What did this phrase mean to you?
To me, the subtext was: yes we can elect a semi-qualified windbag simply on the basis of the color of his skin.
I think if anyone on the left looked at Barack Obama and thought of him as white there is no way they would have voted for him.
The same is true for Hillary Clinton. She got where she is in the party simply because of her gender. Had she been a man she would not have gotten close to her party's nomination.
Yes we can, means: yes, we can elect people simply on the basis of their skin and gender.
And they can in turn elect Supreme Court Justices using the same criteria.
Is there another meaning for YES WE CAN that I missed?
30 comments:
No, he was fully qualified (unless the "birthers" are right).
35, born a citizen.
That's it.
Now, a good choice?
A capable executive?
Those are definitely debatable.
Though he has done at least two good things since being in office:
1) In signing the credit-card bill, he also changed the laws to allow guns into national parks. Though this abuse of the amendment process displays just how fscked our legislative system is, anything that increases gun ownership and use rights is a plus.
2) In playing golf slightly more than once every two weeks--as if he had nothing better to do--he has wasted at least 150 hours of time in which he could have been screwing up the country. If you assume a 12-hour workday for the president, that's nearly two weeks he's taken off his time birthing the obamanation.
race gender class race gender class...this obsession you righties have is getting old.
And to me, Yes We Can meant that we were going to elect an intelligent, moderate, non-ideological pragmatist who's willing to hear and use ideas from the other side and is unafraid to tackle the huge problems that our country faces even if they're difficult, contentious, and/or unpopular.
Luckily, I had a good pulse on what Obama was saying and how he was actually presenting himself, so I am altogether rather pleased with his job performance.
Some to the left of me, however, bought into the Rightie claptrap that he was a Marxist, and so they are disappointed that he isn't towing the lefty party line, what with his Republican-based HCR Bill and much-tougher-and-focused-on-terrorism-than-Bush foreign policy.
Yes we can reject and overcome the cynicism and incompetence of the Bush administration.
Yes we can intervene to stabilize an economy that was broken when we inherited it.
Yes we can intervene effectively in Afghanistan, which the Bush administration ignored, and which provided shelter to our true enemies.
Yes we can end the illegal, immoral, and costly war in Iraq that the Bush administration started.
Yes we can enact health care reform, and ensure that all of our citizens have the benefit of access to our health care system, while bringing health care costs under control.
Yes we did.
And there is more that we're going to do to. Yes, we will enact effective new regulations of the financial sector.
And yes, we have reached out to our adversaries in good faith, and have had bad faith returned for it, but we will not despair, for our cause is just, and we believe that our adversaries will eventually chose constructive engagement over blind hostility.
I think there were probably concentric rings in terms of who voted for Obama.
An inner circle who were real politicos thought they saw him as some kid of pragmatic nice guy who would heal America.
That probably amounts to ten percent of those who voted for him.
There must be many who didn't really know what he was for, because now that he's enacting his takeover of the economy, they are mad, and moving in droves over to the Republicans, so that in the last few special elections, Democrats are getting trounced.
Even in Massachusetts.
Scott Brown ran on an anti-Obama theme, and won Senator Kennedy's seat that his ghost had recently surrendered.
Then New Jersey and Virginia.
There was the screw up in the 23rd in which the local Repubs ran a left-leaning freak show and lost and a third-party Conservative Party guy nearly won.
At any rate, I think a lot of young people must have read those three words YES WE CAN as -- yes, we can elect a black guy to the Oval Office.
The left kept talking about how this was history, and blah blah blah.
It was definitely important to a lot of people -- more important than actual political policy that Obama threatened to pass.
Now that he's passing those bills (HCR, etc.), he's on his way out.
I think the great majority of the electorate judged him solely on the color of his skin -- kicking MLK's advice to choose on character in the shorts.
It's difficult to decide BO's character. His politics stink, but there are weird things I like about him.
He fits very nicely into his clothes, for instance, and it's nice to have another handsome president (W. was very handsome, and also looked good in suits).
Maybe that's finally the real thing.
For the English crowd "race and gender" have been a hue and cry for at least two decades.
I hear him very loud when he refers to those two things. When he talks about history, etc.
I mean, he's not unaware that he's black.
And Hillary was not oblivious to the fact that it was the over-fifty women who were mostly on her team.
I think the thing about Obama playing golf is that he plays it for the same reason that lots of successful, hardworking businessmen play it - it's a vacation from stress, but you are still close to where you work, so you don't have to take days and days off the way Bush did to get his vacay fix down in Crawford.
I haven't seen any good numbers wrt how many vacay days he has taken...anyone have a link?
Brett:
Non-ideological? Really? Have you read the man's speeches (remember, I have--back when I supported him)?
Dr. Paul has it about right (as did my cousin back in Christmas of 2006) he's a corporatist, statist shill.
Stu:
The Iraq war is still going strong.
They popped some al-something or another the other day who was purportedly the leader of some group in Iraq.
Obama seems to barely pay attention.
I think the war is on remote control. He is afraid to lose it, and afraid to win it, so it just goes on and on.
It's mostly being done now by predator drone to keep the casualty count down.
At least on our side.
And I think the intelligence side is getting better. That's apparently a very very good job now, and the CIA is recruiting more people all the time.
If you know Arabic, you can make a hundred grand to start, and get your own car, and travel and see things.
I think if I was thirty again, I'd sign up for Afghanistan U. or one of the American colleges in the Kurdish area of Iraq.
Lebanon is always looking for profs. I wonder if there is anything left of Beirut.
I enjoy Lebanese food.
GM,
The Iraq war is still going strong.
On the contrary. There is a reduction of force agreement in place, and we will follow it. If you look at the monthly US military KIA stats from the Iraqi theater, they are way, way, down. Our participation in this war is drawing to a close. You and I might wish it was faster, but one of the last acts by the Bush administration was to negotiate a status of forces agreement that gets us out on a specified timetable, no faster, no slower.
By non-ideological I mean that he tends to view things more through a prism of what is practical and pragmatic than what fits within a predetermined idea of what the 'solution' always is -
I don't know what you mean...
Kirby - Your willful ignorance with regard to the wars in the middle east is astounding.
Obama increased troop levels in Afghanistan by almost 50,000 in his first year in office.
It's true that he is following the Bush timetable for getting troops out of Iraq - it took Bush four years to figure out what needed to be done over there, and Obama wisely continued the same basic approach...He's just honest and more straight-forward about it. Bush was all pretending that he wasn't planning on pulling troops out, when in fact he was.
Our participation in this war is drawing to a close.
Ha. We will have troops there until the American Empire collapses.
Obama increased the troop levels in Afghanistan, but they're just having lunch there. Very few real campaigns, and the buzz on the right at least is that he's not pursuing the Taliban into their lairs in Pakistan except with drones.
Of course he's not allowed over there, but he did say in the primaries that he would be sending all kinds of missiles into Pakistan to wipe out the bad people.
That's happened a few times.
But I think he has been more preoccupied with strategy against the American uprising against Stealthcare.
In Iraq, there have been a few major kills in the last week, but in general, I don't think this is high priority for BO.
He never mentions it, or talks about it.
Now that Stealthcare got past all the snags except the one final snag which is the constitutionality aspect, he finally made a surprise visit and had lunch with the troops in Iraq.
I hope he ate the same mess as the troops themselves, and didn't order in a lobster and caviar.
I have had the impression that both of our wars have been far from his mind. His real war has been class war against American business interests at home.
The "fat cat" bankers, and the other people he snorts about have a much higher profile than any of the terrorists in the Middle East.
He sent in troops, that's true, but he doesn't pay attention much, as Lincoln, for instance, did pay attention, in the Civil War.
Obama's far more interested in how his golf game is going.
Last I read, the US had 98,000 troops in Iraq with plans to reduce troop levels to 50,000 this summer if the elections were productive. Iraqi elections were recently held and I believe Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is attempting to form a government. There have been many bombings recently, most associated with frustration as some 600 former Baathist regime members were banned from running. The American forces are allowing Iraqi police/troops opportunities at policing their own country. Kirby I think it is your intellect that is on auto-pilot rather than Obama, he seems quite active to me. He has opposed Netanyahu and his cabal of right wing Israeli imperialists, such as Avril Lieberman, desire to build more Jewish settlements in Jerusalem. He has pressures China to devalue the Yuan, which they have done; this helps the competitive ability of our exports. He seems to be moving a nuclear reduction agenda along, who could argue with this? Moreover, I think the US response to Haiti was faster and more effective than the US response to New Orleans.
Bush broke Reagan's record for vacation days as president, exceeding 436 days.
Kirby, Obama is for what he has accomplished. He was to do the following:
Pass health care (failed to create gov plan)
Ramp up the war in Afghanistan
Reduce troops in Iraq
Stabilize the economy
Pass Credit Card Reform
Pass Financial Regulatory Reform
These are exactly the policy points he campaigned on. What I find ironic is that on this blog, we all bickered about who passed the deregulatory bills that caused the financial mess we are currently mired. Implicit in these condemnations is the need to regulate Wall Street practices. Now that he is trying to do it, he is the boogeyman?
You keep saying Obama is done, on his way out. Bullcrap, his popularity is not troubling, quite normal, and you cannot judge this in a vacuum; it only matters if Obama is more popular than the person he runs against. So far, Mitt is their best bet. What is he going to do, get on television and scream about health care that was rendered so similarly to his own bill? Good luck with that!
I don't know who is the best bet to run against Obama in '12.
I do think in '10 the problematic "voting thing," which so far the left party has not managed to do away with, any more than they have gotten rid of Fox News or Rush Limbaugh (those pesky mosquitoes! can't we do something to drain the swamp of negative criticism?).
Palin is I think the biggest and most problematic possibility.
The secret of voting is that most will vote on looks.
Kerry was a blighted disaster from the viewpoint of his hair alone.
Gore was attractive, but next to Bush, not.
Obama is a very good looking man.
Palin, however, is better looking.
Romney is good looking.
Huckabee? Not so much.
But there is another quality that I think people would like to see, which is a sense of humor.
Romney and Palin don't have that.
Huckabee has it.
By it, I mean the ability to quickly turn paradigms around, and not get caught in the glare of a hostile question.
The very best the Republicans have in this mode is by far Giuliani.
He's superb. I have no idea why he didn't do better in the last run-up.
I think he has health issues.
He's just superb. If he could turn NYC around, he can turn the whole world around.
I wonder if he'll get another chance. I love Giuliani.
I think one real problem with him is that he's very close to being a centrist, which turns off the far right. He has dressed up as a woman, for instance, which I don't think the far right appreciates.
But we have to have a person with a mind. A very good mind. I haven't been impressed with Palin's or with Romney's. They are both smart people, but they are not in the top 2%.
Giuliani is. Huckabee's up there.
Plus, Huckabee is funny as heck, and if he loses fifty pounds, he doesn't look so much like a woodchuck.
Plus, he will rein in the Bible Belt.
A lot of it might be about the momentum of the country. Last time around the country seemed to be falling apart, and the change candidate walked in on that.
That McCain got 47% of the vote is astonishing since the far right didn't like him, and most people were lukewarm about having a person with a busted jowl line for president.
Maybe there's someone in the wings who will step out. It would be terrific fun if Herman Cain was to run against Obama.
My personal favorite would be Condoleeza Rice. But she has a real brain, and is probably too intelligent to run.
She also really does know other languages, including tough ones like Russian. She's not just out there like the Monoglot Multicultural Himself commanding other people to learn them.
She also has artistic talents, and is, I think, a deep person.
I don't think she'll run, though. She's seen the viciousness of the left, and I don't think she could handle it. She's too intelligent and sensitive.
All we're going to get is thick-skinned wily jerks. The race is too long and too punishing for anyone else.
The only idealist in this nxt grouping would be Huckabee.
I think he would have easily beaten Obama last time around.
Huckabee nor Palin seem viable candidates according to polls. I don't think republicans will choose palin in the primaries, she's a crowner of kings, not a queen. All of these candidates lose to obama at the moment:
http://www.pollingreport.com/2012.htm
It's not so much what people think of Obama, rather what they think about the person that is running against him. Palin typically comes in third in most polls of republicans.
2012 is political light years away though and so many things can happen. The events happening right now will barely register in the national consciousness in 2 years. Remember how George the first defeated communism and smashed Iraq, and somehow managed to lose the election?
The repubs might take the house or become a larger minority, but most of Obama's agenda will have become law and it won't really matter.. too little too late.
Kirby - your impressions about how far the wars have been from Obama's mind don't mean much.
It's true that he's less inclined to babble on about them to gain political points the way Bush I'm-a-war-president-yee-haw did.
But if you look at the actual facts on the ground, his approach has been more effective than Bush's in Afghanistan and Pakistan. His approach in Iraq is a continuation, basically, of the end of Bush's presidency...
The fact that Obama's not trying to scare America into allegiance to him by constantly playing the warterrorismcard is fine by me -
And you also have to realize that the right doesn't bring it up all that much, since they can't really attack his approach except for arcane denunciations of using technology to defeat our enemy and that Obama is killing too Many terrorists...
The right also likes to lie about Obama's nuclear policies and then call them weak.
"Obama's far more interested in how his golf game is going."
It would behoove you, Kirby, to start talking about things beyond the shallow impressions you've received from rightwing media outlets.
Otherwise, you kinda discredit yourself.
W.B. has disappeared (sadly), so there's no steady-righter to interpret your sometimeswhargarrbl into actual criticisms.
GM is kinda anti-Obama the way you are, but he's definitely not aligned with you politically. So you should think about playing double-duty for a while - not only stoking the fires with your surreal critiques, but also finding sound arguments to back up your claims.
Obama spent 26 days on vacation during his first year... W. spent 69.
http://www.factcheck.org/2010/01/president-obamas-vacation-days/
And the left didn't criticize Bush for playing golf - they criticized him for playing golf after he said he wasn't going to, and criticized him for that highly insensitive 'watch this drive' line.
Those are critiques about honesty and insensitivity, not golf-playing-frequency.
They criticized him for going to the ranch all the time because he was the most vacationey president EVAR!!!
The Health Care reforms still have to pass the Constitutional test. This is basically the problem of FORCING the healthy to purchase (the Commerce Clause is in question).
18 States' Attorney Generals have argued that this is Un-constitutional. It almost certainly is.
It's hard to tell what the long-term effects will be.
Right now, many employers will try to dump insurance on to other insurers.
Forcing insurers to take up anyone, just anyone at all, is the equivalent of a public option, since government mandates that insurance companies have to buy.
This in turn is something like the Redlining that housing activists sought and succeeded in banning which eventuated in the government propping up bad loans with Freddie and Fannie.
The government will also have to make an insurance bailout system similar to F & F, which should eventuate in yet another bailout, from any country that will still have us.
Maybe we can mollify the Chinese by giving them California.
Then we can all pray for the Big One.
That's about the only way I see out of the eventual disaster that the Commiecrats are planning for us.
Maybe too the constitution will hold but not if they get more commies on the bench, which they soon will.
On a side topic: I was impressed by the reasoning in the latest decision to do with crush videos. This is freedom of speech for animal crushers. It's hard to describe what these videos do. Basically young women grind kittens under their feet, shoving high heel stilettos through the eyes of cats, while talking about how they love Obama.
This gets the left off, apparently. It's like catnip to them.
And the Supremes sang that depciting animal cruelty is overbroad, and should still be allowed.
Which I think is the right decision.
Alito dissented.
I found all this over at Althouse, where I find most of my legal news.
What a shock to my system that people are watching videos like this. It's a new low.
This country makes Sodom seem like a Sunday School picnic at my church. I can hardly believe the adventures my fellow citizens are getting themselves caught up in.
Killing gerbils and cats for kicks?
Oh my.
I imagine the ELCA will just see it as another alternative expression of spirit.
Altared states of consciousness and all that.
(Sorry, Stu, thought I'd throw a live one your way --!)
"18 States' Attorney Generals have argued that this is Un-constitutional. It almost certainly is -not-"
FTFY
Kirby,
Forcing insurers to take up anyone, just anyone at all, is the equivalent of a public option, since government mandates that insurance companies have to buy.
This is garbled and confused. I think you mean "sell" rather than "buy." And no, the government doesn't foce insurers to ensure anyone. It merely says that if they do chose to sell insurance within a pool, then they have to sell to the whole pool. Moreover, the pools are very large, and the effect of the mandate is to create symmetry. The old way made it possible for insurers to "shape" their pool, meaning in practice that you could only get insurance if you didn't need it. Symmetry was lacking. Requiring insurers to ensure everyone, but not making this mandatory creates a complementary assymetry, in which only people who had an immediate need for insurance would bother to get it. The effect of the mandates (both for individuals to acquire coverage, and for insurers to offer it) is to ensure that the distribution of risk within the insured pool is the same as the distribution of risk in the population as a whole.
Regarding "crush" videos, you said, "I imagine the ELCA will just see it as another alternative expression of spirit."
Just to be clear, this says a lot about your imagination, and nothing whatsoever about the actual beliefs of the ELCA.
The secular view of homosexuality has certainly changed in my lifetime. In the 50s it was considered a condition.
It still is, but it is no longer considered pathological in most secular circles.
In the more reasonable churches, that is, churches where reason and faith try to reconcile to one another, and where when push comes to shove, reason trumps faith, it is also becoming more acceptable.
I don't know what the percentages are.
On the other hand, fires that are unquenchable can't be considered a moral imperative. There are, for instance, people whose fire leads them to want children, or now, even to want crushed gerbils. I assume that then, Stu and Brett and others would not allow people to follow their fires into areas where it might hurt others -- such as going after children, or wanting a kitten's head crushed in order to get off.
So let's dispense with the fire as justification option.
That leaves our wondering if no one is hurt, and everyone is an adult, whether that will fly.
This would mean that group gropes would be fair play IF all members agree to the act, and no one is hurt.
Are we really willing to countenance that?
If not, then out goes the adult mutual consent option.
We are now down to the option of two who wish to be together by mutual consent.
So, if a grandfather and grandson want to live in a homosexual union, and want to live together, and both pastor at a church, then is that option a go.
I think we would all say no.
Correct me if I'm wrong in thinking that even Stu and Brett would be against this option at their specific church, and would object to a church in which the majority of pastors were living in such unions.
So that leaves the union of two homosexuals, not otherwise related, who are faithful to one another.
Let's say that we can find no reason that this would hurt either one (in spite of the AIDS issue for the men), and the lack of children for them (adoption is an option in some states).
Why, in fact, is God against this?
Why does God prefer the union between a man and a woman, in sickness and in health, until death do they part?
I don't know. He just does.
Personally, I also don't see why we can't take His name in vain. What's it to Him?
He's all-powerful, and we're not.
People should have companionship. If the secular governments vote to allow gay couples to marry, so be it.
But inside of churches I think that once you start reshaping the dictates of God so that they fit what you feel like doing, you are making God in your image, rather than trying to conform to his ideal of us.
Somehow, I think a pastor should represent an ideal.
God's ideal is Adam and Eve.
I suppose there all kinds of fires that lead people out of that -- into adultery, or crushing gerbils, or other mucking about.
Reason might even justify those choices.
But I don't think they can be reconciled with the Biblical tradition, without completely rewriting the Biblical tradition (some are moving in that direction, but why not just burn the Bible and read Our Bodies, Ourselves, as the new Bible, or the nude Bible, instead?). Among other things, you don't then have to learn Greek, which saves you one big step.
Kirby,
On the other hand, fires that are unquenchable can't be considered a moral imperative. There are, for instance, people whose fire leads them to want children, or now, even to want crushed gerbils. I assume that then, Stu and Brett and others would not allow people to follow their fires into areas where it might hurt others -- such as going after children, or wanting a kitten's head crushed in order to get off.
There's a reasonable argument here. Pedophiliac desire does not justify pedophilia. I can only agree. The distinction that I would draw is that children cannot give valid consent. Thus, all pedophiliac sex is rape in the eyes of the law, and this is a position that I concur with.
And therefore, if pedophiliac desire does not justify pedophilia, neither can homosexual desire in and of itself justify homosexual activity, nor for that matter can heterosexual desire in and of itself justify heterosexual activity. Again, I can only agree. Certainly there is a lot of sinful behavior around sex.
My take on this, for what it's worth, is that we'll know the good by its fruits, and the evil by its fruits. We can see the evils of faithless sexual behavior all around us, in broken relationships, broken people, sexual disease, unwanted children, etc. In faithful relationships, we see that each individual is stronger and healthier because of that relationship. Trust is built, people are cared for, in sickness and in health. Faith and families can grow. What I'm not seeing is that these are distinguishing characteristics of heterosexual relationships within the gamut of faithful relationships. Mutual faithfulness is a much higher barrier than mere consent, which I suspect that even you would agree with.
But I do believe that Paul had a point. It is better to be married than to burn. And I believe that this is as true for homosexuals as for heterosexuals.
On the other hand, fires that are unquenchable can't be considered a moral imperative. There are, for instance, people whose fire leads them to want children, or now, even to want crushed gerbils. I assume that then, Stu and Brett and others would not allow people to follow their fires into areas where it might hurt others -- such as going after children, or wanting a kitten's head crushed in order to get off.
Point of information. AIDS is not an issue within a monogamous homosexual relationship. And by this point, I'd hope you'd understand that AIDS is not a disease of homosexuality, it is a disease of promiscuity. Though you might find it hard to believe, both of us are on the same side of the fence as regards promiscuity, although I don't doubt that we'd quibble over definitions an a few edge cases.
Why does God prefer the union between a man and a woman, in sickness and in health, until death do they part?
I don't know. He just does.
I don't know that God condemns homosexuality, which is what you meant even if you weren't willing to say so explicitly. I know that a naive reading of the Bible, coupled with the notion that God is the literal author of the words found therein, gives rise to this conclusion. Unfortunately, I am permitted neither. This is not, as you would have it, evidence of an absence of faith, nor even of a submergence of faith to reason.
Brett,
W.B. has disappeared (sadly), so there's no steady-righter to interpret your sometimeswhargarrbl into actual criticisms.
I have hopes that W.B. will be back.
He's an ELCA Intern Pastor. I can speak with authority only to my immediate situation, but I'm the chair of lay committee for an ELCA Intern Pastor. I just turned in my committee's final report yesterday, and this was for a reasonably ordinary situation. W.B.'s situation is more complicated, due to the departure of his supervising pastor. This is one of those things that just isn't supposed to happen, and it is a testimony to his bishop's and congregation's trust in him that he was asked to serve as interim.
There's also the issue that his wife is due sometime in the next few weeks. Perhaps he's now a rookie Dad! Been there. It's pretty intense, especially for kid #1.
I'm reminded about the old cynical remark that time is just nature's way of making sure that everything happens at once.
It's just a guess, but I suspect he's been overtaken by life. As I said, I hope he'll be back. In the meantime, let me suggest that we all say a prayer asking for support for W.B., his wife, his child (whether it is to be, or is), and his ministry. We'll save the prayer of thanksgiving until we've heard from him :-).
Stu, glad that I made at least one reasonable argument on your terms.
I think in general the argument we are having is about nature, and the nature of natural desire, and why is it that some people have an unnatural natural desire that for instance drives them toward children, gerbils, or toward the same sex.
None of the three will create offspring, which is the apparent purpose of sexuality.
But you're right -- one of these three involves the consent of both partners, and doesn't necessarily bring on a disease, and is not even necessarily harmful to them.
Sexuality in general is undertheorized in Christianity, perhaps because Jesus himself felt not much in this regard, or rarely says at least that He did.
Luther made provisions for men and women which was a step toward normalizing one aspect of nature.
Catholics like JH think this was a mistake, but Luther had seen the terrible effect of suppressed desire and how it led to the use of bordellos and the same among the clergy. Many popes had affairs, and mistresses.
So he tried to create a normalization of an unnatural suppression of the sex instinct.
Which would naturally mean that this should be furthered.
But Jesus did allow for marriage between a man and a woman.
Never once does he imply that a homosexual relationship was ok.
He also didn't ban it outright, any more than he technically banned orgies or gerbil snuffing.
But if we could get back to why nature is this way, and why Christianity is so unnatural (no other creature in nature is asked to be neighborly, but just to be what are).
An interesting argument is that of Sade.
He argues in Justine that it is his nature to be sadistic, and that it would be a crime against the nature that God made him for to not express his natural sadism.
It's a parallel argument, and again the answer is partially to do with consent.
And yet there is also consentual s and m, of which the ELCA has I believe said is interesting, and ok.
(That is based upon a remark I once read in First Things by former Lutheran theologian Richard Neuhaus. I don't remember what he based it on. As you know, he became a Catholic, partially because he didn't like women in the Lutheran ministry.)
NATURE.
Is it Christian?
He argues in Justine that it is his nature to be sadistic, and that it would be a crime against the nature that God made him for to not express his natural sadism.
This is of course a poor argument, countered precisely by Jesus in the Matthew: Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. That is, because it was in our "nature" to have hard hearts, divorce was okay--but Jesus says we should be better than that.
Also--Jesus goes on to talk about those men who can't be married--and say that they should NOT get married and "accept it." Just sayin'.
Headlines in the local paper today said that Obama's primary litmus test for a new SCOTUS judge will be abortion.
NO HUMAN RIGHTS FOR BABIES! The headline read.
Ok, I'm stretching the truth here.
The article went on to stipulate that the bodily integrity of a baby was of absolutely no concern to the president, and that people could go ahead and use a shovel if they liked to whap them on the head like baby seals.
Well, actually, he wants human rights for baby seals.
I had high hopes for Obama when he threw his hat into the ring, but that hope dimmed when he refused to be specific about what he planned to do. It was all this "hope" and "dreams" and "it's our turn" stuff, he was slippery as an eel.
Also, I didn't like his manner--all sweet choirboy with no rough edges or toughness. He'd win the God & Country Merit Badge from the Boy Scouts of America (if he weren't seduced first by the Scoutmaster!).
Nonetheless, after 8 years of devastation by Bush & Co., a change was needed.
In the meantime, the Republicans have been stalemated and at sea. They have no ideas, and no leaders. Sarah Palin? Give me a break. Housewifery dressed up as PTA secretary. Great legs, though.
She played basketball in high school. Maybe we could get her to do a shoot-around. First to get five three-pointers wins. The winner gets to take her out for a soda.
Curtis,
She played basketball in high school. Maybe we could get her to do a shoot-around. First to get five three-pointers wins.
What an amusing thought. Barry played ball too. My guess is that he'd have little trouble posting her up, but she'd be better off the dribble. My money's on Barack, though. Eel or not, he's got the more flexible spine, and that matters in B'ball. He's got more tenacity too. He's a whistle-to-whistle guy. Sarah's got a two-quarter game.
Thanks Stu. Your intuition is correct. I've got a very full plate with planning a new member Sunday, preaching every week, introducing a new contemporary liturgy (for one service) and resurrecting the sung liturgy for the other. The baby isn't due until July, but we're definitely hopping! I am knowing more and more the necessity of consistent daily prayer and I surely do appreciate the prayers of others. They have been a Godsend.
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