In a staggering new poll by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News President Obama leads Romney by 94%- 0% among black voters. Obviously, all polls are done with smaller samples. The reality in November will not be this stark, but a poll like this takes one’s breath away. Romney also has a problem with women voters. Probably this is information the Romney camp already had. If so, would that not predispose the Romney campaign toward a strategy appealing to angry white men and the women who fear them? My hunch is that Mitt Romney, like John McCain will be too decent to pull that campaign off.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/80015.html
I consider belief and doubt both to be sacred elements of faith. If I had to choose between them, I would choose doubt because then I could discover new truths. But then I would need belief to trust new truth when I saw it.
This is an interesting article, sent by Rodney Beeber, exploring how differently the liberal and conservative parts of our nation view one event. It is getting harder and harder for the two groups to even talk.
“We Are two countries now. It’s the space between that’s scary. There are guns there. And no laws.”
I would not accept the premise that violence is balanced between the two sides. I suspect if we counted the actual bullets, it would usually be conservatives shooting liberals and not the other way around. (e.g. It is usually pro-life people shooting pro-choice and not v.v.) But the divide is definitely from both sides. We need to find out why it is we cannot reason with one another anymore.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/louisiana-police-shooting-11911108
Julian Assange faces charges of sexual assault in Sweden, for which he should stand trial. But the reason he remains holed up in an embassy resisting extradition, is a whole other matter. Even as we choose between candidates for President we must never forget that whoever we choose will need to lie to us. When a vast military empire poses as peaceful democracy its leaders must wear a mask before its people. Once the people have been propagandized and passified into unquestioning consumers, they must never be shown an actual mirror.
Whatever wrongs Assange did in Sweden are not the reason he is being hunted by the U.S. As this article points out, all Sweden would have to do is quarantee that they wouldn’t extradite him to the U.S. and Assange would lose his excuse for not facing those charges. As the article points out:
“This is a man, after all, who has yet to be charged, let alone convicted, of anything. But as far as the bulk of the press is concerned, Assange is nothing but a “monstrous narcissist”, a bail-jumping “sex pest” and an exhibitionist maniac. After Ecuador granted him political asylum and Assange delivered a “tirade” from its London embassy’s balcony, fire was turned on the country’s progressive president, Rafael Correa, ludicrously branded a corrupt “dictator” with an “iron grip” on a benighted land.”
What should bother us as responsible citizens is, when heartbreaking truths leak out about the true nature of our foreign policy, our leaders do not rise to correct the situation, they rise to crush the messengers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/21/why-us-is-out-to-get-assange
This N.Y. Times story will become more and more common. As long as “religion” is a synonymn for cultural conformity and pre-scientific thinking more and more people will wake up wanting something more.
Religion is not what a culture deems it. It is not churches, crosses, temples, dogmas or particular rituals. Religion is the sacred poetry of life. It is celebrating the circle of life all along the way. Religion does not require belief in the supernatural. It does not require us to believe untestable propositions, or perform irrational acts in the name of our sect. Instead, religion is stopping briefly when the sun rises and sets. It is looking in wonder into the eyes of an infant and seeing the universe made manifest. Religion is pausing at the death of a friend, or stranger, and teaching children that they, too, belong to the circle of life.
In the West, religion has been falsely associated with supernaturalism, theism, creationism, sexism, and all kinds of isms. It is understandable and, in fact, admirable that people would reject that version of religion. Unless Christianity goes through a reformation more radical than Luther or Calvin ever imagined it will continue to lose its best and brightest. There is nothing irreligious about being an atheist, Buddha could be called an atheist. But how poor will our lives be when our masses live without reverence shared in community?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/magazine/from-bible-belt-pastor-to-atheist-leader.html?_r=1
We must never get used to targeting foreign civilians or denying them due process. Whether you are Democrat or Republican you have a duty to your brothers and sisters in other nations to condemn the war crimes of both Bush and Obama. This sounds like radical talk in the U.S. but it is considered common sense almost anywhere else in the world. We have a duty as human beings to be bigger than our nation, our religion and certainly bigger than our political party. The only way the world can know you have a commitment to universal human rights is if you critique your own group for mistreating any another group.
In this article, Glenn Greenwald reports on a drone attack using a technique we have called “terrorism” when used by our enemies:
“The US government has long maintained, reasonably enough, that a defining tactic of terrorism is to launch a follow-up attack aimed at those who go to the scene of the original attack to rescue the wounded and remove the dead. Morally, such methods have also been widely condemned by the west as a hallmark of savagery. Yet, as was demonstrated yet again this weekend in Pakistan, this has become one of the favorite tactics of the very same US government.” -Glenn Greenwald
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/20/us-drones-strikes-target-rescuers-pakistan
I love this kind of summary of censored or under reported news. It’s a great way to chase new stories. This list comes from the Nation. See if you agree.
http://www.thenation.com/blog/169492/five-most-under-reported-stories-summer
It is encouraging to find that some Republicans were so offended by Todd Akins’ claim that raped women don’t get pregnant that they want to replace him on the ticket. The comment has hurt him some in the polls. The problem is that so many Americans from both parties vote party line that they will support a bad candidate from their own party over someone from the other side whom that might actually like better. The following N.Y. Times article summarizes the initial reaction of Republicans following Akins’ remarks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/21/us/politics/republicans-decry-todd-akins-rape-remarks.html?_r=1
It’s not easy to place a gun to your temple and shoot yourself in the head when your hands are handcuffed behind your back, but that’s what police report a 21 year old black man having done in the back seat of a police car after twice being searched for weapons. If ever a case required an outside investigation, this is it.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/08/20/159416070/death-of-handcuffed-man-in-police-car-ruled-a-suicide?sc=17&f=1001