Obviously taken during his off seasons when DU doesn't have it's fund drive. I've heard he spends all day, every day, soaking in the mod hot tub!

To Grovelbot!

The people in this thread certainly aren't progressive. In their world, there will be no whimsy and you will not ever color outside the lines.

Psalm 109 actually supports Obama. Really!

Don't believe me? Let's look at the psalm in its entirety, not just cherry pick a couple lines completely out of context like the teabaggers/freepers/Christian Taliban folks like to do.

I'm using the Contemporary English Translation of Psalm 109 for my illustration.


Ah ha! Did you catch that? This is a prayer-song written by King David for his music director, who was obviously a good person. The first few stanzas are about the music director's virtuous responses in the face of cruel persecution.



OK, who does that sound like? Obama is the face of world diplomacy today, he's the poster child of being "friendly and kind." Meanwhile "destructive and deceitful lies are told about" him, "hateful things said for no reason." Has the far right ever been friendly and kind? Have they ever had pity on their enemies (and victims)? Um, no. That is why this psalm is not about them. But it could be about Obama.

It goes on...



This part is important!

What you are about to read is an excerpt from his enemies' talking points.

It reads like a Glenn Beck show transcript, complete with faux indignation and crying. This is where we get the infamous verse 109:8 that's in the news today.



So the Christian right is very clearly identifying with the oppressors of King David's friend.

Hello!! Christian Taliban!! King David is Jesus' great-great-great-grandpappy! How do you think Jesus is going to feel when he checks his naughty/nice list on Judgement Day and sees you sided with the David's friend's tormenters? My guess would be judgement would not run in your favor, Freeper.



Like Carly Simon's song "You're So Vain," these next stanzas are probably why the right thinks this song is about them.



Many of the religious right are indeed poor and have lost all hope. Their whole (white) world view has come crashing to the ground with this past election, and they feel tossed aside like crawling insects. We certainly see them and shake our heads! Right down to the economic crisis causing so many people to go without food or shelter. Poor white conservatives are a dying breed and they know it.

What these rabid right-wing white Americans fail to grasp is that they are not the only poor people in the world. In fact, most poor people, most truly starving, helpless people throughout the world look more like Obama than like them. Thus again, these stanzas apply to Obama in that he is symbolic of decent, kind people the world over by virtue of his compassion and skin color.

I add these last stanzas to include the whole psalm, not just the parts that particularly support my thesis. They're not necessarily meant to invite discussion about if Obama prays or if he even believes in god (since this psalm was written for someone, the views expressed may not necessarily be his own ). Most of the rest of this psalm is praise to the Lord (which, speaking from a historical Jewish perspective, was God, the only god, not the Trinity, and certainly not Jesus who hadn't even been born yet).



So this psalm does indeed pray for Obama--it prays for heavenly intervention against the rabid and dangerous white religious right!

"Neither the library nor library staff shall act in loco parentis. Selection and/or shelving of materials will not be influenced by the possibility that materials might inadvertently come into the possession of minors."

Yet according to the article, the library workers who pulled the book from the shelves "...remain baffled as to the reasoning behind their dismissal."

And honestly, I'm not sure which is worse: that one woman decided to basically steal the book from the library so that no child might ever see the graphic novel that (again, according to the article), "...meets no standard of obscenity by the law," or that they went into a patron's library card account to look up who was requesting the book (thus violating privacy rights), or that they didn't contact the patron or her parents for the parents to review the content and approve or deny their child the right to read it.

 
the caste system is inherently racist. Merriam-Webster define racism as "a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race." They define race itself as "a class or kind of people unified by shared... characteristics" and "a category of humankind that shares distinctive physical traits."

You're saying lighter skin = higher caste = easier access to wealth. That's a classic case of racist rationalization.

But I do think it's highly likely that his mental state was influenced by Christian bullying post-9/11. That, and his head being fucked up by listening to god only knows how many hundreds of GIs telling him about what triggered their PTSD; and his easy and Army-trained access to guns; and his anger at the military for blowing off his pleas to not be sent overseas--even when he offered to pay for his education! All contributed to this tragedy. That doesn't mean I think he shouldn't be held accountable for his actions. It just means I see that he was a product of his environment, he's caught up in the evil web that is a real part of our armed forces today.

The Boy Scouts are homophobic and forbid gay men from being scout leaders and also forbid atheists and agnostics from joining a troop.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_Scouts_of...

The Girl Scouts are welcoming of all girls, with anti-discrimination policies protecting leaders' sexuality or religion. They did this in direct response to the Boy Scouts anti-gay stance.
http://www.womensenews.org/story/lesbian-t...

because the OT is so messed up. First of all, the OT is still part of the Christian Bible, so many Christians take it just as seriously as the NT. And there is stuff in there that is not draconian, and is in fact liberating, such as the story of Moses freeing the slaves and many strong female role models that are almost entirely absent in the NT. Then there's the fact that the primary followers of the OT had their population severely decimated by that little thing called the Holocaust. And finally, those are the texts that Jesus himself drew inspiration from; if you like his teachings you cannot toss out the Hebrew teachings that informed him.

As a devout agnostic, I don't believe the Bible is inerrant, but to broadbrush the selective Jewish teachings that are included in the Christian Bible comes close to being anti-Semitic (although, knowing you, I am 100% sure that wasn't your intent).

I've read that even links the teens to that school. This was a gang activity, just as likely to happen during prom as on any other given night. The suggestion that proms should be cancelled because of one gang rape is ridiculous. I'm sure there are lots of rapes going on during proms and football games and during house parties all over the country, you just don't hear about them because it's usually one-on-one and the girl is often too embarrassed or scared to come forward about it. If you think it wasn't going on in your school when you were growing up, no matter where you grew up, you're either male, naive, or both.

"Anger/Hatred" (though I'm never revengeful), "Nothing in particular - You expected him to pull this stunt" and alsame's upthread response of "Disgust".

I hate that troll, Lieberman!
I would expect nothing less from that troll Lieberman.
That troll Lieberman disgusts me.

as far as we know. Everything the Bible says about Jesus, and about what Jesus supposedly said, is hearsay.

I hate that term, choice, because it's as polite and milquetoast and unambiguous as saying gay people are living a lifestyle choice!

It's not about the woman's right to choose whether or not to keep a fetus, it's about a woman's right to control her own body! Once we abdicated that argument, once we gave up that basic human right--to control one's own body and destiny--by coyly referring to it as a choice, we elevated a (undevelped human) fetus' rights above a (fully developed) woman's human rights.

Because that's what also included in the new proposed display entitled "Foundations of American Law and Government! I like what Vonnegut had to say about our national anthem:



Really and truly, the only thing in their lame-o would-be display is the Constitution. If they really wanted a display of the principles of law and government we were founded on, they'd include the Magna Carta, the story of the Six Nations (Iroquois Confederacy), and the Emancipation Proclamation and leave the Ten Commandments and and our meaningless, war-loving, flag-worshipping national anthem the fuck out of it.

My core values would include:

* Belief that every individual has inherent worth.
* Belief that every individual is deeply connected (whether scientifically, religiously, or both) to every other individual and thing in the universe.
* Belief that every individual should have access to healthcare, education (including the arts), a job in a safe environment with a living wage, shelter, food and clothing, regardless of race, gender, religion, economic status, language, or sexual identity. This means everybody, including prisoners and undocumented immigrants--even war criminals like Cheney. Which leads me to...
* Belief that torturing and killing a person for any reason except self-defense is immoral and unethical, including wars and use of the death penalty.
* Belief that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

The Unitarians and the Universalists were two separate churches until they merged in 1961. The Unitarians did not claim to be a Christian church at the time of the merger (having been drummed out of Christian circles by denouncing the validity of the Trinity), but the Universalists considered themselves (and were considered by others) to be Christians when the churches merged. Even when the Unitarians were decidedly NOT a Christian church there were still many among them who believed in a Unitarian Christianity, based on a sermon by Rev. William Ellery Channing delivered in 1819, called (oddly enough) "Unitarian Christianity."