A Comprehensive Strategy to Fight Al-Qaeda

With the Party of Dobson

Bush and the Ten Commandments

Calling Bush the devil is offending the devil

QuoteOriginally posted by: doreilly Bush and the Ten CommandmentsThis is so good it need not be hidden under under a URL but expanded in its full glory!The Bush presidency is the most overtly religious in living memory, probably in all of American history. The President has stated his belief that he has been called by God and acts as if Americans are God's new chosen people, successors to the ancient Israelites. Some evangelical Christians claim to base their moral code on Mosaic law, and last year the Supreme Court even allowed a six-foot granite monument engraved with the Ten Commandments to be displayed on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol, advancing the historically debatable proposition that our national legal system is based on biblical sources. But just how good has the Bush Administration's record been when it comes to following the Ten Commandments? Thou shalt have no other gods before me.Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image... These two commandments are of course in direct opposition to our First Amendment, which prohibits the establishment of a national religion and insures full religious freedom for American citizens. But even supposing that we accept Moses's proscriptions, Bush and his colleagues have blatantly broken these laws. Under their aegis, Yahweh's interests have consistently taken a back seat to those of Mammon. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. This translates roughly into a proscription against giving false testimony in God's name. When George W. Bush took the oath of office, he elected to add the optional phrase "So help me God" to the formulaic oath each President must take to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." So, too, did subsequently disgraced Congress members like Tom DeLay and Randy "Duke" Cunningham. In fact, all these men held the Constitution and its principles in contempt and did everything they could to undermine it. Their success is demonstrated by the fact that the Center for Constitutional Rights has called for Bush's impeachment and has prepared and published a detailed list of articles supporting such an action. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. There is no guaranteed Sabbath observance for on-duty American military personnel in Iraq, where military expedience necessarily comes before religious observance. Neither is there any Sabbath, or for that matter any rest whatsoever, for the millions of Iraqi civilians who live in what has effectively become a full-scale war zone. These people can no longer go to work or to school or to their houses of worship without fearing for their lives and those of their loved ones. Honor thy father and thy mother. If we consider Bush's widely unpopular senior healthcare plan and his sustained attempt to eviscerate Medicare, need any more be said on this subject? The president of the AFL-CIO, no less, has called the new Medicare drug plan "costly, confusing and corrupt," "a special-interest law that puts drug companies and HMOs first" and leaves seniors "without so much as a life preserver." As for Bush's push to deprive Medicare of the legal right to negotiate on prices with the drug companies, this is surely one of the more obvious cases where the interests of Mammon have taken precedence over common decency. Thou shalt not kill. This is the King James version; the New International Version of the Bible, which has replaced the King James translation almost everywhere, reads "You shall not murder"--a difference so significant that one suspects the Pentagon hawks of having supervised the translation. But the injunction against killing is a time-honored one. The Administration's record in Iraq alone? More than 2,500 US servicemen and -women, and many, many more Iraqis: The estimate of civilian deaths is now at well over 50,000. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Two military contractors, Mitchell Wade and Brent Wilkes, are at the center of a scandal that involved paying out millions of dollars in bribes to a group of mainly Republican Congressmen. Wade also alleges that Wilkes played a role procuring hookers for these public servants' delectation at rowdy Washington parties. This is only one of the scandalous fruits of a political culture that has allowed such contractors to gorge on our taxpayer dollars like hogs at a trough. Thou shalt not steal. Biblical scholars point out that Moses would have included kidnapping in his use of the word "steal." This leads us to one of the Administration's most terrifying and lawless innovations: the practice they have oh-so-euphemistically dubbed "rendition." Even though Congress approved the President's Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 it has allowed the Administration to abduct whomsoever they please and to "render" them out of the country to so-called "black sites," secret detention facilities outside of the United States where they are detained indefinitely, denied trial and tortured. This, of course, is also in flagrant violation of the Constitution. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. It might be a stretch of the imagination to think of Saddam Hussein as a neighbor to Bush and Cheney, but they undoubtedly bore false witness against him. The Administration's phony claims that the Iraqi leader was allied with Al Qaeda and that he possessed weapons of mass destruction were deliberately cooked up, via the bogus Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group, to justify an aggressive and illegal war. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's. What about thy neighbor's oilfield? What about thy neighbor's country? In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus said, "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments." Bush's "Christian" values, like his "compassionate" conservatism, have proved to be nothing but a rhetorical smokescreen for grotesquely un-Christian and uncompassionate policies.

