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So much of the mess corrupting our political process stems from a deeper immaturatiy in our worldview.  Democracies cannot depend on finding heroes to fight villians.  Democracies require an informed citizenship voting on the overall direction of the country, and not just being an audience in some melodrama of good fighting evil.  It would be infinitely better to be able to vote for people who promised to promote certain policies, and to have the right to recall them if they did not do what they promised.  What follows is a balanced investigation of the President’s new focus on populist issues looking not so much at Obama himself, but on the decisions that any President would have to make to clean up economic corruption.

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Prayer is not a type of magic. Prayer is a certain vulnerability and openness.  It is recognizing that you are not an orphan of the universe, but are an intersection of thousands of invisible threads. You are an expression of the mystery out of which everything comes. Praying is aligning the pulse of your body to the pulse of nature.  It is aligning the intelligence in your head to the intelligent web that runs through not only you, but the whole of reality. It is remembering you are part of a larger life.

Jesus taught before the edifice we now call the church was built.  His concern was much more basic than that of many theologians. He wanted to teach us how to tune our hearts to the common life. His teachings can be helpful whether or not one becomes a Christian. I don’t think he would have the slightest interest in converting anyone to the institutional church, although some kind of community is indispensable for deep living, so he wouldn’t be against the church either, so long as the church teaches universal love and not sectarian dogma.

For some people, prayer is a conversation with God, to others, who don’t believe in God, it is more like a reverent awareness.  Whether your prayer consists of words or of attentive silence, pray until the shallow concerns you have reach a depth that includes compassion for all beings, and acceptance of reality as it is.  When you rise from that prayer, you will have the heart that Christ had, and the mind that Christ had. And you will know that your prayer has been answered whether you become a Christian or not.

A little lesson in politics by Monty Python
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The solution to the political problems facing America will not be found by choosing between socialism, capitalism, democracy or libertarianism.  It will be found when we diagnose what each system can and cannot do and create a hybid that can do it all.

Is Obama a socialist?  I think a look at his State of the Union Message will dispel that little bit of insanity.

“I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: That Government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.” As an illustration, he said, “That’s why our health care law relies on a reformed private market, not a Government program.” -Barack Obama

A socialist believes in putting people ahead of making money. The private sector cannot do the task of providing universal health coverage because it will always be cheaper to deny coverage than to provide it. Obama talked about single payer when he was running, so it’s understandable that some would accuse him of socialism, but he has proven that he will support markets no matter who gets hurt.  Would a socialist’s first act be to empty the public coffers into a bailout of corrupt businesses?

“The United States is the “one indispensable nation in world affairs—and as long as I’m President, I intend to keep it that way.” -Barack Obama

Again, a socialist sees the needs of humanity as more important than any one nation.  A socialist would move toward international law and weakening boundaries, not toward turning his or her own nation into an unrivaled empire.

Furthermore, a socialist President would visibly stand by unions and migrant workers and show up at revolutionary activities like the Occupy Movement.  Sorry capitalists, but Obama is innocent of the charge of “socialism”.  In fact, he’s one of yours.

When we consider our economic woes in the U.S, we are not in uncharted waters. Northern Europe has already addressed many of the problems we find insurmountable. read more here

“No one is born hating another person because of the colour of (their) skin, or (their) background, or (their) religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”  -Nelson Mandela

Deep within us, a choice is being made every day and every moment. Far beneath our political decisions lies a more fundamental question.  This decision is so deep that it lies beneath our every political position or religious philosophy.  It is the decision to live in our hopes or in our fears.  The world we see is the result of a process we do not see.  It is better to have been born without the eyes in our head, than to have closed the eyes of our heart.

I was so happy when the Occupy Movement began to use the phrase, “We are the world.”

This chant contains the essence of every true religion and every great revolution. The theologian Paul Tillich expressed the insight this way: “The most intimate motions within the depths of our souls are not completely our own. For they belong also to our friends, to humankind, to the universe, and the Ground…… of all being, the aim of our life.”

Each wave of the ocean is an individual in one sense, but it is also a wave of something more basic. In the same way, every individual human being expresses a unique aspect of nature and of all humankind. This is why the deeper we go inside ourselves, the more we discover a mysterious sense of otherness, and the more we care about others, the more their happiness becomes an intimate need of our own. Beneath our thoughts, is an animal, is the web of life, is the planet.

