The re-emergence of Reagan-lamprey Ed Meese figureheading the latest Koch Brothers assault on our democracy inspired some pre-Internet nostalgia from TNR‘s Michael Schaeffer:
… For people who followed politics, of course, Meese was the guy behind some of Reagan’s most divisive policies. But ordinary commuters also experienced the Meese-bashing in ways they didn’t with other officials: During the last couple years of the Reagan administration, walls, construction sites, traffic signal boxes, and highway overpasses throughout the Washington area were festooned with giant posters that read “Meese is a Pig.” Soon afterwards, a second series of the poster appeared, with an additional two words: “Experts Agree!”
The campaign, in turn, drew ample national media coverage and represented something of a cultural moment—a pre-web meme of sorts. Stores began selling T-shirts bearing the same message.
Now, with Meese’s allegedly porcine mug gracing the front of the paper of record again, I reached out to Jeff Nelson, the man behind the original poster campaign. “Meese did all he could to obstruct justice in the Iran-Contra scandal, and he also helped block action to ban plastic guns, which could pass undetected through metal detectors,” Nelson, now 51, recalls. ” I was so angry, and as a lone citizen I felt so powerless.”
t’s the sort of sentiment that sends people to their laptops nowadays. Nelson and his cohort had to work a bit harder at it. “There were no things such as blogs and tweets,” he says. “Things were much more regional and getting in the National news was a really big deal. At that point I had been silk-screening posters for several years, mostly for bands I played in, using rudimentary homemade equipment in the leaky garage of our rented house. I was so angry that I decided to do a big poster campaign against Meese, and bought the largest paper I could find.”
Smaller print on the posters included a lengthy list of reasons for the declaration, which included ill-treatment of AIDS patients and efforts to weaken Miranda rights, as well as Meese’s role in the Iran-Contra affair….
An inspiration for us all, Mr. Nelson.
Just Some Fuckhead
Meese was evil before Cheney decided to make a career of evil.
jl
TPM blog is an endless treat these days for tracking GOP lunacy and general odd behavior:
Ted Cruz: ‘I Didn’t Say Republicans Will Win’ Shutdown Fight (VIDEO)
“You talked last night — you were at a Virginia Republican event in Richmond and said Republicans will win this,” Crowley said. “And by that, I believe you meant what you wanted in exchange for a spending bill. What does win this mean to you? What does that have to look like for a Republican victory?”
But the junior senator from Texas denied the premise of Crowley’s question.
“Let me be clear, I didn’t say Republicans will win this,” he said. “Listen, I think career politicians in both parties have been part of the problem. What I said is the American people are going to win.”
After being pressed by Crowley, Cruz attempted to define what a victory for the American people would look like.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ted-cruz-i-didn-t-say-republicans-will-win-shutdown-fight-video
Garbo
It is no surprise that so many of these assholes, like Meese, sport the sweaty ham head.
Poopyman
Lamprey? Might you mean Ramora?
Punchy
Did anyone ever see jailtime for Iran-Contra?
Chris
Ashamed to say I’d never heard of this “Meese” character before today.
I said in an earlier thread that I’m really, really looking forward to Perlstein’s Ronald Reagan book. The reason for that is that the Reagan administration is the last administration that, towards the end at least, was literally headless – not just that the president was too lazy or bored to govern (like W. Bush), but Alzheimer’s being what it was, was actually incapable of it. Among the things I’m curious to read up on is who, besides Nancy Reagan, was really in charge during those times (and just how long “those times” lasted). By the sound of it, Meese would’ve been among them.
WereBear
@Garbo: And some people think there is no Goddess.
Gravenstone
Since this is an open thread, I just wanted to share this little pearl of “wisdom”.
The above was the pile of garbage I stupidly clicked on at a site I’ve largely abandoned, beyond one gaming related forum. The author is a former Wall Streeter, who has moved onto some other position within the financial industry. I post it mostly just to offer a glowing example of the cult of Republican victimization. My question, how does one seriously even begin to engage people who see themselves this way?
WereBear
Alzheimer’s seems to creep in long before anyone realizes. Makes one wonder if he knew much about any of it; he was always a guy playing a role, anyway.
BruceFromOhio
@Punchy: No. But if they did, Doug Feith would have the cell just down from Oliver North, and across the aisle from John Poindexter.
Grifters gonna grift.
Schlemizel
@Poopyman:
No, lamprey is right. They are really nasty things that attach to the host & suck it dry. They have a mouth that looks like that sand worm thing from Star Wars. A thing of nightmares.
@Punchy:
No, Poppy pardoned them all on Christmas Eve so it would be buried & forgotten
Anne Laurie
@Poopyman: Naw, I think of Meese as more a freshwater, simple-brained, slimy-skinned parasite.
WereBear
Ed Meese. I’m reminded of the McNamara ferry incident, where someone tried to throw him off the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard, because the person was overwhelmed with all the deaths that hung over McNamara.
Don’t know how long I could work in DC without causing an incident, you know? It was hard enough biting my tongue today, when a Republican complained about the National Weather Service being down.
PsiFighter37
@jl: It’s shit like this that makes me wonder if Ted Cruz is really a sleeper Democrat who’s built this entire facade of being a jerk and an asshole so that he can destroy the GOP from within.
For all the people who say he’s a really smart guy – basically everyone who’s met him, although they make sure to note he’s an asshole – he’s sure done some really stupid shit (barring some outside explanation).
Chris
@WereBear:
I don’t think he ever cared to know much of anything; he was always just the grinning public face of the enterprise. But it does make a difference if he couldn’t know anything.
Bush was the same “I don’t care, just let the cabinet run everything” asshole, but it seems that he actually did sit up and pay attention after 2006 – not only did he fire Rumsfeld, but he supposedly stopped letting Cheney tell everyone what to do (and Cheney, rumor has it, was actually angling for a third war, with Iran). For a president with Alzheimer’s that’s not in the cards.
gogol's wife
@Chris:
I think you underestimate Reagan’s degree of agency during his entire presidency.
jl
@PsiFighter37: And if you read the link, Cruz goes on to describe pretty much exactly what the American people don’t want, at least according to polling data.
lamh36
Breaking: Veterans Benefit Admin Closing Regional Offices Tomorrow!
Just saw this on Maddow
Chris
@gogol’s wife:
I’m pretty sure he had agency at the start, and not at the end – exactly when the shift happened is what I don’t know. But I’m also pretty sure that he chose not to exercise that agency for a lot of the time he was there. Republican presidents, whether it’s him, Bush, or Eisenhower, like to give their cabinets a free hand (Grover Norquist brought that up during the election by saying that it didn’t matter how good or bad of a president Romney would make, all he needed to do was rubber stamp what people like Paul Ryan put in front of him).
That doesn’t let presidents like that off the hook for the crimes that happen on their watch – as the Bush/latter years example shows, they clearly do have the agency to control policy when they want to. But they often choose not to care enough to do so. I think that’s what Reagan was, at the beginning, and eventually he slid from that into senility.
gogol's wife
@Chris:
I think you’re confusing him with George W. Bush. Reagan was an activist politician and a true believer.
But I’m just basing that on living through it. I haven’t read any books on it. Living through it was enough.
Svensker
Ed Meese? Ed Meese!?! Why isn’t he dead? Ugh. I was a Republican at the time and I thought Ed Meese was a repulsive excuse for a human.
On a happier note, Go Jets!
Chris
@efgoldman:
I’m not talking about ideology. I’m talking about how the party and its administrations tend to organize themselves.
David Koch
Aqua Buddha was on MTP yesterday and he said there’s no need to raise the debt ceiling that it’s only a scare tactic by Obama, that all you need to do is cut $675 Billion from the budget by next Thursday, which would produce a balanced budget, eliminating the need to borrow money.
That’s his solution: cutting $675 Billion dollars over the next 10 days.
How did any self described liberal ever take this kook seriously?
raven
@efgoldman:
If you call that living
awucka wucka
Gravenstone
@David Koch: So he’s proposing we eliminate the military? cool.
Mino
@Punchy: No. A participant conveniently died and they blamed everything on him, if I remember correctly. The CIA guy, William Casey.
And the Xmas pardons.
LeftCoastTom
@lamh36:
But at least they can visit a memorial…
raven
@efgoldman: I’m reading a book about WWII in North Africa right now and it’s pretty interesting how fucked up things were and what dopes many of the “delegatees” were!
lamh36
ira- NY
Looked in my Webster’s under political miscreant and there was EM’s pic. Should be in prison eating bread an water on holidays.
raven
Well shit, halftime of the Falcons game, the Braves are about to start and I’m on the fade. Hello DVR!
pillsy
There are endless second acts in American lives, at least for wingnut bottom-feeders.
Baud
@raven:
I read Jean Edward Smith’s biography of Ike and he was not a fan of Ike’s military aptitude.
Dave
Jeff Nelson of Minor Threat? Holy shit, I never knew that!
IowaOldLady
@PsiFighter37: Re whether Cruz is smart: I used to teach in a selective grad program. To be admitted, students scored about the 85th percentile on the GREs. They were smart. But at some point, character or personality enable or limited them as learners and thinkers. One common problem was that they were so used to being smarter than everyone around them, that they couldn’t learn new stuff. They couldn’t rearrange what they thought and have new insights. Cruz looks like that to me.
Baud
@lamh36:
Cuccinelli should suspend his campaign and go to Washington to work out a deal.
raven
@Baud: Yea, more of a manager of people. I was very surprised to read that almost all the military people wanted to invade Europe right away when we got in the war and FDR said “fuck that shit!”
Chris
@Mino:
If I recall, he was another one who spent his time in office creeping towards senility.
But yeah, the way I’d always heard it was that everyone involved who was still alive got pardoned, by H. W. if I recall correctly, so the whole thing ended there.
SiubhanDuinne
@Chris:
MikeJ
@Dave: People don’t give the DC punk scene enough respect.
srv
@efgoldman: You people are so ignorant. The real story on Iran Contra.
My mom laughed so hard she started choking.
SiubhanDuinne
@SiubhanDuinne:
Oh, FYWP. You knew good and goddamn well that it was supposed to look like this:
Oh, to be so young.
Suffern ACE
@efgoldman: well he running on his ability to reach across the aisle and compromise. And Cuomo apparently just appointed Pataki to a tax cut commission, so I guess the message from the tri state area is that bi partisan centrism makes us happy.
Belafon
@Gravenstone: And I would love to know all of the Democratic leaders who “came from a history of civil and social disobedience that was celebrated by its peers.” I bet the only one the guy can accurately name is Forrest Gump.
lamh36
@Baud: @efgoldman: The Cuccinelli camp are using tried and true “blame pollster” strategy on this one.
MikeJ
@efgoldman:
Same as the McCain approach:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2013/10/01/chris-christies-flawed-solution-to-the-shutdown/
lamh36
Baud
@lamh36:
Awesome. When he loses, he can blame ACORN for good measure.
NotMax
@Chris
Should you have some extra time, look up Meese Commission and also the Wedtech scandal (which was the final straw that pushed Meese to resign).
sdhays
@lamh36: If ever there was a state that should be unhappy about the federal government shutting down, Virginia would be that state. I hope the Democrats do some real recruiting in Cantor’s district this time; if there was ever a time Cantor should be vulnerable, 2014 should be it.
russell
WHY ISN’T THAT MF’ER IN JAIL?
Jeff Spender
This is the kind of stupid I’m up against on Facebook.
Sorry about that—-but trying to figure out how to respond rationally to that is making my brain turn to goop.
lamh36
@Baud: oh. and Cruz was there Saturday, but Cucinnelli was no where to be seen and he went out of his way to NOT be photographed with Cruz
MikeJ
@russell: IOKIYAR
David Koch
@lamh36: And they’re attacking the GOP propaganda mill Politico – HA!
lamh36
@David Koch: yep. eating their own…
Baud
@Jeff Spender:
Don’t. Them withdrawing from the world of politics into the comfort of their religion is a good thing for the country.
MikeJ
@Jeff Spender:
Billy Shakes said it best in Merchant of Venice:
“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!”
lamh36
OK. Time for The Blacklist
Mike in NC
Why is this oxygen thief even still alive?
LeftCoastTom
@Baud: Nah, he can blame “gay math”, which the unskewed guy thought was responsible for the strange belief that Obama would win Oregon.
PsiFighter37
J-E-T-S looking fine against the Falcons. Stuffed them on that last drive at the 1-yard line…gotta say, they’ve built themselves a pretty solid D-line after all.
Sexy Rexy may not be done after this year if this keeps up. And it sure looks like Geno is playing a hell of a lot better.
David Koch
Meese wasn’t all bad. He produced a great porn review anthology. It was a really helpful guide for porn rentals.
Betty Cracker
RAYS v Red Sox getting interesting.
beltane
Ed Meese must be like a 1,000 years old by now. He was a disgraced old crook way back when I was in high school. Is Meese too evil to be accepted into Hell?
Suffern ACE
@PsiFighter37: how can you be excited by more Rex Ryan? It’s like waiting around for a Norv Turner Championship. It’s not in the cards.
Jeff Spender
@MikeJ: This is actually pretty brilliant.
sdhays
@srv: Phil Hartman was a national treasure. It was so sad when he died.
NotMax
@Jeff Spender
Blow their tiny little minds:
Jesus was really born in what is now Kenya, regardless of what the widely disseminated story repeated by his supporters claim.
After all, where’s the birth certificate? The church has certainly never produced one.
Omnes Omnibus
I had assumed that Meese was dead. Now I am sad.
beltane
@Mike in NC: Maybe he is no longer living but is not quite dead. We may want to consider wearing bulbs of garlic around our necks to prevent this creature from biting us in our sleep.
Gravenstone
@Mike in NC: I would suggest an unholy alliance, a deal with the devil, if you will.
Baud
@NotMax:
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I’m not a fundy and even I can give a response to that challenge.
Jeff Spender
@NotMax: I have to argue geodesics with him to disprove the Kalam Cosmological Argument.
That’s not the kind of thing I would say to him.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gravenstone:
You can’t. People like that are the ones who can’t be reached, so it is best to either ignore them or point and laugh.
PsiFighter37
@Suffern ACE: I’m not, but the Jets have been sucking less this year than I expected. Geno’s been turning the ball over a bit, but he’s got a rocket of an arm and generally seems to make less stupid decisions than Dirty Sanchez did.
ETA: Without Tony Gonzalez, I feel like the Falcons wouldn’t have an offense / Matt Ryan would be exposed.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
I see this a lot. There is an odd strain of evangelism among some liberals that makes them want to reach the most hardcore wingnut rather than the mushy middle.
Chris
@SiubhanDuinne:
Hey, my generation got Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz… Bolton. And their grinning monkey of a boss. The more things change…
@Jeff Spender:
It does indeed. The fact that I was raised on his philosophy is a huge chunk of the reason why I will never in ten lifetimes vote for you fucking Roman Empire wannabes with no gods but yourselves.
I ain’t gonna criticize, I’ve posted idiots’ Facebook comments here to vent about them often enough.
Rational response… ah… Have you tried blocking them from your minifeed? Or even unfriending, if you’re not very close.
NotMax
@Baud
Anecdotal.
Redshirt
@Betty Cracker: Almost over. Sox making a 9th inning charge…
Suffern ACE
@efgoldman: is one of those former Bush AGs running around the country fighting shariah law?
Betty Cracker
@efgoldman: Might be a sweep after all; Fernando is looking bad. As for the fan base, they don’t deserve scare quotes. The stadium is horrible and inconveniently located, but people watch on TV.
tybee
@Jeff Spender:
all you can do is laugh at the ignorant. they refuse to learn so ridicule is the only answer.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Advice for them from the bad Kevin Costner-Ashton Kutcher movie, The Guardian : Save the ones you can, Jake. The rest, you’ve got to let go.
Redshirt
@Betty Cracker: Tie game.
johnny aquitard
I hate meeses to pieces.
Jeff Spender
@Chris: I do block some of the more…enraging things he says (once he said Wendy Davis needed to learn her place and accept Christ).
But I won’t defriend him simply for the fact that I want to be there when he admits the philosophy and “logic” he uses as the foundation for his entire worldview have serious logical fallacies that undermine all of it. I’ve come close. So very close…he won’t answer several pointed questions that get at the heart of it, but I’m sure that eventually I’ll be able to get a concession out of him. He’s been especially defensive lately, especially in a discussion I had with a friend about morality that he saw himself into.
Redshirt
@efgoldman: Koji time!
This has been a long game so far, and I’m not sure I can stay up for extra innings.
Win it in the 10th, Sox! I need my beauty sleep!
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: Meese was worse than Gonzales. Meese is more more competitive with John Mitchell as a candidate for worst AG ever.
tybee
@johnny aquitard:
i was wondering when that would show up. :)
Redshirt
I love one pitch, one out. I wonder what the MLB record is for fewest pitches in a complete game. The ultimate low would be 27.
EDIT: 2 pitches, 2 outs.
EDIT 2: WTF?!?!
Baud
@Redshirt:
I looked it up once. It’s somewhere in the 50s. I think by a Red Sox pitcher.
Another Holocene Human
Ed “Snuff Porn” Meese is still alive? I thought he’d be packed in formaldehyde by now with the rest of his throbbing neck-veined paranoid enablers.
Betty Cracker
RAYS WIN! RAYS WIN! RAYS WIN!
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Holocene Human: It is actually amusing that “Holy fuck, Meese is still alive!” or the equivalent has been the most common response to this news.
Redshirt
@Betty Cracker: Good game, Tampa. You escaped this time, but you won’t be so lucky next time.
Dustin Pedroia’s collision at 2nd looms large in that loss.
Redshirt
@Baud: That would have been a very fast game!
JordanRules
Just saw a commercial for H&R Blocks new healthcare advisory service helpth.com.
The world keeps trying to turn while the idiots keep spinning their wheels trying to delay the inevitable.
Narcissus
Hello? Test post.
Villago Delenda Est
@lamh36:
Yeah, blaming the pollster worked so well for Rmoney.
Baud
@Redshirt:
Charley “Red” Barrett for the Boston Braves.
BBA
@efgoldman: Given that Christie’s predecessor Jon Corzine actually shut down the state government, and he’s already tarring his opponent for her association with Corzine, I don’t think this angle will work too well in NJ.
drkrick
@Baud:
Matthew and Luke. Mark and John have nothing to say on the matter.
Ripley
@Jeff Spender: ‘Jesus was a pussy who died like a fool, or maybe the other way ’round.’
Not what they have in mind?
Belafon
@Jeff Spender: My suggestion: He/She wants scripture; give them scripture. I would personally go with straight-up Jesus. It might require some research, but virtually everything they think they believe in that sounds to us like worshiping money is pretty much described by Jesus as worshiping money.
Villago Delenda Est
@beltane:
Hitler, Stalin, and Mao all objected to him taking up residence there.
It was classic “there goes the neighborhood!”
Baud
@drkrick:
Since when do fundies care about what the Bible actually says.
Long Tooth
“Meese is a pig”! (circa 1980)
Try to imagine how native Californians feel, those that watched his career unfold from the beginning.
Anoniminous
They are hauling out Meese?
First, why isn’t that bastard dead.
Two, what possible upside is there for the GOP to wheel him out of the old folks home?
nineone
@srv: That were awesome. When I first saw that, back in the day, like your mom, I laughed for days. It’s just outrageous enough to be plausible.
@Jeff Spender:
I’m thinking napalm or some other horrible practice now proscribed in decent society.
@PsiFighter37:
On the other hand, after that end of half bungle,I’ll be surprised if Mike Smith makes it out of the locker room during halftime without being canned.
Redshirt
@Baud: Cool! Thanks for the knowledge. Poor Reds pitcher got a bum loss in that game – he pitched great too!
Redshirt
@efgoldman: I remember walking up to Fenway right before the game and getting bleacher seats for 5 bucks.
Success ruins everything!
Belafon
@Chris:
I would Rec this if I could.
Betty Cracker
@efgoldman: It’s not just an awful stadium (though it is certainly that): it’s located on the end of a peninsula so that the majority of potential attendees have to cross one of several long bridges that are prone to bottlenecks in heavy traffic. It’s an unbelievably stupid setup that can’t really be compared to situations in other MLB towns.
fuckwit
@Chris: Reagan was pretty much a figurehead starting with his assassination attempt, which was like a few months into his presidency! Nancy pulled him in and kept tight, close watch over him after that. She was totally freaked out, had astrologers determing the Reagan’s schedule, etc.
I’m pretty sure that Bush was actually running the country for almost the entire Reagan era. I don’t think too many people appreciate that; it was likely well beyond the amount of power Cheney had over Bush’s son. Bush essentially had 3 terms.
Reagan’s Alzheimer’s started to kick in very early. He was very convincing during Iran/Contra hearings saying “I don’t remember” and “I don’t recall”… because he probably really didn’t remember any of it. Old former CIA director Bush probably ran the whole Iran/Contra operation out of the VP office– something Cheney did later on with the Plame leaks, for example– and Reagan didn’t remember it, if he was even told about much of it at all.
Reagan, by the way, during his acting years, was renowned for his photographic memory. He could read a script once and have all his lines memorized– something very useful for a man cranking out cheap pulp B-movies at a rapid pace. People found it hard to believe he really couldn’t remember things. But that memory went downhill fast, and by his second term I don’t think he was really there at all mentally.
Writer Michael Ventura called Reagan during the era “Our Great Alcoholic Father”. He was exactly right. Reagan was not drunk, he was demented, just as out-of-it, the whole time. He did read from speeches well and smiled like an actor though, which is what gave him that Teflon.
beltane
@Villago Delenda Est: Meese would make a very able assistant for any of those three in the netherworld.
MikeJ
@Redshirt:
In the 80s I had a job as a delivery boy, and I’d drop off the package and head over to Fenway. Starting in the 3rd it was $3 to get in.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: Hell, Meese has Mitchell crookedness and Ashcroft’s insane prudery.
Jeff Spender
@Belafon: I know enough about scripture and enough about his mindset to know that he’ll rationalize the shit out of anything I say to him. Have you seen the William Lane Craig video wherein he tries to rationalize the Old Testament angry vengeful god away by saying that the real victims of god’s genocide were the Israelite soldiers that had to carry it out? The children who they slaughtered were okay because they got the gift of heaven, but someone think of the soldiers!
This guy actually said that god is not capable of murder since we are his creations, so anything that he can rationalize under that he will.
beltane
@efgoldman: At the end of the day, John Ashcroft showed he possessed something of a conscience, a rare trait for a Republican. He just happened to be offended by statues of nekkid ladies.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: I tend to agree, but the man had dresses put on some of the Justice Department statuary to cover their naughty, naughty boobies. Dude had issues.
@Jeff Spender:
By this reasoning, killing one’s children is cool.
joel hanes
@Gravenstone:
how does one seriously even begin to engage people who see themselves this way?
Tell them that you’ve been reading Fred Clarks’s blog “Slacktivist”, that Fred’s a Christian who witnesses his faith, and that some of the things he says have made you think.
(Then go read Slacktivist. Fred was raised Talibangelical, but escaped from that mental prison. The Christ he champions is the Christ of Matthew 25 and the Sermon on the Mount. Fred has spent years slowly recapping the excreble Lahaye/Jenkins “Left Behind” series, ripping into shreds the theology, the eschatology, and the writing)
I’ve been a strong atheist for forty-five years; I think Fred Clark is one of the good guys, and deserves a bigger audience.
Jeff Spender
@joel hanes: Have you read Matt Dillahunty’s take down of the Sermon on the Mount?
Jeff Spender
@Omnes Omnibus: I asked him if he would murder his twin infant daughters if he got a command from god.
Never got an answer.
If it were me? I’d spit in god’s face and tell him to send me to hell. God’s a monster for even asking.
Belafon
@Jeff Spender: No, I have not seen the video. I do find that rationalization interesting, since the old Testament pretty much describes God as being willing to kill as necessary. I mean, who killed the first born in Egypt.
I might also try to encourage you to engage him not for him, but the rest of the audience. I still do it sometimes. But, then again, there are some people you just won’t be able to do anything about.
Mike in NC
@Omnes Omnibus: Remember “Let the eagle fly”? Good times those were.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jeff Spender: My thought on that is that if, for example, my neighbor’s dog starts telling me he is god and I should kill people, I will just stop by the nearest mental health facility and check myself in.
Jeff Spender
@Omnes Omnibus: I let him assume god for that one for the purposes of the question–as if it was a real command and god existed.
Other than that, yeah, I’m with you.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike in NC:
::shudder::
scav
So, as the next concrete example of all those things government doesn’t do for us? Hundreds sickened in U.S. from salmonella outbreak linked to raw chicken
and, for the info, Raw products from the facilities bear one of the following numbers inside a USDA mark of inspection or elsewhere on the package: P6137, P6137A or P7632.
Jeff Spender
@Belafon: I mean, the answer I got from him in the past was that god can’t murder because he’s god—we’re his creations and he’s the ultimate arbiter of life and death.
Discussions with him led me from merely being an agnostic atheist with no real dog in the battle to an agnostic atheist who now sees the Christian god as a logical impossibility.
scav
@Jeff Spender: Wait a minute, so does indeed mean they object to abortion but would totally be ok with mothers offing the little snowflakes once they pop out? But, in that case, shouldn’t they be pushing for more Late term abortions as the soul is more baked or whatever it is? And why doesn’t god install the immortal component to the soul when the sperm touches base (Life!) but apparently waits until the birth canal?
gbear
@Jeff Spender: Bob Dylan would take them out on Highway 61.
Belafon
@Jeff Spender: I’m pretty sure if I kill my kids it’s murder. The only reason you couldn’t call God killing murder is it’s a little hard to find a jury of his peers.
I understand his reasoning, and it’s the same reasoning that allows a couple to say “it’s God’s will” when their son kills their daughter with a gun they gave him for Christmas, that they left loaded. No, it’s not God’s will, it’s just you being an idiot and endangering other’s lives.
nineone
You gotta be kidding me. Julio freakin’ Jones one-hander on the bomb!
Gwangung
@lamh36: ok, this sounds like it might be a good show (I have a casual acquaintance who’s on the show). Is it?
Omnes Omnibus
@Belafon:
I am willing to cut grieving parents some slack in such circumstances. It must be almost impossible to face that reality.
fka AWS
@Mike in NC:
Damn you to hell for even mentioning that!
Jeff Spender
@scav: I presented him with a logical syllogism that used his beloved scripture to argue that since only 6 in 10 adults make it to heaven, and there is biblical reason to assume 10 in 10 children will get to heaven, that it is better to kill the children instead of letting them live to adults.
Instead of responding to that argument, he tried to pick apart the syllogism on a logical basis (and wasn’t successful, so he let it drop). It was hard to construct the argument because, well, I find it abhorrent, but I thought it pretty clearly underlined the some of the inconsistencies.
trollhattan
@efgoldman:
The hilarious adventures of Gov Bush and Gonzo exectuin’ operations at the Texas death chamber are perhaps the best demonstration of the banality of evil in modern America I can cite.
Ashcroft perhaps redeemed himself a bit with his hospital-bed refusal to capitulate, I’ll grant him that much.
Omnes Omnibus
@fka AWS: How about me?
Long Tooth
@Anoniminous: Scalia touched on that question in a recent interview. As I understood him to say, the devil is immortal.
Hill Dweller
I see the Broder-esque, pre-vacation Jon Stewart is back with a vengeance tonight.
trollhattan
@fka AWS:
But that goddamn eagle sure flew, didn’t he? (Noting that one R. Cheney had a shotgun at the time.)
Jeff Spender
@Belafon: I think it’s along the same lines of trying to argue that logic is grounded in god. Logic exists because of god, right? TAG, basically. That essentially amounts to a ceiling supporting itself in the air–so logical laws can’t apply to god.
I understand the reasoning of the parents, but to try to hand-wave away the genocide in the OT? Yeah, no.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jeff Spender:
There is? What about original sin?
handy
@Omnes Omnibus:
You did a bad bad thing, Omnes Omnibus.
Omnes Omnibus
@handy: Given the context, you had to know what it was. Blame yourself.
ETA: I just placed the temptation before you. You fell. I had to put a lot more persuasion into getting the girl to eat the apple all those years ago.
Jeff Spender
@Omnes Omnibus: Sorry, we’re assuming baptism at birth. He’s a Southern Baptist.
handy
@Omnes Omnibus:
Hell, I admire it. I was going to post the damn thing myself but I wussed out.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jeff Spender: That makes more sense then.
SectarianSofa
Ed Fucking Meese. Unbelievable. I was so glad to get rid of him the first (and what I thought was the only) time around….
Another Holocene Human
@MikeJ: Fuck all y’all, the first time I went to Fenway (and I was still a kid at the time) it was $18 in the fucking bleachers and the opposing team was the Texas Rangers, which SUCKED.
All my best (and most affordable) Red Sox memories happened at Camden Yards. Amtrak was cheap then, too, so when you count the cost of Fenway concessions….
VodkaGoGo
@Dave: I didn’t either but I made the connection instantly. “Guy in DC in the early 80’s named Jeff Nelson doing an anti Meese guerrilla poster campaign? Yeah, that’s the drummer from Minor Threat and those posters came from the Dischord house.” He was damn fine drummer too.
Another Holocene Human
@Jeff Spender:
You and Socrates have something in common, then.
Funny how that question, Do morals come from [the] God[s]? has such amazing powers to piss off ostentatiously religious people.
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Holocene Human: It is easier with the Greek gods who didn’t really claim to be moral arbiters and law givers but just wanted to be bribed with booze and sex.
scav
“Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him.” Minus the trust.
Another Holocene Human
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, that’s just it, that’s how we perceive them, but it’s clear in the dialogue that Plato recounts that Socrates was hitting a real sore point with his interlocutor who expresses notions that modern Christians would be awfully familiar with, eg, that morality comes from the gods, the what the gods do is good because they do it, so the legend says they did something immoral but it’s not really immoral because shut up that’s why–Zeus and Apollo go around raping females while Jehovah has this thing about trying to get his followers to kill their own children to prove how dedicated they are to the cause. I never could understand the morality in immoral obedience, I mean doesn’t that movie about the trial at Nuremberg posit the opposite thesis? But why try to understand it, it’s Sunday School. 5 impossible things before breakfast, because you can’t have breakfast until church is over.
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Holocene Human: I am just a simple man. I say pick your moral code – through religion, reason, or whatever – and do your level best to live up to it. That is all anyone can ask of a person.
ETA: If you do that throughout your life, with the occasional stumbles and failings that come along, you are a good person.
scav
As this one is the religious thread, Scouts across the puddle are allowing atheists in explicitly with their own pledge. New Scouts pledge welcomes non-believers. Guides are ahead as they dropped god and country for everybody, going instead for “to serve my Queen and community”. Little Chicago thugs in training.
Chris
@Belafon:
I quite enjoyed it when Obama made that same point in a speech years ago in which he pointed out that if we saw Abraham about to kill Isaac, he was pretty sure most of us would tackle the lunatic to the ground. Good way to make the more basic point that no, society really can’t function based on arbitrary decisions of what people claim God did or didn’t tell them to do.
As a great American movie would’ve put it, Smoky, this is not Canaan. There are rules. :D
El Cid
Remember, though, that the Reagan administration was full of really sane types and only the recent crazy Tea Party backed types are the real crazies.
The Tea Party represents what the Reagan administration was aiming to be but couldn’t quite get that far at the time.
Omnes Omnibus
@scav: Hopefully BSA will do the same thing.
bob b
Meese was insanely personally corrupt, taking huge “loans” from crooked S&L’s that he never paid a dime on. ( Read Stephen Pizzo’s book, Inside Job.) He was also a prime cheerleader for police violence against student protesters when Ronnie was Cal Gov.
Plus the “Meese Comission” that concluded that porn causes violent crime, because several convicts told him that. Party of personal responsibility, my ass.
joel hanes
@Jeff Spender:
Dillahunty’s takedown of the Sermon on the Mount
I had not. Now I have.
I’m not impressed.
Like the Genesis literalists, Dillahunty takes many of the words absurdly literally, and misses both the poetry and the message.
Omnes Omnibus
@joel hanes: Which translation was used?
Jeff Spender
@joel hanes: I never found it poetic, even when I did still consider myself a Christian.
I guess what I’m saying is that I was not impressed with the sermon on the mount. The thing with Dillahunty is that he’s a former Baptist who was training to be a minister, so he does it from the point of a view of a Bible literalist. I don’t see why that’s an invalid way to do it.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: I don’t fucking play golf.
@Jeff Spender: The King James is beautifully written.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: If I played golf, it wouldn’t be with Nino. I dispute the whole concept that Nino knows a damned thing about me.
Tehanu
@joel hanes:
Another vote for Fred. People like him are the only reason I have any respect for religion. And he’s a terrific writer.
Bill
Hey, I still have my T-shirt somewhere! I’ll have to dig it out.
As I recall, a courier was refused entry into the Pentagon for wearing one of these shirts.
Matt McIrvin
@Punchy: I remember Oliver North got “community service” and one of the things he did as part of it was to narrate a children’s concert of “Peter and the Wolf.” You know, hard time.
Matt McIrvin
@fuckwit: I often wonder how the Cold War and the overtures from Gorbachev would have gone if Reagan hadn’t had Alzheimer’s, if he had been the strident, nasty-edged Red-baiter of his younger days. His dementia might have saved the world.
Jebediah, RBG
@bob b:
Outside of Job, you won’t see anybody as put upon as poor Ed Meese. Inside of Job, it’s too dark to see anybody.