May 2008 archive

Christian America has long been cynically manipulated by politicians eager to win support and cash to fuel earthly ambitions.

Database Mining in a good suit means that most supporters will never see their candidate portrayed so transparently as the Second Coming, unless they self-identify officially as ‘church-going’ Christians.

Oregon voters are extremely unlikely to see this incarnation of the candidate for change. My own distrust of the candidate began in his equivocation on the role of religion in politics. As a person of faith who prays daily I absolutely reject any suggestion that faith has any role to play in the political process. I don’t want to know whether a candidate prays or not, what his or her sexual orientation may be, or whether they prefer to shop at Target or Saks.

Preacher Mike Huckabee is far more open about his Christian identity. Are all the highly intelligent voters who support the candidate for change and who have such contempt for folks  for the clinging religious voters aware that a vote for change is a vote for Christian more of the same?

We’re approaching something close to a crisis, where folks who want experience and some level of candor liberate themselves from the pundits and party loyalty to look to the real challenges we all face.

Flying under a false flag might strike many as a sign of sound judgment and integrity.

We won’t see these depictions of Obama as Jesus in New York or Oregon.

Fair enough?

Excerpted from Burning the Midnight Oil for the Next American Revolution (14 May 08),

in the Burning the Midnight Oil blog-within-a-blog, hosted by kos,

though to the best of my knowledge he doesn’t know it.

Lets not be under any illusions about the difficulty of the coming election.

And that is: if there is any difficulty, we have made it for ourselves. We are being handed the opportunity of a generation on a silver platter. And while many of use have been distracted by the side issue of who is going to be nominated to run for the Presidency, in another week or so there will be no more excuse for getting sidetracked.

And we can turn our attention to building a House majority so large that the so-called “Blue Dogs” lose their leverage.

1. The Miami Herald reports that Newcomers are assimilating quickly in U.S. “A wide-ranging and provocative new study of immigrants’ integration into U.S. society has concluded that newcomers today are assimilating more quickly than their predecessors did 100 years ago — with Cubans, Vietnamese and Filipinos among those leading the way.”

   Jacob L. Vigdor, a Duke University economist, authored the study which was published by the Manhattan Institute, a right wing think tank. The study found that new immigrants become part of the American society “remarkably well.” “Today’s immigrants are making faster progress. As a result, even as immigration has skyrocketed, assimilation has remained stable, Vigdor concluded. ‘This is something unprecedented in the United States,’ he said.”

   Only “Mexicans — by far the most numerous nationality — lag significantly behind other big immigrant groups, possibly because a lack of legal status keeps many Mexican immigrants from advancing.” The Washington Post adds “A major reason” why the assimilation of Mexican immigrants lags behind others is a “high percentage of Mexican immigrants who are in the country illegally… ‘If you’re in the country illegally, a lot of the avenues of assimilation are cut off to you,’ he said. ‘There are lot of jobs you can’t get, and you can’t become a citizen.'”

   Vigdor noted: “In general, the longer an immigrant lives in the United States, the more characteristics of native citizens he or she tends to take on… however, that the speed with which new arrivals take on native-born traits has increased since the 1990s. As a result, even though the foreign population doubled during that period, the newcomers did not drive down the overall assimilation index of the foreign-born population. Instead, it held relatively steady from 1990 to 2006.”

2. The New York Times reports Defense War Secretary Robert Gates wants weapons useful in current conflicts. “Gates issued a clear warning to the military and its industrial partners on Tuesday that expensive, new conventional weapons must prove their value to current conflicts, marked by insurgency and terrorism, if they hope for a place in future budgets.” In addition, Gates indicated “the Army and Marine Corps would continue to carry the brunt of the nation’s combat effort. The Air Force and Navy, he said, would be cast as ‘America’s main strategic deterrent’ against potential adversaries such as Iran, North Korea and China.”

   He acknowledged that given troop commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan, “it is true that we would be hard-pressed to launch a major conventional ground operation elsewhere in the world at this time.”

   “The risk of overextending the Army is real,” Mr. Gates said. “But I believe the risk is far greater – to that institution, as well as to our country – if we were to fail in Iraq. That is the war we are in. That is the war we must win.”

Four at Four continues with the oil pander of Congress and the real betrayal of America.

Cross-posted at DailyKOS

Memos written at the request of high-ranking government officials by Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo on August 1, 2002 (also signed by Jay Bybee, now a federal judge) and March 14, 2003, assured the Bush administration that

. . . . the Department of Justice would not enforce the U.S. criminal laws against torture, assault, maiming and stalking, in the detention and interrogation of enemy combatants.”

Of course, we know that the purpose of Yoo’s memos were simply established as a means of legal clearance for all that ensued thereafter.  

Daniel Levin, Acting Assistant Attorney General Office of Legal Counsel (December 30, 2004)

. . . . specifically rejects Yoo’s definition of torture, and admits that a defandant’s motives to protect national security will not shield him from a torture prosecution.  The rescission of the August 2002 memo constitutes an admission by the Justice Department that the legal reasoning in that memo was wrong.  But for 22 months, the [sic] it was in effect, which sanctioned and led to the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody.”

Note:  all quoted material above from Marjorie Cohn, President National Lawyers Guild.