DISQUS

Dope as usual.

and by broadway obviously I mean broad street. damn I'll turn in my philly credentials now.

Cotdamn that broadway jawn is ridiculous.

Pockets are on empty right now but I'm a try to hit up at least one of these shows. That Ciz verse on Knock Em Dead is probably the best I've heard from him so far. Havent heard him switch up his flow like that before.

Thanks

Don, I'm sending wet weather wishes your way.

Sitting at my computer this wet dreary morning I suddenly feel refreshed. Thank you Jim!

From what I've heard in his interviews, Will Smith takes the bottom line approach - after the Fresh Prince had its last season, he did some research and discovered that superhero/alien/sci fi movies were the top grossers at the box office - so that's what he decided to do. And hey, if I were an actor, I would too.

But you're right - he's enormously talented, which is why I hope to see more work along the lines of "Ali" and "Pursuit" in the near future. In the meanwhile, I hope he puts those box office dollars to good use and buys a private island ;)

Take it from someone who has lived in countries with public health - the criticisms about high costs and long waiting times you hear from places like the Heritage Foundation are exaggerations. Every system has problems, and public health, for all of its faults, guarantees equal health access to everyone.

At the end of the day I think sentiment has very little to do with the issue. It is raw statistics. Try going up to Canada or the UK and telling them that their healthcare system (which is under attack from conservative government types and private business) is going to be cancelled and you'll have a riot.

At the end of the day voters will decide - so here's hoping that American citizens finally vote to bring our health system in line with the rest of the Industrailized world!

I'd like to see the Democratic party embrace the pro-life platform

Maybe you should get the "capital punishment/make war not love" Republicans to go pro-life first and then we'll work on the Democrats :)

Since we're on the subject of the Democratic primary, whatever happened to Barack Obama?

Staying in the game despite attacks on his personal life by racists who can't handle a little bit of truth.

An interesting point, but our freedoms under the U.S. Constitution were not won by Anabaptists during the 1500s.

Well I suppose it depends on whom you mean by "we". If you mean "we" as in the folks who landed on Plymouth Rock - then yes I suppose you could say that. But let me challenge you to take a larger picture of "we":

1) African Americans who were enslaved in the Americas for 400 years, won their freedom through non-violent means.

2) Women won the freedom to vote through non-violent protest.

3) Unborn children are having their right to live advocated for through (largely) non-violent political action.

On and on the examples go...

"There is no need for Rev. Wright because racism is gone; and in fact he is the problem; as are all the Blacks who think there is a problem who can't get on with their lives" crowd. This element within conservatism and the Republican party have just set this movement back 30 years in its capacity to contend it has a clue.

Hear Hear!

I don't think that sharing what others have said about God judging America is very relevant to this topic

I think it's highly relevant. It isn't as you say when you speak of Wright being a divider while Barak is trying to be a unifier. This is a more subtle point which is being drowned out in all of the soundbites. What people are offended at are Wright's so-called unpatriotic statements - pure and simple. So I'm just trying to show that he's in good company - so why is everyone taking offense?

Mr. Wright is using racially divisive rhetoric... but white America to repent

Yes, and...? The point of Wright's rhetoric is that many of the wrongs of the past still live on today in other forms.

And of course, there is the all time classic from that anti-American Presidential swearer-in, Billy Graham:

"If God does not judge America, He is going to have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah."

I rest my case!

Some gems from one of Reagan's spiritual gurus.

Francis Schaeffer in, A Christian Manifesto speaking of opposition to abortion:

"There does come a time when force, even physical force, is appropriate"

And then comparing the USA to the evil empire:

"In the United States the materialistic, humanistic world view is being taught exclusively in most state schools. ... There is an obvious parallel between this and the situation in Russia (the USSR). And we really must not be blind to the fact that indeed in the public schools in the United States all religious influence is as forcibly forbidden as in the Soviet Union."

Too bad Fox wasn't around then

More from our Rev. Hagee, from his own Jerusalem Countdown

"It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God's chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day..."

I'll leave you to conclude what Hagee is implying about the Holocaust.

Where's Fox News when you need them???

On the September 18, 2006, John Hagee told NPR's Terry Gross

"... I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of
New Orleans."

So yeah, I'm waiting for Fox news to report this and for Hagee to get some of the heat that Wright has been experiencing.

... I'm waiting... still waiting...

And Hagee had pronounced fire and brimestone on America more times than I can remember. So why no outrage about this?

I suspect it's because Rev. Wright hit a raw nerve when he spoke about the oppression of the poor and minorities in America - people find it hard to handle the truth.

Ironic isn't it - how the requirements of American political correctness require Black Presedential candidates to distance themselves from a significant pespertive of the black community.

Rev. Wright has merely given voice to the very different perspective that black American Christians have on history and the current cultural/social/economic situation than the mainstream. Black Americans have to act as if their America is also all about quiet leafy suburbs, bbqs and Disneyland. Slavery and Jim Crow can be rememberd in the sanitized official ways that we're used to, but not with the righteous anger of a Jeremiah Wright.

This whole drama has little to say about Rev. Wright and Barak. It has a lot to say about how we Americans can't handle the reality of our own history.

Wait wait - this is not about 911. For how many decades before 2001 had these folks (not just Falwell) been condemning America? And no reaction from anyone - nothing, zip, zilch. In the sensitive environment after 911, Falwell got a slap on the wrist and got called a bigot.

That's an ocean apart from the treatment Wright got!

slap on the wrist

Well what I meant was that neither received the equivalent of death threats. Being called a bigot in America is one thing, but "un-American" is entirely something else.

Sure they did. Google Falwell and 9/11

So after 30 years of this rhetoric, Falwell (notice the other two never did) gets a slap on the wrist? Also was Falwell called "un-American" or "Americah-hating"?

Non-denominational worship at an elementary school on Sundays - Kevin, looks like you and I have more in common than we thought :)

The irony as it has struck me is that Falwell, Robertson, Billy Graham and others condemned America in ever harsher words for decades, and no one seemed to have anything to say about their "un-Americaness". All of a sudden the African American pastor of a African American presidential candidate says this and everyone is losing their minds!

Sorry carl the above was me

Oil is not enough of a bargaining chip because there is no moral authority behind oil. These states need a moral bargaining chip - possessing a commodity like oil is an irresistible temptation rather than a defensive bargaining chip against the West (look at Iraq today)

On the Israeli-Palestinian issue I don't take sides. I think the people on both sides have suffered a great deal. I just want to point out that this isn't a black and white issue. It's really quite complicated and the fact that there has been an impasse on this issue for decades is precisely because it is complicated - not because realistic solutions have not been possible from the very beginning.

So I take issue with black and white presentations of the issue which assume one side as good and the other as bad, while ignoring the deeper causes and dynamics behind the issue.