[I]t’s odd that they [atheists] will condemn politicians like Bachmann for bringing God into a political discussion, yet they throw their support behind leaders like President Barack Obama, a Christian who says that he is opposed to gay marriage because “God is in the mix”. (A weak attempt at making his Christianity sound cool).
Hmm, Michele Bachmann is crazy for thinking that there is a God who backs her political agenda but President Obama is just fine even though he’s against letting consenting adults who love each other marry because the same God says no?
Why is it that so many atheists who feel that anyone who believes in God is delusional and should seek help support leaders like President Obama? If believing in God is a sign of mental illness, would you really want a man who is suffering from this delusion to have a nuclear arsenal at his disposal?
One reason is that, like many Republicans, they don’t really believe that Obama is a Christian. Not surprising, considering that this is the man who said that guns and God were something for bitter, small town Americans to fall back on when he said that “they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.” – Daniel James Hayden IV
I’m a closet Trekkie without the elf ears or phaser. I don’t attend those goofy conventions but I love Star Trek and have since I was a kid. A few times a year when I can’t sleep, I have a ST marathon (I have all the DVDs. And for the original series I go to FirstOnMars.com or hulu.com and watch on my computer.)
I like the original series and the Next Generation – don’t watch the newer incarnations like DeepSpace 9. As far as I’m concerned, no one can be better Enterprise captains than William Shatner or Patrick Stewart.
Live long and prosper with a 2 state solution - Mr.Spock
Nimoy is advocating splitting Jerusalem. Making it the capitol of both Israel and the Palestinians, in addition to land swaps. What land is going to be swapped? If the Palestinians have control of the holy sites that are now in the hands of the Jews, will they remain open to all? I doubt it and so does Andrew Klavan:
In his letter, Nimoy sites the episode of ST called Let this be your last battlefield (Season 3, episode 15.) Two aliens are transported on board the Enterprise who have been in mortal combat for thousands of centuries. If you get a chance to watch the episode, it’s an obvious portrayal of the race issues in America in the ’60’s.
Star Trek - Let this be your last battlefield
Both men are half black and half white and the only difference is that white is on the left of one and on the right of the other. The dialog is Oppressor vs Oppressed, bad guy/good guy and guess who’s the oppressive bad guy? The one (Frank Gorshin) who represents the white American male. He’s white on his right. Get it? (As a side note, this is the television Primetime Propaganda that Ben Shapiro writes about in his new book.)
So Nimoy thinks that a lesson can be learned from this episode of centuries old conflict and puts it in the context of the 2 state solution in Israel. I’m not really seeing a connection here. Israel has taken a dry desert and turned it green. It’s created a nation that is the most productive and democratic in the entire region – a nation that is open to anyone and just to all, including women and gays, unlike it’s Muslim neighbors. It has never enslaved Palestinians (as the ST episode posits about Black Americans.) It has never religiously oppressed them, as their Muslim neighbors do to Christians and Jews.
The ST episode and the letter Nimoy has written suggests and encourages a form a reparation for the oppressed (Black Americans in the 60’s and now Palestinians.) This is not only unrealistic (I mean, after all it was just tv!) but dangerous to the Jewish state. How will Israel be more prosperous, more safe with the Palestinians owning half of Jerusalem and swaths of the country? These are people who have sworn their intent is to destroy Israel.
And why do the Israelis owe reparations to the Palestinians? They never enslaved or stole this land from anyone. It was a UN charter that granted this land to them. Why have the other Muslim nations not absorbed the Palestinians into their nations but instead expect the Israelis to do so?
A 2 state solution will not work. It will empower the Palestinians to attack the Jews and to take more and more if they can get away with it. It’s their stated goal to eradicate the Jewish state and giving them more of a toehold by donating half of the holiest of cities, Jerusalem to them, will only encourage them on their dastardly course.
My message to Mr.Spock is logical: In television, conflicts that have simmered for centuries are routinely solved in less than 50 minutes. Not so in real life.
~~ooOoo~~
By the way, if you’re not a trekkie you probably don’t get the reference in the title of this blog, to another ST episode: Spock’s Brain. In that episode, Spocks brain is surgically removed by another alien invader, much prettier than Frank Gorshin, and he’s kept alive by the gifts of Dr. “Bones” McCoy. (insert smiley face emoticon here, please.)
Come on, ask me anything Star Trek — I got an answer for it!
Why do we have a responsibility to act in Libya and not in Syria? Why do we have a responsibility to act at all, in the Middle East (short of helping our only real ally, Israel)?
Oh, I remember now – we need the oil. Our allies need the oil. Where are all those anti-war protestors that screamed “no blood for oil” during the Bush years? What’s happened to the stupid Cindy Sheehan?
