Internet muse.
Daring, bold, never sold.
My daily weblog of politics, humor, philosophy...and a constant and nagging reminder of the existence of universal love....
"My parents, like yours, taught me to share, but it wasn't until that day in Union Station that I truly learned the meaning of that word..."
Shorter Conservatarian BlogosphereLarry Johnson on Spying on Americans (and John Bolton)
We are very concerned by the fact that people are exposing illegal acts by the government to the press.
Apparently, the White House over a year ago asked the New York Times not to publish the facts of NSA eavesdropping on American citizens. True to character, the Times complied and cooperated. But now that we know about it, the media, every member of Congress and every concerned American, should be asking "Is this Constitutional?" and "Is this legal?" The executive branch itself should be asking these questions as well. Further, the executive branch would do well to ask, in a business sense, "Is this worthwhile?" and "Is it cost effective?" and "Does it work to improve national security?" I'd like to think that, in addition to these questions, my old boss Michael Hayden is asking the very simple, straightforward, and ultimately the most courageous question. "Is it right?"Katrina Vanden Heuvel: Spying and lying
And to the officials who keep rummaging through all the packages arriving at my doorstep, be aware that I haven't ordered any bomb making supplies recently, just a talking Scooby Doo and Barbie's Fairy Tale Palace. So keep your damn mits off my kids' Christmas presents, dammit!
O come, Desire of nations, bind
In one the hearts of all mankind;
Bid Thou our sad divisions cease,
And be Thyself our King of Peace
"...We live in relative luxury. The sounds of war, if we hear them at all, are a very distant rumble. Hunger, malnutrition, disease, injustice, drought are all very well hidden from our daily routines. We disperse the darkness by turning on a switch.I lost my beloved mother just before this year's Holiday rush began. If anyone can fully understand the lesson about the emptiness that bares itself when something - somone irreplaceable is lost, I'm afraid that I am this season's poster-child.
When we sing "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" we do not sing these words out of desperation and hopelessness. In fact if we are honest with ourselves, we have to probably admit that usually we don’t want Emmanuel to come at all. We are not anxious to have a fulfillment of all the prophesies just yet.
Instead we look forward to the coming of Santa Claus with his presents and gifts. We look forward to year end bonuses and increases in our income. We look forward to parties and festivities, to big meals with family and friends. Most of us live a very privileged life.
Yet in spite of our relative prosperity; in spite of our peaceful, secure lives; in spite of all that we have; we recognize an emptiness deep within. We are fearful of losing what we have, we covet and desire more. Still we are haunted by a sense that more and newer does not necessarily mean better. Intuitively we know that emptiness deep within us can never be filled with whatever is under our Christmas tree.
It is only by embracingWhen we placate and sedate our brokenness with material possessions and riches, it's not much different than being attracted to all those prescription drug ads displaying pretty fields of flowers and smiling, satisfied, successful people - or self-medicating with alcohol or drugs. What we bury and forget is lost. The fruit of the love that God intended for us to keep in our hearts never ripens when we forget the lessons of the prophets.
our own state of brokenness
that we are able reach out with compassion in faith and hope to others..
We guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year when Christmas comes
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why they are poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus
But please forgive me if I seem
To take the tone of judgement
For I`ve no wish to come between
This day and your enjoyment
In this life of hardship and of earthly toil
We have need for anything that frees us
So I bid you pleasure
And I bid you cheer
From a heathen and a pagan
On the side of the rebel Jesus.
"The only thing that the enemy has got going for them is the capacity to take innocent life and to get on our TV screens with this devastation that they cause. These people cannot stand free societies."
- President Bush, answering a member of the Press on December 6, 2005
[WaPo]
Former VP candidate, John Edwards told delegates at a weekend convention of the Florida faithful that Americans would come together behind a leader who asks people to sacrifice for the common good: "There is a hunger in America, a hunger for a sense of national community, a hunger for something big and important and inspirational that they all can be involved in." This statement illustrates a classic Democratic disconnect. In case Edwards hasn’t noticed, there’s already “something big and important and inspirational” going on; it’s called the War on Terror and it’s not only protecting Americans at home.The only disconnect I see is the writer's own. It is Ms. Fabrizio's major 'disconnect' with the reality that exists today at the very center of American hearts and minds. Any recent poll will tell us that Americans are not inspired and are extremely skeptical, at best, about this war in Iraq. I believe that Senator Edwards is correct - Americans come together when they are inspired by an issue that they care about as a common people. Controversial, unjust and morally questionable wars are not something we have been spiritually enthusing over.
