Most humans are Dogs. Ingratiating, insecure, ass sniffing dogs.
Good morning Charles.

I don't see how any of this explains Netanyahu. Or am I just playing into your hands here?

Must we be slaves to ridiculous myths and superstitions? Fools.

I just thought of a great game where you have stories like this about crazy religious acts stripped of any clues as to the date and you have to decide if it happened after the year 2000 or before the year 1000.

Ooh, can we stone women, now? There's a number of them I'd like to hit with a rock.

Oh, we're not a stone-age society anymore and have civil laws and discourse? Dang. I was really looking forward to my second amendment remedies to those sinful women who talk back to men despite the Bible outlawing uppity women.

(and the award for most offensive post this morning goes to: )

Guess he should have been reincarnated as a honey badger. Oh religion, you so crazy!

I was not aware that Jews believed in reincarnation.

@4 shw3nn, that would make a great website!

The clever lawyer dog escaped! Solid evidence that the judges' suspicions were correct!

@5: It wasn't the Stone Age but the advent of laws which bought about the practice of stoning to begin with.

@3 Yes, must we be slaves to superstitions and ridiculous myths like: Obama's a good president and the Democrats aren't in the tank for the rentier class? I know, Vince, it will be a hard-fought battle to disabuse yourself of these silly, foolish and trite beliefs you keep spouting but please continue to pick on easy targets like religion.

@10 Okay, feel free to believe Obama is a bad president but please don't ignore that the alternative was to have an infirm president with creationist vice president?

These two topics are not quite as divorced as you would have us believe.

Humans cannot become dogs? I wish someone had told me that before I paid for all that surgery.

@8 - Clever lawyer dog? Come with me, we have a show to pitch to CBS.

Funny you mention that. "Oh Heavenly Dog" was on TV last night.

"Obama doesn't do everything I want him to do at all time. Therefore, I won't vote for him, He'll feel really bad when he finds out he didn't get my vote!"

That, in a nutshell is apparently what passes for mainstream thought in today's liberal movement.

Over at the Netroots Nations, my fellow homos are having a hissy fit over an Obama campaign document from 1996. Because, after all, there's no statute of limitations on having your feeling hurt, and it feel so good to be morally indignant.

Forget about saving Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Forget about stopping the cutting of social programs for people with AIDS. Forget about ENDA and DOMA and making sure DADT's demise actually gets implemented. Forget about how three of the liberal judges on the Supreme Court are all but dead (seriously, they're collective age is like 250). It's all about the glamor and how much a Pomeranian you and be. Life is apparently one big reality show for our GLBT "leaders"

Yes, I am perhaps rather overly disgusted. Maybe it's the weather?

@ #7 -- Jews don't believe in reincarnation, except for the members of the regressive Orthodox sects who live in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods like Mea Shearim, where they take direction on their daily lives from rabbis who lived in the 17th and 18th centuries in places like Poland and Byelorussia. These are the people who throw (large) rocks at women who show too much forearm by dressing "immodestly" and stage riots over the Jerusalem Gay Pride parade.

@14: Forget how he escalated the war in Afganistan and started bombing poor people in Pakistan too, proving himself to be just another vile mass murderer. Forget how he has increased FBI surveillance and persecution of activists in the US, stripped even more constitutional rights than Bush, and increased deportations. He not only failed to close Guantanamo as promised, but has continued extraordinary rendition. I won't even go into his economic policies, which have been almost entirely in favor of the richest 1%. His "Change We Can Believe In" has amounted to nothing more to an occasional bone thrown to liberals like you, meanwhile his overall policies and actions not only reflect Bush/Cheney but are in many ways far worse. He should stop incinerating tens of thousands of people, torturing hundreds, and locking up people for speaking their mind; he can keep his half-assed repeal of DADT.

Faustian.

Calm yourself bhowie. A stroke is a terrible way to go.

Do I think Obama is perfect? Of course not, and I never did. He was always too moderate for me, but he wasn't McCain, and that was good enough for me.

You, on the other hand, get all touchy, upset the game board, and lock yourself in the bathroom, expecting us all to coax you to come out. And we never do.

It sounds like you want a revolution, and that's fine. I wouldn't mind one myself, as long as it wasn't too messy. Until then, I dance with whomever won't mark up my dance card too much. We have real world problems. The root of it is too much money in the hands of too few people. That explains the wars, the stagnant Congress, and the dreadful economy. But too many liberals, or whatever you call yourself, just want to pose and preen and lecture about how morally superior you are to the rest of us.

So tell me this: what is your solution? I'm open to new ides.

Just another little Israeli quirk, I guess. I hadn't heard this one before.

@18: Sorry for getting all "touchy" in the face of crimes against humanity. I'm sure a mother in a small village in Pakistan who just saw her family blown up by a Predator drone would say, "That's okay. Stay calm. At least he's not McCain, and that is good enough for me." I'm sure Bradley Manning feels the same way. Right now someone is in a dark room having his fingernails yanked out because of Obama...I'm sure he would tell us to "stay calm."

It is attitudes like yours that allow Obama to get away with it. Take a little look at the history books sometime and tell me how positive social change came about. It is always "messy" but less messy than the alternative. Meanwhile, we are all complicit in crimes against humanity.

Oh, by the way, you don't know me. Not only do I not lock myself in a room, I bust my ass 12 hours a day working for social justice. Speaking of which, I have to get back to work. Enjoy the rainy weekend.

Also: My solution? That could take all day, it's complex, just like the world. But we could start by not supporting and apologizing for Democrats who just sell us out almost every time. As Emma Goldman said, "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal."

It's stuff like this that's the reason why I make absolutely no distinction between religious people and the shirtless whackos on the street corner yelling at invisible demons.

Let's all agree to call out mental illness when we see it.

Charles' statement has the tone of a weary, long-suffering parent explaining something obvious to a very dumb child.

Or maybe I'm just projecting.

bhowie, I'm w/ ya on Obama's bullshit, but please take a moment to reflect on Catalina's point: we have water-carriers for the monied class, and our other choice is FUCKING CRAZY. Dem v. Rep.

And let me point out that, while times of revolution seem romantic, they actually were filled w/ a lot of wonderful people dead in uncaring massacres & many lives destroyed. Be careful what you wish for.

Catalina: How are you going to save Medicare, Social Security, etc. FROM Obama and the Democratic party? That's what I want to know because they certainly don't believe in saving them--all posturing aside. This fake fight over the deficit was orchestrated by Obama with his deficit commission that recommended...reducing Medicare and SS, while they are far more solvent than other programs. And if you believe his assertions that cutting those programs is not on the table, you might want to examine the other wonderful promises he's made and broken. He's a neoliberal on roids. I've called him conservative too many times to remember because he strikes me as that.

Forget NN11: it's just a way to co-opt and dissipate the left. Kos still owns that and he's nothing but a Democratic Party frontman. It will work and those people will vote for the President.

Oh, and there's things like this which should disgust and outrage everyone who professed a genuine desire to change things in 2008. Remember "fundamental change" Obama?

"I wouldn't mind one myself, as long as it wasn't too messy." That's the problem. This is a conflict that will be messy either way: through abject impoverishment of the lower class or through an actual conflict (which I don't think has to be violent) between the classes that may get worse at some point but might put us on a path that doesn't guarantee the former.

"But too many liberals, or whatever you call yourself, just want to pose and preen and lecture about how morally superior you are to the rest of us." And there are too many amoral "pragmatic" liberals, or whatever you call yourself, that roll over for the skullfuck their being handed by supposedly reasonable and brilliant politicians.

@26 "their" should be "they're"

Sorry, I got all worked up. I am certainly not advocating bloody revolution here @27. I've read too much about that history to know the same thing you said. I think we have to be smarter than that and see what can work before it's too late though. On a bigger point though: we have to provide feedback to this system as it's already out of control. There are no bailouts for environmental and societal collapse.

er @25 not @27

On the bright side, Disney's movie version of this case, "The Shaggy Rabbi," comes out this fall and is going to be HILARIOUS fun for the whole family!

Catalina, how I love you. Mwah!

Jewish Rabbinical Courts: now endorsing animal cruelty in the name of voodoo bullshit. Convert today!

Voting has always been a choice between two evils. Obama sucks, sure, but the alternatives are 1) vote for a religious nutbag Republican ( no thanks) or 2) vote for a third-party liberal ideologue, which would make me feel pretty smug - at least until as a result I'm stuck with a religious nutbag as my president.

I have a friend who voted for Nader. In Florida. And to this day he defends it, saying Gore would have been no different than Bush. And, yes, Gore would have sucked, but we wouldn't have Roberts on the bench. We probably wouldn't have invaded the wrong country. We certainly wouldn't have debt created by "job-creating" tax cuts. My friend sounds a lot like @10. (Rick, is that you?)

Catalina, my solution revolves around everyone waking up to the fact that it's not about Presidential politics, it's a distracting horse-race that clearly will only change things at the margins when you're only choices are betwixt R's and D's. I voted for him in '08 cuz the idea of Palin a heartbeat away from The Football honestly gave me nightmares, but this time around, as long as he's ahead in the polls I'm voting 3rd party to register my incredible dissatisfaction. Hell, I dunno, I might even vote R to try and send the message that the D's need to run an actual populist next time if they want a two-termer. Will a Republican president be worse? Of course, in the short term, but we need to be thinking long term on either how we get the Democratic Party back on our side, or making them so irrelevant that there's finally an opening for an actual liberal party again. But the spotlight focus we have on Presidential politics is the problem. It's not where the real change will happen.

Thanks @34. The empty suits, whether they have a D or R attached to their name, are going to do what they do with little variance. Only when we focus our attention on actual organizing will we get any real hope and change.

@25: I do NOT romanticize about revolution. Believe me, I'd rather live my comfortable life and not worry about it.

Troll: I said "little variance," not "no variance."

OuterCow, I agree that it's not about Presidential politics, but we part ways there. No one will learn a lesson from a protest vote, because there's no teacher. The R's will just count the vote, and talk about how the country is "center right", and the point will be lost on the D's.

I think it's much more about starting from the ground up, much like the conservatives did, and electing city council people, state assemblymen, congressional representatives, etc. A congress full of Bernie Sanders, Dennis Kuchinich's and even Jim McDermotts would be able to affect real change in the right direction.

That doesn't mean you neglect the Presidential position, of course. There's still that pesky Supreme Court to worry about, and the whole veto thing. You may not be satisfied with Sonya Sotomayer and Elena Kagen, but I assure you they are better than whatever Alito or Roberts clone McCain would have come up with.

Building from the grassroots involves both hard work and having a sense of both politics and humor. You don't attract people to your cause by haranguing them about atrocities. It just doesn't work.

Speaking of that, bhowie, your tax dollars pay for our atrocities as much as mine. We're both to blame equally. So I'm not going to be browbeaten by someone who claims a higher morality than I, whether they claim it in the name of God, or by how much "Social Justice" work they do. That's why I quit going to Socialist Party meetings. There's only so much of that one can take.

To suggest that there's "little variance" between a D and an R is to ignore Social Security, the Civil Rights Act, and every piece of contentious progressive legislation passed in the last fifty years. Yes, it's a slow, agonizing process, but that's how democracy works.

@40: First, I did say "we are all complicit." Second, I didn't comment on the social justice work I do (which is NOT fucking Socialisti Party meetings) for some claim of moral high ground. I was countering your description of me as someone who locks themselves in their room.

I agree with you about building from the grassroots, but my "haranguing about atrocities" is my counter-argument to liberals who so smugly defend Obama. It's sickening.

41: Social Security and the Civil Rights Act exist not because some fucking Democratic president ordained it, but because people organized in the streets and MADE them.

Bhowie dear, you must try not to be so literal. When I spoke of locking oneself in the bathroom, it was an exaggeration to make a point. Aren't they teaching that in English 101 or something these days?

And pretentious haranguing is not, unfortunately, limited to Socialist party meetings. You prove that point nicely.

By the way, you really need to brush up on your history, dear: while I agree that the civil rights movement was largely because of citizen engagement, and the Democratic party, at least at the grassroots level, was not particularly helpful, Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid (along with the rest of the New Deal, New Frontier, Great Society) were pretty much Democratic inventions.

Lastly, presidents don't "ordain" anything. They propose, Congress dispose. It's too bad they don't require Civics classes anymore. Self-righteous undergrads unsed to be so better informed.....

Ok, dear. With a little analysis of social history beyond the implementation of policy, one would know that the "inventions" of the Democratic Party came about due to social pressures. Dear. History is not about facts, but analysis. THAT is what you learn in levels above 101 Civics classes. Thanks for reminding me.
When I said "ordained" I too was not being literal. Two can play that game. Dear.

