I actually don’t think they’re joking at all. I think they’re counting on all of us non-fundamentalists being completely unfamiliar with the reference (i.e. we’re allergic to biblical passages and would never do something as laborious as google the reference).

Sounds like hoping for a one-term presidency more than a death.

And I’m with them there. God, I’ve never wanted Hilary Clinton to be in the white house more than I do now.

No, they’re not joking.  But that’s what they’ll hide behind, sure as you’re born.

i.e. we’re allergic to biblical passages and would never do something as laborious as google the reference).

Or even that we’d never have done something like read the Bible, much less own a copy or two of it. Hell, I’m as atheist as you will find, but I was raised a fundy, and I still have multiple copies of the Bible, and occasionally crack it open. Hell, I teach literature—kind of hard to get a grasp on the lit of the western world without having at least a passing knowledge of the Bible and Christianity.

Alkaiod, I feel a strong urge to ban your for coddling people who threaten the President, and lying about their motivations.  Since the verse is framed in a series of death threats in the Bible itself, there is only one interpretation, that it’s a death threat.  So, are you going to apologize for your “mistake”, or do we need to ban you for buddying up with people making threats against the President’s life?

I disagree…

I read an article about the evolutionary roots of humor that really resonated with me… it is a way of building comradery, identifying your peers and groups. Farts and people getting hit in the nuts are funny because it is such a universal humiliation—we all identify with it. Actual jokes are funny because you need some common point of reference to “get it.”

These people have a common point of reference… they want Obama to be assassinated. Whether it is richly or thinly coded, they think it is funny because it is playing on that point.

I’ll add: I wouldn’t know what the Psalm 109:8 meant, like most people, including the ones who are the target of the joke. Jesus freaks tend to know even less about their religion than atheists. What’s funny about it is the sentiment of malice, which comes through any time a fat white guy mentions an Obama in a non sequitur.

(Also: I’m a fat white guy.)

Here’s a larger contextual sampling:

8   Let his days be few;
       
and let another take his office.
9   Let his children be fatherless,
       
and his wife a widow.
10   Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg:
       
let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.
11   Let the extortioner catch all that he hath;
       
and let the strangers spoil his labor.
12   Let there be none to extend mercy unto him:
       
neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children.
13   Let his posterity be cut off;
       
and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.
14   Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the LORD;
       
and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.
15   Let them be before the LORD continually,
       
that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.

I think these products are out and out treasonous.

Obama was elected in a fair democratic election.  He dramatically defeated John McCain, and these losers can’t handle it.  They are praying for a coup and the destruction of our republic.  and WHY?  Because he’s black? 

Seriously, the majority of people in the country voted for Barack Obama.  More people voted for Barack Obama than any other president ever (thanks to our ever increasing population).  He won by a larger margin than W.  He won so dramatically that Diebold couldn’t throw it to McCain.

These assholes simply cannot comprehend that they are a minority and that more people in the country disagree with them.  More than that, they don’t care that they are a minority.  They aren’t interested in democracy.  They want their theocratic authoritarian leaders in control.

Specifically referring to this “joke”:  They aren’t joking.  They are serious.  I think they believe that all Christians hate Obama, and that no liberals have ever actually read the Bible nor could possibly be Christian.  The fact that we know the next lines are about leaving his children fatherless and his wife a widow confuses them, especially since I expect many of them don’t realize what the next lines are.  How could someone who doesn’t hate Obama know what the Bible says?

As for being Christian?  Jesus told a parable of the Good Samaritan.  A man is injured in the street.  A rabbi and some other “good” person went by and didn’t help, b/c the injured man was “unclean”.  They were keeping to the rules of their religion, though it meant the man might die.  The Samaritan sinned by ignoring his religious tenets, but he saved the man’s life.  Jesus says that’s what we need to do—ignore stupid religious rules when they interfere with caring for our fellow humans, even if they are of different religions.

These fuckers have absolutely no clue what “Christian behavior” is supposed to include.  Praying for someone’s death is the OPPOSITE of what Christ taught.

I’m furious that Cafe Press is putting those items back up.  The sellers and buyers should be reported to the Secret Service and every last one of them should be investigated.  They are “joking” about assassination of a duly elected president.  They claim he’s illegitimate b/c they didn’t vote for him, as if the votes of those who disagree with them don’t matter.

Incertus (6):

Or even that we’d never have done something like read the Bible, much less own a copy or two of it.

Because anyone who reads it will be instantly andautomatically converted.

Which is why, going back to the other thread, it seems reasonable and justifiable to trick people into being witnessed at.

How many jesus freaks have you met who had read the Bible?

They know less about the Good Samaritan than they do about how athiests and SATAN are trying to fake global warming and destroy freedom.

It was an editorial in the Christian Science Monitor: an entire generation of Christians know nothing about their religion except how they feel about it.

I’m not going to let them plead ignorance of what the verse means, and nor should anyone else.  Even morons know what “may his days be few” means, and even those well-practiced at only turning to the verse they’re told to turn and no others read the verses around the one.

Even if you don’t read the Bible, the “joke” doesn’t make sense unless you look up the verse and read it in context.  So don’t make excuses for them, please.  This was written and is read as a threat.

You’ve won that one, Amanda—absolute, hands down. For whatever reason they think it is funny, it is intended as, if not a threat, a desire that he die. It isn’t kosher under any set of rules.

It is possible Alkaloid wasn’t quite paying attention, and I appreciate that you’re giving him a chance to back-track. But if he stays on that argument, no one here will think you’re wrong for banning him.

Wow, you use birth control? I’ll pray for you.

You don’t need to look it up for it come across, loud and clear, as a threat. They perverted “pray for” into a gross negative years ago, and that’s exactly how it is functioning here. The actual passage reference just pushes it further.

Obama was elected in a fair democratic election.  He dramatically defeated John McCain, and these losers can’t handle it. 

Because a fair number of them think the election was stolen by ACORN. I.e. they’re racists.

I think that, if called on it, they will say it’s a joke.  But I don’t think being clever/funny is their prime motivation.  I really think that they want to call outright for his death, but don’t have the courage of their convictions when they contemplate the consequences for their actions.  They know saying it outright is a serious criminal offense with a steep punishment, so they say it this way, maintaining some thread of plausible deniability, while simultaneously getting to further unite their tribe with the shibboleth of a bible quote.

Good point, ha.  It’s like taking the already passive aggressive connotations of “I’ll pray for you” and amping them up to serious hate.

Just an fyi that this is not new. I remember in the 90’s that one of my coworkers had this same sign in his office, though, as I recall, it was handmade. At that time it was in reference to President Clinton. I actually think that they hated Bill Clinton just as much as they hate President Obama. However, there is that additional element of race that I’m sure puts President Obama in greater danger.

I know this is the standard line, but…

can you imagine if the left had organized a “I hope GWB is assassinated” club? Impeachment was considered beyond the pale.

You’ve seen the video with the Christian twits talking to an Indian Hindu? http://www.break.com/index/one-indian-one-normal.html

I have a friend who was in a basic JC class with a girl who, seriously, didn’t know that there are other religions besides her own. She was raised in such a bubble that she really thought the whole world had been Saved… it is possible that classroom was the first time she’d ever been challenged by someone who had different beliefs.

We know Obama won the election, by an overwhelming margin. Unfortunately, not everyone has a fact-based reality. Never doubt the capacity of some people to live in a completely different reality.

What frightens me, ha, is that they may realize Obama was elected by a majority, and they don’t give a shit.

They are seriously as unAmerican as they accuse the left of being.  They would prefer an assassination and a coup to a democratic republic where their views are the minority.  Unamerican!  As crazy as I feel every time I write that, what else can we say?  They refuse to accept the duly elected leader of the country, they pray for his assassination, and they are arming themselves for a revolution.

