Working across the aisle and pulpit - how religion can inform political participation?

Is swamp pig the same as long pig?

"Swamped," like an alligator at home, yes. You'll find "allegory" several lines above "alligator" in a dictionary. Having breakfasted on swamp pig, I hung around a while to see whether there'd be any scraps of bacon left for lunch. I've had enough now.

Two steps forward, one back I see eirimach.. you got swamped, metaphorically speaking

I'm still working on "pigs in a swamp," and you hit me with parachutes and swamp gas with teleprompters? I can figure out pigs in a blanket because I breakfast at truck stops when I drive cross-country, but pigs in a swamp puts an image in my mind of raw bacon floating on pea soup, with a well-fed alligator lurking somewhere nearby. As I said, Jesus knew how to avoid mixed metaphors. And it always helps to begin with what they call--metaphorically--a "concrete fact."

Ah, the Adlerian/Jesus style seems to be working with you, so I'll take another baby step: A mind, like a parachute, only works when it is opened...So pull the rip cord and smell the swamp gas: Your messiah is a smooth talking teleprompter reading, corrupt, Chicago thug. You will know him by the company he keeps.

Jesus spoke in parables and kept the metaphors to a minimum lest those who most needed edification became confused by a hopeless mixing of metaphors. Pigs in a swamp? "Faint sparks of id" and sunlight penetrating concrete? Cheap perfume poured on swamp creatures? Criminal muppets? Aahhrrgh! It's an English teacher's nightmare! Whatever can it MEAN? It's time for a seasonal quotation. As Francis Church might have written to Virginia O'Hanlon in 1897, "VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong.... They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. Yes, VIRGINIA, there is [MEANING. It] exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion [to truth] exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy." And you will find meaning if begin with clarity and courage and open-mindedness to comprehend plain FACTS in the world around you. You CAN shed the skepticism of a skeptical age and give integrity a chance to manifest itself even in these benighted times.

Lad, Jesus spoke to us in metaphors in order for the least edified to finally understand....I hope my pig/swamp creature/concrete metaphors finally made it through.

Actually em: "It takes a long time for sunlight to penetrate concrete". Maybe in the deepest recess of your id a faint spark just flickered. Something spawned in a swamp will always be a swamp creature, no matter how much cheap perfume you pour over it.

Quoting from Lincoln this time. . . He was running for office, campaigning at county fairs, and during a speech he put this question to his audience: "If I call a horse's tail a leg, how many legs does the horse then have?" One young man who was anxious to show everyone that he could count shouted out, "Five legs, Mr. Lincoln. That horse has five legs!" "But sir," Lincoln replied, "Calling a horse's tail a leg don't make it one!" Calling Obama corrupt don't make him corrupt. Go and try to gather some facts, Monsoonman. Come back when you can tell the difference between guilt by association and real corruption.

You acknowledge your cheap shot, then proceed to tell me/us you weary of trying to make us think with our brains? Your superior pseudo intellectualism, I suppose is showing us the way? If it oinks like a pig, smells like a pig and wallows in corruption like a pig, it is a corrupt pig no matter how much lipstick you put on it. Obama came from the simmering corrupt cauldron of chicago, with close friends like convicted felon, tony rezko, the murderer bill ayers, the reverends wright and pfleger, the convicted criminal/muppet blagojevich, his employment with the corrupt organization ACORN. Yes how unintellectual of us to notice those associations. So find another shade of lipstick for your pig, this one doesn't work.

You're right, Monsoonman; I took what another commenter calls a "cheap shot." but I do weary of trying to get you guys to think with your brains. None the less, I'll give it one more try: here's what you did. Like Joe McCarthy, you made the unAmerican charge of guilt by association against Obama. If you were to mug a pensioner on a dark street corner, we would not send your pastor to prison with you, or your family or friends. Guilt and virtue are individual in the American ethos. You'd take that trip up the river alone, with no one else guilty by association with you. When Senator McCarthy's demi-demagogues helped him out with another tactic, fear mongering, they created an environment in which the weak-minded and the malcontents bought into the guilt by association, and soon suspicions and charges of "fellow-traveler" and "communist" and "subversive" and "enemy of the state" filled the land. You're doing the same now with your fear-mongering about Obama. You've taken Finnegan's solid point about reaching across the church aisle and used it to try to worry people about Obama's past association with Reverend Wright. It's a transparently fallacious piece of (non) reasoning, and I grow weary of pointing out such tactics, so I just took a short cut and quoted Olbermann instead. 'Sorry. Thje UAW took a hit in the GM reorganization along with everyone else. Why not an equal hit? They had little to do with the company taking wild risks with its financial marketings. Those were the doings of admins and managers; UAW folks would rather just build cars. It looks like they're doing that again now, a Motor Car car of the year included. Like Fast Eddy at the pool table, they're back!

So puerile with the "hate speech" name calling, the "scare tactics" accusations, now the playing with poop card. Pitiful....Yes please enlighten us as to how bailing out the uaw pension funds with tax payer money and bondholders money was so important to the obama administration? Why didn't the unions take an equal hit along with the rest of the GM bagholders?

"Ye shall know them by their fruits." Turning GM around to profitability was not a Marxist scheme but a "score one more" for capitalism. Still, I am concerned about the "company" I'm keeping here. As Keith Olbermann said recently, One side sticks to the facts, and the other side is close to playing with its poop." He was talking about Ailes of FOX News, but if the shoe fits, . . . .

Whether you like it or not & you won't admit it until it's to late. America & obama are in the same place that Germany & hitler were in, in the beginning. Only difference is more people are on to obama. No hate involved, well maybe some, but still the truth.

"You will be known by the company you keep" Anybody that sits his arse in a pew of a racist church for twenty years listening to hate sermons and says that he does not agree with the sermons spoken is either a liar or a fool for wasting his time, take your pick....Yes you and many others swooned over the obama who was sold to you, you didn't know or didn't want to know about reverend wright and many other aspects of the community organizers past. But you "felt" good about him, that's all that matters to you....BTW: Since when did speaking the truth become hate speech around here?..and when did the truth become "scare tactics"? What are YOU afraid of?