So, a pastor in Florida is going to sponsor a Qur'an burning at his church on September 11.
I can't stand people who want to burn books. I don't care what book it is. You have to be some kind of crazy person to intentionally burn a book. For real.
Further, where exactly is this man's church going to get the Qur'ans they are going to burn? Buy them? Um...wait. We're going to spend money...just so that we can summarily burn it. Right. Why not just sponsor a burning of Fed money? Because that would make just about as much sense.
Anyway, in further news. The Americans for Prosperity Foundation is in trouble. Turns out that, under 501(c)3 status, a company/foundation/organization cannot make any explicitly political statements. For instance, they can't bash certain policies of certain people we all know. To Tim Phillips, I'd just like to say- "voter education" doesn't include bashing just the opposite party's platform. That's telling the voters what we wish they'd think. How about we just let Fox News handle that, hmm?
Also, the Presidential family went on vacation (again). Not that I really care. Wish I had time to go golfing. Oh wait, I do, but I'm not the President. Right. I still don't care. What, you're saying it's wrong of him to spend his salary on what he wants? Really? How does that work?
Seeing as we, the American people, do have to pay our President, and said President does have alternate sources of income (his wife still has her own income, I believe), he can spend his money however he wants. If I had as much money as he seems to, I'd be taking trips to Martha's Vineyard, too. Of course, it might be hypocritical for him to counsel us to tighten our belts, then go on a vacation. But then again, Obama doesn't have the monopoly on bad advice. Remember Bush, telling us to "go shopping" in response to 9/11...and we all know where that brought us.
Wall Street is defecting to the Republicans, moving away from their normal ally, the Democrats. Odd, that.
So Democrats are using it as a campaign talking-point, that Republicans are, fundamentally, friends of big business, and not to be trusted as, obviously, big business must be paying off Republicans to try to repeal the stimulus/etc. if Republicans want to do so. Does that have logical validity? Sure. Is it likely? Probably. But Democrats have also been bought off in times past, and still are, so there you go.
So anyway. Americans are still concerned with things that aren't really important, a la Cordoba House, Republicans (and Democrats) are being bought off by Wall Street, and lots of other people, and our political system is still just as messed up as ever.
In other words, just another day in the life.
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13 comments:
You're totally right.
If the Americans for Prosperity organization is violating their 501(c)(3) status then we must look at ALL the (501)(c)(3) groups that are supporting the Democrats and demand that they stop participating in politics attacking the GOP and/or their policies also.
We pay the salary of the President and those of secret service and other employees, the jet, jet fuel etc. so, yes, we do have a right to say something about the President and his wife spending time on their sixth vacation of the year, in addition to all the concerts, golf games and other stuff that the American people have paid or are paying for. Plus, when Obama calls on people to come to Florida and the Gulf Coast tp vacation and he doesn't spend his vacation there, that looks muy hypocritical. If he was spending time back in his Chicago home in previous vacations then maybe I would think a little differently about all their vacations.
Teresa- I totally agree on the 501(c)3 thing. Do you know of any Democractic organizations like that? I might have to add them into my mini-rant. :D
I really don't care if they're taking a vacation. I merely mentioned it because, for some reason, it was a big news item on both the New York Times and the Washington Post. It doesn't matter, especially not when we have bigger problems, like oh, the Federal Reserve and their wanton printing of money, an economy that's fixing to take us into another recession, an Iraq war that's still a war, even though they say it isn't, and an Afghan war that is swiftly failing just as utterly. In that scheme of things, Obama's vacation habits kind of recede into the background.
The Qur'an burnings you oppose, on what grounds?
Does this pastor have the right to peacefully address issues he is concerned with, or not?
He definitely is getting his point accross, that is: "Islam is of the Devil." And he is being heard. His event is peaceful. It is his money. May he not spend it as he desires?
He does not say he believes, "US currency to be the Devil's work." But rather, "The Qur'an is the Devil's work." Your argument in paragraph 3 makes no sense. It is putting ideas not expressed into someones else's argument.
Tragedy- I don't oppose it, per se. I suppose he has a right to do it if he wishes. But I also have the right to think it's utterly ludicrous and a waste of good money. ^.^
Paragragh 4 is supporting income taxes being used as a means to restrict freedom of speech and to redistribute wealth. Correct?
Tragedy- ...say what again? I was in no way advocating such a thing. When an organization applies for 501(c)3 status, they agree to not engage in any partisan political activities. That is, they cannot endorse politicians, etc. Americans for Prosperity has broken that agreement. I think that 501(c)3 status is perhaps a bad idea, but it is the law, and any organization that falls under its protections also has to observe its restrictions.
Explicitly political is alright. The law says, they are prohibited from participating in a campaign. Whose campaign have they opposed or supported? What canidate in Kansas, Michigan, or Missouri has stated he or she is running for increased "pork barrel" spending or furthering the health care agenda?
Not a single one has stated that on either side.
The advertisements are not false. They inform the voter, accurately, as to a particular issue. No canidates or parties are mentioned explicitly in the ads.
Thus logic dictates, the point of paragragh 4 was to condone the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's use of the Internal Revenue Service to restrict the freedom of speech or to intimidate any 501(c)3 that would educate voters on any issue of concern relating to recent legislation, if any canidate running for office voted for or against that legislation.
At the moment, would that the Federal Reserve was printing money... it would be a helluva lot more effective than letting Congress spend it. Full disclosure, I've been heavily into NGDP targeting rather than low inflation targets. Currently we aren't even hitting the low inflation target of 2%, much less ~4%, which was what it was during the Clinton-Bush "boom" days. I think its pretty easy to have a central bank and a lot more effective than specie currencies (and a lot more libertarian if done right than the government setting gold prices as they did for decades), but they seem to be pretty good at screwing up their mission. Which means we get lots of people calling for Keynesian stimulus bills and wasting taxpayer's money instead. So yes, I agree that needs to be talked about.
The campaign spending issue needs to be worked out in relation to the Citizens United decision as to who gets to exercise free speech involving campaigns. Technically Liberty is right, if they did violate a law, then that's a problem, and I agree this would be a dumb law, perhaps even unconstitional. I'm also more in Tragedy's camp here that they did not actually break any laws, though I think they toed the line a little too cutely because of the generally partisan divided shorthand on those issues.
(Full disclosure again, I opposed all of those things in some form or another despite my non-partisan nature, having my own preference for health care reform that looked like Singapore, and preferring monetary policy and automatic stabilizers to fiscal stimulus, ie, waste).
Tragedy - burning books is perfectly legal exercise of free speech (as is burning the flag for that matter), but it is still stupid.
Given the general attitude toward Islam already in the past few weeks (what with the arson at the mosque in Tennessee and the killing of a cab driver as a hate crime and much of the rhetoric surrounding the BCFRC/G0M), it also seems unnecessarily inflammatory, no pun intended, and disrespectful of a globally well-regarded and practised faith (I assume some Christians would react the same way when atheists do something blasphemous toward their faith as some Muslims will to this, as an example). I suppose the same argument is made regarding the mosque in NYC, but I would not call for either the mosque not to be built or the preacher not to burn any Qur'an. I merely indicate that one of those events is dumber and less productive than the other.
And I encourage government officials to take vacations personally. This is far more productive than how they usually spend their time and our money.
Just an interesting perspective on the Qur'an burnings - we were talking to my Muslim dance teacher, and she said that she was very disappointed to hear about the Qur'an burning, but it's a free country, and if Muslims wanted to burn the Bible, they could do that too (and I am sure that someone out there has done that). But, she said, it's part of the Muslim faith to burn anything that you won't use anymore that has Allah's name on it, even if it's just an old calendar or something.
Interesting, huh?
Oh, and I must say, I'm an atheist, and I don't agree with many of your views, but I still like commenting :)
I do agree its a free country and Mr. Jones can do whatever he wishes. I still don't like it. :P
And that's okay if you disagree with me- I have other readers who do, as well as a couple athiest readers. :) Thanks for your visit.
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