Where was Dobson’s rain?

Tough night for James Dobson. Not only did God fail to deluge Invesco Field* for Obama’s acceptance speech (84,000 in attendance), it was the most watched convention speech ever! (No word, yet, from Dobson crony John Hagee, on whether God sent Tropical Storm Gustav to shake up the Republicans’ convention.)

Lots of things to celebrate about this week: Obama made a fabulous VP pick, Hillary Clinton showed some genuine class in her fine speech, Bill Clinton reminded us why we used to like him - before he was possessed by whatever bitter, conniving, scheming, dastardly, Anger Management flunkee force took him over on the campaign trail. What a great line… “People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.” But wow, how about John Kerry’s incredible speech, from which Obama’s pathetic ad writers could take a few pointers!

I have known and been friends with John McCain for almost 22 years, but every day now I learn something new about Candidate McCain. To those who still believe in the myth of a maverick instead of the reality of a politician, I say let’s compare Senator McCain to Candidate McCain.

Candidate McCain now supports the very wartime tax cuts that Senator McCain once called irresponsible. Candidate McCain criticizes Senator McCain’s own climate change bill. Candidate McCain says he would vote against the immigration bill that Senator McCain wrote.

Are you kidding me, folks?

Talk about being for it before you’re against it!

Let me tell you, before he ever debates Barack Obama, John McCain should finish the debate with himself.

And what’s more, Senator McCain, who once railed against the smears of Karl Rove when he was the target has morphed into Candidate McCain, who is using the same Rove tactics, the same Rove staff, the same old politics of fear and smear.

Well, not this year; not this time. The Rove-McCain tactics are old and outworn, and America will reject them in 2008.

So remember, when we choose a commander-in-chief this November, we are electing judgment and character, not years in the Senate or on this Earth. Time and again, Barack Obama has seen farther and listened harder and listened better and thought harder. And time and again, Barack Obama has proven right.

John McCain stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier just three months after 9/11 and he proclaimed, next stop — Baghdad. The judgment immediately from Barack Obama was to see an occupation of undetermined length, undermined consequences, undetermined cost that, in his words, would only fan the flames of the Middle East.

Well, guess what? Mission accomplished. (One transcript here.)

As for McCain’s VP pick, I think I join much of the country when I say… huh?!

Update: “stole the spotlight” from Obama’s speech? “Electrified Republicans“? Is this writer reading the same stuff I’m reading, or is she reading the latest RNC canned copy memo?

Update to the update: Wow… the electorate sure does sound “electrified!” Good thing Biden didn’t electrify them this much.

Update II: “crony” typo above, fixed.

*Hat tip to CW for reminding me of this gem.

Bear with me…

I’m prepping for another comprehensive exam, which I will confront tomorrow.  So I’ve neglected to freshen up around here.  (Which is not to say that I haven’t strayed from my studies to compile a long list of bloggables; I just haven’t had a chance to “frame” them.)

Let me just pass along a few things to chew on:

• Frank Rich
• Andrew Sullivan’s observation that, according to the very definitions of torture John McCain has signed off on for the Bush Administration, he wasn’t actually tortured by his captors.
• It doesn’t matter that John McCain has more homes than he can count; he was a POW!
• The mainstream media doesn’t seem to find it so newsworthy when a Republican breaks ranks and comes to the Dem side, as when a DINO like Zell Miller or Joe Lieberman goes Republican.
• I recorded the Obama/McCain interviews at Saddleback with Rick Warren the weekend before last, but no need.  McCain cheated and was being prepped on the questions by staffers while driving over in his motorcade, instead of being ensconced in “the cone of silence” Warren claimed he was in.  Need further proof?  Read the transcript.  (But he was a POW!)
• Curious, isn’t it, how the Republicans never seem to show any concern about the hackability of private corporate vendors’ electronic voting machines?  Read this too, and then get your pen-and-paper absentee ballot.

All right…  We’ll catch up after the exam tomorrow.

“McCain rules out military action against Russia”

Well, I think this is a very sensible position to take… SINCE HE’S NOT THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF OR ANYTHING!!!

My God…  is he on steroids, off Geodon, or what?

