The Wrongologist – Page 221 – Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Road Trip, Vol. I

Now sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip. Well, not really. We drove about 400 miles today, passing through DC and south in Virginia to Richmond, headquarters of the Confederacy during the Civil War. There isn’t a shooting war between the White House and Congress, but sometimes, it feels that way:

Maybe it just depends on your point of view:

Wednesday Links:

The University of Massachusetts at Amherst has banned Iranian nationals from admission to certain graduate programs that school officials say aligns its policy with US sanctions against Iran. Luckily, there are other engineering schools.

Boston is using prison labor to shovel snow for pennies. Unionized city workers and state prisoners cleared commuter rails of snow on Monday

The WaPo thinks House Speaker John Boehner is managing to combine legislative incompetence with PR incompetence. Well, Boehner believes the country is in grave danger because of Obama, and right after this latest three-week vacation, he’s going to get busy taking health insurance away from poor folks.

The trade in antiquities is one of ISIS’s main sources of funding. Most of the items are from excavations rather than thefts from museums.

Limited Blogging

There will be limited blogging over the next few days, as the Wrongologist and Ms. Oh So Right take a road trip to a warmer place. It was -2°F this morning, and the wind was blowing. We want to experience spring a few months early, so off we go.

There should be some interesting links and a daily cartoon over the next few days, if Wrongo can connect to the Internet while Ms. Right is driving. To get you off to a good start, here a caveman’s take on the eternal questions about the value of a healthy lifestyle:

Monday Wake-Up Call – February 16, 2015

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn” − Alvin Toffler

Today’s wake-up call is for Americans who can’t unlearn that trickle-down doesn’t work, and that voting in politicians who espouse it will prolong the nation’s agony. Do people know that the new GOP House began passing a series of deficit-hiking tax cuts that will primarily help the rich at the expense of everybody else?

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee (which writes tax legislation), wants to make some previous tax breaks permanent. From HuffPo:

The House voted 272 to 142 to make permanent a number of temporary provisions that are aimed at helping businesses earning up to $2 million. The main cut, which would add $77 billion to deficits over 10 years, allows businesses to immediately write off new equipment purchases up to $500,000. Temporary versions of the measure have been passed about a dozen times before, generally as economic stimulus measures.

The GOP then passed a second tax cut, aimed at giving bigger tax breaks for charitable giving. Ryan wants even more tax cuts that would add another $300 billion to the deficit. Those may reach the House floor later this month.

Here’s the Republican strategy: Slice the elephant and eat it a bite at a time. Pass small pieces of tax legislation while ignoring the deficit impact, then when their corporate and wealthy individual patrons are taken care of, remind everyone that the deficit is the biggest, baddest enemy the economy has. Then propose budget cuts that hit the working poor and the middle class. Ryan’s current strategy can be seen here: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

If you dare try to make these things that we all agree on that need to stay in the tax code permanent, it’s ‘You’re not paying for it; it’s a budget buster; you’re being irresponsible; you’re jeopardizing tax reform.’ Process, process, process…Here’s the problem. What we’re trying to do here, we’re trying to grow the economy. We’re trying to get people back to work.

That meme will end soon. It will be replaced with: “growth is being stifled by the deficit”.

The NYT’s Upshot notes that a number of Republican governors are proposing tax increases — and in every case, the tax hike would fall most heavily on those with lower incomes, while they propose simultaneous tax cuts for business and/or the wealthy. Krugman analyzes it thusly:

If you look for an overarching theme for overall conservative policy these past four decades…It has been about making the tax-and-transfer system harsher on the poor and easier on the rich. In short, class warfare.

Class warfare. These folks keep bottling snake oil and voters keep buying it. Lowering income taxes on the wealthy doesn’t create jobs. Why would it? The focus of the GOP on cutting income taxes is solely intended to protect the rich.

Wrongo has run businesses for 35+ years and never saw taxes as an impediment. Taxes are paid out of profits, not revenue, and paying taxes means you are running a profitable business. Cutting taxes for small business can be a disincentive: Why should the owners expand the business when their net is greater, and they didn’t have to increase sales? For large corporations, tax cuts mean that people in the C-suite get richer. Nothing. Filters. Down.

