Fish for Friday

Well, my goodness. See The Guardian's article, "Pew's religion survey reveals a secular shift away from the religious right" [personal communication]:

"One nation under God," reads the pledge of allegiance, yet new data reveal an America less fervent in faith than ever before.
    According to Pew, there are now as many people who identify themselves as "none" in religious affiliation as identify as "evangelical"....
    The new survey...which confirms previously observed trends of Protestant decline, accompanied by a rise in religiously unaffiliated Americans, casts serious doubt on whether the self-styled church freedom warriors are fighting a politically popular battle. Among the survey's findings, two thirds of Americans (66%) believe churches shouldn't endorse candidates. And 54% say churches should stay out of political matters entirely. Even a majority (56%) of white evangelicals agreed that churches should not endorse candidates....
    Looking at the Pew survey, one wonders how long the religious right can continue to use the same battle plan. Yet, the data show they are clearly losing the public. Another survey last week from the Public Religion Research Institute showed that while Mitt Romney has the support of 80% of younger white evangelical millennials (aged 18 to 25), this is a small and diminishing constituency: white evangelicals comprise only 12.3% of that age group. That's less than half their proportion of the 50 to 64 population. The Pew survey showed that while 32% of Americans aged 50 to 64 are white evangelicals, only 13% of those aged 18 to 29 are....

Interesting video. Narrated by [Republican] actor Jeff Daniels, this program reveals some troubling aspects of one of our major political parties. "Enjoy" [personal communication]:



The question for the next debate is, will the President be able to "go after Romney's jugular?" He might not be able to do that, according to some of Obama's old friends who reacted to the first debate (in the October 6 New Yorker):

Laurence H. Tribe, a leading constitutional-law scholar and Obama’s mentor at Harvard, told me after Wednesday night’s debate with Mitt Romney, “Although I would have been happier with a more aggressive debate performance by the President, I’ve had to remind myself that Barack Obama’s instincts and talents have never included going for an opponent’s jugular. That’s just not who he is or ever has been.”
...
    “The President has always been someone who takes the truth seriously and has a great faith in the American people and their ability to handle big ideas,” said [Will Burns, a Chicago alderman, who, as a student, worked for Obama in his (successful) 1996 campaign for the Illinois State Senate and his (unsuccessful) 2000 campaign for Congress]. “He doesn’t patronize them. He uses the campaign as an educative process. He wants to win but also wants to be clear about his ideas…. He took complex ideas like Medicare and the debt and tried to explain it to people so they can understand them while at the same time not being patronizing. And he is doing this with an opponent who is completely dissembling on every issue! There is a certain brazenness about Romney. It’s like [Stephen] Colbert talking about ‘truthiness.’ Romney stood there, with his hair and his jaw and his terrific angles—and he lied! About taxes, about Medicare. Obama pushed back on the five-trillion-dollar tax cut or the way Romney’s version of Medicare would destroy Medicare as we know it. And Romney just tilted his head and said, Oh, no, it won’t. At some point, you have to believe that the facts speak for themselves.” [personal communication]

The unemployment rate has dropped to the level in 2009 when Obama took office.
    What Obama has achieved trumps Reagan because he inherited a global economic meltdown not seen since 1930. And Reagan wasn’t up against a hostile Republican Congress hellbent on his destruction. Despite all Obama was up against, he managed to pass Keynesian stimulus in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that was actually bigger than FDR’s New Deal. The unemployment rate could have been even lower had it not been for right-wing state governors implementing draconian public sector cuts and austerity-obsessed, obstructionist congressional Republicans blocking the American Jobs Act.
    But despite an entire political party putting rigid ideology above the good of the country and global events outside his control, President Obama has America headed in the right direction in terms of jobs and the economy. He must be reelected to finish the job and keep America moving forward.
    Republicans keep falsely claiming that Obama is bringing European-style socialism to America, but it is the Republicans who want to bring Europe’s disastrous austerity measures to our shores.
    And how is austerity working across the Atlantic? We all know—not well. [personal communication]

Limerick of the Week:

There's a fervent blog troller named Don
Who sometimes signs himself "Hugo" or "Ron"—
    If not "Peter" or "Joe,"
    Or "Reginald" or "Bo,"
Or his favorite alias, "Mister A. Non."