Thursday, September 24, 2015
Presidents Bush and Obama on Muslims
Here’s a fun game. Here are some statements from Presidents Obama and Bush.
See if you can guess who said which.
1) “Ours is a war not against a religion, not against the Muslim faith. But ours is a war against individuals who absolutely hate what America stands for.”
2) “They’re terrorists. And we are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam.”
3) “Our war is not against Islam, or against faith practiced by the Muslim people. Our war is a war against evil.”
4) “Our enemy doesn’t follow the great traditions of Islam. They’ve hijacked a great religion.”
5) “Given the…nature of the enemy — which is not a traditional army — this work takes time, and will require vigilance and resilience.”
6) “The terrorists do not speak for over a billion Muslims who reject their hateful ideology.”
7) “The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself.”
8) “How do we, as people of faith, reconcile these realities — the profound good…the compassion and love that can flow from all of our faiths, operating alongside those who seek to hijack religious for their own murderous ends?”
9) “There are thousands of Muslims who proudly call themselves Americans, and they know what I know — that the Muslim faith is based upon peace and love and compassion.”
10) “This great religion in the hands of a few extremists has been distorted to justify violence.”
Answers to Bush-Obama language quiz:
1-Bush
2-Obama
3-Bush
4-Bush
5-Obama
6-Obama
7-Bush
8-Obama
9-Bush
10-Obama
The extremists on the right who believe Mr. Obama is an Islam-loving, Commie, Kenyan, Muslim will ignore how their Christian Conservative President Bush defended and praised Islam -- which, of course, doesn't make HIM a Muslim, but it makes President Obama a Muslim. And we mustn't forget that Obama's middle name is Hussein, which proves he's a Muslim, because someone's given name is what makes that person a Christian, Muslim, Jew, or Pastafarian. The fact that President Obama identifies himself as a Christian is immaterial to the extreme haters on the right. Their detestation of this president is their life's blood; they feed on it and nourish their unhappy little souls with it. It's what holds them together in their tight little circle of hate.
If you repeat a lie often enough, -- in this case, that President Obama is a Muslim -- then you'll allow yourself and others to believe it's the truth. And if you really believe President Obama is a Muslim, all evidence to the contrary, you must be one of those people who call Americans "vermin" and one of those people who want to kick Americans out of their own country because of the religion they practice.
The Nazis demonized the Jews in the 1930s, blamed them and liberals for everything that was wrong with Germany. There isn't that much difference between what the Nazis said then and what the extremist wingnuts are saying now about Muslims (and libtards). They're just too blinded by their fear, loathing, and ignorance to see it for what it is.
"...all evidence points to the fact that Obama is a Christian. The members of the public who say he is a Muslim -- 18 percent, according to the Pew poll [2010] -- are wrong, and we rate their statement Pants on Fire!"
From "Christianity Today:"
Obama Is Not a Muslim
From Wikipedia:
Allegations that Barack Obama secretly practices Islam or is an atheist, or that he is the antichrist of Christian eschatology, have been suggested since he campaigned for the U.S. Senate in 2004 and have proliferated since his election as President of the U.S. in 2008.
As with conspiracy theories surrounding his citizenship status, these false claims are promoted by various fringe theorists and political opponents, with American bloggers and talk radio hosts particularly promoting the theories.
And then there are the more egregiously dumb who use doctored videos to "prove" President Obama is a MOSLEM!
"The video in the link is actually a compendium of intercut, out-of-context statements taken from various interviews with Barack Obama in which he discussed Islam in general (as well as his childhood exposure to Islam), and from addresses delivered by President Obama to areas of the world with predominantly Muslim audiences for the purpose of "creat[ing] a better dialogue so that the Muslim world understands more effectively how the United States, but also how the West thinks about many of these difficult issues like terrorism, like democracy, to discuss the framework for what's happened in Iraq and Afghanistan and our outreach to Iran, and also how we view the prospects for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians."
The above is a somewhat complicated explanation of why President Obama (as well as his predecessor, GWB) do not condemn the Muslim religion. But the rightwing nutjobs can't understand something as nuanced as presidents not wanting to make a difficult situation worse by stirring up hatred against the world's 1.2 billion Muslims. The absence of malice toward non-jihadist Muslims by President Obama (and GWB) is the only proof needed, to the simple-minded, that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.