Here is your Monday tune to fight the Plutocracy. “Rich Man’s War” by Steve Earle, from his 2004 album, “The Revolution Starts Now”:

And some Monday hot links:

The Westminster Dog Show starts today. Wrongo and Ms. Oh So Right are attending.

Researchers are using drones and satellites to spot lost civilizations. Remote sensing technology is revealing traces of past civilizations that have been hiding in plain sight.

Lobbyists move though the revolving door back to House and Senate committees. There is a profound change taking place among Capitol Hill staff, as many GOP lawmakers are handing the keys to K Street corporate lobbyists. Public Citizen’s Paul Holman notes that Speaker John Boehner, has “encouraged new members to employ lobbyists on their personal and committee staff.”

More than 4,000 Fort Carson soldiers are heading to Kuwait, where they will become one of America’s largest ground forces in the troubled region. Did you know that the Army has kept a brigade in Kuwait since the end of the Iraq war in 2011?

Majority of public school students are now considered low-income. Another success brought to you by trickle-down economics.

Unaffordable rents here to stay say experts. They aren’t likely to ease up for at least two years, according to the latest Zillow Home Price Expectations Survey

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – February 15, 2015

Big week, what with Cease Fire #2 in Ukraine, or as Moon of Alabama calls it, Minsk 2.0. Mr. Obama is bombarded by advice about how to move forward, most of it in favor of providing military aid to the government in Kiev. He is trying to balance that advice against the cornerstone of his foreign policy: “Don’t do stupid stuff.” Like some other Obama principles, this has a very high Wimp Factor, particularly if compared to GW Bush’s “bring it on”.

Then there is Mr. Obama’s strategy on Syria and dealing with ISIS. This week, he asked for a new Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), a mere six months after we began bombing them. So, a few Democrats criticized the proposal as too broad and too vague. They say it could leave the next president with enormous war-making latitude. Republicans want to go bigger.

Obama’s AUMF proposal is an invitation to Congress to offer its own expansive view of the president’s war-making authority. Can Congress do better?

Mr. Obama’s Ukraine dilemma:

Congressional chicken hawks debate the “enduring” war:

In other words, The AUMF, after Congress gets through with it, could be a disaster waiting to happen. The entire situation could devolve into another decade plus of ground war in the Middle East.

So, here in the middle of cartoons, is the anti-war song “Highwire”, by the Rolling Stones from their 1991 album, “Flashpoint”. Remember 1991, that was Gulf War 1.0. There´s only ONE reason for more war: Mo money. That’s the bottom line. Is this song on Obama’s iPhone? It should be. Lindsay, and John, this song’s for you:

Sample Lyric:
We sell ’em missiles, We sell ’em tanks
We give ’em credit, You can call up the bank
It’s just a business, You can pay us in crude
(That’s oil you know…)
You’ll love these toys, just go play out your feuds
We got no pride, don’t know whose boots to lick
We act so greedy, makes me sick sick sick
…
We walk the highwire;
Sending the men up to the front line;
Hoping they don’t catch the hell fire;
With hot guns,
And cold, cold lies.

In other news, some guy killed 3 Muslims, but nobody thinks it’s a big deal:

State’s rights vs. Gay Rights is back on the table for those who think it never left:

Jon Stewart says he’s out:

Finally, Valentine’s day covered for a lot of feelings:

Friday Music Break – February 13, 2015

Friday, where America aims for the basement, and winds up in the 3rd sub-basement. You’ve heard about the dude in North Carolina who killed 3 Muslim students over a parking space? Oh, and he had posted anti-religious messages on Facebook. Well, God weighed in:

America: where minorities, for good reason, fear their kids getting shot, and white people, for no reason, fear their kids getting shots.

— God (@TheTweetOfGod) February 12, 2015

And here are two stories by/about our Republican “friends”: First, from Montana, where a state Rep is trying to “enhance” the state’s indecent exposure law by outlawing yoga pants.

Rep. David Moore (R-Missoula) introduced a bill that makes any nipple exposure, (including men’s), and any garment that “gives the appearance or simulates” a person’s buttocks, genitals, pelvic area or female nipple, indecent exposure. The Republican said:

Yoga pants should be illegal in public anyway.

If the biggest problem Rep. Moore has to worry about involves nipples or clothing that “give the appearance or simulates” one’s “buttocks, genitals, pelvic area or female nipple,” he really needs to find a less perv-like job. As a member in good standing of the Republican Party, (the folks who demand smaller, less intrusive government), how would he go about enforcing his new law?

