Domestic Right Wing Terrorists!

[Townsend]

Not at all.  Roman Catholicism is a Christian religion.  I cannot help it if I am the only one who is right in this world! Ha ha!

9 o'clock show totally different than the 7 o'clock show.  Please tip your waitress.

[Hoss]

Christianity is the religion, Catholicism is merely one sect of the whole. As are the Church of England, the Methodists, the Baptists, the Episcopalians, and the rest.

Which makes them ALL denominations, and Know Nothing true to his moniker, yet again.

[tim huntzinger]

Christianity is the religion, Catholicism is merely one sect of the whole. As are the Church of England, the Methodists, the Baptists, the Episcopalians, and the rest.

Sure whatever.

[tim huntzinger]

Which makes them ALL denominations, and Know Nothing true to his moniker, yet again.

Yep right you are.  The Catholic Church claims to be the only true Church.  But to the outsiders is just one of many.  Makes sense.

[Conan71]

Actually, KK is correct calling Catholocism it's own religion, citing certain schools of religious philosophy.  Not all schools of Christian philosophy agree with this notion, but it does exist and KK didn't make it up on his own.  IOW, KK didn't pull this out of his arse.  I can actually allude to it fairly quickly in one of CF's Googled references:

"Today, however, Roman Catholicism is not the only accepted Christian church. Thus to be a Roman Catholic means to be a certain kind of Christian: one with unique beliefs, practices and traditions that are distinct from those of other Christians. Nevertheless, the Catholic Church continues to maintain that it alone has carried on the true tradition of the apostolic church and has traditionally regarded dissenting groups as heresies, not alternatives (Martin Luther was swiftly excommunicated). However, the recent Second Vatican Council declared all baptized Christians to be "in a certain, although imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church." {1}"

http://www.religionfacts.com/christianity/denominations/catholicism.htm

I was brought up in the Episcopal (Anglican) Church, the Apostles Creed and Nicene Creed as repeated at every mass:

Apostles Creed 
   I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen 

Nicene Creed A.D. 381 
   We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.
 
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made.
 
For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.
 
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
 
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets.
 
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.   


Might come as a surprise to some of you who have never attended an Episcopal mass, considering the Episcopalians are generally regarded as being the first to tell the Pope to go to hell.

[cannon_fodder]

Conan, many Christian (if not most) denominations claim to THE CORRECT ONE.  Many claim that unless you believe in their brand of Christianity you are going to hell.  So each of these many Christian sects is it's own religion, distinct and apart from the Christian religion?

However, I have yet to see a reference to the school of thought stating Catholicism is it's own religion. The portion you referenced simply says that being "Catholic means to be a certain kind of Christian."  Which is to say it is a denomination of Christianity.  Even if the Catholics (or other Christian sects) wished to pretend they were a separate denomination or that they are the only TRUE Christians, it doesn't make it so.  There are no beliefs in Catholicism that separate it to such an extent as to override the underlying commonality (a belief in the teachings of Jesus).  Just like Hindus believe in a pantheon of Gods and Mulsims believe Mohammad was the consummate Prophet.

Your argument more greatly supports the notion that Catholics are Christians, as evidenced by the Nicene Creed you posted. They recite all the major tenants of Christianity with the additional statement that they believe their brand is the correct brand.  How does that exclude them from the group?  And if so, are all other sects of Christianity their own religion?

My entire argument is very simple:  Christian = follower of Jesus Christ.  The rest is just details.

(I have no vested interest in this argument.  Just amused that the definition of Christian could somehow exclude the "original" denomination of Christians.)

[tim huntzinger]

Conan, many Christian (if not most) denominations claim to THE CORRECT ONE.  Many claim that unless you believe in their brand of Christianity you are going to hell.  So each of these many Christian sects is it's own religion, distinct and apart from the Christian religion?

However, I have yet to see a reference to the school of thought stating Catholicism is it's own religion. The portion you referenced simply says that being "Catholic means to be a certain kind of Christian."  Which is to say it is a denomination of Christianity.  Even if the Catholics (or other Christian sects) wished to pretend they were a separate denomination or that they are the only TRUE Christians, it doesn't make it so.  There are no beliefs in Catholicism that separate it to such an extent as to override the underlying commonality (a belief in the teachings of Jesus).  Just like Hindus believe in a pantheon of Gods and Mulsims believe Mohammad was the consummate Prophet.

Your argument more greatly supports the notion that Catholics are Christians, as evidenced by the Nicene Creed you posted. They recite all the major tenants of Christianity with the additional statement that they believe their brand is the correct brand.  How does that exclude them from the group?  And if so, are all other sects of Christianity their own religion?

My entire argument is very simple:  Christian = follower of Jesus Christ.  The rest is just details.

(I have no vested interest in this argument.  Just amused that the definition of Christian could somehow exclude the "original" denomination of Christians.)

Right.  Christian = follower.  Either way you slice it SBC is not the largest denomination which was my original assertion.  Sorry I am swimming against the herd on this but there you go.

[cannon_fodder]

No problem.  I don't care which way someone swims, so long as they support their contentions.  I agree with your underlying premise.  SBC isn't the largest.

[FOTD]

Pastor interested in effect of right-wing writings on accused shooter

"In his first media interviews since the shooting, Buice said he's curious whether any clues might be gleaned from the writings of right-wing radio talk-show host Michael Savage and Fox News personalities Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, whose books were seized as evidence from Adkisson's residence by police.

"The words you choose may be the difference between war and peace," said Buice, speaking to a belief in the power of "dehumanizing language."

"I believe in rigorous debate," he said. "But what's the difference between a political opponent and a cockroach? You stomp a cockroach. You debate a political opponent. I believe, if you truly listen to your opponent, it will make you better."

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/aug/06/pastor-interested-effect-right-wing-writings-accus/


and don't forget this as the culture war turns for the worse....


Church shooter pleads guilty; letter released

Adkisson to spend life behind bars for crimes
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2009/feb/10/church-shooter-pleads-guilty-letter-released/
It was a simple plan, he wrote, borne out of hopelessness but rooted in patriotism.

"The future looks bleak," the ex-soldier lamented. "I'm absolutely fed up! So I thought I'd do something good for this country — kill Democrats 'til (sic) the cops kill me."

With what he believed to be his last pen strokes, Jim David Adkisson urged other suicidal soldiers against the "liberalism that's destroying America" to leave their own trail of carnage behind.

"I'd like to encourage other like-minded people to do what I've done," Adkisson wrote. "If life ain't worth living anymore, don't just kill yourself. Do something for your country before you go. Go kill liberals."

[FOTD]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/opinion/14rich.html?th&emc=th

OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Obama Haters' Silent Enablers
By FRANK RICH
Published: June 13, 2009
WHEN a Fox News anchor, reacting to his own network's surging e-mail traffic, warns urgently on-camera of a rise in hate-filled, "amped up" Americans who are "taking the extra step and getting the gun out," maybe we should listen. He has better sources in that underground than most.

The anchor was Shepard Smith, speaking after Wednesday's mayhem at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Unlike the bloviators at his network and elsewhere on cable, Smith is famous for his highly caffeinated news-reading, not any political agenda. But very occasionally — notably during Hurricane Katrina — he hits the Howard Beale mad-as-hell wall. Joining those at Fox who routinely disregard the network's "We report, you decide" mantra, he both reported and decided, loudly.

What he reported was this: his e-mail from viewers had "become more and more frightening" in recent months, dating back to the election season. From Wednesday alone, he "could read a hundred" messages spewing "hate that's not based in fact," much of it about Barack Obama and some of it sharing the museum gunman's canard that the president was not a naturally born citizen. These are Americans "out there in a scary place," Smith said.

Then he brought up another recent gunman: "If you're one who believes that abortion is murder, at what point do you go out and kill someone who's performing abortions?" An answer, he said, was provided by Dr. George Tiller's killer. He went on: "If you are one who believes these sorts of things about the president of the United States ..." He left the rest of that chilling sentence unsaid.

These are extraordinary words to hear on Fox. The network's highest-rated star, Bill O'Reilly, had assailed Tiller, calling him "Tiller the baby killer" and likening him to the Nazis, on 29 of his shows before the doctor was murdered at his church in Kansas. O'Reilly was unrepentant, stating that only "pro-abortion zealots and Fox News haters" would link him to the crime. But now another Fox star, while stopping short of blaming O'Reilly, was breaching his network's brand of political correctness: he tied the far-right loners who had gotten their guns out in Wichita and Washington to the mounting fury of Obama haters.

What is this fury about? In his scant 145 days in office, the new president has not remotely matched the Bush record in deficit creation. Nor has he repealed the right to bear arms or exacerbated the wars he inherited. He has tried more than his predecessor ever did to reach across the aisle. But none of that seems to matter. A sizable minority of Americans is irrationally fearful of the fast-moving generational, cultural and racial turnover Obama embodies — indeed, of the 21st century itself. That minority is now getting angrier in inverse relationship to his popularity with the vast majority of the country. Change can be frightening and traumatic, especially if it's not change you can believe in.

We don't know whether the tiny subset of domestic terrorists in this crowd is egged on by political or media demagogues — though we do tend to assume that foreign jihadists respond like Pavlov's dogs to the words of their most fanatical leaders and polemicists. But well before the latest murderers struck — well before another "antigovernment" Obama hater went on a cop-killing rampage in Pittsburgh in April — there have been indications that this rage could spiral out of control.

This was evident during the campaign, when hotheads greeted Obama's name with "Treason!" and "Terrorist!" at G.O.P. rallies. At first the McCain-Palin campaign fed the anger with accusations that Obama was "palling around with terrorists." But later John McCain thought better of it and defended his opponent's honor to a town-hall participant who vented her fears of the Democrats' "Arab" candidate. Although two neo-Nazi skinheads were arrested in an assassination plot against Obama two weeks before Election Day, the fever broke after McCain exercised leadership.

That honeymoon, if it was one, is over. Conservatives have legitimate ideological beefs with Obama, rightly expressed in sharp language. But the invective in some quarters has unmistakably amped up. The writer Camille Paglia, a political independent and confessed talk-radio fan, detected a shift toward paranoia in the air waves by mid-May. When "the tone darkens toward a rhetoric of purgation and annihilation," she observed in Salon, "there is reason for alarm." She cited a "joke" repeated by a Rush Limbaugh fill-in host, a talk-radio jock from Dallas of all places, about how "any U.S. soldier" who found himself with only two bullets in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama bin Laden would use both shots to assassinate Pelosi and then strangle Reid and bin Laden.

This homicide-saturated vituperation is endemic among mini-Limbaughs. Glenn Beck has dipped into O'Reilly's Holocaust analogies to liken Obama's policy on stem-cell research to the eugenics that led to "the final solution" and the quest for "a master race." After James von Brunn's rampage at the Holocaust museum, Beck rushed onto Fox News to describe the Obama-hating killer as a "lone gunman nutjob." Yet in the same show Beck also said von Brunn was a symptom that "the pot in America is boiling," as if Beck himself were not the boiling pot cheering the kettle on.

But hyperbole from the usual suspects in the entertainment arena of TV and radio is not the whole story. What's startling is the spillover of this poison into the conservative political establishment. Saul Anuzis, a former Michigan G.O.P. chairman who ran for the party's national chairmanship this year, seriously suggested in April that Republicans should stop calling Obama a socialist because "it no longer has the negative connotation it had 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago." Anuzis pushed "fascism" instead, because "everybody still thinks that's a bad thing." He didn't seem to grasp that "fascism" is nonsensical as a description of the Obama administration or that there might be a risk in slurring a president with a word that most find "bad" because it evokes a mass-murderer like Hitler.

The Anuzis "fascism" solution to the Obama problem has caught fire. The president's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court and his speech in Cairo have only exacerbated the ugliness. The venomous personal attacks on Sotomayor have little to do with the 3,000-plus cases she's adjudicated in nearly 17 years on the bench or her thoughts about the judgment of "a wise Latina woman." She has been tarred as a member of "the Latino KKK" (by the former Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo), as well as a racist and a David Duke (by Limbaugh), and portrayed, in a bizarre two-for-one ethnic caricature, as a slant-eyed Asian on the cover of National Review. Uniting all these insults is an aggrieved note of white victimization only a shade less explicit than that in von Brunn's white supremacist screeds.

Obama's Cairo address, meanwhile, prompted over-the-top accusations reminiscent of those campaign rally cries of "Treason!" It was a prominent former Reagan defense official, Frank Gaffney, not some fringe crackpot, who accused Obama in The Washington Times of engaging "in the most consequential bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain." He claimed that the president — a lifelong Christian — "may still be" a Muslim and is aligned with "the dangerous global movement known as the Muslim Brotherhood." Gaffney linked Obama by innuendo with Islamic "charities" that "have been convicted of providing material support for terrorism."

If this isn't a handy rationalization for another lone nutjob to take the law into his own hands against a supposed terrorism supporter, what is? Any such nutjob can easily grab a weapon. Gun enthusiasts have been on a shopping spree since the election, with some areas of our country reporting percentage sales increases in the mid-to-high double digits, recession be damned.

The question, Shepard Smith said on Fox last week, is "if there is really a way to put a hold on" those who might run amok. We're not about to repeal the First or Second Amendments. Hard-core haters resolutely dismiss any "mainstream media" debunking of their conspiracy theories. The only voices that might penetrate their alternative reality — I emphasize might — belong to conservative leaders with the guts and clout to step up as McCain did last fall. Where are they? The genteel public debate in right-leaning intellectual circles about the conservative movement's future will be buried by history if these insistent alarms are met with silence.

It's typical of this dereliction of responsibility that when the Department of Homeland Security released a plausible (and, tragically, prescient) report about far-right domestic terrorism two months ago, the conservative response was to trash it as "the height of insult," in the words of the G.O.P. chairman Michael Steele. But as Smith also said last week, Homeland Security was "warning us for a reason."

No matter. Last week it was business as usual, as Republican leaders nattered ad infinitum over the juvenile rivalry of Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich at the party's big Washington fund-raiser. Few if any mentioned, let alone questioned, the ominous script delivered by the actor Jon Voight with the G.O.P. imprimatur at that same event. Voight's devout wish was to "bring an end to this false prophet Obama."

This kind of rhetoric, with its pseudo-Scriptural call to action, is toxic. It is getting louder each day of the Obama presidency. No one, not even Fox News viewers, can say they weren't warned.

[FOTD]

OP-ED COLUMNIST
A Threat We Can't Ignore
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/20/opinion/20herbert.html?emc=eta1

By BOB HERBERT
Published: June 19, 2009
Even with the murders that have already occurred, Americans are not paying enough attention to the frightening connection between the right-wing hate-mongers who continue to slither among us and the gun crazies who believe a well-aimed bullet is the ticket to all their dreams.

I hope I'm wrong, but I can't help feeling as if the murder at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and the assassination of the abortion doctor in Wichita, Kan., and the slaying of three police officers in Pittsburgh — all of them right-wing, hate-driven attacks — were just the beginning and that worse is to come.

As if the wackos weren't dangerous enough to begin with, the fuel to further inflame them is available in the over-the-top rhetoric of the National Rifle Association, which has relentlessly pounded the bogus theme that Barack Obama is planning to take away people's guns. The group's anti-Obama Web site is called gunbanobama.com.

While the N.R.A. is not advocating violence, it shouldn't take more than a glance at the newspapers to understand why this is a message that the country could do without. James von Brunn, the man accused of using a rifle to shoot a guard to death at the Holocaust museum last week, was described by relatives, associates and the police as a virulent racist and anti-Semite.

Investigators said they found a note that had been signed by von Brunn in the car that he double-parked outside the museum. The note said, "You want my weapons — this is how you'll get them."

Richard Poplawski, who, according to authorities, used a high-powered rifle to kill three Pittsburgh police officers in April, reportedly believed that Zionists were running the world and that, yes, Obama was planning to crack down on gun ownership. A friend said of Poplawski, he "feared the Obama gun ban that's on the way."

There is no Obama gun ban on the way. Gun control advocates are, frankly, disappointed in the president's unwillingness to move ahead on even the mildest of gun control measures.

What's important to grasp here is that this madness has nothing to do with hunting, which the politicians always claim to be defending, and everything to do with the use of firearms to resist policies and lawful government actions that some gun owners don't like.

In a speech in February to the Conservative Political Action Conference, the executive vice president of the N.R.A., Wayne LaPierre, said: "Our founding fathers understood that the guys with the guns make the rules."

A new book by Dennis Henigan, a vice president at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, goes into detail on this point. In "Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths That Paralyze American Gun Policy," Mr. Henigan refers to a Harvard Law Journal article written by an N.R.A. lawyer titled, "The Second Amendment Ain't About Hunting." In the article, the lawyer makes it clear that for the N.R.A., the right to bear arms is "directed at maintaining an armed citizenry. ... to protect against the tyranny of our own government."

There was a wave of right-wing craziness along those lines during the Clinton administration. Four federal agents were killed and 16 others wounded in 1993 during an attempt to serve a search warrant at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Tex., where a stockpile of illegal machine guns had been amassed. The subsequent siege ended disastrously with a raging fire in which scores of people were killed.

In the aftermath of Waco, the N.R.A. did its typically hysterical, fear-mongering thing. In a fund-raising letter in the spring of 1995, LaPierre wrote: "Jack-booted government thugs [have] more power to take away our Constitutional rights, break in our doors, seize our guns, destroy our property, and even injure or kill us. ..."

Whatever the N.R.A. may intend by its rhetoric, there is always the danger that those inclined toward violence will incorporate it into their twisted worldview, and will find in the rhetoric a justification for murder. On the second anniversary of the Branch Davidian fire, less than a week after LaPierre's inflammatory fund-raising letter went out, Timothy McVeigh blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

You cannot blame the N.R.A. for McVeigh's actions. But you can sure blame it for ignoring the tragic lessons of history and continuing to spray gasoline into an environment that we have seen explode time and again.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has reported a resurgence of right-wing hate groups in the U.S. since Mr. Obama was elected president. Gun craziness of all kinds, including the passage of local laws making it easier to own and conceal weapons, is on the rise. Hate-filled Web sites are calling attention to the fact that the U.S. has a black president and that his chief of staff is Jewish.

It might be wise to pay closer attention than we've been paying. The first step should be to bring additional gun control back into the policy mix.


OTAY, light it up gunners.

[waterboy]

Sometimes I get honored with a copy of the Southern Poverty Law Center magazine. Regardless of your politics, it is worthy of reading. It is both interesting and horrifying. In fact, it scares the bejeezus out of me what is happening under our very eyes that we decide to ignore because of our irrational fears of government "takin' er guns away'.

[FOTD]

Sometimes I get honored with a copy of the Southern Poverty Law Center magazine. Regardless of your politics, it is worthy of reading. It is both interesting and horrifying. In fact, it scares the bejeezus out of me what is happening under our very eyes that we decide to ignore because of our irrational fears of government "takin' er guns away'.

Required reading for the intelligent! Kinda splains why Guido, Conan, No Knothing, Iplawless etc. aren't in touch.

[FOTD]

Randall Terry warns of 'potential violence' if health care reform passes

http://www.examiner.com/x-5697-Grassroots-Politics-Examiner~y2009m7d18-Randall-Terry-warns-of-potential-violence-if-health-care-reform-passes?cid=examiner-email


"Let all those in government be warned: They cannot order people to pay for murder and betray God Himself without horrific consequences" -Randall Terry
Randall Terry, Founder of Operation Rescue, and other local anti-abortion advocates will hold a press conference at the National Press Club on Tuesday, July 21 to discuss what they will and will not do if healthcare passes.

"Let all those in government be warned: They cannot order people to pay for the murder of babies, and betray God Himself, without horrific consequences."

The recent murder of Dr. George Tiller at his place of worship was trumpeted as God's justice by Terry while other groups such as the American Center for Law and Justice fought to protect the "truth truck" displaying a picture of Tiller with the provocative message "Tiller the Killer Gets no Peace.".

Terry says it is clear that many elements in the pro-choice congress and White House want to force Americans to pay for what he calls the murder of the unborn in their healthcare program.

"If that happens, it is tantamount to the government putting a gun to taxpayers' heads to pay for the brutal murder of an innocent child. This is tyranny and evil of the highest order."

Terry ominously suggests that violence will result with or without his prodding:

"Please understand: neither I, nor any thinking person wants the convulsions that would inevitably come from such a government policy -- the decision to force Americans to pay for the murder of their neighbor.

"Nevertheless, the sheer horror and frustration of such an evil policy will lead some people to absolutely refuse to pay their taxes. And I believe -- if my reading of history from America and around the world is correct -- that there are others who will be tempted to acts of violence.

"If the government of this country tramples the faith and values of its citizens, history will hold those in power responsible for the violent convulsions that follow."
-Randall Terry

[FOTD]

No outrage from this unAmerican bs? Why do Kristians hate people?

Randall Terry is a terrorist. There might be damage? Reprisals? Whhaaaa....if i can't get it my way, let's settle this through violence. Pu$$ies.