progressive involvement

Lectionary blogging: John 15: 9-17

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. ¹⁰If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. ¹¹I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

12 ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. ¹³No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. ¹⁴You are my friends if you do what I command you. ¹⁵I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. ¹⁶You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. ¹⁷I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

Translation:  Just as the Father loved me, I loved you.  Remain in my love.  If you keep  my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept the commandments of my Father and I remain in his love.  These things I have spoken to you so that my joy might be in you, and that your joy might be complete.  This is my commandment, that you love each other just as I have loved you.  No one has love greater than this, that one might lay down his life on behalf of his friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command you.  No longer do I call you slaves, because the slave does not know what his Lord is doing.  But I called you friends because all that I have heard alongside my Father I have made known to you.  You did not choose me, but I chose you, and I lay you down so that you might go and produce your fruit that might last so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you.  I am giving you these commands so that you might love one another.

 

Who will ultimately win in the battle between the people and the banks?

It's an open question.  So far, austerity budgets are 0-2 at the polls, as both Greece, and now France, have rejected them.  They've rejected them because they don't work.  Good night, people, it was those crazy policies that created the problem in the first place.  Krugman:

What’s wrong with the prescription of spending cuts as the remedy for Europe’s ills? One answer is that the confidence fairy doesn’t exist — that is, claims that slashing government spending would somehow encourage consumers and businesses to spend more have been overwhelmingly refuted by the experience of the past two years. So spending cuts in a depressed economy just make the depression deeper.

In a contest of money and power on one side and the mass of humanity on the other, normally, I'll admit, you'd bet on money and power.  At least, that has been the experience of humanity through history.

The signature achievements of recent history--the Magna Charta, the rise of Democracy, the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation--were attempts to redress this imbalance.  One might even add the demise of polygamy, as democratically-minded populations decided that one spouse out to be enough for everybody, and no longer should powerful men monopolize the female population.

In more recently history, the reform legislation of Theodore Roosevelt was a response to financial corruption and the vast imbalance of wealth in the "gilded age."  What made Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal" new?  For once, the common people caught a break.

The people have more power than they used to, in other words.  Whether they'll put it to use remains to be seen.

 

Socialist hell-hole has money to lend

Sweden has weathered the financial crisis better than most other European countries because Sweden's safety net acts as a stimulus during a recession.

They also regulate their banks.

I asked the Swedish finance minister the other day how they made nationalised banks lend. He said to me: "It's simple. We own them, we tell them what to do and if the directors don't, we sack them and get people who can." That's what me must do.

This is something we won't be able to do since, there, the government owns the banks, whereas here, the banks own the government.

Clinton on LBJ

Molly Ivins once said:  "Outside of Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson was a great president.  Course, that's like saying that outside of the 100 years war, it was a great century."

Johnson got hustled into Vietnam because he didn't want conservatives carping that he was selling out against communism.  Johnson going right on war enabled him to go left at home, or, at least, that's how he tried to play it.

Robert Caro, our nation's finest biographer, has just released his latest work, "The Passage of Power", which covers, roughly, 1960-1965.  In previous volumes, Caro wrote of Johnson's humble origins.  This gave Johnson sympathy for the underdog.  As a young man, he taught poor Mexican children in a country school, and came to have a real affinity for poor people. 

Bill Clinton reviews "The Passage of Power" today in the New York Times.  Clinton writes that although many of his contemporaries rejected LBJ because of Vietnam, he couldn't make that break because of Johnson's singular achievements in civil rights and the war on poverty.

The will to continue these noble efforts were subverted by the failure of Vietnam and the end, as Clinton notes, "of broad-based economic growth that had indeed “lifted all boats” in the early ’60s."

But for a few brief years, Lyndon Johnson, once a fairly conventional Southern Democrat, constrained by his constituents and his overriding hunger for power, rose above his political past and personal limitations, to embrace and promote his boyhood dreams of opportunity and equality for all Americans.

That's exactly why a friend once said to me, "Don't tell anybody, but I'm a closet Lyndon Johnson freak."      

Cool!

 

Why mainliners are more liberal

This "protestant map" displays areas where mainline protestants predominate (gold) and evangelicals predominate (blue).

The map is a little deceiving because, while the west looks solid blue, the reality on the ground is that both "seculars" and Roman Catholics really predominate in the west--outside of Utah/Idaho, where Mormons predominate.

The south, of course, is solid blue.

80% say they're Christian

49% belong to a local congregation.

Nothing to see here, move along folks

HuffPost calls this a bombshell, but it's not really new information.  Many have said that there was a second gunman involved in the assassination of Robert Kennedy.  At least a few books have been written on the subject.

The latest involves a woman, Nina Rhodes-Hughes, who was present with RFK at the Ambassador Hotel on that fateful night.  She claims to have heard at least 12 shots, maybe 14, but says the FBI bargained her down to 8, the number of bullets that Sirhan Sirhan's gun would hold.

Questions about the shooting arose at the very beginning, but were dismissed as "conspiracy theories."  Some noted, for example, that the fateful shot was fired from about one inch to the back of Kennedy's head.  Sirhan was in front of Kennedy.

Other witnesses, in addition to Rhodes-Hughes, have disputed the number of shots fired.  Critical evidence, such as wall paneling with multiple bulletholes, was destroyed long ago by the Los Angeles police department.

 

Almost deserves it for going to Bob Jones University in the first place

Outside of news and sports, I don't watch much TV and hve never watched "Glee".  It must really be bad though.  Chris Peterson was kicked out of Bob Jones University for watching it, even though he watched it on his own computer, off-campus, at a Starbucks.