Freshman U.S. Senator David Perdue of Georgia raised some eyebrows on Friday at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference in Washington DC. He says he was making a joke when he referred to Psalm 109 and encouraged the participants to pray that President Obama’s “days would be few.” Some, however, looked up the Psalm and noticed that it’s a bit more expansive:
Set thou a wicked man over him: and let Satan stand at his right hand. When he shall be judged, let him be condemned: and let his prayer become sin. Let his days be few; and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places. Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labour.
It’s not a very nice prayer, and certainly not a nice future to wish on the president, the First Lady, and their two daughters.
Harry Reid was incensed, which he let be known through his staff:
“If Republicans are still wondering why Donald Trump is their nominee, look no further than today’s Faith and Freedom conference where a sitting Republican Senator left the impression he was praying for the death of President Obama and then the Republican Leader followed him on stage and did not condemn him,” said Kristen Orthman, a Reid spokeswoman.
At the White House, press secretary Josh Earnest was asked about it. In particular, the press wanted to know if Sen. Perdue is still welcome at Wednesday’s congressional picnic. Earnest said that he was but noted that there are “a number of other scriptures he might consult.”
I guess the White House is so used to these kinds of slights that they hardly notice them anymore.
This thing, which has been all over bumper stickers and T-shirts and Internet memes since inauguration in 2009, also displays the biblical ignorance of the so-called Christian right and their inability to read critically. The poem is about (traditionally written by) the biblical David when he’s fleeing from the rage of literally insane King Saul; the part the wingers quote from is “dear God, this is what my enemies are saying about me” and it represents Saul’s psychotic curses as David experiences them. Senator Perdue is adopting the voice of the crazed enemies of God.
Long version at my place, if anybody wants to read it.
Good Scholarship. Thanks.
Thanks Voice
Yes, and of course if the President IS assassinated it will either be God’s Will or the unconnected act of a mad man. No one on the Republican side will take the slightest responsibility for having incited the violence in Orlando against gays, or against the President. Nothing to do with the free availability of automatic assault rifles, of course…
in here with this (practically meaningless) distinction/correction: “semi-automatic”.
You would not think it meaningless if you were the target!
dead people in Orlando!
It could have been 300!
you could not grasp how ridiculous you make yourself look sometimes.
Automatic weapons are not readily available in this country. In fact, they are generally illegal. I believe there are some quite minor exceptions for “collectors” and such. I think those exceptions probably require such measures as disabling the “automatic” capacity of the weapon, though I wouldn’t swear to that.
The obvious point being: the Orlando shooter got easy access to a semi-automatic gun, enabling him to slaughter 50ish people (and injure roughly that many more, some of whom may yet succumb). Merely semi-automatic WAS PLENTY EFFECTIVE FOR HIS PURPOSES!
He would NOT have had easy (or probably any!) access to an automatic weapon of any kind.
So, yes, obviously, and transparently so, the distinction is significant.
Observation: you seem determined, once you’ve adopted a position, to double down on it no matter how factually untenable it is. This kills whatever credibility you may have ever had with anybody.
Jus’ sayin’.
Except there is an actual definition for assault rifle, the idiots fronting the NRA refuse to acknowledge;
Notice the highlighted weapon is the one the murder used.
It was an assault weapon, f**k the NRA
Murderer in Orlando that is.
in question wasn’t whether it was an “assault weapon”, but instead whether it was “automatic”.
So unclear why you started with “except”, unless you just didn’t read at all carefully. (I.e., carefully enough to grasp what the subject was.)
Jus’ sayin’.
Apparently it was not the Colt. gun used
24 rounds in 9 seconds.
.
I saw ar-15 reported, but as we all know media reports are not always accurate.
Sorry, no slight intended. I just wanted to show how bad it truly was.
The AR-15 is pretty old fashioned when compared to what’s out there.
.
Model 1928
In a catalog published by Auto-Ordnance in the 1930’s this model is referred to as the “Navy Model,” .45 caliber. The U.S. Navy ordered 500 of this model and helped keep struggling company alive. It was used by U.S. Marines in Nicaragua and was described as very effective in the jungle fighting. The catalog also notes this gun was then in use by the Army, Navy and Coast Guard. The “Navy Model” utilizes the horizontal foregrip, compensator and sling swivels although it was offered either with vertical or horizontal foregrip, with or without the compensator. The cyclic rate of fire was reduced to 700 rounds per minute.
What I remember was 750 rounds per minute, but even at 700 that’s 105 rounds in 9 seconds, four times faster than the Sig. Full automatic does make a difference.
Tommy gun too old?
M-16 Rate of fire 700-950 rounds/min on full auto. Just google it.
Semi-automatic guns are readily available (including to the Orlando perp!) in this country.
Automatic weapons are not!
What about this distinction (and its immense significance!) are you evidently incapable of latching on to?
sun rising in east):
It’s debatable whether the 2nd amendment includes fully automatic weapons (or nuclear weapons!) since it was written in the days of single shot muzzle loaders.
During the Napoleonic Wars, a highly trained British redcoat could load and fire three rounds a minute (Wellington’s standard), much faster than the French. In nine seconds one couldn’t shoot at all except for the initial pre-loaded round. BTW, the troops didn’t go around with their weapons pre-loaded. There was too much risk of accidental discharge. they didn’t load until they were ordered to in battle.
anything I wrote, but hey, whatever.
I wasn’t mocking, just making a technical argument.
was about the (very predictable!) argument to be expected from gun-nuts (note — quote! — “gun-nuts” in original subject line!) dismissing anybody ever not accurately making the technical distinction between “automatic” and “semi-automatic”; thereby (by gun-nut lights!) disqualifying themselves from credibly commenting. (Gun-nuts do this all the time!).
That is, they “mock” anyone/everyone who fails to accurately acknowledge this distinction, and then use this dismissal to also dismiss whatever argument has been presented, no matter how credible or even obvious.
Remarkably, you’ve taken their side in this sub-thread! Gob-smacking, that.
So, no, I did not imply YOU were “mocking” anything, ever.
Sheesh!
I guess you just want to argue, because I was stating facts, not taking sides. Maybe you need to take a course in remedial reading. Or go back to DKos.
Let’s review, shall we?
Me: (In the present context [i.e., deranged asshole made very short work of slaughtering 49-and-counting people with, technically, a “merely” semi-automatic gun]), the distinction between “automatic” and “semi-automatic” is (direct self-quote!) “practically meaningless”. Yet if anyone makes the mistake Frank(?) made in the comment I replied to, gun-nuts can be counted on to come howling dismissively along the lines of “Ha, you moron, you don’t even understand the (critical obviously!) distinction between “automatic” and “semi-automatic”. Ergo, ipso facto, presto-chango, nothing you could possibly have to say on the subject could possibly have any merit.
(Which, as I linked elsewhere in the thread, they then did with utter predictability.)
You: No! The distinction’s critical! With an automatic weapon, it could have 300! [That’s you, taking the side of the gun-nuts.]
Me: Irrelevant! It’s unlikely in the extreme that he could have gotten hold of an actual automatic weapon. They’re illegal! He had a very easy time getting a plenty-efficiently-deadly semi-automatic, though. This is why the distinction is “practically” meaningless, even though gun-nuts wet themselves in their eagerness to pretend it’s the most important distinction there could ever be.
Correcting the stupid shit you posted does not mean I “just want to argue” (though posting the shit in the first place certainly suggests that you do). I’d much rather you didn’t post shit in the first place, and save me the trouble of correcting the record!
So, yeah, there are reading comprehension issues in play here, but they ain’t mine.
The pathetitude of the dKos misdirection would be nearly impossible to overstate. (Since we’re correcting the record here, I’ve never posted/commented there, and I virtually never read anything there — the extremely rare exception being when somebody I DO read occasionally links to something there. Can’t remember the last time that actually happened, but I think it has in the distant past.) Basing your . . . um . . . “argument” on such a false and baseless assumption is one example of why you have so little (quite tempted to put that at zero) credibility.
There is apparently a special operations concept that covers that “Who? Me?” form of assassination: stochastic terrorism. Set up the conditions, up the tension, and wait for a mad man to pop.
To see it being played out as a constant political tactic by the supposed loyal opposition is quite offensive to one schooled in US democracy in the 1950s, when that was unheard of from the politicians themselves in public.
Similar in spirit to “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”
I’m not a Christian, and I always notice this funny thing about conservative Christians.
When they cite Bible verses, they rarely quote Christ, if ever. They quote the Old testament or revelations – those are the parts they like.
Whole swaths of the the old testament are not compatible with Christ’s message of Love and forgiveness. Revelations never seemed Jesus-ey to me at all.
So this guy Perdue fits right into that. Never mind love thy neighbor. They like the parts of the Bible that are bloody and mean and war-like. I always find that telling.
Not to mention “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” I believe that was in red in my New testament when I went to Sunday School. The red was supposed to be Jesus’ actual words.
This one is also very pertinent.
Matthew 7:3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”
Perfect!
Oh you’re not wrong! Today’s “Christians” love the Old Testament “god,” who’s all about retribution, violence, bigotry against those not like you, and so on.
I was raised as a “Christian,” but I can no longer claim to be one because I cannot stand to be associated with the debased, debauched, hateful, vindictive, hypocritical, nasty, mean-spirited thing it has become.
