once more with feeling | this land is mine

Now and then, this timeless work from Nina Paley demands to be seen and considered one more time....

Trigger warning . everyone, everywhen gets skewered.

When will we ever learn?

From Nina Paley

Christmas Memory | My father is a...

From January, 2014

Our daughter Kate told a story at Christmas that, for Susan and me, summed up a lot that we've been thinking and talking about together.

A young friend told Kate she was struggling with a prominent thread among Christians in her social media connections: "I am a princess, because my Father is the king of kings." Of course there was merchandise involved because nothing says princess like a little pink t-shirt.

The young woman found all this off-putting, though she couldn't put a finger on just why. “Am I wrong?” she asked, “Do I just not get it?”

"Oh, sweetie, no," Kate told her, "you're not wrong. In fact, wouldn't it be more accurate to say, "I am a servant, because my father is a servant"?

There may not be a sizable market for that t-shirt. It's a lot to live up to. But wouldn't it be something if households and streets and schools and playgrounds and performance spaces and youth groups were teeming with little servants learning to understand and embrace their identity and calling to follow Jesus? Wouldn't that be something like Christmas?

Martin Marty on the New York Times Food Writer Who Fasted | Updated 04.04.19

We were, as a people, in a somewhat different space when this came up eight years ago ... somewhat, but not entirely. We're not arguing much about cutting the Federal deficits this year, but we're finding plenty to clash about as relates to the poor — of whom it may be said, as David Beckmann is quoted as saying by Martin Marty: "They didn’t get us into this, and starving them isn’t going to get us out of it.” So, with that...

“Why We’re Fasting” is the title of columnist Mark Bittman’s essay in Wednesday's New York Times, the “we” being himself and David Beckmann, here described as a “reverend,” and “this year’s World Food Prize laureate.” The pastor heads “Bread for the World.” Yes, why fast? Readers can do their own sighting and hearing of all the media-reported clashes over the national budget, now in final crunch time. That scan will reveal the obvious: that lost in the necessary political and economic debates blighted by the side-tracking but focal partisan and sub-partisan disputes on the issue is one set of people. Biblical scholars in this “Judeo-” and “Christian” nation call them “God’s people.” They are the poor, disabled, disadvantaged, undersheltered and, yes, hungry, about whom some of the budget debates were supposed to have been waged.           

Bittman and Beckmann discuss Isaiah 58, essential reading for believers and bystanders alike at such a time and place as this. G. K. Chesterton famously observed that one can look at something 999 times and then, on the thousandth sighting, see something revelatory, as if for the first time. We are asked to do such looking now. To bid each other to do so will sound embarrassingly pious, and yet. . . .           

As Bittman tells it, he is fasting, or was, last Monday, when thousands of others also fasted to draw notice to those Congressional budget proposals (H.R. 1) which would “quite literally cause more people to starve to death, go to bed hungry or live more miserably than they are doing now.” Adds Bittman: “And: The bill would increase defense spending.”

Bittman confessed to some skepticism about whether things work out the way Isaiah 58, reporting on God’s revelatory word, suggests. That chapter also reflected God’s being bored by all of Israel’s fussing about how strenuous the people were about holy fasting. The prophet—in my own loose translation—says, for God: “You think you are going to impress me by fasting, but all you do is get hungry and thus get angry and then beat up on each other. Is that the fast you think I want?”

You will know the truth and the truth will make you flinch before it sets you free | thoughts on torture as an American policy

"You will know the truth and the truth will make you flinch before it sets you free." 

It's a saying passed down by friends of the Baptist preacher Carlyle Marney, He doesn't seem to have included the line in any of his writings or published sermons, but he appears to be stuck with until somebody steps forward to claim it for someone else.

We are in the grip of one of those massive flinches right now as we digest the summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on torture as a tool of US policy.

Some of us feel blindsided by the release of hundreds of pages detailing horrendous acts committed in our name. But not everyone. The conversation has been going on for more than a decade. In 2006, I decided to stop just talking about torture and start recording what I knew, what I suspected and what I feared about my country's decent into officially sanctioned torture.

I'm indebted to those who held the light so others could read the handwriting on the wall.

Here, for what it's worth, is one person's progression of posts — some original, much borrowed —tracking how the wind's been blowing on torture as an American pursuit. 

March 06 2006 | Mr. Conyers Steps Up 

October 17 2006 | Military Commissions Act of 2006 | Two Centuries of American 

Democracy Undone with the Stroke of a Pen

March 09 2007 | Iraq Four Years On | In Search of Moral Footing

February 15 2008 | Senator McCain Said What?

March 10 2008 | Hey; this is America, we don't torture

July 24 2008 | A World That Stands as One | Barack Obama's speech in Berlin

November 03 2008 | a last word on November 3, 2008

August 31 2009 | Torture Debate Lost in Maze

January 21 2010 | A letter to Senator-elect Scott Brown of Massachusetts

June 11 2010 | Torture: Are You Convinced?

