We felt like we were in a scene from Blazing Saddles, as our two vans approached this young Afghan with a rifle, and one of those old fashioned toll bars you could raise and lower with your hand, on what passed for a road leading into a village we were planning to visit. There was no actual road, of course, just rubble that was slightly more well trod than the rubble around it, but there he stood, this skinny gun-toting teenaged toll taker, who had lowered the bar and was now holding out his hand as the first van approached. “What is the driver going to do?” we asked. “Pay him, of course.” Our driver said. Someone else quipped, “There isn’t really a road here, couldn’t we just go around that stupid bar?” “No. This is how the local chief helps pay for food and keeps kids like him from working for the bad guys. We’ll just give the kid a few dollars. Don’t worry.”

This was June 2002, soon after the Taliban had fled Kabul. These types of road blocks were common in Afghanistan then, and I’d bet are quite common now. That’s why reading in today’s SF Chronicle that Congress was investigating the “possibility” that U.S. funds were being used to pay for “protection” of vehicles and people moving supplies between bases in Afghanistan, I chuckled and thought, “It sure would be a waste of time and money investigating that! Anyone who knows anything about Afghanistan knows you have to pay for crossing those Blazing Saddle roadblocks!”

Character is fate. This is true for nations as it is for individuals. Only when we understand both Obama’s character and America’s will we able to fathom the tragedy — the loss, the unfulfilled promise, the disappointment — that attends his Presidency.

Who is Barack Obama? One telling moment can be found in his description of his mother’s death in The Audacity of Hope. Obama writes: “More than once I saw fear flash across her eyes. More than fear of pain or fear of the unknown, it was the sheer loneliness of death that frightened her, I think.” Obama’s mother was an anthropologist. She viewed all cultures from a distance, and did not have a commitment to any particular one. In his own childhood, Obama rediscovered his mother’s isolation. He resolved that he would not live without contact, without commitment, without something to fill the void, the emptiness. He joined the black church. He became a community organizer. He married and had children. All of this led to his famous words at the 2004 Democratic National Convention that “there’s not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.”

Obama’s ability to articulate a common identity for the United States won him the nomination. Unlike John Edwards, Obama saw the US in terms of what Rousseau called “the social compact,” as opposed to an aggregation of interests. Unlike Hillary Clinton, he tried to bring people together, not to split them apart. His opposition to the war in Iraq was at the core of his extraordinary victory. To get a sense of how remarkable it was, remember the Grand Inquisitor episode in Dostoevsky, in which an auto-de-fé is going on, and a calm, quiet, reasonable man appears who all pundits and politicos want to put to death.

I’ve been reading various healthcare diaries from around Left Blogistan searching for a strategy to salvage healthcare reform. The most interesting so far are a pair dealing with polls that surfaced on Daily Kos.

fladem writes about the sudden collapse in support for health care reform as measured in the recent WSJ/NBC poll.

The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll coming out later today will show opposition to the health care bill growing — mainly from disappointed liberals, who are very much disappointed to see the public option getting thrown out.

The poll has 47% saying the Obama health care plan is a bad idea, to only 32% who say it’s a good idea…45% say it is not acceptable for a plan to not include a public option. But, 58% would find inclusion of a Medicare Buy in acceptable.

Daily Kos diarist arodb writes about a recent WaPo/ABC poll taken after the defeat of a proposal allowing the re-importation of drugs.

This poll also finds a significant drop in support for health care reform in response to the defeat of an amendment which would have benefited the American people.

But Obama and the Democrats have had decidedly less success convincing the public that their health proposals will bring positive change. More than half of those polled, 53 percent, see higher costs for themselves if the proposed changes go into effect than if the current system remains intact.

It looks to me as if the public is getting smarter and is becoming less willing to have smoke blown in their collective face. Chris Bowers at Open Left urges us to swallow our bitterness and help Obama to pass his sham of a bill.

I strongly disagree.

I believe that if Obama and Emanuel believe we progressives will stand our ground and if they begin to fear their ability to pass a bill will become endangered, they will find a new solution. In all likelihood, Lieberman will be thrown to the political lions, and progressive features will find their way into health care reform in some way, shape or form. But this won’t happen if we blink.

The Climate Justice Fasters in Copenhagen have been doing amazing work promoting climate justice. This Thursday, they will be joined people across the world for a 24 hour fast in solidarity.

We are past the time of procrastination!

We need to act to solve the climate crisis now!

From the website www.climatejusticefast.com.

Our friend Christopher Reiger (whose art we present on our gallery and whom you may recognize as Hungry Hyaena on the comments threads) has written to us about it. He blogs about it himself here, where he writes:

I’ll be one of thousands (hopefully one of many thousands) of true cosmopolitans forgoing food as part of the Global Climate Justice Fast. Bill McKibben’s organization is trying to spread the word from Copenhagen, but the easiest place to sign up is at the Climate Justice Fast website. The official statement of the fast participants reads:

“We will fast voluntarily, for one day on Thursday, in solidarity with the millions who have and could lose their lives to preventable and involuntary hunger, disease and conflict resulting from climate change.

We call on world leaders for a real climate deal now–a deal grounded in science and strong enough to get us back to 350 [parts per million].”

David R. Loy

David Loy is one of the most socially aware Buddhists that I am aware of. I don’t know that much about Buddhism, despite having various friends who are strong Buddhists. When I read Buddhist magazines, I find myself disappointed that there seems to be so little on social change as Buddhist practice and necessity. David Loy, who is Besl Professor of Ethics/Religion and Society at Xavier University in Cincinnati, is certainly a great exception (and I am not saying there aren’t many others out there, just that I am not aware of them). We have just posted at Tikkun Current Thinking a piece he has sent us about his response to Copenhagen. In it he calls climate change “the greatest threat ever to our species.” Some quotes:

The basic difficulty about responding to the “climate emergency” – and a host of related eco-crises such as desertification, and what is happening to the world’s oceans, and mass extinction (half of the earth’s plant and animal species may disappear by the end of this century) – is that climate change requires us to notice something we normally prefer to ignore or resist: that we are not separate from each other, but interdependent, and that we must therefore also assume responsibility for the well-being of each other…

In the past Western nations could use their technologies (including weapons, of course!) to dominate the rest of the world and exploit its resources, but suddenly we find ourselves in a new situation, where each nation is now directly dependent upon the good intentions of other nations, whether developed or undeveloped.

“My hopes were that the viewer would just take a minute or two to find out who these people were.” -Kai Klaassen

I love it when I am given the chance to examine carefully the face of a true hero – the eyes, the laugh lines, the stress creases of someone known for being brave, accomplished, influential or wise.

I also love pie.

How wonderful to indulge two passions at once.

On a recent trip to Mission Pie, a local “farm to table” café in my neighborhood in San Francisco, I had the pleasure, over a slice of walnut pie, of admiring Kai Klaassen’s recent portraits of lunchroom employees of the San Francisco United School District.

Memories flooded back to me at the sight of their iconic uniforms and the good humor and quiet dignity emanating from their eyes.

(To see more of Kai Klaassen’s lunchroom portraits, visit the Tikkun Art Gallery.)

Says Klaassen,

When I look at all the drawings together and see the smiling workers with their hairnets on I think they are a symbol of America’s promise. The promise that, in 1946 when Harry Truman signed the program into law in an attempt to keep children from going hungry, we were as a country concerned with giving every kid a chance to realize their full potential by providing food and an education to all.

In anticipation of the coming passage of a “Health Care Reform” bill, we are already hearing a great deal about “not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Liberal Senators like Tom Harkin are hawking the idea that we’ll get the public option, or the expansion of Medicare, “next time.” Make no mistake about it. Such homilies are as empty as Obama’s reference to “Fat cats.” The bill marks a turning point in the history of American social reform, and it is a negative one.

Of course the bill will accomplish good, and this needs to be recognized. It will extend coverage and it will prevent some insurance company abuses. However, the true meaning of the bill lies not in the steps it takes toward universal coverage and toward reform, but rather in the meaning it assigns to those steps, namely cost control. Rather than a future in which liberals expand coverage further, the bill marks the deepening of the divide between the “two Americas,” and a decisive step toward abandoning long-standing ideals of equality.

Universal health care was the central demand of progressives because issues of life and death are great equalizers. Accordingly, people of good will can tolerate living in a society in which some people have bigger houses or bigger cars than others, but not in which some people have better health care. Health care is the one thing we should never compromise about, because it is morally intolerable to allow two Americas in this sphere.

Al Fritsch, Jesuit Scientist

This week’s spiritual wisdom is in our Guide to Christmas in the current Tikkun. It is by Al Fritsch, who is a Jesuit priest and public interest advocate, a co-founder of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, and a writer (see www.earthhealing.info), pastor, and prison chaplain.

The True Meaning of Gifts

by Al Fritsch

I distinctly remember one of my very early Christmases when stationed in the Northeast as a newly ordained priest. After the Midnight Mass I was invited by a local family for their gift-opening event, which was for them a traditional holiday affair. In the course of the evening I got a distinct feeling that members of this family were pretending to enjoy opening the many expensive gifts given to each other. These gifts did not seem to be deeply appreciated by the young members, even though the gifts were way beyond the price range I would have paid. I seemed powerless to reach out and touch their searching and lonely hearts. I came away with a bit of sadness, even though they had not neglected to give me a gift as well. A lingering feeling persists: gifts ought to symbolize acts of love, not the value of the materials in themselves.

With harder times this Christmas, many people are buying fewer material things and engaging in some soul searching about how to teach their children and loved ones what the true meaning of Christmas is and what gifts of love mean. Christmas is meant to celebrate the most spiritual act of self-giving the world has ever known. Through recent times the feast has been replaced by a grand show of materialism; this is the utter defiance of God’s gift of Self through the substitution of material things like electronic gimmicks, clothes, recreational equipment, and household wares. This year the pattern of past giving could be different. This is a perfect opportunity to tone down the material concerns of the past and to explain to youth that economic times call for something else. Besides, the lessons are the best of Christian education. How about gifts to others, especially the needy, in the name of the loved one? That’s why I wrote “Twelve Gifts in Hard Times” [below the jump]. Also consider pooling names and giving just one within a given group.

Soma or Big Brother? Destruction or distraction? For years “Brave New World” was balanced against “1984″, as though those two works defined the opposite ends of the dystopian spectrum, a spectrum one might presume to be exclusively in shades of grey. And though such an opposition ignores the many other fine works describing the range of hand-baskets in which we may be hell-bound, the pairing offered a useful metaphor. For many, the final word on the debate was Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business” which in 1986 argued brilliantly that it was Huxley, not Orwell, whose map more accurately charted our society’s devolution. If you haven’t read Postman, or have only fuzzy memories of “1984″ or “Brave New World” check out Stuart McMillen’s concise and clear outline of Postman’s contrast between the Orwellian and Huxleyan dystopias. It’s a funny cartoon summary with painfully accurate images of Huxleyan indulgence and Orwellian control. And it’s hard to argue against Huxley in a week when Google (to whom we’ll return later on) tells us that people find the question of whether the world’s leaders in Copenhagen will manage to avert the impending climate catastrophe to be five million hits less interesting than Tiger Woods, whom we are given to understand has been putting his balls into the wrong holes.

Despite that, I think Postman had it wrong.

The sun rises over Manhattan, September 12th, 2001.

I grew up during the decade we are ready to leave behind.

I was seventeen years old, and a junior in high school, when Al Gore lost the presidency by judicial fiat. I remember reading excerpts from Bush v. Gore in the New York Times in the cafeteria, a place that I always thought I’d recall more for its unpleasant and strangely unidentifiable odors than for its role in the formation of my political consciousness. That was how my decade began: as a passive spectator, unable to vote, disturbed by the news that four men and a single woman had decided who the president was going to be. But that wasn’t really the start of the decade.

Normally I would make this brief post a comment and stick it on the end of my last article entitled,“Send Leiberman a Golem for Hanukkah,” but I’m too spitting mad. I have argued for a long time that an imperfect bill is much better than no bill. However, a useless bill is not.

Several blogs including McJoan at Daily Kos, Jonathan Kohn at The New Republic, and Carrie Budoff Brown at Politico are reporting that Rahm Emanuel is pressuring Reid to lose the Medicare Buy-in to quickly cut a deal with Lieberman.

The White House, of course, is denying it.

I don’t care who’s telling the truth. I say we send our golems to Rahm. And call him too. Tell the White House to grow some cojones.

The White House comment line is 202-456-1111.

The switchboard is 202-456-1414. Call ‘em both. Keep their lines tied up.

And their email is http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact.

To send Rahm a golem, copy and paste the following message: “Rahm. Stop blocking REAL health care reform or we will vote you and all your evil minions out of office. Here’s a golem for you. I hope you get the message you evil effing ba$tard.” Copy the embed code that appears in the top right hand corner of the box after the one-minute golem video has played into the message box.

Here’s what he will see:

Rahm. Stop blocking REAL health care reform or we will vote you and all your evil minions out of office. Here’s a golem for you. I hope you get the message you evil effing ba$tard!

Of course, you can send whatever message you like. You can write to him in Hebrew. Just be sure he gets the point. And the golem.

(For anyone who does not know what a golem is, and why a golem would mean something to Rahm, see this morning’s diary entitled “Send Leiberman a Golem for Hanukkah.”

In the typical fashion that have made Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins into heroes among those who hate the religions of the world (sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not–there are some destructive elements in many religions, but that’s not the whole story), we get in the article on Chanukah (which you can find below) Hitchens’ distortions endorsed by Dawkins.

The approach is typical: a religious view or practice is misdescribed and distorted, then ridiculed. The critique is made to seem plausible by quoting out of context and taking the least sophisticated possible interpretations of whatever religious tradition is being critiqued.

Unlike Hitchens and fellow traveler Dawkins, I first link to the entirety of Hitchens attack, so you can read it in context, then present the original text he is critiquing which I wrote in 2007 and which he misrepresents. All this is followed by my comments.

After you’ve read it all, you could try to figure out why anyone with a serious intellectual curiosity would give a moment’s attention to Hitchens’ intellectual clownishness.

Tell Congress to vote NO.

Robert Greenwald, director of the powerful video Rethink Afghanistan, along with Veterans for Rethinking Afghanistan, is gathering signatures for a petition against the escalation in Afghanistan to be delivered on the floor of the House by U.S. Representative Alan Grayson (D-FL) tomorrow, Tuesday. The petition:

President Obama has decided to send more than 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan, at a cost of more than $100 billion/year. But America cannot afford a war that does not make us safer, and Congress has the power to stop the escalation. Vote NO on any spending bill that would send more troops to Afghanistan.

Congress has the power to stop the escalation by denying funding. Please add your name to the petition by the end of day on Monday December 14 by going to www.rethinkafghanistan.com.

Did you know that seven states have laws barring atheists from holding political office? I learned this while reading about newly elected Asheville, NC councilman and atheist Cecil Bothwell — both he and the city may face a lawsuit because of his lack of belief in God. Article 6, section 8 of the NC state constitution reads, “The following persons shall be disqualified for office: First, any person who shall deny the Almighty God.” While constitutional experts say the law is not enforceable Bothwell may have to defend himself from civil lawsuits.

Bothwell is a Unitarian Universalist who celebrates Christmas and is not opposed to the council praying before its meetings. He even said he would join in by reading a quote or passage from a meaningful book. Yet the newly elected councilman is still facing criticism:

When Mr. Bothwell was sworn into office on Monday, he used an alternate oath that does not require officials to swear on a Bible or refer to “Almighty God.”

That has riled conservative advocates, who cite a little-noticed quirk in North Carolina’s Constitution that disqualifies officeholders “who shall deny the being of Almighty God.” The provision was included when the document was drafted in 1868 and was not revised when North Carolina amended its Constitution in 1971.

Tehran students rally on Sunday. Credit: NYT, Your View via Reuters

The latest news is that the Iranian police have arrested students for supposedly burning pictures of Ayatollah Khomeini in recent protests at Tehran University. Whether they actually burned these images or not seems to be in dispute. The NY Times reported Sunday that

For all the charges and counter-charges that have been raised during the crisis – including vote rigging, the rape of jailed protesters and the plotting of a velvet revolution – each side seemed to agree that burning an image of Ayatollah Khomeini, the father of the state who is revered as divine, was going too far.

Given that widely shared perception it would clearly be bad tactics for the students to burn the pictures, whether in their hearts they revere Khomeini or not. These students are going for the very biggest stakes: to change their country. Whether that is evolutionary change, in the form of reforming the current system, or revolutionary change, it is still critical to win a large percentage of those alienated by the present government. Students cannot win against state power anywhere by wielding violence themselves, only by winning over growing public support.

A split is apparently developing between the reformists who wore green for Moussavi in the June presidential election and the students protesters today who are wearing less green and are more ready to ditch the whole Islamic Republic that Khomeini brought in. So it is good tactics for the Iranian regime itself to accuse the students of burning the Khomeini portraits, whether they did or not.

From a distance, this is clear. Why then, is it not clear to the small numbers of anarchists in Berkeley last week who did apparently use fire–this time not just to burn pictures of their opponent, Robert Birgeneau, the University of California Berkeley Chancellor, but to try to set fire to his home? Were the burning torches they threw purely symbolic, not intended to do harm, or did they want the building to burn? They did break windows, lights and planters at the residence.

“These are criminals, not activists,” Birgeneau said in a statement issued Saturday morning. “The attack at our home was extraordinarily frightening and violent. My wife and I genuinely feared for our lives.”

I’m considering the possibility that Lieberman is not actually a human. I suspect he is a golem created by the insurance industry to terrorize the general public. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Jewish lore, a golem is a zombie created from clay during times of peril to defend persecuted Jews from Nazis, the Czar, etc. More on this below.

After telling Harry Reid that he would consider supporting a health care reform compromise including an expansion of Medicare, our favorite Senator decided to throw a wrench in the works on the Sunday morning talk circuit by announcing his plan to scuttle health care reform. According to the New York Times Lieberman said:

You’ve got to take out the Medicare buy-in. You’ve got to forget about the public option. You probably have to take out the Class Act, which was a whole new entitlement program that will, in future years, put us further into deficit.

It goes without saying that Lieberman would oppose a Class Act. In this instance he is referring to an insurance policy covering long term care: the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act. In other words, if Reid eliminates every last vestige of reform from the Health Care Reform bill, Lieberman will support it.

There are a number of actions progressives can take to combat Lieberman’s most recent assault on the Democratic Party while saving the health care bill. Senator Olympia Snowe currently objects to the Medicare buy-in because Medicare’s reimbursement rates to hospitals and doctors are disproportionately lower in rural areas, a perfectly reasonable objection for a senator from a rural state. Perhaps it is time to fix this problem.

Next, progressives can sign the 8,868 individuals who have signed a CREDO petition informing Senate leadership that today is a good day to strip Lieberman of his committee chairmanship. Such a move would likely force him into the Republican party which would not go over well with his constituency in Connecticut.

Then we can tune into a Daily Kos diary posted last night by Hlinko to collect pledges for donations to a Lieberman opponent in the next election if he fillibusters HCR. So far, Hlinko has collected $1.6 million in pledges from $30,000 people through facebook.

(You can pledge, too by becoming a fan and leaving your pledge in the comment section. To do this, follow the facebook link in the preceeding paragraph, and sign up for a facebook account by clicking the green tab at the top left hand corner. Tthen follow the link to the pledge page one more time and this time click the blue tab on the top right hand side of the page. Write your pledge into the empty comment bar in the center at the top of the page. Click the share tab below the comment bar and you’ve succeeded! If Lieberman persists in his threat to fillibuster, donate the pledged amount directly to his opponent when the time comes.)

However, there is a particularly Jewish protest Tikkun readers can engage in as well…one that might actually mean something to Lieberman. (Thank you to reader Laura S. for emailing your suggestion!) You can send him a golem of his very own.

For those of you who don’t know, a golem is a gigantic clay monster. According to Jewish lore, Rabbi Judah Loew ben Azalel, Chief Rabbi of Prague in the late 16th century, created a golem to defend his people from vicious anti-semitic pogroms. If you are feeling especially ambitious and are a pious practitioner of Judaism, you can create your own golem to send to Joe Lieberman by fashioning a giant man (at least three stories tall) out of clay and imprinting the name of G-d on his forehead (the clay man’s forehead, not Lieberman’s). Then tell him to go visit Joe. Complete instructions are available at this site. Or, if you are feeling lazy and you may work from the comfort of your own home.

Finally, for readers who do not want to risk dabbling in the occult, send him a pre-formed golem via video. (To do this, copy and paste the URL to the right of the video into an email message. You can reach soon to be ex-Senator Lieberman here.)

Finally, for your own enjoyment, here is a link to an entertaining one minute musical golem video that can’t be embedded. Another good but longer animated video is embedded below. Happy Hanukkah!

Many religious leaders like to feel in control and give others advice. Though I am still a very much a rabbi-in-progress, with three-and-a-half years of study to go before ordination, I think it would show a great deal more strength for clergy to admit their shortcomings and be honest about how often they (and fairly soon soon we) don’t know what to do or how to do it.

In the spirit of seeking, rather than giving, advice, I wanted to share some of the fears that I have about my future career – and lifestyle – as a rabbi. I was recently asked to record these as part of a professional development course at Hebrew Union College but thought they might be of interest here and foment conversation about the difficult life’s choices that many religious leaders face.

Annise Parker (in pearls), her partner Kathy Hubbard, and their two daughters

Just when you thought the progressive momentum had stalled, comes this!

Annise Danette Parker was elected mayor of Houston on Saturday, winning her seventh consecutive city election and becoming both the first contender in a generation to defeat the hand-picked candidate of Houston’s business establishment and the first openly gay person to lead a major U.S. city.

… Less than two weeks into the five-week runoff, social conservatives mounted a campaign to turn voters against Parker because of her sexual orientation, sending out mailers and e-mail blasts that cast the election as a referendum on gay rights.

While some voters acknowledged it was a matter of concern, many saw no problem voting for a gay candidate, especially given Parker’s assurances that she did not intend to expand gay rights through her position as mayor.

Ray Hill, the dean of Houston’s gay activists, saw victory in more ways than one.

“For me, it means 43 years of hard work has finally paid off,” Hill said. “For Houston, it means we have finally reached the point where being gay cannot be used as a wedge issue to divide the community and prevent us from reaching our aspirations. Annise Parker is not our mayor — she is the city’s mayor.”

43 years hard work. How sweet to see results. We’re far from blind as yet to people’s given identities (sexual orientation, gender, race etc.) and therefore able to elect them solely on the content of their vision, abilities and character. But in this one the latter qualities trumped the former and we can all breathe more freely. Now we just have to hope she’s a good mayor…

Despite its recent prominence, the religious right is only about thirty years old, while the religious left has a genealogy that stretches back more than two centuries. In every generation people of faith have brought their bodies and spirits to the causes of human freedom, racial and gender equality, economic solidarity, and global peace. Catholics and Calvinists, theological liberals and evangelicals, adherents of indigenous spiritualities and immigrants of every faith have worked to extend the radical vision of the American Revolution to all peoples.

More here, from “The Religious Left: an Old Tradition for a New Day” in the Unitarian Universalist magazine. Saying the Religious Left only stretches back “more than two centuries” is a little thin, when one thinks of Cromwell’s Ironsides who cut off the king’s head, or the Anabaptists of the 16th century, or the medieval Cathars and Hussites and so on. And that’s just the Christians.  The article ends with a survey of the religious left today, seeing four wings of it:

1. grassroots activists like the 185 Catholic Worker houses, and the new monastics, typically nonviolent
2. the social advocacy arms of the mainline denominations (only Christian and UU ones are mentioned, though)
3. those who identify with theologies of liberation and consider the first group too nonviolent, the second group too liberal
4. the “spiritual but not religious” for whom social activism is inherently spiritual.

Tikkun isn’t mentioned and I am not clear where they think we would fall. I’ve been working on our deadline for the next issue all day and will keep cranking all tomorrow and on to Tuesday end of day, and don’t have a brain cell left for making that judgment call, or for saying something analytically wise and interesting. Giving the link to this article is enough.

Though I have to add that we published a kick-ass article on the relevance of the social gospel today, by Gary Dorrien, that goes much deeper than this UU World survey is able to do.