• How do you punish a man for not wearing a shirt during the summer?
• Who gets the government job that requires them to stare at breasts and genital areas all day? Does he outsource it to the TSA?

Is this just another example of Republican “small government?” It’s another indicator that the GOP doesn’t care about small government, unless you’re talking about a government that will enforce an intrusive, narrow-minded, repressed, authoritarian agenda. Good job, Montana.

Second, apparently Kayla Mueller is the wrong kind of dead hostage. The world knows that ISIS announced that hostage Kayla Mueller was dead. Although most of us sympathized with her family, some conservatives did not, calling Ms. Mueller a terrorist sympathizer and “anti-Israel bitch” because she had worked on behalf of people in occupied Palestine. Conservative blogger Debbie Schlussel wrote:

Mueller was a Jew-hating, anti-Israel piece of crap who worked with HAMAS and helped Palestinians harass Israeli soldiers and block them from doing their job of keeping Islamic terrorists out of Israel.

America’s right-wing must re-civilize itself. The way back is through reason and rationality, where facts are tied to reality, not to figments of a fevered imagination, or to utopian beliefs that, in the end, will never take our Nation where it needs to go. The conservative warmongers were really disappointed to learn of Mueller’s politics. No doubt, they had been salivating when they learned a pretty white girl had been killed by ISIS.

Time for music. Valentine’s Day is tomorrow, and here are the Foo Fighters doing “Everlong”. This was recorded live at Wembley Stadium in London, England, in June 2008. OK, it’s not your traditional soupy love song for a manufactured holiday, but it’s poignant, true and loving. The video is divided into an acoustic version of the song, and an up-tempo, typical Foo treatment. Watch the acoustic version which ends at 4:50:

Sample Lyric:
And I wonder
If everything could ever feel this real forever
If anything could ever be this good again
The only thing I’ll ever ask of you
You’ve got to promise not to stop when I say when

See you Sunday.

Obama’s National Security Strategy Dissed by Republicans

For the third time in a century, America might be asked to save Europeans from themselves.

As is evident in Congress’s unease, events are spiraling out of control in Ukraine. We are again getting drawn into Europe’s centuries-old propensity towards self-destruction. It is evident that Europe seems unwilling and/or unable to contain the geo-political ambitions of Vladimir Putin. It is also evident in the European Union’s (EU’s) stand-off with Greece, which grows uglier by the day. And Greece’s overtures to the Russians make the situation possibly even more alarming.

After WWII, America helped rebuild Europe. That provided the early foundations for the unprecedented period of European stability and prosperity that has followed. Is Europe willing to throw that away? Our global role raises many questions for America’s policy makers:

• Are the Europeans being careless with their hard-won peace and prosperity?
• What is our strategy with Ukraine and Russia’s aggression?
• What is our strategy for the greater Middle East, including Israel, Iran and ISIS?
• What about China?

All of these questions are on the table as the Obama administration seeks a new Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) against ISIS this week. It is particularly relevant that the Obama administration released its new National Security Strategy (NSS) last Friday. It was greeted by Republicans with disdain. Given the major issues we face throughout the world, most thought it should have been more concrete in its outline of strategy.

It isn’t often that an administration’s own recently retired top official would blast the NSS. Former Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who retired last year as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), said on Fox News Sunday:

We need a much broader strategy that recognizes that we’re facing not just this tactical problem of ISIS in Iraq and Syria…We’re facing a growing, expanding threat around the world…

It’s normal for any president’s political opposition to deride a new NSS. And no NSS is likely to be compared to Sun Tzu’s Art of War. Flynn, who led the DIA for two years under Obama, has some credibility. He used the analogy of a quarterback leading a football team down the field:

I feel like when we say ‘ready, break,’ every player on the team is going off into other stadiums, playing different sports…

By contrast, the administration is describing their approach as “strategic patience” – signaling that they intend to avoid any substantial commitments (at least involving any direct military presence on the ground) for the next two years. This codifies Mr. Obama’s “leading from behind” as at the core of US strategy.

