gasp! horrors! Obama meets intelligent people!

[realthog]

Thanks to freethinker/revere for this, of which there's lots more:

According to some notorious hate groups, the Obama administration is meeting with hate groups:

Some conservative commentators are accusing the Obama administration of inviting "hate groups" into the White House by holding a meeting with a coalition of secularist and atheist groups. Officials from the Justice and Health and Human Services departments met Friday with representatives of the Secular Coalition for America, an umbrella group that includes American Atheists and the Council for Secular Humanism. The coalition called it "the first time in history a presidential administration has met for a policy briefing with the American nontheist community." (Daniel Tencer, Raw Story)

The complainants are the usual line-up of KKK-flavored religious fanatics like the always-off-his-meds whacko Bill Donohue of the Catholic League [. . .]

Myself, I wonder why it is that so many in the US establishment agree with me that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an extremely nasty piece of work while failing to acknowledge that the US faux-religious right is packed out with so many Mahmoud Ahmadinejads -- of whom Bill Donohue is just one. To an objective, non-partisan observer there is no difference between, say, the Ayatollah Khameini and Pat Robertson -- they're both vile psychopathic bastards who believe that the voices speaking in their heads entitle them to commit the most heinous of hate crimes. Perhaps they're one step up from mercenaries like Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly and Rush LimbHawHaw, who peddle hate because that's what lines their pockets, but it's a small step.

This cannot be said of the couple of people I've met who were at the White House the other day. Of one I know she's such a threat to modern society that, at an NYC meeting we both attended, she was (a) the other person busting to get to a lav afterwards, and (b) the one who in her despair scurried into the gents' by accident, leaving me hopping around in the corridor because I didn't have the guts to charge into the ladies'. Aside from that, she's a very charming and tolerant person.

There are some Third World countries in which there might expectedly be a public uproar (whether officially orchestrated or otherwise) should their heads of state convene a meeting with avowedly intelligent people: Zimbabwe, Uganda, Iran, Burma, Sudan, North Korea . . . It's to the very profound shame of the US right that the US should join such ranks.

Comments

[sarcobatus.livejournal.com]

OMG, he's back, and with a vengence.

It's Rush Limburger, btw.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

vengence

SP

[sarcobatus.livejournal.com]

All right, here's your freaking "a".

sheesh

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Thank you kindly, ma'am.

*rolls eyes*

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Rush ought to begin his broadcasts "Jairmany calling..."

[realthog.livejournal.com]

And his listeners would grin in the smug knowledge that Jairmany is somewhere in South America, or is it East Asia or one of those other Pacific islands . . .?

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

A beach resort in the Dominican Republic.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Which as Sarah Palin can tell you is somewhere in the continent of South Africa, or does she mean Ukraine . . .? You know, the one where the Face on Mars can be found.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Ah, that would be Uranus.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Yes, yes, yes. Sometimes that mote in the US eye is so huge it's embarrassing.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

But see the comment directly below from thalinoviel. Seems it's not just the US that has a beam-sized mote . . .

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Oh, that one is ridiculous and should never have got that far. There's too much pandering to the Mail readership. If you want really daft, you should look at the last few days in the Daily Fail. There's an election due and the right wing press are in overdrive.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Oh, that one is ridiculous and should never have got that far.

Well, yes, like Guantanamo Bay. It's no excuse. That there's a loony judge is one thing; that the Establishment chooses to do nothing about it while the Know Nothings cheer is quite another.

There's too much pandering to the Mail readership.

I've been hearing dribs and drabs of this, and being horrified (as by the Mail's campaign of lies and misrepresentation over climate change). Even despite this, the mainstream "news" media here are perhaps in even worse shape.

[thalinoviel.livejournal.com]

Meanwhile in the land of enlightenment one of our students has been jailed for 6 months for attending a protest.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

Many thanks for this, of which I had heard nothing. This is truly disgusting. Every time I read about this sort of institutionally racist shit I remember that ghastly self parody of Bush explaining to the American people why it was that Al Quaida had attacked: nothing to do with the US foreign policy of dropping bombs on defenceless Muslims, ya know, but all to do with "They hate us for our freedoms".

No: first we turn some among our number into "they"; then we mistreat and abuse "them"; and then we wonder why "they" hate us.

Sickening. I've forwarded the article on to friends here so they can know it's not just in the US that anti-Muslim racism is becoming the new cool.