Reading notes

The Commerce Department announces very good growth during the previous quarter. Many observers declare the economy’s troubles over. And the administration’s supporters claim that the economy’s turnaround validates its policies. …

Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley has suggested, plausibly, that much of last quarter’s consumer splurge was “borrowed” from the future: consumers took advantage of low-interest financing, cash from home refinancing and tax rebate checks to accelerate purchases they would otherwise have made later. If he’s right, we’ll see below-normal purchases and slower growth in the months ahead. …

It would be quite a trick to run the biggest budget deficit in the history of the planet, and still end a presidential term with fewer jobs than when you started. And despite yesterday’s good news, that’s a trick President Bush still seems likely to pull off.

I’d like yesterday’s GDP figure to be good news as much as anybody. But something’s fishy about it. Something’s not kosher. I noticed on NPR’s Marketplace yesterday that their man-in-the-street interviews about it tended to concur: (paraphrasing) “As long as I and lots of my friends are unemployed and can’t find a job, GDP don’t mean sh*t.”

[via Daily Kos]

Catholic Social Teaching, among its many other core holdings, says that for Catholics, bringing your life into the public square and advocating for the poor and downtrodden is not an optional thing; it is a mandate. This flows from the more theological realization that in a Catholic framework, salvation depends on what you do for others—we are all responsible for all of us, and we are all dependent on how we take care of all of us.

Matt’s banner identifies his site as “Paul Wellstone progressivism for conservatives and people of faith (and for dispirited liberals, too!)” Dispirited liberal, that’s me kinda often. Thanks, Matt.

[via The Right Christians]

It’s been nearly three years since President Bush took office, and we’ve seen it all: environmental destruction sold as green policy. War sold as an end to terror. And huge tax cuts for the rich sold as a jobs program. But the misdeeds keep on coming and we’ll keep on listing them for the November 2004 election.

Today’s so-called Republicans have established a mind-numbing record at polluting the environment; bloating government; appointing crony partisans; pushing the nation into debt to fund tax cuts for the rich; legislatively catering to the world’s largest corporations; opposing women’s rights; kneecapping states, local communities, and schools; eviscerating constitutional protections of liberty at home; and devastating our nation’s reputation abroad. …

In the years since [1872], the Republican Party has been seized by Ayn Rand utopians, Pat Roberson fundamentalists, and the largest and dirtiest of America’s corporate elite. They’ve trashed the values of Lincoln and Eisenhower, rejected Jesus’ words in Matthew 25, and turned our commons into a dumping ground while using our nation’s treasury as a honey pot.

Bill Moyer interviews Joseph C. Hough, former dean of the Vanderbilt Divinity School and currently President of the Faculty and William E. Dodge Professor of Social Ethics at the Union Theological Seminary:

HOUGH: There is a definite intentional move on the part of political leadership in this country. In the direction that I think is not at all compatible with the prophetic tradition in Islam, Christianity, or Judaism. And that is the obligation on the part of people who believe in God to care for the least and the poorest. That central teaching, that sacred code, I think, is very well summed up in Proverbs [14:31] where the writer of Proverbs says, “Those who oppress the needy insult their maker.” …

If Tom Delay is acting out of his Born Again Christian convictions in pushing legislation that disadvantages the poor every time he opens his mouth, I’m not saying he’s not a Born Again Christian, but as a the Lord’s humble fruit inspector, it sure looks suspicious to me. And anybody who claims in the name of God they’re gonna run over people of other nations, and just willy-nilly, by your own free will, reshape the world in your own image, and claim that you’re acting on behalf of God, that sounds a lot like Caesar to me. …

I’m getting tired of people claiming they’re carrying the banner of my religious tradition when they’re doing everything possible to undercut it. …

Hough’s term “the Lord’s humble fruit inspector” has really stuck with me. I don’t think Jesus would have given us the measure “by their fruit you shall know them” if he didn’t intend us to use it in our assessment of where and who we are — and whom we’re among. Its usefulness seems to lie in its moderation, a path between the one extreme of being judgmental, and the other of being gullible.

Five months after the end of the war, Americans remain deeply ambivalent over whether it was right or wrong to invade Iraq. In part, that’s because it’s still not clear whether we were, in fact, welcomed by the people we set out to liberate.

Most people know by now that the popularity of the United States has dramatically declined across the Arab world during the last half year. But how about in Iraq itself? Are Iraqis glad that we came? Do they see a brighter future ahead? Do they want us to stay and see them through this mess or do they want us to pack up and get out? …

Iraqis, like their fellow Arabs, feel victimized by a history of betrayal and humiliation at the hands of Western powers. It appears that U.S. policymakers overlooked or misread this sentiment.