An AM radio talk show host this morning (5/25/05) asked why listeners thought the President's ratings, and those of Congress also, had fallen so much in recent weeks. Here's my thinking on that question.

Historically, when gasoline prices at the pump rise, the occupant of the White House finds his ratings going down. Apart from that fairly constant political reality, I quote Thomas Friedman's column in the May 25 edition of the New York Times, to wit: "As a nation, we have a mounting education deficit, energy deficit, budget deficit, health care deficit and ambition deficit. The administration is in denial on this, and Congress is off on Mars." ["C.E.O.'s, M.I.A.", Thomas L. Friedman, published May 25, 2005, New York Times]

To Friedman's list of deficits, I would add, also, a soldier deficit. Since we turned over sovereignty to Iraq on June 29, 2004, an action that was supposed to solve so many things, there have been at least 750 more US troop deaths, and the Army can't recruit enough people to join them to fill up their ranks.

The Administration's charade about the Newsweek article as the cause of rioting in Afghanistan may have had a smidgeon of truth, while ignoring the far larger truth that we have, from the beginning of the Afghanistan war, and then the Iraq war, been disrespectful of prisoners' rights under the Geneva Convention. Detainees have been whisked away to U.S.-friendly foreign nations for interrogation under who knows what kinds of conditions, because the Red Cross has been denied access to these prisoners. Nor does the Administration acknowledge the horrifying reality of so many deaths (at least 21,725 civilians, cf. http://www.iraqbodycount.net/) resulting from our preemptive attack on a nation that did not, it turns out--as most of the U.N. inspectors insisted prior to our invasion--have any WMDs.

The American people are fed up with this basic violation of our understanding of ourselves as "the good guys". Good guys don't torture prisoners. Good guys don't blame the little soldiers without holding some higher-ups really accountable. Should Lyndie England go to jail? After reading her story, I don't think many Americans believe she should be punished with anything more than a dishonorable discharge.

What about the pro-war spin that the administration put on professional football player Pat Tillman's death, a hero in my book no matter how he died, by hiding the facts about how he really died from his family as well as the nation? What did lying about Tillman's death really accomplish except to further tarnish our national reputation?

With the rich getting richer while the deficits that Friedman lists are getting bigger and deeper, I think Americans are becoming more and more aware, even those who don't read newspapers and magazines, that the Bush administration's best skill is "shift and shaft": shift attention away from the things that we should really be upset about, and shaft the poor, the enlisted people in the military, the workers who won't get their pensions, the children, the people losing their health insurance, and even the earth itself.

These are all good and solid reasons for the decline approval ratings for President Bush, as well as for Congress.

If President Bush and his administration will not undertake these tasks, it is time for Congress to address and develop a sane energy policy; universal health care; and ways of solving world problems that don't include pre-emptive attacks. It's time to start figuring out, how we are going to extricate ourselves from Iraq and Afghanistan and acknowledging the irresponsibility of the failure to do any post-war thinking at all before we attacked Iraq. It's time for citizens to start making our voices heard about shift and shaft economics, shift and shaft politics, and shift and shaft morality.

I, for one, have reached my limit of what I can stomach. My heart and head ache for my country. It is time for a true Jeremiad: a witness for real morality, real justice, real commitment to values that go beyond what people do in their bedrooms to what they do on Wall Street, in executive board rooms, in the Pentagon, and in the Oval Office. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's time to re-read the book of Jeremiah.

Life Together: How many? How long? Why?

Eight more of America's courageous soldiers died today in Iraq. Untold (literally) hundreds more Iraqis have died this week. Children have lost parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Parents have lost children forever, without, in most cases, even a body to bury..or anything recognizable as the person that was loved. How many more people have to die?

Over 1600 American soldiers have lost their lives in the name of "fighting terrorism", but we have to ask if the world is a safer place since this war began?

In addition to the nearly 3000 lives lost in the World Trade Center, we keep adding to a list of the killed, and the insurgency just seems to gain strength. Osama Ben Laden, whom we originally set out to capture, is rarely even on the radar screen either of the citizens of this nation, or of the media. We are not defeating terrorism, but making more terrorists whose perceived only avenue of resistance is the terrible evil of suicide bombings. Iraq, under Saddam, suffered from terrible oppression, but the killing and loss of life goes on and on and on, with more lives lost than under Saddam Hussein's terrible dictatorship. Meanwhile, we have not been seen as the liberators of the Iraqi people but as the cause of the on-going violence in their nation. We were told that with the election, things would begin to calm down and the insurgency would lose its will to fight. The contrary seems more accurate.

Moreover, we discover, in the most under-reported, and most under-discussed news of the year, that months before the President argued that Saddam had refused to obey the UN resolution, that the President of a land committed to the supposed religious principles of honesty and truth telling, justice and liberty, was having intelligence reports shaped in such a way as to justify a pre-emptive attack on a nation that really was no threat at all to our country long before he had the so-called legal justification. How much dishonesty does it take to start an impeachment hearing? The President of the United States, George W. Bush, lied to the American people, and he used people such as his Secretary of State, Colin Powell, mercilessly, in the deception. He used our military. He abused the American people's trust.

And we wonder why citizens of many other countries in the middle east, and elsewhere, despise this Administration, and by association, all Americans? Do we remember how long it has taken some of our parents and grandparents to come to terms with modern-day Germans or Japanese? It will take two to three generations before many people in the middle-east will ever be able to see the United States as anything other than an imperialist aggrandizer.

How long? we ask, wondering if we will ever be able to bring our military home. We wonder if the people of Iraq are not now set upon a path to an ongoing civil insurgency, if not outright civil war. There still seems to be no plan to extricate ourselves from Iraq. I have to guess that the reason there is no plan is that the present U.S. Administration does not plan to ever leave, that we invaded a country that was not a threat to us for the sake of their oil, and the sake of saying "we're bigger than you are." Many of the U.N inspectors tried to tell us that Iraq was no threat, but these world-approved inspectors were scorned for the sake of what?

How many more must die? How long will we go without honesty? How long must the people of both America and Iraq wait until there is a plan for the departure of the "coalition of the willing", who more accurately should be called the coalition of the gullible?

Why are the people of this country accepting all this so passively? Why are we willing to swallow untruths about Abu Graib, about the treatment of prisoners from Afghanistan and Iraq? Why are falsehoods presented as if they are in our best interests? Why are truths, such as the British memo that reveals that the U.S. President was planning war, and shaping the facts to suit his intentions, far earlier than Bush will admit, hidden, undiscussed, left to molder in small print in the middle pages of newspapers that aren't even read by the majority of our U.S. citizens? When will we say, "Enough!" This is our country, and we are better people than this.

Lord, make us instruments of thy peace...

In hope of unity, justice, and peace, Nancy Jo

Life Together: Health Care Crisis Growing

A small item in this week's Christian Century, [May 17, 2005, p. 6] notes that many cars and light trucks are now made in Canada because of the far lower costs of providing workers with health insurance in Canada than in the U.S. The difference is substantial: $800 to provide health care in Canada; $6500 to provide health care in the U.S.

This morning, while in my car, I listened to Sue Wylie bemoaning the intrusiveness of a growing number of businesses into the private lives of their employees, seeking to prohibit them from smoking not only on the job, but in their own cars, at home, or at play. The reason, of course, is that smoking correlates to ill health and thus results in higher health insurance costs, as well as lost productivity. One caller noted that at a time when some families are paying as much as $1600 per month for health insurance, she didn't find the nosiness of an employer unfair.

Similarly, I ran into a friend in the grocery store the other day whom I hadn't seen in a while. She and her husband work so that they can pay health insurance for two young adult daughters with chronic illnesses that have nothing to do with life-style choices. They simply developed health problems in late adolescence that make insurance a necessity but impossibly expensive for them as student or as a person with a chronic disabling health condition.

America has the best health care system in the world; the problem is that fewer and fewer people can take advantage of it. The inequities of the health insurance system seem only to grow exponentially, creating greater and greater injustices.

Hospitals began as ministries of churches and religious orders. Yet, even these supposedly "faith-based" institutions operate unjustly, charging far more to the individual who has no health insurance to use the emergency room, for example, than the individual who does have insurance.

When will we in American churches begin to stand up for health care as a moral right, not something you get if you can afford it? I've seen comments by some of our fellow citizens that individuals who are in the U.S. as illegal aliens should not be allowed to receive health care. What? Shall we just let them collapse and die in our gutters?

Moreover, even self-interest ought to be able to see that when the federal budget cuts appropriations for Medicaid, and for Medicare, that it simply drives the prices up for everyone else. We also lose the productivity of those who can't afford to be treated for their diseases. We lose the educational potential of children who can't be seen by doctors because their parents make just a few dollars too much to qualify for Medicaid, and so they miss days at school, falling even further behind.

Finally, the cost of clergy health insurance continues to sky-rocket. Because most denominations are self-insured groups, the rates depend upon the health of the participants. Most clergy don't engage in behaviors like smoking or drinking, but I have to say, looking at my own set of scales, and at the girth of most of my colleagues, those ugly words morbid obesity apply to many of us, and surely has a great deal to do with our health insurance costs. But that's a subject for a future blog.

The cost of health insurance for church employees is forcing difficult decisions and impacting our capacity to provide ministries to our world.

As Pentecost arrives, it is time to allow the Spirit to come and knock us off our complacent duffs. We are called to preach and teach the good news of God's intention for all human beings to live lives of integrity and wholeness, and to heal the sick and mend the broken places in our world. It's time to resurrect the idea of national universal health care as a moral and spiritual right of all people.

In hope of unity, justice, and peace, Nancy Jo

Life Together: Our Efforts to Communicate

Thanks to all of you who have written in response to my first attempts at blogging! It is good to know that there are readers out there, and people willing to engage in dialogue about important matters.

We are working to find a way that will both be inexpensive for us, no cost to you, and that will avoid advertisements or some other group harvesting our address list, to let you know when new posts to the blog have been made. As novices in this new form of journalism and communication, it sometimes takes us a while to find the right way to do things. I hope you will bear with us, and check the site from time to time to read the new contributions. I will be writing at least weekly.

This past week, I've sent a letter to Governor Fletcher and to former Governor Jones, regarding the failed promises or potential failure of gambling income to the states that have expanded gambling for the sake of balancing the budgets and lowering taxes. In New York, income from slots at the tracks is coming in at about 40% of what was predicted. In Pennsylvania, a sociologist doing a poll of citizens of that state about their anticipated rate of participation in electronic forms of gambling (they are going to install about 60,000 slot machines across Pennsylvania), with an anticipated return of $1 billion a year to the state treasury. However, his polling of a significant number of people is showing that the returns to the state may be closer to 36% of what they will be banking on. This is no way to run a state treasury. When markets are saturated, when inflation has begun to set in (as it has because of the higher price for gasoline), then people will have less income to gamble.

A word to the wise: Gambling advocates will promise the moon, to get their foot in the door. They will generally accept strict regulations, knowing that when the state is dependent on the income, and the income begins to decrease, they can get the restrictions loosened.

May the sun shine bright on our old Kentucky home; we've had a cold week just past. It's time for spring, and for Pentecost, and for the church to come alive with hope and compassion.

Grace and peace, Nancy Jo