They hate America.  They want a theocratic authoritarian state, just like the Taliban, where unbelievers can be lashed and stoned in public for not properly observing religious strictures. 

and yet they go around crowing about being patriots!

Hell, I’m as atheist as you will find, but I was raised a fundy, and I still have multiple copies of the Bible, and occasionally crack it open.

I’m an atheist who was raised by atheists.  My grandparents were atheists.  Not only do I have multiple translations of the Bible, but I know it better than any Christian friend I’ve ever had.  (When I was little, my uncle used the King James for reading practice with his daughter and me.  I also went to a Jesuit university.)

I agree that there is no conceivable reason to give anyone a pass on this.

There is no justification whatsoever to putting a Biblical reference (chapter and verse) only on a shirt you are wearing without having looked it up for yourself. And, while some online search engines do in fact give you only the exact verse you ask for, these people are the ones who claim to love the Bible so much that it informs their entire lives, legal systems, relationships, and, I assume, how to housetrain their puppies.

If you look the verse up in the Bible, by golly, there is the context, right there.

I can give a bit of a pass to someone who just has a Bible QUOTE on their shirt, especially if it is something warm and fuzzy about love, or about how wonderful God is, etc. But just the chapter and verse? Bzzt.

This is Christian passive aggression at its finest. They want to go about “witnessing” to their desire that God Smites Obama, but not have to actually engage anyone, on the assumption that people will have to go home and look it up. It is the equivalent of “witnessing” by putting flyers on windshields, but they get to feel deliciously like they are getting away with something.

The really stupid thing is that a significant majority of these clowns are the same ones who kept telling us that even questioning the President’s policies (or extended vacations) was TREASON! TREASON, I SAY! when it applied to Bush. I knew the turnaround on that would be instantaneous, but I didn’t think it would descend to calls for assassination.

By the way, Cafepress has pulled all the items again:

http://blog.cafepress.com/2009/11/20/psalm-1098-update/

Good for them.

They are testing lines and trying to plant seeds, walking right up to the ege of the line without technically crossing it in an explicit legal sense, hoping someone out there can be incited to follow through.  And God forbid should anything happen, these assholes will immediately deny any responsibility, much the same way as Bill O’Reilly denied any responsibility for the assassination of Dr. George Tiller.

This is one of the unpleasant side effects of living in a society that has the First Amendment protections that we enjoy.  While we can call what they do with these t-shirts and references to assassinated presidents utterly tasteless and morally reprehensible, the one thing we can’t call it is illegal.  Because unfortunately, it’s not.

I wonder exactly what good these folks think could possibly come from the president being assassinated?  We’re probably talking about massive civil unrest not seen since the 1860s.  It would quite literally become a threat to the future of the Republic itself, and could lead to a second Civil War.  Even if you completely disagree with President Obama on just about every single policy issue, you have to realize that wishing for his death is the equivalent of wishing for the possibility of America being completely destroyed as a result.

I hate these sick fucks so much.

I was thinking about the parable of the Good Samaritan recently, and I realized that your average American Christian today wouldn’t be the Samaritan, wouldn’t be the injured traveler, wouldn’t even be the rabbi and merchant who passed the traveler by. They’d be the bandits who attacked the traveler in the first place.

You’ve seen the video with the Christian twits talking to an Indian Hindu? http://www.break.com/index/one-indian-one-normal.html

Oh my God. How can I unwatch this? My soul hurts.

They aren’t specifically advocating for his assassination… they are merely praying that someone will do it.  Entirely different thing, and in no way legally the same, right?  Or something.

I wonder exactly what good these folks think could possibly come from the president being assassinated?  We’re probably talking about massive civil unrest not seen since the 1860s.  It would quite literally become a threat to the future of the Republic itself, and could lead to a second Civil War.  Even if you completely disagree with President Obama on just about every single policy issue, you have to realize that wishing for his death is the equivalent of wishing for the possibility of America being completely destroyed as a result.

I always want to remind them about how quickly people turned on the militias after the OKC bombing. And how much more severe the backlash would be after a militia/teabagger-inspired assassination attempt. And how utterly tiny their numbers are, compared to the rest of the non-insane population. It’d be open season on wingnuts.

United Church of Christ minister here.  Some of the ancient Jews were good at teh hate.  We are familiar with Yom Kippur, where you consider your sins of the past year and make amends to those you have harmed.  Some of the ancient sects also had days of cursing where you would pray for all kinds of evil to befall other Jews who did not believe as you did.  This psalm and similar ones come from that tradition.  What makes my head explode is that the fundies know that Jesus bans this shit.  They never hear these words read in their own churches.  (OK, maybe a few).  They have to mine the OT for hateful stuff because Jesus supports none of their agenda.  Judaism denounces speech like this as well.  The radical fundies take pleasure in perpetuating a tradition of hatred that educated and civilized spiritual people know is not and cannot be of God.  It really is so sad that the gospel has never been able to penetrate their hardened hearts.

Caren, on this, I agree with you completely.

This isn’t an unpleasant side effect of living with the First Amendment. This is an unpleasant side effect off the Bosses and historic bigotry… not just the racism, the christofascism and the rest of it. And the unrest that comes when you try to move forward… every chapter of progressive change in American history has been marked by violence. The Civil War, unionization, the attempted coup during the New Deal, civil rights, etc. If this thing is limited to the vigilante nutballs who snap, I’ll count us lucky. And mourn the dead. We are not fucking around here.

I really hope DTG is wrong, but I don’t know. I’m going to dwell on optimism, because the alternative is so fucking scary.

I’d really like to see the blogging community game out what a Palin candidacy would actually look like, assuming she wins the nomination. A year ago, I thought she could do some boot camping to improve her skills, get a subscription to the Economist, and emerge a viable candidate. Now, I think it might look very different… total hostility to the traditional media, nearly-overt racist populist appeals, really giving an establishment voice to this alternate reality we’re talking about. She’d lose, go down in flames even, but I’m still not hoping for it… I worry it would unleash some kind of ugliness we haven’t seen in two generations. Maybe not since 1860.

I wonder exactly what good these folks think could possibly come from the president being assassinated?  We’re probably talking about massive civil unrest not seen since the 1860s.  It would quite literally become a threat to the future of the Republic itself, and could lead to a second Civil War.  Even if you completely disagree with President Obama on just about every single policy issue, you have to realize that wishing for his death is the equivalent of wishing for the possibility of America being completely destroyed as a result.

That’s not a bug, it’s a feature.  They’re still trying to refight the first civil war, after all.  The south will rise agin, right?

Scott, it almost needs to be open season on wingnuts.  They are actively advocating revolution and showing no respect for democratic values.

By “open season” I mean prosecuting the ever-living shit out of them when they cross the line; SS investigations of EVERY fucking nonsense shit they pull; the rest of the country pulling its head out of its ass and letting them know this treasonous shit is unacceptable.

W would have declared them enemy combatants and sent them to Gitmo, just like Padilla.  Presidents can do that, now, thanks to him: they can declare American citizens enemy combatants and hold them or ever render them without cause.

The Unitary Executive needs to be destroyed, and we need to return to a rule of law, but sometimes I wonder if Obama is dragging his feet precisely b/c these dictatorial powers can protect him better than allowing our citizens, even the crazy ones, freedom.

I know I am kinda hysterically afraid of what’s going on, and that leads me to say a lot of stupid shit.

But I am really uncomfortable with this talk about civil liberties and rights being somehow problematic. We can deal with whatever shit they throw at us, without abandoning the things we believe in.

We may be frightened children, but unlike them, we can deal with it.

Jamie D beat me to it. These nutbars WANT to start a second Civil War. They think a majority of Americans will join them, and that they’ll win.

