Hate Group Westboro Baptist Church Says They Are Going to Picket Mandela’s Funeral

Hate Group Westboro Baptist Church Says They Are Going to Picket Mandela’s Funeral

By: Jason Easley

The Westboro Baptist Church is trying to take their platform of hate and intolerance to a whole new level by planning to picket Nelson Mandela’s funeral.
Here is what they tweeted:

THANK GOD for Nelson Mandela being dropped into hell! Westboro Baptist Church booking flight to South Africa (not banned) to picket funeral!
— Westboro Baptist (@WBCSays) December 6, 2013

 WBC may not get very far with their picket because free speech is limited in South Africa. According to Article 16 of the South African Bill of Rights,

Section 16 states,
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, which includes -
(a) freedom of the press and other media;
(b) freedom to receive or impart information or ideas;
(c) freedom of artistic creativity; and
(d) academic freedom and freedom of scientific research.
(2) The right in subsection (1) does not extend to -
(a) propaganda for war;
(b) incitement of imminent violence; or
(c) advocacy of hatred that is based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion, and that constitutes incitement to cause harm.
Judging from their Twitter stream, Westboro Baptist Church looks to be in violation of both 2(b) and 2(c). Westboro Baptist Church thinks that Mandela is in hell, because he divorced and remarried. WBC is also promising to picket the late actor Paul Walker’s funeral. In fact, where ever there is a high profile death or natural disaster, WBC can be counted on to threaten to show up and spread their message of hate and intolerance.
People have stood up and done the right thing to stop WBC protests in the past. In 2011, 300 bikers foiled a planned WBC protest after tornadoes devastated Joplin, MO. Earlier this year, Teamsters formed a human shield to block a WBC picket of Boston Marathon bombing victim’s funeral.
I doubt that the Westboro Baptist Church gets entry into South Africa. If they get into the country and are foolish enough to protest Nelson Mandela’s funeral, the potential for violence would be higher than anything that the hate group has ever tried before.
What WBC is planning proves once again that they are one of the most vile hate groups in the world, and hopefully they will be stopped.

Hate Group Westboro Baptist Church Says They Are Going to Picket Mandela’s Funeral was written by Jason Easley for PoliticusUSA.

© PoliticusUSA, Sat, Dec 7th, 2013 — All Rights Reserved

 

The Secret Agenda Behind House Republican ACA Hearings is Obama Impeachment

The Secret Agenda Behind House Republican ACA Hearings is Obama Impeachment

By: Sarah Jones

Tuesday, December, 3rd, 2013, 10:14 am

Fox News is making the Republicans’ House hearing case for them by helping the GOP make the case for impeachment.

The House is holding a hearing today (one of four ObamaCare hearings on your tax dollars) on “Presidential power”, alleging that President Obama disregarded the constitution when he tweaked the timing of the implementation of the individual mandate. This precedes impeachment, and that’s why they’re holding this hearing.
Megyn Kelly did what Fox does best; she “raised the question” of whether or not Obama has violated his duty. Has the President substituted his judgment over the Congress’ judgment?
Watch the December 2 edition of Fox News’ The Kelly File here via Media Matters:

First “Judge” Andrew Napolitano claimed Obama had let a large group of people off and refused to prosecute them for some kind of quid pro quo, but Megyn Kelly quickly steered him back to the Talking Point of the Day – Healthcare.gov, aka, ObamaScare. Stay on point, Andrew!
Kelly reminded Napolitano that they are both lawyers so they know how things work. I beg to differ. I know plenty of ignorant lawyers. Knowing enough about the law to pass the bar says almost nil about understanding government, unless you are a constitutional lawyer (like the President). Or you’ve worked on government (like the President).