Strategic Patience brings along with it a very high Wimp factor. But should it be dismissed out of hand as weakness, or as a simplistic attempt to avoid foreign policy commitments? The Wrongologist has written before about the urge to “do something”. This is called the “Politician’s Syllogism”, a logical fallacy:

1. We have to do something
2. This is something
3. Therefore, we have to do this.

We hear this most Sunday mornings on “Bloviating with Old Politicians”, featuring John McCain. In fact, Sen. McCain’s wingman, Sen. Graham, launched the first strike against Obama’s NSS, tweeting:

I doubt ISIL, the Iranian mullahs, or Vladimir Putin will be intimidated by President Obama’s strategy of ‘Strategic Patience.’ Lindsey Graham

Many other Republicans piled on during the next few days, but no one offered an alternative strategy.

Iran is far more important than Ukraine, which is more important than ISIS, which is a strategic side show. Short of ‘boots on the ground’ in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Ukraine, what are the Republicans suggesting we do?

If Strategic Patience is acceptable for our adversaries like Russia or China, it should be acceptable for us. The realities of US resource allocation and the current balance of power dictate we focus on the long game, which may mean that saving Ukraine, or lives in Syria, won’t make it to the top of our list. The most important rule that America’s would-be interventionists must learn is that the “first do no harm” doctrine must apply.

The amount of treasure the US has expended on foreign interventions since 2001 is irreplaceable. We could have covered the Mojave in solar thermal plants, and no longer need foreign oil. We could have completely renovated our transportation infrastructure. We could have built a high speed Internet across the US for what we spent on what are now piles of junk and wrecked installations in the Middle East, not to forget the wrecked lives of our soldiers and their loved ones.

US politicians and foreign policy elites really must resist the urge to “do something” in response to every perceived foreign policy crisis.

Why Does The FBI Work For The Koch Brothers?

“If you have nothing to hide, it will still be found.”

Climate Progress referenced a story in the Canadian Press:

Unexpected visitors have been dropping in on anti-oil activists in the United States — knocking on doors, calling, texting, contacting family members. The visitors are federal agents.

Opponents of Canadian oil from tar sands say they’ve been contacted by FBI investigators regarding their involvement in protests that delayed northbound shipments of equipment to Canada’s oil sands. These protests have blocked highways in order to delay shipment of the equipment.

The FBI visits have been happening in Oregon, Washington State, and Idaho, and a lawyer working with the activists told the Canadian Press that he has advised them not to talk to the agents: (brackets and emphasis by the Wrongologist)

It’s always the same line [by the FBI]: ‘We’re not doing criminal investigations, you’re not accused of any crime. But we’re trying to learn more about the movement.’

Yet, the FBI told the Canadian Press that it doesn’t investigate political movements, but focuses on crimes. They quote FBI spokesperson, Ayn Dietrich:

The FBI has the authority to conduct an investigation when it has reasonable grounds to believe that an individual has engaged in criminal activity or is planning to do so…This authority is based on the illegal activity, not on the individual’s political views.

But the FBI made public in January 2014 that they had changed their mission statement. Instead of listing “law enforcement” as its “primary function,” as it has for years, the FBI fact sheet began to list “national security” as its chief mission. Foreign Policy reports:

Between 2001 and 2009, the FBI doubled the amount of agents dedicated to counterterrorism, according to a 2010 Inspector’s General report. That period coincided with a steady decline in the overall number of criminal cases investigated nationally and a steep decline in the number of white-collar crime investigations.

Back in 2000, the FBI sent prosecutors 10,000 cases. That fell to 3,500 cases by 2005. Foreign Policy reports on a 2007 Seattle Post-Intelligencer investigation that the Justice Department did not replace 2,400 agents assigned to focus on counterterrorism in the years following 9/11. The reductions in white-collar crime investigations became obvious:

Had the FBI continued investigating financial crimes at the same rate as it had before the terror attacks, about 2,000 more white-collar criminals would be behind bars.

That explains why no executive in a “Too Big to Fail” bank went to jail after the 2008 economic meltdown.

Now, we have one serious issue. The FBI is essentially doing pre-emptive security work for a private corporation, and it’s a Canadian corporation at that. From Charlie Pierce:

The idea that your friendly neighborhood Fed is stopping by to “learn more about the movement” should be chilling for a number of reasons. The first is…the FBI has no business dropping in on citizens who have not committed a crime, nor are they suspected of having committed one, and especially not at the behest of a private multinational concern.

