The Shock Doctrine

Naomi Klein

Watch the short film

Fast Facts, Shocks and their Aftermath from the Shock Doctrine Short Film
Chile, 1973

* 50,000 tortured
* 80,000 imprisoned
* Public spending cut by 50%
* Incomes for the rich up 83%
* 45% of population in poverty

Wars – Falklands War, 1982

* 910 people die
* Thatcher’s popularity doubles
* She privatizes gas, steel, airlines, telephones
* She declares war on unions
* Thousands are injured
* Unemployment triples
* Number of poor increases by 100%

Massacres

* China 1989 – hundreds killed
* Thousands jailed and tortured
* China becomes sweatshop to the world
* China embraces “free market” capitalism
* Factory wages: $1/day

Russia, 1993

* Yeltsin attacks parliament
* Hundreds killed
* Parliament burned
* Opposition arrested
* 72 million impoverished
* 17 new billionaires created

Terrorist Attacks – New York, 2001

* Attacks launch “War on Terror.” It is privatized.
* US spy agencies outsource 70% of their budgets
* Pentagon increases budget for contractors by $137 billion/year
* Department of Homeland Security spends $130 billion on private contractors

Invasions – Iraq, 2003

* The most privatized war in modern history
* US decrees 200 state companies will be privatized
* Hundreds of thousands killed
* 4 million displaced

Natural Disasters – Sri Lanka, 2004

* 35,000 dead
* Coastline handed over to hotels and industry
* Nearly 1 million displaced
* Fishing people forbidden to rebuild homes by the sea

Leahy: Clinton Should Drop Out

Sen. Patrick Leahy wants Hillary Rodham Clinton to abandon her White House run, the Associated Press is reporting.

“Senator Clinton has every right, but not a very good reason, to remain a candidate for as long as she wants to,” he said in the statement. “As far as the delegate count and the interests of a Democratic victory in November go, there is not a very good reason for drawing this out. But as I have said before, that is a decision that only she can make.”

Penn. Sen. Bob Casey Endorses Barack Obama

“I really believe that in a time of danger around the world and in division here at home, Barack Obama can lead us, he can heal us, he can help rebuild America,” he said.

Hillary’s Prayer: Hillary Clinton’s Religion and Politics

For 15 years, Hillary Clinton has been part of a secretive religious group that seeks to bring Jesus back to Capitol Hill.

Through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as the Fellowship. Her collaborations with right-wingers such as Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) grow in part from that connection.

The Fellowship’s long-term goal is “a leadership led by God–leaders of all levels of society who direct projects as they are led by the spirit.” According to the Fellowship’s archives, the spirit has in the past led its members in Congress to increase U.S. support for the Duvalier regime in Haiti and the Park dictatorship in South Korea. The Fellowship’s God-led men have also included General Suharto of Indonesia; Honduran general and death squad organizer Gustavo Alvarez Martinez; a Deutsche Bank official disgraced by financial ties to Hitler; and dictator Siad Barre of Somalia, plus a list of other generals and dictators.

More on the Fellowship’s leader, Doug Coe, from Harper’s via DKos.

The Obama version of ‘we shall overcome’

Before he did it last week in Philadelphia, no one could have imagined that Barack Obama would sing the blues so powerfully. With the same soul power that bluesman Albert King once described, Obama brought the grits. He revealed an inner music of spirituality, of confrontation, a statement of aching tragic depth and resilient affirmation.

Sleeping (sitting)(speaking)(conspiring) with the enemy…

Scaife?!

How low can you go?

Hillary’s Rev. Wright His name is Richard Mellon Scaife.

“Hate speech [is] unacceptable in any setting,” Hillary Clinton today told the Tribune-Review. We turn now to this excerpt from a 1981 Columbia Journalism Review profile of Scaife by Karen Rothmyer, in which the reporter describes a conversation with the distinguished publisher and philanthropist:

“Mr. Scaife, could you explain why you give so much money to the New Right?”

“You fucking Communist cunt, get out of here.”

Christopher Ruddy, who once worked full-time for Mr. Scaife investigating the Clintons and now runs a conservative online publication he co-owns with Mr. Scaife, said, “Both of us have had a rethinking.”“Clinton wasn’t such a bad president,” Mr. Ruddy said. “In fact, he was a pretty good president in a lot of ways, and Dick feels that way today.”

Do you need a picture?

[Thx Veneita]

Scaife “helped fund the Arkansas Project, which ultimately led to the impeachment proceedings of President Bill Clinton.”

The Right Choice?

The conservative case for Barack Obama

by Andrew J. Bacevich

Barack Obama is no conservative. Yet if he wins the Democratic nomination, come November principled conservatives may well find themselves voting for the senator from Illinois. Given the alternatives—and the state of the conservative movement—they could do worse.

Dinner With Barack

From Barack’s Campaign Manager:

You’ve heard about all of these political fundraising dinners, hosted by Washington lobbyists and filled with representatives of special interests.

Contributions like these are at the root of what’s wrong with politics. And John McCain and Hillary Clinton have built campaigns fueled by them.

But our campaign is different.

In February alone, more than 94% of our donors gave in amounts of $200 or less. Meanwhile, campaign finance reports show that donations of $200 or less make up just 13% of Senator McCain’s total campaign funds, and only 26% of Senator Clinton’s.

Our funding comes from a movement of more than one million people giving whatever they can afford.

And in the next week, four supporters will be selected for a new kind of fundraising dinner.

Make a donation in any amount between now and 11:59 pm EDT on Monday, March 31st, and you could join Barack and three other supporters for an intimate dinner for five.

We’re reserving two of those seats for new donors like you. If you’ve ever thought about making a donation to join our campaign, now is the time:

https://donate.barackobama.com/dinner

This movement is changing the way campaigns are funded.

More than one million individual donors have demonstrated that this election is about more than a candidate — it’s about each of us having a personal stake in the future of American politics.

Meanwhile, Senator McCain has raised more than 70% of his total campaign funds from high-dollar donors giving $1,000 or more. Senator Clinton has raised 60% of her funds from $1,000-and-up donors. And both Senator McCain and Senator Clinton have accepted millions of dollars from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs.

Refusing to accept donations from lobbyists and special interests has allowed this campaign to answer only to ordinary Americans like you. And this dinner will be an opportunity for you to sit down with Barack and your fellow supporters and talk about the issues that matter in your life and in your community.

Get the kind of treatment that John McCain and Hillary Clinton reserve for special interests — make a donation in the next week, and you could share your story and your ideas with Barack in person:

https://donate.barackobama.com/dinner

With every single donation, we’re building a movement to change American politics. Help the movement grow, and own a piece of this campaign today.

Thanks for your support,

David

David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

Lie much? Depends on what the meaning of ‘running from sniper fire’ is…

Clinton retreats under fire from sniper story

During a speech last Monday, she said: ”I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down.”

Watch the video.

Obama, Ferraro, Wright: ‘Postracial’ Meets Racism

Quite what concept Ferraro was referring to is difficult to fathom. Of the ten whitest states to have voted so far, Obama has won nine of them. Of the ten blackest states to have voted so far (including the District of Columbia), he has won nine of them. The votes are not weighted for melanin content. His lead is the product not of affirmative action but of democratic election.

There is a word for people who consistently deny the existence and effects of racism while denigrating black achievement. It’s called racist. It is not a word that should be used casually, and it is a word that has at times been misused. But it is not a word that we should refrain from using simply because some people might be offended. Ferraro is a racist. That’s not all she is. And that’s not all she has to be. But that is what she has consistently chosen to be in her response to black men in politics.

Obama Surges in New Poll

According to Gallup’s daily tracking poll, Obama regained his lead over Sen. Hillary Clinton by 48% to 45%over the weekend.

Haunting Obama’s Dreams

Email from my friend Jerry Baker:

I don’t forward Maureen Dowd’s columns very often however, in my humble opinion, she’s capturing the mood of many Democrats with her column below.

