Nov 5, 2008
Oct 30, 2008
The Economist Weighs In
Count The Economist among the official endorsements for Obama. Here's the article:
The Economists Endorsement for Barack Obama
Count The Economist among the official endorsements for Obama. Here's the article:
The Economists Endorsement for Barack Obama
Obam's Economists
A List of some of his Economic policy advisors:
- Jason Furman
- Austan Goolsbee, University of Chicago tax policy expert
- Karen Kornbluh
- David Cutler, Harvard health policy expert
- Jeff Liebman, Harvard welfare expert
- Michael Froman, Citigroup executive
- Daniel Tarullo, Georgetown law professor
- David Romer, Berkeley macroeconomist
- Christina Romer, Berkeley economic historian
- Richard Thaler, University of Chicago behavioral finance expert
- Robert Rubin, former Treasury Secretary
- Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary
- Alan Blinder, former Vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve
- Jared Bernstein, Economic Policy Institute labor economist
- James Galbraith, University of Texas macroeconomist
- Paul Volcker, Chairman of the Federal Reserve 1979-1987
- Laura Tyson, Berkeley international economist, Bill Clinton economic adviser
- Robert Reich, Berkeley public policy professor, former Secretary of Labor
- Peter Henry, Stanford international economist
- Gene Sperling, former White House economic adviser
- Heidi Hartmann, President, Institute for Women's Policy Research
Other prominent economists who support Obama:
- Brad Delong, Berkeley macroeconomist
- Joseph Stiglitz, 2001 Nobel laureate
- Edmund Phelps, 2006 Nobel laureate
- Ray Fair, Yale macroeconomist
- Dan McFadden, 2000 Nobel laureate
- Robert Solow, 1987 Nobel laureate
Prominent finance people who support Obama (not actual economists):
- William Donaldson, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair 2003-2005
- Arthur Levitt, SEC Chair 1993-2001
- David Ruder, SEC Chair 1987-1989
- Warren Buffet, investor, richest person in world.
One of the things that have caused my support for Barack Obama is his thoughtfulness. His candidacy represents a marked departure from "Bush-like" political action mired in stubbornness and an inability to admit failed policy. With this supporting cast and Obama's ability to process and think through decisions, I find comfort. =)
A List of some of his Economic policy advisors:
- Jason Furman
- Austan Goolsbee, University of Chicago tax policy expert
- Karen Kornbluh
- David Cutler, Harvard health policy expert
- Jeff Liebman, Harvard welfare expert
- Michael Froman, Citigroup executive
- Daniel Tarullo, Georgetown law professor
- David Romer, Berkeley macroeconomist
- Christina Romer, Berkeley economic historian
- Richard Thaler, University of Chicago behavioral finance expert
- Robert Rubin, former Treasury Secretary
- Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary
- Alan Blinder, former Vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve
- Jared Bernstein, Economic Policy Institute labor economist
- James Galbraith, University of Texas macroeconomist
- Paul Volcker, Chairman of the Federal Reserve 1979-1987
- Laura Tyson, Berkeley international economist, Bill Clinton economic adviser
- Robert Reich, Berkeley public policy professor, former Secretary of Labor
- Peter Henry, Stanford international economist
- Gene Sperling, former White House economic adviser
- Heidi Hartmann, President, Institute for Women's Policy Research
Other prominent economists who support Obama:
- Brad Delong, Berkeley macroeconomist
- Joseph Stiglitz, 2001 Nobel laureate
- Edmund Phelps, 2006 Nobel laureate
- Ray Fair, Yale macroeconomist
- Dan McFadden, 2000 Nobel laureate
- Robert Solow, 1987 Nobel laureate
Prominent finance people who support Obama (not actual economists):
- William Donaldson, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair 2003-2005
- Arthur Levitt, SEC Chair 1993-2001
- David Ruder, SEC Chair 1987-1989
- Warren Buffet, investor, richest person in world.
