Month: May 2006

this diary is dedicated to all who suffer because of war and other disasters

we honor courage in all its forms

cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, European Tribune,  My Left Wing, and TexasKos.

image and poem below the fold – see also this post

Mother-in-law Rabia Mohammed Hussein grieves the loss of Nabiya Nassayef, 35, who was pregnant and her cousin who were both killed as they were driving to a maternity hospital in Samarra, Iraq Tuesday, May 30, 2006, according to Iraqi police. When asked if they knew about the incident, the U.S. military had no immediate comment.
(AP Photo/Hameed Rasheed)

Lot’s Wife
by Dana Littlepage Smith

Do not look behind you.
   –Gen. 19:17

So simple a mistake. They say I turned to look;
instead it was to listen. I did not know: only the dead
can stand the music of the spheres made mortal.

Caught in my hood, the hard chords of chaos:
the childish scream, the mother’s litany as she names
the loss which instantly unnames her.

And then the inconceivable: between the flint
blast and the crack of iron, I heard
the burning of the scorched moth wing,

the lily as its petals crisp to white fire,
but more than these, the footfall
of a naked man who runs to nothing.

And so I chose this brine,
now crystals shift. The salt dissolves
and I want to speak.

Whore of all hopes, I now believe
some stories survive
in order to remake their endings.
– – –
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riverbend

Just what did Jesus have to say about about tax structures? Personal financial portfolios? Offshore corporate tax havens? Municipal bonds?
My biblical research has failed to locate any such directives.

Various admonitions in the Bible though seems to particularly weigh in on those who use its spiritual contents for personal profit. Some examples:

    Thes 2:5  …Never at any time have our speeches been simply flattery or a cover for trying to get money.

    Cor 2:17  At least we do not go hawking the word of God about, as so many do…

    Cor 2:17  Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit.

    Cor 2:17  We are not like those hucksters–and there are many of them–whose idea in getting out the Gospel is to make a good living out of it.

    Tim 6:5  …among men of warped minds who have lost their real hold on the truth but hope to make some profit out of the Christian religion.

    Tim 6:5  …They think religion is a way to become rich.

Unfortunately but expectedly, Jesus’ messages have been abused by sham evangelists throughout history for financial gain.

For recognizable names, there’s Reverend Ike with his pricey miracle-annointed prayer cloths, Jim and Tammy Baker of PTL (Pass The Loot) infamy, Jimmy Swaggart ‘ministering’ to prostitutes in various hotel rooms, Robert Tilton badgering his faithful for larger and greater donations, Benny Hinn ‘out-curing’ Jesus, Pat Robertson currying favor with anyone having access to African diamond mines and Jerry Falwell’s willingness (maybe glee?) to blame everyone who fails to agree with him for the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

There’s also the prosperity gospel, a ‘strain’ of ‘ministry’ focused on building a wallet of fine fettle, not necessarily a life of devoutness.

Here’s Jesus about the danger of living a money-driven/damn-the-poor life–many more instances of this subject, more than any other, are contained in the Bible.

    Mark 10:21-27, 31 Jesus looked steadily at him and loved him, and he said, “There is one thing you lack. Go and sell everything you own and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” But his face fell at these words and he went away sad, for he was a man of great wealth. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!” The disciples were astounded by these words, but Jesus insisted, “My children,” he said to them, “how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” They were more astonished than ever. “In that case,” they said to one another, “who can be saved?” Jesus gazed at them. “For men,” he said, “it is impossible, but not for God: because everything is possible for God… Many who are first will be last, and the last first.

Jesus could not make it clearer than this:

Albeit controversial, this following question bears asking: have the elders of the Southern Baptist and many other evangelical sects also lapsed into a overt bypassing of Jesus’ warnings?

The thrust of today’s Southern Baptist leadership agenda and that of most other evangelicals is not geared towards the morality of economic equality and fairness for the poor. The pulpits are silent and the religious radio/television show hosts mum on this subject. There is no vociferous advocacy for a reduction in poverty by way of a decent minimum wage, an equitable income tax structure, elimination of usury and the such.

No, trumpets blow and breasts are beaten in selectively opposing gay marriage or civil unions, eliminating abortion, minimizing stem cell research, cowering the judiciary and demanding a absolutist role of Christianity in American public life.

Jesus’ monetary rebukes are no political or financial use for the primary leading lights of the evangelical movement.

A December 12, 2004 article by Don Lattin in the San Francisco Chronicle provides some insight. Here are some excerpts:

    Pushing poverty into ‘moral-values’ debate
    Some religious leaders trying to broaden discussion beyond abortion and marriage

    Don Lattin
    SF Chronicle Religion Writer
    Sunday, December 12, 2004

    While many of these evangelical voters have lost ground during this economic shift, they have also abandoned the political party that claims to embody their economic interests.

    That does not surprise Charles Jarvis, a former Reagan administration official and executive vice president of Focus on the Family, an influential radio and print ministry headquartered in Colorado Springs and led by evangelical psychologist James Dobson, a member of the Church of the Nazarene.

    Jarvis now heads USA Next and United Seniors — two nonprofit organizations dedicated to “tax freedom” and “retirement freedom.”

    “One reason people in this county don’t want to ‘burn the rich’ is that Americans are incredibly open to the possibility that they themselves can become rich,” Jarvis said.

    …Liberal religious activists counter that tax cuts for the wealthy and trickle-down fiscal policies have created economic well-being for a small fraction of the American people

    They cite U.S. Census Bureau data showing that 8 in 10 Americans saw their share of the total U.S. income shrink between 1980 and 2001. Real gains were made only by the richest 5 percent of American citizens, whose share of total U.S. incomes rose 42 percent during that period….

    …USA Next has now started a campaign to support President Bush’s plan to allow workers to divert part of their Social Security taxes to private retirement accounts.

    “Social Security is not just a financial issue — it’s a justice issue, ” Jarvis said. “It’s not a safety net for tens of millions of people. Social Security is a debt time bomb. Religious people may have good intentions, but they can be astonishingly naive. Good intentions can recreate immoral results.”

To judiciously frame that most Americans picture themselves becoming rich and therefore oppose higher taxes on the rich is specious at best.

And what of USA Next’s campaign for private retirement accounts when such setups would do nothing towards addressing the “debt time bomb,” as Jarvis labels it?

If Jarvis is so concerned about that “debt time bomb,” then why no addressing President Bush’s incredible run of deficit spending. Where is James Dobson’s crusade against President Bush’s voluminous deficit budgeting, something that harms families today and places a tremendous IOU burden on the backs of America’s children?

Where were Jarvis and Dobson when the recent federal bankruptcy bill was passed, the one bought and paid for by the campaign contributions of financial institutions? The legislative changes did not benefit Focus on the Family members.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a conspiracy of silence on these subjects.

In a January, 17, 2005, David D. Kirkpatrick-written article in the New York Times, Richard Land, a prominent Southern Baptist leader with access to President Bush, addressed economic concerns expressed by evangelist Jim Wallis, head of Sojourners:

    “…He argued that Mr. Wallis misunderstood conservative evangelical voters because he conflated the moral issue of alleviating poverty with the practical issue of whether Democratic policies are the way to do it.

    “I don’t know anybody who is in favor of poverty,” Dr. Land said. “He doesn’t seem to have adequately comprehended that the debate is over, based on the 30-year experiment, about whether big government or free markets work better at producing wealth for everybody.”

Land is demonstrating a talent usually reserved for Republican script readers with his blatant dishonesty in smearing Democrats as opposed to free markets.

Why the complete and utter silence of Land and the Southern Baptist hierarchy when the aforementioned bankruptcy bill was passed?

Why is there no moral crusade by Land and his colleagues in a nationwide effort to raise the federal minimum wage?

Yes, health care coverage, adequate childcare assistance to now-working former welfare recipients, a higher federal minimum wage–all lack the visceral appeal connected to opposing abortion and homosexuality. But these economic concerns affect Focus on the Family members, Southern Baptists and the American public in infinite greater numbers than do the so-called gut level issues.

But you wouldn’t know it by listening to Charles Jarvis, James Dobson or Richard Land.

For Judas, it was 30 pieces of silver. For a number of the clergy today, it is thunderous railing against ‘sins’ of the flesh and willful muteness regarding immoral financial policies that harm their followers. It’s deliverance of their respective flocks in a block vote, in gleeful exchange for political power.
Bring back the sackcloth and ashes for Jesus is being re-crucified.

Although it certainly isn’t the leit motif of the Bible, there’s even a description of quasi-socialism among the devout:

    Acts 2:44-45 All the believers joined together and shared everything in common; they sold their possessions and goods and divided the proceeds among the fellowship according to individual need…

    Acts 4:32,34-35 All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had…

When’s the last time that was brought up in any sermon?

While the northern hemisphere is enjoying Summer, we down south are settling into Winter, with its chill days and long nights.

Although the critters never need an excuse to sleep, as we approach Winter solstice, napping has been elevated to an Olympic sport.

Photo caption: Wake me when it’s dinner time

Photo caption: Wake me when it’s Spring.

I had a Pat’s cheesesteak today with cheese fries. It was good.

Some loose ends here. I’m not selling ads this week so I’d like to gently nudge people to the Booman Tribune store where you can buy cool shirts and coffee mugs or Bootrib member books. We also have the bumper stickers. If you’d like to make a sizeable contribution, get a few color ones. Don’t worry about the weight display, it’s a glitch in the software and the bumper stickers don’t weigh 400 lbs.

Other tidbits: I’ll be in Las Vegas for Yearly Kos from Thursday June 8th to Sunday June 11th. I hope to see as many of you there as can make it. It really is going to be much more than a Kos event. MyDD and FireDogLake will have caucuses on Thursday (before my flight arrives) and Booman Tribune and My Left Wing will be throwing a small party on Friday Night at the Circus Circus, across the street from the Riviera where the Kos event is being held. Maryscott is reported to have a camera crew in tow, so you might make it into a documentary if you make it to the party.

There will also be big parties thrown by General Wesley Clark and former Governer Mark Warner (who is a very nice and funny guy). I’m guessing these will be Saturday night, but I’m not sure. Jerome a Paris is coming, and he will be giving a presentation (A Sustainable Energy-Energize America – Jérôme Guillet, Mark Sumner, Adam Siegel, George Karayannis) at 1:30pm on Friday. Larry Johnson will hopefully be back from Iraq and will be part of a panel on Plamegate with Ambassador Joseph Wilson, Dan Froomkin, Jane Hamsher, Christy Hardin Smith, Marcy Wheeler, Murray Waas, at 9:30am on Friday.

After all that fun, I’ll fly back into Philly on Sunday night only to turn around and take a train down to DC for a three-day conference thrown by Take Back America 2006. You can register for that conference here. There will be even more luminaries at the DC event, including Hillary, Kerry, Feingold, and Obama. I’ll be set up in a Bloggers Blvd. and have access to all the interviews, etc. There has been some talk of a meet-up for DC area tribbers on the 13th, but I now realize there is some big blowout (free) dinner that night. So, maybe the 14th would be better. In any case, nothing has been organized yet.

Just writing about all this activity has made me tired. When I get back, I may have to consult Family Man and get back to more conventional slacktivism.

Can you find the hidden clues in this famous painting and uncover the infamous Waldo?

I’ve always been a voracious reader, as far back as I can remember I felt a powerful need to read. My Mom was a tireless reader of popular novels and mysteries and my Dad was a “Great Books” reader so I grew up in the presence of books and their availability probably had a lot to do with my love of reading.

When I was five and six years old I lived half a city block from a branch library and my grandfather would take me in hand to check out a book every week or so. I remember reading the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam at the age of nine and devouring everything I found interesting in my elementary school library. I read everything, books, newspapers, cereal boxes, reading became my escape, reading became almost obsessive.

By the midpoint in High School my reading habits actually had a negative affect on my academic life as I would skip school quite often and spend the day at the Main Library in downtown Dayton lost in whatever I could find in the stacks. School bored me to tears but every book was a new adventure and the library became my refuge from school.

I point this out not to blow my intellectual horn or to lay claim to some vast storehouse of knowledge because I doubt that I’ve retained even a small percentage of what appeared on the pages that I’ve had my nose stuck in all these years. No, I point this out to assure the public that although I’ve been a lifelong unsupervised addictive reader I’ve miraculously come through the experience relatively unscathed.

I have somehow been left unharmed by the written word, although I’ve consumed works by tyrants like Hitler and Mao, Saints like Augustine and Francis, and inveterate scoundrels, poltroons as well as a few self proclaimed geniuses. I’ve read dime novels and thirty dollar best sellers, Bibles and weighty tomes, history and biography, science and pornography and through it all I have managed to avoid insanity, incarceration and the loss of my immortal soul, or so I believed until recently.

It was an article in USA today that caused me to question whether my life of undisciplined consumption of the written word has sown the seeds of eternal damnation in my soul.

To wit:
“Code” not benign
By Ted Baehr in USA Today May 18

A few pundits are arguing that Christians should read the bestselling book The Da Vinci Code and see the movie to “engage the culture” and as a tool for evangelism.
By that argument, we should encourage people to read other popular, but infamous, works: Chinese dictator Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book, or The Communist Manifesto. Or, why not Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an anti-Semitic diatribe popular in Muslim circles?
It would be wonderful to believe Christians can argue the facts to Dan Brown’s hate-filled, fictitious attack on Jesus Christ, Christianity, the Bible, Christians and history. The truth is, however, that many people have not read a Bible or understood their faith sufficiently to counter the story’s intricacies.
Does the average person know what Gnostic Gospels are? Are people familiar with the Catholic group Opus Dei? What is the answer when Christians are asked whether Jesus married Mary Magdalene? Did they have children? Has the church hidden important facts from the faithful? These are just some of the complex issues discussed in The Da Vinci Code Although it is fiction, it contains enough references to history to make Christians question their beliefs.
The slanderous distortions and falsehoods are as dangerous as they are numerous. The movie threatens to strike another massive blow to people’s understanding and knowledge of God, Christianity and history.
Although the movie waters down the novel’s anti-Christian attacks and virulent paganism, it promotes the book and contains enough falsehoods and scurrilous conjecture to distort the truth about Jesus Christ and increase prejudice against Christians.
So, what should Christians do?
Direct churches and individuals to sound books, websites and other resources to help them understand the issues. Sign the petition on www.movieguide.org expressing concern over the movie. But, most of all, don’t see the movie, especially the first week of release. If you have to go to a movie, however, go see another one instead.
Dr. Ted Baehr is chairman of the Christian Film and Television Commission and founder of Movieguide.org.

Now this has me a bit worried, not that my Christian beliefs are in danger, the sanctimony and hypocrisy of the Church and many of it’s most vocal faithful destroyed any connection I might have with them many years ago. No, I am concerned that all these dangerous words and concepts and ideas may be rattling around inside me and creating some great cancer in my soul that would cause me to question the moral authority of such learned and pious men as Mr. Baehr.

I looked up his website and found that he is tirelessly at work in his “ministry” (annual subscription $40 US) protecting us from unwholesome books and movies by reviewing them and applying a ratings system which ranges from Good, Wholesome through Extreme Caution to Abhorrent. The Da Vinci Code received the Abhorrent rating, the movie that is, the book rated no better in the review I read on the site.

I read the book myself two or three years ago and found it to be a “good read” one of those pot boilers that will keep you in an easy chair through a long afternoon and evening and wishing for one more chapter. A “good read” nothing more, an enjoyable work of fiction, nothing earthshaking, nothing that I would ever imagine would cause the controversy and hand wringing that has arisen among some in the Christian community.

As for the movie, I haven’t seen it and probably won’t until it comes out on television. The last movie that I saw in a theater was “Cape Fear” with De Niro about fifteen years ago. I don’t go to theaters because they won’t let me sit around in my underwear and drink beer. So I can’t say much about the film but old Ted Baehr thinks it’s pretty dangerous and I guess that should be good enough for me.

This flap reminds me a little of the Dan Quayle “Murphy Brown” nonsense back in the eighties. I’m not sure what it is about the “family values” people or the “Christian thought police” that enables them to spot these grave dangers to my soul long before I ever notice them but they sure are good at it.

It’s also very comforting that they have illuminated the moral pathway so brightly for us, and so carefully identified all the traps and pitfalls along the way that we can follow it without stumbling, with our eyes shut, even in fact, with our heads implanted deeply in the sand.

My life is surely enriched by those like Mr. Baehr who work so diligently to keep me safe from heresy and apostasy, from the blaspheming free thinkers and their dangerous ideas, from these writers of fictional filth and wanton historical speculation.

Fortunately I’m not a member of Baehr’s Christian flock or herd or I might take offense at what some might see as a terribly paternalistic attitude toward the faithful and a shameful disdain of their intelligence and ability to think for themselves.

What is so frightening to these folks about a work of fiction is a mystery to me unless they fear fiction because they have always been afraid that they have based their entire lives on a work of fiction. I just don’t know.

Bob Higgins
Worldwide Sawdust

It’s too zarking hot here and I’ve had a long day. Bottom line: this diary needs a better, more attention grabbing title than I can conjure up at the moment. Suggestions are welcome. What follows is the latest from Charlie Grapski–and if you’re not familiar with the story, click my name as I’ve posted about him a number of times before.

There is a significant new development in the Alachua saga. For years there have been anonymous attack blogs spreading rumors about those addressing corruption in the City of Alachua.

When they discovered we had created a registration based information site – that cannot be used for anonymous attacks – this Sunday they put up their own new site (registration based).

The difference is – this time they have “outed” themselves rather than hiding behind anonymity.

And it is the Alachua County Republican Party! At first I thought this was a rogue Republican or actor – who was falsely representing their views as the official views of the Republican party.

But I spoke with the Chairman of the Party this morning and he confirmed it to me – the Alachua County Republican Party is responsible for that site and the Republican Executive Committee is sponsoring and financing it.

You can see it at http://thetruthabouttheala.blogspot.com

Also see the new posts at the Alachua Project site:

http://freealachua.org

http://freealachua.org/…

What the chairman of the Republican Party, Stafford Jones, stated to me was that the Republican Party has decided to “draw a line in the sand” on the issue of the City of Alachua. They claim that it is a model of “pro-job, pro-family” government that should be followed everywhere – in contrast to our claims that it is the epitome of corrupt practices and deference over democracy.

So the Republican Party has laid out the line in the sand – which side will people take – the Republican Party, officially, has staked out one side of that line and demanded people take sides. I wonder how many registered Republicans agree with the officials leading their party?

Charlie