« Everybody talks like they've got something to say | Main | Women is a big word » Just Like Moses29 May 2008 07:01 pm I don't see what J Street is complaining about here: Well, no, okay I understand perfectly well what J Street is complaining about. Joe Lieberman's just so utterly committed to the higher good of endless war in the Middle East that he doesn't really care. Comments (21)
Umm, did Joe Lieberman just compare John Hagee to Moses? That should not sit well with any Jews, hawks or non-hawks. 
Joe Lieberman is rapidly becoming a joke. What is WITH this guy lately? Has he gone around the bend? He's getting more and more radical. Seriously -- talking to a group of people that thinks that Hitler was an agent of G-d and who want all Jews to convert or be obliterated? I just don't get it. Where's his integrity?
Joe Lieberman is rapidly becoming a joke. What is WITH this guy lately? Has he gone around the bend? He's getting more and more radical. Seriously -- talking to a group of people that thinks that Hitler was an agent of G-d and who want all Jews to convert or be obliterated? I just don't get it. Where's his integrity?
Matt, The idea that God makes good out of evil, and that evil men are used by God to His own purposes, is one with a long history in Christian theology. The idea is that God allows wicked men to exist in order to then bring evil out of good. Judas betraying Christ made possible the Substitutionary Atonement; the treachery of Brutus and Cassius made possible the Roman Empire which St. Paul used to spread the Gospel; the slaughters of Cortes and Pizarro made possible the evangelization of the Americas; and so forth. Berdyaev, the great Russian mystic, appears to have believed that God used Stalin to punish the Russian people for its sins, as He might have used a plague or an earthquake. It's certainly not a point of view one I agree with- I don't believe that God is in any way to be connected with evil- but nor is it one to be dismissed out of hand. As Maritain said, "He was served by the martyrs, and He was served by the executioners that made the martyrs."
Sorry, Hector: the fact that lots of religious people throughout the years have made such arguments is not, in point of argument, an argument in and of itself that the argument should not be dismissed out of hand. In the reasonable world, yes, such absurdly teleological arguments are to be dismissed out of hand. And surely if Jesus had been a grown-up instead of a feverish child, he would have agreed.
Hector has proven to me that God is either a huge asshole or largely incompetent. It also sounds like he's trying to defend (if not advocate) Hagee's support of Hitler.
ben: In fairness, Hector is explicitly disagreeing with the argument, but suggesting that such a type of argument is respectable as a category.
In fairness, Hector is explicitly disagreeing with the argument, but suggesting that such a type of argument is respectable as a category. It could be argued that puppies could be ground up for one's personal amusement. After all, we slaughter pigs for similar reasons. It's certainly not a point of view one I agree with-I like puppies(alive)-but nor is it one to be dismissed out of hand.
Joe Lieberman has become a caricature who has lost all conscience and political bearings. Could he really be McCain's Veep? http://www.political-buzz.com/
On the larger argument: Lieberman is comparing Hagee to one of the greatest Jewish leaders. Hagee has declared that Hitler's actions were sactioned (or impelled) by God in order that the Jewish people be driven to Israel so that they could eventually be offered conversion or a horrible death.
I honestly don't understand how anyone in the world can possibly watch this game and not see the laughably pro-Lakers officiating. It is comically bad. The crowd is so used to getting every call that they react angrily when blatantly obvious calls don't go their way. I'm an NBA widower. I can't deal with this shit anymore.
I grew up in Connecticut. So I'm not surprised. There are a lot of idiots in that state. This guy should have been tossed under a bus long ago. But then look at most of the Senators and Congressman in Washington. Any that are more than thirty or forty years old basically are the same corrupt old farts that Lieberman is. And the rest are learning to be. Take a good look at Lieberman. This is your government, folks. Obama does not exactly represent your government - Lieberman does. Obama will look like Lieberman in twenty years. In forty years he'll look like Jesse Helms - if the US still exists then. Face it - the US Congress is a freak show. Congress: America's Criminal Class: Part I (from 1999): Money Quotes: "America, Mark Twain once said, is a nation without a distinct criminal class "with the possible exception of Congress." If anything, the Congress of today is even worse than it was in Twain's time more than a century ago. The 535 men and women who make up the House and Senate of the United States include, at best, a collection of rogues, con artists, scofflaws and bad check artists. At worst, they comprise, as Twain once observed, a distinct criminal class. Our research found 117 current and recent members of the House and Senate who have run at least two businesses each that went bankrupt, often leaving business partners and creditors holding the bag. Seventy-one of them have credit reports so bad they can't get an American Express card on their own (but as members of Congress, they get a government-issued Amex card without a credit check). Fifty-three have personal and financial problems so serious they would be denied security clearances by the Department of Defense or the Department of Energy if they had to apply through normal channels (but, again, as members of Congress they get such clearances simply because they fooled enough people to get elected). Twenty-nine members of current and recent Congresses have been accused of spousal abuse in either criminal or civil proceedings. Twenty-seven have driving while intoxicated arrests on their driving records. Twenty-one are current defendants in various lawsuits, ranging from bad debts, disputes with business partners or other civil matters. Nineteen members of current and recent Congresses have been accused of writing bad checks, even after the scandal several years ago, which resulted in closure of the informal House bank that routinely allowed members to overdraw their accounts without penalty. Fourteen have drug-related arrests in their background, eight were arrested for shoplifting, seven for fraud, four for theft, three for assault and one for criminal trespass."
Oh, we're talking religious freaks here? How about this one?
Republicans and Democrats attend cult blessing ceremony http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/jun/24/usa.religion Money Quotes: "The US Senate was used for a bizarre ritual in which the Rev Sun Myung Moon, the head of the Unification church, was "crowned" and declared himself the messiah in the presence of more than a dozen Republican and Democratic members of Congress, it was reported yesterday. "Emperors, kings and presidents ... have declared to all heaven and Earth that Reverend Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity's saviour, messiah, returning Lord and true parent," the 85-year-old Korean "Moonie" cult leader told several hundred guests at the meeting in one of the Senate's office buildings on March 23, according to the Washington Post. He also claimed endorsement from Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Hitler, who had all been reformed and reborn through his church's teachings - an idiosyncratic version of Christianity which rejects the use of the cross as a symbol and denounces homosexuals as "dirty dung-eating dogs". An account of the ceremony was first published by a Washington investigative journalist, John Gorenfeld. According to a transcript of the event, Mr Moon declared: "I am God's ambassador, sent to Earth with his full authority. I am sent to accomplish his command to save the world's six billion people, restoring them to Heaven with the original goodness in which they were created." The glittering event in the Senate's Dirksen building reflected Mr Moon's extraordinary influence in US politics. He owns the conservative newspaper the Washington Times and the US news agency United Press International. His fiercely conservative attitudes towards homosexuality and pre-marital sex have won him the endorsement of leading Republicans, including the president's father, George Bush, and John Ashcroft, the attorney general, who participated in one of Mr Moon's "prayer luncheons" days before the president's inauguration in January 2001. Leading black Democrats also played a prominent role in the March ceremony. An Illinois congressman, Danny Davis, wore white gloves and carried a purple cushion bearing a medieval-style "international crown of peace", which was placed on Mr Moon's head, at an event at which 100 Americans from 50 states were also given lesser "national" and "state" peace awards. The event was an "innocent ceremony," Mr Davis told the Guardian. "It was a banquet to give out awards. I didn't have any way of knowing Reverend Moon would say he was the messiah, or whatever he said." Mr Davis acknowledged that "three or four individuals directly related to Rev Moon" took part in a fund-raiser for his primary campaign in Illinois earlier this year, but said small sums of money were involved. Other members of Congress who attended the event said they had been fooled into going by being told only that people from their constituencies would be honoured at the ceremony. A spokeswoman for a Democratic senator from Minnesota, Mark Dayton, said: 'We fell victim to it. We were duped.' It was unclear who gave permission for the Senate office building to be used." Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is a member of "The Family" - a right wing Christian cult that claims members of many of the most powerful right wing Republican Senators in Congress. Hillary's Nasty Pastorate
I think Lieberman needs a neurological workup to assess his grandiosity.
Let me guess, that Laker-partisan guest blogger here is going to continue to pretend that LA didn't get every single call this series.
So I guess when we defeated Hitler we were counteracting God's will. Are we to sit back and let evil people do their evil deeds because they are working on God's behalf? How are we to determine which of these evil guys are sent by God and which are just, you know, assholes?
The fault of Lieberman and Hagee isn't that God doesn't use the wicked to His ends, it's that it isn't their place to discriminate among them. By singling out this or that person for the particular praise that God is using them for His ends, they imply that there are people for whom that isn't true. They're attempting to stand in for God.
At this point it might just be worthwhile to check Joe's urine for hard drugs or figure out if the neocons and anti-Semitic Christian zionists have pictures of him naked with Larry Craig or something. Joe's train of thought de-railed a long time ago.
Imagine what future blessings these people must wish upon the Jews.
It seems a lot of Democratic politicians have lost their bearings during this presidential campaign. What's with Geraldine Ferraro? She sounds positively insane. If I were Hillary, I'd reject and renounce, except that Hillary is past the point of no return, and as evidenced by RFK,Zimbabwe, Civil RIghts, punching frogs, increasing need to chug back hard liquor, she's clearly on that trajectory as well. And of course, Bill. Anybody else got any others?
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Heads in the Sand
Joe just agrees with some high profile Christians (Hagee and Torquemada) that what's best for the Jewish people is conversion or death in a fiery Apocalypse.
Posted by ben | May 29, 2008 7:24 PM