"While the Self-Righteous-Right wonders where the King's mojo may have gone, the sane center of America - the vast majority of folks now - all know the truth: the administration's endless, blundering incompetence intertwining seamlessly with the administration's contagious, contemptible corruption has sealed the King's doom."
"I’m not "uncomfortable" with the way Jesus is being tossed around – I’m angry about it. I’d go well beyond discomfort. I think the religious right is making Jesus into some kind of Old Testament wrathful prophet who is judgmental, divisive, and opposed to any notion of liberalism, whereas the teachings of Jesus tell quite a different story. He was tolerant. He was forgiving. He preached love, not hate. In many ways, the literal reading of the teachings of Jesus in the gospels, particularly not filtered through the later apostles in the New Testament, but the literal teachings of Jesus as portrayed in the gospels, are almost totally at odds with the teachings of the present-day religious right."
It is not actually a positive sign for the Americans that Sunni Arabs came out to vote in order to get rid of them, to see if they couldn't get rid of the current pro-American government, to underline that the armed struggle will continue, and to prove that Sunni Arabs (20% of so of the population) are a majority of the country! The American faith that if people go to the polls it means they won't also be blowing things up is badly misplaced.William Rivers Pitt looks at facts existing on the ground:
This election will be no panacea, despite what the hopefuls think. Every electoral model has the Shia and Kurds assuming dominant positions in the Iraqi government. Even if every Sunni in Iraq goes to the polls, they make up only 20% of the overall population. Electoral formulas meant to enhance Sunni power within an Iraqi government will still leave them deeply in the minority. A collection of leading Sunni parties called the Iraqi Consensus Front has been pushing a straightforward slogan: "Our goal is to get the invaders out and rebuild the country." If their minority status prevents the Sunnis from achieving their first goal according to their wishes, they may well return to violence to achieve their second goal. A leaflet was broadly distributed in the Azamiyah neighborhood of Baghdad last Monday. Sunni Arabs may have a chance to advance their cause politically in the upcoming elections, read the leaflet, but "the fighting will continue with the infidels and their followers."
To a remark about Americans being stupid for letting Bush back in, he put Blair in the frame: "It's a pleasure to come to a country where they never made the wrong choice!"
"The evidence of voting fraud and election theft is no secret – it is out in the open for all to see who are willing to see....The response of the mainstream media in the face of all this? Total silence....The response of the Democratic Party? Total silence...The response of the media and the Party to the GAO report report validating the concerns of the critics? More silence.Why!? [Ernest Partridge Essay]
"There has never been a single declaration among the higher levels of government now that we ever intend to withdraw completely our military forces from Iraq," Carter told reporters, according to The Times Herald-Record. "My belief, and it may be erroneous ... is that the top leadership in this country intends 20 years from now, 50 years from now, we'll still have a major military presence in Iraq." - [AP]I don't doubt that this is true. What are we supposed to think about that?
“The monologue of the religious right is finally over and a new dialogue has begun.”
- the Rev. Jim Wallis, author of 'God's Politics - Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It'
Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners, a Christian group active in politics, said Monday that protesters will pray for “a change of heart” by Republicans, citing Old Testament prophet Isaiah, “Woe to you legislators of infamous laws … who make widows their prey and rob the orphan.” - SFGate
"More than anything, I'm risking arrest this Advent season because I have hope. And hope is what Advent is all about."
Wallis and other progressive religious leaders who believe the poor have received short shrift hope that, by emphasizing the religious obligation to help the poor, they can reframe the debate....At the same time, that might help lift the fortunes of Democrats who voters say are more concerned with poverty than Republicans are, but who have suffered political defeats because their party is perceived as being less hospitable to people of faith. In the last two presidential elections, Democrats lost - by significant margins - voters who considered themselves deeply religious, and this has been an issue many in the party said must be addressed if Democrats are to return to power in Congress or the White House.
"...when asked by Cybercast News Service whether he was urging the government to promote Judeo-Christian values, [Rev. Raymond]Rivera said he was not. "What we're saying is that ... whether you have a religious tradition like many people here do, or just come out of a human tradition, we don't think the country should balance its budget on the back of its most vulnerable citizens."
"....getting arrested for an act of civil disobedience in North America isn't remotely similar to what has happened to the four Christian Peacemakers Teams members in Iraq. But it reminds us all that following conscience and acting on conviction sometimes has a cost. For a few, it could mean putting life on the line."
Carrie Gordon Earll, spokesperson for Focus on the Family, told Cybercast News Service that her organization did not take part in Wednesday's rally because it holds a different view of the relationship between the government and the poor. [my emphasis]We can only assume that they think the budget is moral enough to suit their Christian fancy - and they must believe that the government has no responsibility or accountability for lifting the poorest in our society. In any moral sense, that statement is a no-winner. James Dobson and those in his his organization have shrunk back in the face of a value-challenge from Wallis and the other activists who protested in DC yesterday.
From the WaPo:What a cop-out!
Janice Crouse, a senior fellow at the Christian group Concerned Women for America, said religious conservatives 'know that the government is not really capable of love. You look to the government for justice, and you look to the church and individuals for mercy.'" Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council says putting the biblical mandate to help the poor into the federal budget is a "shifting" of responsibility.
Focus on the Family: It's not a question of the poor not being important or that meeting their needs is not important. But whether or not a baby is killed in the seventh or eighth month of pregnancy, that is less important than help for the poor? We would respectfully disagree with that.
Wonkette: "In other words, poor people, if you're cold and hungry this Christmas, the right would love to help you. You'll just need to find a womb to crawl into first."
[Pastor Ted] Haggard’s relatively open-minded stance [on gay civil unions] could signal a shift away from the radical homophobia of evangelical hate-mongers like Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, writes Dicker in a Toilet Paper blog item: “[Haggard] could have even greater influence over Evangelical Christian public opinion than Dobson has ever had, particularly if they start moving toward the middle where many who now despise them as fundamentalists might be willing to take a softer view if they'd adopt a message of compassion toward gays.”
"I knew that but I used my candidacy as an opportunity to talk about fundamentalism and issues that were dividing us. Too many Baptists have been too silent and cozy when it comes to the rise of fundamentalism. I decided a while ago I was no longer going to be silent and would never be cozy."
The Nagasaki-Hiroshima story reminds us that government deceit (even by good men) is hardly a recent invention. None of the officials involved in this tale had evil intentions. What can be said of them is that some became so taken by the power the atomic bomb seemed to give them to do good (as they defined it), that they seem to have become carried away...
The manipulation of the public by elites, the seductive belief that overwhelming force confers unlimited power to determine good and evil, and the fragile nature of the limits we seem willing to accept on our own prerogatives are all ongoing issues--as, finally, is the terrible question of what it means for a democracy to delegate to one person such extraordinary discretionary power in an era when the next Hiroshima could be the globe.
- Excerpted from: The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb
by Gar Alperovitz
LSU's Reilly Center for Media and Public Affairs shows that Louisiana residents are most concerned about the displacement of the state's residents, closely followed by their concern for rebuilding New Orleans. [LSU]Document here (pdf)
Louisiana residents rated the response of religious organizations as highly effective, giving them an 8.1 on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being highly ineffective and 10 being very effective. Nonprofit organizations received a 7.5. However, respondents evaluated the effectiveness of government response – at all lev-els – much more negatively. Respondents rated New Orleans city government and state government at 4.6, local governments – other than New Orleans – at 6.5, and the federal government at 5.1. The Greater New Orleans region – areas identified by the 504 area code – consistently rated all levels of government more negatively than other area of the state.We are a divided society - two Americas - and it shows in this recent poll. Results show a clearly partisan response to the ratings given to the state vs. the federal government response to the hurricane. Unless you were comatose last Labor Day, you know how bad the federal response was to Katrina. Yet, look at the non-realistic response from Louisiana Republicans on the federal response vs. the local/state response. It's as if they were coached by Fox News:
Breaking the results out by political perspective, Republicans gave the federal government significantly higher ratings, 6.0, than state or local governments, 4.3 and 3.8 respectively; while Democrats gave low marks to government across the board, 4.7 to the federal government and 5.0 to both the state and local governments.I am tired of having to report that many of our citizens are refusing to look at reality and are neglecting to commit to working together, as Americans from one America, to guide our Representatives toward meaningful solutions to so many of our nation's troubles. The longer we stubbornly commit to being divided, the worse things will get. The worst leadership lessons about commitment to national division have been taught by our President, who has given blubbery lip service to bipartisanship, but has never backed it up with meaningful action. Our Representatives are equally guilty. From the president, we have seen perpetual Republican campaign speeches, set perfectly for the media in front of adoring invitation-only throngs, with a convenient legislative companion to help him to cash in on what Bush unduly considers to be his "political capital" - the compliant "rubber-stamp" House of Representatives.
