A lovely parody on the Republican's "Stoopid Defense", aka Evasion Tactic 2276c-841. Perfected by Reagan in the 1980's (Republicans are welcome to counter here by pointing out that Reagan probably wasn't faking it).

Evidently there's something about the White House which causes right-wing corporatist's to suffer from dain bramage. They really ought to be kept out for their own good. Not to mention ours.

We haven't failed to notice that the last three out of four Republican presidencies have been characterized by the grossest imaginable criminalities.

Did somebody say something?

What a load of baloney.

Life has no "meaning". Life only has 'purpose'. And the purpose of life is for gametes to use zygotes to create more gametes. If you insist that life must have meaning you are more than welcome to ascribe any meaning to it you like. Suck it up and be a Bokononist about it.

Tiger got to hunt.
Bird got to fly.
Man got to sit and wonder 'why why why?'

Tiger got to sleep.
Bird got to land.
Man got to tell himself he understand.

Eagleton's religious immorality is extremely dangerous. If one supposes that there is no natural morality and that morality only comes from "God" - or, more correctly, one's interpretation of "God's will", which has been used to "justify" the most heinous crimes imaginable. Which amounts to no morality at all.

It is easily shown that religion has only a tangential relationship to morality anyway. Keep in mind that Jesus preferred the kindly unbelieving Samaritan to the selfish self-righteous 'believer', and that his pet peeve was the religious hypocrite. Got plenty of those. But very few actual 'Christians'. So much for any religious basis to morality.

The only true morality is that Do Unto Others thing that Jesus paraphrased from the Pentateuch, whose authors got it from the Zoroastrians, but is really a feature of nearly all religions, including those which do not actually profess any belief in deities. Therefore, that morality does not necessarily have anything to do with "God".

If you are a truly moral person you do the Right Thing

because it is the right thing to do - not because some invisible man in the sky tells you to do it. How 'moral' can you be if your morality requires that your actions be micromanaged by mythical supernatural beings? Are you really so lame that you're incapable of being moral unless some Santa Claus (he knows when you've been bad or good) has you under constant surveillance?

Whatever. You can always prefer to just Do What You Wish, as mandated by Auryn. Just remember the consequences, and recall that Bastian almost didn't make it back.

The neocons have never made any secret about their intention to aggressively pursue lying propaganda to advance their policy of military imperialism:

The PNAC blueprint also outlines a consistent framework of war propaganda. One year before 9/11, the PNAC called for "some catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor," which would serve to galvanize US public opinion in support of a war agenda.

In the wake of the September attacks on the World Trade Center, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld created to the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) ... "The Department of Defense said they needed to do this, and they were going to actually plant stories that were false in foreign countries -- as an effort to influence public opinion across the world."

To justify pre-emptive military actions, the National Security Doctrine requires the "fabrication" of a terrorist threat, --ie. "an outside enemy." It also needs to link these terrorist threats to "State sponsorship" by the so-called "rogue states."

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5428.htm

They did promise that they would lie. And lie and lie and lie. Didn't you believe them? Lying is how it's done. Lying is always how it's done:

... Fourth, it establishes complete control over all forms of expression ... Fifth, it institutes an elaborate governmental propaganda which swamps all subjects with news and opinions, with the end of securing allegiance, or at least acquiescence. This is the purpose of conservative takeovers and consolidation of media concerns and 'deregulation' of the broadcasting industry, which enables a policy of overt defamation of the administration's critics, and worse ...

Totalitarian Neoconservatism

And so forth.

"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the State."

- Josef Goebbels

"To win the sympathy of the masses, you must tell them the crudest and most stupid lies."

- Adolf Hitler

Do this:

Assume that everything that comes out of the Bush administration is a lie. If some statement can be corroborated independently, assume that they're relying on a small amount of truth to hide a vastly larger lie.

This approach has never failed. And there is no reason to expect it ever will.

Lots of examples:

Interestingly, the "rotted press corp" is primarily liberal.

-- shooter242

Apparently Rupert Murdoch is a 'librul'.

Here's a good one:

... is making money running down our president and our military in a time of war to the direct benefit of America's enemies all you really care about?

-- PoliticalRealityOnline

Translation: "Anybody who notices that Bushites are compulsive liars gets targeted for a smear campaign and accused of being a traitor."

A lot of these guys actually get paid to issue lying neoconservative propaganda. But they don't get paid very much.