Wednesday, May 31, 2006

 

Yet Again, I Have To Pick Up A UK Paper To Find Out What's Happening In America

Did you know that the nasty, ego-poisoned scorpions of the religio-racist right are on the verge of stinging each other to death? I didn't, until I saw this. Get a load of the opening passage:

In his consulting room in a suburb of Montgomery, Alabama, gastrologist Randy Brinson is a worried man. A staunch Republican and devout Baptist, Dr Brinson can claim substantial credit for getting George Bush re-elected in 2004. It was his Redeem the Vote initiative that may have persuaded up to 25 million people to turn out for President Bush. Yet his wife is receiving threats from anonymous conservative activists warning her husband to stay away from politics. "They've been calling my house, threatening my wife," said Dr Brinson. "The first time was on a day when I was going up to Washington to speak to Republicans in Congress. Only they knew I'd be away from home. The Republicans were advised not to turn up to listen to me, so only three did so." The reason he has fallen foul of men whose candidate he helped re-elect is that he has dared to question the partisan tactics of the religious right. "Conservatives speak in tones that they have got power and they can do what they want. Only 23% of the population embraces those positions but if someone questions their mandate or wants to articulate a different case, for the moderate right, they are totally ridiculed."
Did you note the part that I bolded? A leading conservative admits that less than a quarter of Americans back conservative positions. Yet to judge from the US media coverage, you'd think that we all were conservatives. But wait! There's MORE!
In his office in Washington DC, Rich Cizik, vice-president of the National Association of Evangelicals, the largest such umbrella group in the US, is also feeling battered. His mistake has been to become interested in the environment, and he has been told that is not on the religious right's agenda.
Because, of course, the religious right in the US is allied with Bush's big-business, big-polluter backers. But I digress.
Mr Cizik, an ordained minister of the Evangelical Presbyterian church and otherwise impeccably conservative on social issues such as abortion, stem-cell research and homosexuality, believes concern for the environment arises from Biblical injunctions about the stewardship of the Earth. The movement's political leadership, however, sees the issue as a distraction from its main tactical priorities: getting more conservatives on the supreme court, banning gay marriages and overturning Roe v Wade, the 1973 abortion ruling. "It is supposed to be counterproductive even to consider this. I guess they do not want to part company with the president. This is nothing more than political assassination. I may lose my job. Twenty-five church leaders asked me not to take a political position on this issue but I am a fighter," he said. Another Washington lobbyist on the religious right told the Guardian: "Rich is just being stupid on this issue. There may be a debate to be had but ... people can only sustain so many moral movements in their lifetime. Is God really going to let the Earth burn up?"
No, Rich isn't the one being stupid on this issue. And as for whether or not God really would let the Earth burn up, I suggest that the lobbyist needs to re-read 2 Peter 3 in his or her Bible.


Comments:
I'm extremely confused by how you get that the media coverage slants towards conservatism?

Everything I see in the mainstream media screams liberal or communist... how that translates into conservative I'm not sure... please enlighten me.
 
Enlightenment? Sure!

I've lived through it, so I already know about it. But if you haven't -- or have spent the past few decades in a cocoon -- then you need to read the following books:

On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency (yes, the conservative buying off/cowing of the US press goes back at least this far)

The Republican Noise Machine (former GOP media insider David Brock explains how the Republicans work to control the US media)

The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton (and destroy them over nonsense while letting GW Bush get away with actual wrongdoing)

Fools for Scandal (how the US press let the Arkansas and national GOP lead them by the nose on the bogus Whitewater "scandal")

More can be found here, but that should do for now.

You spout the same "the media is liberal" nonsense that people like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter and Michael Savage and Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity and other conservatives far too numerous to list here have been saying for decades -- and you provide no proof of your assertions.

Meanwhile, RNC Chair Roger Ailes was tapped by Republican Party stalwart Jack Welch to run NBC's news department -- which is now run by Ailes' disciples, even as Ailes himself went on build FOX News from the ground up at Rupert Murdoch's behest.

But of course, you're not actually here to argue a point -- you're just here to do a hit-and-run trolling. I'm posting this for the enlightenment of those readers who aren't doing Karl Rove's bidding.
 
Homer Simpson: What if we've picked the wrong religion? Every week we're just making God madder & madder?
It was just a matter of time. Armageddon of american ultra conservative churches. I'm just surprised it took this long.
 
2 Peter 3 could very easily describe the effects of extreme global warming. Prophetic visions tend to be a little iffy on temporal sequence.

On Fistandantulus, this isn't even a 23 percenter. More like a 2 percenter.

Communist media? This is an Orwellian phrase, something out of Animal Farm.

The half dozen corporations that control the media are shareholder owned, many outright controlled by billionaires like Rupert Murdoch and Pat Robertson. They run government propaganda, much of it pro-military. They run fake science produced by apparatchiks through handpuppets like John Stossel so that destructive corporations can continue to destroy our home and our health.

Come to think of it, it does sound like communism: a few people, controlling all the resources while pretending that there's real freedom and opportunity. Lies enthroned. An increasingly repressive and violent state engaged in massive spying on the population. The media used by the government to control the populace.

Republicans-- the New Communist Party.
 
Of course there is more and more left opinion out there as the conservative agenda falls apart. But the press still belongs to the corporations, the same corporations that own the Bush regime.The "official" word comes from their sources, and liberals are painted as marginal flakes. Look at how Chomsky, the most respected American political thinker abroad, remains invisible to Mainstream U.S.A.
This is all so reminiscent of the Vietnam era! It was just those crazy radicals who opposed the war until suddenly it seemed everyone was against it. The body count in the Gulf Wars is lower so far, but the carnage goes on. Will we see millions dead in the Middle East? Yes, if we do not get rid of the House of Bush.
 
Every chance the republican controlled congress gets, it gives corporations fat tax breaks. Corporations get hefty, most unchallenged contracts. Corporations are not investigated for war or disaster profiteering. I would call that corporate welfare. Gee, that's no different from those "lazy, poor" people getting a gubmint check just for the asking.
 
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