November 09 2010 | The Tortured Logic of Our Times | Expecting More from Our Leaders

June 10 2011 | Martin Marty on Torture, Then + Now

November 05 2012 | Too Far to Turn Back Now | The Election of 2012

May 23 2013 | Barack Obama on the components of a comprehensive counterterrorism strategy 

October 27, 2014 | If... National Security + Moral Law 01

Ferguson Grand Jury | an honest mistake?

Banking on Education | college students borrow money at 800% higher interest than banks...

Click to Enlarge Image



Banking on Education infographic via Democracy for America

nothing new here | State of Florida v. George Zimmerman

From Bernard E. Harcourt, Racial Profiling: What's the Problem? page 37

As far as I can tell, the process and outcome the George Zimmerman trial haven't yet lent themselves to crisp, clear, universal findings, except to underscore this conclusion: Dark-skinned young men are disadvantaged prima facie in the design and application of U.S. legal codes, law enforcement and criminal justice.

If we wish to be anything like who we say we are, we have to address and change prejudicial dynamics in law and policy as well as human interactions.

Read it for Yourself | Barack Obama on the components of a comprehensive counterterrorism strategy, May 23, 2013

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

May 23, 2013

Remarks by the President at the National Defense University

National Defense University

Fort McNair

Washington, D.C. 

2:01 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Good afternoon, everybody.  Please be seated. 

It is a great honor to return to the National Defense University.  Here, at Fort McNair, Americans have served in uniform since 1791 -- standing guard in the earliest days of the Republic, and contemplating the future of warfare here in the 21st century.

For over two centuries, the United States has been bound together by founding documents that defined who we are as Americans, and served as our compass through every type of change.  Matters of war and peace are no different.  Americans are deeply ambivalent about war, but having fought for our independence, we know a price must be paid for freedom.  From the Civil War to our struggle against fascism, on through the long twilight struggle of the Cold War, battlefields have changed and technology has evolved.  But our commitment to constitutional principles has weathered every war, and every war has come to an end.

With the collapse of the Berlin Wall, a new dawn of democracy took hold abroad, and a decade of peace and prosperity arrived here at home.  And for a moment, it seemed the 21st century would be a tranquil time.  And then, on September 11, 2001, we were shaken out of complacency.  Thousands were taken from us, as clouds of fire and metal and ash descended upon a sun-filled morning.  This was a different kind of war.  No armies came to our shores, and our military was not the principal target.  Instead, a group of terrorists came to kill as many civilians as they could.

Djesus Uncrossed | Is this anybody's preferred Jesus?

WARNING: WATCH THIS PARODY VIDEO AT YOUR OWN RISK.

That warning made, I have the unhappy suspicion there are American Christians who might prefer DJesus Uncrossed to the one who so embarrasses them by what his earliest followers claimed he actually did and actually said. Is that suspicion totally off base?

DJesus Uncrossed (Official Trailer HD) by Efecto_Espejo

Won't you be my neighbor?

An expert on the Bible decided to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 

“What is written in the Law?” Jesus replied. “How do you read it?”

The expert quoted from the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy: “'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind,'" he said; and then quoting from the 19th chapter of Leviticus he added: "and ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” 

“Good answer,” Jesus said.

For some reason, this did not satisfy the Bible expert, and he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 

To which Jesus replied: 

We won't even debate the American Jobs Act?

Last night the United States Senate failed to muster 60 elected officials willing to even debate the merits of the American Jobs Act.

That's how things work under current Senate rules. The Act itself might be passed with a simple majority of 51 votes. But 60 votes are required to bring the matter up for debate.

What part of we need jobs makes this proposal so distasteful that it can't be discussed?

• Incentivizing employers to hire returning Iraq and Afghanistan Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines?
• Hiring, rehiring and preventing the layoff of tens of thousands of firefighters, law enforcement officers and teachers?
• Training to refit capable but unemployed American workers to take jobs requiring knowledge and skills they lack?
• Modernizing more than 30,000 schools across the U.S.?
• Adding — if Moody's Analytics is in the ballpark — 1.9 million jobs — lowering the unemployment rate by a full point and growing the U.S. economy by two percent? (Could your enterprise use a two percent bump at the closing of the year?)

Read the American Jobs Act for yourself. If your Senator voted against even debating the measure, you have a right to know why. Here's where you'll find Senate contact information. 

bizarro world | the wealthy + the poor in America | a respectful exchange

I repeat here a brief exchange on the post, bizarro world | the wealthy + the poor in America, because the Comments feature — properly, I expect — doesn't allow for embedded links and I thought it was important to highlight the Forbes 400 List and David Kay Johnston's Reuters reporting; which I've done below.

Nate commented on my bafflement about those who characterize America's working poor as pampered tax dodgers while painting our wealthiest citizens as beleaguered victims. Nate wrote:

And yet both of these characterizations can be found to be true. Wealthy & middle-class citizens over-spending and tying themselves to every penny of a paycheck, underwater in a mortgage and indebted up to their eyeballs. The working poor doing enough to stay under the gov't threshold and continue to get assistance, while buying new cars, digital cable packages and the latest kicks.

Headline from the Future | Health Coverage

Official Denied Emergency Treatment

(Arlington, VA) U.S. Senator Tom Brown died yesterday in the parking lot of a Washington area hospital after being denied entrance because he lacked proof of insurance. 

