Blogging and reading has come hard for the past couple of months. In May, I had my first 7 day stretch without a blog post in quite some time. I have read part way into several books, unable to spend long periods of time reading. (Maybe not so much UNABLE, but somehow just not having the desire or the drive to continue; my interest level is waning)
We had a short respite from the heat we were having late May and early to mid-June. It dropped down to upper 70’s low 80’s this past week nearly every day. Janet and I were taking walks around the neighborhood several times last week. Now it seems the warmer temperatures are back, with 90’s coming for the next weekend.
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On the way hone from work yesterday, I heard them start out on a news story, about a “prominent news person” having died. When they said Tim Russert, I was blown away. 58. A son just graduated from college. Such an encouraging , positive guy. Keith Olbermann spoke mostly with a wobbly voice, and when reading some of the tributes that came in, he often had to pause before going on. Have to say I was pretty emotional myself.
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Today marks 25 years of being married to Janet! Hard to believe I’m talking about that many years!
<<<Here we be, on June 11, 1983, Cincinnati, Ohio.
We’re going to a Nashville dinner theater tonight. On a far less significant note, today also marks the 6 year mark of the first post on this blog, back when it was a Radio Userland blog, before it was a Movable Type blog, before it was what it is now, a Wordpress blog.
Click the photo to see a larger version (I never noticed how freakin’ big my chin is in this picture! Just call me Dudley Doright (or Buzz Lightyear if you don’t know Dudley, or even if you don’t know diddly.)
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Why don’t we have a media that is all over this? 50 bases? U.S. blocking the “independence” of Iraq (ie. make it’s own decisions about their own economy, wanting to “diversify their receipts from oil sales away from dollar holdings into euros”. Sounds smart of the Iraqis to me.
The intrepid Patrick Cockburn reveals that the White House is more or less extorting the Iraqi government into signing a security pact with George W. Bush. At stake is $50 bn. of Iraqi money held in the US Federal Reserve, at least $20 bn. of which could be lost to Iraq if the government of Nuri al-Maliki declines to sign on the dotted line. Cockburn also reveals that the Iraqis wanted to diversify their receipts from oil sales away from dollar holdings into euros, and that the Americans vetoed the move. Bush wants 50 bases in Iraq and the prerogative of the US military to act unilaterally and with impunity inside the country.
Although the Bush administration is playing hardball to get this wideranging set of commitments from Iraq before July 31, and although Iraqis are eager to escape Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which limits their government’s sovereignty, the negotiations may collapse in the face of widespread opposition to the baldly neocolonial terms sought by Washington. Even remaining under the UN Security Council, under Chapter 7, may be preferable to Baghdad. There were large demonstrations against the security agreement, barely covered by the US press, last Friday, and Iraqi religious and political leaders are coalescing against it. Postcolonial states of the Arab world, which only attained real independence from Britain and France with great difficulty and in living memory, are touchy about being seen as kowtowing to imperial demands. The Shah’s government was overthrown in 1979 by huge crowds and a wide cross section of the public precisely on these grounds.
Informed Comment: Bush Blackmailing al-Maliki with $50 Bn. in US Fed
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Via UMR, this post asks a question that I feel this Obama "resigning from Trinity UCC” incident has brought to the fore about church and American politics
What does this say about American politics? Obama has not announced his decision to join another church. If it weren’t for his political aspirations, would Obama remain as part of this congregation, or is his decision to depart mainly based upon political expediency? I understand if Obama is disappointed with comments made from Trinity UCC’s pulpit. I am disappointed myself. However, Obama will likely not be the last presidential candidate to rise from a religious community with a controversial pulpiteer, so I ask, is this good for the church, for politics, and for American political discourse?
Will future political candidates choose churches that are more innocuous to American culture? No doubt some candidates have done so in the past–choosing their faith communities based on the measure of influence they could garner from the congregation/denomination/etc. As a final question, has anything similar to Obama’s plight taken place with other persons striving to take hold of public office in a way that it has become newsworthy?
Obama Resigns Church Membership « Performing the Faith
While Obama is right that his political position has brought “undue” scrutiny upon Trinity members, I am still disappointed (but not surprised) that the idolatry of American governmant and the implied “priority” of the political sphere as the “real way to make a difference” has caused/convinced Obama to “make the break” from what should be the primary alliance. But of course, I have not seen Obama as the kind of ecclesially centered member who would insist that American politics has NO authority in his relationship with his church membership. I guess the closest analogy to what I’m getting at here would be to ask if Obama would set his own family aside and divorce his wife if MIchelle were to become a political liability. This would be a breaking point in the public mind, since most would see this as a ridiculous choice. But one’s relationship to the church is not even in the same ballpark in American culture. So what sort of family is the church, if not in fact a real family?
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