progressive involvement

Superdelegate contributions

Here's a list of contributions Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton have made to the campaigns of superdelegates.  Obama has given about three times the amount that Sen. Clinton has given.

Lectionary blogging: Luke 24: 13-35

Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles^* from Jerusalem, ¹⁴and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. ¹⁵While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, ¹⁶but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.

In Luke, people are often on a journey.  Luke takes seriously that we are all on a pilgrimage through life.  The Emmaus story, chapter 24, is also a journey story, and one that has certain resonances with another journey story in chapter 2. 

In chapter 2, Mary and Joseph journey away from Jerusalem and find that Jesus is not with them.  They go back to Jerusalem and search for three days.  They are tired and anxious.  When they find Jesus, he speaks of a divine imperative.  He "must be"--dei--about his father's business. 

At Emmaus, another couple journeys away from Jerusalem.  Cleopas and his companion, probably a woman, are sad and disappointed.  In this case, Jesus is with them, but unrecognized.  Jesus speaks again of divine necessity--"Was it not necessary--dei--for the Messiah to suffer these things and enter into his glory?"  In the meal, Cleopas and his friend discover that Jesus had been with them all along. 

"Counterintuitive"

Get this: Richard Mellon Scaife, who financed the "Arkansas Project" back in the 90's, says nice things about Hillary.

More from Rev. Wright

From the Trinity UCC church newsletter, by way Jake Tapper and ABC News: 

1) ISRAEL BUILT AN ETHNIC BOMB TO KILL ARABS

The June 10, 2007 church newsletter on the Pastor's Page includes some rather incendiary charges -- made by an Arab-American activists -- claiming that Israel worked with South Africa to develop an "ethnic bomb that kills Blacks and Arabs."

2) SLURRING ITALIANS

New York Newsday reports that in the Dec. 2007 edition of the Trumpet magazine, published by Rev. Wright's daughter, the pastor in a eulogy for Asa Hilliard wrote that Jesus's "enemies had their opinion about Him... The Italians for the most part looked down their garlic noses at the Galileans." He calls the crucifixion "a public lynching Italian style" executed in "Apartheid Rome."

3) THE US GOVERNMENT IS RUN BY WHITE SUPREMACISTS

In that same eulogy Wright says that the US "government runs everything from the White House to the schoolhouse, from the Capitol to the Klan, white supremacy is clearly in charge, but Asa, like Jesus, refused to be defined by an oppressive government because Asa got his identity from an Omnipotent God."

3) HAMAS OP-ED

Bizzyblog has published the July 22, 2007 church newsletter in which Wright reprints an article by Mousa Abu Marzook, deputy of the political bureau of Hamas, which the US government named a terrorist organization in 1995. (UPDATE: The full Bizzyblog post on this can be read here.)

Marzook was named a Specially Designated Terrorist by the Treasury Department In 2004, the Justice Department indicted Marzook for conspiring to violate U.S. laws that prohibit dealings in terrorist funds.  The op-ed was first published on the Los Angeles Times op-ed page.

 

Hillary, the Democrat

I've posted elsewhere on "Why I support Hillary Clinton," but here's another reason:  She's a Democrat.  That's why it torques me to hear this talk from the Obama campaign about how she's hurting the Democratic Party by staying in the race, and if she really cared about it she'd get out. 

What a load of bull.  In the first place, she's not beat.  To make a basketball reference during this month of "March Madness," Obama is ahead by about 80-78 with 8 minutes to go in the game and his campaign is trying to go into a "stall game," and, what's more, insisting that the game end early by sabotaging re-votes in Florida and Michigan--like this is a good way to "win" the nomination, by backing in to it. 

Yet another statement on human sexuality? Just shoot me

By my count, this is the third social statement on sexuality from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in the past 15 years.  For centuries, we didn't talk about sex at all.  Now that we've started, we can't seem to shut up about it.

A similar study in 1993 was released to the press before many people in the ELCA even knew it was coming down the pike.  If memory serves me correctly, the big deal at that time was that the statement said something positive about masturbation.  Oh, the horror!  This apparently caused a number of Lutherans around the country to get the vapors, and the reaction resulted in the director of the study being pressured to step down.

 

So much for Sen. Obama's red-state appeal

Arkansas (rasmussen)
Obama      27
McCain     43

Alabama (susa)
Obama      35
McCain     62

Missouri (susa)
Obama      39
McCain     53

Kentucky (susa)
Obama      28
McCain     64

Ohio (susa)
Obama      43
McCain     50

North Carolina (susa)
Obama      42
McCain     51

"It's happened twice as fast as we predicted.''

The Wilkins Ice Sheet in Antarctica is disintegrating.  It's happening about 15 years ahead of schedule.  David Vaughn of the British Antarctic Society predicted in 1993 that the ice shelf "would be lost within 30 years." 

"Wilkins is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula yet to be threatened," he said. "I didn't expect to see things happen this quickly.

More at Bloomberg.com.  Photo:  Jim Elliott, British Antarctic Society.

Exactly who is following the "Rovian playbook"?

Anybody see this little article in the Financial Times last December?  It's Karl Rove's advice to the Obama campaign.  Says Earl Hutchinson:

Obama has followed the script to the letter. He's unleashed an all-out no holds barred attack on Clinton's personality, record, and demeanor, and even tossed in some blatant racial digs at her and hubby Bill for supposedly demeaning Dr. King, Jesse Jackson, and of course himself. He's made bold, brash, and loud pitches and promises to do everything from end the war to clean up the economy. This fulfills Rove's admonition to him to stop sounding wishy-washy on the big ticket issues and create an aura and persona of confidence, expertise, and even invincibility about himself.