Politics Archives - Page 6 of 7

Of Mice and Men

“The eighteen minutes that Joe Biden spoke with Stephen Colbert produced the most public and painful demonstration of emotional honesty by any politician in months, if not years. Biden could never speak in a campaign quite the way that he spoke on Colbert. But a version of that would be powerful, and it was impossible not to see, in the Biden interview, a rebuttal to Trump’s moment in America—to the notion of self-promotion as success, of cruelty as candor, of empathy as weakness.”

Source: Biden, Alone in a Crowd – The New Yorker

“I fully think apologizing is a great thing,” the famously self-assured Trump replied before winning the studio audience’s applause by adding: “But you have to be WRONG. … I will absolutely apologize sometime in the hopefully distant future if I’m ever wrong.”

Source: Donald Trump gets rich with his humorous ‘Tonight Show’ turn

Run, Joe.

U.S. Poverty Shifts Since 1960

“Since President Lyndon B. Johnson launched the War on Poverty 50 years ago, the characteristics of the nation’s poor have changed: A larger share of poor Americans today are in their prime working years and fewer are elderly. In addition, those in poverty are disproportionately children and people of any age who are black, Hispanic or both.

But perhaps just as striking is that the geographic distribution of the poor has changed dramatically, too. A new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data finds that the South continues to be home to many of America’s poor, though to a lesser degree than a half-century ago. In 1960, half (49%) of impoverished Americans lived in the South. By 2010, that share had dropped to 41%.”

Source: How the geography of U.S. poverty has shifted since 1960 | Pew Research Center

Thinking Religion: Jesus on the Kinsey Scale

Thomas Whitley and Sam Harrelson discuss the Prayer of Jabez, Sex and the Bible, pansexuality, the Pope’s new chair, and why Islam isn’t limited to the originating text.

Source: Thinking Religion: Jesus on the Kinsey Scale | Thinking.FM

Follow Up:

iTunes Ratings
We’re on Stitcher (And iTunes)
What is the Prayer of Jabez?
What does the Bible say about sex?

Show Notes:

In a Word, What It Means to Be Pansexual | HuffPost
Kinsey Scale | Wikipedia
Kentucky Clerk Fighting Gay Marriage Has Wed Four Times | US News
Texas Faith: Illegal Immigration, the Bible and Donald Trump | Dallas Morning News
Papa’s Got a New Chair | AP
The Birmingham Quran and the Palimpsest of History | Marginalia
The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife: “Patchwork” Forgery in Coptic … and English | NT Blog

Resurrect My Soul

It turns out that the problem of wisdom is not easy to solve. Acquiring it is dangerous. The individual who pursues true insight is, to use Nietzsche’s phrase (though the perception goes back at least as far as Plato), untimely. That is, he strives to be ahead of his time in his perceptions, albeit sometimes basing his thoughts on the intellectual achievements of the past. He is out of joint with his moment, and the result often is the enmity of others. People do not like his ideas, which seem to be an indictment of the way they are living. The thinker is a walking criticism of the lives of the rest, as Socrates showed. He paid with his life.

Source: Why We Need to Resurrect Our Souls

Working on an episode of Thinking Daily now with this as the soapbox.

1 in 7 people on earth used Facebook on Monday

We just passed an important milestone. For the first time ever, one billion people used Facebook in a single day.

On Monday, 1 in 7 people on Earth used Facebook to connect with their friends and family.

A more open and connected world is a better world. It brings stronger relationships with those you love, a stronger economy with more opportunities, and a stronger society that reflects all of our values.

Source: Mark Zuckerberg – We just passed an important milestone. For the…

Of course, that means 6 in 7 people on earth didn’t use Facebook.

That means that there are lots of people who choose not to use Facebook in the developed world.

More critically, that means there are many people in our world that don’t have access to the internet or devices that can access the web (or Facebook if you please).

Companies are working to crack this nut for their own bottom lines but also the improvement of humanity. Access to information and the ability to communicate near instantaneously with someone on the other side of our planet (and eventually beyond) will be an amazing issue to cover in the coming decades.

It’s incumbent upon all of us now to make sure the internet is as welcoming and transformative as it should be for everyone (whether old or new user).

Is Apple Supporting Terrorism?

“Wittes and Bedell argue that Apple’s decision to “move aggressively to implement end-to-end encrypted systems, and indeed to boast about them” after being “publicly and repeatedly warned by law enforcement at the very highest levels that ISIS is recruiting Americans” — in part through the use of encrypted messaging apps — could make the company liable if “an ISIS recruit uses exactly this pattern to kill some Americans.”

Source: Obama Administration War Against Apple and Google Just Got Uglier

The wars of the future will be fought between increasingly archaic nation states and corporate states just as the Glorious Revolution and the French Revolution (and in part the American Revolution) signaled the decline of monarchies in Europe.

Civilians Using Handguns in Self Defense

The NRA likes the idea of training so much that it’s floated the idea of mandatory firearms training for school children. On the other hand, it’s opposed laws requiring mandatory training for gun purchases. Many states allow concealed carry without any training or permit for people as young as 16. Most states don’t require gun owners or purchasers to even be licensed, much less trained. And a handful, like Arizona, have passed laws prohibiting localities from imposing their own training requirements.

Source: Watch what happens when regular people try to use handguns in self-defense – Washington Post

I grew up around guns in our home and the homes of my friends (and the occasional gun rack on the back glass of pickups), and hunting culture. I understand the sentiment that guns are tools and can be used for evil just like any other tool. What I don’t understand is the resistance from some groups to legislate mandatory licensing and training (similar to what we do with automobiles).

If you’re really of the “government wants to take away our guns” so we need to hold up the 2nd amendment as our way to preserve freedom persuasion, I’d argue that a citizenry that is licensed and trained to handle firearms is a much bigger threat to “the government” than the current situation.

“What is Left is Pretty Much McDonalds”

“What is left is pretty much McDonald’s — the restaurant of the masses, the great democratizer, the substitute for the community square, where it is possible to read or nurse a cheap cup of coffee for hours, or to nap after taking a daily methadone dose.”

Source: A Manhattan McDonald’s With Many Off-the-Menu Sales – The New York Times

Confessions of a Congress Member

Discouragement is for wimps. We aren’t going to change the Constitution, so we need to make the system we have work. We are still, despite our shortcomings, the most successful experiment in self-government in history. Our greatest strength is our ability to bounce back from mistakes like we are making today. Get over your nostalgia: Congress has never been more than a sausage factory. The point here isn’t to make us something we’re not. The point is to get us to make sausage again. But for that to happen, the people have to rise up and demand better.

Source: Confessions of a congressman: 9 secrets from the inside – Vox

Anonymous member of Congress with some interesting insight into the workings of our government in 2015.

The title refers to a “congressman,” so I assumed this is a male. However the writer never uses that term but frequently uses “member of Congress” or “Congress member.”

Obama Administration Issues Final Contraception Coverage Religious Accommodation Rules

“Providing written notice, courts have determined, does not constitute a substantial burden on religious exercise. Beyond that, the rulings emphasize, contraception is made available and paid for by others under the plan, not the objecting religious organizations.”

Source: Obama Administration Issues Final Contraception Coverage Religious Accommodation Rules

Finally.

Now let’s move on to issues affecting our communities, states, and country that deserve the type of scrutiny, examination, and money that this has received.

Troubling Theology

“Nothing surprises our God. He is perfect in omniscience. He knows everything that can be known including what is going to happen in the future. In other words, what happened on the Friday before last came as no surprised to God. Neither will it prove any kind of meaningful impediment to the advance of His kingdom. We serve the God whose plans could not be derailed by the unjust death of His Son. His church survived the Roman Empire. It survived Christendom. It survived the Enlightenment. It survived Darwinism. It survived Stalin. It survived Mao. The church is surviving ISIS and Boko Haram and Al Shabaab and Al Qaeda. Christians holding to the historically orthodox position on sex and marriage should in no way think that the legalization of same-sex marriage in this country on the basis of the opinion of five people will pose any kind of an existential threat to the church.”

Source: What I said to my conservative church about same-sex marriage | Baptist News Global Perspectives – Conversations that matter

This strand (fractal?) of a theology is so troubling to me.

When Pres. Obama heard the news about the ACA Supreme Court Decision on Thursday

So, when the briefing finally ended, I asked Denis McDonough to come back into the Oval Office and showed him the clock stuck at 10:10am. I then showed him the back of my camera, where he could see the photo of the President first being told about the decision. The camera time read 10:10am.

via The White House on Medium

Talk about a coincidence on a historic day.

Our Week in Washington D.C.; Or How do I explain to my daughters how important this all is?

“The Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage across the United States Friday in a closely divided ruling that will stand as a milestone in its 226-year history.

The justices ruled 5-4 that states cannot deny gay men and lesbians the same marriage rights enjoyed for thousands of years by opposite-sex couples. Within days if not hours, the decision is expected to trigger same-sex marriages in states that still ban the practice.

“They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law,” Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his 28-page ruling. “The Constitution grants them that right.”

Source: Supreme Court strikes down bans on same-sex marriage

Saving this for posterity because I’ve been in Washington D.C. this week with my wife, our soon-to-be-born baby boy, and my young daughters (age 7 and 5). While we’ve been doing the touristy stuff, we’ve also been in the midst of two major Supreme Court decisions on “Obamacare” and marriage equality.

My girls have gotten to walk past the Supreme Court and stand with us while we took the chants and the applause in after these rulings. I didn’t hide my tears.

What a week. As the Confederate flags come down across Southern states and my own beloved South Carolina after the terrible massacre of innocents in Charleston, we see the rise of something different in our country.

Here’s to new beginnings based on love, reconciliation, and the bridging of divides that those in power have used to try to keep us apart.

Here’s to the future United States and a country that is better for my daughters and son than the one I grew up with.

Amen.

Bernie Sanders Gains on Hillary Clinton in Bloomberg Early-State Polling

Bernie Sanders is gaining on Hillary Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire, with an appeal as an issue-oriented protest vehicle potentially capable of slowing any coronation of the popular front-runner.

Source: Bernie Sanders Gains on Hillary Clinton in Bloomberg Early-State Polling – Bloomberg Politics

I’m really hoping that Sanders can convince Democratic primary voters that he’s not a socialist (that seems to be the drawback) and bring some competition to the seeming inevitability of another Clinton vs Bush race.

To support an oligarchy seems very much against the spirit of what I felt today while standing in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol here in Washington D.C. and pondering how George Washington could have been king.

I’m still not completely sure on my own allegiance to a particular candidate, but issues such as this are troublesome to me.

Oh Hillary, Don’t Do That

Bless her heart (we South Carolinians forgive Frank Underwood’s accent, but that’s just because he’s on Netflix)…

Hillary Clinton’s fake Southern accent gets lost in translation | Fox News: “And there’s nothing more unpleasant to the ear than a phony Southern accent. It’s downright disrespectful and a bit condescending. But because she’s Miss Hill’ry – the mainstream media laughs off her faux dialect.”

http://video.foxnews.com/v/embed.js?id=4262062331001&w=466&h=263Watch the video at video.foxnews.com

Are we sure Chancellor Palpatine didn’t write this?

“Though imperialism is now held in disrepute, empire has been the default means of governance for most of recorded history, and the collapse of empires has always been messy business…Back then it was states at war; now it is sub-states. Imperialism bestowed order, however retrograde it may have been. The challenge now is less to establish democracy than to reestablish order. For without order, there is no freedom for anyone.”

Source: It’s Time to Bring Imperialism Back to the Middle East – ForeignPolicy.com

Yes, western imperialism and colonialism helped cause this mess. Surely there’s a better way forward than re-establishing such hegemonic (and veneer thin) powers in the region.

Propaganda Marketing

The marketing strategy here is to get “influencers” to naturally and realistically spread your messaging/propaganda through their regular channels.

Source: MRBlog | ISIS and the US Government: The Propaganda War – The Marginalia Review of Books

Thomas does a great job breaking down the current efforts by our intelligence community to use hyperlocal and big idea marketing to counteract the spread of ISIS related media.

Marketing matters!

Is the Original New Testament Lost?

House of Cards is fun, but take a few mins to watch something a little more substantive this weekend (like this):

As you might expect, I argue that even though we have thousands of manuscripts of the New Testament, we do not have many *early* ones — and hardly any *really* early ones. That is why we can not (always? ever?) know with absolute certainty what the authors of the New Testament originally said. That matters for lots of reasons, one of which is that fundamentalist Christians but their faith in the very words of the Bible. But what if, in some passages, we don’t know what those words were? Dan, also as expected, argued that we have such extensive evidence for the New Testament — more than for any other book from the ancient world — we can trust that we have what the authors originally wrote.

via My Debate with Dan Wallace: Is the Original NT Lost? – Christianity in Antiquity (CIA): The Bart Ehrman Blog.