Heart of the Presidential Choice and Direction of theCountry

[Stephen Fox]

If you've come across a better framing of the key question, please bring it to our attention.

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/a ... ntPage=all

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archi ... mormonism/

Also see the Dave Roberts Osteen and Mitt Romney thread at this site.

[KeithE]

Inequality is certainly one of the big issues, but so is our counter-productive wars, our deficits now and future(Medicare costs), corruption of election/legislation/deregulation, no leadership in GW/CC, and curtailing of our civil liberties are also big.

[KeithE]

[KeithE]

Meanwhile



And our

[Dave Roberts]

[Sandy]

The problem here is that the top one percent have the money to pay for some of the most outlandish, ridiculous lies about what President Obama is doing, saying, or about what he believes, and what, according to his political enemies, he will do if he gets four more years. I really don't know how he can stand listening to some of that kind of stuff week after week and not feel compelled to do something about it. I know a lot of it is minor, stuff they probably don't think it is worth the time to bother about, and they'd tie up several courts for several years if they filed slander suits every time it came out. I sure don't think this was what the founding fathers had in mind when they set up the constitutional guarantee of free speech. The residual money that flows from the fat cats into the hands of liars like Glenn Beck, Laura Ingram, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Mike Drudge is exactly why they do it. And because they are now competing against each other for it, each lie becomes more outlandish and ridiculous as it comes out in their attempts to "scoop" each other.

[KeithE]

[Gene Scarborough]

I have a wide-ranging bunch of email friends. Of late, when I have gotten the outlandish Republican allegations I send them to those friends. One is the Beaufort County Democratic coordinator, a lady.

She has responded with much fact to offset the lies.

When a political contest stoops to lies and slander, it simply compells me to vote for their oponent.

We are deadlocked with hatred these days when there has never been a time begging statesmanship these days. Someone has likened it to the hate of the Civil War. It is certainly the stuff of assination. In my 66 years of living I am seeing almost the same tempers flaring as in the days of Integration. The enemy is gays and the rich are enjoying their perks of the Recession when they helped create it with financial lies.

The saddest thing is that most retired elders with a portfolio have lost about 40% of their nest egg to liars and thieves---none of whom is in jail yet per the mandates of Federal Laws and SEC rules and regulations.

[Sandy]

[Stephen Fox]

www.drshow.org show of May 7 by Ornstein and co-author nails it.

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/22/153259424 ... enterprise

[Gene Scarborough]

LINKMAN strikes again!!!

Gimme a break and state something you are thinking. These links do nothing for me or the discussion, buddy

[Ed Pettibone]

[Gene Scarborough]

Ed---I have to be working for a living and don't have time to chase empty links. If either of you wants my attention, then put in personal observations that say something on an issue

[Ed Pettibone]

[Gene Scarborough]

Ed---

I just shared my outlook = take it or leave it.

If anyone wants my attention, then do more than post a stupid link

[Stephen Fox]

www.drshow.org May 30 could enlighten Gene as well; the political divide

[Stephen Fox]

A Kabballah like reading of this review, in conjunction with exploration of the conversation between Dionne and Douthat suggested above should go a long way toward framing any worthy discussion of where the country is now in the conversation about religion and politics and whatever is left of it's higher nature (in the Lincoln sense).
I am convinced Robinson is a healthy antibiotic to the infection of the the Manhattan Declaration, while meeting them on their Home field.
Charles Marsh should be more medicine for the M Dec this fall with his biography on Bonhoeffer.

As I've said before, if Marney were still with us, Marilynne Robinson would be his girl.


http://www.christiancentury.org/reviews ... e-robinson

[Stephen Fox]

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/20 ... 2-matters/

[Stephen Fox]

[Stephen Fox]

[Stephen Fox]

Reviews among others my acquaintance Tom Edsall. Edsall as early as 84 got to the guts of Where Paul Pressler was coming from in the New Politics of Inequality when he analyzed independent oil companies in Tx Ok and La and traced them to Joe McCarthy's politics.

Here is where we are now, thanks in no insignificant way to Pressler's takeover and what he bequeathed to Richard Land and Karl Rove. For that google NPR morning edition today about Rove's nonprofit social welfare lawyered up deals that front for Pressler's oil companies and the Koch Brothers.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archive ... tion=false

[Stephen Fox]