tales of copper city

How to have faith when you don't 'believe' in God

Thanksgiving morning, as we get ready in our small church to serve Thanksgiving dinner to over 200 people in Bisbee, I think it might be a good time to reflect on why I spend so much time in church when in fact my thoughts about faith and God are so, well, unusual.  Besides, politics and health care reform are beginning to drive me totally crazy. So here goes.

I am a Christian.  I have faith but I don't 'believe' in God.

There, I've said it and I'm glad.

But hold on a minute:  the statement "How to have faith when you don't believe in God," does not quite mean what it might seem, at least for me anyway.

How the filibuster has changed....everything

A letter written by a staffer for Lyndon Johnson just after his victory in 1964 explains what the filibuster was like in former times and what it is today.  And, to my surprse and embarrassment, I never appreciated this huge difference, despite a lot of time spent getting a graduate degree in politics from a very fine university.

I found out that the filibuster is today a tool for  a supermajority for almost anything that matters rather than an temporary halt in the Senate's business to try and slow the majority down and arouse the energy and attention of the nation.. 

In other words the filibuster was used in the past to try and halt a vote but not to actually prevent it from ever happening.  But today, with a radicalized Republican party and a Democratic Party asleep at the switch, the filibuster is now used to make anything and everything pass a 60 vote hurdle.

Here is the article by Ezra Klein in the Washington Post relating the analysis by a staffer under LBJ.  The staffer was Mike Manatos and he served as White House liaison to the Senate.  The really interesting part was the vote for Medicare, which was, initially, 55-45.  The vote swelled to over 65 when it was apparent it was going to pass because the Republican Party, in those days, was not a party determined to defeat a president and discredit an entire opposition party at any costs.

That was then, and now is now.  Surely, we can change this, in 2010, when the new Senate is organized.

War and health care reform...and Princeton economists

Uwe Reinhardt, a Princeton health care economist, was the big dog during my years in health care reform.  He was witty, informative, and everywhere. 

Reinhardt's no longer everywhere. It must be hard to be seen when another economist from Princeton, the Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, is everywhere and constantly making sense on health care reform. But Reinhardt is still witty and full of insight as this column reveals, comparing health care reform in the U.S. and the war in Afghanistan. 

No, it's not just the annual costs that are similar; it is far more than that. It is the attempt by the U.S. government to somehow wade in and control a nation full of bristling, protective, and corrupt tribal chieftains fighting to protect and expand their turf, tribal chieftains who maintain their home base in the nation's capital.  And so on. It's a wonderful column.

I got this reference from Brad Wright's blog, Wright on Health, which has become one of the best on the web.  Be sure and read it every day.  You will learn a lot.

What day is today?

We watched JFK, Oliver Stone's riveting film last night, mainly because I have started reading JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why it Matters, by James Douglass, another (and very good) case for the assassination of Kennedy by groups connected to the CIA and to the Special Ops group within the military, the group that during and after WWII assassinated foreign leader, rigged or stole elections, and overthrew governments.  

Douglass's book focuses on Kennedy's turn toward struggling for peace, ending our involvement in Vietnam, and the growing menace of the CIA and the national security state.  Kennedy was far from perfect but it seems certain he was turning toward nuclear disarmament with Russsia and there were enormous pressures resisting this turning, including many leading generals and the Joint Chiefs who wanted to launch a preemptive nuclear attack on Russia.

Read it and weep

Read Tom Engelhardt on Afghanistan and weep.  Engelhardt offers the speech that Obama is not going to give, the speech that announces that we are withdrawing from Afghanistan on an orderly basis.

Obama simply can't do this, as we all know, not because withdrawal is wrong but because we can't handle the truth anymore in our politics.  The truth will produce an uproar by the right wing and Fox News and we can't handle that.  The right already has moderate to conservative Democrats scared to death on health care reform; that's nothing compared with a "soft on terrorism" campaign.  Think how that will play in Arkansas, or Nebraska, or wherever.

There goes another $100 billion dollars a year in defense spending and here comes a growing Taliban presence, a strengthened Al Qaeda, and yet another endless American war.  And that $100 billion will sail through Congress, unlike the $100 billion annual costs for health care reform.

And we thought we were electing a president and a Democratic majority with courage.

The behind-the-scenes fighting over health care reform in the House

Ezra Klein's interview with Congressman Jim Cooper, Democrat of Tennessee, is the best article I've seen about what went on in the House in the final days before the vote.  It's scary how close it really was and how impressive Speaker Pelosi's victory was.  Jim Cooper is so important today because he was a major factor in blocking the Clinton Plan. We owe him a big thanks.

It's not over until it's over

The historic vote last night in the House of Representatives for health care reform is incredibly important. We should all celebrate and thank Speaker Pelosi for pulling it off.  Yet, as most know, the 220 to 215 majority reminds us that the struggle between strong democracy, majoritarian democracy and weak, anti-majoritarian democracy within the Democratic Party is not over, and will likely continue for some years into the future. 

If the Democrats succeed in the Senate and if they make the most of this victory next year by reminding the electorate, time and time over, how historic this shift is, then the future of a stronger, more progressive majority in the U.S. may be in the cards.