Normandy was a stop on the way TO Germany

Our president is going to Normandy tomorrow. I am sure that he will say all the right things that we expect any president, regardless of party, to say.

And I am sure that his comments will be worth calling to our attention.

But why is he going to Germany first?

It has been the practice of our presidents to go to Germany whenever they go to Europe. Ronald Reagan even caught heat from conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer when he visited German SS graves on the same trip as he commemorated the fortieth anniversary of D-Day.

I know that we live in a different world now.

But this combining of trips seems to be a slap in the face of our WWII vets and the people who knew or loved them. Would it hurt to do the German visit on a different trip?

Administration's Veterans U-turn

The Obama administration is backing off the suggestion to charge veterans for their health care.  It only seems fair that when we ask people to surrender their personal civil liberties for a period of time and take extraordinary risk limb and life that we honor whatever we promised them before we got them to do so. 

Two observations come immediately: 

1.  We never factor in this cost when we decide to go to war.  We really need to do better accounting before we become so internationally adventurous. 

2.  From 1945 until 1993 only one president did not have military experience.  Since then we have had two draft dodgers and one who was not old enough to be subject to a draft.  It seems likely that with our volunteer military that it may be a long time before another veteran becomes president.  This is neither good nor bad per se, but it will not be hard to understand when veterans become uneasy in the next decade or two.

Lincoln note for the day: 1860 compared with 2008

Eric Black of MinnPost has an interesting article comparing the campaigning and voting practices of 1860 which elected Abraham Lincoln with what we know now and how the election map has rotated almost 180 degrees.

 

He notes some of the differences in ballots between then and now.  The ballots were far from secret and arguing about stray marks and dangling chads would seem strange.

 

Sometimes it seems that our new president was taking extreme measures to compare himself with his fellow Illinoisian.  Black finds some comparison, noting that Obama carried every state that Lincoln carried while the South has become Republican territory and provides links to maps which show this.

 

Our growing religious stewpot

Last month I was at a Baptist funeral at which a rabbi sang “Eagle’s Wings.”  That seemed strange.

 

At an event I was at earlier today somebody mentioned that it was a sign of the times that we were having such a hard time deciding which Jewish man with a Catholic wife should be our senator, that a previous generation would never have given either much hope.

 

As one who remembers when back in the pre-Vatican II days when my Catholic neighbors were told by the sisters at their school that they shouldn’t even go into a nearby Protestant church for a non-Sunday, community event and heard similar cautions mentioned by Protestants about Catholic campuses, events like these do indeed make it seem like we are making progress in tolerance.

 

But I just noticed a post from a Muslim woman in the Washington Post’s and Newsweek’s On Faith which outdoes that all.  It describes a Muslim event at which Rick Warren, Obama’s invocator, spoke and Melissa Etheridge sang.

 

To quote Yakov Smirnov, “What a country!”

Any boy can grow up and become . . .

I remember when I was a child being told that any boy born in this country could grow up and become President. [Of course, this was bull. There isn’t enough time for everybody to become president even if the term is just for one day. And, funny, I don’t remember the same being said about any girl.] But figuring out who was born in this country can put some people in fits.

Late in the 1964 election cycle, Melvin Belli, a famed torts lawyer of the time, filed a lawsuit alleging that Barry Goldwater was not eligible to be President because he was born in the Arizona territory, not in one of the United States.

His case was never heard in court. Courts do not usually rule unless there is a case in hand and with the short timeline and Goldwater’s rejection by the people of 44 states, there was never a case to put in front of any judge[s].

.

The press at the time laughed at the idea, because people born in US territories are citizens at birth. Congress has made it so. But I remember reading some law professor saying shortly afterward that the suit would have had at least some theoretical merit, apparently reading the language to require that a president be born in one of the United States. I looked at my copy of the Constitution and was not sure that I agreed, but figured that it was one of those things that law professors have fun with. Several years later I remember seeing a similar article. A lot of Latin was thrown about.

Now we might have a similar case coming up since John McCain, although a citizen from birth, was born in Panama. A foreign country is not the same as a territory, so the case would be different, but it seems a lot the same to a non lawyer like me.