QuoteOriginally posted by: doreillyCalling Bush the devil is offending the devilThe leftist presidential front-runner in Ecuador said Wednesday that the devil should be insulted by comparisons to President Bush, whom he called a "dimwitted" leader who has done "great damage" to the world.Beautiful.

the parallels, themes of liberalism, anti-semitism etc were just too good for me to resist, sorry:merchant of venicecast of characters:shylock: The American Rightportia/bassiano: The American LeftAntonia: Subset of the Muslim worldplot synopsis:Antonia owes a pound of flesh to shylock after 9/11, shylock attempts extraction in several (war) theatres. Portia suggests shedding blood while removing flesh is murder, shylock has his moral law thrown in face repeatedly. Is disgraced (at next elections?), Portia/bassiano laugh it up, Antonia's ships come back to port, realizes hullabulloo was over nothingnow playing at your local media outlet

Hath not [the right] eyes? Hath not [the right] hands, organs dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer as [the left] is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

QuoteOriginally posted by: zetathe parallels, themes of liberalism, anti-semitism etc were just too good for me to resist, sorry:merchant of venicecast of characters:shylock: The American Rightportia/bassiano: The American LeftAntonia: Subset of the Muslim worldplot synopsis:Antonia owes a pound of flesh to shylock after 9/11, shylock attempts extraction in several (war) theatres. Portia suggests shedding blood while removing flesh is murder, shylock has his moral law thrown in face repeatedly. Is disgraced (at next elections?), Portia/bassiano laugh it up, Antonia's ships come back to port, realizes hullabulloo was over nothingnow playing at your local media outletI can't buy it Zeta, like Lear I see Shylock as "A man more sinned against than sinning". The reason why Antonio owes the pound of flesh instead of interest is that Shylock wants revenge for previous insults etc. In other words Antonia first insults Shylock not the other way round.Also Portia offers "thrice that sum to deface his deadly bond" but why would the American left try to appease the American right to help a "Subset of the Muslim world". I do not think the American left cares anymore for the "Subset of the Muslim world" than the American right does. In other words Portia is find with Shylock taking its pound of flesh from Antonia, Portia's problem is that now that Shylock has the taste for blood, he not only want’s a pound of flesh from other Venetians he also want’s it from the Danes, the Scots and the Moops. In other words he want’s revenge on characters from all the plays of the bard.

I was going a little deeper; I don’t want to write an essay so I’ll try to be brief.The bard captured human character better than most, even though I detested him in high school. I see the “Christian” characters in the story as liberal democrats. They err on the side of forgiveness, overlooking the need for justice if it demands breaking the moral law. And the jewish character of Shylock as the right emphasizes the moral law, the need for justice, even if it requires breaking it in the process. I know you don’t like St Paul but he would categorize the first as using Grace (forgiveness) as a license to do what they/others like, the latter as legalists who think by their righteous deeds earn/deserve God’s favor, perhaps even having a mandate. Neither extreme is particularly good, but this is human nature, right? Who you identify with in the story depends I think largely on personal bias; I should also say that the parallel isn’t exact, there’s no real bassiano or link between the left and Osama et al, I'm not an idiotic conspiracy theorist. And yes unlike Shylock the right has gone bat poop crazy as someone here has said.Osama et al do have a burden to the west for obvious reasons. But the way this will play out (as I see it) is the right losing power in the elections, Portia (Hilary?) gaining power, and antonia calming down b/c the right is out of puff/seat of power.

'fraid I see it different. The right are racist bastards and Antonio is one of the worst. He is trying to get out of a contract he was stupid to get into. There is no forgiveness here. Christians side with Antonio because they are Christians. They side with “their” own. Shylock sees Antonio as somebody who needs to be taught a lesson and takes great pride in the fact the he Shylock the “lowest rung in the ladder” is the one to do it.

Feel free to expand, you've lost me. Is antonia now george busch gardens and shylock Osama been there done that? not all christians are sheep dor, and I am happy to dialogue so long as we both admit to our particular prejudicesMaybe the whole problem is that kissinger is still on the payroll

Ok I had given up on your analogy. I was referring to the play itself. So my point is, that in the Venetian society and elsewhere money lending was one of the few careers open to Jews. At the same time they were despised as "usurers" in these Christian communities. Jews were also forced to live in “ghettoes” and may have been despised for other reasons which obviously could be traced back to the beginning of Christianity. So I do not see the Christians believing in the idea of forgiveness in this case, I see them looking after one of their own.Now while not all Christians are sheep (lemmings maybe a better word) I do not remember any Christians coming to Shylock’s defense. PS: I refrained from announcing any particular prejudices, since I believed my empiricist views to be empirical