A majority of Louisiana residents, 54 percent, said that the federal government should pick up the tab for the costs of rebuilding, while 20 percent said insurance companies should pay the costs and 13 percent said state government should pay.Citizens are very concerned about the future of education and, to a lesser extent, health care. Some would actually agree to cutting health care to save education. What a sad choice - don't you agree?
Louisiana residents expressed a preference for raising taxes over cutting either education or health care, and a preference for borrowing money over raising taxes. Nearly 70 percent of respondents opted for raising taxes rather than cutting education and 65 percent opted for raising taxes over cutting health care. Even larger majorities preferred borrowing money to cutting education – 79 percent – or cutting health care – 74 percent.
This beleaguered city has struggled for months to maintain a "we're all in this together" civility, to keep the high-ground haves from turning their backs on the lowland have-nots. But the issue of where to place trailer parks in New Orleans seems to have stirred tensions and rubbed people like little else.And then there's NIMBY problem:
The Federal Emergency Management Agency wants to set up more than 22,000 trailers in the city in an effort to house returning residents while they rebuild their homes. Many will go in private yards, but plans also call for 22 trailer parks, said Rachel C. Rodi, a FEMA spokeswoman.
The agency has also been encountering resistance to parks in the rest of the state, even as it fields complaints that there is not enough housing for evacuees. Only a handful of parishes are allowing them. Some, like Orleans Parish, are restricting them, while many are barring them altogether.
Much about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath has been unprecedented, yet this outcry is all too typical in cities throughout the nation. Everyone wants to help the less fortunate, but can't the city find another place for them?It looks like most citizens believe the trailer park idea is bad - all around. The poorest will be stuck living in tin cans all together - isolated literally and figuratively from those lovely housing divisions across the street where the rich folk like to meet.
"As a Christian, I have no doubt in my heart, my mind, and my soul that what the State of California did this morning was morally wrong."
"How soon we forget that we bear the symbol of Jesus Christ's own unjust execution on the ends of our golden necklaces."
"As a society, we have to "pay our bills" somewhere along the line. I'd rather pay the bill by making things better on the streets than to abide silently while the State performs executions in my name. 'Paying the bills' will require saving that drowning baby from Grover Norquist's proverbial bathtub."
We hear Stanley Tookie Williams in his own words, speaking in one his last interviews, recorded just hours before his death. He appeared on Pacifica Radio station WBAI's Wake Up Call. In the interview, Williams says he would like to be remembered for his redemptive transition: "Redemption. I can say it no better than that. That's how I would like the world to remember me. That's what I would like my legacy to be remembered as."Doc Searls explains why he thinks this is a strike against Gov. Schwarzenegger.
Willie Horton. Tookie Williams. 1300 missing children due to Katrina, with bloated black bodies floating past our eyes. Republicans really do like to Stay the Corpse, don’t they? Especially the non-Aryan kind.Note: To defend the state's taking of a life, I saw someone invoking the Old Testament readings of Genesis 9:6, Exodus 21:12-14, Leviticus 24:17, Numbers 35:33 - totally neglecting the New Testament and forgetting that these are words of God, and they work both ways. We could apply those readings to a soulless state taking a life in the name of its citizens - and the judgement against the people of the democratic state would be equal to the judgement against Williams.
It came hours before UN Security Council members got the latest report on the death of a former Lebanese PM, in which Syria has been implicated....the attack raises the political temperature in Lebanon at a highly sensitive moment.
