We learned recently that the portrait of President Lincoln in the recent movie is not exactly complete, at least as to how slavery was abolished goes- - because apparently nowhere anywhere in the Movie does it make mention of Fredrick Douglas, one of the premier anti slavery figures of the era, a Black man, and a former slave. According to what Randi said he was a runaway slaved who went to England because his Abolitionist stance got a much better reception over there than it would have in his own Country. It would seem that Douglas was none too happy about Christianity or Christian preachers, either. While some say that it was fundamentalist Christians who speerheaded the abolitionist movement, Douglas takes strong exception to this. He said the only thing worse than being a slave was being the slave of a Christian master, because they were more cruel and more vindictive than his non-christian counterpart. And Douglas speculates that it's their Christian hypocracy that made them so mean and unrelenting. Of course any Slave Master with a real contience who was thinking of "strraying from the faith", so to speak, of Slavery- - needed only to attend his local Church every Sunday to hear the Southern itenerate preacher fire up the congragation with pro slavery rhetoric and claim that Slavery was art of God's plan for Black people as taught in the Bible. Black people themselves were taught that to chafe against slavery was to go up against not just his Slavemaster, but God himself. This has been the cry of fundamentalist preachers for years that to go against their teaching is to rebel against God Himself, and even people like Neil Savedra of KFI take refuge in this teqaching, chiding people for their "sin of Rebellion". Slavery is just God's plan for the Black man or woman and if they ever hope to see those Pearly Gates they had better not complain in this life. But they carry this travesty further to staging mock marriages between slaves, just to show that "we aren't all bad" but they inevitably leave out the line about "What God has joined together - let not man put assunder" (Selah)
How interesting it is indeed that people like Pat Buchannon do not regard Latino Catholics as "real Catholics" in the same way that he regards the Polish and Irish Catholics. May I remind Pat that the Irish were once seen as a lawless, renegade bunch, known for their womanizing and drunken brawling and adandoning their wife and kids "more than any other race". Personally I'm not hot on this designation one bit, but I've heard it said. So in statistics about Catholics voting for Romney, "Latinos don't count". And then we have the so called scourge of Liberation Theology that is "Dangerous" and spreading throughout Latin America. Far from embracing the Rev Martin Luther King as "a fellow evangelist", southern clergymen one and all condemned him as some kind of a carpetbagger, or worse yet, a Communist. It was Ghandi and not Christ that inspired Rosa Parks to refuse to sit in the back of the bus that December 1955 day in Montgomery, Alabama. People like Larry Elder love to cite the fact that a higher percentage of Republicans voted for the Civil Rights bill than democrats. Would they be as willing to take a second survey to see which of these voting groups is more "devoutly Christian" and would pass a theological test from Dallas semenary?
Of course Randi Rhodes also reminded us today that in the employment market in many parts of the Country (though I'm not sure it's true here) that often a Black man without a criminal record will be denied a job whereas a White man WITH a criminal record, who just got out of Prison, will be more likely to get one and get more call-backs from employers. And in this "War on Drugs" itself, it's really a war on Black people because of course 95% of the drug cases are plea bargained before they ever come to trial. The Black man has a thirty-three percent higher chance of being denied bail than a white man, despite most likely being a LOWER flight risk than the White man. But even innocent Black men will cop a guilty plea because- apparently this fact is true- - they don't LET black people on Juries that decide drug cases where the defendant is a Black man. So apparently the Black defendant reasons, "I would rather get Three years for a crime I didn't do than 25 years for a crime I didn't do. I know there have been a number of men, and a number of Black men convicted of Capital crimes awaiting execution and often languish on Death Row for decades till modern DNA technology exhonorates them. What's odd therefore, is that Larry Elder should be Against the war on drugs, because we all know how he has an abiding disdain for his own Race, and basically he's just an Oreo on the radio, and just another token Black, or a political freak, if you will, that the Right likes to put out as a front man as a representetion for a group which, in fact, they do not at all represent.
Apparently they are NOT going to change the long standing rule on Senate Filibusters. It was speculated today that some deal was made that in exchange for not pressing forward on the debt ceiling thing, that they would agree to keep the status quo in the Senate- - and not require the "talking filibuster' but all a Senator has to do is say "I filibustrer", and it is so. If course they also have this doctrine of the US Senate called the Anonamus Hold, where one Senater, who never has to make his name public, gets to put the kabosh on any candidate for any cabinet or judicial office that the President should appoint. The secrecy of it all almost sounds unconstitutional since I thought there was some Rule about how all procedings have to be made official and public, at least to some degree. At least as to who said what and who voted which way on a key issue. The Republicans do have one good point, however. They say "The US Senate has not passed a budget in four years". This situation cannot stand. No matter what it takes or who gets bloodied up, they need to get on the stick - and pass the darned thing, and prove that they are worthy of their pay.
According to Randi Rhode's website it's the Presidential Administration itself that is "stirring up the conspiracy pot" and putting out these bogus stories about how Sandy Hook was a fraud perpitrated by hired Hollywood actors, or all of this "birther" nonesence. I can assure you many on the fringe right ardently believe that the President was born in Kenya and that he is a Moslem at the present time. Polls of southern states demonstrate it time and time again with alarmingly high numbers. There are also really high numbers on Creationism, a belief that all of Mankind and Nature was created in Seven Days like it says in the Bible. Polls have also revealed shocking deficets in the knowledge of the young of historic events that are well known to we in the older generation. So in reality this is a conspiracy theory about conspiracy theories. Glen Beck claims that while the right wing nuts are debating such nonsensical issues- - that President Obama is quietly putting his Agenda through.
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