One of the things that have caused my support for Barack Obama is his thoughtfulness. His candidacy represents a marked departure from "Bush-like" political action mired in stubbornness and an inability to admit failed policy. With this supporting cast and Obama's ability to process and think through decisions, I find comfort. =)
Oct 29, 2008
Powell: I Support Senator Barack Obama
This is a man with an impeccable record of service to his country; he is wise, thoughtful and sensible. What I appreciate specifically in this YouTube clip is his thoughts on members of the GOP demonizing Muslims. He articulated far better than I could have, the discomfort with generalizations and fear tactics. Worth a watch.
This is a man with an impeccable record of service to his country; he is wise, thoughtful and sensible. What I appreciate specifically in this YouTube clip is his thoughts on members of the GOP demonizing Muslims. He articulated far better than I could have, the discomfort with generalizations and fear tactics. Worth a watch.
Rocky Time
I’ve been back in Colorado six days now. It’s funny the things that people can take advantage of, the beauty they can allow to slip through their consciousness, unfazed, unknowing, repellant to the wonder of nature and creation. There’s something spiritual in the grandeur of space, of time, in the majesty of looming peaks and complementing blues, greens, whites and browns. I forgot what it is like to be a child. I forgot what it was like to smile just because the air feels good on the face. I forgot what it was like to stop caring and worrying and scheming and plotting; to just be. This is my pursuit. To reconnect with those simple joys of being.
It’s snowing. The sun is out. The milk dusted mountain caps glimmer in the distance like a dream. Welcome back to the Rockies.
(This is the town of Crested Butte, my new home)
I’ve been back in Colorado six days now. It’s funny the things that people can take advantage of, the beauty they can allow to slip through their consciousness, unfazed, unknowing, repellant to the wonder of nature and creation. There’s something spiritual in the grandeur of space, of time, in the majesty of looming peaks and complementing blues, greens, whites and browns. I forgot what it is like to be a child. I forgot what it was like to smile just because the air feels good on the face. I forgot what it was like to stop caring and worrying and scheming and plotting; to just be. This is my pursuit. To reconnect with those simple joys of being.
It’s snowing. The sun is out. The milk dusted mountain caps glimmer in the distance like a dream. Welcome back to the Rockies.
(This is the town of Crested Butte, my new home)
Sep 19, 2008
Stolen from my good friend, Andrew Helms' blog.....
For the last x number of years I've been receiving countless pro-McCain, or more specifically anti-Obama smear emails alleging he is a Muslim (one of the bad ones), the anti-Christ, Satan or some other derivative of a spawn of Satan.
Just now for the first time did I receive a pro-Obama email. I figured I would share it.
I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....
* If you grow up in Hawaii and are raised by your grandparents, you're
'exotic, different.'
* Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American
story.
* If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
* Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.
* Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well
grounded.
* If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the
first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter
registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years
as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator
representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of
the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years
in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people
while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs,
Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you
don't have any real leadership experience.
* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city
council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000
people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people,
then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking
executive.
* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while
raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're
not a real Christian.
* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your
disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a
Christian.
* If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including
the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
* If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no
other option in sex education in your state's school system while your
unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.
* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in
a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city
community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values
don't represent America 's.
* If you're husband is nicknamed 'First Dude', with at least one DUI
conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until
age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession
of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable and you are know as putting country first.
OK, much clearer now.
For the last x number of years I've been receiving countless pro-McCain, or more specifically anti-Obama smear emails alleging he is a Muslim (one of the bad ones), the anti-Christ, Satan or some other derivative of a spawn of Satan.
Just now for the first time did I receive a pro-Obama email. I figured I would share it.
I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....
* If you grow up in Hawaii and are raised by your grandparents, you're
'exotic, different.'
* Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American
story.
* If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
* Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.
* Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well
grounded.
* If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the
first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter
registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years
as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator
representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of
the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years
in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people
while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs,
Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you
don't have any real leadership experience.
* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city
council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000
people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people,
then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking
executive.
* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while
raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're
not a real Christian.
* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your
disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a
Christian.
* If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including
the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
* If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no
other option in sex education in your state's school system while your
unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.
* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in
a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city
community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values
don't represent America 's.
* If you're husband is nicknamed 'First Dude', with at least one DUI
conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until
age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession
of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable and you are know as putting country first.
