He's right, though. Hale's tweet helps Obama a little, "Jeremiah Wright's church for 20 years". "Wait, I thought he was Muslim?"

and bone chips … very little brain matter.

mine or anyone else's. It's always fraught with pitfalls.

to spare the feelings of right-wing Christian zealots?

Is he a preacher? Yes, I understand that this is something Presidents are made to do for political reasons, because the masses want our leaders to appear all Christian-y and faithful--but if I were President, I would set the precedent and seriously just stay away from the topic as much as possible. I wouldn't delve into what is and isn't Islamic, I wouldn't make any proclamations about Christianity, I would just avoid the whole mess because there's no reason to weigh in.

Is Obama the President or the Grand Leader of All Things Religious in America?

As a former lecturer on Constitutional Law, what does President Obama NOT understand about separation of Church and State?

Many on the right will still believe he is a Muslim, radical Christian, Kenyan, Indonesian, Hawaiian terrorist anyway.

presidents.

But I agree with you, it's best if presidents say as little about religion as possible. Sometimes, though, a president must say something, and it should be as bland and non-controversial as possible.

There's a good reason why the founding fathers sought to separate government and religion, and that reason shows itself in today's comments.

Not to mention the religious right wanting to destroy secularism. Remain silent?

Hell, no. The Constitution guarantee of free religious beliefs, any religion, needs protection, it is under massive and open attack.

and how Christians are being persecuted by secularists, and how Islam is a threat to America.

We're in the Twilight Zone!

place well, which he did not do this time.

Right now, we have international crises in the Middle East and in Ukraine. There is also difficulty in getting a DHS spending bill passed. Personally, I'd like to dissolve DHS, but that not going to happen soon and we need a budget.

These statements get people riled up and divert attention from the practical job of governing in a difficult time.

The religious right has been trying to destroy secularism since the enlightenment, but I don't see that they're gaining victories anywhere in the West, including the US.

Furthermore, I don't think that his statements concerning Christianity will change the minds of those who reflexively hate Islam. From what I can tell from the internet, those folks are now even more enraged and less likely to examine their views.

We differ significantly on how the president should handle these issues. I don't believe that either of us will change each other's mind. I won't be posting again on this topic.

Last time I check we passed Jim Crow laws as recently as last year so anyone that thinks horrible ideas disguised in the name of christ ended in the 11th century didn't listen to Obama. Heck THIS YEAR people are defending anti-vaxxing in the name of Christ. So pretty much Obama is right and they hate him for it. Go figure.

incredible post. where did you get the last image?

nt

a great crime.' In this case, two great crimes.

And what he said is not only true, it's constructively true.

nt

It's fucking meaningless and looks to be downplaying what is happening TODAY. It was a stupid thing to say unless he's calling for an enlightenment in the Muslim world.

genocide, slavery, Jim Crow

I forget, Americans can't handle the truth.

magical balance fairy - because that's always helpful. Is it really so hard to stick to what's happening TODAY? Apparently so.

and spouting "America is a Christian Nation" ... then I'm all for what the president did

I suspect those who are so mortally offended by what Obama said are those who want people to focus on only one thing, and that one thing is that Muslims are collectively responsible for what ISIS does.

but those same people would never claim that Christians are collectively responsible for what the KKK does.

Imagine trying to get Elisabeth Hasselbeck and her "friends at FOX" to grapple with that one

Christians.

. . . and the President's remarks were aimed at people who smear the whole of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims based on the actions of an extremist minority. Let's not set up a false dichotomy between endorsing the actions of groups such as Isis and opposing broad-brush bigotry.

exactly!

Would you trade ISIS or the Inquisition for a crusade? Or do you want ISIS to come to such a stature where they could rock their versions now? Fuck no, you know better than what you say here.

How are the Crusades and the Inquisition "downplaying" anything? It is like saying someone calling 10 people getting killed a Holocaust is downplaying the 10 people being killed rather than actually downplaying the Holocaust.

If you want to pretend that something that happened hundreds of years ago has the EXACT SAME effect on our lives as something that's happening right now, you're the one whose thinking is simple minded. WTF do the crusades or inquisition have to do with TODAY? BTW, I'm not trying to protect Christianity - both Christians and Muslims have been killing MY people for many, many years. I'm talking about what the fuck he was hoping to accomplish? The fact that he said nothing untrue is completely meaningless.

P.S. Lay off the coffee and perhaps you wont sound like someone looking for a fight.

I'd say that at this point it is no contest that the Crusades have more impact on more lives and the very shapes of our societies, religions, cultures, and even genetics than these bands of marauders in the middle east we are talking about today.

Typically, if you are aware of an event the further back in time it is the more important it is and just because an event occurs in the present doesn't change it's impact footprint. In 2,000 years it is most probable that the Crusades will still be of more historical importance. Maybe not but most likely.

The present is nothing but the fruits of the past and the future is nothing but what we make of it from here.

All of this is probably beside the point anyway and our hand in predictably setting up just such fucks to assemble and cause discord is hardly ancient history, Operation Enduring Clusterfuck rocks on.
I think that is what causes all the anger and teeth gnashing is knowing our own stupid fuck policies grew this mess and fear our response will just ramp up up the crazy but wanting that visceral resolution, or to live up to "you broke it, you bought it", or paternal hero syndrome, or whatever is too attractive not to keep trying to roll the dice.

your answer to isis? Just let the countries being effected deal with it (which I would be fine with, the same way I'm fine with Russia and the Ukraine duking it out amongst themselves). My point was I don't need a history lesson from the President or you on this issue and the people who are getting massacred TODAY don't need it either.

posted by eridani

Bill Moyers: The Fiery Cage and the Lynching Tree, Brutality’s Never Far Away

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/02/06/fiery-cage-and-lynching-tree-brutalitys-never-far-away

Sure enough, there it was: the charred corpse of a young black man, tied to a blistered tree in the heart of the Texas Bible Belt. Next to the burned body, young white men can be seen smiling and grinning, seemingly jubilant at their front-row seats in a carnival of death. One of them sent a picture postcard home: “This is the barbeque we had last night. My picture is to the left with a cross over it. Your son, Joe.”

The victim’s name was Jesse Washington. The year was 1916. America would soon go to war in Europe “to make the world safe for democracy.” My father was twelve, my mother eight. I was born 18 years later, at a time, I would come to learn, when local white folks still talked about Washington’s execution as if it were only yesterday. This was not medieval Europe. Not the Inquisition. Not a heretic burned at the stake by some ecclesiastical authority in the Old World. This was Texas, and the white people in that photograph were farmers, laborers, shopkeepers, some of them respectable congregants from local churches in and around the growing town of Waco.



Here is the photograph. Take a good look at Jesse Washington’s stiffened body tied to the tree. He had been sentenced to death for the murder of a white woman. No witnesses saw the crime; he allegedly confessed but the truth of the allegations would never be tested. The grand jury took just four minutes to return a guilty verdict, but there was no appeal, no review, no prison time. Instead, a courtroom mob dragged him outside, pinned him to the ground, and cut off his testicles. A bonfire was quickly built and lit. For two hours, Jesse Washington — alive — was raised and lowered over the flames. Again and again and again. City officials and police stood by, approvingly. According to some estimates, the crowd grew to as many as 15,000. There were taunts, cheers and laughter. Reporters described hearing “shouts of delight.”

When the flames died away, Washington’s body was torn apart and the pieces were sold as souvenirs. The party was over.

Yes, it was hard to get back to sleep the night we heard the news of the Jordanian pilot’s horrendous end. ISIS be damned! I thought. But with the next breath I could only think that our own barbarians did not have to wait at any gate. They were insiders. Home grown. Godly. Our neighbors, friends, and kin. People like us.

see http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026191915

Sorry, but I cannot take her.

I used to think he was smarter than this. He just handed ISIS a blank check. He tossed in the trash any moral authority he might have had, even to verbally condemn these atrocities, much less do anything about them.

I saw it on tv, I really couldn't believe my ears.

He might as well have said, "sure, we all make mistakes". MY head is exploding! This shit is sickening:

In reference to his specific quote in the OP...

This shit by ISIS sure as hell IS unique to some other place right now, and that is what we're talking about! Is there an ADD virus loose in the world, or what? Can he not follow a subject long enough to hold on to a point? Or does he think he's a college professor teaching ISIS and the rest of us sitting around in a little classroom somewhere?

Wow.

I didn't need anyone to tell me it was a huge needless blunder. That was obvious.

It was stupid and if the audience didn't sigh loudly in disgust, I'm amazed at their restraint.

U mad, bro?

"A nod's as good as a wink to a blind horse."

By reminding people this is not the first time people have committed atrocities in the name of religion he LOST moral authority to speak about any currently happening? Because generally, it's the other way around. The people who tell the truth about this stuff are the ones with the moral authority to address it.

WTF is going on in your brain to make the leap from A to B there????????

Dr. Tiller - gunned down in church in front of his family, the Westboro crowd picketing funerals, Rev. Jim Jones convincing people to commit suicide, countless abortion clinic bombings and killings by "pro-lifers" etc ad nauseam.

(notice no one on the right ever uses the term CHRISTIAN terrorism)

An elderly lady I knew told me about when the KKK would wear their robes in church.

Went to wiki to clarify Jonestown numbers (913), and noticed this tidbit "it was the largest single loss of American civilian life in a deliberate act until September 11, 2001."

I swear this country is so fucked up sometimes. Can't take a little truth from our leader? Then maybe these moronic repukes need to shut the fuck up and read a book or two! His comparison is SPOT ON. Does he validate what ISIS is doing? Of course not. All the morons freaking out must either not know any history or just don't give a shit and believe USA can do no wrong.

Slavery and the near genocide of the native people...but YEAH...let's freakout because Obama told a little truth among a country neck deep in bullshit and hype.

Right. And they KNOW he wasn't validating what ISIS is doing ... but they need to feign outrage.

I really don't understand how honest people can come to the conclusion that he was validating what ISIS is doing! HELLO...this is the guy that GOT OBL! This is the guy droning the shit out of Pakistan right now.

I LOVE the fact that Obama brought up a moment to reflect on...shame to see some turn it into outrage at truth and history.

DUers who talk about Christian and Jewish atrocities in history is somehow "condoning the burning to death of a man in a cage"

I know it is Thursday, but did I miss the memo that we changed Stupid Day from Friday to Thursday? I think the ultra-nationalists here are going crazy over people talking about - gasp - not so good things from OUR history. Do they even know that the POTUS was the originator of the message? Do they even care or is it just another thing to get mad about. Was the POTUS wrong?

Obama will do his best to kill every last person in ISIS...how the hell anyone came to the opposite conclusion, just boggles my mind napkinz!

To say if we discuss past atrocities perpetrated in the name of religion is to condone what ISIS is doing ... CONDONE????

good grief!

(as one member said, this is a straw man)

between civilized man and savages. But I don't think those words would have helped. One thing that must be avoided at all cost is any notion that this is a war against Muslims. That is exactly how ISIS would want it to be seen. I think the President choose his words very well this time.

9/11 George Bush - This Crusade Is Gonna Take A While (Sept 17 2001)

Last edited Thu Feb 5, 2015, 06:04 PM - Edit history (1)

There are recent atrocities he should have used But his point is still valid.

"Unless we get on our high horse and think that this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ," Obama said. "In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ."

During the Bosnia war. Yes.

He merely pointed out that throughout history "there is a tendency in us [humans] to pervert and distort our faith." And the excesses of the historical Crusades and the excesses of today's ISIS are examples of that.

....which is perfectly straightforward and truthful. Nothing outrageous here - except to RW'ers who see & hear through their own twisted filter.

Murica! USA! USA!

The irony, it hurts.

can give one whiplash if they're not careful. LOL

"someone somewhere said something horrible" is becoming a very boring and useless Internet pursuit

has evolved into a more peaceful religion. And of course most Muslims are also peaceful but ISIS is evil. I don't think it is helpful to compare ISIS with something Christians did 900 years ago.

I hope it does not take hundreds of years before their extremists stop committing atrocities in the name of their religion.

We'll need a thousand or 2 more years.

Palestine did not happen hundreds of years ago. American hegemony in the Middle East are not ancient history. What is it about the western mind that believes that killing and maiming countless numbers of people is only technical procedure?

We have a military in 2015 that boasts it's on a mission for God and has proven they're willing to torture Arabs; kill their civilians; drop chemicals on one of their cities and melt everything alive within it; sodomize their sons and make the parents watch; etc., fucking etc.,...because you know, God.

That's like saying that those who burn Korans are devout Islamists.

There's a reason that folk are constantly bringing up the Crusades in these discussions.

The domestic terrorism of the KKK justified itself as a Christian action. That is violence justified by religion.

As Obama pointed out, slavery and Jim Crow was also justified by a misuse of the Christian religion as well.

The murders of millions in the Holocaust had it's historic roots in Christian anti-Semitism.

There is no need to go back so far in history as the Crusades to make a comparison.

But that goes over the heads of the Repubs of course.

I think using the "C" word against ISIS, putting them in the same camp was the point. It was directed towards moderate Muslims around the world.

If they need a reminder of the brutal acts during the Crusades:

http://www.truthbeknown.com/victims.htm

Jerusalem conquered 7/15/1099 more than 60,000 victims (jewish, muslim, men, women, children). [WW37-40]
(In the words of one witness: "there [in front of Solomon's temple] was such a carnage that our people were wading ankle-deep in the blood of our foes", and after that "happily and crying for joy our people marched to our Saviour's tomb, to honour it and to pay off our debt of gratitude&quot

The Archbishop of Tyre, eye-witness, wrote: "It was impossible to look upon the vast numbers of the slain without horror; everywhere lay fragments of human bodies, and the very ground was covered with the blood of the slain. It was not alone the spectacle of headless bodies and mutilated limbs strewn in all directions that roused the horror of all who looked upon them. Still more dreadful was it to gaze upon the victors themselves, dripping with blood from head to foot, an ominous sight which brought terror to all who met them. It is reported that within the Temple enclosure alone about ten thousand infidels perished." [TG79]

But it is the same crap over and over. Obama says the worse statements until it is pointed out W said the same or worse and then they jump on another subject. Perhaps he had is trying to say to all of us this is a bad group and there needs to be action. They cut the heads off and got a reaction and now they have smelled flesh. It will happen again and again if they are not annihilated.

So Obama compares ISIS to the Crusades. I would compare ISIS to the early English, and Europeans. They burned people at the stake for being a heretic, and for being a presumed witch, along with the nasty shit Mr. Obama mentioned....So he gets jumped on, but when Ben Carson mentions that ISIS and our founding fathers were doing similar, thats ok....yeah

People were burned at the stake, drowned, subjected to the rack, etc. solely because they had beliefs which differed from the state approved list. Sounds like ISIS to me.

sadly, some do know their history

and it's fine with them because "Christianity is the one TRUE religion" ... those who suffered atrocities were mere infidels and heathens

It depended on which brand was in power.

Disgusting that their 4th grade level world view gets attention as if they weren't pathological.

seems a few here think the president, in pointing out past atrocities committed in the name of other religions, was "condoning" or "validating" the barbaric acts of ISIS

talk about a straw man

I missed the festivities here...just seeing references to it now. Disappointing.

At least they don't have the public spotlight like the CONservative shitstormers do.

First thing I'd bring up is "What the hell is this Prayer breakfast thing?" "You people don't do God-Damn thing all year but you have time for this bullshit??"

They're going to hate him anyway, do it just to cause THEM some stress

President Obama condemned those who seek to use religion as a rationale for carrying out violence around the world, declaring Thursday that "no god condones terror."

"We are summoned to push back against those who would distort our religion for their nihilistic ends," Obama said during remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast. He singled out the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, calling the militants a "death cult," as well as those responsible for last month's terror attacks in Paris and deadly assault on a school in Pakistan.

Also a report just now that an Obama ordered drone strike just killed the mastermind of the Paris Charlie attacks.

http://news.yahoo.com/us-drone-kills-senior-qaeda-militant-yemen-aqap-112205061.html

to which the Christian right in this country will say, "But those other gods are false gods, only OUR god is the one TRUE god."

Remember, we're a CHRISTIAN NATION.

How dare the president try to recognize other religions!

was justified. They are one in a long line of zealots that the world has reviled and will ultimately reject.

I think the President said something simple, profound, and true. ISIS (and al Qaeda) is not the only religious movement or religiously-inspired to torment, kill, enslave, and plunder their neighbors in the name of the Almighty. Yeah, we westerners (and even Americans from time to time--witness forced Christian conversion and persecution of Mormons) did it, too. It wasn't that the President said it was right for ISIS to do what they do.

just reported on The Ed Show

Michele Bachmann condemns the president and says ISLAM is the problem.

This 'Prayer Breakfast' they do is a prim example, all the comes from it year after year is trouble. Every year the message it sends to millions of Americans is that we do not matter, this event always has anti gay elements and one year they had invited the 'Kill the Gays' guy from Uganda.
I am just sick of them all and their ritualized bigotries. They need to keep their God hobby out of government and Presidents need to lay off the preaching, it is not appropriate to the office nor for any leader of a secular government in an extremely diverse country.

Down with the Prayer Breakfast! Go to Starbuck's or something instead.

Who would have thought that could happen.

Great Op napkinz.

Reaction to the remarks was swift and fierce. Conservative firebrand Michelle Malkin led the charge.

"ISIS chops off heads, incinerates hostages, kills gays, enslaves girls. Obama: Blame the Crusades," she wrote on Twitter.

http://www.aol.com/article/2015/02/05/outrage-after-obama-compares-isis-to-the-crusades-national-prayer-breakfast/21139559/


First, President Obama is not blaming the Crusades. And he is not condoning what ISIS is doing.

Second, since when did Malkin become a champion of LGBT rights?

But I don't believe that they are that stupid; they are deliberately misrepresenting what he said. None of them seems to have heard that it is forbidden to bear false witness against thy neighbor in Christianity.