If Keystone were approved, it is likely that there would be demonstrations up and down the route of the pipeline, from northern Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico. More from Pierce:

That the FBI is already gathering intelligence indicates that the Bureau knows this and is warming up for such eventualities. Names are going into a file…This never has worked out well in the area of political dissent in this country, and, given the fact that we now have a staggering network of covert domestic intelligence-gathering and a huge government law-enforcement apparatus, it’s unlikely to work out well in the future…

There is a name for what happens when the government’s law-enforcement powers are put at the direct convenience of private corporations. Fascism.

Here are a few questions: Is this just a little hippie punching by the Fed Coats?

Is the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover back, dresses and all?

Why do the Koch brothers’ corporations now justify FBI support?

The FBI owes the oil sands activists and the rest of America, a better explanation than, “Don’t worry. We’re not doing what all of you know we did in the past.”

Is There Risk in a Professional Military?

With the pot boiling in Ukraine, Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande have spearheaded a plan to bring Russia, Ukraine along with France and Germany to a peace summit that may be held this week. That may or may not lead to anything, but, our Republican Chicken Hawk leaders in Congress have already decided it is a wimpy response to Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Sen. John McCain is reported by the Telegraph to have compared this initiative to the Munich Agreement in 1938 between Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, and Adolf Hitler, which allowed Nazi Germany to annex the Sudetenland:

History shows us that dictators will always take more if you let them…They will not be dissuaded from their brutal behavior when you fly to meet them to Moscow – just as leaders once flew to this city.

Mrs. Merkel said that she was against supplying Ukraine with lethal aid. McCain’s reaction to the leader of Germany? He summed up his reaction to Ms. Merkel’s speech with one word: “Foolishness.”

What has to happen before we stop listening to the Chicken Hawk wing in Congress? Clearly, losing wars isn’t enough for us to stop using military force to meddle in other nations’ problems. The “War on Terror” has been a transfer of national wealth to the corporatocracy. War and weapons of war are strategic US exports, peace just isn’t that profitable.

But today, let’s step back and look at the confluence of two emerging societal issues with our military, and the risks they could bring.

First, the risks implied by having a professional military have been examined by the Wrongologist. This has two effects: It divorces the rest of us from the consequences of foreign wars. Out of a population of 310 million, only about three-quarters of 1% served in Iraq or Afghanistan at any point in the post-9/11 years. It is also skewing the demographics of our military. Today’s map of the states of those in military service align closely with today’s red states:

Montana, Alaska, Florida, Wyoming, Maine and Texas now send the largest number of people per capita to the military. The states with the lowest contribution rates? Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York.

What’s clear from the data is that a major national institution, the US military, now has tighter connections to some regions of the country than to others, something that wasn’t true when we had a draft. The uneven pattern of military service is not an insignificant reflection of the cultural differences that characterize different regions of our country, and this has broad ramifications for our future.

Second, according to the WaPo, we’re “optimizing” the Federal civil service for Veterans:

Obama began accelerating the hiring of veterans five years ago in response to the bleak employment prospects many service members faced after coming home from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Veterans benefit from preferential hiring for civil service jobs under a law dating back to World War II, but the Obama administration has increased the extra credit veterans get, giving them an even greater edge in getting those jobs. The government has also set hiring goals for veterans at each agency, and managers are graded on how many they bring on board, officials said. WaPo says that the result is that veterans made up 46% of full-time hires last year, according to the Office of Personnel Management. They now represent a third of the federal workforce, holding positions throughout the Federal government.

Here is the concern: Heidi A. Urben, studied the attitudes of the officer corps, and found that about 60% said they identify with the Republican Party. But, that’s not all:

Officers who identify with the Republican Party display lower levels of trust for their civilian superiors

The Wrongologist is pro-military. He served during the Vietnam era. Yet, is there a perfect storm brewing?

• We have an all-professional military that doesn’t really trust civilian superiors.
• Those who leave the professional military are staffing one-third of our federal workforce.

Charles J. Dunlap Jr., a retired Air Force major general at the Duke Law Schools says: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

I think there is a strong sense in the military that it is a better society than the one it serves…In the generation coming up, we’ve got lieutenants and majors who had been the warrior-kings in their little outposts…They were literally making life-or-death decisions. You can’t take that generation and say, ‘You can be seen and not heard.’

