Category: Politics

re: Obama’s speech on race

From Brian McLaren:

Senator Obama’s speech today was, I think, one of the most important speeches of my lifetime. I hope people will read it and ponder it…

I hope each of us can encourage intelligent and civil conversation on the content of this speech. I feel we’re at a moment where our history could take a different turn depending on how we respond. In the context of “Everything Must Change” – Senator Obama has said things that America desperately needs to hear and engage with.

Here are lines I especially hope we take to heart:

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina – or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

I resonate so much with these words. Will we choose – as we do so often – to focus on the latest distractions? Or will we go for the deep shift that’s needed in our hearts, our attitudes, our values, our beliefs, our priorities, our purpose, and our vision? I believe we can make the better choice and take the better path. I believe we can.

Barack Obama’s speech on race

The NYTimes has the full transcript of Obama’s speech today.

Here’s a few snippets:

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

Continue reading Barack Obama’s speech on race

Interesting thoughts from Moby

Moby’s blog is always a fun read. You never know what you’ll find. Some stuff I agree with, some I disagree with (especially his gripes against Mike Huckabee :-))

Anyways, here’s some of his recent thoughts from SXSW in Austin re: an Oklahoma State Rep:

hi, i’m here in austin and enjoying the fact that it’s warm and i’m also checking the news and lo and behold i find this little gem:

AP – OKLAHOMA CITY – A Republican member of the Oklahoma Legislature, Rep. Sally Kern, stated recently that “the homosexual agenda is just destroying this nation” and poses a bigger threat to the U.S. than terrorism or Islam.

“According to God’s word that is not the right kind of lifestyle,” Rep. Sally Kern of Oklahoma City said during an appearance before a group of Republicans.

Kern says in the recorded comments. “It is not a lifestyle that is good for this nation.”

ok, where to begin…

how about this simple question: what did jesus(presumably sally kern’s god)say about homosexuality? let’s see…nothing? yup, nothing. dear sally kern: jesus never mentioned homosexuality. allow me to put it a different way, perhaps in question form…how many times did jesus mention homosexuality? oh(to be conversational), none? yup none. never. not once. zero. he did mention divorce(saying it was bad), and capitalism(ditto: bad), and judgementalism and intolerance(again: bad), and forgiveness(good). but homosexuality? never mentioned by jesus in the gospels. so why are the religious right in the u.s so utterly obsessed with homosexuality? and how is the homosexual agenda(whatever that might be)destroying the nation? i mean, if evangelicals call themselves christians shouldn’t they sort of base their evangelical agenda on the things that christ actually said?

ok, back to sxsw in sunny austin.

moby

Thank you

Mike Huckabee in Plano Texas

From Mike Huckabee:

Dear Faithful Friends,

Last night was a tough one for all of us. While Janet and I stood on the stage, we felt as if we were surrounded by a much larger family than our immediate family. We have been surrounded throughout the process by a large and growing family of faithful friends whose efforts in the campaign have humbled and amazed us day after day. I regularly wept or choked back tears just reading comments on the blog when I realized the sacrifices that so many have made for the campaign.

We had held out hope that we would win enough delegates to keep the contest going, but had vowed that if Senator McCain actually got the 1191 delegates, we would accept the will of the voters. In the end, the relentless hammering of the media that we “couldn’t win” influenced enough voters and while we campaigned long and hard in the final states, it simply wasn’t enough. I congratulate Senator McCain and will do what I can to assist him and influence him to take strong stands for issues that we conservatives cherish.

I don’t see the long journey having reached its destination, but merely taking a detour. As my Marine friend Clebe McLary says, “I didn’t lose–it’s just that the game ended before I got finished playing.”

In the immediate days ahead, we will be transitioning from campaign mode. For 14 months, there have been a lot of things put on hold in our lives. We have to join the many incredible people on our staff to figure out “what’s next?” But this much I can tell you—we want to stay in touch and start now building a platform to continue addressing issues that brought us together in the first place.

Throughout my life, I’ve found that there are sometimes three possible answers to our prayers–“Yes,” “No,” or “Not Now.” I would like to think our prayers were answered with a “Not Now.”

We will keep our website up and as we transition, will want to create a way to keep in touch and continue the battle for our families, our freedom, and our future. We also want to make certain we are doing everything we can to assist key Senate and House races around the country, in places where we feel we can make a difference. You can expect us to be very active online as we do this.

In the immediate time, we have to make sure that we pay all the bills of the campaign and end in the black, help our staff find ways to earn a living, and make sure that we don’t lose the momentum of the past 14 months, but instead follow the plan:

REFLECT, REST, RENEW, and RE-BOOT!