They’re totally wrong on both counts, but as has been amply demonstrated, they are entirely impervious to reason and data.

No, I agree with you, ha.

I’m sick to death of taking my shoes off in airports.  I’m sick of Americans cowering from endless fearmongering from Fox. 

We’re better than this, or at least we’re supposed to be.  Freedom is scary, but allowing these people to speak their minds gets them out in the open, where we can better protect ourselves.

The fact that Cafe Press pulled the items is good.  It shows that this type of hate speech isn’t acceptable in public, even if it is protected by the government.  Cafe Press actually let people debate it for a long time before pulling the stuff.  They had a poll.  The whackadoodles are still claiming their First Amendment rights are violated, b/c they don’t understand what the First Amendment is, but they are seeing a pushback not only in debate but in polling.

Again, that’s what scares me.  Their complete disrespect for the democratic process.  Minorities should be protected, but the majority rules.  It’s the fairest system, and they want to chuck it for theocratic authoritarianism.

So when will we see “Health Care For All—Matt 25:40” on a T-Shirt? Jesus’ charge to help the poor, the sick, the incarcerated is no match for these folks’ tribalism and sense of entitlement.

The wingnuts can claim 1st Amendment rights all they want against Cafe Press but it won’t wash because Cafe Press is a private company. It isn’t operated by the government is it? The Bill of Rights pertains to Government Actions relating to the private sphere and individuals; not private person to private person.

I take it as an axiom that “No one is kidding about anything, ever.” No one who has ever used the phrase “I was kidding” actually was. “It was a joke!” never references anything actually funny. These people are serious, in this case deadly so. These are not thinly veiled jokes, but thinly veiled threats that they want us to see, but which they count on us not calling out because of general decorum and because religion always gets a pass.

The first amendment gives them the right to wear it, but doesn’t force anyone to sell it.

While these T-shirts are unpleasant and distasteful - they really not as bad as the “kill Bush” T-shirts from several years ago - also sold on cafepress.

Those t-shirts proclaimed “Kill Bush” and had a smear of blood across them.

Next to those - and some of the other teach shirts made by the extreme left - these Obama t-shirts look restrained and calm.

Weirdnoise:

Ask and ye shall receive.

I hate these sick fucks so much.

Comment #27: DTG in STL on 11/21 at 03:16 PM

That sums everything up for me. (Also:you’re one of my favorite commenters here.)

Damn html fail.

Try this one.

I wonder exactly what good these folks think could possibly come from the president being assassinated?

I was thinking about this the other day, when someone sent me this link - like, do they think the country would suddenly turn into a Christian theocracy and liberals would all run away and they could just sit around wacking off with their bibles all day?

Then I thought…they do realize that even if something were to happen to Obama…ummm, then Joe Biden would be president. I know he’s white so they are less afraid of him, but he’s still a Democrat, so they would still hate him and accuse him of being basically demon spawn.

And if something happened to Biden, too? Mwahahahaha - Nancy Pelosi, bitches! Wouldn’t the wingnuts love that? A San Francisco liberal, complete with uterus.

Of course, the amusement from that does nothing to assuage my disgust and anger about this bullshit. It’s disturbing to me how easy this is for them, to call for someone’s murder. I mean…how much more twisted can you get then being completely okay with murder and in fact gleefully looking forward to it? Manson family values…

Amanda - I’m assuming that the collective decision from the high council of Pandagonia is that PP be allowed to stay and fling his wingnut poo against the wall, but is there anyway he can be forced to change his moniker?  There’s absolutely nothing “progressive” about this shitstain, and I throw up in my mouth a little bit everytime I have to read his bile and then see him referring to himself as “progressive”.

Also, pitbullgirl65 - Thanks, back atcha.

“How many jesus freaks have you met who had read the Bible?”

This is a good point.  I actually know more about the Bible than most of the Christians I talk to.  Most of what they believe is what they are taught from the pulpit, and the average fundy preacher is not much more well read in theology than the people they preach to.  Mostly what they do is pick and choose what parts of the Bible they want to preach and which ones to ignore because they are too liberal.  Love and peace and taking care of your fellow man are themes that run through the New Testament, but are generally not given much thought in fundamentalist congregations.

I agree that these people are deadly serious about what they want to happen to President Obama.  Their pretense of joking is only an attempt to cover for themselves.  U.S. vs. Lincoln allows for a defense that the threat was made in a spirit of levity, but as a reasonable person, I would construe that particular Psalm as a threat if someone directed it toward me.  I just don’t see the funny in wanting the President’s wife to be widowed and his children orphaned.

Also, these are the people who are always going on about how God hears and answers prayer, so a prayer for the death of the president should be seen as attempted murder.  If I point a gun at someone and pull the trigger thinking it’s loaded, am I innocent of the charge of attempted murder because it happened to be unloaded?  If thinking about a woman with lust in your heart is adultery, isn’t wanting someone to die the same as murder?

The most dangerous thing about them is that they are so absolutely convinced of the rightness of their positions, that their logic is impeccable and their arguments flawless.  They are incapable of learning from history because for them history is only something you hear about in Sunday School, and it consists of people talking to God and raising the dead.  The atrocities of the last two thousand years of their peaceful, loving religion are forgotten, or most likely never learned, so they can’t see how dangerous their belief system is.  Their reasoning, as we all know, is like the peace of God.

There are five critical differences between the lefties who called for Bush’s death and the rightwingnuts who are calling for Obama’s.

1) The lefties who did so were anarchist fringers who had been thoroughly disavowed by the Democratic party, and whose sentiments were not echoed in either Chamber. The rightwingnuts, by contrast, are the Republican party base (REALLY base), and are represented in Congress by Michelle Bachmann, Tom Coburn, Jim Inhofe, and everyone else we’ve seen profiled by Media Matters and C&L;.

2) The lefties were anarchist fringers without corporate backing or corporate media outlets to echo their views, and their presence was limited to a small contingent in anti-war parades and anti-globalization protests. The rightwingnuts are sponsored by Fox News and the pharmaceutical lobby, have major media television and radio shows dedicated to spreading hate speech, and they are being bussed in to their own individual events, complete with organized media coverage.

3) The lefties who called for Bush’s death did so after the illegal invasion - an invasion justified by lies and deceit - of a sovereign nation which posed no threat to us resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, the destruction of an entire country, and the looting of our national treasury for the sake of Halliburton’s stock, which will take decades, if not longer, to fix. The rightwingnuts are angry because a black man is President.

4) The lefties were anarchist fringers without major caches of weapons, whose idea of violence is smashing some store windows during WTO protests. The rightwingnuts are currently in the business of buying up guns and ammo, taking automatic weapons to rallies where the President will be speaking, and are organizing themselves into a rising number of white supremacist militias whose aim is to overthrow the democratically-elected government and install a vicious Old Testament theocracy.

4) The leftist fringers do not subscribe to a violent suicide cult ideology which seeks to bring about Armageddon. They seek an egalitarian socialist ecotopia. The rightwingnuts, by contrast, see it as their divinely-mandated call to bring about the end of the world.

The possibility of a leftist fringe nut actually assassinating Bush? Slim to none. The possibility of a rightwingnut assassinating Obama and starting a new race war? Up by 400%.

If you’re going to compare apples and oranges, “prince,” at least make muffins out of them both first for an attempt at commonality. You are made of so much fail it redefines the word.

The ones who think it’s funny (as opposed to the ones who think it’s funny and serious) are on the same emotional level as 5-year-olds who try to see exactly what it will take to get their parents to come down on them.  And we’re not doing them any favors by a failure to set limits.

Maybe it’s time for “Love it or Leave it” to be a slogan again.

thanks keori @50. that comment is made of awesome.