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More information on how cretinous Americans went after other religions and labeled them enemies of state, fake, and subversive. The extremists in wingnuttia are not one bit original in their paranoid hatred and stupidity:
"Throughout U.S. history, Protestants have denounced Catholics as fake Christians, amoral villains and traitors to the nation. In an argument that anticipated today’s critiques of Islam, inventor Samuel Morse argued in 1835 that the ideal of religious liberty served as a Trojan horse secreting enemies of the nation “into every nook and corner of the land.” This “infallibly intolerant” Roman Catholic tradition, he argued, wasn’t even a religion; it was a nefarious political scheme masquerading as one.
But anti-Catholicism was not the only culture war prosecuted by conservative defenders of faith and flag. Mormons, too, were targeted as slaves of a religious despot whose liberty was incompatible with our own. Before this culture war was over, Mormon leaders would be sued, jailed, beaten, stripped naked, tarred and feathered, and murdered. And rank-and-file Mormons would be chased from New York to Ohio to Missouri to Illinois to the Utah territory.
Today, it is easy to imagine that Barack Obama is the first U.S. president to be accused of being a Muslim. But that honor actually belongs to Thomas Jefferson."
The more things change...
The people who continue to claim Mr. Obama is a "Moslem" have a kinship with the Stupids of Jefferson's era. Those people were as bumblebrained then as they are now. Facts don't matter to them, only their emotions. And hatred leads the list of their preferred emotions.
"Jefferson’s face now adorns Mount Rushmore, but in the election of 1800, Federalist partisans of John Adams viciously denounced Jefferson as un-American, principally because of his unorthodox faith, which ran more toward deism and Unitarianism than toward evangelical Protestantism.
One Federalist called Jefferson the “great arch priest of Jacobinism and infidelity.” The Connecticut Courant suggested he might be a secret Jew or Muslim. It complained that no one seemed to know “whether Mr. Jefferson believes in the heathen mythology or in the alcoran (Quran); whether he is a Jew or a Christian; whether he believes in one God, or in many; or in none at all.”
Excellent post Shaw.
The folks who cannot grasp what is the obvious have allowed themselves to become tools for bigotry and hate.
I knew #3 was Bush because Obama tends not to use the word "evil". However, the point is a good one. It is often pointed out that if Reagan were alive today, he could not get the Republican nomination because many of his actual actions deviated from post-2009 baggerized Republican orthodoxy. The same could even be said of Bush.
Here is an excerpt from a speech by Carly Fiorina soon after the September 11 attack:
There was once a civilization that was the greatest in the world. It was able to create a continental super-state that stretched from ocean to ocean, and from northern climes to tropics and deserts. Within its dominion lived hundreds of millions of people, of different creeds and ethnic origins. One of its languages became the universal language of much of the world, the bridge between the peoples of a hundred lands.....Its architects designed buildings that defied gravity. Its mathematicians created the algebra and algorithms that would enable the building of computers, and the creation of encryption. Its doctors examined the human body, and found new cures for disease. Its astronomers looked into the heavens, named the stars, and paved the way for space travel and exploration.....When other nations were afraid of ideas, this civilization thrived on them, and kept them alive. When censors threatened to wipe out knowledge from past civilizations, this civilization kept the knowledge alive, and passed it on to others.....the civilization I’m talking about was the Islamic world from the year 800 to 1600, which included the Ottoman Empire and the courts of Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo, and enlightened rulers like Suleiman the Magnificent.....The technology industry would not exist without the contributions of Arab mathematicians. (link)
Her observations of course verify what serious students of the subject know -- that the great civilization of the early Islamic era wasn't very "Islamic" by modern standards. But baggers don't do nuance, especially about history (most of which they know nothing about). I'm betting some rival candidate will soon publicize this speech among the Republican electorate, and that will be the end of Fiorina's bump in the polls.
The right's constant calling Obama a Muslim is just another way for them to demonize the president, and they've been doing that since he was elected. They're not very bright, most bigots aren't.
On a slightly off topic yet related subject. The Popes remarks to Congress were quite impressive. He hit on, in a very positive way, key important issues of our time.
Hopefully the republicans and conservatives were listening.