“We are the world” expresses the truth behind the Christian Pentecost, the Jewish “tikkun olam”, as well as the true thrust behind Marx’s socialism. The “red” of communism represented our one human blood. The failure of past revolutions and religions has been, in part, a failure to realize one of the most profound insights to which a human may aspire. Whether the problem is economic, political or religious, the solution to the basic disagreements of humankind begins with the insight, “We are the world.”

Prejudice is the hardedst thing to see. If you have a prejudice, you can’t see it because you’re seeing through it. It’s the lens with which you look at the world. Listen to the parables. They help us to move from an idea of charity to an idea of justice. Not as shame, not as a burden, but as an incredible gift.

Sermon found here.

Ever wonder what BP and other foreign companies were doing drilling U.S. oil in the first place?  Ever wonder why some of the bailout money went to foreign banks?  National bounaries have become a myth the rich impose upon the poor.  As long as we believe in separate flags and religions we can be played against one another  The rich themselves fly above nations, and above the law of any nation.  Meanwhile, they send the poor to fight and die over invented regional causes. They profit no matter who wins or loses. This madness will continue until enough of us realize that we are one species, and reorder the world accordingly.

The following article is taken from Mother Jones.

—By Kate Sheppard

| Mon Jan. 23, 2012 10:28 AM PST

Heavily oiled Brown Pelicans captured at Grand Isle, Louisiana on June 3, 2010 wait to be cleaned. International Bird Rescue Research Center/Flickr

Back at the height of the massive Gulf oil spill in 2010, there was quite a bit of controversy about just how much crude was blasting out of the well. According to new documents that a watchdog group released on Monday, there was heated debate among the scientists who evaluated the flow rate as well.

For the first few weeks after the spill began in April 2010, BP misled the public about how big it was, and the government repeated BP’s estimate without question. And when the government released its own estimate in late May of up to 25,000 barrels per day, that too was controversial—and proved to be far lower than the actual size, which was more like 53,000 barrels of oil per day.

Now, an email released by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) traces efforts to downplay the spill size in the initial weeks back to the White House. The group released a May 29, 2010 email from Dr. Marcia McNutt, the director of the US Geologic Survey and head of the government’s Flow Rate Technical Group (FRTG), that was released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. The email came after scientists on the flow-rate team complained to McNutt about how the spill figures were conveyed to the press, and in response she cited pressure from the White House as the reason the numbers were low-balled. Rather than reporting that the lower-end estimate of the spill was 25,000 barrels per day, officials cited that figure as the higher-end estimate:

I cannot tell you what a nightmare the past two days have been dealing with the communications people at the White House, DOI, and the NIC who seem incapable of understanding the concept of a lower bound. The press release that went out on our results was misleading and was not reviewed by a scientist for accuracy.

McNutt’s email reportedly came in response to complaints from scientists on the team about how the flow rate had been handled. PEER also filed a complaint against Dr. William Lehr, a scientist at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) who was the team lead for the FRTG’s plume analysis team. PEER argues that Lehr “manipulated the scientific results” of the team’s experts and understated the spill rate in what it communicated. From PEER’s release on the complaint:

Lehr was leader of one of the most important FRTG teams, the “Plume Team” which analyzed videos of the oil leaks to produce the first estimates.  Three of the 13 Plume Team experts used a technique called Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) to estimate a leak rate in the range of 25,000 bpd.  But three other experts on the Plume Team reported that PIV was underestimating the size of the leak by more than 50%. Those three experts used a different technology to correctly peg the leak rate at 50,000 to 60,000 bpd.

Yet Lehr did not tell the public or key decision makers that there was a deep split on the Plume Team.  In the Plume Team’s Final Report, the body of which Lehr wrote, he reported that “most of the Plume Team used PIV” which produced “consistent and accurate” estimates.  These underestimates were repeated to the public and media.

The government was also criticized for its handling of an August 2010 report on where the oil went, for which Lehr also served as the lead scientist. (I’ve requested comment from NOAA and the White House, and will update this post to reflect that when I receive it.) UPDATE: Scott Smullen, a spokesman for NOAA, said it is “not appropriate to comment” on this matter because it is still in litigation.

It’s not entirely clear from PEER’s release, though, what was real reason for the inaccurate figures—a single scientist giving inaccurate information, the White House pressuring him to do so, or the White House screwing up the reporting of the figures. Whatever it was, it resulted in the public getting a dramatically inaccurate impression about the size of the spill.