Trijicon, a manufacturer of rifle scope sights, has been inscribing references to New Testament verses on the scopes that they have been selling to the U.S. Military.
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Republican National Committee (RNC) put out a statement from chairman Michael Steele today honoring Dr. King’s “epic and historic fight for civil rights.” Yesterday, Sarah Palin also put up a Facebook message celebrating his “efforts against racial discrimination.” Both the RNC and Palin also tried to tie the conservative movement to King’s work:
ENC: "[...] As we celebrate his legacy, I’m reminded that his message is rooted in ideals and principles that the Republican Party has advocated since its inception. Today, our Party and the nation honors Dr. King’s dream by continuing his fight — the fight for all Americans to have an equal chance at the American Dream.”
King is best remembered for his work fighting racial discrimination. But King’s vision for equality extended beyond integrated schools and businesses. He was also a fierce champion for the labor movement and living wage laws. Additionally, King believed that universal health care was essential to ensuring true equality in America. In a speech to the Medical Committee for Human Rights in 1966, King famously said:
Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.
As the Kaiser Family Foundation has noted, the health reform bills being considered by Congress — which conservatives are opposing — would significantly benefit persons of color, who make up more than 50 percent of the uninsured (even though they comprise just one third of the U.S. population).
In September, Steele claimed that “Dr. King would be disappointed in the political leadership of this country for failing to address the least of us.” But as Richard Payne wrote in an April 2, 2006 op-ed in the Charlotte News and Observer, “Is there any doubt that King would have been on the forefront of arguments for payment of a living wage to the working poor, and that he would have advocated for universal health care?” [...]
Martin Luther King Would Still Fuck Your Shit Up (A Call to Democrats to Sack Up)
Here's one you might not have heard: Speaking to a small group of protesters outside Santa Rita prison in California, on January 14, 1968, where he had visited Joan Baez and other jailed anti-war activists and draft resisters, Martin Luther King, Jr. said, in remarks that ought to resonate not just with President Obama, but with cowardly Democrats and everyone who thinks that moderation works:
"And I say to you in conclusion that we must continue to stand up and we must continue to follow the dictates of our conscience, even if that means breaking unjust laws. Henry David Thoreau said in his essay on civil disobedience that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. And I do not plan to cooperate with evil at any point.
"Somebody said to me not too long ago, 'Dr. King, don't you think you're hurting your leadership by taking a stand against the war in Vietnam? Aren't people who once respected you gonna lose respect for you? And aren't you hurting the budget of your organization?'
"And I had to look at that person and say, 'I'm sorry, sir, but you don't know me. I am not a consensus leader. And I do not determine what is right and wrong by looking at the budget of the Southern Leadership Conference or by taking a Gallup poll of the majority opinion.'
"Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but he's a molder of consensus. And on some positions, cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expedience asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?'
"But conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?'
"There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right. And that is where I stand today and that is where I hope you will continue to stand so that we can speed up the day when justice will roll down like waters all over the world and righteousness like a mighty stream. And we will speed up the day when men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks and nations will not rise up against nations neither they will not start a war anymore and I close by saying as we sing in the old Negro spiritual, 'I Ain't Gonna Study War No More.'"
We forget, amid all the deification, what a tough bastard King was. We admire him because he was uncompromising and principled, and also because he fought like lives depended on it. Because they did.
In One Day, New Jersey Sees Startling Spike in Cases of Glaucoma
Same day state assembly legalizes medical marijuana.
Obama Has “Secret Vault” in New York Under Interpol's Control
According to Glenn Beck, who's sending Chuck Norris to wrest it from Interpol and bring it back to open on his show, undoubtedly revealing: Obama's Kenyan birth certificate, the Communist Manifesto and a detailed diagram of Glenn Beck's house.
KABUL, Afghanistan — Days before a major international conference on Afghanistan, militants launched audacious and coordinated attacks in central Kabul early on Monday, with explosions and gunfire echoing across the city. The Taliban said its fighters carried out the assault.
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Police and paramilitary officers at the scene said the onslaught began with an initial suicide bombing in the downtown area near the Justice Ministry, the Central Bank, the presidential palace and the Serena Hotel favored by Westerners. Hotel residents took cover in a basement as the fighting swirled above them, according to a BBC reporter at the hotel.
Militants have become increasingly bold in penetrating the capital as their campaign broadens in many parts of Afghanistan, prompting President Obama to promise 30,000 additional American troops to reinforce the international coalition.
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It's just a fucking dodge, just one more way to get out of your responsibilities as a human being, just one more way to say, I'm right to be a selfish cockhole who doesn't give a damn about anything. And I for one have fucking had it. Don't come around and say we have problems here at home. We fucking KNOW we have problems here at home. Americans have been trying to solve them for decades while those of you who don't want to hear about anybody's misfortune but your own mouth about welfare cheats and the inevitability of any charity effort to get taken for a ride. If you're gonna say the attention and money needs to be directed here at home, then DIRECT IT HERE AT HOME. Quit fighting efforts to give everybody health care and screaming about death panels. Quit demandng lower taxes that won't pay for the cops you need to patrol your streets, for the community policing programs that actually work but are the first things to get chopped when the state cuts off funding. Quit thwarting every attempt to feed the hungry with lists of forms for the hungry to fill out to PROVE that their stomachs are growling.
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After an exclusive deal with devil, we are finally able to bring black magic into your very own home! The lucky winner of this auction will attain the soul of Televangelist PAT ROBERTSON in a handheld figurine comprised of the finest straw, cloth, and other organic natural materials! BID NOW to own your very own physical representation of the dark, dark soul of Pat Robertson.
To: Rush Limbaugh
From: Roger Ebert
You should be horse-whipped for the insult you have paid to the highest office of our nation.
You might even go so far as to suggest that a place like Haiti is cursed, not merely by its terrible location in the hurricane track or by tectonics, not merely from environmental squalor or its crushing poverty, but by God himself.
Indeed, you might go so far as to agree with the eternally vile Pat Robertson, never one to let a massive human tragedy go perversely unblamed on the victims, saying Haitians brought on the tragedy themselves, because they made a deal with Satan nearly 200 years ago, exchanging their very souls for freedom from horrific French enslavement.
Isn't that sweet? Oh, Pat, you contemptible Christian reptile. Don't you know it's exactly the other way around? That, according to the Times piece, it was France's rather evil demand for fiscal reparations after the Haitians won their freedom from slavery that caused much of the country's downward spiral into near-permanent ruin? Say hi to Jerry Falwell in hell for us, Pat.
Pat Robertson's Katrina Cash
[...] And the Bush Administration, through FEMA, is doing its best to insure that Pat Robertson is getting that cash just as quickly as humanly possible.
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Tomorrow, the former President who was impeached and shouldn't have been and the former President who wasn't impeached and should have been ... will be on virtually every channel asking you for money for Haiti.
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Zac Brown Band perform Manfred Mann's "Fox On The Run" live in an impromptu jam session while on the bus.
Dear Pat Robertson,
I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I'm all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I'm no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished. Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth -- glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle. Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake. Haven't you seen "Crossroads"? Or "Damn Yankees"? If I had a thing going with Haiti, there'd be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox -- that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against it -- I'm just saying: Not how I roll. You're doing great work, Pat, and I don't want to clip your wings -- just, come on, you're making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad. Keep blaming God. That's working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract.
Best, Satan
Pat Robertson 'A Public Relations Nightmare,' Says God
Almighty Holds Rare Press Conference
Our countries have had a special relationship, not always good, ever since the former French colony's slaves successfully revolted in 1803.
From 1915 to 1934, U.S. Marines occupied Haiti to protect our business interests. In the '60s, we winked at the repressive government of President Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier; in 1986 we helped arrange the exile of "Baby Doc," the son who succeeded him.
In 1994, a multinational force led by U.S. soldiers reinstalled former parish priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide as president. But by 2004, Aristide was accused of rampant corruption, and U.S. Marines arrived to maintain order as he was forced into exile.
