Reckoning With John McCain
Respecting the best of McCain requires grappling with the rest of McCain. By Timothy Patrick McCarthy Twitter August 27, 2018 photo above: John McCain in 2007. (Dennis Van Tine / MediaPunch / IPX) WN: In my view, the article highlighted below is a respectful, balanced assessment of Senator McCain, when seen through the lenses of […]
Millennial Evangelicals Diverge from Their Parents’ Beliefs
The separation of families at the border, climate change, and various progressive causes have galvanized young Christians. By Eliza Griswold August 27, 2018 WN: I have a white Canadian Evangelical friend who expresses being fed up with white Evangelical-bashing — in particular towards white Evangelicals south of the border1. I argue on the contrary that […]
The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism
The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in 17th Century North America and the Caribbean August 24, 2018 Slavery and the Origins of Capitalism by Louis Proyect WN: I wrote the following in introduction to a book similar in its findings about 19th-century American capitalism to 17th-century colonial capitalism, entitled The Half Has Never […]
Uri Avnery: One of My Few Heroes in the Middle East
August 22, 2018 by Robert Fisk photo above: dovblog | CC BY 2.0 excerpts: I must admit that Uri Avnery was one of my Middle East heroes – there aren’t many – and his story is worthy of a movie, though there will be no Spielbergs to direct it: writer, journalist, leftist, veteran of the […]
Donald Trump’s Fixer Says the President Engaged in a Criminal Conspiracy to Sway the 2016 Election
That’s impeachable. By John Nichols Twitter August 22, 2018 10:40 am photo above: Michael Cohen leaves his federal court hearing in New York on August 21, 2018. (Reuters / Brendan McDermid) WN: Is anyone really surprised?! The answer shouts out from the question1. Yet an acquaintance, the vast majority of white Evangelicals, and in general Trump’s […]
Tomgram: Alfred McCoy, Will China Be the Next Global Hegemon?
Beijing’s Bid for Global Power in the Age of Trump “America First” Versus China’s Strategy of the Four Continents By Alfred W. McCoy image above: Visual Capitalist, from “The world’s top economy: the US vs China in five charts” WN: As usual, Dr. McCoy’s trenchant analysis proves compelling, sage, hugely informed, and immensely helpful. Trump’s […]
Trump’s War on Regulation Is Just Another Form of Trickle-Down Economics
Aug 14, 2018 by Robert Reich photo above: Economist Robert Reich. (YouTube screen grab) WN: True to expectation, an acquaintance immediately blamed California’s 2018 wildfires on environmental extremists… He is an absolute climate change/anthropocentric climate disruption (ACD) denier offering not a shred of evidence but constant bombastic fundamentalist pronouncements that brook no discussion, no questioning1… […]
Trump Wouldn’t Have Let Her in the Country, But Ilhan Omar Is Likely Joining Congress
Wednesday, August 15, 2018 by Informed Comment Ilhan Omar is humane where Trump is selfish. Ilhan Omar is high-minded where Trump is in the gutter. Let’s hope hers is the future — his the past. Juan Cole 13 Comments WN: Hers is a voice one could wish were dominant in the U.S. today… One can […]
Why the Vatican continues to struggle with sex abuse scandals
by Chico Harlan August 12 at 6:53 PM Email the author photo above: Members of Chile’s bishops conference, Luis Fernando Ramos Perez and Juan Ignacio Gonzalez, give a news conference at the Vatican in May. (LUCA PRIZIA/AFP/Getty Images) WN: Pope Francis by all accounts is faltering on this, rather than robustly pursuing justice in all […]
How Does This All End? How Do We Come Back Together?
August 1, 2018 by Tim Suttle 8 Comments WN: In the article highlighted below, we are told — again by this author — that America has a wisdom problem. I have no doubt that he is right. What must be asserted however much more so is that America has an Evil Empire problem. When an […]
Willow Creek, Your Time Is Now
August 6, 2018 by Scot McKnight 68 Comments photo above: Pat Baranowski was the executive assistant to the Rev. Bill Hybels at the Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., one of the largest megachurches in the country. CreditAlyssa Schukar for The New York Times WN: What can one add — that is not […]
The Fix Analysis ‘Facts develop’: The Trump team’s new ‘alternative facts’-esque ways to explain its falsehoods
‘Facts develop’: The Trump team’s new ‘alternative facts’-esque ways to explain its falsehoods by Aaron Blake August 6 at 10:58 AM Email the author photo above: Of course, it didn’t rain on Trump’s Inauguration Day… WN: There is an acquaintance who routinely railed against Obama and Hillary for being constant liars. He has fallen strangely […]
A Paradigm Shift in Christian Theology: What It Means to Say “God is Jesus”
August 6, 2018 by Roger E. Olson 19 Comments That “God is Jesus” is commonplace for Christian peace theologians/peacemakers of every era. The “paradigm shift” I suggest is really therefore with two kinds of believers: those throughout Church history who have refused to read the New Testament as God’s final or ultimate self-revelation in […]
America just won the world’s hardest math contest. Again.
by Mahbub Majumdar August 1, 2018 Mahbub Majumdar is the national coach for the Bangladesh Mathematical Olympiad and a professor at BRAC University in Bangladesh. photo above: (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post) WN: I’m not anti-America! I am though anti-bullying, bullying of which America is Ultimate Example, Ultimate Offender. Just as Trump is of all Americans, […]
Melania Trump trolls her husband
photo above: First lady Melania Trump with President Trump at the White House on Monday. (Andrew Harnik/AP) by Karen Tumulty, May 7, 2018 Email the author WN: Way to go Melania! And she has just spoken out in favour of LeBron James whose intelligence Trump publicly ridiculed. excerpts: It may be that the most effective […]
DAILY MEDITATION
photo above: courtesy of Judith Leckie WN: You may sign up for these Daily Meditations from the Henri Nouwen Society here. Sharing the Abundant Love Why must we go out to the far ends of the world to preach the Gospel of Jesus when people do not have to know Jesus in order to enter […]
What It’s Like Inside the Largest Immigrant Prison in the US
By Christina Fialho Salon Published August 4, 2018 photo above: A guard escorts an immigrant detainee from his ‘segregation cell’ back into the general population at the Adelanto Detention Facility on November 15, 2013 in Adelanto, California. John Moore/Getty Images WN: It is ever true that the measure of any civilization is its prisons. Fyodor […]
Pope revises catechism to say death penalty is ‘inadmissible’
Commits the church to working toward its abolition worldwide1 Aug 2, 2018 by Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service Theology photo above: Pope Francis gestures before speaking about the death penalty at an event marking the 25th anniversary of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, at the Vatican in this Oct. 11, 2017, file photo. […]