Ellison: Pressured by ‘warmongers,’ it’s not easy for Obama to ‘do the right thing’
Thursday, July 01, 2010 at 2:15 pm
- 13 Comments
Both namedropping and conjuring the fiery rhetorical style of the late Paul Wellstone, Rep. Keith Ellison gave a rousing welcome speech to the 3,400 people gathered in Minneapolis over the weekend for the 2010 General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association. Heralding the progressive legacy of the conference’s host city — from Wellstone to Hubert Humphrey to Eugene McCarthy — he began by calling attention to the yellow “LOVE” shirts some in the audience wore, an idea he came back to in his final words, which both supported Barack Obama and subtly revealed his own frustrations with the president.
Acknowledging the role of Christ in his own faith life and in Islam, Ellison told the biblical story of Jesus’ miracle of the loaves and fish — how a small amount of food somehow managed to feed an enormous crowd. “As the scripture goes, there was enough… I wasn’t there, I don’t know what happened… Maybe the disciples’ perception of scarcity was misinformed, and actually there was more than they understood there to be. Maybe there was radical abundance, though they saw scarcity.”
Then he drew a parallel with today: “There’s enough for the straight and the gay. There’s enough for the people who were born in America and the new immigrants. There’s enough for the blacks, there’s enough for the whites, there’s enough for the Latinos, there’s enough for the Asians, there’s enough for the Muslims, the Christians, the Jews, the Buddhists, the Hindus! There’s enough, everybody! …We don’t have to throw anybody under the bus. We don’t have to chase anybody out the door!”
But there’s a big “if.”
There may not be enough, he said, if we continue our rate of military spending or if we horde our wealth or “take the bountiful oceans… and pollute them with fossil fuels that spill into our oceans.”
Concluding the welcome, he offered a subtle critique of the president, by suggesting that he’s struggling — but falling short — in doing the “right thing.”
“Of course President Obama hasn’t brought forth heaven on earth,” he said. “Did you think that he was going to? He needs a strong movement based on the movement of love to propel him forward to do the right thing. I think he wants to do the right thing, but when he’s got the war-mongers pulling on him, it’s not easy to do the right thing.”
13 Comments
Comment posted July 1, 2010 @ 4:22 pm
I don’t know why, but this guy doesn’t get enough national attention for his world-class nitwittery.
Comment posted July 1, 2010 @ 6:40 pm
ah dennis, you still haven’t figured out what the story of loaves and fishes was about, even when its laid out for you.
Comment posted July 1, 2010 @ 6:59 pm
I thought that interpretation of feeding the multitude by the local mooslim politician was pretty amusing, yes. Which only contributes to his standing in the annals of nitwittery.
Comment posted July 1, 2010 @ 9:03 pm
Dennis, when you for once offer a cogent argument on anything, I might begin to take you seriously.
Comment posted July 2, 2010 @ 2:06 am
He sounds more Christian than a “Social Conservative”.
At the beginning of the clip, I kept thinking: “Come aboard, we’re expecting you!”
Comment posted July 2, 2010 @ 8:46 am
Eric – good job purposely misspelling Muslim to show your complete and utter lack of disregard for fellow human beings. Now that’s class.
Comment posted July 2, 2010 @ 8:47 am
Just so we’re all clear, Dennis is the coward, not Eric.
Comment posted July 2, 2010 @ 8:14 pm
so dennis, what do YOU think the story of the loaves and fishes is about?
Comment posted July 2, 2010 @ 8:26 pm
greg: It’s about how sharing food with your neighbor has absolutely nothing to do with financing a government bureaucracy.
It’s about how one-to-many charity is what Christ wanted us to do, not depend on Caesar to distribute food in our name at great inefficiency.
That’s it, right?
Pingback posted July 6, 2010 @ 10:38 am
[...] The Minnesota Independent and Citypages report on House Representative Keith Ellison’s speech to UUs at GA in Minneapolis. Check out the embedded video to watch Ellison’s speech. (Minnesota Independent, CityPages – 7.1.10) [...]
Comment posted October 20, 2010 @ 5:52 am
Who are the terrorists ?
CIA USA ,,, CIA USA ,,, CIA USA, this was the slogan that the protests were chanting years ago. America is involved countless terror activities via its criminal espionage agency CIA in additional to various means thats including puppets regimes. In recent move into same terror-ism activities, America represent real danger on the world safety, is propelling another puppet regime of the south Korea into staging a tension on the region.
“The south Korean military warmongers has been busy with madcap large-scale air battle ex-ercises with U.S. forces in the air over the western part of the Korean Peninsula since October 15″
“exercises with the U.S. imperialists right after their provocative PSI exercises came to a clo-se. This is an intolerable provocation to the DPRK and a blatant challenge to the desire of the Koreans to see the inter-Korean relations improved and the need of the times.”
“The puppet military is spearheading the exercises now under way in the air over the western part of the Korean Peninsula with combined air forces of south Korea and the U.S. involved. Herein lies a dangerous military purpose”
Reference”
US and S. Korean Warmongers’ Joint Air Battle Exercises Flayed
http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2010/201010/news19/20101019-05ee.html
Renewed American Threats: Building a Pretext to Wage War on North Korea?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20227
Secrets of the CIA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QYZBMIBOck
Secrets of The CIA – Iraq
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=803apgVhMDQ
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