Okay, now this conservative is screaming it: No blood for oil! Bring our soldiers home!
I could NOT care less about muslims killing muslims. And I don’t want our soldiers sacrificed to protect them from each other. When they are done killing each other, they’ll be back to killing us.
This Libya thing is about civil war – a power struggle – and oil.
If we are arming ONE Al Qaeda member, that’s one too many. If we are aiding one, it’s one too many. None of us have forgotten who attacked us on 9/11. I’m sure there are a lot of liberals in this country who have, including it seems, TheOne, but the majority of us, regular Americans, have not forgotten.
The Libyans are tribes, who mostly still live in a stone age with cell phones and modern weapons. They don’t care about or understand western democracy. They aren’t fighting for “freedom.” Who’s kidding who? They are fighting for power and control. And the ones who win (most likely it will be Al Qaeda) won’t be our pals. They’ll be very rich – oil rich – enemies.
Wake up, America! they won’t like us any better than they did on 9/11 or 2 days ago. A no-fly zone and air cover is not going to change that and the president just can’t seem to “get it.” They may have the same color politics – Obama and the muslims – but that’s where it ends.
And while we’re on the subject of a “responsibility to act” – what about the Christians in Ethiopia who recently were terrorized, killed and had their churches burned down? What about the Christians in Afghanistan who are being terrorized and killed? What about the outrage for a family in Israel that was murdered in their sleep?
WHERE IS THAT DAMNED OUTRAGE, MISTER PRESIDENT? WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT ”RESPONSIBLITY TO ACT?”
It will probably be on Glenn Beck today or this week sometime.
We have good reason to be afraid. These people not only believe in the second coming of their Messiah, but they plan to do what they can to speed up his coming, including destroying Israel and Jerusalem. They are willing to die to make it happen.
Stay on long enough and it’s translated into English.
By the way, keep your eyes open near the end for Pelosi, Obama, Bush and others giving the horned hand sign. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a picture of any of them doing that — it’s kinda funny if it weren’t so terrifying.
Suicide bombers in training from lastdaysrevelations.com
“We have discovered how to hit the Jews where they are most vulnerable. The Jews love life, so that is what we will take from them. We are going to win, because they love life and we love death.”
– Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of Hezbollah
The following video is graphic and disturbing, so be warned before you watch or forward it to the 50 second mark.
Nothing has disturbed me as much as the slaughter of this Jewish family on March 11th. This unspeakable act which seems to have garnered not ONE statement from our government, our state department or the man who sits in the oval office, disgusts and saddens me. I have seen virtually no American press coverage of this. And I can’t understand why there is no public outrage. I can’t understand why there is only silence from the Hollywood elite and those celebrated American terrorists, Bill Ayers and his lovely wife Bernadine Dohrn, who all support Palestine. (Dorhn, along with Code Pink, were part of the phoney flotilla that was enroute to the Gaza Strip with weapons for the Palestinians.)
In order to fight and beat these barbarians, we have to first understand what and who we are fighting. Please read Steven Brown/FrontpageMag.com. You will come away with a whole new mindset on radical islam.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that Baby Joesph and his family are Muslim. I do know that his parents are of Lebanese decent but I remember hearing on tv that they were also Muslim.
Who is helping this family do what they want to do with their child?
Priests for Life. You know, those pesky Christians who are being killed and having their churches burned in the Middle East.
Wasn’t it Katie Couric who said that the most underreported story of last year was the rise in Islamophobia in America? I think many Christians would disagree with her. But at least the president of France is speaking out firmly; not so our own president who himself claims to be a Christian.
“We cannot accept and thereby facilitate what looks more and more like a particularly wicked programme of cleansing in the Middle East, religious cleansing,” [Nicolas Sarkozy, president of France] said in an annual New Year’s address to religious leaders.
An attack on a Coptic church in the Egyptian city of Alexandria on January 1 killed 21 people.
No one has yet claimed responsibility for that attack, which came after threats published online against Egypt’s Copts from an Al-Qaeda-linked group in Iraq which had said it was behind a deadly assault on a church in Baghdad in October.
Forty-four worshippers and two priests died in the attack on a Syriac Catholic church in Baghdad in October, the worst of a series of attacks against Christians in Iraq.
Police in France and several other European countries have boosted security at Coptic churches which were due to celebrate Christmas on Friday, according to the eastern Orthodox church calendar.
Pope Benedict predicts a mass exodus of Christians from the Middle East and Africa due to the increase of violence and murder:
Benedict singled out the “reprehensible attack” on a Baghdad cathedral during Mass in October, killing two priests and more than 50 other worshippers, as well as attacks on private homes that “spread fear within the Christian community and (create) a desire on the part of many to emigrate in search of a better life.”
The Vatican voiced concerns that the steady flight of Christians from Iraq will effectively eliminate the ancient community there.
