“The Words of Christians in the Mouth of Christ.”
There are lots more. Go here to see images that link back to the persons who really said the words.
Tea Party Jesus
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Category Archives: politics
education in a democracy
It’s reasonable to assume that education in a democracy is distinct from education under a dictatorship or a monarchy; surely school leaders in fascist Germany or Albania or Saudi Arabia or apartheid South Africa all agreed, for example, that students should behave well, stay away from drugs and crime, do their homework, study hard, and master the subject matters; they also graduated fine scientists and musicians and athletes, so none of those things differentiate a democratic education from any other.
What makes education in a democracy, at least theoretically, distinct is a commitment to a particularly precious and fragile ideal: every human being is of infinite and incalculable value, each a unique intellectual, emotional, physical, spiritual, and creative force. Every human being is born free and equal in dignity and rights; each is endowed with reason and conscience, and deserves, then, a sense of solidarity, brotherhood and sisterhood, recognition and respect. Democracy is geared toward participation and engagement, and that points to an educational system in which the fullest development of all is seen as the necessary condition for the full development of each, and conversely, that the fullest development of each is necessary for the full development of all.
The above is an excerpt from Bill Ayres’ piece in yesterday’s Huffington Post
Ayres, now Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, was the founder of the militant Weather Underground in the turbulent 1960s.
Many of my beliefs about government, politics, education, and learning were formed during those years of widespread controversy, disillusionment, and rebellion.
Ayres piece, written when two talks that he was scheduled to give at the University of Wyoming were canceled because of “security threats” and “controversy,” reinforces those beliefs I still hold today and is worth reading in full.
even in shadow
Even in dark corners, good things grow.
I read this article in the NY Times by Bob Herbert and am almost overwhelmed by the clouds of darkness with which the GOP has shrouded the minds of so many of my countrymen and countrywomen.
Herbert writes:
The G.O.P. poisons the political atmosphere and then has the gall to complain about an absence of bipartisanship.
The toxic clouds that are the inevitable result of the fear and the bitter conflicts so relentlessly stoked by the Republican Party — think blacks against whites, gays versus straights, and a whole range of folks against immigrants — tend to obscure the tremendous damage that the party’s policies have inflicted on the country. If people are arguing over immigrants or abortion or whether gays should be allowed to marry, they’re not calling the G.O.P. to account for (to take just one example) the horribly destructive policy of cutting taxes while the nation was fighting two wars.
If you’re all fired up about Republican-inspired tales of Democrats planning to send grandma to some death chamber, you’ll never get to the G.O.P.’s war against the right of ordinary workers to organize and negotiate in their own best interests — a war that has diminished living standards for working people for decades.
The are dark times. Depressed and depressing times.
But then I read this article, also in the Times, and see a brighter side — small, still. But we are due for a new season of enlightenment in our nation’s political world.
David Leonhardt reminds us that
The bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday is the federal government’s biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago.
[snip]
The bill is the most sweeping piece of federal legislation since Medicare was passed in 1965. It aims to smooth out one of the roughest edges in American society — the inability of many people to afford medical care after they lose a job or get sick. And it would do so in large measure by taxing the rich.
[snip]
Above all, the central question that both the Reagan and Obama administrations have tried to answer — what is the proper balance between the market and the government? — remains unresolved. But the bill signed on Tuesday certainly shifts our place on that spectrum.
While I am not a Christian, I can’t help but wonder how a U.S. Senator Jesus Christ would have voted on the issue of universal health care.
almost as immorally nuts as GOPers
I gave up raging over the mess that the GOP so-called “leaders” have been making of my country. It seems like too many of the people on this planet are hell-bent on helping with the demise of sense and sanity.
All of the following are excerpts from this week’s Harper’s Weekly Review, where you can find documentation and a citation for each of these discomfitting reports.
A Walmart in New Jersey asked all black people to leave.
An Ohio man told police that since January he’s been sucker-punching little children at his local Walmart for thrills.
A Kentucky man was charged with wanton endangerment after he got drunk and put his five-week-old son to bed in an oven.
Wachovia Bank was fined $50 million, and required to remit a further $110 million, for laundering funds for Mexican cocaine cartels.
A Swedish report found that the United Arab Emirates is now the fourth-largest importer of weapons in the world.
Dutch officials repudiated a claim by U.S. general and former NATO commander John Sheehan that the gayness of the Dutch army had rendered it unable to defend Srebrenica against the Serbs.
Pope Benedict XVI wrote a letter to Ireland to apologize for the sexual abuse of children by Church leaders.
A lawyer in Oregon was planning to release the Boy Scouts’ “perversion files,” a secret archive of 1,000 documents identifying Scout molesters.
A cable network in North Carolina played two hours of porn on the Kids On Demand channel.
Then there’s the “a little nuts but not immoral” category:
Members of the Winnemem Wintu Indian tribe traveled from California to New Zealand to beg forgiveness of the salmon.
Mexican police were praying to spirits and sacrificing chickens to protect themselves from drug lords.
The Vatican was investigating the daily appearances in Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina, of the Virgin Mary, who is crowned with stars and floats upon a cloud.
Indian politicians wanted to ban both black magic and Lindsay Lohan.
Finally, neither nuts nor immoral, and maybe a good idea — especially since I haven’t been able to wear my removable bridge because my gums are swollen:
A Bavarian baby-food company said it was planning to market its product to adults who dislike chewing.
Makes you just want to break out in song, doesn’t it?
Stop the World I Want to Get Off
and
Stop the World I Want to Get Off
and
all that’s wrong
From The Narcissus Society by Roger Cohen in the NY Times:
Community — a stable job, shared national experience, extended family, labor unions — has vanished or eroded. In its place have come a frenzied individualism, solipsistic screen-gazing, the disembodied pleasures of social networking and the à-la-carte life as defined by 600 TV channels and a gazillion blogs. Feelings of anxiety and inadequacy grow in the lonely chamber of self-absorption and projection.
[Be sure to read the rest of the above piece.]
And that’s just the “little picture.” Add the above to the stonewalling of the RIGHT(eous) GOP that is preventing what is supposed to be our “big picture” government from fixing what it can, and we wind up with an American society that has too much wrong because it has too much RIGHT(eous).
I have never felt so powerless to affect the big picture.
Maybe we need a real Luke Skywalker so that this Empire can Strike Back.
the truth about the Massachusetts Brown vote
Contrary to many Republican assertions, the defeat of the Democratic Senate candidate earlier this month was not a statement against the Obama agenda.
A new Washington Post/Kaiser/Harvard poll regarding Massachusetts voters
suggests that while the election was a “protest of the Washington process,” it was not a rejection of progressive policy. Only 11 percent of voters, including 19 percent of Brown voters, want Brown to “stop the Democratic agenda:”
– 70 percent of voters think Brown should work with Democrats on health care reform, including 48 percent of Brown voters.
– 52 percent of voters were enthusiastic/satisfied with Obama administration policies.
– 44 percent of voters believe “the country as a whole” would be better off with health care reform, but 23 percent believe Massachusetts would be better off.
– 68 percent of voters, including 51 percent of Brown voters approve of Massachusetts’ health care reform.
– 58 percent of all voters, including 37 percent of Brown voters, felt “dissatisfied/angry” with “the policies offered by the Republicans in Congress.”
What people in other states don’t realize is that Massachusetts already has (and Brown voted for it) a health care system similar to the basics of the proposed national health reform. The new Republican Senator Brown was/is against the national effort NOT because it won’t work, but rather because Massachusetts already does what a national health care system would do for the rest of the county.
In the words of Senator Brown:
BROWN: It’s not good for Massachusetts because any time government is trying to put a government option there with directly competing with what we’ve done already here, it may be good for other parts of the country, but for us where we have 98% of the people insured already, government should not be in the business of running health care…We took actually money that was coming from the Federal government and also from the uncompensated health care pool, things we were giving hospitals were in fact to pay for this. And obviously there’s an employer contribution and a purchaser contribution. We gave through the Connector and various types of plans, Commonwealth Care, we provided pretty good plans for a lot of folks that wanted that type of care.
You can listen to Brown’s position in an interview here.
The above linked site also explains
Brown implied that the federal government needs to play a role in reforming the health care system and stressed that the federal dollars have helped insure residents who “don’t have any care whatsoever.” “Until they change the federal rules regarding health care and health care coverage for all, and we have to continue to support the folks hare in Massachusetts to keep them healthy,” he said
I didn’t vote for Brown, but if he is really going to represent me and the other almost-half of the Massachusetts citizenry (who voted for the Democrat), I hope he really is, as he has claimed, an independent Republican and that he will opt to legislate without his previous provincial motives.
little altars everywhere
Yes, I know that’s the name of a book by the Ya-Ya writer, Rebecca Wells.
But in this case, I’m referring to this slide show of “altars” that people submitted to a request for “What’s on Your Shelf” from the blog on Killing the Buddha.
I’m not sure how I found that site — probably just surfing around, looking for something to think about, care about. Not that there isn’t plenty out there: homeless, bankruptcy, greed, war, fraud, despair. Oh, yes, plenty to think about and care about. Too much, as a matter of fact. Too much for my tired brain, tired heart.
If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him is one of my favorite non-fiction books. Maybe by only favorite non-fiction book. So, it’s not surprising that when I ran across the Killing the Buddha website, I was intrigued.
I used to have an altar of sorts — that’s when I had room for a surface to put it on. Now I have a wall
that includes a witch’s broom, my old power stick, a quilted shield especially designed and constructed for me by my good quilter friend, my new walking stick, Acuaba, and a photoshopped picture of “witches at tea” using the faces of my women friends. As powerful and meaningful as any shelved altar, I would think.
My shelves themselves are stacked with books, craft patterns, and assorted other things of significance. For example:
You might notice the Tarot deck, the icons, the empty box from my 3G iphone, a mini cast iron cauldron. What you don’t see in the shelves below are my collections of beads and jewelry findings that I’m trying to find time to play with/work on.
As I hurry along to get ready for Christmas (yes, I do still call it Christmas; why not?), I think about the cocoon in which I have wrapped myself during this time of world wide insanity to escape from the fundamentalists, the radical atheists, the war mongers and warring sufferers, indeed, the sufferers of all kinds.
I surround myself with resident family and Bully Hill Seasons wine and Chocolate Mint kisses, with quilting dreams and knitting crafts, with escapist suspense novels on ipod and paper, with the snores of my old and much loved cat.
I wish there were, indeed, little altars everywhere like mine — eclectic and inclusive and affirming.
I wish there were an altar somewhere on which if could feel prayers for my suffering mother would be answered.
ban guns and capital punishment; allow abortions
I want to ban the sale of guns to anyone who just “wants” one and capital punishment for any but the most hopelessly insane serial killers. I want a public health care option that includes funding for abortions along with widespread sex (read “human reproduction and contraception” education). I am an American of conscience. What makes those Congressional “people of conscience” douchebags any more ethical and moral than I.
The power people of this country are as morally bankrupt as so many of the rest of us are financially.
Poor Obama. He might have won, but we are losing.
haunted houses vs global warming
In the United States, more people believe that houses can be haunted by the dead than believe that the living can cause climate change.
The above from here.
The piece cites some polls that only reinforce the general lack of critical thinking among many Americans, particularly those who also believe in evolution, and adds:
Since republicans attend church much more regularly, perhaps a more active stance by churches on climate change would increase the urgency and conviction? Well at the highest levels, this has already happened. In 2001, the Unites States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement saying, in part, “At its core, global climate change is not about economic theory or political platforms, nor about partisan advantage or interest group pressures. It is about the future of God’s creation and the one human family. It is about protecting both ‘the human environment’ and the ‘natural environment’ …Passing along the problem of global climate change to future generations as a result of our delay, indecision, or self-interest would be easy. But we simply cannot leave this problem for the children of tomorrow.”
A summary of the science of climate change is available at ClimatePath.