At last: a considerable reaction, of any kind, to yet another casualty of war.

I copied all of my friends' Facebook statuses over these past few days concerning the death of Osama Bin Laden, because I wanted to gauge the reaction of those in my social network. I thought the variety of responses was interesting, and surely most of these perspectives are worth looking at and considering. I think it's important to understand the general reaction of our country, the Church, and our loved ones- it says a lot about us. How did you FB friends react to the news? What do our reactions say about our character/values/priorities?

As Mother Teresa said, "If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other." What a tragic state of humanity that the death of any person would elicit joy and celebration.

big deal osama bin laden is dead. its not goin to end the war. it brings a small piece of justice but other than that its not a big deal at all.

Glad America can put this to rest. :)

Don't rejoice when your enemies fall; don't be happy when they stumble. [Proverbs 24:17]

Jesus loves Osama Bin Laden.

The Crucifixion = redemptive violence–– right? With all this celebrating you would think so. I don't post prayers on facebook often––actually ever––but Father please teach us, through the open body of your Son, what it means to be hospitable.

"As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live." - Ezekiel 33:11.

LOL I hope none of you Osama celebrators are pro life. LOL @ ur hypocrisy.

Let us not forget our humanity, though he may have forgotten his. Evil is not extinguished through death and celebrated hatred.

God bless America. It doesn't matter if one man is dead. This one man was responsible for 3000 innocent us civilians deaths. Our troops will continue to fight and this night shows us what were fighting for.

It's a great day for our country! President Obama's speech was clearly heartfelt and brilliant!

I am getting off facebook for the a good amount of time because I'm tired of everyone justifying hate and murder and war with a flag and a cross. Excuse me, but that's disgusting. Damn America, you've let me down. Again.

“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love." - Martin Luther King Jr.

good riddance Osama Bin Laden, your cowardice and inhumanity will follow your name through the rest of history.

Call me a skeptic, but I'd like proof that Osama Bin Laden is dead.

I would love to drag his body through the streets of New York behind my horse. You know who I mean

Bin Laden has been killed. How do we feel about this? Hey wait a second...my Bible says: Psalm 10:12-18, Exudus 20:13, and 1 John 3:15; contrasting ideas in the same book! Eeek. It's very easy to comment on this event when we sit huddled safe in the US. How would our perspective shift if we did not have the luxury of talking about war in a classroom? but rather had to live in its brutality everyday? Food for thought.

It's so sad to me how fast we fall into celebration for the death of a person. What happened to the love and peace that Jesus showed us through his life?

Finding truth in God's Word. Ezekiel 18:23. He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Praying for peace. Night all.

"I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy." MLK Jr.

Am I reading a different Bible? Are we supposed to be gleeful about taking a life; no matter whose life it is? Aren't conservative Evangelicals supposed to be pro-life?

It disturbs me how everyone and their mother is putting *like* to posts about a person's death. Not sure that death ever deserves a *like*..... no matter who it was.

Lets be clear!! Obama did not or initiate the assassanation of Osama Bidladin, a American Soldier that volunteer's to protect you and I and the Freedoms in which America stands for and that Obama wanted to freeze the pay of did!! God bless the USA wich was found under Him!!

The War on Intelligence

Some of the recent actions of our House of Representatives are scaring me a little bit. While our middle and lower class bends under the weight of a national deficit, jobs flee overseas to exploit workers, and our education and healthcare systems perpetuate cyclical poverty and disease, the best they think they can do is take away our intelligence so that we don't notice the actions they aren't taking. 

The recent attack on public broadcasting (170MillionAmericans.org) and Planned Parenthood (ppaction.org/IStandWithPP) are a distraction and a waste of time that hurt, not help, Americans. The attack on public broadcasting not only does not make a dent in the national debt, but it takes away a valuable unbiased news resource from the American people. It is an attack on intelligence that leaves many with no domestic news options besides incredibly biased news stations that avoid the real issues.

Thanks Marz for the image: tellhertruly.tumblr.com

As for the attack on Planned Parenthood, it is a wedge issue and at it's heart is an attack on women's health. The NY Times spells out what the Pence Amendment is really all about:

"The egregious cuts in the House resolution include the elimination of support for Title X, the federal family planning program for low-income women that provides birth control, breast and cervical cancer screenings, and testing for H.I.V. and other sexually transmitted diseases. In the absence of Title X’s preventive care, some women would die. The Guttmacher Institute, a leading authority on reproductive health, says a rise in unintended pregnancies would result in some 400,000 more abortions a year... Their continuing resolution would cut by 10 percent the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, better known as WIC, which serves 9.6 million low-income women, new mothers, and infants each month, and has been linked in studies to higher birth weight and lower infant mortality (The War on Women)."

This is not about abortion. Very little federal money that goes to PP funds abortions, and those dollars that do are for extreme cases like rape and incest. This is about misogyny, about a war on the intelligence of the U.S. public and of women especially. How much more do Republicans have to take from the middle and lower classes before we start taking it personally?

How about the trillions of dollars we have spent killing people in the Middle East? How about the billions of dollars spent on the war on drugs-- the war on drugs being the jailing of thousands of poor non-white men who have committed victimless crimes-- which hasn't stunted drug use in the least? How about the obscene salaries of the men pushing this legislation through? THOSE are the dollars we should be cutting. There's a reason stupid crap gets so much time on the news: it's so we don't think about this stuff. It's so our only political and moral convictions have to do with abortion and gay marriage, instead of the plagues that are killing the minds, hearts, and bodies of our children. This is a war on intelligence. By all means, keep getting angry about the freedom of Muslims to practice their religion, the choices that women make in their personal lives, and the sexual lives of women and men you have never met. But one day you will look down and see the ground has been taken from underneath you by the very men who incited you to such anger, and they will have done it without you even noticing.

http://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/

NY Times: The War on Women

http://www.170millionamericans.org/




Lupe Fiasco- Words I Never Said:

A few graphs that explain most of what's wrong with America...

I want to print this out and keep it in my wallet at all times. So frustrating! But so enlightening... How much worse is it going to get before the middle class gets their heads out of their... well, you know... and stop voting for Republicans?!

Mother Jones: It's the Inequality, Stupid