Obama-McCain – the pastor was in the saddle
So the pastors are still in the saddle. Are reports of the eclipse of the religious right in this Presidential campaign premature? The prequel to the Obama-McCain main bout has just been held in a “Megachurch forum” in Saddleback Church California, moderated by the pastor no less, Rick Warren. The BBC’s Justin Webb appears to deplore this but EJ Dionne jnr of the Washington Post invites us to think again.
Quote:
“The notion that Christianity in general and evangelicalism in particular are by nature right-wing creeds has always been wrong. How can a faith built around a commitment to the poor and the vulnerable be seen as leading ineluctably to conservative political conclusions?
And when political commentators talk about “evangelicals,” they are almost always talking about white evangelicals, forgetting that millions of African Americans are devout evangelical Christians and are hardly part of the conservative base”.
The verdict on the debate was generally mixed, McCain having the edge for crispness but with a tie registering with Huffington’s young blogger. And there was a spat over whether McCain cheated by improperly overhearing the questions to MCain.
NY Times quote
“..It was McCain’s night. Obama made no big mistakes. But his tendency to somewhat windy generalities meant he wasn’t particularly compelling. McCain, who went second, was crisp by contrast, and his anecdotes colorful.”
Will Obama continue to trim or will he stake out firm new ground for a new era of secular politics in the US?
The US even got around to killing some innocent Canadians due to their shoot first ask no questions later
Greenflag: “faith based welfare , faith based geography ? , faith based health care ? faith based economics ? faith based space program relying on russian rocketry
”
Greenflag, you really are a piece of work. Your slander of the Republican party is par for the course — “hyperbole” doesn’t even begin to cover it. You’re trying to compare plums and plutonium.
Besides, Obama has already endorsed at least faith based welfare, wanting to continue the Bush outreach program under a new name, and faith based geography, what with the 57 states and the Indiana-Arkansas border. Communism amounts to faith-based economics, since it doesn’t work in practice, yet the lemmings keep running towards it. No worries about the Russian rockets, unless Putin decides that he has more to gain from the world than he does with Russian imperialism.
Dread C-it is interesting that the Lancet study’s methodology was not questioned in Kosovo or darfur.
In Iraq it is suddenly suspect?
the ORB study-also suspect?
These questions come from the same poltical elite that fooled many (not I) about the WMD threat of a ramshackle dictatorship.
Wow, the NYT, NBC, now even CNN’s senior political analyst is starting to panic, and is offering advice to Obama on how to win!
It ain’t over, till it’s over! McCain, the dark house, looks like he might just be able to win the race of his life.
Will Saddleback be the watershed?
(This is related to the thread topic)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtCA3TTj1Tw
Dahr Jamail doesnt share your views Harry, but what would he know?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNWOj_dFSR4&feature=related
Phil: “Dread C-it is interesting that the Lancet study’s methodology was not questioned in Kosovo or darfur. In Iraq it is suddenly suspect? ”
It isn’t “suddenly suspect,” Phil. Statisticians have been poking holes in it almost since it came out. I simply prefer not to cite blogs or wikis. I’ll do it, in extremis, but it is not usually my preference.
Likewise, it is a poor assumption that one methodology works in all circumstances. Different populations have different characteristics.
Lastly, the results in Iraq of their study were irrational on their face — you have to believe that slightly less than 3% of the population died without the normally observed rate of injury to death.
Phil: “These questions come from the same poltical elite that fooled many (not I) about the WMD threat of a ramshackle dictatorship. ”
Phil, that is a tired canard. The whole of the world believed they were there — the anti-war crowd cited those weapons as a reason not to go to war during the 18 month “rush to judgement.” To claim that the WMD threat was universally empty is Monday morning quarter-backing, not prescience. For the record, given 18 monthes and a small crew and a couple of semi-trailer trucks, clearing out the WMD from Iraq would have been small beer.
And, for the record, those questioning the Lancet study are statisticians, not politicians. Any claim of bias is equally applicable to the study.
Try again.
Dread Chutlu
‘Your slander of the Republican party is par for the course—“hyperbole” doesn’t even begin to cover it. You’re trying to compare plums and plutonium.’
Which part of the GOP is the plutonium and which the plums ? I’d guess the evangelicals could be the ‘plutonium ‘ and the ‘liberal North eastern wing the ‘plums ?
‘Besides Obama has already endorsed at least faith based welfare, wanting to continue the Bush outreach program under a new name’
In Victorian Age Britain and even later (have a read of Geroge Orwell’s Down and out in Paris and London’ )it was customary to provide food and soup to the ‘deserving poor’ on the basis of their ability to gather in church and sing hymns lustily to the lord before serving them soup or bread . The purveyors of faith based welfare in that age knew that had they served the soup first, they’d have to sing their hymns alone !