The New Testament features the Prophet, Jesus, often identified as the son of god (as we all are, if you go in for that sort of thing). Jesus taught all about love (mainly), forgiveness, tolerance. The New Testament is allegedly about the Good News of god’s forgiveness and his covenent with humans.
No, it’s not much recognized in today’s “Christian” churches, at least not the ones my family attends (when I may reluctantly attend with them here and there). It’s all about god’s vengence and wrath, and how everyone is a despised debased sinner who is condemned to hellfire for all eternity, unless you go along with their very narrowminded bigoted heretical claptrap.
Indeed, whole swaths of the old testament are not compatible with Jesus’s teachings, and the new testament was meant – or at least that’s what I was taught – as a sort of update of all of that.
But hippy Jesus doesn’t get his due these days, does he?
And Revelations has always been weird. I think whoever wrote it ate some magic mushrooms or something.
Perdue is only repeating a bastardized version of this Bible verse that has been repeated by these “Christians” and their “leaders” since Nov 9, 2008. This isn’t a new thing, and they haven’t let up since Nov 9, 2008. Trump is their karma coming home to roost.
They also like to quote the misogynist Paul, who IIRC never even met Jesus.
Yeah they all loves ’em Saul of Taursus. Not a nice guy, that Paul. Tip: don’t call Saul.
Really getting off-topic, but it does seem notable that what the world calls Christianity was very much the creation of that fellow, St. Paul.
“Oh you’re not wrong! Today’s “Christians” love the Old Testament “god,” who’s all about retribution, violence, bigotry against those not like you, and so on.”
I’m going to assume you don’t know any better, and therefore be gentle in my response, but this comes off as both ignorant and anti-Semitic. You should probably either learn more about the Torah or keep your opinions about it to yourself.
Copied this from a question of the differences between the Christian Old Testament and the Hebrew Torah.
Quite relevant to this discussion.
Emphasis mine.
I did not know that. It does indeed make a difference.
Thank you for the reminder that the Tanakh and the Christian OT are not the same thing, and that, in a very important way, neither are the God of the Jews and the God of the Christian OT. Same set of books, different set of stories, yes. Yet this is a distinction that is lost on most non-Jews, and the idea that Jesus was all about universal love that transcended Jewish law is pretty much at the heart of anti-semitism. (See David Nirenberg’s Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition on this). Describing “the Old Testament “god,'” as being “all about retribution, violence, [and] bigotry against those not like you” clearly draws on this tradition, in my opinion, even if it is not intended that way. That’s why I suggested learning more about the God of the Jewish Torah, as opposed to the God of the Christian OT (or even the Christian Penteteuch, for that matter).
You have to understand the original poster you replied to is right in a way.
The founders of the Christian religion co-opted the idea of God from the Hebrew religion to set up their religion, and changed the order of the Tanakh to create an Old Testament, in order to use it as the set up to the New Testament. They wanted a story that lead directly to Jesus, so they in a way rewrote the original story to make a better frame for their new story.
The modern day evangelic movement mostly uses this rewriting of the old testament god as angry and vengeful to use that fear that it stokes to convince people they have the truth to find a way to salvation from the rath of this angry vengeful god.
The truth to them, of their message is not based on the original meanings found in the books of the Tanakh, but in their translation of what the books rearranged into the old testament says. The new testament message doesn’t meet their actual goals so they return to the old testament for most of their message because if your frame it in the right terms it can be used to stoke fear. Fear which they and only they have the answer to save people from.
They were Jews, after all. There were many sects of Judaism, and I seriously doubt they were intent on setting up an entirely new religion.
The Jews originally following Jesus probably not, but Paul certainly was.
The Council of Jerusalem (50AD), was directly related to the differences between following Hebrew scripture and following Jesus by gentiles. The outcome allowed the Christian church to grow outside of Jewish community, and allowed it to grow far beyond Palestine.
The bible itself wasn’t canonised until the Council of Carthage circa 379AD, and the Christian church had moved far beyond Judaism at that point.
I was speaking of the very early followers.
Council of Jerusalem was only about 15 years after the crucifixion, and that was the dividing line between those that followed the new religion (Christianity) and those who remained in the Jewish religion.
Seems more applicable to the Senator himself.
It at least merits a pro forma visit from the US Secret Service inquiring as to whether David Perdue believes that God helps those who help themselves.
This lynch-mob theater has gone on too long.
Speaking of Orlando, the father of the shooter is a long-time CIA asset, which I suspected from the period of his relocation from Afghanistan to the US in the late 70s, when we were supplying the Mujahadeen with SAMs.
The photo with Dana Rohrbacher is a nice touch:
http://www.madcowprod.com/2016/06/13/orlando-shooter-dad-longtime-cia-asset/
That’s an interesting twist.
Love those religious prayers of peace, non-violence, compassion and empathy.