Daily Topics - Thursday April 29th 2010
By louisehartmann
Hour One - Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, Pima County, AZ www.pimasheriff.org Arizona Immigration law...do AZ police consider this law sound or stupid?
Plus....It's 2010...do you know where your birth certificate is?
Hour Two - Matthew J. Brouillette www.commonwealthfoundation.org When did shooting guns become an appropriate form of political speech?!
Plus...Geeky Science- Dr. Janette Sherman www.nyas.org Chernobyl 24 years later - what you didn't know and why you need to know
Hour Three - S.E. Cupp author, "LOSING OUR RELIGION: The Liberal Media’s Attack on Christianity" www.redsecupp.com When did it become the job of the press to promote Christianity?
Comments
#2
More Geeky Science ---
Last night the Discovery Channel showed a story about relatively new phenomena called "megacryometeors." These are huge (as large as basketballs) ice chunks that appear to fall out of a clear blue sky. After refuting the "dropped out of an airplane" idea, the story explained that these are created between the troposphere and the statosphere and may be the result of more water vapor in the increasingly warmer atmosphere. They can fall to earth anytime and anywhere.
http://www.megacryometeors.com/
Yikes!
#3
Rove welcomes former Alabama AG who hounded Siegelman: ‘Hey, Bud!’
By Muriel Kane
Thursday, April 29th, 2010 -- 11:19 am
#4
"War is an extension of politics by other means" - Carl von Clausewitz
N
#5
re: lefties taking-up arms: I left an andean "nuevo cancion" band over that very issue. At the time, i felt the FMLN (salvadoran resistance) was just causing the poor more misery with blowing up granaries and burning crops. After all these years, I can no longer say armed resistance is inappropriate in all cases. Of course in the US it would be sheer suicide. they know where you are. In other cases...I don't know.
#6
@Quark: so they're OK to drink?
#7
@Zero G: Greek Fire used gravity as a propellant, and gunpowder's enemy is gravity.
#8
@tlint: good, but you're too late. look @earlier posts.
#9
Harry,
I finally figured it out --- upload your music CDs to YouTube, then post the link on your Thom Hartmann member page. (I love all the Andean music I've heard.)
Your experience sounds very interesting. (I'd like to know more.)
#10
I just wish Us Christian will realize that christianity is not under attack but it is the fruit of our labour our hypocracy that is under attack. Our double standand that want to hold everyone to the highest of all morality but yet exclude ourselfs from those same standard.
#11
re: Glen Beck: "Oh, the tragedy of in-breeding."
#12
i should have known this crowd wouldn't let something like that go this long... hearing news of the big gulf oil spill makes me wonder: how's that drill, baby, drill-y thing workin' for ya'?
#13
Jeanie: Personally, I sit corrected ...
... most of my internet boo-boos don't happen when I'm standing ;-)
#14
@QUark: sorry, the CD like I said is really scratchy and even stops at one point and i have to fast-forward it to keep it going. i wish i could provide it. also, i still dont know how to post my photo, cant even put it IN my computer. I can scotch-tape it to the screen. the band was called Toqui Amaru. i was percussionist for about 3 years in the mid-'80's. i was so proud 'cause these folks were real, educated musicians. At the time i had had non-violence and peace-keeper training from AFSC (Quakers), and felt singing songs about armed resistance was too contradictory. I've regretted it since.
#15
Harry,
The megacryonicmeteors are gray in color. (They probably pick up dirt as they are formed.) If you have a dirt-deficiency in your diet, by all means, drink up!
SKOL! :-)
#16
Thom, Catholics can get marriages annulled, which is basically saying the marriage never happened, then getting married again isn't such an issue. However the annulment is very difficult to get. I'm not entirely sure that the church holds such a strict view of marriage after divorce these days, a lot of things changed after Vatican II.
N
#17
Nels,
I am not advocating violence - I am only questioning. It is a damn hard question, though. Do we respect the Jews who went meekly to their deaths or those in the Warsaw Ghetto who fought back, against horrific odds.
We are confronting monsters. The US National Security apparatus recruited from the Nazi Security apparatus. The US is spreading DU. We are using nuclear blackmail, and have ever since 1945. Questions are easy, answers not so much. Would I shed any tears if a lone gunman took out Scalia, Alito, Roberts, or Thomas...I think not. I think that we need to define economic activities which deprive folks of the means to sustain themselves as a form of violence, just as much violence as actually shooting them. IMHO.
#18
@QUark you can probably find Toqui Amaru cd's; maybe even Zazhil CDs maybe download them. I'm not on the CD;s as a member.
#19
Fattest Food ever? Im guessing Souper Salad: the gravy pit
#20
s.b. "megacryometeors"
#21
@Quark; so the microwhatdayacalllits are probably better for you than airplane toilet water?
#22
@Gene Savory,
Oy, such weighty issues...
#23
@Quark, did the story happen to say how much force these megacryonicmeteors (ice basketballs) hit with, on the average? Also did they happen to have areas that where more prone to this phenomenon?
Can we also get this over to the right wing media for further proof there is now Global Warming since Ice Basketballs are falling from the sky? I'm sure they would appreciate the evidence.
N
#24
@Gene You;re right, so sorry. lets get back to something interesting, like macroeconomics...yawn....
#25
Harry,
I don't know that you were wrong. Gandhi accomplished quite a lot without armed resistence...
#26
Are these ice basketballs Voit or Wilson?
#27
KFC's Double Down isn't so bad. It's just Chicken Cordon Bleu, renamed the "Double Down" so that it can be sold to Bubbas, Tea Partiers and Nascar fans who wouldn't dare buy something with a French/Marxist name.
The joke will be on them when they find out they've been eating French cuisine and will now have to vote for Obama and get gay-married.
#28
@Quark, yeah, but like someone mentioned earlier, Ghandi didn't face Hitler, he faced a bunch of British weenies.
#29
Nels,
In one case, a woman's HOUSE was destroyed when a megacryometeor plowed through her roof. The story seemed to stress that this could happen anywhere in this country and around the world.
#30
doug, you were born hung like a hamster. get used to it.
#31
Harry,
The blue airplane water might be "sanitized for your protection." :-)
#32
I think the blue water is coconut flavored, like sno cones!
#33
The Greatest Show On Earth by Richard Dawkins is a must read for anyone that tries to intertwine religion with evolution.
#34
@Moonbat: didn richard dawkins host the gong show, or some other quiz show? :)
#35
Quark,
True enough that Gandhi got the British to quit India - would he have prevailed against the Germans?
#36
I've seen it written, that when asked about the Jews in Nazi Germany by George Orwell, Gandhi replied:
“All Jews should commit mass suicide!”
If true, and I don't know, but if...
#37
@Zero G. I understand. Its a tough, tough issue to deal with correct use of violence. Fighting back in Warsaw, was there really any other choice, even if it was ultimately futile for them to do so. Up to the last moment in the concentration camps many didn't know when or if they were about to be killed, what they did know was that the slightest resistance on the way was often answered with a bullet. Hard for an unarmed mass to do anything effective against men carrying submachine guns. Really its a moot point, by the time people were being rounded up, they had already been disarmed and for all intents and purposes shell shocked. The only chance for the fight against the racism to have been successful might have been in the '20's, prior to the NAZI's rise to power. The question then becomes would violent or non-violent resistance been the best tactic. Being that if violent tactics were employed it may have played more into the hands of the NAZI's propaganda, though on the other hand, non-violent gatherings may have become ripe targets. Its impossible for me to say what would have been the best way to go, but obviously the lesson we should learn from it, is by being divided and doing little to nothing results in further and further erosion of rights.
N
#39
I remain convinced of this though, hoarding wealth is violence to the whole. Depriving persons of the means to sustain themselves is violence. Every bit as violent as killing them outright.
Thanks folks, tough brain workout today...
#40
Thom, the Catholic Church does have annulment. Annulments are granted to marriages that were entered under a pretense of loving the person. Some persons cannot hold true to a contract and a commitment, such as the adultery, drug addicts, alcoholics a spouse is gay or a lesbian, etc. These are some examples. In annuled marriages a person can remarry in the Catholic Church. In this specific area the Church has matured.
#41
Zero G. the love of money is a root of all evil eh?
N
#42
Harry and Zero G.,
Christ, MLK and others used nonviolent protest throughout history. I wonder if the message they gave was meant for their fellow men more than for the authorities.
#43
@Zero G, depriving persons of a means to sustain themselves is similar to torture and/or terrorism. G. K. Chesterton said that there were people who were also slaves working for slave wages.
#44
@Quark, I think that there is a lot to be said for non-violent resistance. It's not going to stop the tank every time you stand in front of it, but when the story, photo or video is spread, more and more people find the courage to stand up and say I'm not going to take it any more. Whereas you see a crowd of people throwing rocks and bottles at riot police, you may sympathize with their cause, but somewhere in the back of your mind you know their asking to get the crap kicked out of them, and you wonder if its really worthwhile to put your neck on the line with them. It just seems to me that in the long run, the common person wishes to avoid violent conflict, but will happily stand peacefully and say "I don't support this or that". Am I wrong?
N
#45
@Maxrot, there are Catholics who seek to turn back Vatican II. Vatican II was a step in the right direction for the people.
#46
@Quark,
The nature of the Historical Jesus is a matter of scholarly dispute:
#47
John Paul II said that he failed to speak out more against the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero.
Archbishop Oscar Romero
At one a.m. on November 16, 1989, 26 soldiers, 19 of them trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, stormed a Jesuit community in San Salvador, El Salvador. They killed six Jesuits and destroyed the house, word processors, Bibles, and filing cabinets. They also killed the cook and her daughter.
The deaths stunned the world. These good people were advocating the end of the brutal war within El Salvador and the daily $1.3 million in U.S. military aid that has funded the war. These people were killed because they were speaking out on behalf of the poor and oppressed. They had encouraged negotiations between the government and the rebel forces as well as the U.S. embassy. They had preached the gospel and comforted the poor and they paid the price.
Archbishop Romero was a champion for the poor, oppressed, and justice. Archbishop Romero was assassinated in 1980 and the people who loved him picked up his works of solidarity, peacemaking, and truth-telling. Since 1980 countless thousands of people in El Salvador have joined Oscar Romero in martyrdom. Romero’s life gave strength to the Jesuits. Since 1980, despite their most brutal efforts, the government and soldiers had one great problem: Romero, like Christ, refused to stay dead.
What the Salvadoran and U.S. government death squads did not know was that bullets cannot kill the spirit. They killed the bodies of 75,000 Salvadoran martyrs but they could not kill their spirits.
Perhaps the purveyors of death are beginning to learn a basic Christian lesson. CHRISTIANITY MAINTANS THAT THOSE WHO LOVE LIFE AND LIVE A LIFE OF LOVE, LIVE ON IN THE LOVE OF OTHERS. We Christians call this great truth, resurrection, the eternal spirit of nonviolent, revolutionary love that insists on justice and peace. It grows in the human community of love and truth that side with the poor in the nonviolent struggle for justice. Whoever dies in that nonviolent struggle lives on in the spirit of those who take up the struggle anew. Someone always picks up where the martyr leaves off. The spirit of love and truth lives on, the coming of God’s reign of justice and nonviolence gets closer and closer. Peace and justice become reality. Such is the lesson of martyrdom, the practice of resurrection, the essence of Christian love.
ALTHOUGH THE MUSLIMS ARE NOT CHRISTIANS, THEY, TOO, MAY HAVE TAKEN UP THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIANITY IN A WRONG AND AN IMMORAL WAR IN IRAQ.
Oscar Romero lived and died in that nonviolent struggle for justice. His life message was a call to conversion, solidarity with the poor, a speaking of truth to power. He proclaimed life when the system around him demanded death. He announced peace when the government and rebels waged war. He exuded hope when despair ruled the day. The message of the Christian community today is as dangerous as the message of Romero: Jesus lives! The Salvadoran death squads, the Pentagon, and the U.S war makers know it too: Romero lives! The nonviolent struggle for justice continues.
#48
@Gerald, can't disagree with that, without Vatican II I wonder if the church still be as strong as it is. It was far too rigid, Vatican II brought it flexibility. As an organization, it has chosen to sweep a lot of crap under the carpet, its still lead by conservatives, as it has been since Roman times. Its powerful and it attracts ambitious and corrupt people.
#49
The LDS financing Prop Hate did not hit Newsweek until November 15th . . . Two weeks after the election.
#50
awww rladlof there you go again siting facts in the face of right wing BS. Don't you know that the past is there to be re-molded as seen fit by any right winger and the Texas School board?
N
Thom's Blog Is On the Move
By webmaster
Hello All
Thom's blog in this space and moving to a new home.
Please follow us across to hartmannreport.com - this will be the only place going forward to read Thom's blog posts and articles.
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Mueller's favorite place to pray (written about in "Prophet's Way"), and the roof of the room where the Last Supper is reputed to have happened.
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God In Search of Man, reflection by Abraham Joshua Heschel
This is from the book above.
I have highligted the main point i want you to take.
The minds are sick. The hearts are mad. Humanity is drunk with a sense of absolute sovereignty. Our pride is hurt by each other's arrogance. The dreadful predicament is not due to economic conflicts. It is due to a spiritual paralysis.
This is an age of suspicion, when most of us seem to live by the rule: Suspect thy neighbor as thyself. Such radical suspicion leads to despair of man's capacity to be free and to eventual surrender to demonic forces, surrender to idols of power, to the monsters of self-righteous ideologies.
What will save us is a revival of reverence for man, immitigable indignation at acts of violence, burning compassion for all who are deprived, the wisdom of the heart. Before imputing guilt to others, let us examine our own failures.
Religion's task is to cultivate disgust for violence and lies, sensitivity to other people's suffering, the love of peace. God has a stake in the life of every man. He never exposes humanity to a challenge without giving humanity the power to the challenge. Different are the languages of prayer, but the tears are the same. We have a vision in common of Him in whose compassion all men's prayers meet.
In the words of the prophet Malachi, "From the rising of the sun to its setting My name is great among the nations, in every place incense is offered to My name, and a pure offering; for My name is great among the nations." It seems to me that the prophet proclaims that men all over the world, though they confess different conceptions of God, are all really worshiping the One God, the Father of all men, though they may not even be aware of it.
What will save us? God, and our faith in man's relevance to God. Respect for each other's commitment, respect for each other's faith, is more than a political and social imperative. It is born of the insight that God is greater than religion, that fait h is deeper than dogma.
It is customary to blame secular science and antireligious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes a heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion-its message becomes meaningless.
To quote from classic rabbinic literature: "Pious men of all nations have a share in the world to come, and are promised the reward of eternal life. I call heaven and earth to witness that the Holy Spirit rests upon each person, Jew or gentile, man or woman, master or slave, in consonance with his deeds."
God's voice speaks in many languages, communicating itself in a diversity of intuitions. The word of God never comes to an end. No word is God's last word.
Man's most precious thought is God, but God's most precious thought is man.
It is not the role of the media to promote christianity but for the fruits fo Christians to be a testimony of our faith my word