controversy surrounding his endorsement of John McCain. When speaking to me at a lunch attended by mostly Jews Hagee blamed everything on his support for Israel. You can read a transcript of our conversation and listen to the audio here.
Progressive Democrats of America hosted Islamic scholar Reza Aslan, author of “No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam”“No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam”, in Los Angeles on Sunday night in an event moderated by Bree Walker. Video of the entire conversation can be found below broken down into individual Q&A to make each part easily accessible:
The dirty little secret about the “Bush Doctrine” and how the last eight years have “opened up a Pandora's box” (6:53)American misperceptions about the Muslim community (3:21)Why do they hate us? (5:55)Suicide bombing (3:13)Jihadism (5:14)CLICK HERE TO SEE THE REST OF THE DISCUSSION WITH REZA
Barack Obama's landmark speech about race and religion. Do not miss this powerful speech (37:39) that will likely be remembered for a long time to come.
According to the crazy Christian lady (aka Shirley Phelps Roper) from the Westboro Baptist Church whom I spoke with outside of the Academy Awards a few weeks back, Heath Ledger is going to hell.
It's unfortunate that our conversation was cut short by a heavy rain because I wanted to ask her why she thought Hannity & Colmes had her on Fox “News” so often (see one of her many appearances below). The answer, of course, is that it is the job of Fox “News” to scare the dickens (borrowing an expression from Pastor John Hagee) out of Middle America and few do it as well as the “God Hates Fags” church.
Hannity & Colmes break new terroritory tonight by discussing exorcism with two Catholic priests in light of a botched exorcism of a three year old child in Phoenix. First, Father Jonathan Morris, who believes more in God when he sees the presence of evil in someone, assures viewers that what took place in Phoenix was not actually an exorcism. Father Edward Beck then explains that being possessed by the Devil or an evil spirit is possible and that the cure for such a malady is exorcism.
Signs to look for to determine if the Devil has taken possession of a person include: speaking in a foreign language that is not one's own language, speaking in tongues, having a certain power or knowledge that one should not have, and seeing into the future.
At one point, Sean Hannity turns to Father Morris, who has witnessed an exorcism, and states:
I don't want to minimize this, I was just kidding about Alan. But, this is really serious here. I mean Christ, if we believe the Bible and I do, um, he exorcised demons with regularity. I mean often. What did you see at the exorcism you were at?
Father Morris, a Fox News contributor, responds by telling a story that happened to him in Spain while promoting the movie The Passion of the Christ. Long story short, the chief exorcist in Spain didn't know what to think about the movie until he went to his most difficult exorcism case and mentioned the Mel Gibson flick. The Devil inside the tough case immediately went crazy which assured the chief exorcist that the movie was okay since the Devil hates all good things.
Billy Ray Cyrus tells the 700Club about how celebrity brought him a bunch of thangs but little happiness. Then he hit bottom when he was cast in a David Lynch movie which contained bad language, sex and violence, you know, all the things Hollywood has to offer.
So Billy Ray did what anyone else in his situation would do -- venture into the woods to talk to God. And Billy Ray said, “God, tell me what to do, I'm lost.” After some talking, God and Billy Ray concluded that it was time for him to return to his roots and make a gospel album which he could then sell for an outrageous price on Christian broadcasting stations thus allowing him to buy more thangs. Or something like that.
This mashup was originally posted last year but was lost when my original YouTube account was shut down.
Jeffrey Dahmer feels it is a copout to blame others for his crimes. That is, except maybe Charles Darwin! You see one of Dahmer's major problems was that he did not feel accountable to anyone. And he only became accountable once his father sent him some “Creation Science” literature in prison and Dahmer realized that evolution was a complete lie and that the Lord Jesus Christ was the true creator of the universe. How can we feel accountable, after all, if “we all just came from the slime?”
Henry Frankenstein: Dangerous? Poor old Waldman. Have you never wanted to do anything that was dangerous? Where should we be if no one tried to find out what lies beyond? Have your never wanted to look beyond the clouds and the stars, or to know what causes the trees to bud? And what changes the darkness into light? But if you talk like that, people call you crazy. Well, if I could discover just one of these things, what eternity is, for example, I wouldn't care if they did think I was crazy.
Doctor Waldman: You have created a monster, and it will destroy you!
How the right wing corporate controlled empire created a monster and why that might turn out to be a good thing...
John Kerry calls for the return of the fairness doctrine and for equal time requirements in the media. As if anyone needed any proof that an imbalance existed in the media, a recent study evidenced that conservative talk radio accounts for 91% of total talk radio programming. Again, nothing surprising.
But what is particularly interesting about this brief video is that it was posted on YouTube by MDRUDGE and has 180,000 views in one day -- much of them coming from the conservative blogosphere including Hugh Hewitt and Real Clear Politics. The base of the Republican party has always been overly sensitive to such accusations about the media because they actually believe the laughable propaganda about a liberal bias. This ridiculous notion, mind you, is not shared by those at the top of the party like Rich Bond (the former Republican party chair), Bill Kristol and Pat Buchanan, among others, who all admit the idea is rubbish.
