Thursday, September 16, 2010
Carl Paladino, What A Sleaze Bag, A Liar, A Racist, A Religious Bigot, A Spreader Of Pornography And The Republican Candidate for Governor Of New York
Carl Paladino is so ignorant that he is embarrassing to me as a native New Yorker. Unfortunately I knew many people like him growing up. He obviously has never studied the constitution and has no understanding of American principles and values.
John H. Armwood
Rachel Maddow Interviews Vice President Biden On The Economy
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The Daily Show Looks At The Republican Primaries
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Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Poll Suggests Opportunities for Both Parties in Midterms - NYTimes.com
Poll Suggests Opportunities for Both Parties in Midterms - NYTimes.com
By JEFF ZELENY and MEGAN THEE-BRENAN
Republicans are heading into the general election phase of the midterm campaign backed by two powerful currents: the highest proportion of Americans in two decades say it is time for their own member of Congress to be replaced, and voters are expressing widespread dissatisfaction with President Obama’s leadership.
But the latest New York Times/CBS News poll also finds that while voters rate the performance of Democrats negatively, they view Republicans as even worse, providing a potential opening for Democrats to make a last-ditch case for keeping their hold on power.
The poll represents a snapshot of the country’s political mood as the campaign pivots from primary contests that have revealed deep divisions among Republicans into the general election, where the parties deliver their competing arguments to a wider audience. The findings suggest that there are opportunities and vulnerabilities for both parties as they proceed into the final seven weeks of the campaign.
A case for Republicans: Voters are remarkably open to change, even if they are not sure where Republicans will lead them. Most Americans, including one-third of those who were part of the coalition that elected Mr. Obama, now say he does not have a clear plan to solve the nation’s problems or create jobs. Democrats remain highly vulnerable on the economy.
A case for Democrats: The party is seen as having better ideas for solving the country’s problems. The public steadfastly supports the president’s proposal to let tax cuts expire for the wealthiest Americans. And far more people still blame Wall Street and the Bush administration than blame Mr. Obama for the country’s economic problems.
The Meaning of the Koran - NYTimes.com
The Meaning of the Koran - NYTimes.com
By ROBERT WRIGHT
Test your religious literacy:
Which sacred text says that Jesus is the “word” of God? a) the Gospel of John; b) the Book of Isaiah; c) the Koran.
The correct answer is the Koran. But if you guessed the Gospel of John you get partial credit because its opening passage — “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God” — is an implicit reference to Jesus. In fact, when Muhammad described Jesus as God’s word, he was no doubt aware that he was affirming Christian teaching.
Extra-credit question: Which sacred text has this to say about the Hebrews: God, in his “prescience,” chose “the children of Israel … above all peoples”? I won’t bother to list the choices, since you’ve probably caught onto my game by now; that line, too, is in the Koran.
I highlight these passages in part for the sake of any self-appointed guardians of Judeo-Christian civilization who might still harbor plans to burn the Koran. I want them to be aware of everything that would go up in smoke.
But I should concede that I haven’t told the whole story. Even while calling Jesus the word of God — and “the Messiah” — the Koran denies that he was the son of God or was himself divine. And, though the Koran does call the Jews God’s chosen people, and sings the praises of Moses, and says that Jews and Muslims worship the same God, it also has anti-Jewish, and for that matter anti-Christian, passages.
The regrettable parts of the Koran — the regrettable parts of any religious scripture — don’t have to matter.
This darker side of the Koran, presumably, has already come to the attention of would-be Koran burners and, more broadly, to many of the anti-Muslim Americans whom cynical politicians like Newt Gingrich are trying to harness and multiply. The other side of the Koran — the part that stresses interfaith harmony — is better known in liberal circles.
As for people who are familiar with both sides of the Koran — people who know the whole story — well, there may not be many of them. It’s characteristic of contemporary political discourse that the whole story doesn’t come to the attention of many people.
Thus, there are liberals who say that “jihad” refers to a person’s internal struggle to do what is right. And that’s true. There are conservatives who say “jihad” refers to military struggle. That’s true, too. But few people get the whole picture, which, actually, can be summarized pretty concisely:
Bay Ismoyo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Reading the scripture.
The Koran’s exhortations to jihad in the military sense are sometimes brutal in tone but are so hedged by qualifiers that Muhammad clearly doesn’t espouse perpetual war against unbelievers, and is open to peace with them. (Here, for example, is my exegesis of the “sword verse,” the most famous jihadist passage in the Koran.) The formal doctrine of military jihad — which isn’t found in the Koran, and evolved only after Muhammad’s death — does seem to have initially been about endless conquest, but was then subject to so much amendment and re-interpretation as to render it compatible with world peace. Meanwhile, in the hadith — the non-Koranic sayings of the Prophet — the tradition arose that Muhammad had called holy war the “lesser jihad” and said that the “greater jihad” was the struggle against animal impulses within each Muslim’s soul.
Why do people tend to hear only one side of the story? A common explanation is that the digital age makes it easy to wall yourself off from inconvenient data, to spend your time in ideological “cocoons,” to hang out at blogs where you are part of a choir that gets preached to.
Makes sense to me. But, however big a role the Internet plays, it’s just amplifying something human: a tendency to latch onto evidence consistent with your worldview and ignore or downplay contrary evidence.
This side of human nature is generally labeled a bad thing, and it’s true that it sponsors a lot of bigotry, strife and war. But it actually has its upside. It means that the regrettable parts of the Koran — the regrettable parts of any religious scripture — don’t have to matter.
After all, the adherents of a given religion, like everyone else, focus on things that confirm their attitudes and ignore things that don’t. And they carry that tunnel vision into their own scripture; if there is hatred in their hearts, they’ll fasten onto the hateful parts of scripture, but if there’s not, they won’t. That’s why American Muslims of good will can describe Islam simply as a religion of love. They see the good parts of scripture, and either don’t see the bad or have ways of minimizing it.
So too with people who see in the Bible a loving and infinitely good God. They can maintain that view only by ignoring or downplaying parts of their scripture.
For example, there are those passages where God hands out the death sentence to infidels. In Deuteronomy, the Israelites are told to commit genocide — to destroy nearby peoples who worship the wrong Gods, and to make sure to kill all men, women and children. (“You must not let anything that breathes remain alive.”)
As for the New Testament, there’s that moment when Jesus calls a woman and her daughter “dogs” because they aren’t from Israel. In a way that’s the opposite of anti-Semitism — but not in a good way. And speaking of anti-Semitism, the New Testament, like the Koran, has some unflattering things to say about Jews.
Devoted Bible readers who aren’t hateful ignore or downplay all these passages rather than take them as guidance. They put to good use the tunnel vision that is part of human nature.
All the Abrahamic scriptures have all kinds of meanings — good and bad — and the question is which meanings will be activated and which will be inert. It all depends on what attitude believers bring to the text. So whenever we do things that influence the attitudes of believers, we shape the living meaning of their scriptures. In this sense, it’s actually within the power of non-Muslim Americans to help determine the meaning of the Koran. If we want its meaning to be as benign as possible, I recommend that we not talk about burning it. And if we want imams to fill mosques with messages of brotherly love, I recommend that we not tell them where they can and can’t build their mosques.
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Good Election Night For Outsiders And Other Republican Nutjobs
I went to high school, in Staten Island New York, with obnoxious racists like Palidino. Fortunately he will lose to Andrew Cuomo.
John H. Armwood
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Paladino Beats Lazio in New York Republican Primary for Governor - NYTimes.com
Paladino Beats Lazio in New York Republican Primary for Governor - NYTimes.com
Carl P. Paladino, a wealthy Buffalo businessman and political neophyte, won a stunning victory over his rival, former Representative Rick A. Lazio, in New York’s Republican gubernatorial primary on Tuesday night.
The victory for Mr. Paladino, whose agitating campaign strategy and attacks against Albany earned him a late surge in the polls, marked the second major triumph on Tuesday night for the Tea Party movement, which backed the businessman against Mr. Lazio, a dyed-in-the-wool Republican mainstay. And it underscored the deep divisions among the conservative electorate as the G.O.P. hopes to make inroads nationwide this fall.
In another sign of anti-establishment fervor, the state Senate majority leader, Pedro Espada Jr., who is facing civil corruption charges, conceded his race in the Bronx to a Democratic rival, Gustavo Rivera, who had been backed by unions, donors, and elected officials across the state.
Just months ago, Mr. Paladino appeared to be out of the race, banished from the Republican ballot by party leaders at their convention. But he began a grass-roots petition drive and started holding whipped-up rallies around the state, where his mixture of white-hot anger and blunt attacks on Albany gained traction. Far-right conservatives, deficit hawks, and New Yorkers who identified with the Tea Party rallied behind him, even as the state’s Republican leadership continued to dismiss his chances.
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Another ignorant Republican bigot wins a Republican primary!
John H. Armwood
Wrongfully deported American back home - U.S. news - Immigration: A Nation Divided - msnbc.com
Wrongfully deported American back home - U.S. news - Immigration: A Nation Divided - msnbc.com
A Texas-born U.S. citizen who was detained, questioned and deported to Matamoros, Mexico, in the middle of the night has been allowed to re-enter the United States, ending a nearly three-month ordeal.
Luis Alberto Delgado, 19, was carrying his American birth certificate, Social Security card and Texas ID when he was pulled over in a routine traffic stop on June 17, according to Houston immigration lawyer Isaias Torres, who represented him in his legal battle for repatriation.
A South Texas sheriff’s deputy who apparently believed the documents were not authentic handed Delgado over to U.S. border agents. After eight hours of questioning, Torres said, Delgado felt pressured to sign a document agreeing to voluntary removal from the country and waiving his right to a lawyer. The Border Patrol then drove Delgado to Matamoros and left him, he said.
He was finally able to return home over the weekend, Torres said.
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This is an example of what the rising tide of American bigotry is doing.
John H. Armwood
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