Pat Kessler of WCCO poo-poohed the idea that Senator McCain is ineligible the other day and most other people have too. I am pretty sure that they are right in the theory.

But even if they are not right, I think it mainly a matter of fact that if the McCain-Palen ticket carries enough states to have 270 or more electoral votes that they will be declared elected.

Let’s think of things practically. When the electoral votes are counted on January 6 and Dick Cheney [possibly after an objection is raised by somebody in Congress] declares that John McCain has been elected President, somebody [maybe not even a nutcase] will likely be running to a federal court house.

But can anybody imagine that the federal court system would step into this separation-of-powers argument to say that the American people’s choice cannot take office after a joint session of Congress has declared him elected, for a legal reason that even most attorneys cannot understand.

Even if the Supreme Court did not have a 7 to 2 Republican majority this would not happen. But it will give a few lawyers and professors something to think and talk about for a while.

Lawyers and professors are free to enlighten us here, but the matter seems clear to me.

The Constitution refers to our republic as the “United States of America.” Barack Obama was born in neither North America nor South America, but on a Pacific island. Will anybody run with this?

If you don't trust the polls, maybe you want to think of things this way

We are entering the time of the election cycle when we start hearing about how irrelevant things affect our elections. This morning I heard that when the Redskins win on the last day before the election that one party wins and when they lose the other does. It supposedly worked out that way for the last dozen or so quadrennial cycles.

Others have based similar theories on things like hem lengths of skirts, whether the Dow Jones goes up or down the day/week/month before the election, or whether the American League or National League team wins the World Series. If you take a small enough sample you can make any of these work for a spell, and indeed their could be a relationship between stock prices and politics.

But I have observed one thing which nobody seems to have noticed. I don’t know that there is any cause-effect thing here, but I do admit that we are not as geographically united a country as we sometimes seem to think we are.

But the truth I have noticed is this: SINCE 1944 EVERY WINNING NATIONAL TICKET HAS HAD AT LEAST ONE CANDIDATE WHO WAS RESIDENT OF OR NATIVE TO A SOUTHERN OR BORDER STATE, border state being defined as one where slavery was still legal up until the Civil War.

To be specific

1944. Harry Truman [Missouri]

1948. Truman and Alben Barkley [Kentucky]

1952 and 1956. Dwight Eisenhower [born in Texas]

1960 and 1964. Lyndon Johnson [Texas]

1968 and 1972. Spiro Agnew [Maryland]

1976. Jimmy Carter [Georgia]

1980. 1984, and 1988. George H. W. Bush [Texas]

1992 and 1996. Bill Clinton [Arkansas] and Al Gore [Tennessee]

2000 and 2004. George W. Bush [Texas]

So who is it this year?

Palin and McCain don’t qualify, so I guess it will have to be Obama and Biden [Delaware].

Maybe we will know if this holds out some time next week.

ADDENDUM [11/5/08]: Well, it was Obama and Biden, so the string continues for one more cycle.

This is an interesting country

We learned last year that Barack Obama was Muslim. Then this last winter we learned that he had an imam who was called “Reverend” at a strangely-name mosque with the words “Trinity” and “Christ” in its name who said strange things. Now we find out that his wife’s cousin is a rabbi. [story]

Obama’s family’s long-time connections with this land have made for some interesting developments. His opponents merely snicker when they are reminded that Dick Cheney is the Senator’s cousin and now we learn that a rabbi is his wife’s cousin. This is indeed an interesting country.

And that seems to be about all that these things show, but that won’t stop conspiracy foes with nothing better to do from playing with something. We will probably find out that Mr. Obama only married his wife to get the Jewish vote.

Earlier post: Observations on Obama, his mosque, and his imam [3/23/08]

Something wrong with Community Organizing?

Community organizer is a vague title which covers a lot of things. It is a title that even I used to have. I can assure anybody who wonders, though, that there is nothing inherently evil in organizing people or communities and nobody gets rich doing it.

Even in the religiously conservative Christianity Today, Stan Guthrie says, “Whether community organizing is the best way to help the poor is one thing, but to dismiss out of hand the work of someone willing at least to try to help is another entirely.”

