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HOW IS YOUR CONGREGATION PRAYING FOR PALESTINE?

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2025 Palestinians are being bombed, shot, poisoned, and starved to death by Israel. U.S. media outlets are strangely silent about it. One seldom sees, hears, or reads news coverage about Israel’s aggression against Palestinians. But the most unsettling silence is from U.S. religious congregations. Despite daily news reports from non-U.S. media outlets Palestinians are dying every day from Israeli military actions in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank, most U.S. religious bodies are not protesting Israeli aggression. I suspect that they also are not praying about it. They are not praying for the unsheltered, starving, defenseless, and occupation-weary Palestinians in Gaza. They are not praying even though a panel of United Nations experts estimates that 500,000 people are starving in Gaza ( https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/12/famine-stalking-across-gaza-500000-face-starvation-analysis ). They are not praying as men, women, and children are being slaug...
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THE STATE OF THE UNION IN TWO OR THREE WORDS

 Here is my latest Substack Post. I hope you will read and share it. ©Wendell Griffen, 2025 Donald Trump's 100-minute-long State of the Union address will be remembered for many things. It was the longest in recent history. It was the first such address delivered by a twice impeached President. It was the first SOTU address delivered by a convicted felon. It was the first SOTU address delivered by someone who was found civilly liable for sexually assaulting another person. It was the first SOTU address delivered by anyone who won election as President of the United States after having been previously fired from that position by U.S. voters. Donald Trump's 2025 SOTU address was a stream of lies, insults, expressions of personal resentments, and malicious statements. If you watched it you were not made smarter, more hopeful, or more inclined to anything except what Trump wants. Dismantle the federal government. Fire as many federal workers as possible. Deliver control of federal ...
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A LOOK BACK OVER THE POLITICAL CAREER OF JOE BIDEN

​Heather Cox Richardson's latest message follows her typically positive assessment about Joe Biden's presidential leadership.  https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-15-2025 I agree that Biden's leadership was a welcome change from the dysfunction of the first Trump administration. His appointment of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court was principled. And Biden's effort to make much-needed improvement to U.S. roads and bridges certainly exceeded anything Trump wanted to do, let alone tried to accomplish, assuming that one believes that Trump tried to do anything about infrastructure during his first term. It is also true that the Biden administration helped restore jobs to many workers that had been outsourced abroad.   However, Richardson's favorable assessment of Biden's leadership downplays or disregards the harms and longstanding societal wrongs that Biden seemed unwilling, if unable, to address. What follows is...
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IN MEMORY OF PRESIDENT JAMES EARL “JIMMY” CARTER

Heather Cox Richardson’s assessment about the life and career of President Jimmy Carter is commendable, yet incomplete.  https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-29-2024 Richardson failed to mention that it was President Carter who led the transfer of the Panama Canal from the United States to Panama. She did not mention that Carter fired Andrew Young from his position as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations after Young privately met with representatives of the Palestinian Liberation Movement. Yet Jimmy Carter was the only U.S. president or former president who termed the Israeli government an apartheid regime! President Carter was not only the most decent and respectable president of my lifetime. He was also the most sincerely reverent, realistic, compassionate, and just.  The nation disrespected and rejected him, but Jimmy Carter never dishonored the nation. He was the best patriot, diplomat, humanitarian, and egalitarian politician on the global stage of my lif...
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SEEING DARKNESS AND BEING LIGHT A Response to the Fascism of our Time

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2024   Heather Cox Richardson’s latest assessment on U.S. politics is worth pondering. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-20-2024 . Historians will soon record that the 2016 and 2024 elections of Donald John Trump fueled an era of fascism in the United States that threatened the world for decades. And, if Trump’s tenure as President of the United States does not ultimately result in the death of democracy, it could still leave democratic norms in shambles. Trump’s deference to Elon Musk, Musk’s fascist capitalism, and white pseudo-Christian fascism and Zionism already endanger women, indigenous people of color, LGBTQIA people, immigrants, and dissidents across the world, as well as the planet’s ecosystem. Lust for greed, violence, domination, and self-worship does not make a society or its leaders great. It is a force that eventually consumes its host like metastasizing cancer or a raging virus. It is important to remember that...
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WHY I FORMED AN EXPLORATORY COMMITTEE

  ©Wendell Griffen, 2024 Following a recent meeting with about 40 people from a cross-section of Pulaski County residents, I formed an exploratory committee to determine whether to be a candidate for County Judge of Pulaski County in 2026. This group will help me “test the waters” so to speak about whether that effort would be feasible, and who would be likely to help me if it is feasible.   Perhaps you’re wondering why I am considering leaving retirement and taking on the challenge of seeking to become chief executive of Pulaski County government. The short answer is because I want to serve the more than 400,000 people who call Pulaski County our home.   Whether we were born here, moved here to study, teach, do research, obtain health care, retire, or for other reasons, Pulaski County is our Community. I want to help our Community learn, work, and grow, by celebrating and promoting the fact that Pulaski County is home to wonderful people, the seat of state govern...
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THINKING ABOUT THE 2024 U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION FROM FARMING AND DISEASE PERSPECTIVES

The 2024 U.S. presidential election result is being analyzed by pundits, commentators, journalists, and historians as has been done following every other presidential election. Donald Trump's MAGA fascism has clearly been embraced by a majority of Americans who voted.  The Republican Party regained control of the U.S. Senate, and retained its majority control of the House of Representatives. Trump's super-majority hold on the U.S. Supreme Court - thanks to the machinations of out-going Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky - means that MAGA fascism is the dominant political ideology of all three branches of U.S. government for the foreseeable future. It is already clear how MAGA fascism is likely to operate judging from the personnel Trump is nominating to fill key leadership positions. Heather Cox Richardson has written about that in her November 13 edition of Letters From An American.  https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-13-2024 I agree that Joh...
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