Some of the ancient sects also had days of cursing where you would pray for all kinds of evil to befall other Jews who did not believe as you did. (jack spratt @ 32)

From Mel Brooks’s 2,000-Year-Old Man:

Every cave had a national anthem.
Ours was Let them all go to hell, except Cave 17.

Something has occurred to me that I’m not sure how to analyze for plausibility: how likely is it, in anybody else’s opinion, that Obama’s foot-dragging on all the stuff he promised in his campaign has been due to the adoption of a frog-in-slowly-boiling water strategy with regard to a wingnut threat that his security advisors have analyzed to be this dangerous?  (“Play it slow to avoid giving them any single event as a rallying point/avoid being a too-strong figurehead for the changes Congress is making at your direction.”)

I can’t tell—-I’m used to the top brass in Washington being the type who downplay shit like this from right-wingers, and I’m having trouble wrapping my head around the concept that there might be people in charge who literally take this shit as seriously as we do—-but then on the other hand if anybody WOULD take it seriously, it’d be the Secret Service and others who see to the President’s security.

So . . . what do people think?  Plausible, or insufficiently likely to explain away the way he’s been acting?

Posted this over at the home of the great Orange Satan, in response to the same bit of Psalmist wingnuttery.  Seems to fit here too.

I’m not a religious man, personally, but there’s some decent advice in the Bible:

Matthew 6:6  A suggestion that perhaps Christians should be the closeted ones.

Mark 10:25 Something about cantankerous animals and sewing implements.

John 8:7 Of course, with the egos the Christianists sport these days, they’d probably trample the Messiah in a stampede to grab the best rocks.

Luke 20:25 And yet somehow fundie religion and anti-tax extremism go hand in hand.  They even insist that their churches be tax exempt!

Matthew 25:40 The modern American translation is “kick ‘em when they’re down.”  Not sure how that works.

Deuteronomy 5:20 If only… The silence would be deafening.

Deuteronomy 9:16 I mean…SERIOUSLY?!?!

I don’t remember the citation, but the one that sticks out from all of those years of Hebrew school is “And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.  Nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more.” Also one of the few verses I remember in Hebrew. It’s when I learned that goy actually means nation and is not just a pejorative way of describing people my siblings and I were not supposed to date or marry. (One succeeded, the other appears to be on the right path, I fail. Boo-hoo.)

I watched the video. I love Saraa. A very poised teenager. Then again, Hindu children aren’t taught that their way is the only right way to be. Hopefully the other two girls will go away to college and be exposed to other viewpoints and if they remain Christians, will not hold on to the views that everyone else needs to be one too. Lots of my friends held those beliefs at fifteen or sixteen but no longer do, and lots of you here say you were raised in fundie households too. It was disturbing to watch, but having spent a lot of time around teenagers, I learned to remind myself that I knew everything at that age too.

It’s the adults who know everything that scare me. The two Christian girls didn’t come up with those ideas on their own. Either their parents tell them daily, or they got sucked into what we called Young Cult in high school. They “saved” some of the Catholic kids in my high school. I’m sure their parents were thrilled. Though the magic of facebook, I’m in touch with a lot of them. They have “recovering Catholic,” “agnostic,” or some clever version of “no” listed as their religion. Two are minister’s wives but two more became pro-choice, pro-LGBT liberal Protestant ministers.

Two are fundie ministers’ wives, that should read.

It really is so sad that the gospel has never been able to penetrate their hardened hearts.

I’m sorry for this, you’re a nice person and I feel kind of bad but I am sorry, surely you’re not talking about the same Gospel that includes this wonderful message of love:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/But_to_bring_a_sword

I’m sorry, but it’s liberal Christians that are ignoring key passages and cutting and pasting as it suits their purposes. And thank the gods for it, because that’s the only way you can be a christian and not become a monster. The craziness of the fundies is caused A) by the fact that the bible is filled with nonsensical contradictions and fundies dedicate their minds to believing them all simultaneously, and B) doing precisely what the bible suggests over and over, which is, I’m sorry to say, condemning anyone who doesn’t believe in Jesus to hell.

Again, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to make this personal.

I don’t worry too much about Obama being hurt. Its very difficult to even get close to a President post-Kennedy, post-Reagan assassination, and especially post-9/11.

What I worry about much more is the safety of Nancy Pelosi, or even more so someone like Alan Grayson—a low level well-known Congressional Democrat with minimal security. They’re much more likely to be hurt by a nut as they’re easier to strike at.

Oh, and continuing on what was said upthread—if somehow they got Obama, Biden, AND Pelosi they would get Hillary Clinton. They’re really fucking stupid if they think violence would do anything for their movement—I think there would be a HUGE backlash amd possibly even the Republican Party going the way of the Federalists. That is, driven to extinction due to being associated with discredited ideas and treason.

Of course the really rich thing about this is that the psalm is written from the point of view of a righteous leader surrounded by liars, haters, and false accusers, and is a prayer for their downfall.

Oh, sorry, it would be Robert Byrd, not Clinton, after Pelosi. But he’s so sick he would turn it down, and that would mean Patrick Lehay—a deep true blue latte sipping Volvo-driving Vermont liberal.

I hope they’re smart enough to realize this, of course.

I’m not so sure that I worry too much about him at the moment, but I do fear for him and his family when the next round of campaigning starts. That puts him out in the public a lot more. But I don’t underestimate these people.

That sign about “watering the tree of liberty” is definitely a death threat, I think, but the Psalm 108:9 t-shirt is a call to imprecatory prayer – more along the lines of a death wish than an actual threat.

No one wearing that message should be permitted to pass it off as a “joke.” It’s not funny by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, not only is it not funny, but it’s religiously not appropriate.—evidence of how demented these people are and how strong their warped persecution complex is, for them to think their own situations are in any way analogous to that of a Bronze-Age society pressed in a series of wars. (Obama’s crime against them was to try and universalize healthcare while still managing to be less liberal than most of the conservatives in other countries. Are these jackasses allergic to perspective? “OMG. Itz the 2nd civil wahr eleventy!1!”)

The irony here is that Psalm 109:16-19 provides the reasons for these imprecations: “Because he did not remember to show lovingkindness, But persecuted the afflicted and needy man, And the despondent in heart, to put them to death. He also loved cursing, so it came to him; And he did not delight in blessing, so it was far from him. But he clothed himself with cursing as with his garment, And it entered into his body like water, And like oil into his bones. Let it be to him as a garment with which he covers himself, And for a belt with which he constantly girds himself.”

@ Ross:

I’m sorry, but it’s liberal Christians that are ignoring key passages and cutting and pasting as it suits their purposes.

There are dozens of ways to approach the Bible. Literalism and fundamentalism are no “purer” or more honest than the others. This nonsense about how fundies are the true Christians - no; they just cherry-pick in the opposite direction.

All Protestant sects downplay certain parts of the Bible and puts emphasis on and plays up others, depending on the denomination.

The Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox ( I mean the mainline ones not Mel Gibson types) simply downplay them all and emphasize hierarchy, tradition, and liturgy.

I don’t worry too much about Obama being hurt. Its very difficult to even get close to a President post-Kennedy, post-Reagan assassination, and especially post-9/11.

Hopefully true.  I’m wondering, though, if THEY (Obama’s security people and strategy advisors) worry about him.  Or if he does—-if he’s backing down to reduce the risk he’ll get killed and put his family through hell.

And no, I don’t think they’re smart enough to know better.  I think some of them are IN it for the senseless violence, and the destruction of everything.  Some of them are crazy enough to think that’s a feature, not a bug.

Only the Xianists could make the phrase “I’m praying for you” sound like a threat.

What these people want is not just for Obama to go away and be replaced by Biden, Pelosi, or any other orderly sequence of events.

