With Norad, kiddies will be tracking Santa, who flies with the fighter jets, as surely

[No Elephants]

as Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes.

NORAD Santa Tracker: Fighter Jet Escort Injecting Militarism Into Christmas, Critics Say

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/12/16/norad-santa-tracker_n_4455389.html

Nothing like taking the impressionable mind of a child and conflating within it Saint Nicholas, whom they adore and eagerly await all year long, and the US military. And heck, if Santa, the most beloved character to a child, needs a military escort, aren't we all lucky to have the military diving into our lives?

Maybe on Easter, fighter jets can accompany Jesus's spirit to heaven, so that the deification of the American military can be even more complete, and then return comfortingly to earth, with the Holy Spirit, so that they can also accompany the Easter bunny as he fills Easter baskets. What else do kids love? How about trick or treating with fighter jets?

If Bush had done this, Democrats would have been livid. But, it's Obama, a Democratic President, so it's no biggie to Democrats. And Republicans certainly aren't going to object because, apparently, celebrating Christmas properly has something to do with idolatry of the US military. So, neither "side" has a huge problem with it.

And so it goes with every type of RW move that a Democratic President makes.

Gives a whole new meaning to separation of Church and state. Now, government is brainwashing us from an early age to worship both Church and State.

[Enthusiast]

1. "They" would like us

to adopt militarism as the state religion. Seriously. Then we could embark on some "real" foreign adventurism.

[No Elephants]

2. If religious crusadeswere good enough for the Middle Ages, they're good enough for 2013!

That's what the Bible says, anyway.


I don't think I've mentioned before that I have twit of a cousin. One day, she said something typically twitty, then followed that with "It's in the Bible." To which I replied, "No, it isn't."

Recovering quickly, she said, "Whenever, I tell my daughter something, I tell her it's in the bible; and she believes me."

Since she had just tried to pull that on me, I take it her habit has nothing to do with her daughter. She just runs around telling people her twitty stuff comes from the Bible. Because most people today have not read the bible cover to cover, and no one expects her to lie about the Bible, they don't question her.

Meanwhile, her daughter cannot stand to have religion mentioned in her presence. She will run out of the room. No wonder. She thinks the Bible is full of twit.

[Enthusiast]

3. I heard that.

The Duck Dynasty guy's condemnation of gays might be in the bible too. But it's no more emphasized than wearing clothing that combined two different materials or eating shellfish. It seems the bible was written with lawyers in mind as one can find a passage to support most any assertion.

[No Elephants]

4. A lot of the Biblical books of Genesis and Leviticus establish the

laws that were supposed to govern the Jews.

They are not all religious laws, either. Even things like dog bite are covered. The first time, the dog's primary human doesn't get into too much trouble, but after that, he or she does. The idea is that the first bite gave the human reason to know that the dog is a biter. And terms like "reason to know" and "reasonable" abound in our law to this day, including in the Fourth Amendment. And yes, those who studied and interpreted Jewish laws intensely were often asked, even during Biblical times, to represent a fellow Jew accused of violating the Biblical laws.

FYI, if you understand what the Bible says about dog bites, you can predict the outcome of Judge Judy's dog bite cases, as well as a lot of her other cases, that's how closely and permanently Biblical law and secular law is interwined. And, it is said that much of Biblical law was preceded by the Code of Hammurabi, out of ancient Iraq. If true, we lived by their laws for millenia, then, in one of life's many ironies, we supervised writing of their constitution. American exceptionalism. (Great excuse for not learning the metric system!)

I don't know which really came first, the lawyers or the full development of Old Testament law, in all its eventual extremes. For that matter, even if one believes that every word in the Bible was divinely inspired, it was never written down by God, but by all too human priests and scribes. (As my friend point it out to me, the only words actually written by God were the ten commandments. Homosexuality did not make it to the Big Ten or to anything that Jesus spoke.)

The bible and homosexuality is a complex subject in my mind, starting with the full meaning of original Hebrew word and how the Bible was pretty much locked way from the hoi polloi by the clergy of one religion or another until the King James translation and the invention of the printing press came together.

Also worth mentioning: the extremes to which the actual pronouncements were taken. I don't know the original motive behind the simple Biblical order not to seethe (or cook) a goat in its mother's milk. However, that eventually led to, among other things, observant Jews having to have four sets of pots, dishes and flatware. And why there are workarounds for so many things that originated in the Old Testament, like using credit cards at Bloomingdales on the Sabbath for a $2.50 purchase because handling cash is forbidden--though not by the Bible itself. But no leeway whatever for homosexuals. You have to declare them dead, then mourn them formally, then ignore them for the rest of your life or theirs. And, of course, things that are emphasized heavily in the Bible, like love and not judging, just get thrown aside. A convicted murder on Death Row is entitled to marry, but not a homosexual? Why? After all, murder made it to the Big Ten. Homosexuality did not.

I think that homosexuality was an easy thing for an otherwise sinful heterosexual to abstain from--easier than say, lying or coveting his neighbor's wife or cheating on his own wife. So, it gets treated as if it's the most heinous sin of all. But, that's all of this very complex (to me) issue I can deal with right now.

[No Elephants]

5. P.S, This guy says no one these days believes that Moses was inspired by the Code of

Hammurabi.

The theory that Moses’ Law is simply a rewording of Hammurabi’s has largely been abandoned today, due to the fact that similar law codes, even older than Hammurabi’s, have been found in various other places. These would include the Cuneiform laws, written as early as 2350 B.C.; the Code of Urukagina, 2380 B.C.; the Code of Ur-Nammu, 2050 B.C.; and others.

Read more: http://www.gotquestions.org/Moses-Hammurabi-code.html#ixzz2oNugI4eN

Then again, most people who write about such things in these times have an agenda of one kind or another. So, who knows?

This site has a comparison of sorts. http://www.specialtyinterests.net/codexhammurabi.html

And, of course, since the invasion of Iraz, the Code is perhaps literally a dead letter.

Among the artifacts that may have been carried off by looters are the tablets containing Hammurabi’s Code and the 4600-hundred year old Ram in the Thicket from Ur. The 4300-year old bust of an Akkadian king was destroyed by vandals. What was not destroyed by the Mongols in 1248 was allowed to be destroyed by the Americans in 2003. Gone are the artifacts of ancient Sumeria, Assyria, Babylon, Mesopotamia, Ninevah, and Ur.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2003/04/10/are-americans-the-new-mongols-of-the-mideast/

I remember Dennis Miller discussing at the time the fact that soldiers had been told not to attempt to stop the looting of the Baghdad Museum.

"So fucking what? It was a bunch of old shit and their new shit is just like their old shit." (That may be off by a word, if that, that's how much of an impression his yahooism made on me. Here, I am using "Yahoo" as Jonathan Swift used it in Gulliver's Travels, not as used to name something on the internet.)

Yeah, because, when I was in Egypt, no one cared about the Sphinx and when I was in Greece, no one cared about the Acropolis. And no one anywhere cares about some so called Dead Sea scrolls that a little Arab boy found in a cave.

http://www.mywordswritten.org/DeadSeaScrolls.html

I guess they were exactly like their new shit.

So, if someone invaded the US and ordered troops to loot the Middle Eastern antiquities sections of, for example, the the Met in NY and Fine Arts in Boston, it would be okay with Miller because old Middle Eastern shit is just like new Middle Eastern shit?

[Enthusiast]

7. Well, the guy that wrote that certainly displays his

bias when he says, "Hammurabi claimed to receive his code from the Babylonian god of justice, Shamash. Moses received God’s Law atop Mount Sinai directly from Jehovah, the God of the Israelites."

He says, "Hammurabi claimed." In other words he doubts the veracity of these claims. But he goes on to say that Moses, in fact, received the ten commandments directly from God. He doesn't want to admit that Hammurabi law influenced OT law so he says it didn't.



Yes, Dennis Miller is a complete Dubya apologist. And an idiot. Iraq was cluster fuck from day one. But Fox and the other TV "News" sources effectively scrubbed the media of Iraq War criticism. And nothing better illustrates the complete bias of the American media.

[No Elephants]

6. I don't know what to do about Duck Dynasty since I never watched it.

Guess I'll just have to...continue not watching it?

Do you have any idea who the sponsors are?

[Enthusiast]

8. I have never watched it either.

I have never been a fan of "reality" TV, which is entirely contrived.

[Divine Discontent]

9. yes, just painful stuff, at least 90% of it.

I get a kick out of Amazing Race some times. But, about the OP, that just sickens me... ugh

[No Elephants]

10. I saw a bit of it on TV, with the fighter jets. Sickened me as well.

What a bizarre way to mark the birth of the Prince of Peace.

And to impress children that fighter jets and Santa are somehow associated.

Or that even Santa needs a military escort.

I really cannot count all the ways it is wrong.