Working on Fox “News” is a good indicator that you may have difficulty understanding logic and processing facts, or you have sold out so completely that your take on the “law” is pretty worthless. But I digress. Back to impeachments.
So Andrew, who also thought the President should be impeached over the sequester pending cuts imposed by Republicans, championed by Republicans and crowed about by Republicans on Andrew’s very own network, announced that the President violated the constitution when he decided to give “exceptions/exemptions” from the obligation of the law to some groups and not to others.
Kelly played fair cop with Napolitano. “That’s an administrative decision,” she barked. I might remind everyone here that Republicans in Congress make many such decisions – like how oil companies get subsidies but groups of poor people should not, or even other energy groups do not. Fox wants to indict on ideology, apparently. Kelly pretend-pushed him that the executive has the power to make these decisions, so that he could be set up to explain Why It’s Different This Time (aka, ‘cuz Obama did it).
This is the Outrage When the Black Man Uses His Authority segment of the program, when the two very white people smirk disdainfully over the “power grab” (assertion of proper authority) of the black person. It’s all very Southern Strategy on Fox.
So now we find out what Kelly is going for (aka, what the GOP leadership sent her re their hearing today). Delaying the individual mandate! Sure, “timing” used to fall under the purview of the executive branch, but not anymore, they tell us. The President may not change the date of implementation of a part of a law according to Napolitano.
In reality, the President controls policy implementation. That’s his role in the process. By delaying the individual mandate, Obama is simply changing an implementation date, not rewriting the law.
And now we come to the landing that sets up the Republican Congressional hearing today.
“What’s the remedy, you say impeachment, but can you go into court and challenge him? Can you try to impeach him, how would that happen?” Kelly wonders.
Sadly, Napolitano doesn’t think Obama will be impeached because of the experience “we had the last time when Bill Clinton’s eye was off the ball.” Yes. Never mind Iraq, WMD, Katrina, etc. Never mind Nixon. A breach of executive power is best exemplified in Foxland by the delaying of an implementation of a law these people don’t agree with.
But Kelly is very sad because impeaching Clinton backfired against the poor Republicans and then Napolitano reminded everyone that if Clinton hadn’t been impeached he wouldn’t have ignored Osama bin Laden, even though he admits that bin Laden attacked “in the early days of the Bush administration”.
These are the same people who will whine if you blame Bush correctly for the economic mess the country is in. In their minds, Clinton caused 911 because he should have left office when he was impeached. Try not to get lost in the crazy.
Here’s the point of the hearings today, and this is important because it clues us into where they are going. Judge Napolitano tells us that the Republicans may enact a resolution, “Will it lead to impeachment? I don’t know, but it will further diminish and destroy the trust he (Obama) once had with the American people.”
That resolution is what could lead to impeachment. Fox is trying to help the Republicans whip up a public fury to call for impeachment. This call for impeachment will be as good as an impeachment for them, because it will allow Republicans to use the soundbites and run against Obama in 2014 instead of having to come up with an actual platform.
How does Napolitano know ahead of time, since this was taped yesterday, that Obama will be found guilty in these GOP-led House hearings? Oh, I kid. No one thinks that Republicans are looking for facts.

The Secret Agenda Behind House Republican ACA Hearings is Obama Impeachment was written by Sarah Jones for PoliticusUSA.

© PoliticusUSA, Tue, Dec 3rd, 2013 — All Rights Reserved

The Religious Right With Their Weaponized Jesus Are Not Christians

The Religious Right With Their Weaponized Jesus Are Not Christians 

 

By: Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Tuesday, November, 26th, 2013, 7:28 am

It is instructive that Lieutenant General William G. “Jerry” Boykin (retired), who now works as the Family Research Council’s executive vice president, cares more about what Jesus looked like than what Jesus taught.
Boykin, another one of those who says Islam is not entitled to First Amendment protections, and thinks God, not the American people, chooses our presidents, told the audience of a Men’s Prayer Breakfast at William Jessup University, that,

[Jesus] was a man. He was a man’s man, but we feminized him in the church…he was a tough guy and that’s the Jesus that I want to be like. That’s the side that I want to be like. But we’ve feminized Jesus in the church and the men can’t identify with him anymore; not the kind of men that I want to hang out with, they can’t identify with this effeminate Jesus that we’ve tried to portray. He was a tough guy. He was a man’s man.

For Boykin it was bromance at first sight and perhaps a wee bit of latent homosexuality as he waxed over Jesus’ “big, bulging biceps…thin waist” and “strong shoulders” (Who knew Jesus was the Marlboro man?)
Boykin’s accidental outing of himself aside, we don’t know what Jesus actually looked like. But we do know that he was not the strangely Germanic blond guy of popular imagination. He was a dark-skinned Semite:

There is also no doubt that Jesus smelled bad. They didn’t have deodorant in the first century of the Common Era so Jesus smelled bad, Peter smelled bad, Pontius Pilate smelled bad, Caiaphas smelled bad, the guys who nailed Jesus to the cross smelled bad, and so did the two rebels he was executed with and the people who watched, including Jesus’ mother. We get that. But smelling bad doesn’t make you a man when everyone – women included – smells bad. This sort of reasoning is why Boykin is working for the FRC.
We get that too.
But it’s a shame Boykin and the FRC care more about what Jesus smelled and looked like than they do the important things, like what Jesus taught about the poor coming first and the rich, having sold their souls to the dark powers that ruled the age to become rich, coming last. That would be swell, but people like Boykin prefer the Weaponized Jesus of the twenty first century to the apocalyptic prophet of the first.
Jesus is often portrayed as a carpenter but he might well have been, like Socrates, a stone mason, since the word used, in Mark 6:3, τέκτων (tekton), means only that he made things with his hands; it does not specify which craft he practiced. So yes, he would have been a hardy, no doubt muscular fellow, though Geza Vermes, whom I often cite here, points out that the language used – “son of a carpenter” – is used in the Talmud to mean somebody who is “learned” and therefore might have simply signified that Jesus was wise. Of course, we already figured that out, given what he said about rich people chances of getting into heaven (Matthew 19:24).
He might have been big, strapping, smelly AND wise. We’ll just never know. And it really doesn’t matter.
And that is because most of us would agree that what Jesus said was more important than what he looked like. Think about the Beatitudes and Jesus’ words, “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9) and think about them particularly in terms of what President Barack Obama has accomplished with regards Iran and its nuclear program.
Because it is Obama the Republican response was automatically negative but their response should have been to remember Jesus’ words, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone” (John 8:7).
What we get instead is Bryan Fischer proclaiming that God will curse America for making a deal with Iran. Fischer forgets Jesus entirely and goes all Old Testament on us:

What he cursed us with are people like Bryan Fischer and Jerry Boykin and groups like the Christian America Patriots Militia, who have been claiming that Jesus and the Second Amendment together gives them the right to assassinate the president.
If Republicans really cared about Jesus, and what Jesus taught, they would be talking less about their Savior’s manly odor, flip open the New Testament that supposedly informs their beliefs, and realize that having done what Jesus wanted, Obama is blessed, not cursed, and that even if he does something you don’t like, you forgive him, not kill him.
It is too much to say that Jesus would say he wants his religion back. It was never his religion to begin with, after all. It is beyond contestation that Jesus was a Jew who preached an apocalyptic message to the Jews, that he ignored the Gentiles (Pagans) and not only ignored them, but told his disciples to avoid them, referring to Gentiles in true Jewish fashion as “dogs” and “swine” (Matthew 7:6).
Jesus did not invent Christianity. Christianity is a religion that was invented about Jesus, based, allegedly, on his teachings and not his appearance. But Jesus would certainly want those teachings heeded. He did not walk all over a Galilee infested with bandits, rebels, Herodians, and Romans, just for yucks. It was hot, dangerous – and smelly, after all.
We have to assume (assuming a historical Jesus in the first place) that he was serious about what he said.
He died for it, after all.
Whether Jesus was right or wrong about what he taught, whether he was an illiterate Galilean craftsman or divine, he died miserably and in great agony on the cross. And in at least one of the mutually contradictory versions of his death, he told his Father to “forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). He did not say “nuke ‘em till they glow” or “bomb them into the Stone Age,” like would a Republican.
We should respect that, Christian or otherwise.
But Jerry Boykin and his ilk have no genuine respect for Jesus. Jesus has become “weaponized” – a club used to bludgeon enemies. This is not at all what Jesus would have wanted, since he said to “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:39) and that if somebody steals your shirt to give them your cloak as well (Matthew 5:40) and to “love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44).
The only weapon here is love.
But conservatives hate that Jesus. Hate is more their speed. Old Testament wrath. A god who tosses nukes with his fingertips. That god profits them and their friends in the military industrial complex. That’s a Jesus they can get behind. That’s the Jesus Boykin really loves with all his manly man’s heart.
Unfortunately, that’s not the Jesus in the gospels, which is, after all, supposed to be a good message, not a bad.
The thing is, if Christianity is a religion about what Jesus taught, then these people on the Religious Right are not Christians at all. How much greater their crime if they claim Jesus actually created Christianity.
Yes, I do think Jesus would want his gospel heeded if he put in an appearance today. And I suspect he would have a few words for the dogs and swine on the Religious Right who have been masquerading as followers of the rabbi from Galilee.

The Religious Right With Their Weaponized Jesus Are Not Christians was written by Hrafnkell Haraldsson for PoliticusUSA.

© PoliticusUSA, Tue, Nov 26th, 2013 — All Rights Reserved

For the Last Time, the Constitution is Not Based on the Bible

For the Last Time, the Constitution is Not Based on the Bible

By: Hrafnkell Haraldsson more from Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Thursday, October, 31st, 2013, 7:39 am

Like a bad penny, Tom DeLay is back. And because nobody loves a story of false redemption more than the Religious Right, you know he will be doing his best to make his presence felt.

