Do you have a strong enough stomach to eat pizza and ranch dressing with a side of fries for lunch every day?

If so, then it might also be strong enough for you to watch this video about school-lunch policy without becoming ill:

Biden's addition to the internets/connected tubes/etc. lexicon

Vice President Biden: "Do you know the Web site number?"

My friend Dave, in an e-mail: "The next time he plugs his internet into the web, he should just ask the operator if she would connect him to the building where the bailout lives. No fancy numbers needed."

America wants to know: When will our highways start making some MONEY already?

Tom Laskawy names a frustration I share: why do we insist on talking about Amtrak like it's a private-sector business and should be turning a profit? It's a publicly owned agency that provides a clear service, analogous to roads and parks and the armed services. Why does everyone compare it instead to airlines and cars? (Well, maybe they don't NOW, but they did back when Amtrak suffered from the comparison...)

Re-framing the question

Economics is notoriously a field in which there is rarely broad consensus on really major questions. In times like the present, the ideological fault lines may shift considerably, but they don't go away. This is one reason--along with others, not least of which is the fact that I'm not now nor have I ever been an economist--that I don't like to get bogged down by abstract debates about overarching ways of looking at economic policy. It's hard to appeal to "the experts" when they're split, and I get tired of playing pick-an-expert or regurgitating talking points.

So, while a person of my political persuasion may be glad to see an ad in the Washington Post in which a long list of prominent economists offers support for EFCA, I think Ezra has exactly the right response:

Expect, of course, to see a counter-letter of economists opposing EFCA shortly. Which is just the point: Economists disagree on the impact of unions. So the question ends up being whether you want to err on the side of distributing more to the workforce or err on the side of distributing more the executive class.

So the question for the purposes of laypeople like me isn't which group of economists has a more persuasive methodology. How the hell do I know? The question is rather whether you want to put the burden of proof on the folks advocating for the haves or on those advocating for the have-nots. For me, that's a pretty easy call.

Duking it out on the sides of buses

This from Raffi Shahinian--it's the winner of his Alternative Atheist Bus Slogan Contest:

It makes me sick that we even need to resort to such an argument, but since we obviously do:

Md. Gov. O'Malley: end the death penalty, because it's a vindictive and dehumanizing outrage against everything decent, one that scoffs at core theologies Catholic and Protestant alike expensive.

Well, whatever it takes. God bless the governor for his ongoing leadership on this issue.

Some basic understanding=the ability to respond when people start in with their blaming-the-poor

For all us economics laypeople, this video's one of the most helpful primers I've seen:

Congressional candidates forum

Just came back from a candidates forum for the special election to replace Rahm Emanuel in IL-5, my district. The format was to ask a question and give each candidate (18 in attendance; several others weren't there) a minute to respond. So far so good-as-can-be-expected, but then somebody decided to have the 10 Democrats go first and then switch gears and do the whole things again--afterthought style--with the four Republicans and four Greens. Several of the non-Dems were justifiably upset by this arrangement, though to the organizers' credit they did manage both to keep most of the audience there for the second half and to keep the whole thing on schedule and finished in two hours.

The candidates are predictable: the Dems all come off about the same, especially when all you get is 60-second sound bytes of them all answering the same couple of questions. Several of them are old Chicago/Springfield hands. They're for jobs, support for homeowners, health care reform, and not scapegoating undocumented immigrants for problems they didn't cause. They like the president well enough. Sure, count me in--but I'm still not sure who to vote for in the only election anyone's paying attention to the Democratic primary.

Actually, I do have a favorite, though I'm very much undecided: Tom Geoghegan, a labor lawyer w/ a lot of public service experience but none of it in the Chicago Dem machine.

The Republicans, again predictably for these parts, seem mostly to fall somewhere on the moderate-to-RINO continuum. Tom Hanson called himself a "liberal Republican" every time it was his turn to talk. Jon Stewart, an "independent Republican," applauded points the Green candidates made on multiple occasions. But the other two guys, for all their common-sense-moderate populist talk, at least had the decency to pivot repeatedly to some good old-fashioned taxation-trashing.

As for the Greens, three of them made solid enough cases for their candidacies but got overshadowed by Matt Reichel, a lefty activist-journalist who just acted super angry most of the time. He's even younger, even more liberal, and even more bombastic than yours truly (calling into question my three main reasons for deciding against a run myself...). Afterwards, he stood outside the door smiling at people as they left, but he seemed even more intense than he had on stage.

The primary's in eight days.

Vilsack's garden

USDA's such a mess it can't even pull off a proper publicity stunt.

Eddie walks us through, step by excruciating step.

"All we have to do to find compromise is admit that we wrong [sic] about everything"

You think you're mad about centrist equivocation and triangulation and selling-out-of-core-values?

You've got nothing on pastordan. His righteous fury is even leaving behind VERBS. This whole post reads as though he saw something that pissed him off, took a deep breath, held it while he wrote a few hundred words and clicked "publish," and then finally exhaled.

VA legislator: How will I comfort the mourning without...including sectarian prayers at public events?

From the Washington Post:

RICHMOND, Feb. 18 -- As a former Virginia state trooper who has visited horrific crime scenes and notified families of the death of a loved one, Charles W. Carrico Sr. learned the value of prayer and turned to it many times, he says.

So Carrico, who now represents Grayson County as a member of the House of Delegates, said he felt he had to act after Virginia State Police chaplains were ordered last summer to give only generic prayers at public events, a ruling several interpreted as a ban on uttering "Jesus." Rather than comply, six of the agency's 17 chaplains resigned. Carrico wrote a bill to address their stance.

"As a Christian, I must pray to Jesus Christ," Carrico said. "I'm being told not to. Why should I even pray?"