Knowledge of the truth about media bias, of course, never stopped Kristol and his colleagues from continuously using the liberal media ploy to fool the rabid Republican base into backing their policies for war or voting for their pro corporate candidates for political office. After all, you don't cut off the hand that feeds you. And here is where our first monster was born.
As I blogged about here, corporations require year over year growth in revenues and profits or management risks losing $$$$ as Wall Street moves to better investments. This results in more corporate lobbying, bribery, corporate welfare, government give-aways, corporate tax breaks, cronyism and corruption than the previous year. Thus, every year the corporate whores that make up the media punditry, think tanks and Fox “News” must come up with more ridiculous incendiary rhetoric to rally the base whose skepticism grows with every scandal and as their quality of life worsens with higher energy prices, education costs, health care costs and lost jobs. At this point, the right has used every trick in the book from liberal media bias, racism, the faux liberal attack on religion and Christmas, anti-gay, xenophobia, anti-Muslim, creation of an evolution vs. creationism debate, etc. to stoke the fears of its base and rally the troops to overcome the greed and corruption of the corporate-government relationship.
Trent Lott was speaking on June 15 about why Congress was unable to pass immigration reform. The problem was the rabid Republican base that he and his colleagues created to help line the pockets of corporations and themselves as well as win elections had grown into an independent force that was now derailing the corporate/government plans to secure cheap labor. And I can't stop my crocodile tears. Imagine encouraging the worst racist fears in people, not to mention, fear-mongering about the threat of terrorism, year after year for political gain and then crying foul when it comes back to haunt to you. Actually, you need not imagine it.
So now we are stuck with two monsters that must be killed. First, we have the ginormous corporations that must improve their bottom lines which requires even more heinous activity, usually with a government hand, than the year before. The amount of money at stake is so great that no human could help but be influenced by it, never mind, a member of Congress. Thus, we will continue to see more Enron's, Halliburton no-bid contracts, Big Oil billion dollar giveaways, Big Tobacco hundreds of billion dollar giveaways and a bigger portion of the country's tax bill paid by individuals rather than corporations - until this corporate monster is killed. For a current example the idea of allowing News Corp. to buy the Wall Street Journal borders on insanity but it would never be stopped by our government because so many politicians receive benefit from Murdoch's empire.
And we will continue to see more influence from the fringe but powerful group of hate first, irrational, radicals that make up the Republican base and have the power to kill legislation favored by up to 70% of the country. Trent Lott is right to realize the danger that this monster presents to the country. And as one might expect, conservative talk radio was none to happy about Trent's comments or John Kerry's remarks and will fight back hard and dirty. Which is hardly surprising considering the hate rhetoric leaders on the right have filled it with over the years. This monster is a powder keg that wants to blow.
And of all of this might be the best thing to happen to the country. On their own, each monster poses a real threat to the country which has already been severely weakened by six years of Bush policies. It is difficult to see how we reign in or kill either monster on their own considering the corporate monster controls much of Congress, the media and the courts but can't seem to control the radical monster. But, both monsters are showing a willingness to fight each other as evidenced by the Lott quote and reaction from the blogosphere.
This is exactly the type of thing Elizabeth Edwards was speaking about in her impassioned speech posted below. Compromise is not the best approach when certain values are at stake. And what's more important, saving the lives of our soldiers and Iraqi civilians or placating religious bigotry and homophobia?
Put another way, is there any doubt whatsoever that the “culture of life” has cost the lives of American soldiers?
Evidence that we are unlikely to recover from the Bush administration's faith based world. And the truly disconcerting number is that of the “Democrats” who are supposed to make up the reality based community.
One would think that Sean Hannity would tire of facing off against people far smarter than himself. Barely a week after KRS-One made mince meat of Hannity, Christopher Hitchens eats him for lunch. What I cannot figure out is why Hannity puts himself in such precarious positions. One almost gets the feeling that Hannity believes himself to be a real newscaster or legitimate intellectual voice. Could it be that Hannity suffers from the same ailment that has inflicted the Bush administration from the start? Has he come to believe his own lies and b.s.?
Here's hoping that Hannity keeps putting himself out there as it is far more entertaining watching him get beat up weekly than watching him bully his usual cast of characters including crazy Christian women, 9/11 'conspiracy theorists' and other easy targets handpicked to make Hannity look good.
Mark Crispin Miller summarizes one of the major themes of this blog from its inception - the serious threat that Christian fascists and the Bush administration pose to a democratic America - in just a bit over 8 minutes. This is an important video and be sure to stick around til the end. Miller also does a good job of explaining how the US Attorney scandal relates to all of this. But why stop there? The truth is that everything the Bush administration does can be explained by the ultimate goal of creating a permanent ruling party. From Katrina and Iraq to No Child Left Behind and tax cuts for the rich. But I digress. Just watch the video!
Also check out these recent posts for more on the subject:
Jon Stewart puts Regent University Law School and its 150 alumni working for the Bush administration under the microscope. For even more info, visit my recent posts:
