A day after Mitt “Moneybags” Romney stated his lack of concern for the economically disadvantaged (an old school Republican touchstone), President Obama shot back by finally using the right-wing’s bullets against them. Despite constantly being smeared as a secret Muslim, Barack Obama in fact subscribes to Christianity. Today’s perverse version of Christianity typically refers to super rich, white proselytizers who flagrantly manipulate the pure teachings of Jesus and spew bilious hatred towards gays, women, single moms, blacks, and the poor and middle-class. It also tends to refer to making a bunch of bombs to kill a bunch of Middle Easterners so that some defense contactor can continue to eat caviar. So it’s only natural for thinking people to stay within 100 yards of it. But, much like everything else under the sun, the Republicans love co-opting it blatantly injecting it into politics in order to claim higher ground.
Former president Bush, a simple-minded lummox with virtually nothing to offer other than his ability to relate to even dumber people, understood that invoking Jesus’ name would guarantee universal support of his hawkish foreign policy no matter how severely flawed and unreasonable it may have been. For that reason, I have been constantly saying that President Obama should put on his best decider face, hold a press conference on the white house lawn, and state that his good homeboy JC told him that he should return taxes on the highest earners to the levels during the Clinton era. But that’s not the style of the guy of the president who sings Al Green.
During the National Prayer Breakfast in D.C. that took place yesterday, the president revealed that his Christian (or Christ-like) faith heavily influenced his economic policies– including calling for the wealthy to pay more taxes and overhauling the healthcare system. He explained to the attendees that the nation’s challenges require smart policies coupled with a strong values system, and not of the philandering on your dying wife, or subscribing to anti-gay policies and making anti-gay rhetoric only to have secret gay sex variety.
‘It’s hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income or young people with student loans or middle-class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone,’President Obama said.
“For me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that, for unto whom much is given, much shall be required,’ he added, referencing verse 48 of chapter 12 in the Gospel of Luke. “To answer the responsibility we’re given in Proverbs to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute,” added Obama.
“ While personal religious beliefs alone should not dictate a politician’s decisions, leaders should not abandon their faith entirely,” said President Obama
Of course Fox News will still say he’s Muslim Socialist.
Michael is a comedian/VO artist/Columnist extraordinaire, who co-wrote an award-nominated comedy, produces a chapter of Laughing Liberally, wrote for NY Times Laugh Lines, guest-blogged for Joe Biden, and writes a column for MSNBC.com affiliated Cagle Media. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook, and like NJ Laughing Liberally Lab. Seriously, follow him or he’ll send you a photo of Rush Limbaugh bending over in a thong.
There are in fact many “thinking people” who love their Christian faith tradition and live intimately with it. We, too, are frustrated with the way the “religious right” has managed to control the discourse about the faith, but for some reason people don’t listen to us. I think too many people – on the right and the left – want their theology and their politics simple.
Your memory serves you well, Derek Williams. And while the true meaning of the word that was translated as “camel” in the King James Version actually meant, most likely, the word “rope”, it’s still evocative.
However, what the Bible actually MEANS is unimportant to the so-called “Christians” who are currently waging war on the Constitution and the American people. All these power-hungry tyrant wannabees are truly concerned with is how they can twist what the Bible says to support their blighted attempts to gain power. They’ve seen what the Roman Catholic Church became, and a few of the “Christian” leaders of this country are all a-tremble with the thought that THEY might someday rule this country the way Catholicism ruled Europe for so many centuries.
So I’m possessed of mixed emotions at hearing that Obama is quoting scripture at the Republican’ts. I’m glad he’s finally fighting fire with fire, as it were, but this kind of thing can lead to a steep and slippery slope. Yes, please go ahead and show up the Right for the lying, two-faced scum that they are. I have no problem with that at all.
But please don’t give the “Christian” Dominionists any encouragement at all. They want to destroy our Constitution just as much as the mega-rich do, but for markedly different reasons. The mega-rich want to carve the United States up into their own little fiefdoms, where the rich overlord can make up any rules he wants. The Dominionists, on the other hand, want to establish the Ecclesiastic States of Amerikkka, under strict Mosaic law that would apply to everyone but the leaders of the new country, and kill or enslave everyone else in their brave new world.
And there are a lot of politicians at both the state and Federal levels who are unabashed Dominionists, and who are doing everything they can to force the Dominionist agenda down our collective throats.
So give it to them, President Obama. But next time, would you please quote from the Federalist Papers, or Benjamin Franklin, or Thomas Jefferson–or maybe even, dare I suggest it, the Constitution?!?–rather than the Bible? Just so I can sleep easier at night, thanks. And showing up the Republican’ts as the drooling idiots they are by quoting American history at them is much funnier, in the long run.
God help us all.
It’s about time for the President and others to speak out on this issue. Strange that so many who identify themselves as being very religious care mostly about money, are in bed with the very wealthy versus those in need, define welfare as a bad word, believe in health care only for those who can afford it and the list goes on. They are so out of touch with what is truly happening or they just don’t care.
I think this is a case of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” and is a very good move on the part of the President. The right wing crazies keep calling him a Muslim, well it sure doesn’t sound or look like it. Besides, the President has to be subtly put a focus on Willard’s Mormon religion and I surely know the right wing fanatical religions & fundamentalist nuts are not going to be very happy with a Mormon president, so many of them may not even vote, or some of the less extreme of the same genre might hold their noses & vote for Obama for the religious reason alone. Noone is psyched about Willard Romney except Mrs. Romney.
If my memory serves me correctly, it was none other than Jesus Christ himself who said, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven.”