Since Constantine had his vision in the early 4th Century, Jesus has been the War God, and Christianity in one or more of its flavors has been the Most Favored Religion, of the most powerful military-industrial nations in the history of Western Civilization.

The only groups with the power to persecute Christians, not to mention the Jews and Muslims who had their souls saved by having their bodies burned at the stake during the Inquisition, are other Christians.

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Oh look, it's this thread again...

http://www.contractortalk.com/attachments/…

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I bet the hearings will last 3 minutes once the cameras are turned off and the media decides that a Starbuck's Coffee is a better waste of time. Just another ReTHUGlican dog and pony show but without the dogs or the ponies.

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West Little Rock

Are you in West Little Rock near Cantrell/hwy 10?

If so, any thoughts on the Pleasant Forest shopping fiasco being allowed to increasingly muck up Cantrell to remedy poor initial design?

What about Durango? It seems you are from the Walton Heights area. Thoughts?

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There's nothing stopping Democrats from having a competing public hearing on birth control. In fact, I would consider them stupid not to have one.

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Viper

When your opponent is busy shooting themselves in the foot, stay out of their way.

Let the Conservative menfolk have their little press conference and then have their next "emergency" one explaining what they REALLY meant after that.

We will just chuckle amongst ourselves then get real belly laughs watching the Daily Show after that.

Can you say Komen Race for the Backpeddling?

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LOVES it!

Every day more and more GOPers, right wingers, Tea Partiers, Christianists, Scientologists, Mormons, et al., expose themselves (or are exposed) for what they are and what they "believe" despite contradictory factual and historical evidence.

Every day, thanks to the internet, hundreds more if not thousands finally see through the sham of "organized" religion for the superstitious hodge-podge of ancient tribal threats, wars, fear-mongering and false hope that it is.

Every day, those hundreds if not thousands tell hundreds and thousands more.

Every day, religions' lies, hypocrisy, venality, child abuse and corruption make the news.

Every day, churches throughout the "civilized" world lose members, lose "faithful," lose tithers.

Every day, those who actually DO seek relation to a Higher Power learn to do that fulfillingly on their own without paying needless middlemen and shills (priests, preachers and spiritual "leaders" occupying exactly the same ripoff position as greedy insurance companies in health care) through methods humanity has known and taught for millennia (all of which, tellingly, are demonized by "organized" religion).

Cathedrals are emptying or emptied, except for tourists, compared to their height of influence just a few hundred years ago.

Religionists retreat further and further into the isolation and protection of their paranoid sects and cults -- or try to keep the charade going by "expanding" into earth's last bastions of mass ignorance and superstition in Africa, say -- railing ever-more angrily, violently, impotently against the "outside" world of non-believers / non-conformists and against the inevitable erosion of superstition by truth, education, reason, facts and "progress."

Just days ago Mike Huckabee said, "We're all Catholics now," reacting to phony Christianists' phony birth-control "crisis."

But religionists more resemble "all Amish now," their numbers shrinking daily as their children and their enlightened leave their flocks, never to return.

As support shrinks and dies, so does the money, so does religion's extorted "power" through intimidation and corruption.

America's current crop of desperate religionist candidates and campaigns rotate through daily news cycles, making the entire specious enterprise look more ridiculous, ugly and indefensible every day as more and more people realize there are far, far better ways to live.

Thank god.

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Sorry Norma, there will always be wolves in sheep's clothing willing to exploit the needy. Truth, like all powerful things, can be used for good or for ill.

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Sounds like the "separation of church and state" crowd has a different take on things this time. How predictable.

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Viper

Why should it be a "Democrat" hearing?

There are plenty of Republicans who are appalled by Santorum and the Bishops opposing basic reproductive rights.

So many in fact that when they stay at home on election day rather than vote for an Ayatollah Obama will return to the White House.

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I live out highway 10 and no free market person has yet compensated me for my direct out-of-pocket losses due to that shopping center, which we might note was prohibited by zoning but allowed to happen anyway since it created profit for campaign contributors.

And not only allowed to happen, but allowed to happen with a known poor design for traffic flow that backs up highway 10 for a mile sometimes.

It's a textbook example of transfer of wealth and of the wealthy being allowed to ignore laws that the rest of us must follow. Lou Schickel makes several million dollars while several thousand citizens are poorer.

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The design of the center and roads is so poor that should a license be required for developers, Mr. Schickel should have his revoked for incompetence.

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@Viper: "There's nothing stopping Democrats from having a competing public hearing on birth control. In fact, I would consider them stupid not to have one."

I think your colleague Mr. Holmes has a much better idea when he calls for civil disobedience by the 1% of Catholics (= the bishops) who support the birth control teaching, along with Evangelicals and Orthodox Jews. Here's what I just said in response to Mr. Holmes's brilliant suggestion calling for male elites to die on the hill in defense of bans on birth control in 2012--long after the rest of us resolved this issue and moved on to the really important moral concerns of our day:

"SHolmes, please go for the civil disobedience.

Pretty please.

I'd love to see the bishops in their huge scarlet cappa magnas chain themselves to the White House fence to defend birth control, when 98% of Catholic women practice it and when heavily Catholic nations across Europe, including Italy, provide it as a routine matter of health care--with nary a peep from their bishops and the Vatican.

That picture of the bishops chaining themselves to the White House fence with their long red cappa magnas would do a world of good towards getting Obama re-elected--ESPECIALLY among American Catholics, who would be vastly amused at the picture.

As amused as we are at hearing evangelicals suddenly jump on the anti-contraception bandwagon when they have NEVER had a word to say about birth control until now, and when they don't share the natural law teaching of the Catholic church that regards birth control, along with masturbation, gay sex, or ANY FORM of sexual activity between a husband and wife in which semen is ejaculated outside the vagina as 'grave matter' and 'mortal sin.'

Bring it on. LOVE to see the civil disobedience of all these puffed-up little MALE "religious" gurus who have suddenly latched onto a 1968 issue long settled in everyone else's mind as the hill to die on du jour.

I begin to think the stupidity of the white men who have turned the Republican party into their own little exclusive country club is terminal stupidity."

To repeat: I really do begin to think the stupidity of the white men who have turned the Republican party into their own little exclusive country club is terminal stupidity. I've never seen it on more brilliant display than in this birth control debate.

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HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Who needs all the Obama-dissing libs while idiot Republicans continue to act like women have nothing of interest to say about religion or birth control. If it wasn't for all their voter-suppression crap, I'd be smug about Obama's chances...plus the 2000 race where the Supreme Court picked Dubya is too fresh for me to get overly confident.

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Here is the bill Virginia's GOP has just introduced.

"This bill will require many women in Virginia to undergo vaginal penetration with an ultrasound probe against their consent in order to exercise their constitutional right to an abortion, even for nonsurgical, noninvasive, pharmaceutical abortions."

"Against their consent," Razorbabies.

http://www.americablog.com/2012/02/how-is-…

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If you haven't seen Andrea Mitchell's stunned reaction to Santorum-backer Foster Friess on contraception, here it is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=playe…

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That post about probes reminds me of the 'climatic' scene in Demon Seed, Norma.

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It reminds me of Jack Nicholson, but he was much better at it -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wtfNE4z6a8

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