Old Fogey's Quotes for Saturday

Return of my column per my daughter's request

"I would suggest that the rhetoric be cooled at least long enough for people to read the opinion."
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) , regarding Scotus decision against military tribunals
GOP Seeks Advantage In Guantanamo Ruling

"The Supreme Court reminded the world yesterday that America is a nation of laws that insists on following rules, even as it brings killers to justice. Over time,that will be our most effective anti-terrorist weapon of all."
David Ignatius in WaPo editorial over the decision
Fight Terror -- With Law

"Looks as if the blank check that the Bush administration has been waving around has finally bounced."
Editorial, San Francisco Chronicle
Return of due process

"It's a return to our fundamental values. And that return marks a high water point in American history. It means that we can't be scared out of who we are. And that's victory, folks."
Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift, one of Hadman's attorneys who brought the case to the Supreme Court
Overreach Overturned

[This will be my final quote on this issue. Before I leave the subject, however, I have to wonder how Swift will be Swiftboated]

"Accusations of bigamy and child abuse, illegitimate children and a tabloid description of one candidate curled in the fetal position after downing half a pint of ice cream sound like top-rated, daytime fiction."
AP News Release , regarding GOP NY fight for Senate nomination
GOP Candidates in N.Y. Turn on Each Other

“I believe that when there are 60 Republican senators we will move Social Security from the present Ponzi scheme to a fully funded, individually held system.”
Grover Norquist speaking at an American Prospect breakfast
Norquist

 
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Last Word on Obama Speech

What he said about separation of church and state

I've just been reading bloggers trashing Obama for his supposed position on separation of church and state, because he dared to say that we needed to get a sense of proportion about it. None has noted what Obama said about the Christian right on the issue. I give the quote below:

For one, they need to understand the critical role that the separation of church and state has played in preserving not only our democracy, but the robustness of our religious practice. Folks tend to forget that during our founding, it wasn't the atheists or the civil libertarians who were the most effective champions of the First Amendment. It was the persecuted minorities, it was Baptists like John Leland who didn't want the established churches to impose their views on folks who were getting happy out in the fields and teaching the scripture to slaves. It was the forbearers of the evangelicals who were the most adamant about not mingling government with religious, because they did not want state-sponsored religion hindering their ability to practice their faith as they understood it.

Moreover, given the increasing diversity of America's population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.

And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson's, or Al Sharpton's? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let's read our bibles. Folks haven't been reading their bibles.

I'd have to say they also haven't been reading his speech.

 
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Has Daily Kos Read Obama's Speech?

Liberal bloggers attack Obama

I was astounded to see the angry liberal postings about Obama's speech at Sen. Obama Steps In It in Kurtz's Media Notes at the WaPo. As one who has never shied away from the label liberal, I am disturbed by these attacks. Some of us who attended the conference shared that we felt many Christians viewed us as suspicious because we were liberal, and yet, among Democratic liberals we sometimes had our credentials questioned because of our faith.

It appears we were right. We can pretend that this situation does not exist, because it makes Democrats look bad in an election year. Or we can do like Obama did and try to confront the intersection of religion and politics in a thoughtful way.

Let us not become like the Republican Right, too focused on our own hot-button issues. It is far more important to fight poverty than to try to eliminate the word God from political discourse.

I was especially upset by Daily Kos, (Kos) as it is one of my favorites. It is very apparent that he based his comments upon press coverage of Obama's speech instead upong the speech itself. Take for instance the following characterization of Obama's speech by Kos:

Democrats aren't religious, they don't go to church and are secular atheists.

Please go to http://www.obama.senate.gov/speech for the entire text of Obama's speech and see if you read anything even remotely related to saying this.

Kos also makes it seem that Obama was somehow disrespectful toward other faiths. What did Obama actually say?

It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn't fall out in church. The questions I had didn't magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.

That's a path that has been shared by millions upon millions of Americans - evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims alike; some since birth, others at certain turning points in their lives. It is not something they set apart from the rest of their beliefs and values. In fact, it is often what drives their beliefs and their values. . . .

And by the way, we need Christians on Capitol Hill, Jews on Capitol Hill and Muslims on Capitol Hill talking about the estate tax. When you've got an estate tax debate that proposes a trillion dollars being taken out of social programs to go to a handful of folks who don't need and weren't even asking for it, you know that we need an injection of morality in our political debate.

I beg everyone to read Obama's speech for themselves and to remember that although liberal blogs are an important source of truth, they don't always get it right.

 
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Obama's Real Speech

Somebody actually listened

Below I give you the first reliable account of what happened when Obama spoke at Pentacost 2006, which I attended. As I noted in an earlier blog, far too much emphasis has been placed upon the political aspects of the senator's speech. What made it moving was the faith it revealed. I was going to try to go back and reconstruct as much of the speech as I could from my notes, but Dionne of the WaPo makes that unnecessary, so I'll work on bringing you accounts of the other great talks of the conference. It is important to remember that we were there as people of faith, not Democrats (although I didn't meet anyone who was a Republican). We want to put poverty on the national agenda because it is a Christian issue, not a Democratic gimick for victory.

Obama's Eloquent Faith
By E. J. Dionne Jr.Friday, June 30, 2006; Page A27

Many Democrats discovered God in the 2004 exit polls.

Specifically, they looked at the importance of religious voters to President Bush's majority and decided: We need some of those folks. Off Democrats went to their Bibles, finding every verse they could -- there are many -- describing the imperative to help the poor, battle injustice and set the oppressed free.

Now, human beings often find God in unexpected places, so why shouldn't the exit polls be this era's answer to the burning bush? And a lot of Democrats insist, fairly, that they were people of faith long before the results of 2004 were tabulated.

Yet there is often a terrible awkwardness among Democratic politicians when their talk turns to God, partly because they also know how important secular voters are to their coalition. When it comes to God, it's hard to triangulate.

So, when a religious Democrat speaks seriously about the relationship of faith to politics, the understandable temptation is to see him as counting not his blessings but his votes. Thus did the Associated Press headline its early stories about Barack Obama's speech to religious progressives on Wednesday: "Obama: Democrats Must Court Evangelicals."

Well, yes, Obama, the senator from Illinois who causes all kinds of Democrats to swoon, did indeed criticize "liberals who dismiss religion in the public square as inherently irrational or intolerant." But a purely electoral reading of Obama's speech to the Call to Renewal conference here misses the point of what may be the most important pronouncement by a Democrat on faith and politics since John F. Kennedy's Houston speech in 1960 declaring his independence from the Vatican. (You can decide on Obama's speech yourself: The text can be found at http://www.obama.senate.gov/speech .)

Here's what stands out. First, Obama offers the first faith testimony I have heard from any politician that speaks honestly about the uncertainties of belief. "Faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts," Obama declared. "You need to come to church in the first place precisely because you are first of this world, not apart from it."

In an interview yesterday, Obama didn't back away. "By definition, faith admits doubt," he said. "Otherwise, it isn't faith. . . . If we don't sometimes feel hopeless, then we're really insulating ourselves from the world around us."

On the matter of church-state separation, Obama doesn't propose some contrived balancing act but embraces religion's need for independence from government. In a direct challenge to "conservative leaders," he argued that "they need to understand the critical role that the separation of church and state has played in preserving not only our democracy, but the robustness of our religious practice."

"Folks tend to forget," he continued, "that during our founding, it wasn't the atheists or the civil libertarians who were the most effective champions of the First Amendment," but "persecuted minorities" such as Baptists "who didn't want the established churches to impose their views."
Like most liberals who are religious, Obama finds a powerful demand for social justice embedded in the great faith traditions. He took a swipe at those who would repeal the estate tax, saying this entailed "a trillion dollars being taken out of social programs to go to a handful of folks who don't need and weren't even asking for it."

But he insisted that social improvement also requires individual transformation. When a gang member "shoots indiscriminately into a crowd . . . there's a hole in that young man's heart -- a hole that the government alone cannot fix." Contraception can reduce teen pregnancy rates, but so can "faith and guidance" which "help fortify a young woman's sense of self, a young man's sense of responsibility and a sense of reverence that all young people should have for the act of sexual intimacy."

And if you think this sounds preachy, Obama has an answer: "Our fear of getting 'preachy' may also lead us to discount the role that values and culture play in some of our most urgent social problems."

Obama's talk will inevitably be read as a road map for Democrats struggling to speak authentically to people of faith. It's certainly that, but it would be better read as a suggestion that both parties begin to think differently about the power of faith.

"No matter how religious they may or may not be," Obama said, "people are tired of seeing faith used as a tool of attack. They don't want faith used to belittle or to divide. They're tired of hearing folks deliver more screed than sermon."

I think I hear some rousing "Amens!" out there -- from Republicans no less than from Democrats.

 
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More on Obama

Other media references to his speech

Here are a few more links regarding Obama's talk:

From ABC news: Obama: Dems Need Religion

From CBS news: Obama Stresses Value Of Faith

From MSNBC: Obama urges Dems to court evangelicals

From Chicago Sun-Times (one of the best): Obama puts his faith in spotlight

I will later be giving you more about what I thought about the speech.

 
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Poverty and Politics, Part II

Anderson Cooper on Obama's Speech

I just found a second article on Obama's speech at our gathering. Cooper at least bothers to mention the setting before settling down to political analysis.

See Dems hope 'faith' talk will win elections

The problem with this article is that it makes it seem that we were a Democratic gathering seeking to find our way on religious campaigning. Instead, we were Christians seeking to make both parties recognize that the central focus of Jesus' teaching was to work with "the least of these" to provide basic human needs.

Here a few excerpts from the CNN online article by Cooper:

Nothing is more transparent than inauthentic expressions of faith -- the politician who shows up at a black church around election time and claps, off rhythm, to the gospel choir. Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. To say that men and women should not inject their personal morality into public policy debates is a practical absurdity.

Those aren't my words. I'm quoting. And who am I quoting? You might guess an evangelical Christian leader. Perhaps even a Republican strategist or conservative lawmaker. But would guess a Democratic senator? Those are the words of Senator Barack Obama, addressing a bipartisan religious conference sponsored by Sojourners founder Rev. Jim Wallis.

 
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Poverty, Not Politics

Mainstream Media's Obessions

I was not going to blog yet, but I caught this article in the WaPo ( Will Democrats Put Their Faith in Obama? ) while eating breakfast and felt compelled to comment upon it.

It regards the gathering I attended this week. The major purpose of the convention was to launch a New Covenant regarding poverty. The three main demands are: 1.) raise the minimum wage; 2.) commit to end child poverty in the US; and 3.) budget more funds for the MDG efforts to end extreme poverty in the world. A large number of sponsors have signed on, including most major religious denominations in the US. Copies of the Covenant were sent to everyone in Congress as well as the major media outlets. We were considered significant enough to draw important politicians from both parties.

Then I look at the WaPo today and its coverage is limited to one speech and to only one aspect of that speech: the political viability of the speaker. Not one word about poverty. The article does mention the covenant but does not explain it.

Without affectation or awkwardness yesterday, he got off phrases such as "we are blessed" and "we can raise up this covenant" and "you need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away."

The first quote in the article was a mere aside in a carefully argued speech:

Democratic phenom Barack Obama, the subject of the latest presidential boomlet,was nearing the end of a thoughtful speech about religion in politics yesterday at a church in Thomas Circle when he mentioned the Sermon on the Mount.

"It's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application," he quipped.

What annoys me the most is a statement about the crowd's reaction to Obama' speech:

The crowd was rapturous, giving Obama a far warmer reception than it gave two other senators this week, Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), both considered presidential contenders. "It's the most savvy, sophisticated look at this question by an American politician in a long time," Wallis gushed.

Had Dana Milbank stuck around for the second speech of the morning--one by Marian Wright-Edelman--he would have discovered that she received at least as much applause. The head and founder of the Children's Defense Fund had the crowd even more "rapturous," as did Rep. John Lewis the day before. No doubt Obama's speech was thoughtful and inspiring, but these other two veterans of the civil rights movement of the 1960s were the crowd favorites. Obama offers great hope for the future (and his speech was a major reason for my going to the conference). Hearing him only made me respect him more. However, we were there to fight poverty--not to determine the candidate for the Democratic party. Whereas Obama is a beacon of hope, Lewis and Wright-Edelman are our heroes because of their life-long battles for justice.

It looks like it is going to be hard work making media and Congress focus on poverty rather than politics. We knew it would be.

 
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In God's Name, Make Poverty History

Pentacost 2006

This is just a brief post to highlight things to come. I returned last night from Washington, DC, and leave this morning for the beach. However, later today I will begin sharing my incredible experiences at this great rally of progressive (oh, let's just say liberal) Christians against poverty. I was too tired each night to attempt to blog but took extensive notes. Poverty has long been at the top of my agenda, and it was inspiring to gather with so many people (500+) who felt the same.

You may get tired of hearing so much about poverty from me. That's our goal--to make people so tired of hearing about it that they decide to take action.

Oh, the title of this blog was one of our chants during our march to Capitol Hill.

 
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Numbers

Well, one more thing before I bury myself in work...

Old Fogey is currently in DC attending the Call to Renewal conference, which is sponsored by the progressive Evangelical Sojourners organization (led by Jim Wallis) and is focused on getting our government to address poverty as a moral imperative. I'm going to let her write about her impressions about it, but you can get an an advance view of the conference with this WaPo story on Barack Obama's speech to the conference.

Just got our latest issue of Mother Jones, and their usual factoid section is chock-a-block full of tidbits on poverty in the US. Give it a full, jaw-dropping read, but here are a few of the items that stood out the most for me.

Among households worth less than $13,500, their average net worth in 2001 was $0. By 2004, it was down to –$1,400.

Bush’s tax cuts (extended until 2010) save those earning between $20,000 and $30,000 an average of $10 a year, while those earning $1 million are saved $42,700.

2/3 of the reported “shrinking” gap between white and black men’s wages is attributable to black men dropping out of the labor market altogether.

The true jobless rate of black men in their 20s without a high school diploma is 72%.

13% of U.S. households don’t have a checking account. 1 in 10 don’t have any form of bank account.

In Chicago’s poorest areas, the ratio of check-cashing outlets to banks is 10-to-1.

Check-cashing fees for a worker who brings home $18,000 a year add up to about $450 —that’s 2.5% spent just to access income.

 
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The New New SWIFT Boating

Things are still pedal-to-the-metal around here with loads of freelance duties, travel last weekend to the Blowing Rock/Charlotte, NC area, and now a visit by my Mom and her husband (with a weekend trip to lovely Victoria, BC). And I haven't been paying very close attention to the news, but this caught my eye (via The Hill):

House Republican leaders are expected to introduce a resolution today condemning The New York Times for publishing a story last week that exposed government monitoring of banking records.

[...]

The resolution comes as Republicans from the president on down condemn media organizations for reporting on the secret government program that tracked financial records overseas through the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT), an international banking cooperative.

[...]

The Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal all reported the existence of the program on their websites last Thursday.

President Bush criticized the reports during a press event Monday, calling the disclosure “disgraceful” and a “great harm” to national security. Vice President Dick Cheney, who voiced support for the program over the weekend, followed Bush’s criticism with harsh words of his own.

But this might be just a tad overblown (to put it mildly), according to Salon's War Room:

There's just one little problem here. The transaction-monitoring program described by the Times and other media outlets wasn't much of a secret anyway. As the Boston Globe reports today, "public records -- government documents posted on the Internet, congressional testimony, guidelines for bank examiners, and even an executive order President Bush signed in September 2001 -- describe how US authorities have openly sought new tools to track terrorist financing since 2001."

Among those records is a public report prepared for the United Nations Security Council in 2002, a report that specifically acknowledged that the U.S. government was monitoring transactions through the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Communication, or SWIFT. "The United States has begun to apply new monitoring techniques to spot and verify suspicious transactions," the report said, and it recommended that other countries begin to do the same.

One of the report's authors, a former U.S. diplomat named Victor Comras, tells the Globe that the United States has "spent the last four years bragging [about] how effective we have been in tracking terrorist financing." Unless terrorists were "pretty dumb" Comras says, they had to have known all along that the U.S. government was watching their financial transactions.

I'm hoping to get back to more regular blogging next week.

[UPDATE 3pm] OK, I'm reenergizing with a bit o' coffee and decided to take a quick glance around the blogs. Dan Froomkin over at the WaPo has more details on the "double-secret" SWIFT:

[T]he existence of SWIFT itself has not exactly been a secret. Certainly not to anyone who had an Internet connection.

SWIFT has a Web site, at swift.com.

It's a very informative Web site. For instance, this page describes how "SWIFT has a history of cooperating in good faith with authorities such as central banks, treasury departments, law enforcement agencies and appropriate international organisations, such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), in their efforts to combat abuse of the financial system for illegal activities."

(And yes, FATF has its own Web site, too.)

An e-mail from White House Briefing reader Tim O'Keefe tipped me off to just how nutty it is to suggest that SWIFT keeps a low profile. Among other things, he explained, "SWIFT also happens to put on the largest financial services trade show in the world every year," he wrote. "Swift also puts out a lovely magazine ."

Furthermore, as I noted in Monday's column , it has been my personal experience that your garden-variety wire-transfer form mentions SWIFT. Mine warned: "With respect to payment orders executed through SWIFT, the SWIFT operating rules shall govern the payment orders."

 
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Budgeting Poverty

A graphic reminder of what living in poverty means

I'm leaving in the morning to go to DC for the Pentacost 2006 conference on poverty. In looking over the material they sent me, I found the following link and wanted to share it with you.

State of Poverty Tour

 
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