“At present, Christians are the religious group which suffers most from persecution on account of its faith,” the pontiff asserted, and cited Christian communities suffering from violence and intolerance particularly in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Holy Land.
He blasted what he called “more sophisticated forms of hostility to religion, which, in Western countries, occasionally find expression in a denial of history and the rejection of religious symbols which reflect the identity and the culture of the majority of its citizens.”
According to R. Emmett Tyrell, Jr. at The American Spectator, the Andy Warhol Foundation is threatening to pull it’s funding from the Smithsonian. Their complaint is that the Smithsonian caved to Republicans and the Catholic League over “hosting a video showing ants crawling over the crucifix entitiled “Fire in My Belly.”
As Tyrell says, the double standard that the liberals operate on is fundamental to their mindset. It’s okay, justified and in fact, righteous to disturb the peace of those who disagree with them but when the public at large doesn’t want their ‘art’, it becomes an issue of social injustice, bigotry, civil rights violations and hate crime.
“If the ants were swarming all over the Koran it would clearly be a hate crime and out it would go without the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts having a leg to stand on.”
Not only would the Foundation not have a leg to stand on but they would be in the front lines demanding religious tolerance and decrying the bigotry of holding such an exhibit — but only for Muslims.
The Foundation’s argument is one of censorship. “For the Arts to flourish,” writes Joel Wachs, president of the Warhol foundation, “the arts must be free, and the decision to censor this important work is in stark opposition to our mission to defend freedom of expression wherever and whenever it is under attack.”
No one has censored this particular video or the entire exhibit for that matter. This video is available at another New York City museum for those who are so inclined to view and support it. No one is stifling the ‘art’ of anyone. Taxpayers just don’t want to pay for it. All art should be paid for by those interested in supporting it; that’s where private foundations and patrons come in. Raise your own money for this “very important” exhibit.
Don’t be mistaken, this is not about freedom of expression or censorship. The liberals would love to paint that picture but it’s simply not true. This is about religious persecution of those who are not Muslim or those whose religion is not fashionable to the artsy, elite left. This particular assault on Christianity by the left is passive and insidious compared to the persecution they are suffering worldwide. Pope Benedict highlights this in his World Peace Day missive:
“Sadly, the year now ending has again been marked by persecution, discrimination, terrible acts of violence and religious intolerance,” Benedict lamented […]
Benedict singled out the “reprehensible attack” on a Baghdad cathedral during Mass in October, killing two priests and more than 50 other worshippers, as well as attacks on private homes that “spread fear within the Christian community and (create) a desire on the part of many to emigrate in search of a better life.”
[…]
“At present, Christians are the religious group which suffers most from persecution on account of its faith,” the pontiff asserted, and cited Christian communities suffering from violence and intolerance particularly in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Holy Land.
“This situation is intolerable, since it represents an insult to God and to human dignity” as well as “a threat to security and peace,” Benedict wrote [. . .]
It’s time that Christians fought back. If that means fighting in court, then so be it. The First Amendment guarantees us that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” No one or entity, including the government or a private foundation, have the right to stifle the free exercise of religious worship and religious assembly. But the left has hijacked the government and the courts and is passively (without violence) persecuting and stifling the practice of religion by Christians in America.
We see this passive religious persecution in America every day, from Chase Bank refusing to allow their banks to decorate for the holidays to schools that no longer allow Christmas trees.
If the left objects to paying, with tax dollars, for a Nativity scene on the courthouse lawn, then there is no problem with the religious objecting to pay for an exhibit of ‘art’ that depicts Christ or Christianity in an abusive, illegitimate and dishonest way.
As Governor Christie said (on another topic): the double standard ends now. Christians have to stand up and object as loudly, and if necessary as obnoxiously as the left has.
It’s becoming fun to watch the taxpayer funded arts, entertainment and ‘news’ entities in this country run scared from what they believe will be the Republican axe come January.
Right on the heels of the firing of Juan Williams and the public demands to cut tax dollars to NPR, several weeks ago PBS cut a segment of Tina Fey’s acceptance speech at the Kennedy Center. (You can watch the entire thing here, but her disparaging comments about Sarah Palin and conservative women starts at around 12 minutes.)
“And, you know, politics aside, the success of Sarah Palin and women like her is good for all women – except, of course –those who will end up, you know, like, paying for their own rape ‘kit ‘n’ stuff,” Fey said. “But for everybody else, it’s a win-win. Unless you’re a gay woman who wants to marry your partner of 20 years – whatever. But for most women, the success of conservative women is good for all of us. Unless you believe in evolution. You know – actually, I take it back. The whole thing’s a disaster.”
As a warning, this is extremely disturbing and graphic, both sexually and violently. I was hesitant to post it. But this is what Christians, the general public and children can see at the National Portrait Gallery:
Bowing to pressure from the Catholic League and fears of cuts in tax funding by the Republicans, the powers at the National Portrait Gallery (part of the Smithsonian Institution) have pulled an “art video” depicting an image of Christ on the cross, covered in ants. William Donohue, president of the Catholic League calls this hate speech (a term I personally hate) that is meant to offend and insult Christians. Congressman John Boehner’s spokesman, Kevin Smith, called this exhibit a “misuse of taxpayer dollars.”
“American families have a right to expect better from recipients of taxpayer funds in a tough economy,” Smith said. “While the amount of money involved may be small, it’s symbolic of the arrogance Washington routinely applies to thousands of spending decisions involving Americans’ hard-earned money.”
In defense of it’s decision to display this homoerotic exhibit, the National Gallery is quick to point out that the $750,000 in funding came from private donations, not taxpayer dollars. But if the gallery itself, which IS funded by taxes and the employees that are also paid with that same money, didn’t exist, neither would this exhibit.
Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute and a former senior economist on the congressional Joint Economic Committee, told CNSNews.com, “If the Smithsonian didn’t have the taxpayer-funded building, they would have no space to present the exhibit, right? In my own view, if someone takes taxpayer money, then I think the taxpayers have every right to question the institutions where the money’s going.” (CNSNews.com)
Keep in mind that this exhibit is open to the public and in fact, the National Gallery had a family weekend this fall, encouraging parents to bring their children and engage in hands on activities after their tour. (As an aside, this does give new meaning to the term “hands on.”)
This is part of what children got to see:
Another piece in the exhibit is a 1994 photograph (from a triptych) entitled “Brotherhood, Crossroads, Etcetera” by Lyle Ashton Harris. The “Hide/Seek” catalog says that Harris created the piece in collaboration with his brother, Thomas Allen Harris.
“In this provocative center image, the brothers exchange a passionate kiss as Thomas presses a gun into Lyle’s chest–conjuring the original biblical story of Cain’s treachery toward his brother, Abel,” states the catalog description (p. 265) of the piece. (also from CNSNews.com)
I’ve taken my kids to countless exhibits and museums over the years. They’ve had the privilege to see Picasso, Michelangelo and Rembrandt, as well as many other great artists. Really, I don’t have a problem with this stuff. I take that back, I do have a problem with this stuff, now that I’ve seen that video. This is more outrageous and disturbing than I first thought.
I do not advocate censorship, except where it pertains to my parental rights. As a parent, I have the right of censorship over what my young kids saw, heard and read. And I chose to pay for what they saw, heard and read.
The distinction here is that I am paying for art that I do not want to pay for: art that I would not want my kids to be exposed to: art that, in the words of Donohue, I find offensive and insulting. And why is it okay to insult Christians? The liberal art cliche would never be exhibiting art that is offensive to Muslims – mainly out of fear of physical harm and not because it’s simply inappropriate, immoral and unacceptable. And why do this during the Christmas season?
I do think that Bill Donohue is on to something here. As much as I hate the term “hate speech” because it smacks of censorship that I think should only be limited to individual choices and not government intervention, this is the way to fight this kind of thing. Again, this is an insulting and offensive exhibit to a great many American taxpayers, including me and this is not where I choose to spend my money.
Tax payer funded institutions like the Smithsonian and NPR, are not in a position to decide what is acceptable and appropriate to the public – the public makes that decision because the public is funding them. If they want the freedom to exhibit whatever they want – pornographic, anti-Christian, whatever – then they should not be funded by the American people. There is plenty of private funding out there that they can secure.
Florida independent Senate candidate Charlie Crist personally lobbied Democratic candidate Kendrick Meek to exit the race this week, offering him a cross that had been a gift from his sister, Mr. Meek said Friday.
The gesture occurred Monday as Mr. Crist and Mr. Meek were surrounded by local Jewish leaders at a Hollywood, Fla., meeting of the pro-Israel lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
“I was shocked when he did it,” Mr. Meek said in an interview late Friday. “I told him to keep the cross and that I carry my Christianity in my heart.”
Crist spokesman Danny Kanner said he would not comment on a private conversation.
This must’ve been like a diamond encrusted cross or something. Even one that had been blessed by the Pope (and I’m a Catholic) would not entice me to drop out of a race if I were Meeks.
I gotta ask myself “what was this about?” I’m perplexed. . .
“Brace yourselves, because the war with Muslims has just begun,” 31-year-old Faisal Shahzad told a federal judge. “Consider me the first droplet of the blood that will follow.”
Stop Sharia in America
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Obamas Wisdom and Terror in the Street
"We can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever...we absorbed it and we are stronger."
Diary of a Mad Conservative 