jimmy spako wrote:

steve wrote:He's probably "a christian" in the way most people are: Doesn't believe a word of it but pretends to, to be polite and thinks there are some moral points made in the gospels that have value beyond any religious significance.

I have no problem with normal behavior like that.

you have no problem with the meager vestiges of a social system that we still have being outsourced to private "confessional" (religiously ideological) organisations? i very seriously doubt that.

AMY GOODMAN: Naomi Klein, Obama’s Chicago Boys, who are they?

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, one of them is Obama. Obama spent ten years teaching at the University of Chicago Law School, which is a very conservative law school. You know, I wrote a column recently talking about how conservative Obama’s economic roots are, with his ties to the University of Chicago.

His first response to the mortgage crisis, let’s remember, was he was worried about the government taking action to keep people from being evicted from their homes, because that would create moral hazard. And he was not talking about the big companies, the big mortgage lenders; he was talking about individual low-income people being thrown out of their homes. He was worried about moral hazard. That’s a very University of Chicago take on the situation.

And yeah, one of his—his chief economic adviser was Austin Goolsbee, this University of Chicago economist. And, you know, now his chief economic adviser is Jason Furman, who is not a University of Chicago-affiliated economist, but is certainly on the right of the economic—Democratic economic spectrum, has defended Wal-Mart, has attacked critics of Wal-Mart, saying that they’re doing more harm than good, that actually Wal-Mart is a progressive institution that is helping low-income people with their low prices, and that living wage campaigns, for instance, are actually hurting low-income people. So these are pretty conservative ideas, and I think it is important for people to understand that this is who Obama has chosen to take his advice from.

AMY GOODMAN: This is very interesting, because, of course, he really slammed Hillary Clinton when it came to her tenure on the board of Wal-Mart.

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: And he said he wouldn’t shop there.

NAOMI KLEIN: It’s true. He said both of those things, and it is a political campaign, and we’re seeing a lot of double talk on these issues. Austin Goolsbee, for instance, got himself into some trouble after he met with Canadian consulate officials. And they left that meeting with the distinct impression that he had told them that they shouldn’t listen to what Obama’s saying about NAFTA and renegotiating NAFTA for labor and environmental standards, because it’s just an election campaign. So it would seem that perhaps we should take Obama’s Wal-Mart comments in the same spirit. But, you know, my message on—

AMY GOODMAN: And yet, you have him speaking—Obama himself being quoted in Fortune magazine, after he had said that that whole—well, what became a sort of little scandal there, with Goolsbee going to the Canadian consulate—

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: —at the time when he was going through the states where labor was stronger, where he was really slamming NAFTA, saying this wasn’t true, that he was telling them, “Don’t worry. It’s just overheated rhetoric.” And then he said that precise thing, Senator Obama himself, in Fortune.

NAOMI KLEIN: That it was overheated rhetoric. Yeah, exactly.

AMY GOODMAN: That he supports NAFTA and free trade.

NAOMI KLEIN: And it’s—you know, it’s shades of Bill Clinton’s first campaign, where he also campaigned very actively about labor and environmental standards and NAFTA. NAFTA had already been signed, but it hadn’t come into law. And then there was a turnaround, and there was a turnaround in the transition period, after the election but before he took office, where there was a sort of fateful meeting.

And I think the fear is that some of the same people, like Rubin, responsible for, you know, Rubinomics, which turned into Clintonomics, which was, you know, the Democratic full-scale embrace of the ideology of privatization and so-called free trade, that this same sort of group of people are following—are now surrounding Obama. And Jason Furman is a Rubin protégé and worked with him at the Hamilton Project, which is a sort of sub-think tank of the Brookings Institution, which emerged a few years ago to prevent the Democratic Party from embracing what they saw as populist economic policies, the centerpiece of which would have been a reexamine of the ideology of free trade, which is being discredited around the world.

Rick Reuben wrote:

DrAwkward wrote:

jimmy spako wrote: in his faith-based initiatives speech, he essentially said, "bush, now that was one motherfucking pander bear right there. me, i mean it...i'm gonna show y'all how a real jesus freak rolls."

That's not how i read it.

What did you read? Obama thinks that using the federal government to channel funds through churches is the Lord's work.

From his speech announcing the FBI:

obama wrote:"While I could sit in church and pray all I want, I wouldn't be fulfilling God's will unless I went out and did the Lord's work.

Obama said America's problems were too big to solve through government alone. "I believe that change comes not from the top down but from the bottom up, and few are closer to the people than our churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques."

So, if you're an atheist or an agnostic, and a church, synagogue, temple, or mosque is not on your regular itinerary, that may need to change- if that's who's sharing the wealth in your neck of the woods.

Rick Reuben wrote: Dear liberals: stop saying that you're voting for Obama because you think he's a magical person who will do magical things.

Rick Reuben wrote:

r wrote:a pretty convincing argument that Obama's "deepened Christianity" was a strategic move

So he's a phony?

Explains why a certain variety of liberal is so enamored with him. Both Obama and his flock make their top priority 'getting power', not 'fighting the powerful'. If 'aligning with the powerful' is the path to 'getting power', then that is the course followed by the corporate Democratic Party and their blindered menagerie.

If Obama is good at pretending to be what he isn't to get power, then maybe it's time for the liberals to accept that everything he does is some triangulation in pursuit of power?

Rick Reuben wrote:

Rick Reuben wrote:Take note that Steve never disconnects conservative politicians from Christianity the way he's trying to disconnect Obama from it.

steve wrote:I give the greedy and malevolent less benefit of any doubt. Though I'm sure the right wingers (including Ron Paul) are just as phony in their "Faith," I prefer to take them at their word, as this word is of itself more ridiculous and highlights the hypocrisy of their worldview -- pretending to follow a communist preaching empathy for the underprivileged while pursuing policy that benefits only those already wealthy and powerful.

It's a double-barrel shot of asshole and I enjoy seeing it on display.

Rick Reuben wrote:

steve wrote:pretending to follow a communist preaching empathy for the underprivileged

Jesus was not a communist. He never preached that a state should control all property, nor did he demand an end to private property. Jesus was an altruist.