Soapbox

I sent this letter to columnist Jonah goldberg this week, after an op-ed piece in which he basicly stated that Bush’s religion is real and Kerry’s is fake, so Bush should be president. What a worm.

Mr. Goldberg-

Your Column today (10/18) contained glaring logical errors. You are entitled to your opinion, of course, but it would be nice if you presented some basis , other than raw prejudice, for your opinions.

Your basic premise seems to be that George Bush’s faith is “real” and Kerry’s is “fake”. You apparently come to this conclusion based on the fact that Bush says “God bless America” all the time and John Kerry refuses to condemn all abortion and gay marriage. With this flimsy rational, I cannot help but think that your real motivation for belittling Kerry’s faith is that Kerry does not share your political agenda.

Your elevating of your position on abortion and gay marriage above concern for the poor and sick in this world is interesting, considering Jesus himself never felt the need to speak on either of these issues. If you want to judge our politicians based solely on how they follow the Old Testament, shouldn’t you also address their support for slavery, stoning adulterers and making burnt offerings?
I do not presume to know if the president’s professed faith is real or false, but I do know that talk is cheap. Even the devil, as they say, can quote scripture. Therefore I am more impressed by actions than by words. Bush is quite concerned for the unborn alright- at least the ones headed to abortion clinics. His concern for the unborn is sadly lacking when it pertains to his pollution standards, which are allowing unborn children to be poisoned by ever-increasing levels of mercury and arsenic in the air and water. He demonstrates little concern for the unborn dieing in Iraq when their mothers contract hepatitis because we still have yet to repair their sewage and water treatment facilities more thn a year after we destroyed them. So if we judge by his actions rather than his words, I would say Bush’s commitment to “life” comes out neutral, rather than “pro”.

Jesus also said that if we would love him, we must feed his lambs. You complain that John Kerry picks and choses when to follow the Bible and when not to, yet the president has done that very thing! Under George Bush, poverty has increased in the United States to the point where our poverty rate is only just below that of Russia! In my home state of Ohio, demand at food pantries is at record levels, with more and more working families unable to feed their children. More people have to chose between buying food and going to to the doctor, and if George Bush follows his advisor Grover Norquist and “starves the beast” we may one day return to the era of our elderly eating cat food to survive. So it is clear that president and the Republican congress are chosing NOT to follow Jesus’ command to feed his lambs!

Jesus also said that to love our neighbors as ourselves is the second greatest commandment. I believe that this is what Senator Kerry is trying to do in his refusal to punish gay and lesbain people for the way they are born. George Bush claims that he merely wants to protect a sacred institution (though the sacred is not the jurisdiction of the presidency) but he is, in fact, making an entire group of people into second -class citizens. This is not about protecting marriage- it is about legislating the “Jesus loves me but he hates you” mentality that is so contrary to all the teachings of Christ.
Finally, Matthew 6 says that we should not parade our faith in order to impress other but should make it a private thing between ourselves and God. George Bush not only invokes the Divine at every opportunity but has even gone so far as to say that God “told” him to go to war in Iraq, thereby paving the way to shift the blame to the Almighty if the war continues to go sour!

My point is that it is impossible to judge what is in a person’s heart. We all know of people who profess no faith at all, yet live good and moral lives, and others who attend church regularly yet lie, cheat and abuse others. It is completely inappropriate for you to assume that John Kerry, a man who attends church regularly and honors his family, is not a good christian just because he does not subscribe to your particular political views! Going by those standards your dear president is, to many Christians, the worst kind of sinner!

I found this on the Randi Rhodes message board, and thought it deserved to be read. Form a guy who calls himself The Rude Pundit:

10/20/2004
The Thrum of a Steady Decay:
Yesterday, the Rude Pundit was talking to a group of people, as he does from time to time in his Clark Kent guise, and one was a large, beefy young man with a buzz cut hair-do and camouflage pants. The Rude Pundit asked if he was in the military. “No,” the young man answered (let’s call him “Rob,” for the sake of clarity). “But my brother’s a Marine and he’s gettin’ sent to Fallujah the day after tomorrow.”

