If you put as much effort into looking things up as you do into making things up, you’d be dangerous. Initial poll approval ratings after their election:
Kennedy 72%
Eisenhower 68%
Obama 68%
Carter 66%
How is Obama’s post-election rating “absurdly high”???
This is the UN Resolution to which intention is alluding. It’s a non-binding resolution which condemns religious “defamation” (specifically condemning “Christianophobia” and anti-semitism along with Islamophobia) and calls for religious tolerance. It has no force of law, makes nothing a crime, and proposes no infringements on free speech. It’s just a little statement that says, “religious defmation is bad…m’kay.”
Intention’s characterization is completely fraudulent.
How is 70% not absurdly high, especially in the current political era? Getting anything over 50% is wild success.
The statements of witnesses are meaningless, not only because the complainers are political hacks, but because it’s not the defendants’ fault that some pussies pretended to be scared. I saw the video. It was nothing. Trying to blow this kind of chickenshit up into an important news story is absurd. It was a couple of guys with sticks. It wasn’t worth the DOJ’s time. End of story. Especially since no one was prevented from voting.
Incidentally, even if we accept your own most fevered, paranoid interprtation of that incidnt as true, what the fuck does it have to do with Barack Obama?
When you whooosh upon a star
Makes no difference who you are!..
For someone who is unsullied by the influence of the voices of right-wing radio, you manage to come up with the same interpretations, almost word for word, all by yourself, as the talking heads spout every day. Even when they are completely false. You’re remarkable that way.
Anyone want to watch Fox News tonight to see if they mention how all the exit polls show that by a very large margin, today’s elections were not about Obama at all?
Reuters, in the cite you provided, doesn’t report that it is benign “defamation is bad m’kay” at all. I had said that a radical action was:
Reuters said (emphasis mine):
Note the part where it says the resolution seeks to “reinforce laws “to deny impunity” for those exhibiting intolerance of ethnic and religious minorities”. As in, throw blasphemers in jail …
So I’m not the only one who thinks that it is a mistake to propose that it be a crime to call the Prophet Mohammed an asshole. The representatives of India and Canada and 180 secular, religious and media groups have raised exactly the same objection that I raise. It jeopardizes freedom of expression on religious subjects.
Which to me, is radical. I believe what the Canadian representative said, that it is individuals that have rights, not religions. And I believe what the 180 organizations said, which is that the resolution may be used to silence and intimidate religious dissenters. Anyone who thinks that is not dangerous is not following the world news.
And for the people that claim I’m just quoting some right-wing fool, note that a wide range of governments, the media, religious, and secular groups oppose this crap. Are you accusing all of them of being “dittoheads” as well???
Your attempts at guilt by association are a joke. I don’t care who says or doesn’t say what I might say. I look at what I think is right, not who else might have said it.
In this case there’s lots of folks who agree with me, but that’s not the point except in your minds, so I bring it up. I follow what I think is right, and ugly as it might seem, sometimes even Rush is right, a blind hog will find an acorn once in a while.
This is a horrible resolution, one which tries to enshrine blasphemy laws and attempts to justify criminalization of opinion on religion. Do you people not understand the concept of freedom of speech, or do you just not care?
Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I’m a cartoonist who produced a set of 12 cartoons (PDF, zoom out to read it at proper size) of the Prophet in honor of the 12 Danish cartoonish who are still to this day under death threats for drawing pictures of the Prophet.
So I am a bit touchy on this subject, but for good reason, people have been killed for doing what I did. Your bullshit about “religious defamation is bad m’kay” provides justification and support for the maniacs who killed Theo Van Gogh and their ilk. You may find that trivial … I don’t.
Nothing you bolded supported your bullshit assertion. People “expressing fears” doesn’t mean jack shit. The resolution made nothing illegal. All it did was make a hollow condemnation of religious defamation. My Mr. Mackey characterization was completely accurate, and your pathetic appeal to pity doesn’t change the fact that you mischaracterized the resolution.
Then again, perhaps it will, since I pointed out that searching for “Black Panthers polling station” on MSNBC’s own search function returned 30 hits.
Oh, come on, dude. That dog won’t hunt. Obama’s approval ratings have dropped massively, regardless of the circumstances. Whether he could have done anything to prevent that is an open question.
There are about thirty United Nations General Assembly votes a day, plus anything from one to a dozen Security Council and any number of committee votes. I highly doubt anybody bothered to brief Obama on the nonbinding resolution before it was voted on, except perhaps to say, “oh, and the ambassador will be voting on a resolution condemning religious intolerance.”
As contentious as this one was, being the subject of intense debate since it was originally introduced in March, if they didn’t brief Obama then he was very poorly served.
Nor was this just any resolution. It was introduced by that bastion of human rights, Egypt, and one other country … the US. So if Obama didn’t know about it, shame on him.
Well, for what it’s worth, India apparently didn’t object to the resolution very strongly, seeing how it abstained from the vote.
I can’t find the actual text of the resolution anywhere.
I can’t believe I’m seeing Diogenes the Cynic defending blasphemy laws, or at least shrugging this resolution off as nothing to worry about. Aren’t you the guy who hates religion? I’ve seen you go bananas over much smaller matters of religious intrusion into affairs of the state. Or is it only Christians that bother you?
I also never thought I’d see the day that Canada would be standing up against the U.S. on an issue of individual rights of expression, and be on the side the angels. Oh, happy day!
I couldn’t reproduce that result. I tried it, and it gave me 10 results, but all of them were blogger comments … what am I doing wrong? I went to msnbc.msn.com, typed in the search string “Black Panthers polling station”. I got ten results. None of them were articles about the incident, every one was a blogger’s comment. Here’s one blogger that came up in the search …
My question exactly.
What am I missing here?
That was the vote on a very similar resolution back in March.
From a column in USAToday entitled “Just say no to blasphemy laws”:
The UN Resolution is a clear intrusion on free speech, and should never have been sponsored by the US. It provides cover for Islamic governments to jail people for criticizing their religion, and encourages western governments to follow Ireland’s lead and criminalize blasphemy.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/?id=11881780&q=black%20panthers%20polling%20station&p=1&st=1&sm=user
It’s not just you, because I did it just now and got one hit, then did it again and got 35.
It doesn’t provide anything. Nobody reads UN resolutions unless they’re desperately hunting for excuses to do silly things.
In any case, Ireland is firmly under the thumb of the Catholic Church. Most of the other western democracies are not, and you’ll notice that all those examples refer to speech directed at minority religions. Incidentally, the UK Racial and Religious Hatred Act was passed in order to give the government an excuse to deport people like Omar Bakri, which I’m perfectly alright with.
One has to blame the mainstream tedia for failing to advise us of the earth-shattering significance of this resolution. I am, like so many of you, stunned.
There aren’t any “blasphemy laws.” This resolution doesn’t make any laws at all.
What is there to worry about? what part of “religious intolerance is bad, mkay” do you disagree with?
No. You must be confusing me with somebody else.
How is this resolution an intrusion into anything? It’s a non-binding resolution that makes no law and abridges no expression. have you even read it? Do you have any dea what you’re talking about?
Christians don’t bother me, Sam. I’m married to one. I send my kids to a Catholic school. I’m not a bit bothered by any religion. Intrusions of the state into religion bother me, but not religion itself.
What individual right of expression is being abridged by this resolution? Be specific.