(Ir)religiosity

It’s true, now you can add foonotes in Google Docs. I’ve toyed around with various online word processors (like Zoho and Google Docs) but hadn’t found one that offered footnote integration.  Not good if you’re doing a lot of acadmic writing.  Google pulls through once again!

It’s getting close to the election and since I received a few emails from readers about my personal biases I thought I would once again try to clear things up.  Or maybe make them more murky, whichever.

Unless the radical anarchist in me takes over at the last minute in the voting booth and I vote for Nader or register a blank ballot, I will be voting for Barack Obama.  But I do so with guarded and cautious realism.  I am a registered  independent.  I refuse to play the rules of our two-party — or one party, however you see it — system and I reject that standard being placed upon me. I do this for two reason.

First of all, as a Christian my first and deepest allegiance is to the kin-dom¹ of God and I believe that no political party — least of all the two pathetic excuses we have in America — unilaterally represents that alternate reality.  Some choices are noticeably better than others, but none of the choices will ever be good enough because that’s not how the kin-dom operates.  It’s not top down, it’s bottom up.  It’s not centralized, it’s decentralized.  It’s not hierarchical or patriarchal, it’s egalitarian.  It’s ethos is not based on power and greed, but on love and justice.  Barack Obama doesn’t represent it; John McCain doesn’t represent it; Joe Biden doesn’t represent it, and Sarah Palin doesn’t represent it.  A crucified God, executed by the established order, who stood for justice, subverted the status quo and forgave those who murdered him represents and defines the kin-dom. And that’s something of which no politician can ever claim to have exclusive rights.  Ever. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Using kin-dom rather than kingdom is a new idea I’ve been toying with.  More about that later.  For now, suffice it to say that I am using it as a means of intentional subversion and liberation of both patriarchy and hierarchy [↩]

In case you missed it, former Sec. of State Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama this morning on Meet the Press.  The whole interview if worth watching, but a particular quote caught my attention.

I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, “Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.” Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian.  He’s always been a Christian.  But the really right answer is, what if he is?  Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?  Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, “He’s a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists.” This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

Here’s the video with more context.

Read the entire transcript of the interview here.

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50,000 protesters stage a mass protest in Baghdad against the recently renegotiated mandate to extend US presence.

Prakash Ambegaonkar, the founder of Bridging Nations, wrote this piece on why and how the US must rethink foreign policy in the future.

Christian and Islamic leaders petition together for the establishment of just interest rates and rightly place for the global financial crisis on human greed.

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz writes about how we got in the current financial mess we’re in and offers a comprehensive way forward.

The spark of the Divine is always within us. It is the common thread that unites us in our humanity.

Tony Jones writes about why the US is not an empire, at least in the classical sense.  I partly agree.  I’m beginning to come around to the idea that the US is simply part of a transnational big “E” Empire of global capitalism.

Noam Chomsky says the US has one-party system.  I agree — as I’ve written before — and I like Chomsky though he is fundamentally rooted in the modern approach.

Andrew Sullivan’s piece “Why I Blog,” is very thought provoking.  Blogging is the new postmodern format.  I wonder how much longer old-school newspapers will last?

Interesting.

[Ht. Nick Fiedler]

It turns out that Joe isn’t really a plumber. At least not a licensed one. I’ve got nothing against Joe, I have more in common with him than the candidates, but I do have a problem with a campaign using someone for political gain.  It’s just patronizing.  “Like Sarah Palin, a great concept. But the McCain campaign needs to be able to vet its hood ornaments.” [Ht. Andrew Sullivan]

John McCain will have to manhandle Barack Obama — or in his own words “whip his you-know-what” — if he wants to stand a chance of winning the election.  I’m not sure what the chances of that are, but they’re not good that’s for sure.

Check back here for live updates at 9:00 PM EST.

Hat tip to Hacking Christianity for this video portraying the text of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights set to music.

I thought I’d go ahead and post it today rather than later since today is the so-called “Columbus Day” in which Americans of all political stripes and social studies teachers across the country glorify a mass murderer and credit him with having “discovered a New World” when in fact he systematically exterminated and enslaved native peoples in the name — in American hindsight at least — of a dubious metanarrative of progress and enlightenment. Read the rest of this entry »

In celebration of it’s 10th birthday Google is allowing people to search their 2001 database.  It’s pretty cool.  I did a search for Barack Obama and John McCain.  Here are some screenshots of the first couple of results.

You can see the results here and here and the archived sites here and here.

Interesting stuff.

At this point, I think it’s safe to say that the election is Obama’s to lose.  And I think the debate last night helped him in that regard.  I do agree with Dave, there wasn’t really anything new in terms of substance, but Obama came off as more relaxed, grounded, and in control whereas McCain — whose forte is supposed to be the town hall meeting — seemed annoyed, nervous, and anxious.  At times he just seemed to be trying too hard.  We get it John.  You want to connect with the average American.  But referring to us as “your friends” seems disingenuous and patronizing.

McCain barely made eye contact with Obama during the last debate.   While he did make and effort to actually look at him this time he still showed signs of disdain and even disgust.  At one point he referred to Sen. Obama as “that one,” a telling slip of the tongue methinks, and it looks like he even refused to shake his hand.

Though my mind has been made up for a while, I found an exchange between the two on health care to be very important.  If I was an undecided it would’ve been a game changer for me.

BROKAW: Quick discussion. Is health care in America a privilege, a right, or a responsibility?

Sen. McCain?

MCCAIN: I think it’s a responsibility, in this respect, in that we should have available and affordable health care to every American citizen, to every family member. And with the plan that — that I have, that will do that.

OBAMA: Well, I think it should be a right for every American. In a country as wealthy as ours, for us to have people who are going bankrupt because they can’t pay their medical bills — for my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.

The difference there is huge.  In my opinion, every person has a right to quality health care solely on the basis of being a person regardless of the costs.  Period.  It’s not a responsibility we have if we can afford it, it is fundamental right that should be afforded to us all.

With that revealing point, McCain loses and Obama becomes President.