The senator was taking a run, an aide said, when he complained of chest pains. “We took him straight to the hospital, but he didn’t have his wallet and they wouldn’t let us in.” 

Speaking off the record, a hospital employee who is not authorized to speak to reporters told the Post, “They said, ‘He’s a United States Senator!’ I said, ‘I don’t care if he’s effing Ron Paul: No insurance equals no treatment.’ If I make an exception for some clown who says he’s a senator, where does it stop? Treat first, ask questions later? What kind of business model is that?”

Martin Marty on Torture, Then + Now

Torture, including torture by Americans: Who could have predicted that this would be a live topic here in the twenty-first century? We know how to associate torture with the accused and accusing other, with Inquisitors and witch hunters five centuries ago, or with far-away twentieth century totalitarian regimes and religious terrorists. But today the theological, humanistic, and tactical themes connected with torture have appeared close to home, giving new significance to those distant times, places, and events.

Accordingly, a very distinguished historian, Princeton 's expert on the Renaissance, is speaking up. Not known for ideology or pamphleteering, Anthony Grafton takes pains not to oversell the relevance of his subjects. He favors patient historical work and writes in a moderate mode. Recently he looked up from his Renaissance research to see how things are going today. Alert to contemporary controversies and mildly allusive about events in America, he stops short of issuing indictments. Grafton seems to be writing in the haze of "where there's smoke there's fire," but clearly sees enough to issue cautionary words.

His article in the November 5th [2007] New Republic, entitled "Say Anything," refers to what he has learned from the transcripts of those Inquisitors and witch-hunters. He knows enough to say enough about the practical ineffectiveness of torture. Americans, we were always told, do not torture for a number of reasons: Torture violates our moral codes, including those based on religious notions that humans are made in the image of God; religious leadership is almost unanimously against torture, and America is a religious nation; for us to torture is to enter a dangerous game, since if we torture we have no moral claim to demand that "the other," our enemies, should not torture our people when they are captured; and we are a practical people and like to work with things that work. Grafton concentrates on this last piece, the ineffectiveness of torture.

Bible Believers

And that's when Virginia understood: These people didn't believe the Bible; they believed what they believed about the Bible.

Discuss

C.S. Lewis | ...the same old game under the new system

What is the good of drawing up, on paper, rules for social behaviour, if we know that, in fact, our greed, cowardice, ill temper, and self-conceit are going to prevent us from keeping them? I do not mean for a moment that we ought not to think, and think hard, about improvements in our social and economic system. What I do mean is that all that thinking will be mere moonshine unless we realise that nothing but the courage and unselfishness of individuals is ever going to make any system work properly. It is easy enough to remove the particular kinds of graft or bullying that go on under the present system: but as long as men are twisters or bullies they will find some new way of carrying on the old game under the new system. You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, HarperSanFrancisco, 2001 edition, p. 73

This is not the least of our problems just now ... substituting — perhaps mistaking — agreement or compliance for goodness; and excusing bad behavior ... illegal, immoral, cruel, dehumanizing behavior ... because the perpetrators are on the side we call good. As the saying goes: God is not mocked; we reap what we sow.

So … sow fair and equitable dealing, maybe?

To that, add this: Of citizens surveyed by Pew in 25 nations, more people in the U.S. — more than half — see their fellow citizens as morally bad. 

It's one thing to look at our neighbors and see badness; it's another, far worse thing to believe they are irredeemably bad.

Getting over *that* is gonna take some work.

source

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2026/03/05/in-25-country-survey-americans-especially-likely-to-view-fellow-citizens-as-morally-bad/

Follow the Money: Jon Stewart on Teachers + Wall Street

The Daily Show - Crisis in the Dairyland - For Richer and Poorer - Teachers and Wall Street
Daily Show Full Episodes

The Simple Arithmetic of US Gun Homicides

For every 100 people in the U.S. there are about 90 civilian-owned firearms. [1]


More than 12,000 Americans are murdered with firearms every year. [2]


Let's call that 1,000 gun homicides a month
250 firearm murders each week
36 every day
three an hour


Guns don't kill people
People kill people...mainly
People clutching guns


Do the arithmetic.


[1] Small Arms Survey 2007
Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies

Geneva, Switzerland.

[2] Table 2
National Vital Statistics Reports 

Volume 59, Number 2 December 9, 2010 

Deaths: Preliminary Data for 2008 

by Arialdi M. Miniño, MPH; Jiaquan Xu, M.D.; and Kenneth D. Kochanek, M.A. Division of Vital Statistics 

guns | an American haiku

FINAL UPDATE: A Letter to My Senators on Good Faith Toward 9-11 First Responders

Dear Senator,

I urge you to press for another vote this session on providing health benefits to 9-11 First Responders and volunteers.

Please call on the opposition to act in good faith and without further delay on this important matter.

Thanks for your leadership, Senator.

Kind regards,

Jim Hancock

FINAL UPDATE: AP reports passage of the bill.


UPDATE: MSNBC reports a deal has been reached in the Senate Wednesday Afternoon. Almost there...