John Hagee, who said recently that “we are a Pagan nation without shame” has been thundering on about divine wrath of course, forecasting doom and gloom for the godless, by which he apparently means people too smart to fall for his shtick:

The Bible says that all nations that forget God are turned into Hell. I assure you that if America continues to reject the way of God, God will lift the hedge of protection from this nation and we’re going to experience a hellish nightmare unlike anything we’ve ever known before. Wake up, America! Let us return to the God of our fathers; the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob.

How do these two intersect? Hagee interviewed Tom DeLay last weekend. Hagee introduced DeLay as “A brother in Christ who has been tried by fire,” who has triumphed over “the world, the flesh, and the devil.”


DeLay told Hagee he had a “conference call with the Lord” and the Divine Dispense of Wealth told him to cash in on his experiences by writing a book. God even gave him a name for it: “Shut it Down” and a topic: a revival of Constitutional principles.
Why Constitutional and not biblical? Silly question, infidel defilers:
“Jesus died for our freedom. And Jesus destroyed Satan so we could be free and that is manifested in what is called the Constitution of the United States. God created the nation and God created the Constitution; it is written on biblical principles.”

For the last time, the Constitution is not based on biblical principles. The two have nothing in common. Ancient Israel and Judah were kingdoms, ruled by kings. When the kings were gone, the Jews were ruled by corrupt high priests. Monarchy or theocracy. Some choice.
I’m pretty sure that is not the fate the Founding Fathers had in mind for America when they penned the United States Constitution.
No Religious Right figure, Hagee and DeLay included, has ever explained how the Constitution can be based on biblical principles without so much as mentioning God, Jesus, the Bible, or the Ten Commandments. They have not explained how the Constitution can be based on biblical principles when it in fact enshrines English Common Law, which owes more to Pagan Roman civil law than the Bible. And let’s not forget the Iroquois influence on the Constitution. Iroquois who were – oops – not Christians either.
Some, like Bryan Fischer make a big deal of the document being dated “in the year of our Lord” but that is just how they dated documents then, an artifact of a millennium-and-a-half of forced conversion. It is how we still date documents simply by writing down a number dated from the supposed year of Jesus’ birth, like “2013.”
Here is Fischer ranting on the subject (it sounds as though he is trying to convince himself):

You go to the end of the Constitution, what do you find? It’s dated from when? It’s dated from the first Christmas! From the birth of Jesus Christ, ‘the year of our Lord.’ So we dated our Constitution, we dated the Declaration of Independence. We dated them from the very first Christmas! In other words, Christmas is IN the Constitution. Christmas is IN the Declaration of Independence. Because those documents are dated from the birth of what the Founding Fathers referred to as ‘our Lord.’ In the year of OUR Lord. All of them said, ‘Jesus Christ is OUR Lord.’ Our history began with the first Christmas. People say, ‘Hey, the Constitution’s a godless Constitution, God’s not in there. There is no mention of Christ.’ Absolutely wrong. It is an explicitly Christian document.

Bryan Fischer is explicitly dishonest. But you knew that.
Fischer also claims because “Muslim students at Trinity University in Texas are complaining about the phrase ‘In the year of our Lord’ on their diplomas,” they are “inadvertently proving that this is a Christian nation in the process.”
To which I can only say Bryan Fischer needs to take a college level course in logic. And in history. And not from David Barton.
All this fuss is, as Shakespeare would say, much ado about nothing. We are locked into this dating system whether we like it or not. We can change B.C. to B.C.E. (Before Common Era) and A.D. (Anno Domini/Year of our Lord) to C.E. (Common Era) but we are still dating from Jesus’ presumed birth. By Fischer’s logic, Portugal, which did not adopt Anno Domini until 1422, was not a Christian nation until that date, which is an absurdity. By Fischer’s logic, every atheist and every Pagan like myself who writes the year 2013 is a Christian. Another absurdity.
While we’re on the subject of things that are not true being true, God told DeLay, “My awakening is beginning.” Better yet, he told DeLay that the former House Majority Leader would play a role in that awakening. Probably in fleecing the flock.
And speaking of wealth transference, I wonder if God told DeLay about his plans for Ted Cruz, already anointed as Money Messiah by his sinister minions on the right, or revealed any plans for former messiahs like Michele Bachmann, who might have a hard time managing her messiah duties from federal prison. Rest assured, if Bachmann escapes prison, she’ll be on stage with Hagee telling us all about her conference call with God (maybe he will break the news to her that her husband is gay).

