Thread: Pact with the Devil?

Apparently that Rush Limbaugh also had something nasty to say, vis. why no one should send any assistance to Haiti (surprise surprise).

The Top 10 Reasons To Be a Right Wing Radio Host

Ahh, that explains the death of the Archbishop.

Regarding Rush, that moron is constantly going off about how charitable giving is preferable to taxation ("stealing") to help the underclasses of society... Then when a disaster happens, he says we shouldn't be charitable because our taxes already paid for it?!

His ramblings reached us here too. On 8pm news...
Doesn't surprise me there are asinine people in the world. Doesn't surprise me either this kind of people are sought out and given wide public coverage.

But it still ........es me off the person interviewing him didn't just smash his face to a pulp and got away with temporary insanity. That's the kind of heroes with need these days.

In Pat Robertson's defense....


He is 79...

People like Robertson give the church and religion a bad name. It's all he can do to keep his name at the forefront of the news since no one really cares what he does at any other time.

Haiti had an earthquake b/c that is what happens when two tectonic plates rub each other the wrong way for a period of time. Nothing spiritual about it. I used to attend Bible college with colleagues who tried to spiritualize every event in their life and other's lives. Thankfully I had a theo professor (God rest his soul) who constantly refuted these types and said that every little event in the world does not have a spiritual cause. Thinking like that has caused the church far more harm than it has good. And it doesn't even follow with good sound theology to place blame on a country for a natural event that they have no control over. I'm assuming Mr. Robertson has at least attended 4 year college if not more and he should know better than to subscribe to this type of flawed theology. Theology like that makes God sound like some sick kid just waiting to push a button and kill thousands or like a kid slowly pulling the legs off of an ant just to see it squirm. Complete rubbish and nonsense.

Let's turn the tables on Mr. Robertson and use his own ammo against him:
I guess I could place the blame on Mr. Robertson for failing to pray for the protection of all Haitians. <sarcasm>Obviously he did not pray for them b/c this event happened.</sarcasm> So he is the deficient cause of the event according to his own blame-game theology. By making himself the deficient cause he, theoretically, is just as guilty as the efficient natural cause. So, according to his own type of thinking and theological ideals, he should be looking in the mirror for the cause. He is no different than the Pharisees in the Bible who would stand on street corners thanking God they were not like other men. It is extremely hippocritical to sit and act as judge as if you have no flaws or sins in your own life and even worse to do it to a society who just experienced a tremendous disaster. I don't think Robertson is following the Bible here when it says to reach out the homeless and be a shelter to those who have none. He might as well be the people who passed by the injured individual in the road in the story of the good Samaritan. In this instance I would say judge not lest ye be judged is in perfect context for this event. The same judgement that Robertson has passed on Haiti is the same measuring stick that he will be judged by.

It amazes me that popular people like this idiot can even keep a congregation out there somehwere. If any normal pastor, youth pastor, or minister even suggested this type of idea they would be flipping hamburgers at McDonald's....and rightly so.

Thank goodness other ministers are already standing up and calling this man out:
http://blog.timesunion.com/rudnick/p...he-devil/1091/

Before you judge the entire church by this man's ridiculous statements here is a link to how my denomination of choice feels about Haiti. I encourage you to watch the video regardless of how you believe or if you believe - it shows that the churches here do not agree with nor abide by Mr. Robertson's statements.
http://ag.org/top/index.cfm

The Assemblies of God has 273 churches with over 66,000 members in Haiti who did nothing to deserve to die. Mr. Robertson is a complete fool to pass judgement on any of them or any one person in Haiti. I probably attended school with some who are ministering there. I hope everyone is safe and sound.

"His honour rooted in dishonour stood,
And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true."

From Idylls of the King, Alfred Tennyson

Originally Posted by MK27

Apparently that Rush Limbaugh also had something nasty to say, vis. why no one should send any assistance to Haiti (surprise surprise).

Then when a disaster happens, he says we shouldn't be charitable because our taxes already paid for it?!

Not quite what was said, but I'm not surprised that is the presentation.

Obama Leaps into Action on Haiti

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We're going to start in Raleigh, North Carolina. Justin you're first today. Great to have you with us.

CALLER: Mega Rush Baby dittos. My question is, why did Obama in the sound bite you played earlier, when he's talking about if you wanted to donate some money, you can go to WhiteHouse.gov --

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: -- to direct you how to do so. If I want to donate money to the Red Cross, why do I need to go to the WhiteHouse.gov page and --

RUSH: Exactly. Would you trust that the money is going to go to Haiti?

CALLER: No.

RUSH: Would you trust that your name is going to end up on a mailing list for the Obama people to start asking you for campaign donations for him and other causes.

CALLER: Absolutely.

RUSH: Absolutely right.

CALLER: That's the point.

RUSH: Besides, we've already donated to Haiti. It's called the US income tax.

CALLER: Rush, my mother was going to be on a missionary trip. She was going to leave at 4:30 this morning to go to Haiti with our church.

RUSH: That's another point, too. Churches --

CALLER: No government money, Rush.

RUSH: Exactly right. Look, there are people that do charitable work every day in Haiti. It's not as though -- like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, it's our fault. Reverend Wright, it's our fault, there's no excuse for such poverty when there's a nation as rich as we are so close. There are people that have been trying to save Haiti just as we're trying to save Africa. You just can't keep throwing money at it because the dictatorships there just take it all. They don't spread it around, and even if they did they're not creating a permanent system where people can provide for themselves. It's a simple matter of self-reliance. Nobody takes that approach down there because this has always been a country run by dictators and incompetent ones at that.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT

Danny Glover had an interesting response too.

Originally Posted by Dave_Sinkula

Not quite what was said, but I'm not surprised that is the presentation.

Yeah, my version was almost forgiving.

"We've already donated to Haiti. It's called the US income tax." -RL

I thought that was for the big banks?

"You just can't keep throwing money at it because the dictatorships there just take it all." -RL

Nb., that the current government of Haiti is officially democratic (for what that is worth) and actively supported by both the US military and the UN (for what that is worth). This kind of renders the term "dictatorship" meaningless, like, "oh, my neighbor is a jerk" -- but I imagine Rush's listeners are still getting what they want to hear, vis, the real victims of the earthquake are them,* conservatives who have to pay taxes that are probably going to fund somebody else's mess -- which since the US military supports (and in fact installed) the regime there, and conservatives generally support the military with no questions asked, maybe:

1) it really is their mess,
2) they like making a mess, and
3) they don't want ANYONE to clean it up, esp with their money that is supposed to be used more destructively if at all.
Mean mean mean!

The man here intentionally warped the truth here in order to discourage people from offering assistance to what he considers a lost or unworthy cause. So I will stand by what I originally said:

"Rush Limbaugh also had something nasty to say, vis. why no one should send any assistance to Haiti (surprise surprise)."

* they are always the real victims of everything, of course

It's not just in US that some people question why the government should spend money on it.

I guess these... people?... can consider themselves lucky it wasn't in Iran or North Korea. The last vestiges of their already diminished humanity would have been lost with their dialectic.

The world needs more shotguns.

In the days following 9/11 or Katrina, I found news items that showed that some charities were not exactly using donations to go to the victims (cursory search).

The American Red Cross, the largest recipient of Katrina donations to the tune of $2.3 billion, is once again accused of impropriety and fraud.

Now this is sad on its own, but this sort of thing does happen. I know I'd be less than happy if my donation were to later fall into a "Credit Cards Profiting From Haiti Disaster" group.

CALLER: Mega Rush Baby dittos. My question is, why did Obama in the sound bite you played earlier, when he's talking about if you wanted to donate some money, you can go to WhiteHouse.gov --

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: -- to direct you how to do so. If I want to donate money to the Red Cross, why do I need to go to the WhiteHouse.gov page and --

RUSH: Exactly. Would you trust that the money is going to go to Haiti?

CALLER: No.

If one is truly interested in helping the victims, it might be a good idea to check into the charity to find out where the donations go. Some outfits try to make this easy.

I will be donating to Food For the Poor, an terrific organization serving those in desperate need in the Caribbean and Latin America. I have written before about the excellent work they do, and the people they serve. And they really do serve. In 2008, over 97% of their donations went directly their programs in aid to the poor.

Attachment 9548

Regarding the "income tax" comment, I'm sure that France or the UK or other European countries had mobilized their militaries to begin relief efforts almost immediately as well. Unfortunately these many examples haven't found their way into my regular reading. But the "taxes" comment is a fact; "donations" already go toward relief efforts. Giving more is left to individuals to decide, and I don't know how one can argue that this wouldn't be fair.


And regarding the state of Haiti: "No one wants to see the $100 million trove in American emergency aid stabilize the country for awhile, only to see Haiti collapse again from another disaster a few years on." This is wandering away from immediate relief efforts, but as a larger point it does relate. Since it was brought up, as "dictatorship" or whatever, I'll go with this a bit.

Registering 7.0 on the Richter scale, the Haitian earthquake killed tens of thousands of people. But the quake that hit California’s Bay Area in 1989 was also of magnitude 7.0. It killed only 63 people.

This difference is due chiefly to Americans’ greater wealth. With one of the freest economies in the world, Americans build stronger homes and buildings and roads, are better nourished, and have better health care and better search and rescue equipment. In contrast, burdened by one of the world’s least-free economies, Haitians cannot afford to build sturdy structures and roads. (Haitian builders often add sand to their concrete because concrete is so expensive there. The result is weaker buildings.) Nor can Haitians afford the health care and emergency equipment that we take for granted here in the U.S.

More than just anecdotes prove that richer societies are safer societies. Lots of data back up this observation. For example, in a 2005 paper, UCLA economist Matthew Kahn found that, while rich countries experience just as many natural disasters as do poor countries, persons in rich countries are less likely than are persons in poor countries to die from such disasters. Specifically, a country of 100 million people with a per-capita income of $8,000 will experience about 530 fewer deaths from natural disasters each year than will a country with the same population but where per-capita income is only $2,000. Raise the per-capita income from $8,000 to $14,000 and the annual expected death toll from natural disasters falls by another 233 persons.