“What’s Fallujah?” asked a stupid person in the group.

The Rude Pundit answered, “Imagine the most f**ked-up, violent place on earth. Now bomb the shit out of it.” Rob hung in there for a few minutes, tears streaming down his face, until he finally walked away and into the light rain that was falling.

After a moment, the Rude Pundit turned away from the group and headed over to Rob, sitting on a bench, his head down, sobbing. “When did you find out?” he asked Rob.

“Just a couple of days ago.” Rob paused for a minute, staring at his big hands, just trying to stop his large frame from shaking from the wracking tears. “I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose my brother. I don’t know what I’ll do.” Rob talked about how his brother was in an accident at the base a few months ago and nearly died, but he was patched up “with 500 stitches” and was now ready to head to Fallujah with his unit to prepare for the great and grand invasion that we’ve all been promised after the election. “I don’t know what I’d do without my brother. I’m sorry. I don’t wanna talk about this anymore.”

The Rude Pundit had no words of wisdom, no way to say to Rob how f**ked up the world is right now. Rob knew that. Rob didn’t give a s**t about politics, Kerry, Bush, or Saddam. Rob only knew that his brother was being sent to die for a cause that provided no comfort whatsoever. These were not the cries of someone who was proud of what his brother was doing, someone who believed in the rightness of the mission. It was simply the cry of someone who has learned that he has no control over circumstances, over who says how his brother lives and dies.

Here’s a deal: the Rude Pundit will give up a Kerry victory for the Democrats taking back one or both houses of Congress. There’s the trade: Kerry for the Senate. Because, in the end, someone’s gotta answer for this ongoing crime, this erosion of a generation, this destruction of trust. And the only way that’s going to happen is if Bush is still in power, but having to deal with a Democratic majority in at least one house that’s unafraid of investigating and telling the truth (that, in itself, is a pipe dream, though). Even a Kerry victory with a Democratic Senate will never get to the real insidious nature of what’s been done to this country and to the world. It is the way of America, is it not, to suppress truth for years until it is distant enough to have little effect. But we have been damaged – deeply, with a sense of trauma, and it wasn’t 9/11 that did it – we were getting over that horror. Instead, we are all becoming Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome sufferers because of how the Iraq war has stripped away our sense of self-worth. (Those who support the war sound increasingly insane as they scramble to rationalize it. There’s only one way to justify a continued American presence: to clean up the fucking mess we’ve made.)

What if this wasn’t an election year? What if bad news wasn’t seen through the filter of partisan politics (if that’s possible anymore)? Would the lack of WMDs be seen as more than a slap at Bush’s re-election chances? Would the deaths and injuries of soldiers in Iraq be viewed as something other than support for Kerry? (God, how inconvenient it is that people die in a war, huh?) Would the lack of military preparedness despite the President’s constant declarations of the opposite have any greater significance? The war has taken on an increasingly Joseph Heller-esque absurdity, as soldiers are ordered to travel on the most dangerous roads without the proper armor or support in order to transport contaminated fuel that is useless and would be rejected when it was received. What the f***? No, really, and with complete outrage, what the f***? If this wasn’t an election year, would someone be called to account? Because, you know, someone’s gotta be held accountable at some point. Someone’s gotta explain why we’re on the fast track to the second thousandth dead soldier.

The Rude Pundit stood in the rain and had nothing to say to Rob. He placed his hand on Rob’s shoulder for a moment and then headed inside to get dry.

Comedy tomorrow. Tragedy today.
from: http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/

Dick Cheney told America over and over that Sadaam Hussein was involved in 9/11. Then he lied in a national debate and claimed he never said it, but of course, he did.

Dick Cheney told us that if the wrong decision is made in November, terrorists will kill us. He then denied that was what he meant, but he came to Columbus yesterday and put the lie to that denial when he told us that if the incompetent John Kerry is elected, “our greatest danger” is that Ohio could get nuked.

Now, which candidate will say anything to get elected?