RESCUING JESUS - By Alessandro Camon
from Salon
Bush & Co. have hijacked Jesus, using him as the poster child for their callous worldview. It's time to rescue Christ from his kidnappers.
The American Christian right has hijacked Jesus Christ. It has made him into a brand, a logo, a bumper sticker. It celebrates his suffering on the cross, but largely neglects what he had to say. It prefers an Old Testament God, a "Jealous God, visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children." It elevates success to proof of God's favor, and washes its hands of responsibility for the poor. It combines a self-righteous vision of Americans as the chosen people with shrill intimations of imminent apocalypse, to justify indifference to the rest of the world and to the planet itself. It sticks to the letter of the Bible with arbitrary selectiveness, so that it can endorse creationism and condemn homosexuality while acknowledging that (contrary to Old Testament wisdom) the earth is in fact round, and slavery is not OK.
It's a twisted, schizophrenic form of religion that mirrors the most reactionary form of Islam. (Not by chance, both the Christian right and conservative Muslims are at odds with women's rights, and fiercely homophobic.)
...Jesus was a poor man. He started a movement of the poor, for the poor. This isn't socialist revisionism: This is what the Gospels say. Jesus defied authority, and spread a message of hope, tolerance, inclusion...
Houston Indie Media
STICKIN' IT TO THE DICK - Liquid List
WASHINGTON -- Senator Frank R. LautenbergVice President Dick Cheney to forfeit his continuing financial interest in the Halliburton Co reiterated his call for (HAL), in light of the surging value of Vice President Cheney's Halliburton holdings. Vice President Cheney continues to hold 433,333 Halliburton stock options, now worth $9,214,154.93 (at close yesterday.)
"As Halliburton's fortunes rise, so does the Vice President's, and that is wrong," said Senator Lautenberg. "Halliburton has already raked in more than $10 billion from the Bush-Cheney Administration for work in Iraq, and now they are being awarded some of the first Katrina contracts. It is unseemly for the Vice President to continue to benefit from this company at the same time his Administration funnels billions of dollars to it"...
MEANWHILE: The SEC has subpoenaed Senator Bill (Buttah won't melt in mah mouf) Frist for personal documents related to the sale of his health care stock. He's gonna have t' testify under oath.
"WHAT? YES, ME WORRY!
Wonkette reports:
Judith Miller recalls June 23, 2003 conversation with "Scooter" LibbyJoseph Wilson during her last day of testimony in the leak investigation; contempt-of-court threat is lifted. Attorneys believe Patrick Fitzgerald "is looking into a broad conspiracy charge against a group of administration officials or into charging one or more officials with easier-to-prove crimes such as disclosing classified material, making false statements or perjury." [WP, WSJ, NYT]
AND THIS:
We hear Cheney, too. We hear "Watergate-esque." We hear "perjury."
Billmon @ WHISKEY BAR opines:
Fitzgerald and his team . . . appear to understand well the psychology of the kind of people they're dealing with: self-pity, mixed in equal measure with a quivering fear of being anally raped in prison.
BUSH'S "OWNERSHIP AGENDA"
Robyn Blumner in the St. Pete Times
...Before Katrina, there were plenty of jobs in New Orleans. More than 67 percent of households in the Ninth Ward lived at least in part on money made through wages and salaries. Their average household income was $27,500 (median income was not available) - a figure less than half the national average. These people were working, they were just badly paid...
Look at a town like Las Vegas, where low-skilled workers are largely unionized. There, even hotel maids get paid vacation and a pension; even food service workers can afford to buy a home. Yet Bush has been openly hostile to labor organizing and worker interests in general...
In 1965, GM still manufactured Oldsmobiles and they had Genuine DELCO Parts...
Meanwhile - out behind the Last Chance Garage:
"Bye, bye, Miss American Pie, Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy..."
Good fortune. COMMENT!! Please spread the meme. Don't smoke in bed...