OK, much clearer now.
Jun 24, 2008
This made me smile.
Thank God For George W. Bush
In the late summer of 2004, a seminary colleague and I pondered the possibility of another four years of Bush 43. The polls were very close, and it seemed highly possible that we could be faced with four more years of G.W. Bush, coupled with both houses of Congress under the Republicans. My colleague observed ruefully, "Perhaps unified Republican rule would be the best education for the people to see just how much they don't want it." Before I could respond, he added, "Though, I really don't know if we can afford four more years of Bush and a Republican Congress." It turns out he was right -- on both accounts.
One could easily bewail the manifold profligracy of the last incarnation of conservative rule, and what it will cost to recover from it. However, I focus my attention here on the extent to which Congress in general and the Bush presidency in particular have served to fuel an exodus from Bushian conservatism. It was Immanuel Kant who once wrote that David Hume awakened him from his dogmatic slumbers, and in like fashion I rejoice -- indeed, give thanks to God -- for the extent to which many Christians have been awakened from the dogmatic slumbers of narrow moralism to a broader moral agenda, one more consistent with the one whose name we bear when we call ourselves Christians. So, I find myself in an odd place as a progressive follower of Jesus, giving thanks to God for a man generally viewed as the enemy of progressive Christianity -- G.W. Bush.
My thanks, though, would remain too abstract without some attempt to be more specific, and I readily grant that, at best, I am trying to find a silver lining in an otherwise profoundly dark cloud. Yet, it is hard to imagine any one thing that has contributed more to the transition of so many young Christians away from the narrow agenda of many of Bush's right-wing Christian enablers than a presidency that stands in such contrast with the values of Jesus. My good friend and Sojourners colleague Jim Wallis likes to express his puzzlement over how Jesus came to be seen as "pro-war, pro-rich, and pro-American." It is now obvious that under the excesses of GWB, many more have come to be similarly puzzled. What could stand more in opposition to our Lord's injunction to be peacemakers than the Bush doctrine of "pre-emptive war" -- unless it be his willingness to put the development and use of nuclear weapons back on the table? What could stand more in contrast to the values expressed by Jesus in the second half of Matthew 25 than the Bush penchant for tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts paid for on the backs of "the least of these"? What could be more opposed to the God-given obligation to steward the environment than "clean air" rules that worsen air quality, "clean water" rules that worsen water quality, the utter inattention to our dependence on non-renewable energy sources, and the propagandized denial of climate change? Finally, could there be any stronger expression of hubris vis-à-vis the rightful concerns of our global partners than Bushian unilateralism?
On the one hand, George W. Bush will leave a somber legacy, from which it will take years of our best thinking and acting to recover. We rightly bewail this legacy and, sadly, must to some extent own our complicity for allowing his "all fear, all the time" mantra to bewitch us. On the other hand, just as our deepest appreciation of the light often comes in the midst of the darkest hour, perhaps it took the darkness of Bushian conservatism to help us see its bankruptcy on Christian grounds. If this be the case, then maybe there will be one positive, lasting legacy of this administration: Perhaps, for a generation, we will not allow ourselves so easily to be distracted from the simple message of Jesus -- "Blessed are the peacemakers, care for the least of these, think first of the interest of others, love your enemies ...." May it be so.
Chuck Gutenson is the chief operating officer for Sojourners.
Thank God For George W. Bush
In the late summer of 2004, a seminary colleague and I pondered the possibility of another four years of Bush 43. The polls were very close, and it seemed highly possible that we could be faced with four more years of G.W. Bush, coupled with both houses of Congress under the Republicans. My colleague observed ruefully, "Perhaps unified Republican rule would be the best education for the people to see just how much they don't want it." Before I could respond, he added, "Though, I really don't know if we can afford four more years of Bush and a Republican Congress." It turns out he was right -- on both accounts.