I really welcome your input and thoughts during these coming days. Pray for us as we seek wisdom as to what steps we take now. Despite what some have thought, we really didn’t have a “Plan B’ in the wings–we always thought we’d be in this until the inauguration in January of 2009!

God has been so good to us! We can never fully express our gratitude for all you have done and how you have touched and blessed our lives. I truly hope I didn’t let you down. I promise to you that I gave it all I had to the last minute and left it “all on the field.” What is more amazing is how you were willing to be “poured out” to the point of empty in order to be with us all the way. I stand amazed by it all and overwhelmed with gratitude.

We will dust off, pick ourselves up off the canvas, and answer the bell for the next round, whatever that may be. We love you all, and trust that the journey has just begun!

With tired bodies and grateful hearts,

Mike and Janet Huckabee

—

bummed…

I’m more bummed today that I was last night. I think everyone in the office is pretty bummed. Folks were either voting for Huckabee (very few) or Obama. Obama’s campaign lives on – but I think everyone was sad to see him lose in Texas.
Don’t know what’s in store for Huckabee or the next 9 months, 4 years or 8 years. Wait – 9 months till the general election?….. goodness!

I was reading last night in Everything Must Change before heading to bed and I thought this summary of Jesus may be similar to the hope people feel in their candidates. Sure, no candidate has all the answers. No candidate can please everyone but I think those that jump in behind a candidate feel there’s a sense of hope that this person will be different. This person will bring about change. I’m not really trying to compare political candidates to Jesus – but I’m saying that people are looking for a savior and I think we often confuse that with political leaders or celebrities or friends or loved ones. And when it doesn’t work out – we really feel let down by the candidate themselves, or maybe the other voters.

Maybe I’m just feeling down because I’ve never really been on the losing side of an election. My first presidential election was in 2000 and I supported Bush in 2000 and 2004 (the lesser of two evils by 2004).

Either way – I love this picture of Jesus that McLaren paints and the hope that Jesus brings with him.

I pictured Jesus, wandering through the villages of Galilee, walking among his own oppressed and dominated people, people who… had lost hope. Their hopelessness left them paralyzed and powerless between two primary schemes of despair – the violent despair of terrorist resistance or the resigned despair capitulation and collaboration with their powerful oppressors. He didn’t fix all their problems, even though many of them wanted him to and hated him when he didn’t. He didn’t organize any army or hatch a plot or design liberal democracy or create a new get-rich-quick business plan. He didn’t scapegoat anybody – if anything, he kept letting scapegoats off the hook, taking their side to the consternation of their hyperreligious critics.

Instead he simply let the people know he liked them – and so did God…

… And he did one other thing: he told the people something outrageous, something so familiar to us, so familiar to me that it is only in rare moments that I get a glimpse of how wild it really was. It wasn’t an if/then statement – if you do this and this and this, then you’ll get that result. That would have been more pressure, another chance to fall.

No, all he did was tell them that something was already true: the kingdom of God is here. Already.

Huckabee bows out

Huckabee bowed out tonight around 8:45 p.m. CST – about an hour and 45 minutes after the polls closed in Texas.
I haven’t seen the full video yet but I’m disappointed. Not that I expect Huckabee to continue campaigning now that McCain has the needed delegate but I’m disappointed he didn’t do better in the end.

Now what to do in November – we’ll just have to wait and see.

Totally agree with Riveria here

From NPR:
Geraldo Rivera, whose never been afraid to voice a controversial opinion, believes that “The hostility by some anti-immigrant activists against Hispanics is no different from that directed against earlier generations of Irish, Italian and Jewish immigrants.”

“It’s a hysterical whipping up of a mob frenzy on an issue that should be recognized that it is part of a process that makes this country unique,” Rivera (who has a Puerto Rican father and a Jewish mother) tells Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition. “And by exacerbating the differentness of the newcomers, what they do is a gross disservice.”

“Many of the most fervent anti-immigrant activists are themselves the children or grandchildren of immigrants,” he says. “The style changes, the accents change, the geographical antecedents change, but it’s the same. You can track headline for headline the response to the Irish wave of immigration in the mid-19th century to the reaction of the Minutemen and similar radical anti-immigration groups today.”

And he has little time for the argument that some people make about border security being the reason reason behind their opposition to immigration.

“Are you really concerned about ‘border security,’ or are you concerned about the changing demographic face of the United States? [For] example, if it is terrorism that you are concerned about and you want this fence built between the United States and Mexico, why don’t you want the same fence built between the United States and Canada? Why isn’t there this clamor … ?

“It’s not [fear of] crime, it’s not terror, it is demographics that is the true fear. If we wanted secure borders, what about the entire Atlantic and Pacific coasts?”