Only Osama bin Laden can save the USA.

When Tim McVeigh bombed the Murrah Federal Building in 1995, he thought his actions would inspire like-minded “patriots” to rise up and overthrow the government. He hoped to form a more perfect country based on his so-called conservative values.

McVeigh was every bit the terrorist that Osama bin Laden is. The scary thing is, there are many people out there just like him and with every passing day, the same kind of rhetoric that led to McVeigh’s horrific bombing in Oklahoma City is being ratcheted up among the scariest fringes of the right wing.

The other day on the Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck Show, former CIA agent Michael Scheuer — an expert on Osama bin Laden and US-Middle East relationships — said that nothing short of bin Laden attacking the US with a nuclear device will wake us up to the reality of the danger we’re in.

“The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States — because it’s gonna take a grassroots, bottom-up pressure — because these politicians prize their offices, prize the praise of the media, and the Europeans. It’s an absurd situation again, only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently and with as much violence as necessary.”

Now, take the comment for what it is. On one hand, he’s saying we’ve fallen asleep at the wheel again, forgetting what happened to us on 9/11. He doesn’t seem to implicate any one politician or party, but rather Americans as a whole.

On the other hand, it seems to me that he’s hoping we get hit again so we can have an excuse to go after our enemies, who ever they may be.

Mr. Scheuer is no stranger to provocative comments. He’s called bin Laden a “resistance fighter” and Bill Clinton a liar (tell us something we don’t know.) So while it’s scary to watch an American sit up there and seemingly wish for another catastrophic attack on America, this is the kind of thing we should expect to hear from right wing lunatics like Mr. Scheuer.

What’s scarier is that while people like Tim McVeigh were forced to get their propaganda from underground newsletters and books written by the most deluded of conspiracy theorists, Scheuer is free to spread his message to the masses on shows like Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann’s (where he appeared in 2006.)

The difference between his appearances on the two programs, however, was that when he said something outlandish on Olbermann’s program, he was called out on his nonsensical rantings. When Scheuer said on Beck’s show that the U.S. needs to be attacked again, Beck sat there and said nothing, giving tacit approval to the nonsense that Scheuer was spouting.

Just as when Bill O’Reilly called recently-murdered abortion doctor George Tiller a killer over and over and over again, doing everything he could to incite people to action, Scheuer and Beck are doing what they can to take down the Obama administration. They think they’re patriots, cut from the same cloth as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

I’ve got news for them. The only cloth they’re cut from is the one that spawned McVeigh. Violent revolution is not the path to change, I hope Scheuer realizes this before one of his listeners makes good on his rhetoric.

Judge not, lest ye be judged.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

We have a long tradition of trying to legislate morality in this country, which makes it all the more earth shattering when political leaders like Mark Sanford — who announced yesterday that his recent “disappearance” was in fact a trip to Argentina to visit his mistress — fess up to moral indiscretions.

Republicans seem to have been tangled up in a few more scandals lately than their Democratic counterparts. Whether it was John Ensign cheating on his wife, Larry Craig doing a homo tap dance in a Minneapolis airport bathroom stall or Mark Foley telling teenage male Congressional pages to “get a ruler out and measure it for me,” the GOP has had a rough time living up to it’s self-proclaimed title as the party of morality and family values lately.

Democrats aren’t immune to these types of scandals. Former President Bill Clinton canoodled with an intern (and a few others) and Elliott Spitzer likes the high-priced hookers.

The point is, recent scandals should show us that it’s time to separate our moral leaders from our political ones.

Now I know what you’re saying. If we no longer look to our political leaders for moral guideposts, Washington will be more out of control than it already is.

I get it, but that’s not what I’m saying.

Every one of us, whether we’re religious or not, goes through each day following a moral compass. Sometimes our values are based on a holy text of some sort, other times they’re simply a set of values handed down from our elders. Whatever the case, our laws are based on these values, and while our leaders are in Washington or the state capitol building or city hall or where ever, they should feel beholden to the laws of the land above all else.

Personal faith is great to have, but the minute that you get blinded by your convictions is the minute you start judging others for not following the same set of values that you do. Our country is based on freedom within the parameters of the law, not within the parameters of the Bible. Religious leaders in this country condemn countries like Saudi Arabia and Indonesia who enforce strict laws based on the Koran and then in the same breath argue for prayer in schools and gay marriage bans. You can’t have it both ways.

People of faith believe that when you die, you will be judged by the almighty for how you conducted yourself on Earth. So if judgment awaits Clinton, Foley, Spitzer, Ensign and the like, why should we feel compelled to judge them for their mistakes as well? When did we become Gods? When were we endowed by God with the ability to judge our fellow man?

What Craig and John Edwards have taught us is that good men who do good work in the service of the American public can let lust get in the way. How is that different than your neighbor who cheated no his wife with his secretary?

We should allow these men, who have willingly destroyed their own families and careers, to be judged by God. We should allow men — and women — to make mistakes and not throw stones when they stand before us and admit their mistakes.

Now of course this isn’t all to say that we shouldn’t hold our public servants accountable for their mistakes, I’m simply saying that as long as we continue looking to them to not only be good public servants, but to be moral leaders as well, our faith will continue to be shattered time after time as they inevitably falter.

We need to learn to look at these people as the fallible humans they are and let them make governance decisions based on reason, not on looking virtuous all the time for fear of being judged on anything but their performance as a legislator.

These men and women should be judged for what they do in the halls of our public buildings, not behind the closed doors of their bedrooms.

If Sean Hannity says journalism is dead, who am I to question?

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Journalism is dead. Sean Hannity told me so.

Next week, ABC News will cover a town hall meeting from the White House where Barack Obama plans to discuss health care. It will be a policy meeting where Obama will field questions on his proposed health care policies. Presumably, both supporters and skeptics will have a chance to speak.

Sean Hannity, among other outspoken pundits on Fox News, think this is nothing more than an infomercial for health care policies they don’t agree with disseminated by a complicit media outlet under the guise of news to a public not saavy enough to know when someone is feeding them a line. So basically, they’re accusing ABC News of being copycats.

It’s not the opinions expressed on Fox News that offends me so much, I believe there’s a place in the media for all voices, even those as disgusting as some of the garbage pettled by the likes of Beck, O’Reilly and Hannity. Government, business and social leaders need a strong, dissenting voice, and these days we’re sure as heck not getting it from MSNBC.

That said, the twisted nature of Fox News’ reports, pushing obviously biased reports off as news, twisting comments and spinning news and then turning around and calling themselves “Fair and Balanced” or telling people they’re in a “No Spin Zone” flies in the face of every principle we’re sworn to uphold as journalists. It’s fine to have an opinion, it’s fine to express that opinion, but don’t insult your viewers by misleading them.

Fox News was the originator of this style of so-called journalism and to their credit they’re very good at it. This unabashed fanboy attitude towards the Republican Party that was so evident during the Bush years and most recently during the Tea Bagging protests during tax season has served them well, but let’s be clear, they are hugely responsible for the death of journalism they’re not decrying.

They can cry about ABC or MSNBC or the New York Times being biased all they want, but they got the ball rolling. Journalism is vastly different than it was 20 years ago and that is in large part to Fox News. Now is the fact that it’s a different game now necessarily bad? That remains to be seen. But Fox News’ cries about journalism being dead, all the while playing a fiddle like some modern day version of Nero with better hair and a bleached smile, as they watch the fire they created consume the noble profession die are hypocritical at best, delusional at worst.

The fact that the journalism industry (particularly broadcast), regardless of where each outlet falls on the political spectrum, is trending towards the biased, gotcha journalism that Fox News helped develop, makes me sad for my colleagues who strive to do it right each day, and scared for my country, which will suffer the consequences.

Now, watch this video to see what I mean.

Fox’s hypocritical attack on ABC News

But you’re an adult.

Yes, I know this video is more than a year old, but I thought I’d share in case you haven’t seen it. I promise you, watching the full four minutes is worth it. This eighth grader owns Monica Conyers and tells her exactly what we’ve all been wanting to say for years.

Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, Dr. George Tiller? I don’t think so.

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I remember hearing the news that Saddam Hussein had been executed and thinking “It’s about time, that bastard got what he deserved.”

I mean, c’mon, the guy murdered hundreds of thousands of people. He deserved to die, right? What about the Nazi leaders after World War II? What about Pol Pot? These men were monsters who committed genocide, right?

So I read a blog entry from a classmate of mine in college who said he’s having mixed feelings about the murder of Dr. George Tiller this past Sunday in Wichita. You can find the blog entry here. Dr. Tiller performed late-term abortions and because of that has been a lightning rod for the abortion issue for many, many years.

In any case, my classmate, a staunch conservative, said that while he thinks the murder was a tragedy (too strong of a statement, Eric?) he doesn’t feel sympathy for Dr. Tiller. The man, he said, was responsible for thousands of deaths.

Now, I don’t agree with my friend, but I think to effectively argue the other side, you have to understand where your opponent is coming from. The argument he and many others on his side of the issue are trying to make is that they view an unborn fetus as a viable human life (ones who can grow up to become American citizens, Bill O’Reilly is fond of saying.) This is the crux of the issue for many, many people, so they feel that doctors who take those lives away by performing abortions are snuffing out one of God’s children and as a result, are no better than Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, et al.

It’s a hell of a way to think about it. I don’t agree with it, necessarily, but it at least gets me to a place where I can see where they’re coming from.

The thought of the genocides committed in places like Darfur disgust me and I think the people responsible should face justice. Given the chance to affect some kind of change, I wouldn’t sit back. That’s how people like my friend feel about abortion and I can’t begrudge them for it.

That’s as far as I can go in their shoes, however, because people like Dr. Tiller think they are helping people. In many cases, in fact, they are. A large number of Dr. Tiller’s patients came to him because there were compelling medical reasons to need this procedure. I know what it feels like to lose a child before it’s even born. It was soul-crushing enough in our case when there was nothing we could do, so to have to actually make that decision? I can’t imagine that’s a  decision you make lightly. This man wasn’t evil. He’s no Mengele. He’s not a mass murderer, he’s a doctor.

So that’s the difference, and that’s why I can’t get on board with the pro-life crowd. I understand that the choice to have an abortion is not one everybody would feel comfortable making. Hell, there’s no way I’d ever want my wife to have one, regardless of the circumstances.

On the other hand, I don’t think it’s fair to say “Well, if you don’t agree with abortion, don’t have one, but leave your hands of my body.” That’s like saying “If you don’t want to see people slaughtered in Sudan, don’t go to sub-Saharan Africa on vacation.” People who feel so strongly about the issue can’t in good conscience turn a blind eye.

So where does that leave us? Well, we’re at an impasse, I suppose. Neither side is going to give in because there’s no room for compromise when you’re talking about a moral issue of this magnitude. Right now the pro-choice crowd has the advantage and will continue to do so as long as it maintains its tenuous hold on the Supreme Court.

I’m glad my side is winning — for now — as I believe that in this country we have as much right from religion as we do for the freedom of religion, and this is very much a religious argument. That doesn’t mean, however, that I think the other side’s voices should be stifled. Let them try to convince me and others that this procedure is wrong. They have just as much write to state their case as I do mine. That’s what this country is all about, after all, freedom.

That pretty much sums it up.

From a message board, via Reddit.

No, Moslems don’t believe that Jesus was the Messiah.

Think of it like a movie. The Torah was the first one, the New Testament was the sequel. Then the Qu’ran comes out, and it retcons the last one like it never happened. There’s still Jesus, but he’s not the main character anymore, and the Messiah hasn’t even shown up yet.

Jews liked the first one but ignored the sequels. Christians think you need to watch the first two, but the third one doesn’t count. Moslems think the third one was best. And Mormons liked the second one so much they started writing fanfiction that doesn’t fit with ANY of the cannon.

Advice for a graduate

Chris,

I’m sure that in the past few weeks since your graduating, damn near everyone you’ve talked to has tried to give you advice.

“Aim for the best opportunity, not the best salary.”

“Follow your passion.”

“Always spit on it before you try the Mario Golf sneak attack.”

Don’t listen to these assholes. I’ve got some advice for you, and it’s the only advice you’ll hear that matters.

You’ll never be smarter than you are right now. You know all those mathematical theorems, philosophical arguments and historical facts that are filling your brain right now? It’s only a matter of time until it’s all gone. I wrote 20 page papers on conflicting arguments among the founding fathers about the merits of federalism versus anti-federalism in college. Today, I had to check Wikipedia because I couldn’t remember who said “Give me liberty or give me death.” Next up, leaving for work with no pants and drooling on my keyboard once I get there.

Why do you think old people can’t figure out how to use their TV remotes or use a computer? These are the people who invented the nuclear bomb and fought off the Nazis and yet they are constantly crashing their cars through farmer’s markets. Enjoy all that knowledge now, because soon it will be gone, replaced with an comprehensive knowledge of when the “early bird specials” start at the Big Boy.

So here’s my advice. Find a job that is challenging and rewarding. It took me years to land in a place that I find satisfying. You could come home to a blow job and a home cooked meal every day and it still wouldn’t make up for having to slog through a boring, mindless job day-after-day like some ridiculous automaton in a cube whose only respite is the few minutes he can escape each afternoon to eat a sandwich and watch a funny video of a kid getting hit in the nuts by a baseball/golf club/baby’s fist/halibut on YouTube. I’ve been there, man, it’s brutal.

So Chris, good luck, we wish you all the best. We know you’ll do great in whatever you choose.