For the Last Time, the Constitution is Not Based on the Bible was written by Hrafnkell Haraldsson for PoliticusUSA.

© PoliticusUSA, Thu, Oct 31st, 2013 — All Rights Reserved

The Media Peddles an Angry ObamaCare Customer Who Never Even Went to the Website

The Media Peddles an Angry ObamaCare Customer Who Never Even Went to the Website 

By: Sarah Jones more from Sarah Jones

Thursday, October, 31st, 2013, 10:27 am

 

We are being majorly trolled by the media.
The President is not impressed, we are not impressed, and Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times is also not impressed with the media’s ObamaCare reporting. He called out the media for running Deborah Cavallaro’s well televised rage (for example, CNBC during a segment titled, “Ordinary people talk huge price hikes” ) at Obama over her wild misunderstandings regarding ObamaCare.
It turns out that she never even tried to go to the website to sign up or get information.

Hilzik took a look at the facts and concluded, “If her insurance brokers told her what she says they did, they failed her. And the reporters who interviewed her without getting all the facts produced inexcusably shoddy work — from Maria Bartiromo on down. They not only did her a disservice, but failed the rest of us too.”
Cavallaro claimed there is nothing affordable about the Affordable Care Act, and Hilzik determines “at her current income, the act is vastly more affordable to her than what she’s paying now.” She is eligible for $200 a month in subsidies this year.
Hilzik writes, “The bottom line is that Cavallaro’s assertion that “there’s nothing affordable about the Affordable Care Act,” as she put it Tuesday on NBC Channel 4, is the product of her own misunderstandings, abetted by a passel of uninformed and incurious news reporters.”
 
Hilzik then goes on to detail her existing plan, which is a catastrophic plan. It does not comply with ObamaCare rules because it gives too little to the consumer. Let that sink in for a moment before we continue with Cavallaro’s misunderstanding of a law that is helping her, as she “qualifies her for a hefty federal premium subsidy.”
But of course, she didn’t factor the subsidies in. Yet she counts as her skills “value pricing, contract negotiations, organization and administrative skills”. No, I’m not trying to embarrass her; the point is, she clearly knows how to gather information and make assessments regarding contracts.
However, Hilzik discovers that she never even went to the website before going on national TV to decry the website and the entire law:

As for a replacement plan, she says she was quoted $478 a month by her insurance broker, but that’s a lot more than she’ll really be paying. Cavallaro told me she hasn’t checked the website of Covered California, the state’s health plan exchange, herself. I did so while we talked.

Yes, she’s been all over the news and yet she never even went to the California exchange to see what she’s actually be paying. Apparently no TV outlet was interested if she had done that or bothered to factcheck her.
However, in reality world where we check the facts before we form an opinion and go on national TV to tell people how we are getting screwed, Cavallaro has access to a new and better plan for less money.
Her plan was substandard and no, she could not see any doctor she wanted. Also, the California state run website does work save for problems with the part of the website where people can check whether their doctors are part of a network. As of October 15, Californians had started nearly 95,000 applications for health insurance through the state’s new exchange, so obviously many people were able to access the website.
Maybe you have to go to the website to access it, though, eh?
And she could have always picked up a phone. There is an 800 number on the front page of https://www.coveredca.com/.
I mean, seriously, have we come to this? No one in the media even asks her why she didn’t pick up a phone or if she even tried to get insurance? They never asked her what her rates would be under ObamaCare or factchecked those claims. Nope. TV loves haters.
Cavallaro claimed she will be paying 65% more for insurance, but Hilzik compared her options and under a Bronze plan via ACA, she can use her same current insurance company but get a better plan and pay $444 a year less than she’s paying now:

That buys her a $5,000 deductible (the same as she’s paying today) but the out-of-pocket limit is lower, $6,350. Office visits would be $60 for primary care and $70 for specialties, but again with no limit on the number of visits. Factor in the premium savings, and it’s hard to deny that she’s still ahead.

All is not perfect in ObamaCare land, but seeing as it’s a policy that will help 47 million Americans get insurance and helps those with insurance actually have access to what they pay for, it behooves the media to get you to hate it. We can’t have consumers being protected in any way from the corporate overlords.

The Media Peddles an Angry ObamaCare Customer Who Never Even Went to the Website was written by Sarah Jones for PoliticusUSA.

© PoliticusUSA, Thu, Oct 31st, 2013 — All Rights Reserved