But The Woman Who Does Not Love Her Children attacks Obama because he used to be a community organizer, contrasting that with being a small town mayor. It is kind of like attacking garlic because it doesn’t taste a lot like horseradish. They both have their place. Both Obama and TWDNLHC went on to other things. They both probably had ambitions to do so when they took those positions, but that’s politics, isn’t it? So, where’s the story?

Cf: earlier post, Ambition, the Hidden Trait [1/8/08]

Will the Real Christian please stand up? [Or has he already?]

They still question Senator Obama’s religious bona fides. Former Senator Rick Santorum has labeled Obama’s faith as “phoney.”

Remember the Boschwitz “Jewish letter?” He said that Paul Wellstone was not truly Jewish and it helped make him a former Senator.

Well, Santorum already has the title “former.”

And, James Dobson wants people to pray for rain in Denver.

Cf. http://minnesotaindependent.com/view/religious-right11

Glad hands under a Copper Dome [not the one on Selby]

I haven’t been to the Copper Dome in a long time, in fact for so long that I did not think to put it on my restaurant list on the right side of this page. But Barack Obama was there, glad-handing all around.

I don’t know what to read there. People paid good money to see in Mpls., but got to see him for free here. If I were one of the big wallets who saw him there, I might be urinated.

But I am not one of them.

And I can tell myself and whomever else might be interested that Obama and I eat at the same place, albeit not at the same time.

When public people make personal decisions

Leith Anderson is the pastor of a large Baptist church in Eden Prairie, Wooddale Church. As such he can be considered the pastor of one of Minnesota’s most prominent politicians, Governor Pawlenty. He is also President of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Commenting on the Obama family’s recent decision to leave Trinity UCC, he has observed,

How does [Barack Obama] find a new church home for himself and his family? Few other Americans have to search out and select a home Church with 300 million fellow citizens looking over their shoulders.

Even if we don't overlook his past church relationship let's at least call for some privacy in choosing the next Obama congregation.

I am sure that I will be interested in what the Senator and his family choose to do. I cannot imagine that it will happen before November 4^th, but I do think that Dr. Anderson’s plea is certainly in order.

Is Wright wrongfully wounding Obama? And does America appreciate context?

I actually watched Dr. Jeremiah Wright jr.’s speech at the National Press Club live on C-SPAN last Monday. I had been up all night and I guess that maybe I missed its significance.

Parts of the speech seemed like something you might expect a black leader and/or United Church of Christ persoin to say. I did figure that the more Dr. Wright stayed in the background, that the better the chances for the Junior Senator from Illinois becoming president.

As I noted before, crazy ideas come from the denomination with which I am connected. There is a firm belief that everybody needs to learn divine truth[s] for him/herself and feel free to express what they have discerned to be such truth[s].

I have been hearing ever since Monday that Dr. Wright seems to be bringing Senator Obama down, almost as if that is what he wants to do. The Senator has had to pretty much renounce the man. Some speculate that the Junior Senator from New York or people close to her have been keeping Dr. Wright in the spotlight to damage the Obama campaign.

So now I reluctantly suspect that Dr. Wright’s comments may now have that affect. What bothers me is that I am not sure that it is because of what he is saying or because the American public just cannot put the comments into perspective.

There are always conspiracy ideas going around, from the Illuminati of a previous era and the Trilateral Commission and the Federal Reserve of a later era to the Reichstag-September 11^th or the Government invented HIV theories of the present age. I haven’t signed on to a lot of them, but they stay in vogue because there seems to be just enough fact around to make them credible to many.

I doubt if the government invented HIV. However, I am not sure that they haven’t made good use of it since by being overly passive.

I have not signed onto the Obama wagon, but it is no secret that I have little admiration for Senator Clinton. [Senator Rodham would have had more, substantially more.] But regardless of who you and I like, the public is entitled to have its choices better framed with irrelevancies like a nattering clergyperson kept out of things.

Leonard Pitts, jr. is harder on Dr. Wright than I am. But perhaps the summary of a recent column he wrote summarizes the situation well. Noting that a cousin of his held Dr. Wright in awe and lamenting his disappointment and disagreement, he noted

He had his chance to walk on water but - sorry, cousin - he fell in instead. The only remaining question is whether he will pull Barack Obama down with him.