They would like a civil war where they get to secede from the current political scene so they can teach Jeebus in school and not have to go into dirty yucky multicultural cities any more, but get to keep open-heart surgery and cell phones.

Only the Xianists could make the phrase “I’m praying for you” sound like a threat.
Comment #68: Smartpatrol on 11/21 at 08:12 PM

There are a few street people where I live who, if you don’t give them money, say “God bless you” in a way to suggest you don’t want to be in a dark alley with them.

@Ross Lincoln #59.  No problem, buddy.  Protestants in the reformation invented the principle “scripture interprets scripture.”  This means we can cut and paste to our heart’s content.  I have no problem throwing out any part of the Bible I don’t agree with.  Believe me, I have argued many times that the Bible is more of a problem than a help.  I kind of think of myself as a zen christian, if there could be such a thing.

Hell, I’m as atheist as you will find, but I was raised a fundy, and I still have multiple copies of the Bible, and occasionally crack it open. Hell, I teach literature—kind of hard to get a grasp on the lit of the western world without having at least a passing knowledge of the Bible and Christianity.

I was raised in an areligious house, continue to be areligious (a pox-ridden atheist), and I have STILL read that book cover to cover more than once, and have to continually refer to it in my secular academic livelihood.  And own multiple copies.  And the apocrypha. I even minored in Religion as an undergrad, with an emphasis on early Xianity. The myth that atheists don’t know the book is a survivalist one (like Hershele suggests) and has no basis in reality. It’s an insult, in fact. So, shorter me: seconded.

Most of what they believe is what they are taught from the pulpit, and the average fundy preacher is not much more well read in theology than the people they preach to.

This.  How many fundies even know an apocrypha exists?  Or the first thing about authorship? Or translation pollution?  None that I’ve ever met.  Proof that faith does indeed go before even the merest ort of cultural or literary curiosity.

On topic: I am thoroughly chilled by those t-shirts.

I suppose I should amend the above to read, rather, Proof that faith <strike> does indeed go </strike> sometimes goes before even the merest ort of cultural or literary curiosity (since I’ve met some highly educated and curious people of faith).

Sorry Amanda I’ve never read the Bible so I have no idea about the context. My bad.

Lets face it, the call to pray for a person’s death is guaranteed to keep you out of heaven if you’re any sort of christian/catholic.  Saints are beautified due to their ability to will people to death, it’s the compassion they have in the face of disagreement and imminent death. 

Course, this whole argument does stem from what so many people have said: They can’t handle progression in society and demand to cling to their outdated ideas.  Their wish of death for President Obama is actually showing just how much they’ve lost.  Just how the fox media and right in general has painted this picture around a single man.  Just like with the loss of governorships to the republicans in Virginia and New Jersey was trumpeted as a point made.  But they completely ignored the conservative candidate loss in NY.  The right wing relies strictly on defeating obama because defeating popularly elected democrats in purple-red states would go against their perception.

<blockquote> I always want to remind them about how quickly people turned on the militias after the OKC bombing. And how much more severe the backlash would be after a militia/teabagger-inspired assassination attempt. And how utterly tiny their numbers are, compared to the rest of the non-insane population. It’d be open season on wingnuts.
Comment #31: Scott on 11/21 at 03:27 PM</blockequote>

Yeah Scott, but in their minds, it’s the “Chuckie Fantasy”  in which they play the role of the Chuck Connors/Chuck Norris hero, easily trampling the defenseless libs, because libs don’t have guns and are all gay weaklings anyway.

Hopefully true.  I’m wondering, though, if THEY (Obama’s security people and strategy advisors) worry about him.

oh, they do worry. and are working over-time to the point where they’re seriously straining their resources. There even was speculation about pulling the Secret Service out of all the other shit they’re traditionally responsible for, just so they can adequetely protect the President and his family.

and indeed, those wingnut assholes are yearning for a re-play of the Civil War: http://www.usofearth.com/2011-obamas-coup-fails.php

Problem is, these days you don’t necessarily have to get close to the President. These guys are into rifles and some of them are probably getting sniper training. With all these wingnuts running around armed at Presidential appearances, you have to figure there’s lots more hiding, watching, and biding their turn. The ones who are dumb enough to make threats in public aren’t the ones I’m worried about.

Sorry. Somewhere in there it was supposed to say they’re joining the military these days, too.

They would like a civil war where they get to secede from the current political scene so they can teach Jeebus in school and not have to go into dirty yucky multicultural cities any more, but get to keep open-heart surgery and cell phones.

For how much longer will the US make scientific progress when real science is no longer taught in schools, only creationism? I realize there’s a lot more to science than evolution, but when you start to chip away at science classes, I can’t imagine anything but a downhill slide as science teachers are pushed out of the classroom by preachers.

Actually, it’s much more likely they’d have a rogue nation than the whole US. Perhaps a larger area, but I don’t foresee a coast-hugging swath starting with southern Maine down through about Fairfax, Virginia, or a slender line along the west coast being taken. There would probably be a few other strongholds too. What other countries are going to trade with, extend credit, and allow their citizens to visit Jesusland Theocracy of America? Soon the technology will go too. Do they think it’s the Regents University and Bob Jones University grads who are the innovators of the world?

While these T-shirts are unpleasant and distasteful - they really not as bad as the “kill Bush” T-shirts from several years ago - also sold on cafepress.

Great, so you agree with us that the people who posted these T-shirts should be investigated by the Secret Service the same way the people who posted the “Kill Bush” T-shirts were.  (You did see that part in your link to World Nut Daily, didn’t you?)  I’m glad we can all agree that people who make dangerous threats towards the president should be thoroughly investigated even if we personally disagree with the president.

How many jesus freaks have you met who had read the Bible?

Oh, I’ve met plenty who read it diligently.  They just don’t understand it… not that it’s all that easy to understand, hence all of the scholarly debates over it.  So they read it to look for the phrases in which they see guidance, and more importantly, validation.  It’s kinda like a preschooler who only knows the first letter of his own name and assumes that every time he sees that letter in a book that he’s ‘reading’ his name.

They hate America.  They want a theocratic authoritarian state, just like the Taliban, where unbelievers can be lashed and stoned in public for not properly observing religious strictures.

Well, kinda… IME they do hate the rationalist/Enlightenment concept of America, and they definitely want a theocracy insofar as they can be the absolutely dominant cultural segment within it.  I also think that given that kind of power, they eventually would be more like the Taliban than not, but I also doubt that any but the fringiest among them actually envision that at this point.  Mostly they figure that gays and slutty/uppity women and brown people and atheists can continue to live here as third- or fourth-class citizens—closeted, denied opportunities, and especially left without any kind of aid or recourse during difficult times without repenting and kissing the fundamentalists’ asses for it.  They just want the icky types to be hidden, punished, and/or used as negative examples… to them, that’s plenty of “tolerance.”

how likely is it, in anybody else’s opinion, that Obama’s foot-dragging on all the stuff he promised in his campaign has been due to the adoption of a frog-in-slowly-boiling water strategy with regard to a wingnut threat that his security advisors have analyzed to be this dangerous?  (“Play it slow to avoid giving them any single event as a rallying point/avoid being a too-strong figurehead for the changes Congress is making at your direction.”)

I always figured that Obama goes slow for two basic reasons, although neither goes that far: one is that he wants Congress to do its fucking job, and the other is that he’s avoiding internal turf wars for as long as he can.  To use DADT as an example, he knows that most of the country thinks it’s unnecessary, as does a good portion of the enlisted corps, and even Congress is willing to talk about talking about it at some future point… but he also knows that the top brass are a bunch of old hidebound men who a) get pissed about it and b) will cheerfully stab a Democratic president in the back in a New York minute.  So he gives the brass, and Congress, a bit of cover, not forcing the issue, reiterating that most people think it’s silly and that it does cost us a lot in training & essential positions unfilled.  And he waits, while prodding Congress & the Pentagon to do other things he wants, letting them know that he’s taking some heat from his base to make their lives a bit easier.  It’s a useful game, if horribly frustrating.