Shaw... I've come to the conclusion lately that someone is gonna believe what they want to believe, regardless.
We, as people, generally believe we are correct, always. It takes a mountain of evidence for us to believe something different from our core, no matter how true it may be.
And this is true for us libs, as well as our conservative brothers.
I keep looking for the middle, but it looks as if it is continually collapsing around us.
Here's what's different between the extremists on the right and those who aren't.
If you go to any of the extreme right wing sites and blogs, you'll read again and again and again their unimaginably hateful condemnation of ALL Muslims.
Here's a real example (I won't link to where it came from, a friend emailed this to me today):
On Muslims:
"I mean how much raping, thieving, gang banging do these vermin have to do before people get the realization that these vermin are cancer to any civilized country."
Godwin rule: Those above words are no different from the way the Nazis spoke about the Jews in 1930 Germany.
They refer to Muslims as "vermin," and some of the more radical call for the deportation of Americans who practice the Muslim religion. These people must be totally ignorant of history and of other cultures that have demonized their own citizens because of their religious beliefs. Yet here in America, where the right wingers always talk about the sacred Constitution, they are advocating genocide against a WHOLE CULTURE, not just the jihadists.
These are the same people who claim Christians are being attacked by President Obama while at the same time writing horrible imprecations and threats against their fellow Americans who follow a faith they do not like! Can their brains be so bifurcated that they don't see what they've become?
As far as "believing what they want to believe," goes, wouldn't any reasonable, rational person see how far into insanity their hatred has taken them? They howl about President Obama destroying the country while calling for the genocide of Americans!
We, as people, generally believe we are correct, always. It takes a mountain of evidence for us to believe something different from our core, no matter how true it may be.
And this is true for us libs, as well as our conservative brothers.
Yup Dave, bout sums it up as well as I've heard it summed up anywhere. Kudos...
"I mean how much raping, thieving, gang banging do these vermin have to do before people get the realization that these vermin are cancer to any civilized country."
Man, that sounds like the writing from the "Dumbest Man On The Internet," Jim Hoft, or someone overdosing on right wing, anti-everything I don't understand hatred. What a dumb sh*t.
OT
If anyone is wondering why Donald Trump's voice got higher.
RN nd Dave,
I don't think there's any comparison between the left and right on the subject of this post.
For example, is there any justification on the extremist right to advocate for the deportation and death of ALL Muslims? To call them "vermin?" What would it take to show the extremists that their calling for genocide is just plain wrong? And I'm not aware of liberals calling for the genocide of a culture. But that is exactly what the extremists advocate for ALL Muslims. They do NOT qualify it by saying just the jihadists. They hate ALL Muslims.
The KKK was/is a terrorist organization that killed Christian Americans with impunity, but I don't recall people calling for the deaths of all Christians because of the massacres carried out by those KKK Christians. ANd this country still allows the KKK as an organization, even though they murdered hundreds and hundreds of Americans for a century!
Who's not surprised that the Pope's Christ-like message today would piss off the righties in this country? They detest Christ and his socialist policies. They don't believe in helping the poor (they call them "moochers," "takers," "thugs.")
When Jesus fed the thousands, He did not first check to see if they would be His disciples. He did not require them to come to Him for salvation. He simply filled a need by filling empty stomachs. Feeding the poor does not define the Christian; it is part of being a Christian.
But the conservatives who've captured the GOP cut food stamps that help feed children, the elderly, and veterans. But don't tell those people they've perverted their God's message.
The Pope's message is the same, and today's self-identified conservatives hate him for it.
Who was it who said the biggest trick the Devil pulled off was convincing people he didn't exist? That should be changed to the biggest trick today's so-called conservative Christians pulled off is demonizing Christ's Vicar on EArth, Pope Francis --calling him a Commie for doing Christ's work.
Infidel753: "But baggers don't do nuance, especially about history (most of which they know nothing about)."
They don't do facts either, especially fact-checking organizations like FactCheck.org, Or Politifact, or Snopes, because those sites debunk the lies they read in blast emails and then spread around their blogs. Also they believe any fact checking organization is funded by George Soros, so it can't be legit. In fact, what is painfully evident is that these people are allergic to facts. They create their own reality, and they believe in false facts, so long as those false facts support their hatred of liberals and President Obama.
Titan You're Famous: LOL! I did notice his voice has gone up an octave or two.
FHiG, the fact that the right wing bloggers are trashing the pope and his message shows how far into Crazyland they've gone. There is nothing this pope has said that isn't in line with the Christian God's message. But because he believes in helping the helpless, they hate him and call him a Marxist Commie. Happily, they are a distinctly sad, lonely minority who will be left in the dustbin of history. They and their slanderous lies.
Titan: Trump is being widely ridiculed on Twitter for his tantrum against Lowry. He must be purple with rage if he's reading this stuff. And there are few spectacles I find more entertaining than these wingnut-vs-wingnut feces-flinging fights.
Trump, don't forget, is a contributor to the scurrilousness that forms the topic of this post -- he's long been a major exponent of the wingnut nonsense about Obama's birth certificate, and just days ago he refused to correct a questioner who claimed Obama is a Muslim.
Infidel753,
From your link:
"It was a phenomenal attack line – one of the best I’ve seen in recent political history – and it did exactly what it was intended to do: got under Donald Trump’s skin.
Trump lost it and, unhinged, called for Lowry to never “be allowed on TV” again; went whining to the FCC, saying they should fine Lowry; and demanded that Fox News apologize to him for Lowry’s remarks.
Trump's response to Lowry's remarks on FAUX NOOZ sent the sniveling fraud into a tail spin of whining, petulant indignation. Ha! Anytime someone crosses him, Trump goes berserk and lashes out just like a junior high school mean girl. And that makes him even more popular with the loonies in the base of the GOP. They've said Trump is "just like them," and that's true.
I find it hilarious as well.
The same people who hate all Muslims hate this pope. Why? Because the pope has come with a message they detest: tolerance. They hate tolerance, diversity, and anything that isn't white.It's written in their favorite book what their god said and it's amazaing to see them reject it coming from this pope.
Luke 14:13: "But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind,"
The pope supports that.
Jesus the Socialist says to sell all you have and distribute it to the poor:
Mark 10:21 "And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”
Matthew 25:40 "And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’"
The TGOP cut food stamps for children, the elderly, and the veterans. In doing so, they did it to the god they worship.
Jesus the Socialist on sharing what you have with the needy:
Luke 3:11 "And he answered them, “Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.”
This pope reflects all of what Jesus has said about helping the poor and the helpless, and the people who think they are more Christian than the pope hate him for it.
FHIG: The same people who hate all Muslims hate this pope.
They'll square that circle soon enough.
Pope Francis is respected around the world by everyone, not just Catholics. Everyone except those who promote hatred for the poor and homeless and anyone who is needy, IOW, the base of the TGOP.Remember those are the ones who call the helpless and the poor "moochers." Just like Jesus would, NOT! They're the ones who say President Obama is not aChristian, then hate the pope for acting like a true Christian.If that isn't an example of insanity, what is?
Well D'UH! Donald Trump, the far right's preferred candidate is everything the far right's god rejected. A camel will get to heaven, according to their god, sooner than someone like the billionaire Trump! The hypocrisy on the right is astounding. Theyt've demonized the pope who really embodies the God's message and they embrace a man who's been married 4 times, can't recall one Bible verse, even tho he claims the Bible is his favorite book. He insults Mexicans, women, the miliary POWs, and most astounding, other Republicans or anyone who dares to disagree with him.
The Republicans LOVE that guy and dislike the Pope. Let that sink in. Really. It's a good example of how lurid and crazy the wingers have become.
"The most effective way to bring leftwingers to Christ would be for the GOP, tea parties and rightwingers to denounce Christianity."
The leader of 1.2 billion Christians, the Pope, leans politically left and preaches Christ's left-leaning Gospel. How dumb can those people be? Jesus said sell everything you have and distribute the money to the poor. Is that a conservative vlue? Hah! Right now the majority of GOP support billionaires Trump! And they despirse a social justice pope!
The Stupid runs deep in that Party.
The reality is you must survive and provide for your family through productive work of some sort. Life and its necessities are not free. Never has been and likely never will be.
Capitalism is not evil in and of itself. In fact it is the economic system responsible for great economic strides and the growth of the middle class in America. But even good systems can go astray.
More in post directly following.
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