@36 Please. Well, at least you're a consistent asshole. I don't read Krugman and I am not trying to be smart although this little accusation is the refuge of those who don't want to actually substantively counter the assertion they're trying to demean. Nice attempt at derailing or marginalizing.

@44 I am sorry, social security is not a Democratic invention (much less an American one). Keep in mind that there was an actual left wing back when social security was first being proposed in America. The idea of social security really started within the totally independent Progressive Party. Remember, they had their own party when Theodore Roosevelt was running.

What? bhowie, are you trying to say that political parties don't exist in a vacuum, and that they are actually a product of social trends, and that politicians from that party respond to those trends? Say it isn't so! Then why aren't we all members of the Bhowie Scold party? After all, you seem to have the One True Way, and the rest of us are just standing in the way of it.

And just to clarify: You were being too literal in your reading of my original post, and you are being too literal in your comments regarding my comments about your use of the word "ordained". Ironic, isn't it?

In any event, at 11am you assured us that you were spending twelve hours a day "busting your ass" for social justice. Back so soon, dear? I mean, yes, it's the Sabbath and all, but isn't your work too Terribly Important to be distracted by social customs, or the likes of Little Me?

Fucking Sky Bully bullshit. Idiots.

"And pretentious haranguing is not, unfortunately, limited to Socialist party meetings. You prove that point nicely."

Ah, but you also prove that condescension is not relegated to trolldom here. Why's it necessary to be that way? I still think we're all on the same "side."

You're right. I'm wasting time. I don't pretend to have all the answers. I never said I did. I'm just questioning liberals unwavering support for Obama. I was trying to make a point, not to engage in personal attacks on anyone here. Have a good night.

dirac, I agree with what your said @47, and I only meant "invention" in the sense that it was the Democratic Party that was in power when the concept became a policy of the US government. If you want to get really wonky, I think that George Washington proposed something very similar for the District of Columbia.

And I'm sorry if I came off as condescending, and I apologize to bhowie if he/she took offense. I do agree that we all want basically the same thing, but disagree on the nuances. In my defense, sweeping generalizations and pompous statements always bring out the smartass in me, even when I make them myself (and I do on occasion, as anyone who reads Slog regularly knows).

My original comment was that I was frustrated - and remain frustrated - by elements on "the left" not wanting to engage in political discourse. Instead - in my analogy, which I stand by - they want to kick over the game board and lock themselves in the (metaphorical) bathroom. I understand the impulse, but I think that it is futile. Obama is not the best president, and he's let a lot of people down. But he's what we have to work with. A foot in the door, as I have often said.

From that original comment, it devolved into a pissing match that I provided the iced tea for. Others provided the beer, watermelon and coffee, and I thought a good time was being had by all.

@52 I should've taken my chill pill today. I myself don't mean no harm and I get your frustration. The one thing I still contend is that without even a sliver of a threat to Obama and the third way'ers that they'll keep doing what's best for the privileged. People can trash potential third parties or movements all they want and say it's worthless but outside pressure has been relatively good for labor, civil rights, etc.

It's sad, though, to think how little things hav changed in 100 years:

"Our fight is a fundamental fight against both of the old corrupt party machines, for both are under the dominion of the plunder league of the professional politicians who are controlled and sustained by the great beneficiaries of privilege and reaction. How close is the alliance between the two machines is shown by the attitude of that portion of those Northeastern newspapers, including the majority of the great dailies in all the Northeastern cities--Boston, Buffalo, Springfield, Hartford, Philadelphia, and, above all, New York--which are controlled by or representative of the interests which, in popular phrase, are conveniently grouped together as the Wall Street interests." --Teddy Roosevelt

Reincarnated? I thought all dogs go to heaven.

This comment thread has a yahoo chatroom feel to it.

I wonder if charles gets off on reading reactions to his posts ... literally.

Well, I certainly hope so. I don't put on this wig and cinch up my waist for nothing, you know....

says you

But believing in make believe myths, I mean religion is good. So what if a few dogs, and people die in the name of the current myth of the day.

A history of animal trials and their place in Jewish law: http://www.jlaw.com/Commentary/animalt.h…

"The laws of animal trials exist to make an impression on people and thereby influence human behavior."

Can't they just take the damn thing to the pound?