The frightening spectacle has rendered me speechless.  So allow me to pull some helpful quotes from Josh Marshall, who is usually a fairly measured and even-handed writer even when his opinions are strong:

“McCain is uncomfortable not being in the Cold War. He feels out of his element and he wants to go back.”

“Do whatever you can to make sure John McCain is not elected president. Too many opportunities for crazy mischief to let him get his hands on the military and the bomb.”

“This is one dangerous guy …“

“This man is simply too dangerous and unstable to be president. People need to wake up and get a look of the preview he’s giving us of a McCain presidency.”

Yes, I think that pretty well sums it up.

I’ve been trying to stay somewhat above the campaign fray, because it can get so maddening and nauseating.  But since the McCain campaign has rolled out this terrifying new Cold War  G.I. Joe model, “John McCain, Unmedicated,” I feel I must jump in.

Please share these videos widely.  First up: a public service video created by some guy who should be doing Obama’s ads instead of whoever Obama’s got.  I can’t get it to embed properly, so go here. (Hat tip: Americablog).  Seriously, it is worth your while.

Second, another public service video, this one by Brave New Films:

  (Hat tip: MR; thanks!)

Watch carefully, and forward “liberally.”

Best line I’ve heard in weeks

Juan Cole asks:

“Why does Pakistan get all the good impeachments?”

Something to aspire to

Al Gore at his desk

I wish I could remember which blog I was reading when I first saw this photo. I tried to retrace my steps, to give a proper hat tip, but ended up doing a Google image search on “Al Gore’s desk” and found the original Time magazine link. We can look at this in two equally self-gratifying ways: “Wow, at least my desk isn’t that bad!” or “Hey! I’m halfway to Al Gore!” But I’m looking at the surface of my desk and realizing that nothing on it has anything to do with anything I’m working on at the moment. I’ve got a small space cleared for writing, and the rest of the surfaces are covered with objects that should be somewhere else: dead batteries, dead watch, old cell phones, an empty air-duster can, a package of fly trap attractant (for the fly trap outside by the compost bin), unfiled article reprints, 7 or 8 books I’m not reading at the moment…

Meanwhile, everything I actually need and am using — books and notes for my upcoming comprehensive exam, a sermon and a book review I’m writing — are all piled on the floor around me. Because there’s no room on the desk.

Look at Mark Twain’s desk (from Time’s recent feature about him):

I was thinking of making one of these two photos my monitor’s wallpaper, but I’d never be able to find my shortcuts.

Obama was right

Well, to be fair, McCain probably hasn’t had to check the air pressure on any of his vehicles’ tires in at least as many years as he’s been married to an heiress and living in 8 homes.  But see, even I knew that keeping your automobile’s tires filled to the manufacturer’s specified PSI will improve gas mileage.  Now, this might amount to higher math for a guy who doesn’t have a head for numbers, but saying “improves gas mileage” is similar to saying “uses less fuel to go the same distance.”  Ergo, saves fuel.

Obama said that if US drivers kept their tires properly inflated, the US would save the same amount of fuel we are likely to get from offshore drilling.  I’ve heard the same assertion elsewhere, perhaps in an interview with Chris Mooney.  In any case, Obama is right: Popular Mechanics did the math (there’s that scary word again!).  And according to that tree-hugging Department of Energy’s own research, “underinflated tires alone cost the country more than 1.25 billion gal. of gasoline annually—roughly 1 percent of the total consumption of 142 billion gal. According to the Annual Energy Outlook 2007, published by the Energy Information Administration, offshore drilling would increase domestic production of crude oil by only about 1 percent.”  (Hat tip: Americablog.)

Help me understand…

AP photo from BBC link

 

… how a 2-year old dehydrated bear with his head stuck in a jar for over a week couldn’t have been tranquilized - yes, even in a “busy” town - and relocated, instead of being killed?

 

Efforts to tranquilise the animal failed because the bear “stayed in forested areas”, he said.

Mr Naplin said the bear was “in pretty tough condition” after being unable to eat or drink for several days because of the 2.5-gallon (9.5-litre) plastic jar on its head.

Officials knew the jar had been stuck on his head for many days.  It was not going to fall off suddenly.  It was not going to break.  Why could he not have been tranquilized?

Thought for the day

In early September I’ll be leading a discussion session at my church’s annual retreat.  I get to pick the material and topic (though the pastor has veto power), so I’ve been trying to narrow my options.  This morning I was thumbing through a little discussion-friendly collection of sermons and essays by Lutheran theologian Joseph Sittler, The Care of the Earth, and re-encountered this paragraph:

If the creation, including our fellow creatures, is impiously used apart from a gracious primeval joy in it the very richness of the creation becomes a judgment.  This has a cleansing and orderly meaning for everything in the world of nature, from the sewage we dump into our streams to the cosmic sewage we dump into the fallout.

Abuse is use without grace; it is always a failure in the counterpoint of use and enjoyment.  When things are not used in ways determined by joy in the things themselves, this violated potentiality of joy (timid as all things holy, but relentless and blunt in its reprisals) withdraws and leaves us, not perhaps with immediate positive damnations but with something much worse - the wan, ghastly, negative damnations of use without joy, stuff without grace, a busy, fabricating world with the shine gone off, personal relations for the nature of which we have invented the eloquent term, contacts, starting without beholding, even fornication without finding.*

 

Which reminds me…  Hundreds of species of American birds and songbirds have declined by up 90 percent in the last 40 or so years, primarily due to habitat destruction.  Of course, John Terborgh was sounding the alarm years ago.

 

 

 

 

(*”The Care of the Earth,” pages 59-60.)

Help run this ad!

I love this ad.  Let’s help the NRDC get this published in the Washington Post, shall we?  Click here to make a donation.

Sadly, the Bush/McCain snake oil (being peddled with particular exuberance by none other than Newt-Contract On The Earth*-Gingrich) appears to have potent stupification effects: 74 percent of Americans now approve of offshore drilling, despite the fact that even though ”Federal energy analysts have said offshore drilling would have no impact on oil production or prices until 2030.”

No surprises re: where the candidates stand on this nonsense.  McCain is pushing the snake oil for its “psychological benefits.”

*”mistitle” intended; and I didn’t attach my Powells account number to that link, either: if you buy his book, I don’t want any points from it!

Who’s holding up the Global AIDS bill?

My email today included an alert from the ELCA Advocacy center urging phone calls to our senators to unblock the Global AIDS bill.   I confess, I was not up to speed, so I hunted Google news and read that it is currently being stalled by “seven socially conservative senators“ who are worried about what kinds of programs the money will be spent on.  They don’t want to spend money on prevention if that means encouraging people to use condoms.

No surprises, there.  But one of the Seven Socially Conservative Senators is — ready? – Louisiana Republican David Vitter, staunch defender of Family Values and occasional patron of call girls.  OK, semi-habitual patron of call girls.  As an amusing aside, I must note that Vitter is also defending marriage and Family Values by co-sponsoring an anti-gay marriage amendment with… (if you have liquid in your mouth, swallow now)(seriously) – Idaho Senator Larry “I have a wide stance” Craig.  What is with these conservatives?  Do they swear a Hypocritic Oath on taking office?

But I digress.  Now that you know what Vitter is up to, please call your senator (even if it’s one of the Seven Socially Conservative ones).  Here’s what the ELCA alert advises:

Take action today! Call your Senators and urge their support of the S. 2731, the Global AIDS Reauthorization Act of 2008.

Step 1: Call the Capitol switchboard at 202. 224. 3121 and ask to be connected to your Senator’s office. (If you don’t know who your Senators are, you can look them up at www.senate.gov)

Step 2: The receptionist will answer. Introduce yourself as (your name) a constituent from (city, state).

Here is a helpful script:

“I am calling today to urge Senator________ to support immediate Senate consideration of S. 2731, the 2008 Global AIDS reauthorization bill. Our Government’s effort to fight deadly disease in the world through PEPFAR is saving lives and is helping to restore America’s image throughout the world. I urge Senator ___________ to support the $50 billion reauthorization of the Global AIDS bill. Do you know the Senator’s position on this bill?”

Request a written response from the Senator on his/her position on the bill. Be sure to leave your full name and address with the receptionist and thank him or her when you are finished.

Step 3: Let us know how the call went. E-mail kim.stietz@elca.org with an update so that we can follow up with your Senator’s staff in Washington if necessary.