progressive involvement

Using the gun she used to kill Vince Foster and four people in Libya, Hillary Clinton turned it on herself and shot herself in the head hoping to induce a blood clot so that she wouldn't have to testify in Congress about her Benghazi rampage

Or something like that.

Fact check

In the discussion regarding embassy security, it should be kept in mind that the House of Representatives cut State Department requests by $128 million in fiscal year 2011, and $331 million for fiscal year 2012.

In 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that cuts to her department would be "detrimental to America's national security."  House Republicans rejected her argument.

Embassy attacks in perspective

Seven U.S. Embassies And Consulates Were Attacked Under George W. Bush

2002: U.S. Consulate In Karachi, Pakistan, Attacked; 10 Killed, 51 Injured.

2004: U.S. Embassy Bombed In Uzbekistan.

2004: Gunmen Stormed U.S. Consulate In Saudi Arabia.

2006: Armed Men Attacked U.S. Embassy In Syria.

2007: Grenade Launched Into U.S. Embassy In Athens. From The New York Times:

2008: Rioters Set Fire To U.S. Embassy In Serbia.

2008: Ten People Killed In Bombings At U.S. Embassy In Yemen.

CARTER

1979: Iranians Seized Hostages After Storming U.S. Embassy In Tehran.

1979: Pakistanis Attacked And Burned U.S. Embassy In Islamabad.

1979: U.S. Embassy In Tripoli Was Attacked And Burned.

REAGAN

1983: Bomb Blast At U.S. Embassy In Beirut Killed More Than 60, Including 17 Americans.

1983, bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon:

1983: Car Bomb Damaged U.S. Embassy In Kuwait.

1987: Car Bomb Exploded Outside U.S. Embassy In Italy.

GEORGE H.W. BUSH

1990: Palestinian Guerrillas Attempted To Attack U.S. Embassy In Tel Aviv. From a June 21, 1990, New York Times article:

CLINTON

1998: Terrorist Bombs Near U.S. Embassies In Kenya, Tanzania Injured More Than 1,000 And Killed More Than 60, Including Eight Americans. From an August 7, 1998, Associated Press article:

Source:  Media Matters

Practicing your piety before others

Former baptist pastor, and current political grifter, Mike Huckabee, recently trotted out that hoary old canard about God getting kicked out of schools and people, and children, getting shot because of it.  Huckabee takes the view that public displays of piety impress the Lord God.  God pats people--and whole nations!--on the head for their sanctimonious posturing.  

This would go somewhat against the words of Jesus, who regularly took a dim view of public pieties.  He remarked how the scribes, the poseurs of the day, liked to affect long prayers in public "for the sake of appearance" (Mk 12:40), and he didn't think much of it.  

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus' most important speech in Matthew's gospel, he says, "Beware of practising your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven" (Mt 6:1).  He went on at some length:

5 ‘And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.⁶But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Similarly, the prophet Amos had some choice words for people who liked to affect religiosity.  He didn't level his words at public display, however.  He went right after the people in church!  Amos 5:

²¹ I hate, I despise your festivals,
   and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. 
²² Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,
   I will not accept them

Worship without justice is not supported anywhere in the scriptures.  You want to impress the Lord God?  Then, said Amos:  "Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream" (Am 5:24).

"We have systematically removed God from our schools," Huckabee says.  Really?  Any god who lets himself get pushed around so easily can't be much of a god, and any god who withdraws from the scene to make a culture war point isn't worth worshiping.  Mike Huckabee's is a shallow and magical religion with a petulant and little god. 

 

Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison

 

Immortalize yourself

Have a character named after yourself in John Irving's next novel.  

All you have to do is make the winning bid at the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights on-line auction.

Current bid to be a character in John Irving's novel is $3250.

Republicans and Democrats agree!

No cuts to Medicare.  

George McGovern in hospice care

George McGovern, 90, has entered hospice care in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  No other details of his condition have been announced at the present time.  He is "coming to the end of his life," said his daughter, Ann McGovern.  

It was my good fortune to finally meet the man for whom I cast my first vote for president in 1972.  I was driving past the Tattered Cover Book Store (when it used to be at Cherry Creek) at 7:00 p.m. on a Tuesday night, listening to an NPR announcer mention that George McGovern would be at the Tattered Cover at 7:00.

I wheeled into the parking garage, dashed for the third floor door, and there was the gathering with Sen. McGovern preparing to speak.  He was then in his 80's, and was working on agricultural and food issues for the United Nations in Rome at the time.

It was classic McGovern--the same flat, prairie voice, the same undaunted progressivism.  May God hold him close as he prepares to enter into glory.

From his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1972:

From secrecy and deception in high places; come home, America. From military spending so wasteful that it weakens our nation; come home, America. From the entrenchment of special privileges in tax favoritism; from the waste of idle lands to the joy of useful labor; from the prejudice based on race and sex; from the loneliness of the aging poor and the despair of  the neglected sick — come home, America. Come home to the affirmation that we have a dream. Come home to the conviction that we can move our country forward. Come home to the belief that we can seek a newer world, and let us be joyful in that homecoming, for this "is your land, this land is my land — from California to New York island, from the redwood forest to the gulf stream waters — this land was made for you and me." So let us close on this note: May God grant each one of us the wisdom to cherish this good land and to meet the great challenge that beckons us home.

 

 

 

It works!

In last night's speech, President Clinton promoted education finance reform.  One specific idea he proposed is that college student loans would be paid off as fixed percentage of one’s income.

That is exactly how many Habitat for Humanity affiliates structure their mortgages, i.e. as a percentage of income, financed over how many years necessary to pay it off.

Not to mention winning World War II

People bash government by making jokes about the Post Office.  This never made any sense.  For 46 cents, some government employee, about three days from now, will hand-deliver a letter to your Aunt Freda in North Carolina.  What an incredible bargain.

Turns out as well, that the government did too invent the internet.  In fact, if I remember correctly, Al Gore was one of the sponsors of the legislation.  Says tech expert Farhad Manjoo:

If you spend time looking at the history of the Internet, you’ll find the government there at every step. Researchers working directly for the government and at university labs funded by the government were some of the first people on the planet to think up a worldwide network, and, at the beginning, they were the only people working to build such an outlandish thing. That’s not true just of the Internet. Pop open your smartphone and you’ll find government research at the heart of just about every component, from the batteries to the GPS chip to the microprocessor to the multitouch interface. 

Not too long ago, I watched John Ford's version of John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath.  The Joad family was more down-and-out than ever, and they were just about to give up.  

Then, however, they chanced upon a camp run by the Department of Agriculture.  The camera zoomed in to show that the camp was run by the government.  You breathed a sigh of relief because now, you thought, these people might actually get some help, and they did.

John Ford clearly intended for people to see that the government could be on the side of the average person against a rapacious private sector.  Heresy!