Faith based welfare is not a replacement for a properly based social security system so that there is a safety net for those at the bottom of American society . The fact that Obama has to endorse such outreach programs is just an indication of how far the USA has strayed down the path of handing over the ‘soup’ to religious organisations some of whom are no doubt genuine charitable foundations but amongst whom are no doubt those who will use the ‘outreach’ funding to enrich themselves at the expense of the poor .
‘Communism amounts to faith-based economics, since it doesn’t work in practice’
Did I say it did ? What Americans are having to face up is whether faith based Republican policies which has ensured that 1% of Americans possess more wealth than the combined wealth of 100 million ordinary Americans, is working,? and how much longer the growing disparities between the haves and have nots can be allowed to widen before the system collapses from within .
6 county prod ,
‘McCain, the dark horse, looks like he might just be able to win the race of his life.’
Well if Obama does not pick Clinton as VP it could be very close . I still think Obama has the advantage and the economy is not doing McCain any favours .
“The day the Democratic convention ended in San Francisco in 1984, the Newsweek poll showed Walter Mondale 18 points ahead of President Ronald Reagan. Mondale ended up getting clobbered, 49 states to one.”
Hmmmmmmmmmm……………..
DC-those of us who said there was no WMD threat from the Iraqi regime were proved correct.
Totally and utterly correct.
Please have the common decency to concede that the war-especially the UK’s involvement-was based on a false prospectus.
Or do you believe that Blair was being truthful when he said that the Intel on Iraqi WMD was ” detailed,exhaustive and authoritative”.
What do YOU think is the Iraq death toll since the illegal invasion in 2003?
Illegal war based on lies-a war crime.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n9JXgXYgQU&feature=related
Scott Ritter
Ex-USMC
Ex-weapons inspector
hardly a peacenik
he is very angry about the lies told about Iraq/WMD/911 reasons for the invasion.
DC you listen to this man-and then try again
DC here is the “evidence” parsed by CNN.
Curveball indeed……..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYBA9JD5oW4&feature=related
game,set,match
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZTLmOoPzjs&feature=related
At least Powell has the decency to admit that his presentation to the Un was a complete fiction
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FejQH_VCB24&feature=related
a fair and decent man DC-learn from him
Rory in hindsight I was too quick to slap the term “sexual morality” into the list of things worth discussing I should probably made it more generic at “social morality”.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/19/the-war-within-bob-woodwa_n_119788.html
Harry this book should be worth a look when it hits the shelves
Pity I was away last week. I must have missed the march through London against the Russian invasion of Georgia. What a magnificent sight it must have been – half a million protesters standing firm against tyranny and supporting freedom and democracy.
I’d have loved to have heard Red Ken denouncing the bloodthirsty gangster regime in Moscow, George Galloway comparing Vladimir Putin to Hitler and Tony Benn declaring it was all about oil.
What’s that you say? There was no such rally? I suppose they must all have been too busy demonstrating against Chinese oppression in Tibet and demanding a boycott of the Beijing Olympics.
No-shows: Littlejohn wonders where the protesters are for the war in Georgia
Or perhaps not. Funny how the Not In My Name crowd always overlooks aggression by Communist or ‘former’ Communist regimes.
There’s no such reticence when it comes to portraying George W. Bush as the new Hitler or daubing swastikas on the Israeli flag. Look at the protests against the wars in Iraq and Lebanon.
The same people who can’t wait to burn the American flag in Trafalgar Square are only too happy to ignore Russian, Chinese and Iraqi genocide.
Where were all the marchers when the Russians were crushing Chechnya? Why so silent on Tibet? They must have been looking the other way when Saddam slaughtered the Kurds.
It hasn’t been difficult to find apologists for the invasion of Georgia. We’re told that the ‘American-educated’ Mikhail Saakashvili provoked the Russians beyond all reason. What did we expect encouraging the spread of democracy in former Soviet satellite states?
No wonder Moscow feels threatened when independent countries it once ruled by military might become members of the European Union and apply to join Nato.
Putting a Western missile defence system in Poland is like waving a red rag at a bull, the sophisticates say. Putin has no option but to retaliate.
I don’t remember them demanding the withdrawal of Soviet nukes pointing at Western capitals from East Germany. Back then, the Guardianistas were all for one-sided disarmament on our part.
The Left has always been picky about their protests. While they rightly denounce white racism in South Africa, they stay silent on black racism in Zimbabwe.
They bang on about American cultural imperialism, but have nothing to say about Russian or Chinese military imperialism.