The Wrongologist has no idea what the effects of having veterans become a majority of our federal employees will be, but the active duty and the retired military are part of a fraternity. They share common training and values. They share political views, they come from the same states.

It is not hard to imagine that there is an iceberg straight ahead that we are ignoring.

And as the captain said on the Titanic: “Iceberg? What iceberg?”

Monday Wake-up Call – February 9, 2015

Today’s wake-up is for people in Vermont. Most of us know that Latin is considered to be a dead language, because it is taught in few schools, and very few of those are public schools. Thus, very few people can read it, and, aside from a few Roman Catholic priests, almost one speaks it.

In an interesting cultural study of America’s rural North East, an eighth grader in Vermont thought it would be a good idea for the state to adopt a Latin motto, “Stella quarta decima fulgeat” (“May the fourteenth star shine bright”).

You may not know that Vermont entered the union as the 14th state.

A Vermont Republican state Senator, Joe Benning, introduced legislation recommending that Vermont adopt the eighth grader’s idea as a motto. Things got stupid in a hurry, as indignant Vermonters took to the Twitter machine and the Internets. Here are a few samples:

I thought Vermont was American not Latin? Does any Latin places have American mottos?

ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!! Sick and tired of that crap, they have their own countries

How do you say idiotic senator in Spanish? I’d settle for “deport illegals” in Spanish as a backup motto

Hell No! This is America, not Latin America. When in Rome do as the Romans do!

So if they think Latin is the language of Latinos, what do they think Pig Latin is? The language spoken by Latino police? While it’s safe to say that the number of Vermonters who can’t tell Latin from Latino are a minority, it’s just sad that they feel emboldened to advertise their ignorance online.

The issue isn’t “just” that there are some people who do not know Latin. More disturbing is that people don’t even know there IS a language called Latin, and because of their anger, or their sense of American Exceptionalism, they make extremist, xenophobic statements.

Oh, and have they never heard of “E Pluribus Unum”?

This leads straight to your Monday musical wake-up song, Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in The Wall, Pt. 2”, from their album, “The Wall“. PF’s biggest mainstream success, it was written by PF’s lead vocalist, Roger Waters. ABITW Pt. 2 is a protest song against rigid schooling and boarding schools in the UK. It was the band’s only number-one hit in the United Kingdom, and the US. The song talks about how the student had a personal wall separating him from the rest of the world, how the teachers were just another brick in the wall. ABINTW Pt. 2 became a protest song for certain South African students in 1980 during the Apartheid regime, and the song was subsequently banned in South Africa.

Here, for Vermonters who have never heard of the Latin language, is the “We Don’t Need no Education” clip from “Another Brick in The Wall”:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – February 8, 2015

Today is Sunday, the day when Christians worship their God. So, it’s appropriate that we focus on the reaction of certain right-wing Christians to Mr. Obama’s talk at the National Prayer Breakfast last Thursday. He spoke for about thirty minutes but the part of the speech that the right wing are focusing on is when he brought up the Crusades: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

Humanity has been grappling with these questions [violence in the name of religion] throughout human history. And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.

The righties are complaining that Obama is saying that Christianity is equivalent to ISIS. Which of course, isn’t what he said. He was saying that Islam was not ISIS, and demonizing Islam for the sins of ISIS is hypocritical, because, among other reasons, Christians have plenty to answer for, given their historical actions in the name of religion. So, conservatives are slamming Obama for not equating terrorism with Islam. For example, Jim Gilmore, former Republican governor of Virginia said:

He has offended every believing Christian in the United States…Mr. Obama does not believe in America or the values we all share.

The blog Red State said:

Barack Obama, leftwing community organizer and closet theologian, used the National Prayer Breakfast to throw a tu quoque at anyone critical of Islam while continuing to fancy himself as the Pope of Islam

When did the clearly dominant religion in the US develop a glass jaw?

Mr. Obama has attended this prayer breakfast each year to speak about his faith. And the things he said this time were things that Christians agree with: that at times, the religion has been perverted, that we have to walk humbly before God, that God’s purposes are mysterious to us. These thoughts are accepted by every Christian. And so what he said was normal, a recognition of historical fact, and an urge towards some level of perspective and humility.

But what Obama says is never enough for these crypto-Christians. And as for American’s Christian conservatives, they love, love, love violent retribution. One example is their love affair with torture. Do you need the reminder that Sarah Palin said about waterboarding: