My Rock

The brain dead are alive and well here.

If you can't find justice in this country, you need to look in the right places. This country is overflowing with lawyers, judges and legal advocates so cut the crap. Propaganda to exploit the poor as if being poor isn't punishment enough. Fools.

It isn't that big of a mess on balance. The investment bankers are paying for their fraud. The people who filed false forms to get mortgages are going to lose their homes for lying to lenders, the oil companies who inflated prices are losing good customers by shafting the airlines and the list goes on. That's life and that's justice. You could say it's a mess, but in the long term what's a mess? Things are looking good for a number of industries. The newspaper business which runs this site looks good for a number of reasons, research and development is still strong and defense is posting record profits. Steel and railroads are making money and chemicals are doing fine. The fraud is suffering and the basics are prospering. The auto industry looks bad, so the products must improve and customers will benefit. Print this and the ink business thanks you and the paper industry smiles. The credit card people appear to be doomed, for the simple fact that they cheated the customers on a monumental scale. There's always cash, so the economy all rests on ink, people and paper making everything better. It's just like the bible. Life is pretty good and it beats dying, so it goes and keeps going. I'm a man of few wants and simple needs, so I don't get worked up about the messes. Mess is dinner and that's it, it's time for dinner. The garden of good provides food and food for the soul. I better go pick dinner, so good luck and good eats.

Well, Rabbi- I'm a Brooklyn Jew also and I think you made a pretty cynical statement regarding Obama's life. I'm certain when he went into community service years ago he wasn't thinking, oh yeah- this'll make me President. Obama is tryig to win the confidence of those who are uncertain, he is establishing a connection with them- and he's doing it pretty much honorably and without lies. If you note, he advocates choice, it takes a lot of courage to do that from both a religious and a political standpoint.

I really don't care where his vision comes from, it's a vision of this country I want to see come true, and or us to be the kind of country we always said we were.

Rabbi, surely you realize that many of the psalms were composed "in extremis" when King David was running from the forces of his son, Absalom. It strikes me that this goes far to explain its evident aspiration for certainty, love and protection.

We live in a very conflicted political landscape. This is partly due to government mismanagement, partly due to attacks from terrorists, partly due to our operating in a highly competitive world and watching our cultural, economic and political dominance fading into history. To many people, these conditions are as oppressive as any King David ever faced. There is no question that the growth of extremism in our country has many sources. Like you, I find these developments to be a deep cause for concern. Unlike you, however, I don't find either Gov. Palin or Sen. Obama to be champions of radical extremism, even though radical extremists can be found in both camps and both can be found, from time to time, to make statements that seem to pander to these factions.

There is no question that some evangelical pastors have preached the kind of extreme millennialism you mention, and that this is fairly compared to the the preaching of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I see no evidence, however, that either Gov. Palin or Sen. Obama subscribes to these views. I consider the attention to these matters in the public media to be overblown, and it does not speak well of you to have bought into the hype.

"2. Obama, the Christian, who found faith simultaneous with his journey into fully embracing his Black identity, melding service and belief and community while all the while keeping his "eye on the prize"-his ambition to become President."

No, sir.

That is not 'the Prize.'

When people sing that song, you know it's about something different from such mundane concerns.

Or the crass ones some will attribute.

For all that there has been much talk of what we should fear about the man, as an 'angry Black man,' somehow a slave to preachers he denounces or.... tells us exactly what he thinks of, when it's considered 'dirty pool' to look at just how 'mainstream' Palin *isn't.*

Well, as Senator Obama goes, these ongoing conflicts are only his story cause he lived them. He is a black man, by white people's reckoning, but he's an American. With a Kenyan father and a mother that to me is all about *America.*

And the man himself lived this.

'Eyes on the Prize' is a song slaves would sing. People enslaved cause to 'righteous' people, all Black folks were alike.

What's 'the Prize?'

Not power over others, not in the name of God, country, party, or Jesus.

Freedom. The same air my Paddy ancestors hoped to be able to breathe through American Christians fighting over this or that or the other thing.....

Our birthright.

All of ours. All of us who choose to say, "I am an American."

Not those favored by a particular God or kneeling to a conditional freedom, or begging for 'rights' or power granted by a view of 'God' that essentially calls these things 'alienable.'

The *Prize.*

'The Prize' isn't a bundle of melanin with a Penn Ave address.gov.

It's... like most things worth having, not something you can own.

It's something you can share.

Or WTF good is it, anyway.

Senator Obama demonstrates he knows this a lot better than those who like to scuffle about their flagrant double-standards while...

Well, look at the meanwhile.

Reading this column with great respect and interest and what passes for a critical mind on a Friday night when I've skipped coffee, but, *looking around.*

If I can just get this off my so-modestly-prsented chest. Cause.

Well.

Before we get into this, WTF.

". McCain, the POW, whose torture at the hands of his captors have made him a hero."

The very, very debateable narrative about how much and how well that son of an admiral bore what should unquestionably be honored in anyone who suffered it.

What part of 'Messed With Under Extreme Duress For Five And A Half Years' is a *plus* for the position of America's Face To The World And Commander In Chief Of All Armed Forces Conventional And Nuclear?

Yes.

He suffered for America.

Gods know that this is painful, and whatnot.

Is it a qualification for office?

Last I heard I wasn't offered an Abesshood for what was done to me in other circumstances.

Torture isn't like on television. It's not like Jack Bauer's show.

We should recognize that service and suffering. That doesn't mean we should give the guy the nukes.

Just had to say that again.

Part of the reason *torture is wrong* is cause *you can't undo it.*

Can't.

I agree with you Amera. The more real character the better.

Thank you for your perspective. Christianity has been mocked in this race and I'm concerned about this. Character and integrity is sadly becoming part of our past.