Discord, Disharmony and Disaster

John Hagee has apologized to professional complainer / holier than thou pundit Bill Donohue. This is of course a typical non apology apology, in which Hagee apologizes for people being offended by his statements, not for making them in the first place. This highlights the difference between how the media treats the religious right and their republican allies who routinely engage in hate speech against homosexuals, and other fringe groups, and how they treat religious left leaders such as Jeremiah Wright. This situation is also an example of the value of the political tactic known as framing. Because John Hagee has framed himself as being pro Israel, and a defender of Judaism, this allows him to spread his own unique breed of antisemitism. Hagee only supports Israel because of a type of theology known as Christian Zionism, a part of which is that all of the worlds Jews must move to Israel, in order to hasten the second coming of Christ, and that all of the Jews will either convert or die in the battle of Armageddon. This attitude is showcased by this video filmed at a conference held by one of Hagee’s organizations. If the views expressed by the Hagee followers in this video are not anti-semitic, there is not much else that can be called anti-semetic. But because Hagee has framed himself as a defender of Israel, despite anything that he might say, this is what he will be promoted as by the mainstream media. Thus, Hagee has only gotten in trouble for his anti catholic statements, and not his implication that Jews brought antisemitism on themselves for not doing exactly as god commanded.

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Our first link is to this article at Reason Hit and Run about the crusade against unliscensed pool and ping pong tables.

Lunatic Sally Kern from Oklahoma is at it again. This post from Pharyngula tells how Kern is reintroducing her bill to prevent teachers from giving students bad grades if they claim that the answer that they wrote down is a religious belief. If this passes, I would love to see someone try to get away with writing a non Christian creation myth down and see if they can get credit for it.

This post from Glenn Greenwald is about a recent interview by Atlantic magazine with Barrack Obama. This article contrasts the current Israeli butt kissing that is required of modern American politicians with a 1950s era letter in which Dwight Eisenhower claims to have told the state Department to tell David Ben-Gurion that America would “handle our affairs exactly as though we didn’t have a Jew in America.” (more about this general topic is available here)

UPDATE:

This post from by the Washington Post’s blogger Philip Carter is very good, but from a few days ago.

see the title of this post

Welcome. I hope to restart non special features tomorrow, if not later today. However, here right now, is the Tuesday Link rodeo. I am also introducing the official Tuesday Link Rodeo graphic.

Link number one comes to us from the blog of cartoonist Tom Tomorrow. This link which itself is mainly a link to a post at common dreams, about a weird religious organization that Hilary Clinton is member of.
Link number two comes at you from Crooks and liars, and is about general Petraeus’s impending statement to congress that all is well, and pay no attention to the recent spurt of mortar attacks on the Green Zone. Including this one which caused MSNBC to break into one of John McCain’s all is well in Iraq speeches. (also on Crooks and Liars)

Link Number three, goes to Reason Magazine’s blog, Hit and Run. The subject is how one of Hilary Clinton’s advisor’s, who was working for a PR firm on helping to get the US-Columbia Free Trade agreement passed got fired because of it. To me, the lack of support for free trade is one of the most disturbing aspects about the current crop of democratic presidential candidates.

Link Number four is to this story at Harper’s Magazine, about how a military lawyer who disclosed the list of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. (hat tip to Tom Tomorrow)

Link Number Five is to a blog post at one of the Washington Post’s blogs. This post is about an odd paragraph in the latest torture memo to surface. (hat tip to Matt Welch at reason hit and run)

So long and see you next week for another exciting Tuesday Link Rodeo!

Well, I was originally going ignore the fact that Friday had occurred, and not write anything after forgetting the subject I was going to write about Friday, (Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s despicable and (probably dishonest) comments about how FISA stopped the NSA from stopping 9/11. If this story interests you, please read Glenn Greenwald’s coverage of it here) and then being busy for the rest of the weekend. After checking PZ Meyer’s blog Pharyngula I found this story, about how a member of the Illinois General Assembly made the comment, during a hearing on a bill that gave state funds to a Chicago area baptist church, said that atheism was dangerous for children to even know it exists. As an Illinois resident, and an atheist, I am extremely distressed that such attitudes exist in Illinois. The full exchange, between Representative Monique Davis, and activist Rob Sherman is after the jump.

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The link

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(This weeks feature diverts from the usual format of featuring a single quote, and instead features a hot bed of witch hunting insanity) Rather than attack another crazy right winger, I have decide to plunge my righteous Libertarian anger into the left wing to balance things out. My target today is the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The center, in all of its “nanny state” goodness is of course a frequent target of libertarians. Here is what Reason Magazine, Radley Balko, and the Cato Institute have said about the Center.

The CSPI’s Nutrition Action Health letter has to feature some of the world’s only agitprop food criticism. Their features, like their right stuff V. food porn column, or in features like this one, where they describe the gory details of mass market food with words that seem purposefully chosen to send soccer moms door to door with petitions to save America’s youth. These descriptions also use traditional propaganda techniques such as claiming that anyone who wanted to eat a particular Burger King sandwich (This particular sandwich, which features four cheeseburgers and bacon does seem to be overdoing it by a good margin) was suicidal. Another propaganda technique is the groups failure to acknowledge middle of the road positions. They ignore the fact that it might be acceptable to eat the food items that they call food porn once in a while. (To view the lurid Yellow Journalism descriptions of various foodstuffs, view this link)

The group also seems to have a neo-prohibitionist(PDF LINK) agenda. Their website has a large section devoted to fighting alcohol. Their main method of fighting alchohol seems to be to raise taxes on it until no one can afford to buy any. This is a similar tactic to the religious right’s use of TRAP laws.

The official featured quote this week is as follows: Mark Jacobson, (who is the founder and appears to still be the leader of CSPI) who says about salt:

Sitting quietly in little containers on tables in just about every home and restaurant are the innocent-looking white crystals of sodium chloride that are killing a jumbo jet’s worth of Americans every day.

According to Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, “The Iraq civil is over”. While I guess that it is progress for someone with the AEI to admit that a civil war was ever going on in Iraq, this wishful thinking is contrary to the situation on the ground. According to reports by the AP, American Embassy staff in Baghdad have been asked to stay in reinforced buildings, and to wear body armor if they go outside. MSNBC’s website states that the state department has confirmed that two American citizens have died in Baghdad. Both of these stories are related to continuing rocket and mortar attacks on the “Green Zone”.

Glenn Greenwald has more information on his blog about Kagan.

The Iraq conflict started 5 years ago a few days ago. This conflict has become a unmitigated disaster, and has involved the death of some 4003 Americans, (This includes eight that the Pentagon has not officially confirmed) and over million Iraqis. There are also millions other Iraqis that are refugees, both inside and outside Iraq. The continuing of this conflict is short sighted and wasteful, in terms of both money and human life.

Everything about this conflict has been a disaster. From its poor planning to its deceitful selling has been a disaster. Many of the quotes used by the Bush administration to sell the war have become infamous, like Condoleezza Rice’s classic “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud”. Even though there was strong evidence before the invasion that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. (Iraq had even started to destroy its newest ballistic missile, the Al-Samoud 2, destroying at least 34 of these missiles) President Bush still invaded Iraq.

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Welcome one and all to the Tuesday link rodeo! I have some excellent links cued up here, after the Break.

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