Haitians are now paying the price for this feeble and corrupt government structure because there is nobody to co-ordinate the most rudimentary relief and rescue efforts. Its weakness is exacerbated because aid has been funnelled through foreign NGOs. A justification for this is that less of the money is likely to be stolen, but this does not mean that much of it reaches the Haitian poor. A sour Haitian joke says that when a Haitian minister skims 15 per cent of aid money it is called "corruption" and when an NGO or aid agency takes 50 per cent it is called "overheads".

Many of the smaller government aid programmes and NGOs are run by able, energetic and selfless people, but others, often the larger ones, are little more than rackets, highly remunerative for those who run them.

All the more reason for competent handling of help for Haiti, and of the enormous ruin there. For this kind of thing, the UN record is, unfortunately, abysmal. Recall the UN response to the 2004 tsunami in Asia, in which the UN humanitarian coordinator at the time, Jan Egeland, accused countries such as the U.S. of being “stingy,” and promised UN transparency in the handling of the funds that poured in by the billions. About a year later, a series of in-depth investigative reports by the Financial Times found minimal UN transparency, lots of UN stonewalling, and as far as the funds could be tracked at all, it appeared that the UN, having received a flood of relief money, was slow on the scene, and had been spending about one-third of every dollar raised on overhead. The real champions of relief were the U.S. military, and private aid groups. (UN “reform” since then has consisted of a lot of talk about reform, a lot more bureaucracy, a lot more money for the UN, and, if possible, even less transparency.)

These are good arguments, dave.

But what to do?
Surely choosing an aid program that draws pretty graphs isn't the answer. We see the same graphs everywhere. Certain organizations are more respected than others, but this doesn't mean they are indeed trustworthy, either.

Channeling aid money through the government seems the right thing to do. After all the aid coordination is often centralized at the local government. This is how things work in most countries in the world. But if any of us want to believe we live in a country where our government is corrupt to the point of stealing money from aid funds, fine. It's your prerogative. But I don't need to tell you how Rush clearly lead the caller to that conclusion. Not admissible in court.

Instead, it's best not to forget that you can still donate money to the aid organizations directly. You don't need to go to foo.gov if that scares you.

Of course you cannot know if money you give someone for a specific purpose will be used as effectively as you would use it if you could carry out this purpose yourself. My mom was an administrator for the red cross, and she claims she was regularly told by her superiors to NEVER go under budget on ANYTHING, since the next such budget could then be cut by that amount. That's not quite synonymous with fraud or waste, but it sure implies the possibility.

My preferred form of charity is giving money to people who ask me for change. IMO, there is nothing more despicable than posters of the sort "Don't give money to panhandlers -- give it to an organization that feeds the homeless". But I do also occasionally give money to the Red Cross, since there are a lot of things they can do that really, very few other organizations have the resources to do (such as dealing as first response to large scale disasters just about anywhere).

I would strongly question that pie graph and similar "charity rating" systems. What does "97% went to programs" mean? It's totally vacuous. It means nothing. If any of that "program cost" is someone's salary, all they are doing is shifting figures around so they can present people with pie graphs claiming "our administrative cost are only 2%"! Very unlikely -- if it smells like BS and it looks like BS, I say it's probably BS! Also, they are Christian missionaries. No doubt, a lot of those "programs for the poor" are just about proselytizing, handing out bibles, and even building churches == more hypocrisy. They simply profit from an industry, and make like it's charity. Not saying that of all Christian organizations -- I think the Salvation Army is terrific -- just most of them.

What this comes down to is a bunch of people trying to justify their own complete lack of generosity or humanity by saying, "oh, but how do I know someone isn't lying to me"? Hmmm. Maybe it's Rush Limbaugh...

Originally Posted by MK27

Apparently that Rush Limbaugh also had something nasty to say, vis. why no one should send any assistance to Haiti (surprise surprise).

Rush is a moron, although I do tend to agree that we shouldn't send assistance. We can't keep bailing out these third world countries that make moronic policy decisions ( or no decisions at all) every time something happens. Part of being a sovereign nation is taking the responsibility to make your own decisions and living with the consequences. If the bleeding heart conservatives (e.g. crybaby xtians) had their way they would force anyone who builds a house on bedrock to subsidize the rebuilding costs for everyone that builds their houses on sand, which is exactly what sending assistance to Haiti is.

Sorry guys, but the free lunch has to come to an end one way or the other.

If money can fix the problem, then money isn't the problem. Most of the deaths in these situations do not come from the disaster itself, but due to a break down in the distribution system, i.e. price gouging, profiteering, etc. The resulting lack of food water and sanitation quickly increases the death toll. The people who actually die from injuries cannot be helped by ANY amount of money.

If you really want to help Haiti, help them develop policies that will reduce the damage during future disasters. Things like an effective local disaster reaction agency, building codes, policies that encourage infrastructure development, education, roads, hospitals, etc. But ultimately the Haitian people have to pay for these things themselves or they will be unsustainable.