14 Comments Add your own

• 1. roger  |  April 30th, 2009 at 2:22 pm

  Pat this is low even for you.
  Attacking the Church’s now.

• 2. egyas  |  April 30th, 2009 at 4:30 pm

  Heck, I’m an atheist and even I think this is low.

• 3. Pat Cunningham  |  April 30th, 2009 at 4:52 pm

  Come on, guys, This is “low”??? I’m only reporting what the survey says, which I found interesting. Natually, not all churchgoers are fans of torture. Millions of them, I would expect, are morally appalled at the very thought of torture. And no doubt the attitudes on torture among nonchurchgoers are divided.

  But I still find it fascinating that churchgoers are more likely than others to support torture in certain circumstances. And it makes me wonder about the sermons these people hear.

  There’s nothing “low” about discussing these matters. It’s much like those cases in which I’ve reported here that most Catholics are pro-choice on abortion. Torture and abortion are worthy topics for discussion here, and there’s nothing wrong with pointing out the curious demographics in polls on those matters.

• 4. Bob Ham  |  April 30th, 2009 at 4:58 pm

  get a kick out of those on the left because of how they see the last 8 years as something terrible, something that has made them ill and they are unable to recover. When I look at my life the last 8 years, I never had to worry about myself or my family because I knew that the president and administration would keep us safe from another attack. During that time my investment portfolio improved considerably, my wife who has leukemia fought that damned devil and won. My grand kids graduated college, one had to complain about an extreme belligerent left wing professor, but the college got rid of him.

  I moved from beautiful Lake Summerset mostly because I could no longer keep up with my many flower gardens and yard but found a very nice condo in Rockton and am very happy there. I buried my brother, who was very, very sick and of course losing him hurt a lot but he is in a better place now. I also had to put my sister-in-law into an assisted living situation but even that turned out fine because she is only 5 minutes away and we visit her a frequently and take her out or to our place for dinner.

  All in all, even with the steady almost daily griping, nasty name calling, insulting crap from those who insisted on acting like spoiled brats rather than humans I enjoyed my life. I tried not getting all upset with what is happening with our country. There is no way that the family I leave behind will not be living in as good a situation as I had. I still have hope that we the people can turn this spending spree administration around. One would think that as many times as we fell into a recession cutting taxes got us out of it real fast while what is being now is just the opposite. It is Roosevelt all over again and trust me we will pay dearly if we allow this to continue. The tea party, which in some Democratic circles made some very concerned, will grow big time and hopefully by July 4th we can get a few million people to DC to get our impotent Congress to wake up. I just heard on the news that the president’s 100 day speech went on with a very huge negative group of demonstrators letting Obama know what they thought.

• 5. Bob Ham  |  April 30th, 2009 at 5:02 pm

  We all know polls don’t mean a whole lot. They can be written to guarantee the result one wants. Besides Pat a church does not preach that kind of thing anyway. Go some time and see for yourself, you might like it!

• 6. Michael Jessen  |  April 30th, 2009 at 5:42 pm

  Churchill ‘Tortured’ Obama’s Grandfather

  During his press conference last night, Mr. Obama cited Winston Churchill as a man who would not countenance ‘torture,’ even when Britain’s very existence as a nation was at stake: Just another lier Odumbo.

  http://sweetness-light.com/archive/churchill-tortured-obamas-grandfather

• 7. Pat Cunningham  |  April 30th, 2009 at 6:09 pm

  Bob Ham says “we all know that polls don’t mean a whole lot. They can be written to guarantee the result one wants.”

  In truth, polls DO mean a whole lot. That’s why politicians and pundits of all stripes pay them a lot of attention. There hasn’t been a presidential administration in the past 50 years, Republican or Democratic, that hasn’t watched the major polls closely. And rare is the congressperson who doesn’t at least occassionally tailor his or her rhetoric to the prevailing winds of public opinion as registered in polls.

  Ham is right that polls can be fixed to obtain desired results. But he seems not to know that any major polling firm that cooks the numbers isn’t going to last long.

  The big outfits, those that are hired by the major media, have to protect their reputations for accuracy. If one company’s numbers are regularly at great variance with those of other companies, suspicion is aroused and the company’s future is at risk.

  For this and other reasons, the polls commissioned by Fox News produce numbers on President Obama’s popularity that are similar to those from the other big outfits, much as that may pain Fox’s commentators.

• 8. Mike Carroll  |  April 30th, 2009 at 7:24 pm

  I am a regular churchgoer and I am opposed to torture. However, I’m fine with waterboarding. This may come as a shock to those who think that every utterance from Obama has the moral authority of The Sermon on the Mount, but his belief that waterboarding is torture doesn’t make it so.
  If he believes it that strongly, one wonders why he has not asked his friends in Congress to send him legislation defining the practice as torture and making it illegal. Perhaps he is being, what shall we say, a bit Clintonian.

• 9. porky  |  April 30th, 2009 at 8:11 pm

  i do not attend church, but i would love to see terrorists tortured. they attacked us first.

• 10. Monkey  |  April 30th, 2009 at 9:06 pm

  Hey Ham,

  The usual right-wing line that President Bush protected us from any more terrorist attacks makes absolutely no sense. Wasn’t President Bush in office on 9/11? Soooooooo, it was on HIS watch that we were attacked, right? Soooooo, how can he also claim credit for protecting us afterward. Please explain.

  And, I’m trying to figure out how it was that GWB helped your wife beat leukemia, your children graduate college, you sell your home and find a new condo. Then, he must have also been actively involved in causing the death of your brother and causing your sister-in-law to be put into assisted living.

  Apparently, GWB had his hands in EVERYTHING and we all just weren’t paying attention, right?

• 11. shawnnews  |  April 30th, 2009 at 10:41 pm

  I left one church because I felt it was a Republican recruiting machine. We saw a video called “Bill Clinton’s Circle of Power.” They talked about the imaginary “Illuminati” Pat Robertson wrote about that “really” controlled the world. I heard all about Operation Rescue. I felt they were deceived by hucksters in the Evangelical community like Ken Hovind & Mike Warnke or just listening to people who use fiery rhetoric like Rush Limbaugh and Randall Terry.
  I go to a church now where they talk about what they should in church– Jesus.

• 12. dudessabides  |  May 1st, 2009 at 4:56 am

  About two years ago, a nurse took my blood pressure on the way out of Mass. It was very high. I could have told her it would be high because of the content of the Homily.
  Then about a year ago, I forgot to remove my “Hillary for President” button from my rain coat in my hurry to get to Mass on time. I was stopped on my way out of Mass by the priest. The people behind me were prevented from leaving while the priest blocked the exit and publically questioned me concerning my beliefs.
  I haven’t returned.

• 13. Pat Cunningham  |  May 1st, 2009 at 7:52 am

  Mike Carroll: Some experts argue that waterboarding IS illegal:
  http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:95EYqNkek10J:lawreview.wustl.edu/slip-opinions/waterboarding-is-illegal/+waterboarding+illegal&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

• 14. Mike Carroll  |  May 1st, 2009 at 1:31 pm

  It’s not obvious to me what makes that author an expert and any clown can write a Law Review article. I should know as I did. It was cited favorably in a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision by the way.

Leave a Comment

Name Required

Email Required, hidden

Url

Comment

Security Code:

Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>

Trackback this post  |  Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed