Wednesday, 2/18/15, Public Square

Wednesday, 10/30/13, Public Square

“Helping Restore Poor Leaders to Right Thinking”

The Liberty Counsel of Liberty University has adopted a “Prayer in Action Program”, whereby they are encouraging their members to choose a liberal in need of prayer and to pray that the said liberal(s) is/are restored to “right thinking.”

The group offers these “liberals” as being in need of prayer:  Michael Bloomberg, Hillary Clinton, Barney Frank [not a big surprise there], John Holdren, Barry Lynn, Janet Napolintano, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Arnold Schwartenegger, Olympia Snowe, and any other liberal of your choice.

Just as an example, here is why Hillary Clinton needs prayerful guidance:  “Hillery Clinton, former Democratic senator for New York, favors abortion, embryonic stem cell research and opposed criminalizing harm to an unborn child that occurs during an attack on the mother.  The radical pro-abortion group NARAL concluded that her policies were 100% pro-abortion.  She approves of hate crimes legislation and laws that give same-sex civil unions equal benefits, rights and privileges to marriage.  She advocated that homosexuals should be able to serve in the military without concealing their unnatural sexual preferences and she co-sponsored a bill that was intended to provide benefits to domestic partners of Federal employees.  Since becoming Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton has testified that the new policy of the United States is to repeal abortion restrictions around the world.”

Here is the site, for those of you ready to start your prayerful crusades.  Here is the WaPo take on the story.

iggydonnelly

Glenn Beck and left-right confusion

A fascinating article by Glenn Greenwald, at Salon.com, not only attempts to categorize (not an easy endeavor) Glenn Beck. Along the way, Greenwald has much to say about the political climate in the states today. To say the bulk of the protesters (teabaggers, etc.) don’t have a clue about what exactly they’re protesting is oversimplification.
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Last night during his CBS interview with Katie Couric, Glenn Beck said he may have voted for Hillary Clinton and that “John McCain would have been worse for the country than Barack Obama.”  This comment predictably spawned confusion among some liberals and anger among some conservatives.  But even prior to that, there had been a palpable increase in the right-wing attacks on Beck — some motivated by professional competition for the incredibly lucrative industry of right-wing opinion-making, some due to understandable discomfort with his crazed and irresponsible rhetoric, but much of it the result of Beck’s growing deviation from GOP (and neoconservative) dogma.  Increasingly, there is great difficulty in understanding not only Beck’s political orientation but, even more so, the movement that has sprung up around him.  Within that confusion lies several important observations about our political culture, particularly the inability to process anything that does not fall comfortably into the conventional “left-right” dichotomy through which everything is understood.

Some of this confusion is attributable to the fact that Beck himself doesn’t really appear to have any actual, identifiable political beliefs; he just mutates into whatever is likely to draw the most attention for himself and whatever satisfies his emotional cravings of the moment.  Although he now parades around under a rhetorical banner of small-government liberty, anti-imperialism, and opposition to the merger of corporations and government (as exemplified by the Bush-sponsored Wall Street bailout), it wasn’t all that long ago that he was advocating exactly the opposite:  paying homage to the Patriot Act, defending the Wall Street bailout and arguing it should have been larger, and spouting standard neoconservative cartoon propaganda about The Global Islamo-Nazi Jihadists and all that it justifies.  Even the quasi-demented desire for a return to 9/12 — as though the country should be stuck permanently in a state of terrorism-induced trauma and righteous, nationalistic fury over an allegedly existential Enemy — is the precise antithesis of the war-opposing, neocon-hating views held by many libertarian and paleoconservative factions with which Beck has now associated himself.  Still other aspects of his ranting are obviously grounded in highly familiar, right-wing paranoia

Continued here:

jammer5

ARE WE MONSTERS?

As I think about the claim, the Obama care is going to kill your grandmother. How much of a monster one must think the other side is to believe that is even a possible consideration? Seriously in order for Republicans to think that the Democrats would actually think of that as a form to cut costs.

Certainly the cons on tbtsnbn think of thunderbird as some kind of monster often calling him horrible names and accusing him of some mindless actions. It has to be the most unreasoning thing in the partisanship the dehumanizing of the other side.

Can anyone here think of Granny as a loving grandmother and wife? Easier to imagine her drinking the blood of the innocent huh? How unreasoning it is that the lie about the health care bills so demand that the believer must think that the other side is so monstrous. It actually demand that you ignore the very complain about Democrats that they take caring too far and that if it involves money nothing is too expensive.
To then turn around and think that the very same people would let the elderly to die to save money is delusional.

Through out history it is a tactic of war, to dehumanize the enemy. The Japanese so stressed that the Americans if they capture any Japanese the American would eat them alive. The story of the horror of our troops watching men, women and children leaping to their deaths rather then be captured.
We too dehumanized the Japanese, saying they were amoral and without a soul.

But this is too far and disturbing in the name of partisanship, such a illness in our Politics that feels the delusions.

Obama is an Intelligent Liberal and Many are Rooting for Him

In his NYTimes op-ed Timothy Egan asserts that many in our country recognize that Obama is a liberal AND  are still for him.  He says:  “Nearly 60 percent in the NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll viewed him as ‘very or somewhat liberal.’ And, with a shrug and thumbs up, they’re cheering for the new guy.”

Egan further states “Obama’s broad support points to an old American character trait – pragmatism. It can tilt conservative or liberal, as resilient as the times.”

Is it really possible that we are opting for pragmatism, i.e. “getting the job done” regardless vs. ideology?  I want to believe this is true, but I fail to be this optimistic.  I hope I am wrong.  What do you bloggers think?

iggy donnelly