caveat: there may be more to show the various sides of reactions to the press conference, and this is representative of what I’ve found today. Barack Obama at press conference this afternoon re resigning from Trinity United Church of Christ “This is not a decision I come to lightly … and it is one I make with some sadness,” he said at a news conference after campaign officials released a letter of resignation sent to the church on Friday. “I’m not denouncing the...

UPDATE: Juan Williams reports to Fox News that many black people surrounding him having angry reactions to Obama resigning from Trinity. UPDATE: Senator Obama has made his statement tonight saying he has resigned from Trinity. The Clinton campaign has refused comment. Likely, after today’s delegates meeting, not to torpedo any chance she may have to be veep. Pundits are spinning Obama as a radical allied with radical elements in our culture. Others are saying he is distancing himself at this...

In the genre of Pastors and Ministers In the News Related to One Candidate or Another through Frail Associations or by Entering the Time Traveling Machine: Father Pfleger agrees not to speak about specific presidential candidates, that is…. otherwise free to speak about whatever else. At The Unity Church in Chicago recently, Father Pfleger, a Catholic priest, gave a sermon that some see as mocking white people. Unity is Reverend Wright’s church. Video of the sermon here wherein Father...

[SEE UPDATE AT END OF ARTICLE] Sales Tax Comes to the Internet For Certain: It’s true. Tonight I went online to send a birthday gift to a friend in New York. When I went to the ‘checkout’ screen, a big red-lettered notice came up saying as of June 1, 2008, sales tax will be applied to all purchases being shipped to New York, no matter where they originate from This new NY state law of taxing internet purchases and trades… was initiated by Eliot Spitzer and signed into law...

We’ve been led to believe that we pay our credit card company for the privilege of not having to provide cash for everything, and that we’re charged reasonable interest rates accordingly. You know all those cute commercials on TV with cavemen (GEICO) and barbarians (Capital One)? There are some not-so-cute figures behind the rates on your credit card. Your rate may be beyond usury. Over a year ago, I closed down a Chase bank card so hard it registered on the Richter Scale when I found...

It began this week. On May 26, 2008, passengers over the age of 18 are now required to show a U.S. federal or state-issued photo ID that contains one’s name, date of birth, gender, expiration date “and a tamper-resistant feature.” IDs include U.S. passport, U.S. passport card , DHS “Trusted Traveler” cards (NEXUS, SENTRI, FAST), DHS-designated enhanced driver’s license, Drivers Licenses or other state photo identity cards issued by Department of Motor Vehicles (or equivalent)...

On March 16, a crane crashed to the ground at 90th St. and 1st Ave. in Manhattan, killing 7 people. A building inspector apparently had falsified a safety report. Today, May 30, a second horrible crane accident occurred during rush hour this morning. Witnesses said it sounded like a train coming through and all of a sudden the ground heaved, huge crash of metal, and papers and smoke flying through the air, and then debris like snow. I watched some of the people on camera. Their faces, you can tell:...

“Have you ever noticed the leaves before they completely snap out of their little valises … they’re only just peeking out… making a pale green mist in the air… My grandmother used to say that mist was the tree showing us, for just a very few days once a year, what oxygen really looks like.” ________________ CODA The lovely painting is by David Parfitt who lives in Coleford near Bath. You can see more of his watercolors and oils here.

Between now and the end of the first week of June, this one word, STOP, and its many meanings will be weighed by many of the high members of the Democratic party. It’s odd isn’t it, some meanings of the word STOP, actually mean GO. And some meanings of the words STOP really do mean cease now, the time has come. The work is done. TO PULL OUT ALL THE STOPS, means one would, in a project, a war, in love, in politics, in family life, in rage, in celebration, tear out or ignore all normal...

The Soldier’s Promise Tiny Prayer “New seed roots most deeply in the places that are most empty.” ———— CODA [The Soldier's Promise] “Tiny Prayer”, excerpted from book The Faithful Gardener: AWise Tale About That Which Can Never Die by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, ©1996, All Rights Reserved, Harper Collins/ HarperSanFrancisco

I’ve got a junior reporter down on the Libertarian National Convention floor today. Rachel Hawkridge, is a Libertarian activist and delegate from the state of Washington to the Convention being held in Denver over five days. She phoned in to me just a few minutes ago to say the front runners in the race for nomination to run for POTUS have now been tallied in the first ‘tokens’ vote. The people with the highest votes will now be placed into major debates tomorrow… to be...

Prayer for Peace, Memorial Day, 2007 A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America On Memorial Day, Americans pause with solemn gratitude and deep respect for all our fallen service men and women who have given their lives for our country and our freedom. Through the generations, the courageous and selfless patriots of our Armed Forces have secured our liberty and borne its great and precious cost. When it has mattered most, patriots from every corner of our Nation have taken up...

St. Francis of Assisi, after a day of walking far and then even farther asking for alms, came through the forest at last to the giant rocks at the edge of a stream. The little saint said he would be selfish and take the best table in the whole room, that he would sit at the rock table and eat the rough bread the villagers had given him… and then he would take the best water in the whole place to drink… and he scooped up the bounding water with both hands. Oh, it was so cold and good....

THE PRICE OF FREEDOM is an award-winning film to be shown on PBS over the Memorial Day week. It tells the story of seven WWII veterans who fought together and were captured together; their “bonds go far beyond surviving combat. The men have joined forces 50 years after the war to conquer a final foe.” “Despite the brutal ordeals of being a prisoner, many POWs saw their capture as a personal failure, and carried their silent burden for decades.” Now for the first time,...

The Town of Windsor Colorado. population 16,000, was the worst hit, a substantial part of the town torn apart. People in various states of shock, and miraculously, an entire day care center of over 240 children, torn into toothpicks, but all children safe and sound. Update: Excerpt From The Denver Post, today, a day after: Hundreds of businesses and homes in the town of 18,670 were damaged. Trees and power lines were down throughout Windsor. Cars were smashed by falling trees and poles. Some were...

Most every night, I stay up late-late, long after everyone else is sleeping. I fly over the internet, looking, looking, trying to find something beautiful or restorative to share with you here at TMV, so either you go to sleep with a beautiful idea or image, or wake up with one. Tonight, finding something beautiful in this wide and groaning world, was easy. Because there is Jiang Xiaojuan, a young provincial policewoman. Jiang is 29 years old and is the young mother of a little baby herself. Her...

Than Shwe, as four (4), count them, four huge ships are anchored off Burma, ships filled with relief medical supplies, a helicopter, food, tents, clothing for the poor suffering people of Burma, and YOU Than Shwe, whose names literally mean “million gold’ …refuse to allow the ships into port to land. This, Than Shwe, is now three weeks after the entire planetary community has rushed to give aid to the people of Burma. You have said and continue to say, No. You have grabbed what...

We called my father, The Fox. He, an uneducated but wise-in-his-own-ways tailor from the old country. We called him that mainly because when anyone tried to pass something off that wasnt quite as it seemed… dad would bob his head around, pretending to sniff the air, saying “Someting’s up, de old fox can smell it, yep you betcha…” And though we couldnt see through the faux thing right away, it would turn out… later… that dad was often ace-accurate. I was...

Very soon, Senator McCain is going to be releasing his medical records. He’s had bouts with cancer… There may also be some record of his recovery after being a prisoner of war many years ago. To the older generation, a cancer diagnosis of any kind in any person was cause for great alarm, as cancer used to be whispered about as ‘the big C” long ago and was considered a certain death sentence. Back then, often the docs doing exploratory surgery and finding metastasized cancer,...

From my Magyar family, there is a story from my father’s brother,* a man who had the tribal title of ‘keeper of trees.’ The family story goes like this: “Once in times older than the fog and younger than the sun, there were old guardian trees. These venerable trees had lived so long they’d seen everything that passed by on the road before them… and often more than once. Thus, these trees, so situated, had become shrewd observers of human nature. They knew the...

If we opened the windows from our hearts and looked out, maybe we’d see something like this… It’s early morning, we’ve just pulled away from the pier. We’ve got the old Evinrude gassed up and practically drowning the stern of this old boat… But, right now, you’re rowing by hand, at least til we get past the weedy shallows. Those old oak oars warmed in the sun sure do clank in their locks… and the shore birds are knocking themselves out singing like...

“Do you know where Light comes from and where Darkness lives So you can take them by the hand and lead them home when they get lost?” ___________ CODA From the poetry in Job 38-42… Yahweh demanding that Job stop muddying the issues, and instead, get back down to the basics of life, to what has majesty and magnitude… instead of ‘living by rumors.’

Today is Armed Forces Day, though surely it’s ‘Unarmed Forces’ Day… soldiers back from war, who ought be celebrated also… treated with decency to mend up psychic wounds they carry… ones who display injuries just as much in need of healing as a shattered arm, loss of hearing, a leg no longer all there. Same symptomatology in many Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder injuries: shattered; loss of; no longer there in the way one once was… Borrowing an image from...

What might it mean for various campaigns, and the Mainstream Media since John McCain and other candidates are reaching out to bloggers?… inviting bloggers to ply the candidates with questions, in sort of what might be called numerous ‘executive phone-news conferences’? I think we’ll see it as a leap in growth and strength of ‘the new media’s many-armed presence, as well as– for now anyway– ‘a fishing in other rivers approach,’ to see which blogs /bloggers...

It’s worth putting up the last half of the Washington Times article referenced in my previous post. McCain’s choice of bloggers is intense and interesting. Many of the bloggers are hard workers who have given over a significant part of their lives to feeding the maw. No small thing. For sure, it’s never been for the pay. And, AHEM, Senator McCain, The Moderate Voice would like to be invited to be in on your blogger phone calls too. Feel free to contact us. Joe Gandelman is our Editor...