You've seen the [f]right[ened] wing's tactic. Hammer one statement or short snippet of video or talking point over and over again in the vainglorious hope that someday, MAYBE, it will stick.
Even if the facts don't tally with their catchphrases: call CARS a failure when the industry called it a success, mention TelePrompTers as a failing even though there are pics up the Wazoo of Republican politicians reading from the glass screen. Compare Obama to Carter on the subject of employment, even though the Republicans haven't had a champion as good as Carter (3.1% increase per year) since the early 1920s.
It always pays to question conservatives on their hatred, their talking points, their cognitive dissonance. Because occasionally, just occasionally, you get to show one person just how fucked up their world-view really is.
More below the fold.
I'd love to do this as individual images, but time is short this evening. If you want to see an image of the entire thread, click here. But be warned, it's not as exciting as when the conversation was taking place.
It started as a Facebook entry I made yesterday at 8:47am . It was the news story concerning two Egyptian Christians that were in bodily danger at the protest at Saint Burlington Of The Hallowed Coats. Even though they were against the Park51 building, they failed the litmus test with the crowd. That is, of course, if Litmus paper turned from pink to brown. As his first reply, Mike (the Freeper) posted a link to a CanadaFreePress.com web page, and right away it was full of lies and misdirections. As I pointed out:
http://www1.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/nefaikhwan1007.pdf
Here's a document also mentioning [CanadaFreePress's] "Exhibit 003-0085", from three years ago ...but unlike your website (which seems to have an agenda linked to a clock counting down how long Obama has until he's not President!) it doesn't mention Feisal Abdul-Rauf. Once. At all.
Your article also lies about the source of its documents. It mentions "Cataloged as Exhibit 003-0085 by the U.S. federal government", but the link isn't to the Federal Government. It goes to HomelandSecurityUS.com (which is not a .gov website).
http://www.sourcewatch.org/...
Sourcewatch shows how this website is owned by Northeast Intelligence Network (NEIN) based in Erie, PA, and are (according to their own parent company mission statement) "not related to OR ENDORSED BY any government agency". If you have to peddle a lie to try and score political points, it just makes the conservative cause look bad.
A lie on a website pushing an agenda of hate. Hate is NOT the default setting for life.
As is always the way when someone disagrees with such pesky things as facts, the topic quickly took a sharp turn to the right and never returned to the initial point of the protesters. If you're not with us, you're probably not of European descent.
Ten minutes of digging, however, and we have our first catch of the day. I added this at 1pm yesterday.
I did manage to find one person definitely linked to, and convicted of, having ties to terrorist organizations mentioned in the two documents...
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmem...
Former Rep. Mark Siljander (R-MI) pleaded guilty today to obstruction of justice and "acting as an unregistered foreign agent," in connection with his work as a lobbyist for a group with terrorism ties.
According to a press release from the Department of Justice, Siljander, who served in Congress from 1981 to 1987, pleaded guilty today to lying to federal investigators during their probe of the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA).
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Taa daaaaa!!!
So first off, the scary Muslims link provided points right back to a Reagan Republican. Obvious response: ignore completely.
How's that sharia law working out for you across the pond? I bet all those muslim women are happy you allow different standards for them compared to other citizens. Got any tickets to the next stonings at Scotland Yard?
We're all jealous you have two goverments now-
I was born in Great Britain (hello? ShawnGBR...), but have been a US citizen for years. I last visited the UK in 2006. And I saw Mike that day, so I have no idea why I would be across the Atlantic Ocean. As I say, he didn't address Mark Siljander (R-MI) and his link to the same terrorists he is so scared of.
There then followed a protracted quote session from the Founding Fathers, how that great American Winston Churchill hated Arabs too, and of course the questions as to why can't I build a church in Saudi Arabia.
Is that a big Chistmas wish of conservatives? "Dear Santa, I would like a bike and a Nintendo and a church in Saudi Arabia"? I've seen the world from Perth in Perthshire to Bondi Bay in New South Wales, but I've never been to Saudi Arabia. Or had the desire to build a church there. You know: for a party that floats the idea that they're the best for business (they're not), but still ...you'd have thought they would crunch the numbers and understand they're trying to sell coals to Newcastle with the whole 'church in Saudi Arabia' idea. Not a big Christian immigrant population out there, is what I'm saying.
So I addressed the topic of how I could say this is not a Christian Nation...
Lots of quotes, but none of them Federal laws (and not my beloved King of anything: I wasn't a Royalist when I was in Britain).
So to get back to your assertion: "you still have not proven your claim that this country wasn't built on mostly Christian beliefs."
That wasn't my assertion. That's called a straw-man argument. Say I meant one thing, disprove that thing (which I didn't say). In fact, I haven't said one way or the other. What I did say was "Either like the freedoms in the Bill of Rights, or you don't." So now I get the chance to say what I can prove.
It's obvious the PEOPLE that founded the country believed in a divine creator. It's in the Declaration of Independence. But not the word 'God' by itself ("Creator", "Nature's God", the "Supreme Judge of the world" are mentioned, but no preference to God/Dieu/Gott, Allah, Yahweh, Odin, Zeus, Jupiter). We know they had Bibles. More on Washington's Bible, and that 'quote', in a minute. And Jefferson removed supernatural bits from his copy.
My point is, and has always been, that this NATION was not founded as a Christian Nation. Here's the proof.
As you know, the Constitution has the Supremacy Clause. Article VI, Clause 2: "all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land".
Article 11 of one such treaty, the Treaty of Tripoli. Signed into law by President John Adams, a man that also signed the Declaration of Independence. It begins with the statement: As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.
Official records show that after President John Adams sent the treaty to the Senate for ratification in May 1797, the entire treaty was read aloud on the Senate floor, and copies were printed for every Senator. A committee considered the treaty and recommended ratification, 23 of the 32 sitting Senators were present for the June 7 vote which unanimously approved the ratification recommendation.
All read allowed. All voted on. Including the phrase "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion".
The Supreme Law Of The Land, under Article VI of the US Constitution.
So you ask how I can say that? Because that's the law of the land.
And now onto Washington's "so help me God". A long letter by the French foreign minister Comte de Moustier, who attended the ceremony, repeated the oath word for word. It did not include the additional words "so help me God."
It wasn't until 65 years after the event that the story that Washington added this phrase first appeared in a published volume. In his book, The Republican Court, Rufus Griswold cited a childhood memory of Washington Irving as his source.
Washington Irving was six years old when George Washington was sworn in, living in New York. He did get to meet George Washington, the man after whom he was named. Once. And over 60 years later, he said George Washington said "so help me God" when there had been absolutely no report of it for 60 years previous.
And it would have been completely out of character for George Washington to have tampered with the constitutional text in this way. He presided over the Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, and he took the Constitution produced there very seriously. He was reported to be a Constitutional literalist. He came up with the oath as set down in Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution.
So you're giving lots of quotes. And the one actually related to the US Government isn't even a true quote!
...and sure enough, the historical quotes stopped. Like I said at the beginning of this diary, it always pays to question conservatives on their hatred, their talking points, their cognitive dissonance. Because facts are like kryptonite to them. I know: in that analogy, that makes them Superman...
...but Superman has always been a bit of a dick.
Things got rather interesting at around 11pm yesterday when Mike posted this...
CAIR promotes a radical Islamic vision, as evidenced by the fact that its co-founder Omar Ahmad told a Fremont, California audience in July 1998: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran … should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth." In a similar spirit, co-founder Ibrahim Hooper told a reporter in 1993: "I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future."
In 2003 Hooper stated that if Muslims ever become a majority in the United States, they will likely seek to replace the U.S. Constitution with Islamic law, which they deem superior to man-made law. In the late 1980s, Ihsan Bagby, who would later become a CAIR Board member, stated that Muslims "can never be full citizens of this country," referring to the United States, "because there is no way we can be fully committed to the institutions and ideologies of this country."
CAIR is the Council on American-Islamic Relations, but that's not the interesting part.
The interesting part is that Comedy Central was running its piece that directly linked CAIR to the Saudi part-owner of Fox News at around the same time he was typing this. So as a reply today, I posted this...
Here's what you wrote 13 hours ago.
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CAIR promotes a radical Islamic vision, as evidenced by the fact that its co-founder Omar Ahmad told a Fremont, California audience in July 1998: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran … sh...ould be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth." In a similar spirit, co-founder Ibrahim Hooper told a reporter in 1993: "I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future."
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Ta daa!
http://www.rawstory.com/...
Al-Waleed donated $500,000 to the Council on American-Islamic Relations — which has been repeatedly denounced on Fox News's air by Geller and others as a terror group — in 2002. Indeed, Rauf's "numerous ties to CAIR" alone have been cited by the mosque's opponents as a justification for imputing terrorist sympathies to him, yet few people seem to be asking whether Murdoch's extensive multi-billion business collaboration with the man who funds both Rauf and CAIR merits investigation or concern.
Other beneficiaries of Al-Waleed's largess include the Islamic Development Bank, a project designed to "foster the economic development and social progress of [Muslims] in accordance with the principles of Shari'ah." The IDB funds the construction of mosques around the world, and has been implicated by frequent Fox News guest Stephen Schwartz in an attempt to spread radical Wahhabism (a fundamentalist branch of Islam) throughout the United States.
You're trying to blame someone? RUPERT MURDOCH OWNS PART OF AL-WALEED'S COMPANY AS WELL AS HIM OWNING A LARGE PART OF FOX NEWS.
Who's funding the terrorists? Who has ties directly to CAIR? Who is fostering the economic development and social progress of Muslims in accordance with the principles of Sharia Law? Fox News Channel.
You want to be afraid? THERE'S your connection. THERE'S your money to the "establishment of a world Islamic state governed by Koranic law". THERE'S your side of the street, Mike, it's funded and lobbied by conservative terrorist sympathizers. THERE'S your "Manson type cult", advertising wheelchairs to seniors and gold investments on American satellite TV. THERE'S your "don't get fooled by their rhetoric", American 'news' presenters not allowed to say the hijackers were Saudi because they're paid by a Saudi.
That was seven hours ago. In a Facebook thread that had Mike posting up to eight times in an hour (check out his posts that were made "23 hours ago" on the image), suddenly presenting him with the fact that it was him watching Fox News which was helping fund the building of his biggest fear shut him down completely.
I posted a link to The Daily Show video as my next media entry. He hasn't posted at all in that. Strange, strange.
What can you learn from this diary and the Facebook thread itself? Never back down. Never give an inch. Always double-check their sources because you'll find they're easy to discredit with a bit of research (see the George Washington "so help me God" myth). And sometimes, when the fates are with you, events transpire just at the right time to completely turn a [f]right[ened] winger's world inside out within a day of his scaremongering. Turning his attempts to scare anyone reading into his own. Worst. Nightmare.
Mike hasn't just stopped posting after the coup de grace, he hasn't posted all evening. I think I broke his brain.