There are dozens of ways to approach the Bible. Literalism and fundamentalism are no “purer” or more honest than the others. This nonsense about how fundies are the true Christians - no; they just cherry-pick in the opposite direction.

Yep.  It even happens within Catholicism, where you have Iraq War and death penalty-supporting Catholics sneering at liberal Catholics for being “cafeteria Catholics” even though they’re cherry-picking just as much as they accuse liberals of doing.

It’s inaccurate to say that fundamentalists take everything the Bible says literally.  What they actually say is that it’s “inerrant,” meaning that everything in it is correct, even if it doesn’t make sense.  I’m sure you’re sick of me pushing Fred Clark on you at this point, but he explains this stuff better than anyone, especially when he points out that the Left Behind books’ “literal” interpretation of Revelation actually requires you to skip around between various books of the Old and New Testaments and cobble together a “story” from that.

When fundamentalists tell you they’re reading the Bible literally, they ain’t doing any such thing.  They’re picking and choosing but lying about doing it to convince naive people that they actually know what the hell they’re talking about.

How many jesus freaks have you met who had read the Bible?

I think the Bible is a fantastic book – or rather, a fantastic collection of literary works that have been preserved, refined, and sometimes even mutilated through the ages. I read it every day – the parts I love, the parts I hate, the parts I can’t understand even when I look back at other documents from that period or try to read scholarly material about it.

A flat, literal reading of the Bible as a single historical document without error – in other words, the treatment of the Bible as a finished textbook – does a gross disservice to the many authors who wrote it. Literalists completely ignore how the authors were affected by social realities, customs, and pressures. As a result, the many different layers of meaning in a text, and the troubles related to translating that text from one language to another, are completely lost on the literalists.

Furthermore, many of the so-called literalists – the ones who blather on and on about how everyone else in Christendom is merely a lukewarm cherry-picker – are perfectly content with deriving a figurative meaning from literal statements in the Bible if it suits their agenda.

Then – *POOF* - wine becomes grape juice. (Wine in the Bible is clearly an alcoholic beverage, from the oldest texts to the newest, and yet somehow “grape juice” is an acceptable interpretation…because drinking is bad, m’kay?)

Sell all your belongings, give the proceeds to the poor, and follow in the footsteps of Jesus? Aw hell no. That was only meant figuratively…or it was only meant for the people of that time.

But Noah’s Ark and the Flood? Yeah, all that stuff was, like, totally real – and if you don’t literally believe it, you’re going to rot forever in a Hell, with fire and everything, right alongside Hitler and Gandhi.

(Old School Christians from the First and Second Centuries argued about the hell doctrine – whether hell was a temporary place of purification and everyone would be reconciled to God; whether it meant annihilation rather than eternal punishment; or perhaps it did mean eternal punishment. The dominant view was that it didn’t – and there’s lots of scriptural evidence against the view of an eternal hell. But go ahead, present those scriptures to a “literalist” and watch them turn into a cherry-picker or pedant in a matter of seconds.)

Iraq War and death penalty-supporting Catholics sneering at liberal Catholics for being “cafeteria Catholics” even though they’re cherry-picking just as much as they accuse liberals of doing.

And calling it ‘cherry-picking’  demonstrates their own lack of following the tenets of the religion they profess to believe in, as if muttering on ones’ deathbed “I believe what the church believes”(After Extreme Unction and getting things right with SkyDaddy) was still operative in the RCC theology.

Then – *POOF* - wine becomes grape juice. (Wine in the Bible is clearly an alcoholic beverage, from the oldest texts to the newest, and yet somehow “grape juice” is an acceptable interpretation…because drinking is bad, m’kay?)

There was a pronouncement from a Woman Temperance Christian Union type back in the 1920s during Prohibition which argued along similar lines, only it was that when the Bible spoke favorably about wine, it was talking about grape juice, when it talked unfavorably about wine, it was of course referring to fermented grape juice.

It can be found in Americania, a collection from H. L. Menckens’ monthly column in the American Mercury, a sort of patriotic “News of the Weird”, with heading by state.

From #82

I also think that given that kind of power, they eventually would be more like the Taliban than not, but I also doubt that any but the fringiest among them actually envision that at this point.

Latts, I can think of at least one recent American Religious Right leader, off the top of my head, who envisioned a more or less Taliban-style theocracy in the USA, and wrote books about the subject and how he would like to implement it: Rousas John Rushdoony. (”Rousas John Rushdoony”, wikipedia article). Especially note the section, “Intellectual Career: Christian Reconstruction”. From that section:

Rushdoony supported the reinstatement of the Mosaic law’s penal sanctions. ...
the list of civil crimes which carried a death sentence would include homosexuality, adultery, incest, lying about one’s virginity, bestiality, witchcraft, idolatry or apostasy, public blasphemy, false prophesying, kidnapping, rape, and bearing false witness in a capital case.[8] Although supporting the separation of church and state at the national level, Rushdoony understood both institutions as under the rule of God,[9] and thus he conceived secularism as posing endless false antitheses, ...
In short, he sought to cast a vision for the reconstruction of society based on Christian principles.

Note the Rushdoony is considered a large influence on the homeschooling movement, which he “saw as a way to combat the intentionally secular nature of the U.S. public school system”.

Here are some quotes from Rushdoony: (”Quotations on Freethought & Religion: R.J. Rushdoony”, About.com)

He is considered a founder of the movement variously called “Dominionism” or “Christian Reconstructionism”: (”Dominionism”, wikipedia article) From the section of that article, “Dominionism as a broader movement”:

In 2005, Clarkson enumerated the following characteristics shared by all forms of dominionism:[19]

1. Dominionists celebrate Christian nationalism, in that they believe that the United States once was, and should once again be, a Christian nation. ...
2. Dominionists promote religious supremacy, insofar as they generally do not respect the equality of other religions, or even other versions of Christianity.
3. Dominionists endorse theocratic visions, insofar as they believe that the Ten Commandments, or “biblical law,” should be the foundation of American law, and that the U.S. Constitution should be seen as a vehicle for implementing Biblical principles.

Sometimes progressives/liberals/the left fall into the trap of viewing our domestic opponents as being nothing but a rabble of crazy idiots. While this perception is often correct, there are also dangerously intelligent and organized people in the religious right (as only one example of a ‘conservative’ movement). I really think we need to keep an eye on them, and not lump them together as an indistinguishable mass of “Teabaggers”.

i go to church because my fiance goes and one that always has bothered me is how her pastor will site Psalm 11 and totally bypass verse 5.  which i can understand from a rightwing mindset why that would make one uneasy.

Then – *POOF* - wine becomes grape juice. (Wine in the Bible is clearly an alcoholic beverage, from the oldest texts to the newest, and yet somehow “grape juice” is an acceptable interpretation…because drinking is bad, m’kay?)

Actually, the progression was more like: Wesleyan Methodist Thomas Welch worked to discover a method of pasteurizing grapes so his church could use unfermented grape juice for communion and then he and his son marketed it to other Christian sects.  Sort of like how corn flakes and graham crackers were originally marketed as health food by people with weirdo dietary beliefs.  The religious belief by some Protestants against alcohol came first, and the Welches were able to sell to that market.  Without that market already existing, no one would have bothered to invent grape juice.

(Being an amateur student of history, I do have some sympathy towards the temperance crusaders, misguided as they were.  Alcohol and alcoholism really were major social problems with absolutely no cure until Bill W. came up with his idea.  The 12-step idea may have its faults, be applied with too broad a brush and sometimes legally forced on people who won’t actually get any benefit from it, but at least we don’t have as many people literally drinking themselves to death as we used to.)

Then – *POOF* - wine becomes grape juice. (Wine in the Bible is clearly an alcoholic beverage, from the oldest texts to the newest, and yet somehow “grape juice” is an acceptable interpretation…because drinking is bad, m’kay?)

Catholics think drinking is bad?

Tell that to my Irish Catholic relatives.  And the Jesuits.

Tolerance towards alcohol is one of the many reasons that many fundies consider the RCC the “whore of Babylon”.

Sort of like how corn flakes and graham crackers were originally marketed as health food by people with weirdo dietary beliefs.

John Harvey Kellogg, the cofounder of Kellogg’s Cereals and the inventor of corn flakes, was a completely unhinged xtianist whackjob.

He was a staunch advocate against ALL forms of sexual activity.  Like, all of it, even non-kinky vanilla PIV sex between married couples.  He supported the concept of pouring carbolic acid on a woman’s clitoris to try to prevent masturbation.  In his 40 years of marriage, it is believed that he never once had sex with his wife the entire time.  He was asexual, and while there is absolutely nothing wrong with asexuality, there’s something seriously fucked up about using one’s wierd moral objections to all sexuality to try to compel the rest of society to not be sexual.

He wasn’t just opposedd to any and all types of sexual activity, he was opposed to everything that could create any sort of physical pleasure whatsoever.  He was a vegetarian, but above and beyond not eating meat, he advocated not eating anything that wasn’t bland in taste.  Spicy food was of the devil.

He was also a eugenecist, so go figure.

And there was the gun-toting New Hampshire teabagger with a sign saying it is time to “water the tree of liberty”—a reference to Thomas Jefferson’s reminder that the tree of liberty must be watered from time to time with the “blood of tyrants and patriots.”

What does that remind me of?  Oh, yeah…

[When arrested on April 19, 1995,] McVeigh was wearing a T-shirt at that time with a picture of Abraham Lincoln and the motto: sic semper tyrannis, the state motto of Virginia and also the words shouted by John Wilkes Booth after he shot Lincoln. The translation: Thus, always, to tyrants.[56] On the back, it had a tree with a picture of three blood droplets and the Thomas Jefferson quote, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”[57] Three days later, while still in jail, McVeigh was identified as the subject of the nationwide manhunt.

At least they’re making their intentions clear.

I think they engage in these codes not because they’re effective protection or because they’re funny, but because they get a rise out of approximating what they think being clever might feel like.  These codes may not be clever, but they feel clever to people who aren’t really used to exercising their brain cells.  To understand these threats, your brain needs to take two admittedly tiny steps, but those are two more steps than these assholes are used to putting their brains through, so it feels like what they imagine it must feel like to be one of those people who are actually clever and use their brains all the time.

I wonder if they’re counting on a kind of Gresham’s Law of Cleverness taking hold, whereby ersatz cleverness would drive out the real thing. 

By the same token, propaganda would replace history, creationism would supersede science, religion would give place to dominionism, and Left Behind would trump Paradse Lost.

These are not only people who don’t like America, who don’t like Obama, who don’t care for nuance, peaceniks, or perfessers.  These are not only people who think the Civil War was won by the wrong side.  These are people who are unhappy with reality at a very basic level.  They’ve more or less been pissed off at everything since Cromwell: they think that Civil War was won by the wrong side.  The prospect of being able to reboot and start over must pose an almost unbearable temptation to them.  (An even more unbearable temptation must be posed by the prospect of wiping the slate completely clean—-then they’d be able to reformulate the story from the start, the way Judge Narragansett rewrites the Constitution at the end of Atlas Shruagged.)

On the issue of teaching Science: I received an email the other day inviting me to the opening of the new science center at my old high school. It is a $19million 45,000sf facility with state of the art technology, labs, classrooms, offices for faculty etc. This is in conservative Orange County, CA. The district has been short of funds for many years but the first thing they did when they could get the money was invest in science education. 

Conversely, approximately 30% of educational budgets for most schools in TX is spent on sports. Football in particular, which has a limited utility for a majority of students in terms of career possibilities. Recently, our little district floated a bond to replace the five year old football field because it has worn spots. Somehow they can’t find the funds to modernize the science labs but could re-turf and build a new field house. The problem has to do with how schools are organized and funded as well as priorities. With local control, locals (no matter how dumb) control the agenda. Until we have a national curriculum inclusive of regional curriculum we will continue to have problems.

As to the issue of a second civil war: I live in Texas and from what I can tell, most “secessionists” are known to be whack jobs and not taken very seriously. I also have a friend in New England who tells me that the Northern hostility against Southerners is alive and well. He cannot participate in family gatherings with his partner as they make his TX origins a major issue.  He has encountered this with others and I am given to understand that the feeling is pervasive and not based on a religious divide.  The road runs both directions; hostility cannot all be blamed on Southerners. Ignorance and bias is a universal condition and must be fought wherever it is found.

Great, so you agree with us that the people who posted these T-shirts should be investigated by the Secret Service the same way the people who posted the “Kill Bush” T-shirts were.  (You did see that part in your link to World Nut Daily, didn’t you?) I’m glad we can all agree that people who make dangerous threats towards the president should be thoroughly investigated even if we personally disagree with the president.

I think the Service should probably be more concerned about the actual explicit threats that are up 400% than some possibly-veiled vague death threat. And the Service is investigating these t-shirts now.

I always thought the people that wear those Jewish carpenter shirts were painters. Huh.

On a serious note:

In Psalm 109, David calls for God to defend him from his enemies. The first five verses read:

1 O God, whom I praise, do not remain silent, 2 for wicked and deceitful men have opened their mouths against me; they have spoken against me with lying tongues. 3 With words of hatred they surround me; they attack me without cause. 4 In return for my friendship they accuse me, but I am a man of prayer. 5 They repay me evil for good, and hatred for my friendship.

David makes himself out to be an honest, innocent victim - he is deserving of God’s protections. And this is crucial to understanding why those that think citing Psalm 109:8 is so clever - unlike most Americans, even those that consider themselves religious, born again Christians will have studied the OT. They will identify with the plight of David, his persecution. They will believe to some extent that they are too, even though there is no evidence.

But proof doesn’t matter - what is important is that they believe that they are victims.

This is incredibly difficult to combat, and hard to understand, especially since REAL victims of bigotry often are shoved to the gutter by the media and others. But here we are.

<blockquotes>
Catholics think drinking is bad?

Tell that to my Irish Catholic relatives.  And the Jesuits.

Tolerance towards alcohol is one of the many reasons that many fundies consider the RCC the “whore of Babylon”. </blockquotes>

I’m talking about Protestant “literalists.” As far as I know, Catholics have never claimed “sola scriptura” as the basis for their theology. In other words, they never claimed to believe as these guys do - and so when Catholics decide to adopt a figurative understanding of something in the Bible, they aren’t being hypocritical.

I think, by the time the original author is dead, it’s usually not considered important to analyze the original context of the quote.

I think, by the time the original author is dead, it’s usually not considered important to analyze the original context of the quote.

Huh?

I think the Service should probably be more concerned about the actual explicit threats that are up 400% than some possibly-veiled vague death threat.

So if you think it was wrong of the Secret Service to investigate the anti-Bush t-shirt, why did you bring it up as somehow equivalent?  Either you think that all threats against the president should be investigated, in which case you support the SS investigating both the anti-Bush and the anti-Obama t-shirts, or you think it’s a waste of time, which would mean you think the SS shouldn’t have bothered investigating the anti-Bush t-shirt, either.  Which is it?

So if you think it was wrong of the Secret Service to investigate the anti-Bush t-shirt, why did you bring it up as somehow equivalent?

Actually, I said the anti-Bush shirts were worse than the “pray Obama” shirts. I mean the one I linked to says “Kill Bush” with a smear of blood across it. It’s hard to imagine a more straightforward message than that.

Either you think that all threats against the president should be investigated, in which case you support the SS investigating both the anti-Bush and the anti-Obama t-shirts, or you think it’s a waste of time, which would mean you think the SS shouldn’t have bothered investigating the anti-Bush t-shirt, either.  Which is it?

Oh, probably the later. Really, death threats are a serious concern but there are probably way too many for the Secret Service (I really feel uncomfortable with using the acronym “SS”) to field.

Realistically, some random wing-nut on cafepress is probably not going to have t-shirts made if he is seriously plotting to kill the president.

I think the Service should probably be more concerned about the actual explicit threats that are up 400% than some possibly-veiled vague death threat. And the Service is investigating these t-shirts now.

So you agree with my earlier comment #50 that the homemade signs waved by a few dozen poverty-line anti-establishment anarchists at antiwar parades didn’t actually merit investigation because they weren’t credible threats? You agree with me that the death threats against a black President made by gun-toting followers of a corporate-backed, combat-trained, white supremacist, violent, theocratic suicide cult actually need to be taken seriously?

Glad to hear we agree on something.

By the way, have you made those muffins yet? I made apple oat bran muffins today and the smell wafting through the house is divine.

You’ve seen the video with the Christian twits talking to an Indian Hindu?

Goddammit, apparently you were praying for horrible things to happen to 10 minutes of my *life*—that was terrifying. I never knew anyone that ridiculous as a teenager; though I did have one friend who thought that homosexuality was a sin, she was more live-and-let-live than those girls (and not *nearly* as much of an all around dumbass! “Africa”? Seriously?) She was basically like, “well, I think it’s a sin and you have to repent of it to go to Heaven” and I was like, “well, I pretty much completely disagree” and that was the end of it. (Tellingly, during our brief talk she also admitted that it was normal for women to have lustful thoughts about other women, but that those must be ignored and I was like “...uh-HUH.” I hope she’s figured out some stuff about *herself* since then. 9.9)

Saraa rocked out loud in that video, though. Worth watching just for the last bit where she says goodbye. If she were a Xtian she would have told those girls very pityingly that she would “pray for” them. :D

Gerald #96, quoting the beginning of the psalm, misses the same point that the wingers miss, not having bothered to study their bibles.

[[To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David.]] Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise;

For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me: they have spoken against me with a lying tongue.

They compassed me about also with words of hatred; and fought against me without a cause.

For my love they are my adversaries: but I [give myself unto] prayer.

And they have rewarded me evil for good, and hatred for my love.

Now, read that again and consider that this is the king talking. King David, remember? The king is complaining that “the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me: they have spoken against me with a lying tongue”.

(Tellingly, during our brief talk she also admitted that it was normal for women to have lustful thoughts about other women, but that those must be ignored and I was like “...uh-HUH.” I hope she’s figured out some stuff about *herself* since then. 9.9)

Isn’t it? I keep hearing that female sexual orientation is more “fluid” than male sexual orientation.

“Though, if that isn’t damning them with faint praise, I don’t know what is. “

They’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

(I really feel uncomfortable with using the acronym “SS”)

The acronym used by the agency itself and the federal government is USSS - United States Secret Service.

As to the issue of a second civil war: I live in Texas and from what I can tell, most “secessionists” are known to be whack jobs and not taken very seriously. I also have a friend in New England who tells me that the Northern hostility against Southerners is alive and well. He cannot participate in family gatherings with his partner as they make his TX origins a major issue.  He has encountered this with others and I am given to understand that the feeling is pervasive and not based on a religious divide.  The road runs both directions; hostility cannot all be blamed on Southerners. Ignorance and bias is a universal condition and must be fought wherever it is found.

I’m not so much talking about secessionism per se, which, however you feel about it, can’t exist without a certain amount of ideological dedication and consistency on the part of its adherents.  People can’t be secessionists without having first accepted certain ideas, even if they’re bad ideas.  What I’m talking about is more a feeling, usually not well articulated or even articulable, among a mostly-white minority of people living in this country, that things have gone wrong in a way which they can’t define.  (And which they have no real intention of trying to define and which they have no specific plans for ever learning how to deal with.)

I doubt that many of the people who show up for teabagger rallies are secessionists and I sure don’t think that most of them are Southerners.  What I do think is that they either are or like to pretend to be the intellectual and cultural heirs* of two sets of predecessors: the Tories who lost the Civil War in Great Britain and who colonized the southeastern part of the United States (not in that order) and the frontier types, lots of them Scotch/Irish, who colonized the southwestern part of the United States.  (The last group has a long messy history of being systematically beaten up by pretty much everybody, and of being predisposed to internecine strife.)

These are people who lost their battles, and by that I mean their literal, physical battles in war.  The Royalists lost the Civil War in Great Britain and the Rebels lost the Civil War in the United States.  The second group of people was to some extent descended from the first, culturally if not genetically.  Even though the Restoration came in after Cromwell, and even if Jim Crow succeeded the American Civil War, the memory of defeat still hung around like a bad smell, refusing to be expunged.  Matthew Arnold called the upper-crusters of the Victorian Era “barbarians”, meaning that they lived like the barbarians in the uncultured nations of Europe before Rome introduced organized warfare, plumbing, and (eventually) Christianity.  But they hadn’t always lived like that.  Elizabethan and Jacobean noblemen, when they weren’t rusticated, were civilized.  What happened?  What happened is: the nobles and royals lost a war, and felt obligated from that point forward to remain in a state of military readiness, but in a state of military readiness which was more conceptual than real.  (For good reason, because when James II tried to make that state of military readiness real he was thrown out of England and not invited back.) Outwardly the English Royalists accepted defeat and made the best of things, but they kept on fighting the war in their heads.

Somewhat the same thing took place in the American South.  The South lost a war, accepted the consequences physically, but did not accept the consequences intellectually, with the result that Southerners never entirely “stood down”.  The reason their culture is somewhat militarized is that they were militarily defeated, not because they were militarily successful.  It’s interesting that you talk about the amount of money spent on sports programs as opposed to other kinds of programs in Texan schools.  In my opinion that’s a symptom caused by the defeat of days past.  It’s kind of analogous to the way 19th-century upper-crust Englishmen adored hunting and barbells.  The South is still trying to demonstrate its readiness in matters of physical aggression, but not in a way that’s going to provoke an actual fight.  Football is the substitute for war, boys are the substitutes for men, and the whole thing is coded through and through, just like an anti-Obama tee shirt.  It’s 100% percent conceptual, even if it’s not clever.

*not necessarily their genetic descendants

(cont’d.)

(see above)

I’m sorry to hear that your friend in New England is encountering so much difficulty.  I’m sorry to hear it because I believe it: in New England toleration is often more admired in theory than exihibited in practice.  I will try to defend New Englanders to this degree: they know they are narrow-minded people and they’ve got a long tradition of trying to combat that.  On the whole they tend to regard insularity as a defect and not as a virtue, even though they realize they’re mighty prone to it themselves.  That doesn’t make situations like your friend’s any easier, though.  You’re right, too, when you say that the kind of hostility your friend has run into is not based on any religious divide; I will add that it’s not based on any racial divide either; that’s because it’s based in culture and not on religion or race.  Which is good news in the end, because it’s easier to modify culture than to reform religion, and it’s easier to get people to change their ideas than their tribe.