Daily Topics - Wed June 9th 2010 - Do card carrying socialists love Obama?
By louisehartmann
Quote: “An election cannot give a country a firm sense of direction if it has two or more national parties which merely have different names but are as alike in their principles and aims as two peas in the same pod” -- Franklin D. Roosevelt
Hour One - Election results - the big winners were sneaky Republicans and big money
Plus...Stephanie Miller www.stephaniemiller.com
Plus...How did you live without money for a year? Mark Boyle "The Moneyless Man: A Year of Freeconomic Living", founder of the the freeconomy community www.justfortheloveofit.org
Hour Two - The oil co's are not profitable and we need to nationalize them for the good of america Steve Malzberg The Steve Malzberg Show www.wor710.com
Plus...Do card carrying socialists love Obama? Billy Wharton Co-Chair, Socialist Party USA http://socialistparty-usa.org
Hour Three - Newsflash...atheists ask for Federal Faith based money?! August E. Brunsman IV Executive Director, Secular Student Alliance www.secularstudents.org
Comments
#2
How on Earth can the woman who PERSONNALLY laid off half of Silicon Valley win a statewide election in California?
You may be right about that self-hate thing, radlof.
#3
Obama is not a socialist!!! What is he? Weak? Clueless? Non-leader? Loser? I have some thoughts about him but my thoughts are all negative toward Obama.
#4
re: #52: same reason the stock market goes up everytime there are layoffs.
#5
One in four REPUBLICANS (almost 370K) voted for Oily Taint , , , Sorry, I think I misspelled that . . . Yep, sorry . . . Orly Taitz to be the Republican nominee for California’s Secretary of State in the general election. 3/4 of Republicans not for the other guy BUT against her . . .
#6
@harry ashburn, what is the fine print in the contract?
#7
Newt the Gingrich's Contract on America . . .
#8
@mstaggerlee, if religion is the opiate of the masses, then I'm guessing television is the crack of the masses, and crack addicts are even easier to manipulate by their pushers.
N
#9
C'mon, Thom - we KNOW why the media doesn't call it BP's disaster anymore - they've been bought and paid for BY BP!
#10
Gerald, didn't you ever read the footnotes of the 10 Commandments?
#11
BP bought, paidfor
#12
The secular students deserve our support.
#13
That is the 613 Divine Commandments (Mitzvahs) and the Ten Statements . . . and the Seven Noahide Laws . . .
#14
Not sure however that I'm entirely comfy with my fellow secularists working within the 'faith-based' system; legitimizing the idea that there's 'something for everyone' in that particular paradigm.
#15
By Thom's definition, I think Atheism can be either defined as a religion or a cult.
#16
Hitchens' atheism is not a religion, but his neoconservatism is.
#17
I suppose if I had to distill my religion worldview down to one word (or one and a half words) it would be non-Christian.
#18
My fellow Californian's...
We need to follow Carly F. around with signs reading: "There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore. We have to compete for jobs as a nation." And remind people just how she trashed HP and how many jobs she outsourced to China and India. Whenever Thom trashes Apple for manufacturing in China (and other countries) at least when you call Customer Service and Tech Support, the person you're talking to is more than likely an American (last couple of people I spoke to have been in Elk Grove, California)!
#19
The issue is that a crap-load of atheists are so as a reaction formation to religiosity and not due to non-belief in a deity or external guiding force/entity.
That's why I'm a Jew . . . We pray to an empty room and belief is not required, only actions matter.
#20
@n8chz Thanks for the link.
I've been involved in a very long conversation with my friend. It's been obvious that he searches for any information that supports his delusions about societies.
#21
re #67: distilled spirits?
#22
@WASanford You're pointing the finger of blame at the wrong target. What most Californians who complain about our referendum system don't recognize are the benefits of being able to enact laws that our legislature won't touch. There have also been failings within the referendum system that need to be addressed too; as in the ability for a constitutionally unsound amendment to make it to the ballot without passing through our state legislature for oversight ensuring constitutional soundness first, as is required (Prop 8).
I have been saying for a while now that our referendum system simply needs to be reformed. Much like corporations are claiming (and everything from the courts to Congress has been granting them) personhood along with all the rights that go with it, they had long ago decided that they also had a "right" to referendum - which was clearly initiated for The People!http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiram_Johnson
Just like we need to take away corporations' "rights" to things that ONLY people should be entitled to, so should we take away their right to referendum. It's really that simple.
I want MORE voter responsibility, not less. Let's not cater our elections to those who do NOT participate, but to honor those who DO. If some poison pills are what it takes to get people to the polls, so be it. I'm personally for mandatory voting. And I'm not about to abandon direct democracy because of corporate corruption; it's the equivalent of giving up our government to them IMO.
#23
Oy not mandatory voting, puh-leeze. Hopefully at least there will be some kind of conscientious objector provision.
#24
re; #73: you can opt out and go fight in Afghanistan..
#25
Interesting-- My question to Thom is: If religion can be defined as a set of beliefs based on an unprovable premise, how would you define a politcal party?
#26
I don't know if anyone has said this (at work, no time to read) but Thom is wrong about atheism being a religion. But it's similar in this way:
On a form, where you might fill in haircolor, you might put "bald." Bald is NOT a haircolor, but that's where you'd put it on a form. In the same way, "religion" is where you would write in "atheist" or "agnostic" if you were putting it on a form. Neither is a religion, but that's the category it falls into.
So, "Atheism is a religion" = "Bald is a haircolor" as far as these things go. Not accurate, but kinda sorta fits?
#27
Kinda sorta fits, like square pegs in round holes.
A political party is a set of beliefs based on a committee meeting.
#28
Dear Greenlee: so,where do wigs and Hair Club for Men fit in?
#29
Why the California initiative process is broken:
December 18, 2009 11:48:00 PM: Wal-Mart Stores Inc. won a court order Friday preventing a Yuba City resident from registering voters or collecting initiative signatures at its retail chain's outlets until the end of a trial over a permanent ban against the man.
http://www.appeal-democrat.com/articles/jefferson-89841-court-mart.html
Citizen Wal-Mart is out gathering signatures in Salinas, California. On
March 4, 2009, Sprawl-Busters reported that the City Council in Salinas,
voted 5-2 to pass a new city ordinance banning giant superstores. Citizen
Wal-Mart was not happy.
#30
Thom,
Saying that atheism is a religion is a semantic argument. Your guest was getting there. What implications do you feel you are making by saying that atheism is a religion? It seems like you are falling into a common human pitfall: the compulsion to label, categorize, and file everything away in your brain. Or, are you just so insecure about your own spirituality?
You cannot say that atheism is a religion because it is a belief system. Atheism is a lack of belief, 'a' being the prefix meaning a 'lack of'. Atheism is literately defined as a lack of theism. I don't require conviction to say there is no flying spaghetti monster. Atheists made up the flying spaghetti monster to illustrate that you can't prove that god is not a flying spaghetti monster, that the burden of proof is on the person who says that there is a god and god is this or that. The burden of proof is on the person who says the world works according to mysterious, invisible forces. It isn't an article of faith to say that muslims don't get 70 virgins when they die. The article of faith belongs to the muslim. I simply don't believe it.
Call us what you want, Thom, but if you call atheism a religion, you can call liberalism a religion. Conservatism is a religion. Any ism can be defined as a religion, but it's a semantic argument. What are you accomplishing by making the argument? While you are delegitimizing atheism by calling it a religion and having this pointless semantic debate, my gay Christian friend is cutting off his own testicles and bleeding himself out on the bathroom floor. Big man, Thom Hartmann, picking on the weakest and smallest minority on planet Earth. Atheists represent a singular voice of reason in a world of religious insanity. Religion does clear and demonstrable harm to societies and individuals within societies. Atheists are trying to elicit religious moderation, questioning, and reason, to disempower religious fanaticism and find secular paths to personal enrichment and social responsibility. Do you think that is an objective worth pursuing, Thom? So, what does the label matter?
#32
Let's don't make this an anti-semantic issue.
#33
If I can start an Atheistic Church and not get taxed on its assets because its a religion, and then perhaps start a Friday night bingo game and rake in money hand over fist, then I would say determining if Atheism can be considered a religion or not does have some practical implications.
BINGO!!!
N
#34
We keep hearing about the United States of Hell's war crimes and mass murders but legally we also hear that we have no proof. Legally, that may be true but we do not have to go to court to realize the mountain of evidence does offer us a pattern and the compounding of patterns does say our Mengelese nation is participating in cruel and inhumane acts. The United States of Hell will not go to prison and American citizens will not go to jail but at some point the wrath of God will surface either in the natural world or in the supernatural world.
@harry ashburn, what I have read is a breakdown of the sins that fall under each commandment. For example, the Fifth Commandment is Thou shall not kill. We do not have to actually kill someone to have broken the Fifth Commandment. We could want or wish harm to another person or persons to have broken the Fifth Commandment. When Glenn Beck says that we should kill someone, his words are sinful wishes and he is guilty of a mortal sin. We need to be very careful with our wishes to harm another person.
#35
Slow down, prop 14 is NOT open primaries. It's a two round system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-round_system
Maybe it's still a bad idea and I just haven't heard people explain to me why, but I did vote yes for it. I would like to have a discussion about different types of voting systems and their pros and cons, but I want to make it clear that prop 14 does NOT change the california system to open primaries. If anything, the way I would describe it is that it gets rid of the primaries all together.
What I'm hoping will happen is that instead of having to vote for either (for all practical purposes) a corporate democrat or a corporate republican, we'll end up having to vote, in the second round, for either a corporate democrat, or a progressive democrat (maybe even a green!). That's what I'm envisioning. Maybe I'm wrong, but it's a possibility that I hope happens.
#36
Is Obama BP's poodle?
#37
California's two corporatist republicans (ok - redundantcy acknowledged) are being exposed:
Meg Whitman: http://www.leveltheplayingfield2010.com/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q28mq9W3bKE
Carly Fiorina:
#38
Riadlof
I am in complete agreement with your statements about California elections. I live in NM, but my son, daughter and income live in CA. I wish I could vote there.
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Gerald, Yes, God works in mysterious ways. that's why you gotta read the fine print in the contract. :)