Sorry to all of you Hillary supporters, but I’m growing very angry at her tactics, especially she and her husband’s continued praise of John McCain.  What?  So if Hillary doesn’t get the nomination (and she can’t without a wholesale sellout by the Super Delegates) then we should vote for McCain??  Then James Carville says Bill Richardson is a traitor for endorsing Obama?? What??  Is this the same Carville who’s married to Mary Matlin, special advisor to every war mongering Republican in Washington (including Cheney)?

My opinion only…we should be thanking Richardson for having the courage to go on TV and say what many of us are already thinking:  Quit now Hillary and let Obama take on McCain.  He can and he will win.  You can’t.

 

By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON

It is a tribute to Hillary Clinton that even though, rationally, political soothsayers think she can no longer win, irrationally, they wonder how she will pull it off. It’s impossible to imagine The Terminator, as a former aide calls her, giving up. Unless every circuit is out, she’ll regenerate enough to claw her way out of the grave, crawl through the Rezko Memorial Lawn and up Obama’s wall, hurl her torso into the house and brutally haunt his dreams.

“It’s like one of those movies where you think you know the end, but then you watch with your fingers over your eyes,” said one leading Democrat.

Saving Seeds In Doomsday Vault To Stave of Catastrophic Starvation

Scientists are collecting a billion and a half seeds from all the world’s crops to keep in safe storage deep inside a mountain near the North Pole.

Why?

“These resources stand between us and catastrophic starvation on a scale we cannot imagine. And we now have, I think, kind of a perfect storm hitting agriculture,” Fowler says.

That “perfect storm” is crop extinction, a world population growing 50 percent in the next 50 years and global warming.

Meet the White Man who Inspired Wright’s Sermon

His name is Ambassador Edward Peck. And he is a retired, white, career U.S. diplomat who served 32-years in the U.S. Foreign Service and was chief of the U.S. mission to Iraq under Jimmy Carter — hardly the black-rage image with which Wright has been stigmatized.

In fact, when Wright took the pulpit to give his post-9/11 address — which has since become boiled down to a five second sound bite about “America’s chickens coming home to roost” — he prefaced his remarks as a “faith footnote,” an indication that he was deviating from his sermon.
“I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday,” Wright declared. “He was on Fox News. This is a white man and he was upsetting the Fox News commentators to no end. He pointed out, a white man, an ambassador, that what Malcolm X said when he got silenced by Elijah Muhammad was in fact true: America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

Richardson Endorses Obama

Gov. Bill Richardson urged Democrats to unite behind Senator Barack Obama’s candidacy to move the nation beyond its racial and partisan divide.

• Richardson: Video | Text
• Video: The Value of a Political Endorsement

Bill Clinton And Jeremiah Wright Photo Uncovered

The recent coverage of Rev. Jeremiah Wright has often cast him as a marginal, almost fringe figure, but Trinity Church is a major Chicago institution, and Wright has long been a prominent pastor on the American scene.

Obama and Race

“The big thing for Wright is hope,” said Martin Marty, one of America’s foremost theologians, who has known the Rev. Wright for 35 years and attended many of his services. “You hear ‘hope, hope, hope.’ Lots of ordinary people are there, and they’re there not to blast the whites. They’re there to get hope.”

Security Breach of Obama Passport Details

Mr Obama’s confidential files were first accessed after he defeated Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus at the beginning of January.I bet Hillary is behind it if it isn’t McCain/Bush.

Global Warming Rushes Timing of Spring

“The alarm clock that all the plants and animals are listening to is running too fast,” Stanford University biologist Terry Root said.

Even If Hillary Got Michigan Revote, It Probably Wouldn’t Affect Overall Contest Much

First of all, it isn’t at all certain that Hillary would win the contest by a large margin, which she would need in order to put a real dent in Obama’s pledged delegate lead…

Clinton Presses Obama on Efforts for Do-Over Votes in Florida, Michigan

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) abruptly shifted her schedule to make a last-minute visit here Wednesday, demanding that the state’s Democratic Party hold another primary vote or count the results of the earlier disqualified balloting, and challenging Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) to live up to his claim that he cares about making sure people’s votes count.

“This is a crucial test: Does he mean what he says or not?” Clinton said.

Whaaaat? Did she mean what she said when she agreed to not be on the ballot? NO!

An effort to bridge a divide

Since he was very young, Senator Barack Obama has been something of a mediator of racial concerns, shuttling between black and white worlds and trying to translate the concerns of one to the other.

He did it in his family. He did it at Harvard Law School

U.S. Soldier Killed Herself in Iraq — After Objecting to Torture

Looking back at all of the sad, tragic and unnecessary deaths in Iraq that I have written about in the past five years, it is hard to identify one that stands out. But one death does still haunt me, above all others.

Alyssa Peterson was one of the first female soldiers killed in Iraq — and she died by her own hand after objecting to interrogation methods used on prisoners. A cover-up, naturally, followed.

In any age, a prophet draws wrath

…Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, Sen. Barack Obama’s minister, was much quoted over the weekend as having said: “God damn America.” But the quotation comes not from Wright, but from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s first address to the Montgomery Improvement Association on December 5, 1955. Both African-American preachers have understood prophetic biblical preaching far better than those who feign shock at and condemn Wright’s words.

[Thanks GIG!]

Watch the best speech on race in America in decades!

HERE

Must see!

NOT THIS TIME

Obama’s speech, the text

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.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.”

Where is McCain’s distancing himself from Reverend Hagee?

John Hagee preaches anticatholicism

Remember

So it is with conviction that I support this resolution as being in the best interests of our nation. A vote for it is not a vote to rush to war; it is a vote that puts awesome responsibility in the hands of our President and we say to him - use these powers wisely and as a last resort. And it is a vote that says clearly to Saddam Hussein - this is your last chance - disarm or be disarmed.

-Hillary Clinton

---

I want to insure that Saddam Hussein makes no mistake about our national unity and for our support for the President’s efforts to wage America’s war against terrorists and weapons of mass destruction.

-Hillary Clinton

Help Me Fight For Change By Supporting Obama!

As Americans, we dream of a President who is honest, personable, intelligent, and wise.

We want a leader with courage and integrity who has known the struggles of an everyday American. A lot of people have stopped believing that may even be possible.

I haven’t stopped believing. I support Barack Obama because he is that leader.

Join me in supporting Barack by making a donation to my personal fundraising page:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/donkeyod

This campaign for the presidency is unparalleled in history. Our need for an honest, fresh-thinking leader could not be more urgent. Americans are hungry for change and Barack Obama will bring that change when he is elected.

Please take a minute to check out my page and make a donation of any size:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/donkeyod

Thanks.

Obama Supporters! Put your time where your mouth is, so to speak!

Calling Pennsylvania: Ann Marie from Bucks County No matter where you live, you can hep impact the race in Pennsylvania right now. We’re asking our grassroots supporters to call Pennsylvania Independents and non-affiliated voters to identify new supporters and let them know about the upcoming Pennsylvania registration deadline.The Pennsylvania primary is technically a “closed” contest, in which only registered Democrats can participate. However, there is still time for Independents, Republicans, and non-affiliated voters to register as Democrats before the March 24th deadline. Ann Marie from Bucks County, Pennsylvania is one of our many grassroots supporters who have been calling voters all across the country on behalf of Barack for months now. On Thursday she spoke on the National Call Team conference call to share her thoughts on how things are going on the ground, how your calls can make a difference, and her tips for talking to Pennsylvania Independents: Link to the HQ blog to hear Ann Marie. The Pennsylvania calling campaign will be running throughout the weekend, from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM Eastern Standard Time. We have just over a week to reach out to as many Pennsylvania Independents and non-affiliated voters as possible. Help us grow this movement now, one call at time: HELP CALL PENNSYLVANIA NOW.

Election Madness

By Howard Zinn

There’s a man in Florida who has been writing to me for years (ten pages, handwritten) though I’ve never met him. He tells me the kinds of jobs he has held—security guard, repairman, etc. He has worked all kinds of shifts, night and day, to barely keep his family going. His letters to me have always been angry, railing against our capitalist system for its failure to assure “life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness” for working people.

Just today, a letter came. To my relief it was not handwritten because he is now using e-mail: “Well, I’m writing to you today because there is a wretched situation in this country that I cannot abide and must say something about. I am so enraged about this mortgage crisis. That the majority of Americans must live their lives in perpetual debt, and so many are sinking beneath the load, has me so steamed. Damn, that makes me so mad, I can’t tell you. . . . I did a security guard job today that involved watching over a house that had been foreclosed on and was up for auction. They held an open house, and I was there to watch over the place during this event. There were three of the guards doing the same thing in three other homes in this same community. I was sitting there during the quiet moments and wondering about who those people were who had been evicted and where they were now.”

Censorship and the Anemic State of Political Discourse in America

When I lived in China in the early 1990s, there were things that you could not discuss. One was Tibet. Another was Taiwan, “referred to in my daughter’s public elementary school in Shanghai as “China’s largest island.” Another was the 1989 massacre of students and workers in Beijing. I used to be grateful at the time that I was an American and that back home, we could talk about anything.

Except that in a way we can’t. Not in public discourse, anyhow.

When My Father Said the Same Thing as Obama’s Minister He Was a Republican Hero

When Senator Obama’s preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father — Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer — denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.

A Free-Spirited Wanderer Who Set Obama’s Path

In the capsule version of the Barack Obama story, his mother is simply the white woman from Kansas.

The Supervisor, the Champion, and the Promoter

What psychological personality tests reveal about Clinton, Obama, and McCain.

Goodbye Howard Metzenbaum

The Last Ferocious Liberal

Wright’s “Blowback”

Here’s what the New York Times had to say about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s causal assessment of 9/11: “A useful and timely alert.”

Newsday had this to say: “[He] is on to something.” And from the Nation came this: “A straight-talking analysis.”

If Rev. Wright was guilty of anything, other than harshly speaking harsh truths, it was sins of omission. He failed (at least in the video segment I’ve seen) to exempt the actual victims of 9/11 from personal culpability. He also failed (again, in the narrow segment I’ve seen) to equally passionately denounce the always-unjustified horror of terrorism against the innocent.

Smearing Obama

Ari Berman, the Nation

Even if the false claims about Obama originally emanated from the neoconservative right, the Clinton campaign has eagerly pushed them. Clinton operative Sidney Blumenthal has e-mailed damaging stories about Obama to reporters, including a recent article by Batchelor. Clinton fundraiser Annie Totah circulated a column by Ed Lasky before Super Tuesday, with the inscription “Please vote wisely in the Primaries.” Clinton adviser Ann Lewis falsely referred to Zbigniew Brzezinski, a critic of AIPAC, as a chief adviser to Obama on a conference call with Jewish reporters. “I can tell you for a fact people from the Clinton campaign are calling reporters and asking them to pay attention to things involving Obama and Israel,” says Shmuel Rosner, Washington correspondent for the Israeli daily Ha’aretz. The volume of e-mails about Obama in a given state tends to track the election calendar–hardly a coincidence.

NO MORE. No Torture. No Exceptions.

Washington Monthly
Read all articles (pdf)

Read individual articles by the contributors:
Bob Barr
Rand Beers
Peter Bergen
Jimmy Carter
Steve Cheney
Amy Chua
Richard Cizik
Wesley K. Clark
Jack Cloonan
Chris Dodd
Kenneth M. Duberstein
Richard Armitage
Eric Fair
Carl Ford
Lee F. Gunn
Chuck Hagel
Lee H. Hamilton &
Thomas H. Kean
Gary Hart
John Hutson
Claudia Kennedy
John Kerry
Harold Hongju Koh
Carl Levin
Richard Lugar
Leon E. Panetta
Nancy Pelosi
William J. Perry
Paul R. Pillar
Tim Roemer
John Shattuck
Anne-Marie Slaughter
Theodore C. Sorensen
William H. Taft IV
Thomas G. Wenski
Lawrence B. Wilkerson
Steve Xenakis

Clinton’s Up-Is-Down World

As the Democratic race gets nastier, Hillary Clinton’s campaign has taken some lessons from George W. Bush’s situational ethics toward truth and fairness. The question for Democrats is whether they object to this harsh brand of politics or feel it’s the only way to win.

By Robert Parry

Throughout history, it’s been common for politicians to shade the truth when caught in a tight spot. But sometimes politicians push the limits, crossing the line into an Orwellian world where up is down, where bullies are victims, where people objecting to the lies are shouted down.

No, Mr. President, there’s nothing romantic about being sent on an important mission and not being given the tools to accomplish it.

WASHINGTON - Veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan) expressed shock that the President believes the war is “romantic” and “exciting.”

“I didn’t feel like there was anything romantic in not seeing my daughter grow up, in watching Afghan children starve to death, in explaining repeated deployment extensions to my soldiers, in explaining to Afghans that we were there to keep them safe - while knowing that we would never have enough troops to actually do so. No, Mr. President, there’s nothing romantic about being sent on an important mission and not being given the tools to accomplish it.”

-JIM MORIN, OEF VETERAN (2003, ARMY)

Isn’t it romantic? Getting your legs blown off by an IED?

Afghanistan Envy

Bush’s romantic notions about serving on the front lines.

Hillary invented the internet?

More exaggerating of her ‘experience’. This time taking credit for S-Chip.

Clinton role in health program disputed

“I do like her,” Hatch said of Hillary Clinton. “We all care about children. But does she deserve credit for SCHIP? No - Teddy does, but she doesn’t.”

Asked whether Clinton was exaggerating her role in creating SCHIP, Kennedy, stopped in the hallway as he was entering the chamber to vote, half-shrugged.

“Facts are stubborn things,” he said, declining to criticize Clinton directly. “I think we ought to stay with the facts.”

Obama puts Rev. Wright issue to bed

Do you believe in guilt by association? I don’t. Even if I did, I don’t think Reverend Wright is guilty of anything but anger at injustice.

My friend wrote this and I wholeheartedly echo it–

I watched the video of Minister White- so much of what he said is easily taken out of context. I can’t say that I took issue with what he said- the language of the oppressed is always an offense to those who refuse to open their eyes to see things as “the other” sees them. for this is “the offense” that Christ spoke of and for which he was crucified… HE was a radical too.

Another friend’s perspective that I don’t disagree with either:

“What’s the big fuss about Rev Wright’s comments? I just saw it on MSNBC and all I could say was “hell yeah”. He’s right that Hillary will never know what it’s like to be black. We… our country… America… the USA has killed more innocent people in Iraq than were killed on 9-11 and never blinked an eye. We are guilty as hell. I don’t think God is happy with our actions. I don’t think war is what Jesus would do. (for those who focus on the Christian aspect of his commments.) I do think the rich white men like Bush like to keep the black man down and build bigger prisons. I hate the 3 strikes you’re out bullshit.”

Reverend Wright is a Marine, a biblical scholar, and has spent 30 years as a pastor preaching the social gospel. The UCC’s tenets are availabe online at UCC.org.

REGARDLESS, here Obama puts the issue to bed, as well as the Rezko molehill…

Does Hillary actually want to make a big deal out of a real estate deal like Rezko?  [psst remember Whitewater?]  Obama returned all of the money from Rezko and donated it to charity. What did she do with her questionable contributions from IPA?  Sen. Hillary Clinton has declined to return the $170,000 from individuals at a company accused of widespread sexual harassment, and whose CEO is a disbarred lawyer with a criminal record, federal campaign records show.

The Cult of the Suicide Bomber

By Robert Fisk

“The Independent” — - Khaled looked at me with a broad smile. He was almost laughing. At one point, when I told him that he should abandon all thoughts of being a suicide bomber - that he could influence more people in this world by becoming a journalist - he put his head back and shot me a grin, world-weary for a man in his teens. “You have your mission,” he said. “And I have mine.” His sisters looked at him in awe. He was their hero, their amanuensis and their teacher, their representative and their soon-to-be-martyred brother. Yes, he was handsome, young - just 18 - he was dressed in a black Giorgio Armani T-shirt, a small, carefully trimmed Spanish conquistador’s beard, gelled hair. And he was ready to immolate himself.
[emphasis mine]

Examining the Origins of America’s ‘Founding Faith’

Was America meant to be a Christian nation?

[HELL NO!]

Author Steven Waldman attempts to answer this and other questions related to America’s religious history in his new book, Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America.

Waldman sets the record straight on several issues that have been debated fiercely by those engaged in what he calls the “custody battle” over the American founding. Seventeenth-century America, he rightly argues, was not founded as a bastion of religious freedom, but as a place where religious establishments prevailed. Scholars will already know this, but it is still nice to see such a clean and direct hit on the Whiggish interpretations of the British colonies promoted by many of the so-called Christian America writers. Waldman also makes it clear that most of the Founders were not deists, especially if we define a “deist” as a person who rejects the idea that God acts in human history. Nearly all the Founders believed in providence. I am sure that Susan Jacoby and others and still others may have something to say about this, but Waldman is correct here.

It is now common for those on the right and the left to try to prove that America is or isn’t a Christian nation based on the religious beliefs of the Founders. Waldman reminds us of the logical problems with this argument. Just because one of the Founders was a Christian—or even an evangelical Christian—doesn’t mean that he was an opponent of the separation of church and state. The opposite is also true. Just because one of the Founders did not believe all the tenets of orthodox Christianity does not always mean that he rejected the idea that Christianity was good for the republic. This argument seems obvious, but it is often missing from the popular religious histories of the founding era.

What’s the difference? Oh, yeah.

The Society of the Owned

Pt. 6: Just Drop Off the Key

It’s the same anger that follows a broken promise, or a betrayal, when people have followed the rules, or simply done the same what everyone around them: bought into the idea of the ownership society, only to find that the rules have changed, and the door was never opened anyway.

1. The Society of the Owned, Pt. 1
2. The Society of the Owned, Pt. 2: Under the Bus
3. The Society of the Owned, Pt. 3: Deeper in Debt
4. The Society of the Owned, Pt. 4: Caught in the Middle
5. The Society of the Owned, Pt.5: The Rage of a Middle Class

Hillary’s Adventures Abroad

We find some exaggerations in Clinton’s claims of foreign policy experience.

• On March 6 Hillary Clinton claimed that, unlike Barack Obama, she and likely Republican nominee John McCain have “cross[ed] the commander-in-chief threshold.” In a CNN interview the day before, Clinton had listed five foreign policy accomplishments. We can’t determine how much behind-the-scenes work Clinton did while first lady, and she certainly took an active interest in foreign policy when her husband was president. Moreover, her time as first lady plus her longer Senate career do give Clinton more foreign policy experience than Obama. But the public record of her actions shows that many of Clinton’s foreign policy claims are exaggerated.
• Clinton claims to have “negotiated open borders” in Macedonia to fleeing Kosovar refugees. But the Macedonian border opened a full day before she arrived, and her meetings with Macedonian officials were too brief to allow for much serious negotiating
• Clinton’s activities “helped bring peace to Northern Ireland.” Irish officials are divided as to how helpful Clinton’s actions were, and key players agree that she was not directly involved in any actual negotiations.
• Clinton has repeatedly referenced her “dangerous” trip to Bosnia. She fails to mention, however, that the Bosnian war had officially ended three months before her visit – or that she made the trip with her 16-year-old daughter and two entertainers.
• Both Bill and Hillary Clinton claim that Hillary privately championed the use of U.S. troops to stop the genocide in Rwanda. That conversation left no public record, however, as U.S. policy was explicitly to stay out of Rwanda, and officials say that the use of U.S. troops was never considered.
• Clinton’s tough speech on human rights delivered to a Beijing audience is as advertised, though Clinton herself has been dismissive of speeches that aren’t backed by solutions.

This is a summary only. The full article with analysis, images and citations may be viewed on their Web site:FACTCHECK.ORG

Pelosi: No dice on dream ticket

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Clinton has basically ruled out the possibility [of being Clinton's running mate] by suggesting that Republican John McCain is more ready to be commander-in-chief than Obama.