Earlier post: Observations on Obama, his mosque, and his imam [3/23/08]

Observations on Obama, his mosque, and his imam

If I believe all that I hear lately, Barack Obama, whose being Muslim has been well documented on countless blogs and talk shows over the last year or so, somehow has a pastor [or, more correctly, until recently had a pastor] at some strange mosque in Chicago called the Trinity United Church of Christ. “Trinity,” “church,” and “Christ” seem like strange words to be in the name of a mosque, but I am not an expert on Islam. Maybe a “pastor” is some special kind of imam. This “pastor,” Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, jr. baptized Mr. Obama several years ago and also officiated at his marriage and baptized his children. I am not sure where baptism sits among the Muslim rites, but as I said, I am not an expert on Islam.

I do know something about a Christian denomination called the “United Church of Christ” [UCC] which is a predominantly white Protestant denomination. I have been a member of one of its congregations since 1968 and at one time was actually a student at one of the denomination’s theological seminaries.

I have heard many of their mostly white, male, and straight clergypeople and I have heard several who were not white or not male or not straight. I have read articles and position statements from the denomination’s people, both clergy and lay.

The things which Dr. Wright is quoted as saying may be surprising but if the Trinity United Church of Christ were indeed a Christian body like the other congregations who use the UCC label, instead of the secret mosque it must be, the comments certainly would not seem shocking when one considers that the entire denomination seems to be extremely tolerant of strangeness and does not seem to have any conception of heresy.

Dr. Wright has apparently said, “God damn America” as part of a sermon. Isn’t that what white Baptist Phelps is essentially saying when he brings his strident pickets to military funerals? No. actually Phelps is saying that God is already damning America. CONTEXT IS IMPORTANT. In fact I can think of a lot of situations in which religious figures, clergy or lay, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, or Jewish might string those three words together in the right context

Dr. White was senior pastor at Trinity mosque for over thirty years. He must have delivered a lot of sermons or messages or lessons or whatever they’re called. Why not look at a little more before rushing to judgment? The membership of his church at the time of his recent retirement was almost one hundred times what it was when he started there. Considering that people are constantly dying, moving, and changing faiths, to move a church from 80 to 8,000 probably meant that at least 12,000 people must have joined Trinity Church while he was there, yet nobody outside Illinois and the religious community ever seemed to hear of him. Whatever he was doing must not have been too scary or somebody would have “outed” him earlier, and if Obama were truly a good politician he would have had an earlier opportunity to run away.

Somehow a lot of our leading people say outrageous or stupid things and still stay respectable. Andrew Young said that the British had invented racism, but somehow he stayed respectable and was confirmed to be our Ambassador to the United Nations and later served as mayor of a major American city. [Of course the claim was not accurate, since there are no new sins and racism was around before there were British, but it was only mild hyperbole since the British have done a lot to perfect racism.] W went to Bob Jones University, a school whose president once called on God to strike President Reagan and Secretary of State Haig dead for establishing diplomatic relations with the Vatican, and praised the Reagan legacy and he went on to be appointed president. Jimmy Carter stumbled over “ethnic purity.” In a 1976 debate, Gerald Ford, the sitting president running behind in the polls, said that he did not think Poland was under Soviet influence, yet was gaining on Carter in the polls up until election day. It used to be common for the American people to judge a man or woman by a broader context than we sometimes are tempted to do in this news-, but not necessarily well-compiled or placed in context news-obsessed society.

I don’t know who [if anybody] I will be supporting in November. Actually, I find national politics not particularly important sometimes. However, I am impressed with Senator Obama’s handling of this matter. He seems to have acknowledged the goodness of Dr. Wright and appreciated his work while giving his own perspectives on race and faith. He has not shoved Wright off into some kind of limbo as President Clinton did with Zoe Baird or Lani Guinier or his Arkansas friends involved with Whitewater.

I know Obama is an Ivy League lawyer and politician and I would expect him to be a persuasive speaker and I am sure that these things helped him, but he does seem to show a sincerity on racial matters that we don’t see often, if ever.

And if you drive by a building and see that it hosts a United Church of Christ, don’t assume that it is a mosque with a cross on it.