One could easily bewail the manifold profligracy of the last incarnation of conservative rule, and what it will cost to recover from it. However, I focus my attention here on the extent to which Congress in general and the Bush presidency in particular have served to fuel an exodus from Bushian conservatism. It was Immanuel Kant who once wrote that David Hume awakened him from his dogmatic slumbers, and in like fashion I rejoice -- indeed, give thanks to God -- for the extent to which many Christians have been awakened from the dogmatic slumbers of narrow moralism to a broader moral agenda, one more consistent with the one whose name we bear when we call ourselves Christians. So, I find myself in an odd place as a progressive follower of Jesus, giving thanks to God for a man generally viewed as the enemy of progressive Christianity -- G.W. Bush.
My thanks, though, would remain too abstract without some attempt to be more specific, and I readily grant that, at best, I am trying to find a silver lining in an otherwise profoundly dark cloud. Yet, it is hard to imagine any one thing that has contributed more to the transition of so many young Christians away from the narrow agenda of many of Bush's right-wing Christian enablers than a presidency that stands in such contrast with the values of Jesus. My good friend and Sojourners colleague Jim Wallis likes to express his puzzlement over how Jesus came to be seen as "pro-war, pro-rich, and pro-American." It is now obvious that under the excesses of GWB, many more have come to be similarly puzzled. What could stand more in opposition to our Lord's injunction to be peacemakers than the Bush doctrine of "pre-emptive war" -- unless it be his willingness to put the development and use of nuclear weapons back on the table? What could stand more in contrast to the values expressed by Jesus in the second half of Matthew 25 than the Bush penchant for tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts paid for on the backs of "the least of these"? What could be more opposed to the God-given obligation to steward the environment than "clean air" rules that worsen air quality, "clean water" rules that worsen water quality, the utter inattention to our dependence on non-renewable energy sources, and the propagandized denial of climate change? Finally, could there be any stronger expression of hubris vis-à-vis the rightful concerns of our global partners than Bushian unilateralism?
On the one hand, George W. Bush will leave a somber legacy, from which it will take years of our best thinking and acting to recover. We rightly bewail this legacy and, sadly, must to some extent own our complicity for allowing his "all fear, all the time" mantra to bewitch us. On the other hand, just as our deepest appreciation of the light often comes in the midst of the darkest hour, perhaps it took the darkness of Bushian conservatism to help us see its bankruptcy on Christian grounds. If this be the case, then maybe there will be one positive, lasting legacy of this administration: Perhaps, for a generation, we will not allow ourselves so easily to be distracted from the simple message of Jesus -- "Blessed are the peacemakers, care for the least of these, think first of the interest of others, love your enemies ...." May it be so.
Chuck Gutenson is the chief operating officer for Sojourners.
Jun 22, 2008
An Increase for Hate Groups
A Washington Post article recently reports that since Senator Obama has been declared the winner of the Democratic Primary, most hate group web sites have seen a huge growth in traffic and increased applications for membership and activity. In a separate article in the same newspaper, the Post says that some 3 out of 10 United States citizens admit to having a "race bias".
Here's the links for the two articles:
"Hate Groups Newest Target"
"3 in 10 Americans Admit to Race Bias"
A Washington Post article recently reports that since Senator Obama has been declared the winner of the Democratic Primary, most hate group web sites have seen a huge growth in traffic and increased applications for membership and activity. In a separate article in the same newspaper, the Post says that some 3 out of 10 United States citizens admit to having a "race bias".
Here's the links for the two articles:
"Hate Groups Newest Target"
"3 in 10 Americans Admit to Race Bias"
Jun 7, 2008
Power understood as the ability to accomplish desired ends is present in human relationships no matter how particular communities or societies are organized. Nevertheless, Christian communities recognize that the source of power in their life is the love of Christ which inspires and directs them. This is a style of power not of coercion but of empowerment of others.... It also connects to those at the margins of society who search for word of God’s love and justice.
Letty M. Russell
Church in the Round
Letty M. Russell
Church in the Round
Jun 4, 2008
The world is overcome not through destruction, but through reconciliation. Not ideals, nor programs, nor conscience, nor duty, nor responsibility, nor virtue, but only God's perfect love can encounter reality and overcome it. Nor is it some universal idea of love, but rather the love of God in Jesus Christ, a love genuinely lived, that does this.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Meditations on the Cross
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