For more than a century, American politicians have played on racial fears to divide the electorate and mobilize xenophobic parties. Blacks have been the “domestic enemy,” the eternal outsider within, who could always inspire unity among “we whites.” Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy was built on this premise, using coded language ”” “law and order,” “silent majority” ”” to destroy the alliance between blacks and white labor that had been the foundation of the Democratic Party, and to bring about the Republican ascendancy of the past several decades. The Willie Horton ad that George H. W. Bush used against Michael Dukakis in 1988 was a crude manifestation of this strategy ”” as was the racist attack used against John McCain’s daughter, who was adopted from Bangladesh, in the South Carolina Republican primary in 2000.

It is significant that the Clinton campaign used its telephone ad in Texas, where a Fox poll conducted Feb. 26 to 28 showed that whites favored Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton 47 percent to 44 percent, and not in Ohio, where she held a comfortable 16-point lead among whites. Exit polls on March 4 showed the ad’s effect in Texas: a 12-point swing to 56 percent of white votes toward Mrs. Clinton. It is striking, too, that during the same weekend the ad was broadcast, Mrs. Clinton refused to state unambiguously that Mr. Obama is a Christian and has never been a Muslim.

It is possible that what I saw in the ad is different from what Mrs. Clinton and her operatives saw and intended. But as I watched it again and again I could not help but think of the sorry pass to which we may have come ”” that someone could be trading on the darkened memories of a twisted past that Mr. Obama has struggled to transcend.

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Read here and there for starters. After that, check out Zadok here (and Father John Zuhlsdorf has the italian text here if you are up for it).

Now compare all that to the inaccurate Nightline report here.

People “are walking away from their homes in droves not because they lost their jobs but because home prices are falling,” Leamer said.

Many prominent economists and institutions, including Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers, have already declared the economy to be in recession. That is commonly defined as two consecutive quarters of decline in gross domestic product.

UCLA predicts that GDP will dip by 0.4% in the second quarter of this year, but then rebound. Anderson expects GDP to be growing at 2.5% by the end of this year.

In staking out the contrarian position, Leamer noted that UCLA bucked other forecasters in 2001 by correctly predicting that year’s recession.

“We got it right, and we stood alone back then,” he said. In jest, he added later that he had “submitted my resignation letter, in the event I am wrong.”

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It is very helpful to have the full text of this, thanks to Episcopal Cafe.

The Rev. Canon Philip Groves, facilitator for The Listening Process, addressed the gathering. He is charged with monitoring The Listening Process. He expressed his appreciation of the contributions of the Episcopal Church to The Listening Process over the years. He added that other Anglican provinces have a listening process and processes are “frequently going on very quietly.”

He reviewed the resolution that “requests the Primates and the ACC to establish a means of monitoring the work done on the subject of human sexuality in the Communion and to share statements and resources among us.”

Groves called for the need to reflect, communicate, and engage.

“The Church must be diverse because humanity is diverse; it must be one because Christ is one,” he quoted from Andrews Walls in The Ephesian Movement.

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“I am delighted that Bishop Whitmore will be joining us in the Diocese of Atlanta,” said the Rt. Rev. J. Neil Alexander, Bishop of Atlanta, in an article published on the diocesan website. “In our years together in the House of Bishops, I have come to deeply respect Bishop Whitmore for his integrity and his principled way of engaging the full life of the church. He has been faithful over many years in his commitment to The Episcopal Church. He brings gifts that are complementary to mine and will not just fill in around the edges. He will be able to join me in leading the mission and ministry of this great diocese.”

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Comptroller General David Walker estimates that Washington has promised $53 trillion in Social Security and Medicare benefits without funding them. In real dollars, that means every American — this means you — owns a $175,000 share of the federal debt. It’s as if you have a second mortgage — for a home you don’t own.

These days, there has been much finger-pointing at a system that allowed lenders to issue mortgages that violated the basic tenets of fiscal responsibility. How is it, people now ask, that banks could issue so many loans to buyers for homes they could not afford?

How indeed? Washington continues to authorize retirement and medical benefits without putting aside the money to pay for them. Editorials and think tanks sound the alert. Yet you hear little public complaint about the situation. Even in a presidential election year, voters are not demanding that White House hopefuls promise to balance the books.

If the sky falls, will Americans then ask why they were not warned? Every year of inaction adds another $2 trillion to $3 trillion to the tab, noted Alison Acosta Fraser of the right-leaning Heritage Foundation.

Alice Rivlin of the left-leaning Brookings Institution is the fourth member of the Concord Coalition’s “Fiscal Wake-Up Tour.” Asked what presidential hopefuls Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain propose to do about the pending crisis, Rivlin answered that essentially “they’re ignoring it almost completely.”

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Entertaining stuff from Bird and Fortune on the markets and the subprime mess.

The House of Bishops was informed March 10 that full invitation is “not possible” from the Archbishop of Canterbury to include Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire as a participant in this summer’s Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops.

Robinson, addressing the House, urged the other bishops of the Episcopal Church to participate fully in the conference, and thanked all who are willing to “stay at the table.”

Robinson told the House that he respectfully declined an invitation to be present in the conference’s “Marketplace” exhibit section.

Robinson confirmed for ENS that he plans to be in Canterbury during the July 16-August 3 once-a-decade gathering, but not as an official conference participant or observer.

Read it all and please take the time to read Gene Robinson’s address to the House of Bishops as well.

What does commitment to “Global South work” mean for two iconic primates from Africa and Asia? Such clarification is necessary. Without which Anglicans across the Southern Hemisphere do not have a shared platform on which they can discuss how to support one another in promoting the common good.

In what follows, I shall chart the emergence of “Global South Anglican”, and place its rise within the broader historical developments of churches in the Southern Hemisphere. I shall end with some broader questions for the future of the Communion.

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Check it out.

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