Why indeed--a good question. I'm as much a separation supporter as the next "Christian" liberal, but I couldn't agree more that bland, least-common-denominator prayers at public events are pretty much useless. Of course, my objection is to calling God's blessing on such events in the first place--I think prayer's too important to use it as a stamp-of-divine-approval on a non-religious function. Still, ultimately I agree with Carrico's point here.

Except...what does praying to Jesus for strength and comfort amidst a difficult and wrenching job have to do with offering prayers at public events? Well, actually not much. That's right--it's the same old bait-and-switch we know from school-prayer debates: public-school students should have the right to pray in whatever way they want! (Yes!) So teachers/other authority figures should be able to lead them in specifically Christian prayer during school. (Huh?)

From Third Way to the Poverty Forum: Yawning down faith-based-incrementalism lane

Jim Wallis and Mike Gerson: center-left and center-right Christians agree that we shouldn't just let all the poor people die!

The leftier folks are naturally unimpressed: Sarah Posner, Peter Laarman.

As usual, more interesting criticisms from Mark Silk: Does Gerson really support a higher minimum wage? (If so, when did this happen? And if not, what exactly does this coalition mean?) And why are these guys stepping all over Christian Churches Together, anyway? What's the point of duplicating CCT's impressive work in this way-- "we're like those guys, but less bold and with a less diverse coalition" ?

When I was a boy, Republicans and Democrats walked uphill both ways between bipartisan cooperation on the Hill and friendly drinks after work

James Morone on the myth of a less partisan past.

Pelosi and Benedict

So the Speaker of the House met with the Pope, and he naturally isn't thrilled with her views on abortion.

RNS says he gave her a stern reprimand.

Really? Looks more like a standard we-spoke-and-it-was-nice-but-we-don't-agree-about-everything statement to me. Which, the RNS story points out, is an uncommon move on the Vatican's part for a meeting with a political leader who isn't even a head of state.

Doesn't Pelosi come out of this ahead by getting the meeting and the statement at all?

Hooray for transportation spending slightly less dramatically tilted toward highway expansions!

Here's some small-scale good news: high-speed rail actually got an INCREASE in funding during the reconciliation process for the stimulus bill. Which isn't to say that we're actually going to invest anything remotely approaching what we're spending on roads and bridges--and why should we? Passenger rail is less invasive, accessible for more people, vastly superior environmentally, less dangerous, super fun...all in all, a total bummer.

Forgive my pesky sarcasm. This is good news.

Phil Rizk's new blog

His old Google blog was compromised by the Egyptian authorities. Here's his new wordpress.com blog.

"Why Most Christians will Die and Go to H-E-L-L"

This is the title of a tract that a man handed Nadia outside a coffee shop in my neighborhood. It's from a fundie Baptist church nearby. Lot's of raging quotes; here are a couple, complete w/ colonial-style over-capitaliziation-of-Nouns:

"Churches and Pastors and Christians today do not know anything about holiness. They are so worldly and the world is so churchy. Preachers today do not preach against the sins they preached against in yesteryear. Where's the Prophet? Where's the Man of God? Who'll cry out against the sins of the Church members."

"Most preachers are controlled by pulpit committees and the IRS."

"Call us if you're searching for a hellfire & brimstone Baptist Church in your area that believes the King James bible and stands for something"

"We welcome all Religions & Cultures"

This last one is particularly rich given that the man who handed the tract to Nadia is Latino and speaks very limited English. While one never knows, it's a safe guess that he's not a cradle fundamentalist Baptist, and neither are his friends and family--but good chance they're Christians. Nothing like being "welcomed" by being told your faith isn't good enough and you're going to burn in h-e-l-l.

This is the thing that makes it hard for me to go too far down the "conservative and liberal Christians each have their blind spots and intolerances; let's meet in the middle and try to understand each other better--we're all equally guilty in this area." (And yes, I know that this tract comes from some pretty fringy folks, but the mainstream religious right sentiment is softer and kinder more than it's substantively different.) But, while the liberal church may read the Bible just as selectively as the religious right, ignore just as many of its own doctrinal tensions and contradictions, and look down on people who disagree, I've never, ever heard a left-leaning mainliner--fringe or otherwise--say or even imply that conservative Christians aren't real Christians, or that they're going to hell.

This is a difference that matters.

The cutting edge of hating on the LGBT-affirming liberal church

Then: You're not really Christians.

Now: You don't even EXIST--see, that prayer you just prayed didn't really happen!

Phil Rizk talks about his detainment

He wasn't physically harmed, but otherwise a pretty rough go. From this NYT story:

“I was held for four days, but the people of Gaza continue to be held in a form of prison, and there are others in Egypt who are also being held,” he said. “I want to move the attention to others who are still in this situation.”

61 votes: appeasing the incoherent center

Smart words on the stimulus from Ross Douthat:

[The centrists have] done absolutely nothing to widen the terms of debate about what should go into the bill, and they've shaved off just enough money to reduce its effectiveness if Paul Krugman is right - but not nearly enough to make it fiscally prudent if the stimulus skeptics are right.

More.

I agree with Ezra: end the filibuster.

Sorry, can't resist posting one more Drew comic

Two in a day! This is a first for me. But this one's so gentle and bridge-buildy:

Cool new Apple toy!

With apologies to my baby sister, who once--when she was MUCH younger than she is now--sincerely challenged my older sister and me to a "Coldplay-liking contest":

Philip's release

The Egyptian authorities released Philip Rizk on Wednesday, February 11, after five days in custody.

Chicago demonstration for Phil Rizk

A protest is being organized for tomorrow at the Egyptian consulate on N Michigan.

More here.

Free Phil Rizk

Phil Rizk, a journalist and activist in the Middle East, has been taken into custody by Egyptian police after leading a march in solidarity with Palestine.

Phil's a Wheaton acquaintance/friend-of-friends. Here's a Facebook group with more information.

UPDATE: Here's an eyewitness report.

AND: for DC-area people, there will be a protest tomorrow at the Egyptian embassy.

The bomb throwers have it

You know, in general I try not to be too quick to side with the bomb throwers over the bridge builders. I have a fairly instinctual preference for building stuff over blowing it up, to the point that I find myself spending more time defending people I disagree with to other people I also disagree with (i.e., evangelicals and very-liberal mainline Protestants and back again) than actually saying what I myself think. (Those who know me will point out that it's not that I don't find time to say what I think--I just talk a whole lot. I'm speaking relatively here.)

That said: pastordan talks some good sense here. As much as I might try to get excited about the new Third Way "governing agenda," there just isn't that much there.

How Wal-Mart took over the country

If you dare:

FlowingData has a fairly terrifying visual representation of the spread of Wal-Mart.

It's sorta awkward when one arm's longer than the other

So the pope has a long right arm.

Rose (w/ apologies to Michael Lerner): what about his LEFT arm?

Plenty room for Change® at USDA

If you've been here long you've perhaps noticed that I'm no fan of USDA's behavior in the recent past. And none of us foodie types has been too thrilled with the choice of Tom Vilsack as Obama's secretary of agriculture.

But more recently there are signs that Vilsack might not be all bad (see another Tom, and yet another one). Among other things, he's signaled that he intends to make USDA less...blatantly racist.

That's right: not only do your tax dollars pay for big-agriculture thugs to do their food-safety-/local-community-/environment-destroying dirty work in federal uniforms, but they're also paying to explicitly discriminate against black farmers.

But perhaps not for long.

"Did you mean? crises rutherford"

Eddie Gehman Kohan asks a good question: why is the new White House Web site so light on information about food, even omitting any reference to WH chef Cristeta Comerford?

Benedict: The St. Pius kids are alright

The pope is making nice with his right flank. No huge surprise there, but it's worth reading to the end of the article if only to get to this great quote, in which George Weigel out-Weigels himself:

It is not easy to see how the unity of the Church will be enhanced unless the Lefebvrists accept Vatican II’s teaching on the nature of the Church, on religious freedom, and on the evil of anti-Semitism, explicitly and without qualification; otherwise, you get cafeteria Catholicism on the far right, as we already have on the left.

Weigel's sensible! He's moderate! He's...taking a potshot at liberals in an article about extreme conservatives. Because everyone knows that more mainstream conservative Catholics are never guilty of a cafeteria approach.

Wal-Mart saves the earth with the innovation of...concentrated laundry detergent?

Hmmm. As cool and happy as the stock boy looks in the photo, that there's some serious greenwashing.

Or worse.

I'm in "the fake DC" this weekend

So I'm back in DC for the inauguration right now, and, as someone who tries hard to live in the moment, I'm feeling the DC pride as if I still lived here.

Inevitably, with a hip and classy new president coming to town--one who'd rather check out a trendy restaurant or theater company then go out and clear some brush somewhere--the national media has turned its elitist, patronizing attention to DC and its cultural scene. Did you know that there are artists in Our Nation's Capital? And even restaurants?

Here's a good specimen of the genre: a piece on the dining scene in "the real DC," which seems to mean roughly the opposite of what Sarah Palin means by "the real America"--the real DC is apparently a place where rapid gentrification is welcome, everyone has money, and cuisine is judged primarily on its relative haute-ness. This will certainly be news to DC's many, many poor people.

And, you ask, what publication might have run this article implying that

• it's a pleasant surprise when anything remotely fashionable happens in a city of fewer than five million people
  
• DC is a cultural wasteland waiting to be rescued by a celebrity president
• "real" people routinely spend $50 on dinner?

A hint: it rhymes with the "blue fork crimes."

Gordon Cosby's last sermon

The Post ran a good article last week about the last sermon of Gordon Cosby, a legend in DC faith-and-activism circles, and about the future of the Church of the Saviour, which Cosby founded, and its many ministries.

Good comments here, here, and here.

Just give me a f***ing neighborhood-based thing!

I missed this last week, but my kid sister didn't: Obama's people are dealing w/ the faith-based-initiative hot potato by refashioning it so as not to be strictly faith-based. Clever.

No, USA Today headliner, it doesn't. Not even close.

I like Luis Lugo, and religious diversity on Capitol Hill certainly matters.

But the headline for this piece--which, obviously, Lugo himself didn't write--is appalling. Last I checked, people of different religions don't necessarily LOOK different. Meanwhile, we're down to zero black senators again (or one, depending whom you ask).

Our long national nightmare is documented

I finally read Vanity Fair's lengthy oral history of the Bush administration. Fair, non-reactionary, focused almost entirely on the words of actual actors and witnesses with minimal editorializing.

I haven't been so angry since...well, since I watched No End in Sight.

New Year's advice

If you're ever in Chicago at 9 pm on New Year's Eve and you're looking for somewhere to not go, I strongly recommend the liquor store at the corner of Belmont and Sheffield.

"I have always found the middle class slightly annoying."

One of the many people whom we didn't elect president last month is the poet Sparrow, who runs pretty much every time. The current issue of The Sun--do you subscribe to The Sun? If not, stop reading and go do so, right now--includes excerpts from this year's campaign journal. (Sparrow ran this time around as the candidate of the Sudoku For All Party.) Here's a sample:

There's been a lot of discussion in this election about saving the middle class. Let me confide in you, my electorate, that I have always found the middle class slightly annoying. I am running to protect the hobos, stevedores (I'm not sure exactly what a stevedore is, but I love the word), opera singers, prostitutes, people who dress up as rabbits, and experts on Chaucer. The middle class, with their comfortable couches and macaroni casseroles, can probably take care of themselves.

I like this entry because, as a Steve, I too am fascinated by the word "stevedore." Furthermore, the broad coalition he seeks to protect includes two different vocations I briefly considered for myself. (I'm going to make you guess.)

More importantly: seriously, I think it's pretty gross when every time a politician not named John Edwards wants to talk about poor people, his/her people do a global find/replace and make it about the middle class instead. Now, talking about how rising inequality is squeezing the middle class out of existence is another thing. But then you're still talking about poor people (i.e., in the general sense--both the poor and the low-income in policy parlance--people who are struggling to make ends meet even w/o any expectation of middle-class comforts).

In summary: read The Sun, stand up for the poor, and Sparrow's funny. That's my philosophy.

What happened to slow news weeks right before Christmas?

Busy week for me, and even more so for the religion internets.

The Newsweek cover story on same-sex marriage made a bit of a splash, to say the least. Mollie was predictably unimpressed. Many of her criticisms are spot-on, but I can't quite figure out why she's so pissed that the article focuses specifically on biblical arguments (as opposed to e.g. natural law ones) against same-sex marriage. No, biblicism isn't the whole story here, but it's not exactly a straw man, either. (Had she asked, I'd have been happy to do a Google search for her.) Waldman has a good analysis of the inside-the-media side of the story.

Meanwhile, turns out our United Methodist, Episcopal-worshiping, NE-patrician current president is, horror of horrors, a theologically liberal mainline Protestant. Just another unlikely hero of a cynically waged culture war...good thing his faith was interrogated as fiercely pre-election as the very similar views of the president-elect!

And New-Kind-of-Evangelical® hero Rich Cizik has finally been ousted from his position as head lobbyist for the NAE. A long-sought-after win for the old-line religious right, which, you'll recall, is dead/dying/whatever.

Elsewhere, the old debate between the pro-LGBT-and-abortion-rights religious left and the common-ground-common-good-anti-poverty-etc. religious center-left resurfaced this past week. Yawn.

And here's a really interesting standalone piece: from Sightings, the issue of interfaith work and proselytizing.

What is blog?

I've been talking to a lot of folks lately who are interested in "the internets" and "blogging" but feel they lack a sophisticated understanding. My responses tend to be rather rambling, but I discovered recently that my friend Jon has a more concise response:

"Beg for mercy, strawman!"

Don Byrd's takedown of this Chuck Norris column is pretty fun.

High-speed rail! High-speed rail!

This is cool:

Teach a man to Google, and you have cut down on his irritating requests for a lifetime

Hey, I live in Chicago, so I probably know where to find, say, a boring sandwich there, right?

Tired of people asking you for information they could have figured out themselves w/ a simple Web search? The internets have just the thing.

"A big day for Roy Bourgeois"

You think?

Anglican roundup: the insanity rumbles on

Week after next, the Common Cause-affiliated conservatives will gather at my alma mater. Not for worship led by an archbishop who remained silent when asked at GAFCON only to go so far as to condemn violent hate crimes against gays and lesbians--not THIS time. No, they say they'll be forming a new province of the Anglican Communion, a rival North American church.

Adrian Worsfold's response: he's starting his own Anglican Church, too. So there.

And Jim highlights one (of many!) reasons why the difference between an established church and American-style separation matters, even post explicit-financial-support: because the covenant that the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his capacity as leader of the Anglican Communion, wants the different primates to sign--in particular, the U.S. and Canadian presiding bishops--is ILLEGAL for the AofC HIMSELF to sign in his capacity as head of the Church of England...because he isn't really the head.

That would be the queen.

Jim:

A pattern is beginning to emerge here. The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada must cease blessing same-sex relationships, but the Church of England does not have to because it does so quietly. The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada must relinquish their autonomy and sign on to a covenant that will almost certainly be used to marginalize them, but the Church of England doesn't have to because it is an established church.

The Archbishop of Canterbury continues to demand from the North American churches what he does not ask from his own people. And the peculiar thing is that nobody seems to find this objectionable.

Finally, on a lighter note--or at least a gallows-humor note--it seems the Anglican Communion's hiring. (Orphans preferred.)

Better late than never: infamously outlandish rock-star claims edition

The Vatican has forgiven John Lennon.

(And RNS has committed the cardinal sin of Beatles-related headline writing: punning on a song title written by the wrong Beatle. Particularly ironic in this case, given that even a moderate-to-serious [i.e., not a crazed, dogmatic, Kinks-and-Dylan-and-Velvets-and-everyone-else-dismissing] Beatles fan like myself knows that Lennon hated this song...because he understood it to be pro-religion in general and pro-Catholic in particular. ["Mother Mary comes to me..."] Oh well.)

A couple good health-care reads

A clear and informative op-ed by folks from the New America Foundation: 5 Myths on Our Sick Health-Care System.

And a story about two girls with cancer, one in the US and one in the UK, that puts some holes in the old "you'd-better-not-have-to-deal-with-socialized-medicine-in-a-crisis" saw. Good piece--but the remarkable thing, as Ezra points out, is that IT'S PUBLISHED IN FORBES.

Some people make the "it's a slippery slope--what's next? polygamy?!" argument more credibly than others

Mark makes a good observation: It's no small irony that one of main forces behind Prop 8's passage was the LDS church, which, not that long ago, WAS the group fighting for a more expansive (vs. "traditional") view of marriage.

Marketing vegetarianism to 14-year-olds

Via Meghan:

So who's right about my representative?

Michael Lerner?

Or Barack Obama:

Microphone interference=spiritual seekers go home w/o visiting the espresso bar or the bookstore

This is weird. Especially: only megachurch pastors use wireless microphones? And Shure--producer of the industry-standard live microphones used in virtually every live music or speech context--is "an audio-visual company working with megachurches and other users"?

What about pastors of medium-sized churches, and pastors of small churches that aren't quite small enough to not need microphones, and people who aren't pastors but still, incredibly, want to have their voices amplified w/o being attached to a cable?

The story behind the story: perhaps megachurch pastors are especially concerned about microphone interference because their worship aesthetic is so dependent on smoothness and technical perfection. And perhaps, unlike small-church pastors who are busy, you know, writing sermons and balancing budgets and visiting the sick or whatever, megachurches can devote staff time toward fighting the FCC. Really very strange.

Okay, sorry for that curve ball. Next post will be on our nation's new trinity of hope: Obama, Jesus, and Obama. I promise.

The Obama rally

It was a beautiful night in Grant Park, and I'm perfectly happy to have underestimated Obama's margin of victory earlier today. I was disappointed w/ the crowd's booing of Gov. Palin in Sen. McCain's concession speech. (Also: hints of the old, human McCain in the speech.) Otherwise, a great crowd and wonderful to be there. Back at my office in downtown Chicago now, with cheers and chants of "yes we can" in the streets below. Quite an experience.

Now my brother and I are off to catch the packed late-night train back to my apt. But well worth it.

Wes Anderson and David Lynch on the McCain payroll?

I missed this before--apparently the reason McCain's low on cash is that he spent it all hiring big-shot film directors to shoot attack ads for him. Check it out:





Via Hannah.

(Cross-posted at the Posse.)

Election day predictions!

I'm going to keep my predictions positive but conservative: Obama wins, but not big--he gets 295 electoral votes (i.e., he wins NC but loses the other toss-ups). The Democrats pick up a few Senate seat for a total of 58, including Lieberman and Sanders but not including any comedians or best-sellers of factually slippery books calling people "lying liars" right in the title who then carpet-bagged it back to their "home state" they hadn't lived in for many many years and asked for the votes of a famously polite and non-presumptuous electorate. Democrats pick up 22 seats in the House.

Pestilence, war, and famine

Mark Silk has a good anecdote about the Christian Science Monitor, that excellent, independent, quirky, and recently online-only daily paper.

RIP Studs Terkel

The writer/activist/radio personality/music lover died today at 96. (Living in Chicago, always hoped I'd get to meet him at some point.) He understood something many people miss: that you can't really participate in improving the situation of marginalized people without taking the time to LISTEN to them.

Two observations about the evangelical landscape

First: This little number from Focus on the Family is outrageous and reeks of desperation. (Remember, Dobson himself hasn't endorsed a candidate...)

Second: Every single comment on the CT politics blog's post about this is critical of Focus. (The post itself, as is typical of Sarah Pulliam's fine work, stays neutral.)

Both obvious points, I know. But the point is this: as critical as I am of the evangelicals-go-Democratic media narrative, I'm pleased that people are finally understanding the ideological DIVERSITY of evangelicals, electoral realities aside. And was the distance between mainstream neo-evangelicals and right-wing culture warriors ever in sharper relief than in this CT thread?

Bush administration confirms separation between Bush administration and separation

Remember the to-do about Obama's version of what Karl Rove likes to call the "f***ing faith-based thing"? Some media-driven confusion as to whether BO plans to allow organizations receiving federal funding to use a religious litmus test for hiring decisions. (He doesn't.)

The current administration, to no one's surprise, sees things differently. But lest there be any doubt, the Justice Dept recently posted a memo from last year to its Web site.

Item: Is WBEZ pushing the prosperity quasi-Dharma?

Heard this week on my local NPR affiliate's pledge-drive chatter:

When I give to public radio, I do it knowing that I won't miss the money--because the good karma I get in return will more than make up for my donation.

This is what you get when the Elite Liberal Media starts paying more attention to evangelicals, Pentecostals, and garden-variety crazy-religious-provincials: the (shudder) prosperity quasi-Dharma. Makes the New Age scare of the 80s look like harmless self-help crap...

Why won't the candidates talk about food?

It's astonishing how little attention the presidential campaigns have given to food policy. As Michael Pollan and others keep telling us, it's intimately connected w/ a wide variety of issue areas that demand priority status: health care, global warming, energy, international trade, cost-of-living squeezes on working people. (And whoever's telling the candidates that no one wants to talk about food didn't poll me or my friends. It's pretty much all we talk about [when we're not talking about electoral politics itself].)

Anyway. My main-writer-crush Tom Philpott has a good column about where McCain and Obama stand on food and farms, to the extent that they stand anywhere at all. The short version: Obama's the clear better-than, but his ethanol pandering is Illannoyin'. But read the long version.

Also, Elanor recently covered a panel of experts discussing what they would do were they made food policy adviser (!) to the new president. What should his priorities be? etc. Good stuff.

Well hello there

Sorry for the long delay. I've moved and am working full-time again, and I'm trying out the idea of doing w/o Web access at home--the better to read things in print, spend time w/ friends and family, cook, etc. Which will mean lighter posting, though hopefully not as light as the last couple weeks (i.e., not at all).

One thing I will continue updating frequently is my link blog/shared items list. So if that's useful to you, consider subscribing to its discrete feed.

Posting is light because...

...I'm moving this week. Back soon.

Aunt Jemima: Racist image or symbol of wholesomeness and quality? We report, you decide.

At last week's Family Research Council conference, a table run by the Obama Waffles guys was protested and eventually shut down (though not before they sold quite a few boxes of waffle mix to the Values Voters present). Much of the coverage of the event has focused on the question of whether this image




is racist. You know how this goes: One side says a picture of Barack Obama w/ exaggerated features selling waffles that look an awful lot like those on Aunt Jemima packaging is racist. The other side says no it's not, it's about him waffling on the issues. Far be it from the new media to say this is OBVIOUSLY, BLATANTLY RACIST. They just report that a difference of opinion exists. The way that "some scientists" think evolution is a load of crap. The way that many voters (and lawmakers!) say that drilling in the Gulf and/or ANWR will bring gas prices down, even though every expert says otherwise. Now why would the voters think THAT?

Anyway. Sarah Pulliam sticks to the facts but has a more informative piece than most. Also essential is this press release from the waffle guys, in which they make the classically racist move of explaining how un-racist they are:

There was no mention in the AP report that upwards of 1/3 of those who bought the Obama Waffles were Asian, African Americans, Hispanics, or from other ethic groups - all of whom thought the product was hilarious and anything but racist. By the way, the last person to buy was an African-American woman who purchased three boxes of Obama Waffles.

Regarding the charge of being racists, the AP story failed to report that Bob is married to a Hispanic woman while Mark and his wife have adopted a daughter from China. Is that what racists do?

I'm convinced.

A penny saved is 90-odd percent of a penny earned

Roben Farzad on how we're sticking it to responsible savers.

Opposite day

It's bizarro-world time on the church-and-politics front.

A Catholic bishop from Madison is joining the chorus of his peers calling out Sen. Biden and Speaker Pelosi for their recent statements about abortion (and their pro-abortion-rights stances generally). In 2004, John Kerry was similarly criticized. He plead separation of church and state--he may believe such and such as a Catholic, but that doesn't mean he can legislate that in the public square, etc. Now, Pelosi and Biden are being accused not of misappropriating, putting too much stock in, or hiding behind separation--all fair criticisms of Kerry's perspective--but of VIOLATING it by offering their perspective on Church teaching. WTF?

Meanwhile, conservative Southern Baptist leaders are bending over backward to explain why, despite their steadfast opposition to women's leadership not only in the church but anywhere outside the home, voting for a female vice presidential candidate makes lovely sense. Of course it does! Robert Parham isn't having it. Neither am I.

What's nerdier than a speculative theology blog?

A PARODY of a speculative theology blog. Named ΨΕΥΔΟΘΕΟΛΟΓΙΑ.

My favorite news item of the day

Obama whatever!
Palin blah blah blah!
Conservative Anglicans are pissed etc etc!

The Cubs September callups include outfielder Felix Pie. As soon as this guy can figure out how to hit consistently, he's going to win himself a golden glove and lead the league in stolen bases.

A world in which black leaders are judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their MLK rating

Jeff Sharlet wishes that Obama were less of a social-gospel liberal and more of an MLK-style liberationist.

Well, sure. But I think he gives the social gospel movement in its classic form too little credit. It wasn't just a baptism of standard liberal ideas, with their "cautious optimism." In fact, its optimism was pretty radical, and it was rooted in theological particulars: the postmillennial emphasis on the church's ability to build the kingdom of God on earth. (Obama sparked controversy some time ago when he made a particularly postmillennial-sounding statement.)

More importantly: I get that the fact that Obama's convention speech came on the anniversary of "I have a dream," and that the campaign dressed up the stage w/ Roman pillars to bring to mind the Lincoln Memorial, makes the comparison sort of inevitable. But still: Come on. Dr. King, of course, never ran for public office. More importantly, Obama isn't claiming to be the next King, and we've got to stop expecting him to be. It's both unrealistic and unfair. (If Sen. Clinton had won the nomination, we'd be spending our time wishing she were more like, say, Susan B. Anthony...)

Eucharist and food

One of the things I like about the church Nadia and I attend in DC is its appreciation for the significance of food in Christian spirituality. We receive communion gathered around the altar, a table across which everyone in the community is visible and present to everyone else. The sacrament truly feels like a meal.

While the congregation worships upstairs, a parish-run hot meals program is serving lunch downstairs. Nadia sometimes serves as one of the two lay eucharistic ministers who take bread and wine from the altar, walk downstairs to the lunch room, and serve communion to all who wish to receive it. One of the better ways to connect theology w/ praxis that I've encountered--and all of it related to food.

Yes magazine--a publication I often avoid for its pesky optimism--has a great q+a with Sara Miles, an Episcopalian whose adult conversion was deeply connected to the spirituality of food and hospitality. Miles now runs a large food pantry out of her church in San Francisco and consults with others--a practice that, among other things, brings liberal Episcopalians and conservative Pentecostals in conversation about the Christian imperative to feed.

Via Eliacin Rosario-Cruz.

On gaffes

Sam Stein is pleased to report Palin's first gaffe and a roundup of reactions to it.

Not so fast, says Ezra Klein. A gaffe is a MISTAKE, which would require that she know the right answer in the first place.

God the locavore

From RNS, an early example of what may well become a full-fledged trend piece: food ethics as specifically religious practice.

Palin and the Pentecostal fringe

The church in which I grew up is a fairly mainstream evangelical place. But its roots are charismatic, and over the years it's dabbled in (w/o every fully embracing) some of the less mainstream elements of Pentecostal practice. (Slayings in the spirit and talk of spiritual warfare were regular features of my church upbringing, as were the dominionist tendencies that infused such movements by the 1980s. We never got too into the holy laughter stuff, though I experienced it elsewhere. And we loved to sing about the prophet Joel's notion of "latter rain.")

So anyway, I was very interested to see Ruth's in-depth treatment of Gov. Palin's connection to the Third Wave or Latter Rain movement, a fringe-y Pentecostal thread that's been condemned by, among others, the Assemblies of God church and a variety of less-charismatic-leaning conservative evangelicals.

Unless you really know a lot about this stuff--and hardly anyone outside Pentecostal-charismatic circles does, including myself and especially including the MSM--start w/ this backgrounder. Then read her Palin-specific post. Sober-minded, even semi-scholarly, and very fair--yet still pretty damn scary.

"1,000 points of bullshit"

Jon Stewart on bash-community-organizing night at the RNC:

Fr. Bourgeois continues endearing himself to the powers that be

The Maryknoll priest who started the annual protest at the School of the Americas has recently been pretty outspoken in his support for women's ordination.

Does Palin believe the destruction of first the Muslim world and then Israel is part of God's plan? And might this be problematic in a VP?

Frederick Clarkson examines Palin's dispensationalist streak.

$10,000 a year. What an elitist.

The second half of this Jay Smooth video is particularly good--on how despicable it is to mock community organizing:



The suggestion that community organizing--in Obama's case and many others, working long hours for very little pay trying to help marginalized people stand up for their rights and engage the political process--is somehow elitist and/or irrelevant, while accepting the status quo power system represents regular American values or whatever, is not just rude. It's completely idiotic.

Via Adam Serwer.

Words that strike fear in the hearts of decent people everywhere:

Chris Matthews for Senate.

A (dry) night club full of Republicans

While it may be known on the coasts primarily as the capital of Garrison Keillor's Fabulous World of Charming Traditional Lutherans, the Twin Cities area is also a hub of Hip Cool Church for the Youngsters--of both the Emergent and the original-recipe-evangelical varieties.

This place exists within the world of the latter group. I wonder how well the Republican delegates fit in there? I mean, the ones that don't have Bible-verse tats or rock-and-roll-for-Jesus side gigs?

Woody Allen and Billy Graham

I've never seen this before. It's from a special Woody did in the late 60s:



Via Kevin Cawley.

The federal food regulators hate America, part the third

The first, the second. (With feds this infuriating, we may just have to turn this into a regular feature. But I'm careful about what I wish for. Because it might just happen, which isn't actually what I want.)

Anyway: A federal appeals court is allowing the USDA to prevent a small beef producer from testing its animals for mad cow disease, because larger companies--you know, the ones that could actually afford to do more thorough testing--don't want to be forced to do it, too.

FORCED, you say? How would this force the big guys to do the same? Well, it's market pressure that would push them to do so. (Because why buy the possibly mad cow when you can get the definitely sane one for a fair price?) And, as Dean Baker reminds us, big business doesn't actually support free markets over government intervention, and neither does the Bush administration. It's a question of whom the markets are benefiting, and on whose behalf the government is intervening.

Darwin and the existence of God

Looking ahead to the 200th anniversary of Darwin's death and the 150th of On the Origin of Species, Jonathan Sacks offers some good thoughts on how Darwin's insights can actually be HELPFUL to people of faith as they contemplate God and nature. He also makes the very good point that the argument for God's existence from design--the particular thing people are referring to when they say that Darwin directly challenges God or whatever--is pretty foreign to the Hebrew Bible. In fact, it comes from the intellectual world of ancient Greece.

Via The Lead.

Palin

Okay, one more election-related post...

McCain's choice of Gov. Palin to be his running mate struck me as pretty foolish on his part at first--she's younger and less experienced than Obama, she's hardly the kind of woman that Clinton supporters will vote for, etc. But Nate Millman is fairly persuasive. It's going to be interesting.

At any rate, it's now certain that, one way or the other, January's Inauguration Day will mark a historic first. I'm in no way suggesting that this makes the two tickets equally desirable. But still.

Last DNC post

A few bits and pieces--

A seriously alarming video of a cop arresting an ABC News producer for standing on a public sidewalk and photographing senators meeting with VIP types:



As a defense-attorney friend likes to remind me, it's a serious mistake to assume that not doing anything wrong will keep you out of trouble with the cops. And this guy wasn't some anarchist blogger with a cell-phone camera--he's from ABC! Don't the powers that be at the DNC and the Denver PD know what he can do...wait, actually, the video isn't even featured on the ABC site, and it has yet to get 1,000 viewings on YouTube. Looks like nobody cares. Via Firedoglake.

On a lighter note, the Illinois delegation loves each other:



Anyone who's ever followed Chicago or Illinois politics knows how bizarre this is. Via Chicago Public Radio.

Apparently Cameron Strang is getting quite a bit of grief for his decision to pull out of the DNC benediction slot. And Kristin asks why white Protestants such as Strang were asked to pray at the Pepsi Center but not included in the interfaith panel.

Dave takes issue w/ Obama's borrowing from the New Testament in his speech last night. Mark is less concerned.

Okay, no more election posting for awhile...hard to avoid right now.

Obama the theocrat?

Adele Oltman makes the fairly bizarre argument that the Martin Luther King Obama resembles is actually King Sr.--because Obama's theology and views of church and state are too liberal conservative [corrected typo--thanks, Anonymous] for the younger King.

Not so fast, says Mark Silk.

Anti-pluralism on the right

The Republicans get out the English-class-slacker vote:

Via Josh.

Abie Nathan is dead

Gideon Levy has a remembrance.

Not sure whose tax plan will help you more?

Wonder no more.

Birthdays

Today, my little sister is 24.

And this blog is one.

Each is EXTREMELY advanced for her/its age. I'd totally rent a car to my sister w/o adding an age surcharge; I'd also vote for her to represent me in Congress. And the blog's been walking for weeks--we're thinking of starting piano lessons this fall.

Thanks for reading.

WTF, food feds? part two: USDA on beef safety

In part one, we looked at the FDA's affection for irradiated food. Well, mostly we fantasized about the unlikely possibility of an Obama administration actually prioritizing a better farm bill in 2012, but we BEGAN the post intending to look at the FDA thing.

Today, the USDA. The agency's Food Safety and Inspection Service decided recently to combat the food safety problems of large beef producers by tightening regulations on...small beef producers.

With a deck this stacked, it must be infuriating to be a small-scale farmer selling at a market and to have to politely answer questions about why things are more expensive than over at Costco or whatever.

DNC digest

Sifting through hundreds of "are-the-Democrats-really-united?!" pieces, I did manage to find a few interesting things:

The National Journal's audio slideshow of the interfaith gathering.

Donald Miller's benediction apparently was toned down a bit by the convention organizers. The problem had nothing to do w/ implicitly acknowledging the Republicans as equals or addressing Jesus by name. Instead, he was asked to back off a statement about the U.S.'s diminished standing in the world. The DNC: We'll push your faith buttons all day long, but we're too scared to talk about the fact that the world hates America for reasons CAUSED LARGELY BY THE OTHER GUYS. Here's the prayer:



Elsewhere, Sister Helen Prejean did her usual "hey, maybe we shouldn't be torturing and killing people" schtick. Crazy nun. So far out of the mainstream! And Ezra offers an uncharacteristically reflective post about the distance between The Poor of the DNC and the poor of Denver.

Finally, for those of you who share my evident frustration with the small-bore version of Change® the Democrats continue to represent, Glenn Greenwald and Jane Hamsher put on their muckraker hats and crash the Blue Dog/AT&T party:

Back in the Twin Cities

This billboard will greet the RNC:

Via Bennett.

New McCain ads contradict each other

I'm house-sitting for friends w/ cable and thus watching a lot of MSNBC and CNN.

Since Obama announced Sen. Biden as his running mate, McCain has hit back quick w/ two negative ads--two ads that make pretty much the exact opposite argument.

The first points out that Biden had some critical things to say about Obama in the primary. The guy's running mate doesn't even like him--WTF?! Vote McCain: His running mate likes him and doesn't say bad things about him.*

The second offers that the only reason Sen. Clinton didn't get the nod is that she was brave enough to speak the truth in the primary: the anti-Obama truth. He refused to offer her the VP slot just because she asked serious questions about his candidacy--WTF?! Vote McCain: His running mate will be someone who isn't afraid to criticize him.

Naturally, the cable networks are re-playing the ads for free and talking about which constituencies they're aimed at, etc.--w/o bothering to call McCain out for the utter incoherence of this argument. Fortunately, the baseball game's about to start. Time to change the channel.

*Unless his name is Mitt Romney, in which case his running mate admires him but isn't afraid to engage in spirited debate during the primary. You know, like Joe Biden.

FDA: The answer to dangerous food is different dangerous food

You'd think that with all the food safety scares coming at a time of existing anxiety about global warming and energy supplies, local food advocates would get a hearing at higher levels of the advocacy and government communities. You'd be wrong, of course. Instead, you get the FDA ruling in favor of solutions such as this one.

Maybe you can hope for better policy if and when the feds work for Obama. Furthermore, maybe he'll push for a better farm bill in 2012 than the one you finally got this year. Of course, he'll be running for re-election and needing to prove himself a Friend of Business and generally a Non-Extremist at each and every turn. Not that you've ever counted on Democratic leadership on food issues anyway...

Here's a daydream. What if

• Obama wins in November.
• The Republicans, as expected, change their primary schedule effective 2012 but don't go so far as to stop letting Iowa and the other early states go first.
• Obama's people take political advantage of the fact that, as the party not running in the primaries, they're the ones who don't have to pander to big ag in Iowa.
• When the farm bill debate coincides with the general election campaign, Obama pushes for serious reform and attacks his challenger for pandering in Iowa.
• With congressional majorities strong enough to stand up to farm-state representatives up for re-election and the strong, this-is-finally-a-priority support of the White House, the Democrats pass a seriously reform-oriented farm bill. Unlike this last one, the bill is at least well on its way by November.
• Obama wins re-election. Farm-bill reformers get serious subsidy reform AND major initiatives to support small- and medium-scale produce and livestock producers. Everybody gets progress toward tastier and more healthful food, stronger communities, and pathogen outbreaks that are less common and far easier to track and contain.
  

I'm not holding my breath.

"I've used my skills as an impeccable wearer of blazers and boat shoes to avoid a principled stand on any subject"

Don't miss Sally Jenkins' column in the voice of of IOC president Jacques Rogge:

It's one thing for the Chinese government to jail dissidents, to forge the passports of underage gymnasts, and to set up official protest zones and then arrest anyone who applied to use them. These are matters that I met with disciplined silence, or as I so adroitly put it, with "quiet diplomacy." But I cannot ignore Bolt's disturbing spontaneity. Him, I feel compelled to rebuke.

And:

How is [Bolt] different, for instance, from the U.S. women's beach volleyball team, which shrieked, hugged each other, cavorted, and fell about in the sand for several minutes, before congratulating its opponents?

Isn't it obvious? They are women in bikinis.

Best of all:

To sum up, over the years I have been an ally to the Soviet Union, Iran and China, and now I have demonstrated that I am not afraid to take on a Jamaican.

DNC to be less Relevant!® than originally planned

Cameron Strang has backed out of giving a benediction, recommending Donald Miller in his place.

I'd quote Jeremiah Wright on (upper) "middle-classness" if it wouldn't betray me as an extremist and a hater-of-freedom

A CTI survey finds that the average senior pastor makes more than $80k annually. A couple questions this Christian Post story doesn't answer:

• $80k is the mean. What's the median?
• If you were to eliminate from the formula all televangelists who make the kind of money that is liable to, say, get them investigated by Republican senators, what would the mean be then?

Obviously, a simple average number like this one can be pretty skewed by just a handful of astronomically high outliers. Still: $80,000?! For folks w/ a job description that includes preaching the immanence of a kingdom not defined by worldly standards of wealth and value? Sad.

The world on Saddleback

Tom Heneghan has a nice digest of international press coverage of the Warren extravaganza.

Theda Skocpol takes the words right out of my mouth

Several hundred frustrated ones, to be precise.

In short: Start hitting BACK, Obama! If you do so truthfully and fairly, you won't have to sacrifice the moral high ground in which you've staked your claim...with the added benefit of having a (fighting!) chance of actually being elected president.

We get it: The Democrats have found their faith

Next week in Denver, the Democrats are throwing a tent revival convention. Speakers include a whole mess of strategically placed Christian leaders, a couple of whom no one's ever accused of being Democrats, along with four whole rabbis and, in lower-profile, non-prime-time-TV slots, a token Muslim or two a diverse array of religious leaders reflecting the party's commitment to the common good as articulated by our nation's rich patchwork quilt of faith traditions.