PublicChristian

Here’s an Australian paper quoting today from a speech by the French President (Nicolas Sarkozy) at Columbia University (New York City).

Welcome to the club of states who don’t turn their back on the sick and the poor

The very fact that there should have been such a violent debate simply on the fact that the poorest of Americans should not be left out in the streets without a cent to look after them … is something astonishing to us.

» Continue Reading »

Some things cost money; we MUST put out some shekels one way or another for some of what we want or need. That’s part of living in human society.

So to say we should not have health care reform because it will cost some money is not really facing the question. The question is more like, “Do we NEED this or not?” Lots and lots of Americans think we do. And so do millions watching this battle from other nations – where they settled the issue long ago to the great benefit and relief of their populations.

But what if we find out that this reform package will actually REDUCE the budget deficit? » Continue Reading »

We can support policies that actually tend to reduce abortions in the short run. Or we can adopt a political strategy of taking over every branch of government with like-minded politicians so we can (try to) use the long arm of the law to force people to not have abortions – someday in a golden future.

This is from an article in the “New England Journal of Medicine”

The recent experience in Massachusetts suggests that universal health care coverage has been associated with a decrease in the number of abortions performed,

» Continue Reading »

Here’s my wife Connie’s response to a relative who thinks Obama loves to see babies die, and argues that almost all abortions are done for the convenience of the mother. We could rant about this for a long time, but I think Connie did a good job in this post on her Facebook page.

Hi R__, I’m not denying past trends, and I am completely Pro-Life:

Remember, my doctor begged me to have an abortion in the 5th month because he knew the baby (Chelsea) was killing me – I weighed 95 lbs at the time. When I refused, he had to send me to Denver because I had no insurance… and subsequently, she had no insurance for the next 13 years because of her pre-existing condition…

…until I got a job at the U.S. Postal Service – Federal Insurance covers you no matter what and we currently pay $314 per month for family insurance!

There have been so so so many instances since then when I so wish I could share my Federal insurance with the people immediately around me who are suffering so much.

I heard it said last night, that if we can spend so many billions of dollars killing Iraqis why can’t we spend a fraction of that saving and healing Americans… including veterans.

» Continue Reading »

Words of Jesus, who is called “Christ.” It is from his title that we derive the word “Christian” (from Matthew 25:34-46)

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.

•For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat,
•I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink,
•I was a stranger and you invited me in,
•I needed clothes and you clothed me,
•I was sick and you looked after me,
•I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry » Continue Reading »

Here’s a review of another book on prayer as promised a couple of days ago.

[Here's a more recent review of a book on prayer - P T Forsyth's Soul of Prayer]

My second acquisition at Pastors’ Seminar was: Scientific and Pastoral Perspectives on Intercessory Prayer: An Exchange Between Larry Dossey, M.D. and Health Care Chaplains. (1998, Harrington Park Press) It does seem to me to have more bite than the book I reviewed two days ago.

Larry Dossey has for some years been promoting the idea of the effectiveness of intercessory prayer in medical situations, and continues to publicize research » Continue Reading »

It’s just simple truth. Of course we honor those who serve or have served in uniform. We honor them directly, and also we will insist that they be treated decently by the powers that send them into conflict. That is just elementary human decency.

We honor our war dead this Memorial Day weekend. The greatest respect we could pay them would be to pledge no more wars for erroneous and misleading reasons; no more killing and wounding except for the defense of our country and our freedoms.

We also could honor our dead by caring for the living, and do better at it than we are right now.

This is the lead-in to a Memorial Day article by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship (at Truthout).

We watched tonight for the second time the movie “Bonhoeffer“ about the German theologian / pastor who was executed by the Nazis in April 1945, and whose books continue to have influence. I urge that you watch this film. I will not try to list or defend what were to me obvious parallels between then and now, particularly in the misuse and corruption of the Christian faith and the Christian churches. Those parallels will, I trust, be apparent.

Well, I will mention one parallel. A historian being interviewed commented regarding the use of torture by the Nazis that it was a clear example of “the evil of the Nazi” regime. That was spoken in 2002 or 2003 before it was commonly known that our own President highly values the use of torture, » Continue Reading »

This is not some left-wing propaganda outlet. This is from “The Army Times” (”Your online resource for everything Army”), in an article posted today.

The Army is deliberately shortchanging troops on their disability retirement ratings to hold down costs, according to veterans’ advocates, lawyers and service members …

What that means is that veterans unable to work as before – sometimes unable to work at all – are dumped out into society without support. They and their families are often dropped directly into poverty and the horrors of living with severe disability with limited help. And they are being put into such positions by us (through our government), the ones who recruited them with such high promises, » Continue Reading »

Here’s what the House actually passed [pdf, link fixed] yesterday, with the support of 17 Republicans.

Seems pretty straightforward to me.

It says they want to support the troops (in distinction to the behavior of the Republican-dominated House of recent years, which would not provide the armor and equipment the troops need, and the President who consistently cuts support for veterans’ programs).

And it says they disapprove of Bush’s escalation of this going-nowhere war.

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That–

(1) Congress and the American people will continue to support and protect the members of the United States Armed Forces who are serving or who have served bravely and honorably in Iraq; and

(2) Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on January 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.

Not only is it straightforward – it is eminently sensible.

Now the Senate will take it up. Here’s Majority Leader Reid:

“Americans deserve to know whether their senator stands with the president and his plan to deepen our military commitment in Iraq, or with the overwhelming majority of Americans who oppose this escalation … Let us be clear: Anyone voting ‘no’ tomorrow (Saturday) is voting to give the president a green light to escalate the war.

Hi Hillary,

I want to talk about prisons.

Here’s a little background:

#1 I grew up in Santa Monica, California, and graduated from what was the 3rd top School District in the Nation (that’s what we were told – but at any rate it was excellent). When Proposition 13 (radical tax cuts) came in, our schools lost massive amounts of funding -which meant loss of excellent extracurricular programs – and guess what? Crime rate immediately skyrocketed.

#2 My son grew up in rural Nebraska, where the schools were top notch and attentive, and he was an honor student… but guess what? When the budget to schools was cut, and his school lost excellent teachers – he dropped out and eventually got in trouble with the law, among many other kids. Now, I’m happy to say that he is doing quite well on his own, but that is no excuse for what happened.

When we cut funding to good schools, bad stuff happens and we have to put funding to embarrassing things like high prison populations and drug use.

Question: Why not TAKE THE LONG VIEW and invest in every child with our whole heart and funding of excellent, creative and purposeful LIFE-PREPARING teaching. It can be done.

Best Regards,

Connie

Here are some observations from Mobitz57 at his blog “Ziprasidone Daze, Halcyon Nights.” A recent post, “My Teaching Philosophy” makes some observations I certainly agree with. It makes no mention of Christian values, Biblical values, or “family values.” Does it represent those things as you understand them?

I believe in the inherent value of every student as a human being … Students do not mind a class that is difficult as long as they perceive that the instructor is fair, objective, and caring.

I believe in the value of nursing …The innate worth and dignity of humankind gives nurses a high calling to be skilled, compassionate, and wise in their work.

Is teamwork a Christian value?

Nursing is usually a team effort. I want students to develop camaraderie and learn to work together as a team as they push each other to master the information and skills.

Ohh. Here comes a high demand to place on teachers.

Students should see that their teachers love what they do, and love the subject matter that they teach.

I care for people, and I want the best for them. Whether they are stressed out students, or ill patients, I strive for their best possible outcome, whatever that is.

Ahh, and the way you judge the people you’re working with – does Christian morality impinge on that?

My primary assumption is that each student has the same desire to be an excellent nurse that I have. I assume that they have a genuine concern for suffering humanity and want to provide relief and comfort, just like I do.

Hmm. If we could sit Jesus down and make him write a short essay on his philosophy of teaching, I wonder what it would say? Could he accept something close to this next paragraph?

Instead of the “Sage on the Stage�?, I want to be a “Guide on the Side�?. Instead of force feeding information so that students can regurgitate it for an exam, I want to engage students in serious thinking activities that will cause them (and me) to attain critical thinking skills leading us to a lifetime of serious inquiry and learning.

Hey, Mobitz57 dude. Here’s a voice of experience with some info for you – that attitude could get you into a lot of WORK!

Mobitz57’s prior post was “Once I was scared of the ICU,”

Once I was scared of the ICU. That is what made me a good ICU nurse. Now, I don’t care. I am sick of the same old half-dead-before-they-even-came-in nursing home patients that need to be in ICU because nobody else can seem to monitor their urine output correctly. It scares me that I don’t care. …

On the other hand …

I took care of a sweet little Pediatric the other night. Actually, not really a Ped, cuz she was 19. But she was about 60 pounds and mentally about a six month old. But I worried about her, and held her hand, and almost cried because we couldn’t find a trache that would fit her and the ventilator quite right. But she did well, and went home in a couple of days. Really, really big eyes! I remember her name.

Seems like I only remember the names of the people that I actually care about. Well, that’s not entirely true. There are a lot of sweet old ladies, and cool old Vets, whose names and faces all blur together. I hold their hands the same, and tell them that it really is no problem for me to stay all night and take care of them. In fact, it’s my job.

I’m just wondering. Is that Christian morality, even if it’s not quoting the Bible at me or trying to make me feel guilty about something?

And for some of you, I would do it even if I didn’t get paid. So, just because I don’t remember your name doesn’t mean I didn’t truly care about you. I gave you everything that I could.

[Update July 08 - Chelsea is living at Mosaic in Grand Island, NE. We see her fairly often and she gets to go visit or go to Wendy's with my kids and grandkids regularly, which she thoroughly enjoys. She walks much better now, and very enthusiastically, though she needs helpers on both sides. She continues to have seizures, but eats "real" food and has a personality style that might be described as "benevolent turkey." She's a lot of fun.

May, 2008 at Arby's in Grand Island - Here's Chelsea playing a shoulder-shoving game with Grandpa Phil.

________________
Chelsea was named after a park. Pretty cool, huh? So, as with her park-namesake, her name is pronounced "Chelsa" - like Chelsea Park in Santa Monica, CA.

"Chelsea is broken," her brother said when they were both very young.

Chelsea was born with a very rare brain deformity, two of them actually (pachygyria lissencephaly syndrome with subcortical band heterotopia). She doesn't know that, but she suffers the consequences - the worst of which are lots and lots of seizures.

And in spite of having an immeasurably low I.Q. she still has her opinions – expressed with grunts, scowls, eyebrows, pointing, shouts, smiles and laughter. And frankly, almost always her inarticulate opinions clearly have more rational consistency in them than some of the opinions we hear publicly from persons of much higher ability and education.

This week we’re going with Chelsea to Immanuel Hospital in Omaha where on Thursday July 20th she will undergo the most massive trauma of her trauma-filled life – spine surgery, to correct very severe curvatures with metal rods and fused bone. That little spine will get worked on from both front and back – not easy to contemplate. She doesn’t know that’s coming, either, although she’s been in on many of the consultations and conversations.

But she has met the surgeon and she really likes him.

He and others have told us that the alternative to this surgery is “a terrible way to die.” So we are opting for the surgery, in hopes of making her remaining years much less painful and much more enjoyable.

Chelsea would have died years past if it weren’t for government(s) having stepped in with a great deal of money year after year. And while Blue Cross Blue Shield gets a lot of bad rap (deservedly so, it seems) there is much credit due there too, at least in this case.

But as you can imagine, a great deal of credit goes to Chelsea’s mom (that is, my wife Connie) and Chelsea’s brother Marcus for their selfless investment in “The Kid” through the years. And there are numerous medical people, caregivers, teachers, church workers, and friends of all kinds who have cared much for Chelsea and have been regarded by her as delightful, important people, the lights of her life.

Your prayers for her will be appreciated in the next few days. Thanks for reading this. I have a hunch Chelsea would like you.

[Cross-posted at StreetProphets.com]

UpDate 1 Friday July 21

The surgery took a full ten hours. Chelsea came through pretty well, with no problems developing. Today she has a lot of medication on board, and is still not comfortable (duh!). But they moved her out of intensive care this morning and seem pleased with her progress. They expect her to be hospitalized maybe up to ten days. We appreciate all your interest and prayers. She would too, if she understood. She is a responsive and connecting person when she’s not overwhelmed by pain.

UpDate 2 Friday July 28

This is the 8th day out from surgery. Chelsea is pretty happy, and looks good. The surgeon is quite pleased with how the incisions look. Everything has been a bit slowed down and complicated by Chelsea’s birth-handicap, meaning she cannot tell us where it hurts, she can’t eat sometimes, she cannot respond to instructions.

Her veins are small and fragile so she “used up” the potential IV spots on her arms in two or three days. So they went to one on her foot which they did not expect to last; but it is still working. They had – belive it or not – specifically asked the Chaplain to pray about that IV, and to ask some others to pray. And the nurse who visits us each morning actually said the praying is obviously doing some good. Of course, so also is the expert and caring attention Chelsea has been getting all along.

This morning Dr. Longley said he is aiming for Monday morning to send her home. So this initial very rough phase of Chelsea’s most excellent(?) adventure is apparently soon to move into the much more normal next stage.

We certainly appreciate all the good thoughts and prayers that many have invested in this “adventure.”

[Update 3]

I’ve been over at that nursing blog again (NursingDaze). Here are some quotes about a Norwegian philosopher-nurse justifying compassion as a basic value.

Kari Martinsen is an intense Norwegian nurse and philosopher … The Norwegian Nurses’ Association in 2001 adopted a new code of ethics that named compassion as one of the basic values of nursing care. This stems from the theoretical work done by Martinsen.

Caring is central to nursing. It involves

• concern and love for one’s neighbor
• that is coupled with concrete, professional and moral discernment.

» Continue Reading »

Barb Corso pointed out this distraction three months ago (”Deny Health Care to Millions?“). Now Robert Reich has made the same point in USA Today. (or here)

Political deception and distraction are still wrong and destructive, even if done by the very powerful. They are still wrong, even if done by religious Republicans, even if done (too often) with the collaboration of Democrats. They are still evil, even if done out of ideological motives. This is not a Christian way to proceed.

Reich says:

… Social Security is a place holder. As long as it remains on the domestic agenda, it blocks consideration of the real domestic crisis President Bush doesn’t want to touch: the health care system.

… Medicare, the government’s health care program for the elderly, is heading toward bankruptcy faster than Social Security. Its future unfunded liabilities are seven times larger.

Medicaid, the government’s health care program for the poor, is also in trouble. Its costs are rising so fast the White House and congressional Republicans want to whack it by $10 billion over the next five years. But governors don’t want Medicaid cut.

Symptom No. 3 is the increasing number of Americans without health insurance.

Meanwhile, Americans who get health insurance through their employer are suffering sticker shock. That’s because companies are rapidly shifting the escalating costs onto their employees.

The last symptom is the huge financial burden on companies that can’t shift rising health care costs onto employees because of union contracts … Health care is the single most contentious labor-management issue today.

He briefly proposes some interesting ideas for treating our health-care crisis, then wraps up with this:

It’s the perfect time to respond to America’s health care crisis. With the middle class squeezed by soaring costs, big companies reeling and governors screaming, the political momentum is there.

But the Bush administration doesn’t want to tackle it … [and] … They know the nation can pay attention to only one big domestic crisis at a time. So they’re using the fake crisis of Social Security as a diversion. That’s a shame. The real crisis of health care demands the nation’s real attention.

It’s not just “a shame.” It’s shameful. I think we need to remind ourselves and all Christians in this great land over, and over, and over again that Jesus said, “Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these brothers of mine, you have done it unto Me.” I assume that applies to what we have done to hurt as well as what we have done to help.

What are we doing, what are we about to do, to all these millions of ordinary people? It would be a different story if there was just disagreement on how to actually work on and solve these problems. But to deliberately misrepresent them or distract us from them is not acceptable behavior.

How does Jesus take that? Does the Holy One have any reaction at all?

Robert B. Reich, former U.S. secretary of Labor, is professor of social and economic policy at Brandeis and founder and regular writer for American Prospect. See his recent article there, “Changing the Subject: Social Security is not a crisis. What we need are answers to the oil and health-care crises.”

This is from commentary by William Falk in “The Week”, April 8, 2005, p7:

“…. A society that allows Terri Schiavo to die, we’ve all been told these past two weeks, is well on its way to becoming Nazi Germany. Any day now, we’re being warned, hospitals and nursing homes will be pulling the plug on anyone too sick to protest. In a society that values money as much as ours, it’s not an illegitimate concern.”

So maybe it’s not someone’s desire to kill humans, but someone’s desire to make money (or to not spend it on health care for the public), that is the real threat. Now – can you guess who fights continuously against spending money on health care for the general public? In Schiavo’s case, if the Republicans had been having their way more thoroughly over the last decade or so she would have been long since dead. There would have been no money to fund the great expense of keeping her alive and she would have departed long since. That is the morality of today’s radical Republican party. Letting her die has been called “murder” by these Republicans. Is it not murder to be letting people die because “we” choose to spend the money supporting the lifestyles, portfolios, and power of the wildly rich?

“What worries most of us, though, is a nightmare on the opposite extreme. Modern medicine has taken the end of life out of nature’s hands; once a hospital gets it tethers and tubes in you, it’s become quite a challenge to die.”

It becomes a question of when are we not prolonging life, but prolonging death. It’s frightening to be moving toward a society where the government of such a great freedom loving land forces some to live who want to die, and many to die who wanted to live.

“My grandfather avoided that dilemma the only way he could. When he suffered his second heart attack, at home in his bed, he took his sweet time before he called anyone. My mother found him calmly putting on his pants and his shirt. As the EMTs ran his stretcher down the street to the ambulance, he was gazing up at the blue sky, alert, peaceful. By the time he arrived at the hospital, he was gone. Smart man, my grandfather.”

In effect this man was telling all the lawyers and scientists and med techs and judges and geniuses and politicians to BUTT OUT! There are times, many of them, when that is entirely appropriate. And when we do need protection from power running amuck, the example of these Republican politicians and religious propagandists capitalizing so blatantly on this extreme case is not much of a comfort to the rest of us. If our humanness depends for its defense on the likes of Tom DeLay and Rush Limbaugh, then we are in trouble indeed.

Here are links to a couple of neat short cartoon videos. In the first one, Ben Cohen (formerly of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, now of TrueMajority.org ) uses stacks of Oreo cookies to illustrate how areas of our federal budget stack up, including a few comparisons to some other countries.

In the second one you can re-adjust the sizes of the stacks of Oreos and then send a percentages version of the result to your Senators and Congresspersons.

This is reprinted by permission from Jim Dake’s comments at the Nebraska Democrats blog.

I do not even need to tell someone else’s story. My family epitomizes the difficulties so many of us face. I was diagnosed with MS in 1993, 1 year and $34,000 after being sworn in to practice law. I was married, my wife and I had health insurance (private) with a $3,000.00 deductible. One MRI ate that deductible and I have had 20 MRI’s since.

My wife is an epileptic (post my MS) and last year was diagnosed with Ductile Carcinoma Incitu (a non-invasive form of breast cancer, that could have turned invasive if left untreated). I think that UNMC should name a wing after us. We are making payments for med-care till whenever, our prescriptions cost us around $300.00 per month, and we honestly live from disability check to SS disability check and just pay our bills, of which a huge portion (credit cards, etc.) are health related.

Why does Washington ignore this problem? And in the meantime, create a crisis that sounds so similar to the “weapons of mass destruction” crisis that it turns my stomach.

Senator Nelson, I doubt that you read through this blog, but maybe someone on your staff does. The Nebraska State Democratic party has been conducting battles with the DNC to get our state taken on an equal basis with other states, as far as electing democrats and helping us to put together the foundation to make us a blue state. We need your help!

Given Nebraska’s current contribution nationally to the Democratic Party, can you blame the DNC for ignoring us? When Bush pushed for the huge tax breaks for the rich in his first term, which even members of his own party, opposed, he was able to swing you to help the bill pass. I am unsure what we got in return. As Bush’s second term begins, when 36 Democratic Senators stood in opposition to Alberto Gonzalez being appointed to Attorney General, you, Senator Nelson, voted with the Republican majority.

Senator, you and I are UNL Law School graduates, so I would have hoped you had paid a little more attention to Gonzalez’s credentials. Has that man ever even been in a courtroom? Does he know how to prosecute a case. That aside, his ineptitude at legal “research” should have sent up a red flag. His “skill” was used to justify supporting torture, by doing such things as describing the Geneva Conventions as “quaint” and completely disregarding International Law. Those nonsensical arguments are an embarrassment to all attorneys. I practiced criminal defense but would have never even dreamed of advising a client with such ridiculous rationales.

As a lawyer, the confirmation angers me. As an American, it embarrasses me. As a Nebraskan, Senator, your vote to confirm angers me. We both know Gonzalez was going to get through, because of the Republican majority. But why did you not join with the other Democratic Senators to show the country that maybe, just maybe, Democrats are different than Republicans.

Now as the president touts his Social Security privatization, Senator Nelson, you are consistently mentioned as one of the Democrats he can swing to get this “crisis” solved. Which way are you going to swing? The medical crisis is upon us now! Even by Bush’s phoney figures, there will not be any social security trouble for another 10 years.

Senator, you know you are in for a real race for reelection. No, I am not a political strategist, but history has shown that the worst, WORST, thing a politician can do, is to alienate his base. You have to keep the State Democrats on your side as the first step you take in reelection. Your cozy attitude with Bush leaves Democrats like me not anxious to support your reelection. And do not for a moment think that you will somehow swing Republicans to support you. Beyond the votes, we Democrats are the one’s that will be writing letters to the editor, knocking on doors and pushing for you as our candidate. Please, give us something we can use in that sales pitch.

While all the attention this week was on social security and the State of the Union Address, there were a few articles on healthcare that were just barely under the radar. On January 31, an article in the LA Times (”Health Care Overhaul is Quietly Underway” registration required
) revealed that the Bush administration is farther along in its plans to relieve employers of the burdens of health insurance costs than it is in its plans to privatize social security.

The plan appears to be that individuals would purchase catastrophic healthcare policies at their own expense. The tax code already includes a tax deferred savings plan to put aside the deductibles for these policies for self-employed individuals up to certain limits, and this would be expanded to include everyone once it replaced employer-provided health care. On a purely economic basis, this hurts all employees currently under employer provided plans because corporations can negotiate better group rates than any individual can. The corporations are unlikely to pay their employees more to cover these costs – those savings will be passed on to the shareholders.

The impact would have to be devastating to families with children, for whom health insurance is always more expensive. As a self-employed person, I buy my own health insurance and have seen rates on my individual policy rise 60% in the last three years. I can’t imagine how most families would be able afford health coverage for their children. According to last fall’s study by Glen Stassen of the Fuller Theological Seminary, abortions increased during the first Bush term in part due to the inability to provide for the child in a bad economy. What does Bush think is going to happen to the abortion rate when even more people can’t provide health coverage for that child?

Just a few days after the LA Times article, Harvard Medical School published a study on February 2 (it’s researcher calls it “frightening”) that shows that half of all personal bankruptcies in the US are the result of medical illnesses, affecting approximately 2 million Americans, including 700,000 children, annually. “Even middle class insured families often fall prey to financial catastrophe when sick” according to the report.

That the administration’s health care plans are un-Christian is so obvious that I shouldn’t need to explain it to anyone. It violates every principle of social and economic justice in the Bible; it not only does not help the poor, but hurts the poor and seeks to increase their ranks and make the middle class poor as well. It also hurts the economy in a society like ours where it is consumers who generate economic growth. To sacrifice the economic growth of the country in order to hurt the poor and middle class is pure contempt and it is evil. This is not entirely surprising since the “ownership society” is based on principles taught by Aristotle and not by Jesus. But I for one am outraged at the conservative Christian groups like Jim Dobson’s Focus on Family that claim to be for family values but have voiced no opposition to these plans. I would never do as they do and label someone as un-Christian because Jesus told us not to, but I will say that these groups and their followers are being led away by evil, and they will destroy the very families they claim to support.

In another article I read this week, the Baptist Center for Ethics (www.ethicsdaily.com) reported some interesting election statistics. Among people who attend church more than once a week, 64% voted for Bush, and among people who earn more than $200,000/ year, 64% voted for Bush. Once again we see the truth in John Kenneth Galbraith’s quote “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

Social Security is not in crisis; it is in good health for decades to come. And it is our friend, as it has been for millions and millions of hard-working Americans over the last 7 decades. It would be even stronger if this Administration had not used the last four years to turn the Clinton surplus into such massive, unimaginable debt. Now they want to implement this Social Security wrecking project at the cost of even more trillions of unfundable government expense.

What if the truth does not support their plan? Can you guess? That is the case, so they will campaign vigorously for it by misleading us.

“The campaign will use Bush’s campaign-honed techniques of mass repetition, never deviating from the script and using the politics of fear to build support — contending that a Social Security financial crisis is imminent when even Republican figures show it is decades away….” (from The Washington Post, Jan 14, 2004)

Did you notice?

• “mass repetition, never deviating from the script”

That means: avoid reality, keep telling the same lies over and over and over and over. A good strategy for tyrants. Just keep lying. After a while people begin to get worn down. It’s a classic technique for convincing people to do something that is not good for them or that they don’t want to do, a technique that has been practiced effectively across a wide range of human relationships, from 5-year-olds wanting ice cream from reluctant parents, all the way to mass murderers wanting ever more power and freedom to inflict terrors on victims near and far.

• “Using the politics of fear”

Would this American President deliberately choose to sell us a bad idea by trying to SCARE us? Obviously. He has proven it on numerous occasions. Do you remember, for example, “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and the threat of a “mushroom cloud”, and how intensely they pushed that false fear on us?

As has so often been the case, the only “crisis” is that Bush and his owners want this! That’s not enough reason for us to undermine our kids’ and our grandkids’ and millions of other kids’ futures. Bush’s owners are already very well heeled. They really do not need this.

So we have:

• Incessant repetition of scripted lies, with
• deliberate cultivation of false fears,
• all for the purpose of selling us something that will enrich them, will hurt us, and that is completely unnecessary.

This is not a credible or honorable plan. These are not credible people. And it seems they are not even honorable people.

October 26, 2004

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.” — Abraham Lincoln, 2nd Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865

“I believe it [the 2nd Inaugural] is not immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world.” — Abraham Lincoln, letter, March 15, 1865

“Local boy makes good!” Here’s the Bible text Jesus read on his visit to his home town of Nazareth after his popularity began soaring.

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. [Luke 4]

Wow. He emphasizes the lower classes (”the poor”),
incarceration – detention (”freedom for the prisoners”), health care (”sight for the blind”), and economic and political evils (”release the oppressed”). Why do so many Christians take offense today at those who talk about such things? We SHOULD be concerned about those things.

This is the first teaching from the mouth of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel, and it is preceded by the songs of Mary and Zechariah and by the teaching of John the Baptist, all of which hit strongly on similar themes.
It IS Biblical to be concerned about such things!
Unfortunately a lot of Christians today are more comfortable getting their theology from Rush and Rove. “My brothers, these things ought not so to be.” “Why do you call me Lord, Lord, but do not do what I say?”

(See also
• A Beautiful Vision for Our Day from Isaiah 58
• Am I An Enemy of the Churches?
• “The Moral Priorities of Jesus”.