America is constantly denounced for its ‘yuman rites’ abuses, but you never hear a dicky bird about the denial of basic freedoms in China or throughout the Muslim world.
Europe’s Leftists define themselves by their hatred of the U.S., yet cheerfully tolerate all kinds of tyranny elsewhere. They’re against ‘torture’ at Guantanamo Bay, but take a relaxed view of Chinese and Russian death squads.
So the official line is that the war in Iraq was nothing to do with Saddam boasting that he had weapons of mass destruction and defying a whole slew of United Nations resolutions to which he agreed after the liberation of Kuwait. It was all about oil.
Yet the invasion of Georgia was justified because Russia was ‘provoked’. So we can assume that Putin never gave a moment’s thought to Georgia’s pipeline to the West?
What about the announcement last week by a Russian general that Poland was now a prime target for a nuclear strike because it had the audacity to agree to site a Nato defence shield within its borders?
I must have missed the CND press release on that one.
A new survey says that British attitudes towards the United States are governed by ignorance of the facts.
For instance, most people here and in Europe believe America sold Saddam most of his arsenal. The truth is that just 0.46per cent of Iraq’s weapons came from the U.S. Russia supplied 57 per cent, China 12 per cent and the cheese-eating surrender monkeys across the Channel were responsible for 13 per cent.
The U.S. is routinely portrayed as anti-Islamic. But in 11 out of 12 of the most recent conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims, America has sided with the Muslims.
Other widespread myths such as Americans being denied medical care if they don’t have health insurance are simply not true. Filthy, unregulated Russian and Chinese factories and power stations spew out poisonous gases, but America is branded the world’s biggest polluter, even though it has done more to cut carbon emissions since the year 2000 than any other country.
The ‘liberal’ media has a vested interest in perpetuating such lies. The Left seems to be gripped with some kind of political penis envy of America, which can be assuaged only by sucking up to tyrants and dictators.
If we are entering a new Cold War, you can guarantee that the Left will once again be on the wrong side.
There’s nothing new in this. Forty years ago this summer, the big demonstrations in London were against America’s war against communist North Vietnam, not the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia.
So no change there, then.
Ah, Harry “social morality”. Strange how these religious moralists yet all insist on social Darwinism as the basis for their “social morality” – “if the poor and sick suffer and die it’s all their own feckin’ fault for being so stupid as to let us rob them blind in the first place – it just proves that God made us superior”.
Anyway, a little tale of Old Abe Lincoln from earlier times on the stump:
When Mr. Lincoln was elected to Congress, his opponent was a Methodist preacher who kept accusing Mr. Lincoln of being an infidel. One night during the campaign the preacher was giving one of his hellfire sermons in a church when Mr. Lincoln walked in, and sat in the back. The preacher decided to trap Mr. Lincoln. So he shouted, “Those of you who expect to go to Heaven, rise!” Mr. Lincoln did not stir. So the preacher said to the congregation, ” Those of you who expect to go to hell, rise!”. Mr. Lincoln did not stir. So the preacher said to the congregation, “All those who think they are going to Heaven and all those who think they are going to hell have risen to their feet but Mr. Lincoln has not moved. So where, Mr. Lincoln, do you think you are going?” At that Mr. Lincoln got up and said, “Well, I expect to go to Congress,” and left the church.
From Lincoln by Gore Vidal (1984)
“Pity I was away last week”
Some of us, Richard, are more inclined to think that the pity is that you bothered to come back.
Has it never occurred to you that it might be for citizens of one’s own country to demonstrate against what it perceives as its own government’s misadventures and wrongdoings, including its alliances and within its spheres of influence, and for the citizens of other countries to similarly protest against their government’s misbehaviour? Or would you prefer that we all dutifully assemble in Trafalgar Square waving little Union Jacks and Old Glories and hold up placards saying, “Bomb the Shit outa them Baghdad Babies!” or “Nuke Teheran Now!”?
Our government was for a long time complicit in upholding apartheid and had a responsibility towards South Africa and its citizens and it was therefore quite proper to make our displeasure at its inaction known. Our government was an ally of the US during the period of US war crimes in Vietnam and indeed provided covert logistical support and so Vietnam became within our sphere of influence as citizens outraged by our government’s role. We could also demonstrate on behalf of white landowners in Zimbabwe by demanding that our government fulfil its pledges under the Lancaster House agreements and release the agreed funding to compensate them for returning the land to its rightful owners. Would you join us?
Little Dick ,
‘So the official line is that the war in Iraq was nothing to do with Saddam boasting’
Tyrants or would be tyrants are prone to boasting . Look at the historical record from Stalin to Hitler to Saddam to Mugabe etc .
However ‘boasting ‘ by itself is not regarded by the international community as a sufficient causus belli or for that matter in Russia’s case a Caucausus belli .
‘It was all about oil.’
Yes it was. Even Dr Bubbles (Mr Greenspan ) has admitted as much . Nothing new in the region -it’s been ‘war for oil’ or the control of oil by Anglo American oil majors – by one means or another since the 1920′s and especially since the 1950′s .
To quote yourself
‘There’s nothing new in this’
Phill Mac Giolla Bhain above recommends Bob Woodwards detailed investigation of how the USA actually went to war with Iraq which will make it’s ‘timely ‘ publication in September 08 -I recommend you read it .It should do for what’s left of this Republican administration and it’s would be successors what Woodwards ‘ Watergate’ revelations did for Nixon and his Creeps .
On the subject as to why neither the ‘leftists’ nor ‘rightists’ nor ‘centrists’ in Europe are not demonstrating against Russia’s NATO baiting in Georgia here’s a clue .
WINTER . Another ‘positive’ spin off benefit of Dubya’s ‘idiot ‘ war in Iraq ,is that the Russians now have Europeans by the short and curlys as they ‘control’ the gas supplies which much of Europe needs to keep warm and to keep industry going .
Unlike the USA which has/had the military might to invade Iraq and take control of the oil , Europeans are more reluctant to invade Russia not just because of previous failed attempts by France and Germany , but because the Russians actually have verifiable nuclear weapons of mass destruction . They don’t have to boast .
Had the Iraqis had actual weapons of mass destruction the USA would not have invaded. Which is probably one reason why the Iranians see being a nuclear power as their only guarantee of not becoming another Iraq – Mark II .
Rory ,
Good one
Did Lincoln defeat the Methodist Minister in that election or do you know ? IIRC it took Ole Abe a couple of attempts before he actually made it to Congress.
Was that really Richard Littlejohn who just posted a comment on this site?
Harry, either it was him, or someone who shares his views.
Greenflag, correcto about Iraq and WMD.
Greenflag,
I am afraid that we are not told. The excerpt I quoted was of Vidal’s fictional account of a conversation between Mrs. Lincoln and her dressmaker where she recounts this episode, but not, alas, the outcome of that Congressional battle. The episode with the preacher though is one that has strong anecdotal currency and is used here to illustrate Lincoln’s quiet disdain for religion although he did of course “put in a show” at churches of various denominations when it was politically expedient much as minor royalty and on the make politicians today “go native” in dress when visiting countries abroad.
The book is after all a novel not a biography although it outsrips most biographies in the wealth of historical detail that it weaves using a little imagination and some fictional characters to drive the narrative. Indeed the method that Vidal employs of never daring to attempt to guess at Lincoln’s unrecorded thoughts or feelings on any matter puts many a biographer to shame with their “We might suppose that Mr Lincoln could scarce forbear but to express displeasure at this news…” style of writing when we might suppose nothing of the sort unless the biographer can provide some source evidence to support his supposition.
It really is masterly both as novel and as history. Allan Massie, no mean historical novelist himself, declares it the greatest historical novel ever. And it is available in a new pbk reprint from ABACUS at £12.99rrp with a new intoduction by the contrary, cantankerous, lovable old goat himself (Vidal that is, not Lincoln!).
Rory ,
Thanks for the info. Abraham Lincoln was not the only early days President to be somewhat disdainful of ‘religion’ . IIRC many of the Founding Fathers including Thomas Jefferson , George Washington and others were more than a little skeptical of denominational claims.
Those were apparently more ‘enlightened ‘ days in that respect than today’s USA
Taft was another USA President who was dismissive of those with politico -religious pretensions . In our own time Ronald Reagan oddly enough the ‘darling ‘ of the ‘moral majority’ avoided going to church whenever he could . One presumes that as someone whose ancestry was 75% Irish Catholic mixed with 25% Scottish Presbyterian – Reagan had enough ‘conflicting ‘ issues in his background to dismiss both as absolute . His wife took to astrology IIRC.
Phil: “These questions come from the same poltical elite that fooled many (not I) about the WMD threat of a ramshackle dictatorship. “
Phil, that is a tired canard. The whole of the world believed they were there—
DC the whole world did not believe that Saddam had WMD
Scott Ritter, for one, stated that the Iraqi regime had no WMD stockpiles and posed no strategic WMD threat in the region.
He was correct.
Have the basic decency to concede that.
So many of the pro-war faction in Ireland (eg Kevin Myers) have conceded the WMD argument several years ago.
In his new book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth And Hope In An Age of Extremism, author Ron Suskind alleges that the Bush administration knew Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and eventually fabricated intelligence assets to support its case for war. Both the White House and the CIA deny his claims.