Lyrics of the day

By Steve Earle, from his song "Chistmas in Washington"

So come back Woody Guthrie
Come back to us now
Tear your eyes from paradise
And rise again somehow
If you run into Jesus
Maybe he can help you out
Come back Woody Guthrie to us now

Exciting News from UNI

UNI stands for Union Network International, a network of unions that has committed itself to unionizing Walmart - and not just here in the US, but also overseas, including the wage-slave factories that supply Walmart with its cheapo goods.

I have felt for a long time that internationalizing organizing efforts will be the key to increasing workers' power. In other words, let the Moneyed Class globalize the economy: we'll globalize unions. Via The Prairie Populist.

Kos planning take-down of the DLC

Markos over at dailykos is planning a takedown operation against the DLC. Let it be soon.

The DLC wing of the party has been sucking at the teat of big business long enough.

A Link to the Blogger I Wish I Was

This blogger is the best I've come across in terms of both his command of reason, and his fiery populist sensibility. Check him out.

The most concise explanation of the Democrats' Problem

From The New Republic Online: (http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050425&s=trb042505)

"This is the same essential mistake Democrats have made over and over again since the early '70s in relying upon courts to secure rights (like unfettered access to abortion) and promote reforms (like affirmative action) for which they hadn't yet built solid popular support. These court decisions eventually provoked political backlashes that have hobbled Democrats since and, in cases like gay marriage, probably set back the liberal cause by many years. If Democrats hadn't been so successful in pushing the courts so far ahead of public opinion, it's possible they might have worked harder at actually convincing voters that they were right on these issues, bringing the political consensus closer to them rather than pushing it away."

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Interesting Post on One Man's Journey from Republican to Democrat

JCECIL3 has an interesting post up about the way the two political parties' positions have shifted in the last thirty years, and the implications for someone wanting to vote on "values" issues. Hint: the answer may surprise you.

Bay Area Weather Looking "Ominous"

I'm a weather geek, so I read the technical discussions from the NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atomospheric Administration) pretty regularly. These discussions are usually pretty dry, and talk about troughs, ridges, low and high pressure areas, etc., in a rather objective scientific tone.

Today's discussion put out by the weather office in Monterey, California, used the words "very ominous" to describe the developing situation in the eastern Pacific Ocean. We've been getting hammered by storms the last 3 days, which have brought as much as 8 inches of rain to the San Francisco Bay Area, but these may be only the beginning. The weather service is predicting that this series of cold storms will bring snow down to lower elevations for the next five days, followed by a "pineapple connection" connection storm with origins in hawaii. This would dump enormous amounts of rain on the deep snowpack, causing nearly apocalyptic flooding as the rain melts the snow, and then all that water surges into the rivers in the lowlands.

Pray for those without shelter, and add prayers for the people affected by the recent tsunamis in the Indian Ocean basin.

Some thoughts on Catholic Liturgy

While I agree that there are problems with the Liturgy as it is currently celebrated, I hesitate to throw the baby out with the bathwater. "I am the Bread of Life" is a beautiful hymn, guitars and all, and I think it serves the same purpose, in its folky way, that the music of, say, Palestrina did in his day -- listening to the "Agnus Dei" in Palestrina's "Missa Brevis", it is clear that his purpose is to lift the congregation's mind and heart to God, and to plaintivly ask for mercy in a way that makes it clear that God in His goodness stands a good chance of granting it. "I am the Bread of Life" attempts to do the same thing, in the sense that it is a reflection on the promises of Christ (though I grant there is quite a distance between the artistic merits of Toomey and Palestrina).

I think there ought to be a pluralism of music in the Mass, and in fact my home parish does this fairly well. In one of the morning masses, there is more traditional music and the Sanctus and Agnus Dei in latin (and often sung in chant). The youth Mass is the one where you're more likely to hear guitars and Marty Haugen. This seems to work well, and there have been few complaints.

There are certainly limits to this that have to do with taste -- I for one will avoid the "hip hop Mass" if it ever comes -- but it is worth remembering that Christ wasn't too concerned about form in worship, and in fact the Institution of the Eucharist happened in an intimate and informal (though solemn) setting.

Draft Howard Dean to lead the DNC

Recipe for Change

"I've seen too much hate to want to hate, myself, and I've seen hate on the faces of too many white sheriffs, too many white citizens' councillors, and too many Klansmen of the south to want to hate, myself; and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear. Somehow we must be able to stand up before our most bitter opponents and say: 'We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws and abide by the unjust system, because non-co-operation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is co-operation with good, and so throw us in jail and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and drag us out on some wayside road and leave us half-dead as you beat us, and we will still love you. Send your propaganda agents around the country, and make it appear that we are not fit, culturally and otherwise, for integration, but we'll still love you. But be assured that we'll wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves, we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory."

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

From the Stations of the Cross

"These Fourteen Steps
That you are now about to walk
You do not take alone.

I walk with you.

Though you are you
And I am I
Yet we are truly one:
One Christ.

Therefore, my Way of the Cross,
Two thousand years ago
And your "way" now
Are also One.

But note this difference:

My Life was incomplete
Until I crowned it by my death;

Your Fourteen steps will only be complete
When you have crowned them
By your life.

-Clarence Enzler, "Everyone's Way of the Cross"

There are great possibilities for nobility and redemption in un-earned suffering. The only requirement is that the suffering is elevated by Love -- "Agape" love, love that is freely given and expects nothing in return. Am I saying, "Be a doormat"? No. I'm saying that standing in loving opposition, refusing to cooperate with evil but also refusing to hate the evil-doer, can be an occasion of reconciliation, which is better than some narrow definition of victory.