Silencing the Radical Right
It's time for everyone who is tired of the unrelenting CRAP from the Radical Right on message boards of various kinds to pounce on all that garbage with a single, unified message: "You LOST. Go away and be quiet." Don't engage them in their nonsense. Don't dignify it by treating it as something we need to respect and discuss. No. Just dismiss it and shout it down. You see "Obama is a Muslim" crap? Shout it down. "Obama is a socialist"? Shout it down. "Obama has divided the Nation"? Shout it down. "Obama wants to enslave blacks in welfare dependency"? Shout it down. "Obama wants to destroy our democracy and become a Communist dictator"? Shout it down: "You LOST. Go away and be quiet."
+
Maybe if the Radical Right's clumsy propagandists see that, 16,000 times in the next two weeks, we can liberate online comments areas from the b.s. that has filled them for four years, and resume instead civil discourse that speaks to the specifics of a particular story, not goes off on some crazy anti-Obama tangent that has nothing to do with that story.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 9:00 AM

 
Popular Vote 2012
Nobody in the online news stories I have seen actually did the subtraction to show us how many more individuals voted for President Obama than for Richie Rich. Why the hell not? Why do we have to pull up a calculator to get that number? Sometimes the stupidity of the human race just astonishes me. Why is it that the people who went to the trouble to say, on November 9th, that Obama got 60,782,354 to Romney’s 57,884,882, and even specified, on November 7th what percentages the popular-vote figures amounted to ("61,173,739 or 50.5% to 58,167,260 or 48.0%"), not do the math? I couldn't even find an actual final tally in early results from a Google search, just one that was given "with nearly all votes in", on November 9th. Why not?
+
As you can see, the figures above differ by hundreds of thousands of votes (391,385 in the case of votes for Obama; 282,378 in the case of votes for Romney, for a total discrepancy of 673,763 popular votes between two reports). What is this? — a Third World country?
+
A Bing search brought up a Wikipedia page as the top result (a page that Google did not show in the first 30 results — which is inexcusably atrocious). Wiki gave the popular vote as 64,497,901 for Obama to 60,298,327 for Romney, reported as 50.8% to 47.5%. But there, too, no one thought to give an actual number for the difference in popular vote: 4,199,574. Did the editors think no one wanted to know that? Or was every single reader to do subtraction, in their head, of two 7-digit numbers? or pull out a calculator? or call up a calculator on their computer?
+
Wikipedia didn't even do the subtraction of the percentages: 3.3%. That was a lot easier to do in one's head, but not everybody can do even simple arithmetic easily, and some don't even try, even tho they'd be glad to have the information if they didn't have to do math.
+
Wikipedia also didn't do the addition, to show the total popular vote: 124,796,228. Again, why not?
+
What is wrong with these reporters and editors? Are they just insufficiently curious, or out of touch with the things that matter to ordinary human beings?
+
The bulk of people who followed election results on November 6th and followed up November 7th thought the difference in popular vote was on the order of 2 million, not over 4 million. They even remember the percentage difference as just barely 2%, rather than over 3%. Does it make a difference? Hell yes! The militant Radical Right sees a defeat by 2 million votes as a 'squeaker' that justifies them in their insane fantasy that they 'just barely lost', and that that loss was due to their not being Conservative ENUF! They cannot do that with a difference of 4 million.
+
I saw one reader-comment at the end of an online news story today, 19 days after the election, that said that Romney lost because 3.5 million Republicans stayed home. But that's wrong. He would STILL have lost if all those asserted stay-at-homes had voted! And that makes a big difference.
+
The Radical Right cannot take any comfort from the participation rate ("turnout") as reported by Wikipedia: "57.5%–60% (voting eligible)". The Radical Right did everything in their power to rally their voters, in an enormous effort that cost over $750 million (Dems spent over $850 million) and still lost, even tho at least 40% of voters stayed home. There is very good reason to believe that the great majority of nonvoters were members of groups (the poor, the disillusioned, the dispirited) that would vote Democratic if we had mandatory voting.
+
If 125 million people represents 60% of the eligible electorate, that means there are 83 million people who did not vote. If 2/3 of them (which seems to me a conservative figure) would vote Democratic, that would mean another 55.8 million for the Democratic candidate but only 27.2 million for the Republican, which is more indicative of the actual political disposition of the People. 55.8M – 27.2M = 28.6M, + 4.2M actual popular-vote advantage would equal a 32.8 million popular-vote advantage for the Democrat if everyone voted. No Radical Rightist could pretend to see THAT big a discrepancy as a 'squeaker', nor pretend anything but that the Nation repudiates their politics of racism, sexism, religious bigotry, economic division, and scapegoating.
+
Alas, we do not yet have compulsory voting, tho we assuredly should have, but even with 40% of eligible voters staying home, Republicans lost by over 4 million votes.
+
Plainly, if Republicans continue their present course of antagonizing the bulk of Americans, the only way they can possibly elect another President is if they can find some way to suppress the Democratic vote, by MILLIONS.
+
So, what do you think Republicans (or "Tepublicans", if we regard the Republican Party of today as captive to its "Tea Party" loons) will do: moderate their stances, or work very, very hard to suppress millions of Democratic votes?
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 4:23 PM

 
Commenting on Online Comments
I read thru some comments at a Yahoo News story ("Romney ‘transition’ website briefly appears online"), today, and left a few remarks of my own on matters raised there.

Romney was indeed delusional. He thought he could refuse to release his tax returns and get away with it, and answer only questions he wanted to answer. Guess again!

*

Huh? Cit... cites a proverb [don't count your chickens until they're hatched] that is part of the shared WISDOM of humanity, and Ina calls that "ignorance". Astounding.

*

332 (if FL goes to Obama) is 61% of the electoral college. Every honest person on Earth regards that as a landslide.

*

"Mark", read Article III, Section 2 and learn that Congress can pass any legislation it wants and forbid the courts to review it. THAT'S how Citizens United can be overturned. McCain-Feingold can be passed again, with a final provision that forbids the courts from reviewing that legislation. ANY law can be put beyond the courts by Article III, Section 2. The Constitution NEVER gave the courts the power of judicial review. That would constitute a veto over legislation. If the Framers had intended the Supreme Court to have a veto, they would have provided a means to OVERRIDE that veto, as they provided in the case of a Presidential veto. The Constitution is about checks and balances. The Framers never intended that there be no check upon judicial power.

*

Yes, it was perfectly reasonable to have a transition website at the ready. But it was entirely UNreasonable to put it up for even an HOUR after Romney lost.

*

Romney NEVER cared about the economy or putting people to work, so he will NOT mobilize his contacts into a massive, private "Put America Back to Work" program. It was always ONLY ego. I'd be very happy to see Romney prove me wrong, tho, and indeed agitate for a rebound in the economy by bringing jobs home and promoting "Buy American". Come on, Mitt. Prove me wrong.

*

The deeply Red States tried to create their own country once already. It didn't turn out well.

*

The Republicans have thrown up 246 filibusters against Obama's program, deliberately to prolong the Great Recession Bush started. No, we can't [now] blame Bush, who started TARP and other measures, and stood silent as to Obama's plans. But we sure can blame Bush's party.

*

What I can't figure out is why the Radical Right, which was rebuked and repudiated by the electorate, doesn't accept that they LOST, and just SHUT UP. We've heard their crap for four years, and don't want to hear ANY of it any more!

*

[Yogi Berra] lives in my county, and we are very proud of him. As for his observation, it IS over. Thank goodness.

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 6:09 PM

 
The 'First Bullshitter' Proves Himself a Liar Again
Mitt Romney claimed to have written only an acceptance speech, not a concession speech. Yet, when he came to the podium at 12:55am, to deliver a concession speech, he looked at no teleprompter, as far as I could see, and consulted no written notes, but delivered his speech brilliantly nonetheless. So, is he such a quick study that he could have written a (gracious, not bitter) concession speech and memorized HUNDREDS of words in an hour and forty minutes since all the networks (even Fox) declared Obama the winner? If so, a man as stunningly beautiful as he is, should assuredly have a great future as a Hollywood star. Or did he in fact write — or, far more likely, have his professional speechwriters write (after all, he IS a megamillionaire, so has all kinds of "help" with every part of his life) — a concession speech well before 11:15pm (when all the major media declared Obama re-elected), and learn it well by 12:55, on the understanding that he had no chance of becoming President?
+
Interestingly, President Obama also spoke without a teleprompter, even tho Republicans have, for years, suggested that Barack Obama cannot speak without a teleprompter.
+
I have mentioned to my friend Joe from Belleville (a northern suburb of my city, Newark, NJ) for MONTHS that I did not see how Romney could possibly win, and actively disbelieved the pollsters who claimed to see the election as too close to call. I have been redeemed.
+
On January 4, 2012, I observed here:

The general thinking now is that Mitt Romney's march to the nomination is inevitable and irresistible. But Romney is almost certainly not electable either, first because he is a Mormon, and a significant portion of the Republican base is hostile to Mormonism; and second because Romney is a moderate or Liberal Republican posing as Conservative, and few people, to none, are fooled. To the extent that the Republican Party of today hates moderates and Liberals, support of the rank and file in the general election will be unenthusiastic — so unenthusiastic that many Conservative Republicans will simply stay home. And since the Republican Party has to turn out every possible voter to win the White House, any significant rate of abstention by the Republican base would ensure Obama's re-election.
+
How significant a reduction in turnout might occur? Well, Rick Santorum got 25% of the caucus vote in Iowa, representing the anti-Romney, true or Radical Conservative vote in Iowa. Iowa is not representative of the Nation, and its Republicans are much more conservative than Republicans nationally. [Mind you, Obama actually won Iowa.] If instead of 25%, the hardcore Conservative base of the Republican Party that adamantly rejects Romney is 10% of the Party, that should still be well more than enuf to render Mitt Romney, like his father, George Romney, a mere footnote in Presidential electoral history. The elder Romney was also a moderate [In actuality, George Romney declared against the Vietnam War, so became, in many people's eyes, and rightly, a Comsymp enemy of the United States], at a time when the Republican Party was much less Radical Conservative than it is today. George [or Ho Chi Minh] Romney dropped out of the race, and Richard Nixon became President. Nixon would, today, be regarded as too far Left to be electable. What chance does Romney the Younger have in the hyper-Conservative Republican Party of today? We shall see.
+
I bet a nickel that even if Romney wins the nomination, it will be by less than an overwhelming proportion of primary voters; and another nickel that if he wins the nomination, he will lose the general election.

Had anyone taken those two bets, I'd have won a dime.
+
I never believed, for an instant, that any of the 2012 crop of Republican challengers stood a chance of defeating President Obama, and made that plain as early as January 19, 2012, when I published these observations in this blog:

The polls that show a close contest against Obama are almost assuredly wrong, and the only way Tepublicans have any chance whatsoever of winning the White House is if they can block hundreds of thousands of people from voting, which they sure are trying to do. And not just by discouraging people, but by actually enacting laws to bar as many as FIVE MILLION voters!
+
If Republicans are really concerned, as Romney pretends, about people voting multiple times, why doesn't he just advocate an Iraq-style solution, indelible ink for the fingers of anyone who has voted? That's quick and simple, and I haven't heard any reports of people in Iraq getting the ink off in order to vote multiple times. We could create a Purple Badge of [Civic] Courage — a play on the universally-known phrase "Red Badge of Courage" from an esteemed writer from my city, Newark, NJ, Stephen Crane — by which people could show their civic-mindedness and encourage others by appearing in public with a proud, purple finger.
+
This would show us visually the level of participation in elections by various communities, and at once encourage hesitant voters and reproach nonvoters. It would be, for media, "shorthand" evidence of voting levels, engagement, apathy, and willful abstention.
+
Anyone who does not have a purple finger (or lite lavender for dark-skinned people, if purple would not stand out, which it probably would) could expect to be asked, repeatedly, "Why didn't you vote?", thus bringing community disapprobation to work for increased voting levels.
+
Every State in the Union could have purple-finger laws in place by this November's election. The costs would be trivial. And people NOT entitled to vote would not want to be found to have a purple finger when the authorities come calling to investigate a claim of illegal voting.
+
You want a foto ID? OK: take a digital picture of each voter, with purple finger, as s/he emerges from the voting booth, with the name of the voter inextricably connected electronically to the foto. No needless documents to collect, at a fee, in order to get another form of foto ID; no application to a state agency for a foto ID. No expense to the individual voter at all, just a totally trivial expenditure — esp. given our multi-billion-dollar national elections — for some ink and digital fotos to be entered into a database. Such a foto could thereafter be printed out alongside the voter's signature in the books we have to sign when we go to vote, updated for each time we vote. Simple, no?
+
How much do you want to bet that Republicans will find some excuse not to go for it?

Even earlier, on Friday, December 30th, 2011, I observed here:

In Massachusetts, Romney ran as a Liberal Republican; now he pretends he has seen the lite, and become a Conservative Republican. Nobody is buying that. * * * At this point, the possibility of Republicans getting their act together and defeating President Obama appears to be nil. Some other candidate would have to come to the fore, during the primary season or at the convention if the convention can, somehow, deadlock. If my state's governor, Chris Christie, were to jump in, that would certainly shake things up — and that is not just a fat joke. Christie, like Romney, got into the governorship of a Liberal state as a fluke. He might be defeated if he runs for re-election. But his popularity in NJ, or lack thereof (I have been at an event where he was both applauded and booed), does not alter the fact that he appears to be popular outside NJ. Still, he is a relative moderate, from the Liberal Northeast, and that might be enuf to turn off the Republican base. * * *
+
A successful candidate would have to be socially and fiscally conservative; competent; already famous, since there is no time for an unknown to achieve name recognition and wide popularity; well-financed; what else? No extremist can be elected by the Nation. Is it equally true that no moderate can be nominated?

NJ Gov. Christie has, in fact, been blamed, as recently as tonite on Fox News in its coverage of the Republican disaster, for some of the disaffection from (one-term) 'Governor' Romney, for having been seen to embrace President Obama for the President's quick and persuasive action in helping my state in recovering from the astounding devastation of Superstorm Sandy, which has proved vastly worse than anything I have seen in my 67 years.
+
Now that Barack Hussein Obama has won re-election, I and other little-d and big-d Democrats can rest comfortable in the reality that in the current United States, the enemies of the people have, for now, been blocked, defeated — but not necessarily crushed, because they will always find some reason to (pretend to) believe, in their twisted, racist, retrogressive mind, that the election did not mean what everyone else on Earth believes it means.
+
I do not for an instant think that the Retrogressives will understand themselves to have been roundly defeated, and so give up on their attempts to end democracy and substitute minority rule in the United States. 246 times, the Republicans threw up, from January 2009 to November 2012, filibusters to block everything Democrats tried to do. If the past is any indicator of the future, then, and it almost always is, the crushed Republicans will NOT accept that they have been repudiated by the PEOPLE, but continue to try to invoke the unconstitutional filibuster to block the people's will. Democrats must, from a position of strength, ABOLISH the filibuster and every other rule or procedure in Congress that has frustrated the intent of the Framers of the Constitution that has given us MINORITY RULE when the Framers always intended only MAJORITY RULE.
+
If Democrats do not do that, with their great win, they will BETRAY the people and continue MINORITY RULE.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 6:08 AM

 
'No Religious Test'
There is an elephant in the room that no one in major media will talk about: Will voters ignore the religion of the candidates this November and vote only on other bases? Is the Nation really ready to elect its first non-Christian President, the Mormon Mitt Romney?
+
The Constitution is clear about religious diversity in the United States. Article VI states plainly:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation [very important; never forget that the Framers of the Constitution permitted people to REFUSE a religious "oath"], to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on August 9th had as its guest a woman, Joanna Brooks, author(ess) of The Book of Mormon Girl: Stories from an American Faith . Stewart suggested that the Mormon "church" [actually, a cult] is evolving in its attitudes, and should be forgiven if it has not yet evolved fully, in that it is, as religions go, very 'young', only (Brooks says) 180 years old.
+
Stewart offers as an example of a necessary Mormon evolution to accommodate change, a present-day 'Jew' who wants to eat a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich. 'So, you're [an adherent of] Reform [Judaism].' And, so, Stewart's indulgent theory goes, Mormonism will in time adapt to the challenges posed by faithful members of the "church" (cult) who balk at various requirements they object to.
+
Unfortunately, Stewart ignores the statement of his own guest that she was EXCOMMUNICATED by the Mormon "church" (cult) for not mindlessly accepting its teachings to the smallest and most particular degree. She has NOT been readmitted into the good graces of that "church" (cult), so Stewart's view of the present state of the Mormon "church" (cult) is entirely too sanguine.
+
Ms. Brooks plays into that noxious, dishonest game, in stating that (some individual) Mormons participated this year in "Gay Pride" marches in 10 cities. She does not, however, admit that the "church" (cult) did not in any way APPROVE of that participation. As the man responsible for "Gay Pride" EVERYTHING, in that I'm the one who proposed that term in place of "Gay Power" for the weekend of activities around the first "Christopher Street Liberation Day" march (political parade) in 1970, I am especially offended at anyone's making excuses for the Mormon Cult's antihomosexual bigotry.
+
One of the prime, and indeed unending, assaults upon Barack (Hussein) Obama from the dishonest Radical Right has always been that he is not Christian, but Moslem — or "Muslim", a foreign spelling employed to make Moslems seem un-American. Nobody knows how to say "Muslim", so the word is intrinsically uncomfortable for speakers of English. Is it said múz.lim? mús.lim? móos.lim? mue.sléem? Nobody knows. So if you use the spelling "Muslim", you automatically cause some discomfort in readers of English. "Moslem", an English word of longstanding, is simple and obvious, pronounced móz.lam. But we wouldn't want to use a word everybody knows.
+
Never mind that the only reason "Muslim" has been put forward for wide adoption is that Arabic, which all true believers in Islam are required to study, has no letter O. So the traditional English spelling "Moslem" is assertedly objectionable to "Muslims", for not respecting the conventions of Arabic.
+
Why WOULD English respect the conventions of Arabic, Greek, Russian, Hindi, or any other language? English is its own language, written in an altogether different way from Arabic, Greek, Russian, and Hindi. Indeed, Arabic script is so alien to our conception of an alphabet that many people don't realize, in some contexts, such as decorations on the inside walls of mosques, that it is indeed an alphabet, not just some decorative group of lines and swirls.
+
It makes no more sense to insist that the English term for an adherent of Islam be written "Muslim" than it would to insist it be written in the Arabic alphabet within English text!
+
Each of these two languages has its own pronunciations and alphabet. It would be insane to insist that any word from either of them has to be written in its own alphabet everywhere, such that an English word in an Arabic sentence would have to be written in the roman alphabet, surrounded by Arabic letters, and an Arabic word within an English sentence would have to be written in Arabic script within text all the rest of which is written in the roman alphabet.
+
To show how absurd the insistence on "Muslim" is, we need merely offer the name "Osama bin Laden". There is no such character in the Arabic alphabet as O, remember? So why would we write "Usama", a reasonable transliteration from Arabic, as "Osama"? No reason. But how often do you see "Usama", and how often "Osama"? It has to be at least 150:1, "Osama" to Usama".
+
So let us not pretend to write "Muslim" out of deference to Arabic, since we feel no such respect for Arabic as a language. And most people in the West, not just the United States, have no respect for Arab culture, history, or anything else (tho, if they knew much about history, they surely would, given the Caliphate's massive contribution to the preservation of Classical Greek and Roman culture, and addition to the mathematics and technology of the West). So let us end this dopy charade of 'respecting' Arabic too much to write "Moslem", and return to using the one word we all know how to pronounce.
+
In any case, the last Presidential election proved wrong those of us who thought the United States was not ready to elect a black man President. I was highly dubious that this could happen, and was very pleasantly surprised that Obama won. Will this election prove that the United States is ready to elect a non-Christian to be President?
+
Mormons love to represent themselves as Christians. They are not, at least not as ALL genuine Christian denominations regard things.
+
In genuine-Christian theology, Jesus Christ is the Son of God, one-third of the tripartite "Godhead", the other parts being the Father and the Holy Ghost/Spirit.
+
Mormons don't believe any such thing. As far as they are concerned, there is only one aspect of God, and Jesus is not that aspect. Jesus and the Holy Spirit are NOT the equal of "God", and not part of God. So if you accept that the Trinity is the absolute basis of Christianity, then Mormonism is not Christianity.
+
ALL Christian churches, no matter if they be Catholic, Protestant, or Eastern Orthodox, agree that Christianity is about a tripartite Godhead of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (or Holy Spirit). Any religious group that does NOT believe in any such thing is NOT Christian. Period. It doesn't matter what they say they are. It doesn't matter what invented, faux "scripture" they claim for their beliefs. It doesn't matter whether they can or cannot (Mormons cannot) produce hardcopy original texts that set out the basis for their beliefs, on parchment or gold plates (the original of Mormon scripture was supposedly written on gold plates, in a language no one on Earth knew, but Joseph Smith somehow, miraculously, translated), for people to examine. If a religion does not accept the Trinity, it is not Christian.
+
Christians can produce hardcopy versions of all of Christianity's basic scriptures, going back some 1,800 years or more. So can Judaism. So can Islam, Hinduism, etc., produce original hardcopy versions of their scriptures. Of course, none of those scriptures has an author's byline, "By God" (or, for Orthodox Jews, "By G-d"), but all assert that they are the authentic word of God, or Jesus (same thing, to Christians), as written down by people who heard the voice of God or were guided by the hand of God when they set them down in written form. Mormonism cannot. No one except Joseph Smith ever saw the golden plates he claimed to have unearthed and translated — even tho he was not a trained linguist, and the language he pretended to read was unknown to everyone on Earth except himself. Since it was not necessary for a prophet to claim to have seen and translated golden plates, but only to have heard the voice of God or been steered by the silent inspiration of God into writing down what he was told, the entire golden-plates thing marks Mormonism as made-up nonsense, just silly fiction. Smith would have been much better off if he hadn't claimed the existence of golden plates that he could not produce when doubted.
+
Mormonism cannot be proven by any documentary evidence of any kind to be anything but the fiction or rantings of one person, whom no other religion has recognized as a significant teacher.
+
Mormonism is not even, strictly speaking, monotheistic, but speaks of "gods" — plural. And "goddesses".
+
Mormons are not willing to state publicly and unequivocally that they do NOT believe in "the Trinity" of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Ghost), each and all of whom are equal in a tripartite Godhead.
+
Voters who believe that you cannot claim to be "Christian" unless you DO believe in a tripartite Godhead of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (Spirit), all of them equally divine and all of them merely different aspects of the one true God (for instance, God as seen from the right side, front, and left side), are entitled to vote only for someone they feel shares their religious beliefs and ethical values. The Constitution says there cannot be a religious test by Government for holders of public office within the U.S. It does not say that individual voters cannot impose their own religious test in determining whom to vote for or against.
+
True Christians believe in only ONE god, not the "gods" that Mormonism speaks of, and of which one God, Jesus is an integral part, fully as divine as the God who created the Universe and the God who permeates the present and will be with us to the end of the Universe.
+
Mormons don't believe in any of that, but dare to call themselves "Christian". No, they are not Christian. They are no more Christian than are Jews, Mormons, Hindus, Buddhists, Shintoists, or any other group that believes in other religions. Voting for a Mormon is not one whit more "Christian" than voting for a Sunni or Shia Moslem!
+
Will the electorate understand that? Or will it accept the LIE that Mormonism IS Christianity, and vote for a pseudo-Christian, Mitt Romney, against a REAL Christian, Barack Obama? We shall see.
+
Christians, this election year, are being asked two different things: first, to accept that Mormons are Christians; and second, to accept, in the alternative, that it is un-American to discriminate against a candidate for President on the basis that he is not Christian. Those who want to believe that Barack Hussein Obama is Moslem will find themselves in a quandary. Do we vote for the non-Christian we know, or the non-Christian we DON'T know? Of course, since the disbelief in Obama's Christianity is an excuse for simpleminded racism, most of those people will jump to credit Mormonism as Christianity so they don't have to be consistent and reject Romney because he is non-Christian, even tho they claim to reject Obama because he is non-Christian.
+
If the non-Christian Republican, Mitt Romney, gets tens of millions of votes, can we assume that the Nation has broken the back of religious bigotry? Could an agnostic or — 'God forbid' — an atheist also garner tens of millions of votes for President, and even win the White House? It would be tempting to think so.
+
Mush-Minded, Casual Heresy Abounding. Popular singer Josh Groban is featured in a video that will seem to most casual observers as carrying a Christian message, the song "You Raise Me Up". Groban himself is the son of a Jewish father, who married a Christian woman, and Josh was raised Christian. But that doesn't count for many Jews. Rather, as stated in one Israeli message board by "CanDo":

it doesn't matter how Josh was raised. He is still Jewish and his offspring will be Jewish. It is far more important, to me, that, for the benefit of civilization, Jews continue to survive and flourish. Because of the limited number of Jews on this planet, inter-marriage is one way to expand the Jewish race.

Of course, if any non-Jew were to call Jews a "race", all Jews everywhere would join as one to condemn him. And some Jews on that message board reject the idea that a person raised Christian, albeit of Jewish ancestry, should be considered a Jew.
+
A comment on another website observes that:

Josh Groban is an interesting case. His father is Jewish, yes, but his mother had a Jewish maternal grandfather of her own. So he is "5/8ths" Jewish ancestry, as well as definitely a Christian and not Jewish by Jewish law.

In any case, Groban sings the Christian song "You Raise Me Up" in a public-service announcement for The Foundation for a Better Life. It's a beautiful song, based on the Irish tune "Danny Boy". But it contains an astonishingly heretical line in its lyrics: "You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas". What? "To walk on stormy seas"? Is Groban asserting that he, or any other ordinary mortal, can walk on water? Whoa, boy! Christian teaching/myth holds that only one person in the history of the world has ever walked on water, much less "stormy seas", and that would be Jesus of Nazareth, not Josh Groban. Indeed, Jesus is not said to have walked on stormy seas, but to have calmed stormy seas. So Josh Groban is supposed to have been empowered by some supernatural force, not Jesus Christ?, to "walk on stormy seas"? That is HERESY.
+
We don't have an Inquisition in the present era to advise people as to what is permissible and impermissible stretching of Biblical "truth", so crazy things like calling Mormons "Christian" and claiming that Jesus has empowered someone "to walk on stormy seas" now occur all the time. That does not mean that all these liberties as regards Christian teachings accord with actual Christianity, only that there are an awful lot of people who have either never read the New Testament or did not understand what they were reading.
+
Will Biblical ignorance enable Mitt Romney to present himself, successfully, as a "Christian", even tho the Mormon "Church" is not truly Christian at all, but only an astoundingly weird cult, in which God was only one of many 'intelligences' that resided on or near a planet or star named Kolob, closest to "the throne of God"? (Whether Kolob is, or was, a planet or a star, is unclear in the bizarre scriptures of the cult.) Mormon cosmology also holds that God did not create the Universe, but merely organized some of its aspects. Indeed, the Wikipedia article on "Mormon cosmology" says in part that "The prevailing view among Mormons is that God once lived on a planet with his own higher god." (Scientology also teaches that people originated on another planet. Do fundamentalist Christians regard Scientology as Christian? I should hope not!) Mormonism rants on, and on, and on about one nutso deviation from Christian theology after another.
+
Will people dare to condemn Romney's cult as non-Christian? Or will they allow themselves to be intimidated away from pointing out the fact that Mormonism does NOT accord with the most fundamental teachings of Christianity?
+
We shall see. I am an atheist, and hold all religion in contempt. Ethics do not depend upon superstition. Quite the contrary, as we have seen over and over in regard to the behavior of religious fanatics, great evil is done regularly by people who are persuaded that 'God wants them to do it'.
+
What I don't know is how dishonest the fundamentalist Christians who want an ultraconservative Republican to become President, will prove. Will they vote for a HERETIC like Mitt Romney? or a mainline Protestant like Barack Obama? An awful lot of Radical Rightists say, unabashedly, that they believe no non-Christian should ever be President of the United States, and rationalize their (actually racist) hatred for Barack Obama on the basis that he is a Moslem parading as a Christian. How, then, can they justify voting for a Mormon — a non-Christian cultist who parades as a Christian? Is it enuf for Romney to claim to be Christian? It hasn't been enuf for Obama to claim to be Christian. But of course Romney is white, so racist Tea Party and Republican stalwarts will rush to believe that a Mormon is a Christian, even tho NO genuine Christian denomination accepts the Book of Mormon as a legitimate Christian Scripture. If they did, it would have to be incorporated into the Bible and taught by all denominations, but I see no movement to do that.
+
Mountain Meadows Massacre. Attempts by Mormons to present Mormonism as a Christian denomination dedicated to loving piety and Jesus's teachings about peace and charity toward your fellow man run up against the ugly reality that the Mormon Establishment declared war upon the United States and exterminated a wagon train of Americans who merely wanted to pass thru Utah on their way west. These peaceful, loving, 'Christian' Mormons murdered at least 100 Americans, and maybe as many as 140! Remember Mountain Meadows! as adamantly as you Remember the Alamo!, and don't let Mormons represent themselves as patriots and Christians. They are neither.
+
Voters' Religious Test. The Constitution sets no religious test for Government office. Voters, however, have the right to set any test they wish, including a religious test that rejects Mormon pretenses to be decent, exemplary Christians. They are not, and they HONOR the memory and deeds of the monsters who committed the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:42 AM

 
Fiting the RadRite Online
The crazies of the Radical Right have, for years now (since at least the inauguration of President Obama), been using online comment areas to spread their poison, and to try to mislead casual readers into thinking that the rabid views of a tiny minority are mainstream, what most people are thinking. There may actually be email alerts to a small group of semi-pro or perhaps even professional commenters, paid by Rightwing groups funded by the likes of the Koch Brothers, because there is the feel of a coordinated attack to some of these blitzes.
+
Today I decided I had nothing I'd rather do for a couple of hours, so decided to read thru and respond to some comments left at a story on Yahoo News, "Bill Clinton, Paul Ryan square off in Iowa op-eds".
+
The Radical Right long ago realized they could skew perceptions by descending, in small numbers of very active commenters, on message boards associated with news sites, and posting hundreds of mostly very short, poisonous remarks long on bile but short on facts. Many don't even really relate to the specific story, and the posters plainly don't even bother to read the story. It is just a pretext for getting their poisonous misrepresentations published. I do not dignify the comments I answered by quoting them here. You should be able to infer the points I am answering.
+
Liberals have been so disgusted by the 'quality' of public discourse to which those comment-locusts have reduced many discussion areas on targeted news items at, for instance, the Huffington Post/AOL, that they have surrendered the most densely attacked comments areas to the Radical Right. I decided I didn't want to let them take over that particular Yahoo story unopposed, so posted a number of replies to these "trolls" and agents provocateurs, as below.

The racists attack Obama for being black, and then pretend that their hyper-racist rants were caused by Obama! It is not Obama who is dividing the Nation but the neo-Confederate bigots who can't get over there being a black man in the White House. The only thing we know about the Romney candidacy is that his election would put a white man back in the White House. We know absolutely nothing else about him, because he says one thing to one audience and another to a different audience; he says one thing today that conflicts with what he said yesterday or a year ago or five years ago. From pro-choice to pro-life. From instituting Romneycare to opposing Obamacare, which IS Romneycare. You can't trust Mitt Romney on anything. He wants to be President because he WANTS TO BE PRESIDENT. It is the most important thing in the Universe to him. Not to DO anything, of any ideology, for anyone. Just to BE President. To make up for his father's failure, or to show his father up, we cannot know. All we can know is that it's all about HIM, and not the slightest about YOU. We know Obama. We CANNOT know Romney, the man of 1,000 faces.

And:

How much do you think YOU could accomplish if the Party of No threw up 246 filibusters against your program, and prevented ANY of it from being enacted? Obama's economic policies are NOT in effect. They have been BLOCKED by 246 filibusters. I don't know why Obama isn't telling people that, but the voters have to remember gridlock in Congress. The Republicans now pretend to want bipartisanship, but they HATE bipartisanship. If they don't get their way on every particular, they will obstruct EVERYTHING. Crush them. Vote Obama back in, and give Democrats MASSIVE, overwhelming control of both Houses of Congress. Then Democrats will save us from gridlock and move the Nation forward again.

And:

Hillary was not thrown under the bus. She plainly told the world that the White House did NOT get the reports that Obama is being blamed for not acting upon. Hillary has been heroic in saying "The buck stops here", but the Republicans are calling her a liar.

And:

I guess you never heard that the Republican NIXON opened trade with China, and Republicans have pressed for more and more free trade, while Democrats have insisted on provisions that protect American workers. Bush the Elder negotiated NAFTA — look it up. And NAFTA is not the problem. Communist CHINA is the problem, and Romney has sent JOBS to Communist China.

And:

Actually, Dave Camp is that chairman [House Ways and Means Committee; not Ryan]. But Republicans don't want you to know that Dubya DOUBLED the national debt in eight years. Reagan TRIPLED it; Dubya's father added a third to what Reagan had already tripled, so that at the end of the 12 years of Reagan-Bush, the Republicans had QUADRUPLED the national debt. The Democrat Clinton held the line, and left office with the largest surplus in the history of the world. Within one year, Bush had thrown it all away, then in the rem[a]inder of his two terms, DOUBLED the national debt again, from the Reagan-Bush years, so that Republicans OCTUPLED the national debt. Don't trust them when they tell you they are "fiscal conservatives". They are not.

And:

Sex is not public policy. [Answering the suggestion that Bill Clinton's sexual peccadillos make everything he says unworthy of hearing.] The electorate has the right to complain about public policy, not tell people what to do in their sex lives. Mind your own business. And let dedicated public servants mind PUBLIC business. As for the assertion that Obama is Moslem, give it up. Everybody knows it's a lie. When people continue to lie once found out, they are revealed as pathological, not opportunistic.

And:

Given a choice between a President who doesn't do everything we want him to do, and a would-be President who will do a great many things we DON'T want him to do, the choice is plain: Obama. Liberals know they have to push him. But we also know we can rely upon Romney being our ENEMY.

And:

I suppose you never heard these famous words from a Democrat: "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." What ever happened to that? Oh, I know: Republicans stomped that spirit to death.

And:

Conservative blogs are not "literally" on fire. How can anyone believe any further assertion you make when you start out with an absolute falsehood? And "alleged" comments are, absent proof, mere rumor, slander, or fiction.

And:

Actually, EVERYONE should be REQUIRED to vote, so the end result represents the people's actual will. Republicans will never support mandatory voting, however, because they would never win another election. The only way they can ever win at the national level is if a great many people stay home.

And:

Just because the Republicans are dominated by the Koch Brothers, do not delude yourself that Democrats are dominated by billionaires too [in reply to an attack upon George Soros as puppetmaster to Democrats].

And:

Study after study has shown that Liberals are better educated and smarter than Conservatives. Blue States are richer than Red States. And "white trash" vote for the very people who think them trash.

And:

How, pray ([username] "N A" — "not applicable" to today's problems?) are people to "get to work" when the economy was destroyed by Republican greed and mismanagement?

And:

No, "rich" has been repeatedly defined in the national debate as a single person who makes over $200K a year, or a married couple that makes over $250K. There are also Federal definitions of "poverty". Everyone not rich nor poor is "middle class". Pay attention.

And:

NAFTA is NOT the problem. COMMUNIST CHINA is the problem. NAFTA was designed to keep Mexicans in Mexico by providing jobs there by means of which (a) U.S. manufacturers could save some money near-in and (b) create new customers in Mexico. Would you rather that every Mexican looking for work come here? NIXON opened trade with Communist China, and THAT is the country that is depressing U.S. wages, thanks to people like Romney who were 'pioneers of offshoring' — that is, exporting U.S. jobs.

And:

Bill Clinton was born and raised in the Deep South. Get the picture? He GREW, however, something the Radical Right base of the Republican Party and its "Solid South" are unable to do.

And:

Hillary said plainly that the White House did not see the requests for more security that Obama is being blamed for. She stood up as an honorable person. She was not 'thrown under' any bus. As for where she is, she's in the State Department, doing her NONPARTISAN job, dealing with our EXTERNAL interests.

And:

Let us by all means inquire into every single citizen's sex life and broadcast it over all media. Powerful people of high intensity often have high libidoes. And who of us really wants Congress demanding the right to know every detail of our sex life? Get a REAL issue.

And:

You do know that merely saying something doesn't make it happen, right? I know a lot of Rightwingers believe in economic magic, such as voodoo economics, but there is no such thing as a "self-fulfilling prophecy", and YOU are not a magician, so YOUR predictions have less than even the force of stupid people's credulity. Let's just wait for Wednesday, and see what ACTUALLY happens, alrite?

And:

So you want to believe Romney, who has changed his stance on EVERYTHING from his days as governor of Massachusetts — remember "Taxachusetts"? — to his run for office at the national level. Romney will tell you anything you want to hear. I don't trust him one whit.

And:

So you want people to have to BEG for charity, eh?

And:

Nonsense. Clinton left office 8 years before the Bush calamity. You can't blame him for ANYTHING.

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM