archived: 22 - 28 Oct, 2006 Back Next
UPDATED: OCTOBER 26, 2006
ERIC COX
[I THINK ….]
I think the Dems may gain 40 House seats and eight in the Senate.
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JUNKIE: In Yiddish there is an expression of hopeful agreement; “From your lips to God’s ear.”
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UPDATED: OCTOBER 12, 2006
AN EXCHANGE
[By Jay Greene*]
The following email exchange crossed my desk today today -
I just saw a news report that a 13 year old boy fired off rounds from an AK-47 in his middle school in Joplin, Missouri. What is a 13 year old boy doing with an AK-47? Why is an AK-47 in civilian circulation in Joplin....
An explanation was attempted.
Well, Joel, you're obviously not up on your Constitutional studies, or you'd know the answer to that. The Second Amendment, otherwise known as the National Rifle Association amendment, passed in 1790, long before rapid fire, cheap firearms, clearly states specifically the right to bear AK-47s shall not be abridged. Right there, in the Constitution! We often praise the Founders for their foresight, and never more than now, for their prescient inclusion of weapons never dreamed of at the time.
You see, they were thinking of the ongoing need for militias and the ability of lonely frontiersmen to repel Indian attacks and Al Quaida. So foresightful were they, the Amendment can be applied to suburbia (or Joplin MO) in this, the Year of our Lord 2006.
Remember: guns don't kill people, people kill people. "People" include nut jobs, frustrated postal workers, spooky kids and anyone else with diminished capacity and a working trigger finger. God Bless America (because we need all the help we can get).
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*Jay Greene is a frequent contributor to TPJ. Greene is retired, but he held top management posts in the steamship industry and international trade on the Pacific Coast.
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UPDATED: OCTOBER 8, 2006
NOVEMBER ELECTIONS--A STIR OR A POLITICAL LANDSLIDE?
[By Eric Cox]
There is a good chance Democrats will win back one or both Congressional chambers on November 7. This may happen even if gas prices are down, the stock market up and in spite of redistricting making more House seats safe.
It is well to recall that in the past 60 years four times there have been gains in the House of 40 or more seats for one party or the other.
During a recent 10 day period there was an avalanche of bad news for Republicans making it more likely that Democrats will take control of Congress. In this short time span we learned that the national intelligence estimate revealed the Iraq war has made terrorism more likely and that because of Bob Woodward's newest book we learned that there was dissent with the White House regarding the war and that Colin Powell, the most popular Republican was fired.
But it got worse. We learned that Congressman Mark Foley was forced to resign. He was not just any Republican member but part of the leadership as Deputy Whip. Even worse is that he was the member responsible for crafting laws to protect children at risk. For some time he had exhibited inappropriate behavior toward House pages and the GOP leadership had been aware of his errant actions for some time but did not expel him until his inappropriate advances to teenaged pages were made public. There is rich irony here as gay bashing had been a subtle subtext of the Republican game plan only to learn that one of their key players was a gay who abused his position. Initially GOP leaders tried to cover up this embarrassment, thereby compounding the damage. The cover-up was stupid but understandable for party stressing values, especially family values. It is likely that the Foley matter will continue to be prime news until the elections because the steady leak of more details.
There is another reason why November is to be feared by those who control Congress. In the past two elections the GOP make political mileage by the claim that they are better than Democrats of protecting us from terrorists. But the national intelligence estimate makes this claim a much harder sell this time. Even so, key Republicans are trying once to frighten voters as they did in the past and we have in effect another treason season. But will it work a third time?
A wise President Lincoln famously warned us that you can fool all the people all the time and some of the people some of the time, but not all the people all the time.
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UPDATED: OCTOBER 8,2006
20 REASONS TO SPEAK OUT NOW
[Authored by Allen Roland*]
This country is bankrupt. The war is morally bankrupt. The claim of this administration to be Christian is bankrupt. And the only people who can turn things around are people like you ~ people who are just beginning to wake up to what is happening to them. It's your country to take back. It's your faith to take back. It's your future to take back: -- Rev. Robin Meyers
In June of 2005 a man of the cloth came out and told the truth and struck a chord ~ which millions of Americans, including myself, deeply felt.
His fiery words still echo in my ears today – “I am angry because I have watched as the faith I love has been taken over by fundamentalists who claim to speak for Jesus, but whose actions are anything but Christian."
Dr. Robin Meyers is Senior Minister of Mayflower Congregational Church, in Oklahoma City, and a commentator for National Public Radio. Meyers cited 17 reasons why he took issue with those in power who claim moral values are on their side [see article below].
But I'm adding three more right now – less than a month from perhaps the most important election of our lifetime:
1. If we don't speak out now we may lose our right to do that within the next six months.
2. The ultimate moral value is the truth and we have every right to demand it from our leaders.
3. Don't wait for the leaders – be the leaders.
MORAL INDIGNATION
By Robin Meyers**
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/2789/
I am angry because I have watched as the faith I love has been taken over by fundamentalists who claim to speak for Jesus, but whose actions are anything but Christian.
We've heard a lot lately about so-called "moral values" as having swung the election to President Bush. Well, I'm a great believer in moral values, but we need to have a discussion, all over this country, about exactly what constitutes a moral value. I mean what we are talking about.
Because we don't get to make them up as we go along, especially not if we are people of faith. We have an inherited tradition of what is right and wrong and moral is as moral does.
Let me give you just a few of the reasons why I take issue with those in power who claim moral values are on their side:
1. When you start a war on false premises and then act as if your deceptions are justified because you are doing God’s will, and that your critics are either unpatriotic or lacking in faith, there are some of us . . . who believe that this is not only not moral, but immoral.
2. When you live in a country that has established international rules for waging a just war and built the United Nations on its own soil to enforce them, if you then arrogantly break the very rules you set down for the rest of the world, you are doing something immoral.
3. When you claim that Jesus is the Lord of your life, and yet fail to acknowledge that your policies ignore his essential teachings, or turn them on their head (the Sermon on the Mount says we must never return violence for violence, and those who live by the sword shall die by the sword), you are doing something immoral.
4. When you act as if the lives of Iraqi civilians are not as important as the lives of American soldiers, and refuse even to count them, you are doing something immoral.
5. When you find a way to avoid combat in Vietnam, and then question the patriotism of someone who volunteered to fight, and then came home a hero, you are doing something immoral.
6. When you ignore the fundamental teachings of the Gospel (which says that the way the strong treat the weak is the ultimate test) by giving tax breaks to the wealthiest among us so that the strong will get stronger and the weak will get weaker, you are doing something immoral.
7. When you wink at the torture of prisoners and deprive so-called “enemy combatants” of the rules of the Geneva Convention, which your own country helped to establish and insists that other countries follow, you are doing something immoral.
8. When you claim that the world can be divided up into the good guys and the evildoers, slice up your own nation into those with you and those who are with the terrorists, and then launch a war that enriches your friends and seizes control of the oil to which we are addicted, instead of helping us to kick the habit, you are doing something immoral.
9. When you fail to veto a single spending bill, but ask us to pay for a war with no exit strategy and no end in sight, creating an enormous deficit that hangs like a great millstone around the necks of our children, you are doing something immoral.
10. When you cause most of the rest of the world to hate a country that was once the most loved country in the world, and act as if it doesn’t matter what others think of us, because God thinks well of you, you have done something immoral.
11. When you use hatred of homosexuals as a wedge issue to turn out record numbers of evangelical voters, and use the Constitution as a tool of discrimination, you are doing something immoral.
12. When you favor the death penalty, and yet claim to be a follower of Jesus, who said an eye for an eye was the old way, not the way of the Kingdom, you are doing something immoral.
13. When you dismantle countless environmental laws designed to protect the earth, God’s gift to all of us, so that the corporations that bought you and paid for your favors will make higher profits while our children breathe dirty air and live in a toxic world, you have done something evil. The earth belongs to the Lord, not to Halliburton.
14. When you claim that our God is bigger than their God, and that our killing is righteous while theirs is evil, you have made us resemble the enemy we claim to be fighting, and that is immoral. We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.
15. When you tell people that you intend to run and govern as a “compassionate conservative,” using the word that is the essence of all religious faith, and then show no compassion for those who disagree with you, and no patience with those who cry to you for help, you are doing something immoral.
16. When you constantly talk about Jesus, who was a healer of the sick, but do nothing to make sure that anyone who is sick can go to see a doctor, even if she doesn’t have a penny in her pocket, you are doing something immoral.
17. When you put judges on the bench who are racist, and will set women back a hundred years, and when you surround yourself with preachers who say gays ought to be killed, you are doing something immoral.
I'm tired of people thinking that because I'm a Christian, I must be a supporter of President Bush, or that because I favor civil rights and gay rights I must not be a person of faith. I'm tired of people saying that I can't support the troops but oppose the war -- I heard that when I was your age, when the Vietnam war was raging. We knew that that war was wrong, and you know that this war is wrong -- the only question is how many people are going to die before these make-believe Christians are removed from power.
This country is bankrupt. The war is morally bankrupt. The claim of this administration to be Christian is bankrupt. And the only people who can turn things around are people like you -- young people who are just beginning to wake up to what is happening to them. It's your country to take back. It's your faith to take back. It's your future to take back.
Don't be afraid to speak out. Don't back down when your friends begin to tell you that the cause is righteous and that the flag should be wrapped around the cross, while the rest of us keep our mouths shut. Real Christians take chances for peace. So do real Jews, and real Muslims, and real Hindus, and real Buddhists -- so do all the faith traditions of the world at their heart believe one thing: life is precious. Every human being is precious. Arrogance is the opposite of faith. Greed is the opposite of charity. And believing that one has never made a mistake is the mark of a deluded man, not a man of faith.
And war -- war is the greatest failure of the human race -- and thus the greatest failure of faith.
There's an old rock and roll song, whose lyrics say it all: War, what it is good for -- absolutely nothing.
And what is the dream of the prophets? That we should study war no more, that we should beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks. Who would Jesus bomb, indeed? How many wars does it take to know that too many people have died? What if they gave a war and nobody came? Maybe one day we will find out.
Time to march again my friends. Time to commit acts of civil disobedience. Time to sing, and to pray, and refuse to participate in the madness. My generation finally stopped a tragic war. You can too!
"Only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.” --Martin Luther King.
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* Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on Conscious talk radio www.conscioustalk.net
**Dr. Robin Meyers is Senior Minister of Mayflower Congregational Church (an Open and Affirming, Peace and Justice church in northwest Oklahoma City) and professor of rhetoric at Oklahoma City University. He is also a columnist for the *Oklahoma Gazette* and a commentator for National Public Radio. He can be reached at rmeyers@okcu.edu
Last Update: 10/29/2006