Incumbent presidential candidate Hamid Karzai widened his lead over challenger Abdullah Abdullah, according to the latest tally of votes released by election officials in Afghanistan. With just over one-third of votes counted, Karzai has 45.9 percent, while former foreign minister Abdullah has 33.2 percent. Karzai needs over 50 percent of votes to avoid a runoff, which he may achieve once votes are counted from the southern provinces, where his ethnic Pashtuns dominate.

The country’s Electoral Complaints Commission has seen a spike in claims—over 2,000 filed since election day Aug. 20—with 700 it categorized as “Priority A,” or serious enough to warrant an investigation before final results are certified. This, plus low voter turnout (numbers suggest it’s hovering at 30-35 percent), suggest many voters voted by not voting. And those numbers, as this week’s WORLD Magazine article states, “could doom the election to illegitimacy and spark greater violence throughout the country.” A weak government also will compound U.S. efforts to show progress on what President Obama has called not a war of choice but of necessity.

Republican communications consultant Jon Henke is calling on conservatives to boycott any advertisers at the rightist site WorldNetDaily – saying an article on the site is “hideously embarrassing for the right.”

The report alleges that Democrats are putting forward a bill which would create detention centers that “could be used as concentration camps for political dissidents, such as occurred in Nazi Germany.” (WND shows the article was published in February, so I’m not sure why Henke brings up the piece now, when there are plenty of other recent “birther” articles to pick on, but anyway….)

The Boston Herald checked out the bill to which WND was referring:

In truth, Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., has proposed a bill that would order the Homeland Security Department to prepare national emergency centers — to provide temporary housing and medical facilities in national emergencies such as hurricanes. The bill also would allow the centers to be used to train first responders, and for “other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security.”

Henke writes,

The Birthers are the Birchers of our time, and WorldNetDaily is their pamphlet….No respectable organization should support the kind of fringe idiocy that WND peddles.  Those who do are not respectable.

Thoughts?

The lovely Mrs. Burchett and I recently had the joy of watching Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder in concert. I have decided that if I am ever unresponsive you can check my heart status by playing a Ricky Skaggs CD. If my toe doesn’t start tapping I am likely flatlined. You just can’t help responding if you have a pulse.

I left the concert and waded through Skagg’s discography. One song called “Don’t Get Above Your Raisin’” brought back memories of something my mom always said to me. Here’s how it goes:

Now lookee here gal don’t ya’ high hat me,
I ain’t forgot what you used ta be.
When you didn’t have nuthin,
That was plain ta’ see.
Don’t get above your raisin’,
Stay down ta’ earth with me.

Mom was raised as a farm girl in Kentucky and she was fiercely proud of that. So anytime she perceived that I was getting a bit uppity and full of myself she would throw that line down:

“Don’t get above your raisin’.”

Sometimes it was over such important issues as abandoning Maxwell House for that fancy-schmancy gourmet brew. Usually the comment was meant to keep me grounded (no pun intended, for once) and to remind me where I came from. Can’t say that I always appreciated the input.

I think we do the same thing as Christians. A big reason we are not more joyful and victorious in this journey is that we forget where we came from. We have forgotten our raisin’ and the gift of our salvation. Somehow we forget how desperate we were and start to believe that we actually earned some of our blessings. You know, God is pretty fortunate to have me on board. Paul reminds Titus to tell the believers in Crete to remember where they came from:

“Once we, too, were foolish and disobedient. We were misled and became slaves to many lusts and pleasures. Our lives were full of evil and envy, and we hated each other” (Titus 3:3, NLT).

Not too attractive. Nothing to be uppity about. Then the grace of God intervened:

“But—‘When God our Savior revealed his kindness and love, He saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of His mercy. He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit. He generously poured out the Spirit upon us through Jesus Christ our Savior. Because of his grace he declared us righteous and gave us confidence that we will inherit eternal life’” (vv.4-7).

So that is where I came from. That is where you came from if you are a follower of Jesus. Paul wraps ups this text with a challenge:

“This is a trustworthy saying, and I want you to insist on these teachings so that all who trust in God will devote themselves to doing good. These teachings are good and beneficial for everyone” (v.8).

My constant challenge is to not get above my raisin’ spiritually:

• If I can’t forgive then I have forgotten where I came from. I did not deserve to be forgiven by a Holy God, but I was.
• When I look with disdain at another person I have forgotten where I came from. That person is made in the image of God and deserves the respect that commands.
• When I don’t accept another brother or sister I have forgotten that I was unacceptable to a Holy God. Jesus said you are acceptable because of Me. We must offer the same grace because of Jesus.
• When I can’t serve without expectation of personal return I have forgotten where I came from. If I remember where I came from I will serve because I am grateful for what Christ did for me.
• When I don’t give joyfully of my time and treasure I have forgotten where I came from. If you truly understand where you came from the natural response is to serve Him joyfully.

This is important stuff. I don’t want to forget where I came from both as a person and as a child of God. My small town roots are a big part of who I am. And my encounter with grace at the foot of the Cross defines who I am spiritually. I pray that I will remember every day who I am and where Jesus brought me from. Take time to remember where you came from. And then respond appropriately.

The Washington Post wrote a sympathetic profile of Brian Brown, executive director of National Organization for Marriage. The reporter calls Brown “pleasantly, ruthlessly sane” and says he speaks to the nation’s center instead of rousing extremists:

But this country is not made up of people in the far wings, right or left. This country is made up of a movable middle, reasonable people looking for reasonable arguments to assure them that their feelings have a rational basis. Brian Brown speaks to these people. …

He takes nothing personally. He means nothing personal. He is never accusatory or belittling. His arguments are based on his understandings of history, not on messages from God that gays caused Hurricane Katrina.

The profile talks about NOM’s beginnings and its initial missteps and gives a glimpse into Brown’s thinking, methods and home life.

In case you missed it over the weekend, Bob Schindler, Terry Schiavo’s father died on Saturday of heart failure at age 71.

His son Bobby Schindler said in a statement:

“I am heartbroken over the loss of my father and yet I know at this moment he is rejoicing with my sister, Terri. . . . Even at the height of the battle to save my sister Terri’s life, when his patience and temperance was near exhaustion, he managed to display a gentleness of spirit.”

ADDENDUM: NewsBusters comments on the AP story linked to above.

Caleb was one of 12 men sent by Moses to scout out Canaan and bring back intelligence to prepare Israel for conquest (Numbers 13). Twelve spies all observed the same data: fertile soil, fortified cities, and giants descendent from Anak. At the debriefing Caleb said cheerfully, “Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it.” But the other men (except Joshua) gave the people “a bad report”:

“The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim . . . and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them” (13:32-33).

How little have we understood the deadly poison of “a bad report” on the hearers? I do it all the time. I nearly gave one today. Someone told me his relationship with the mother of his son was unsalvageable and that the idea of their reconciling and marrying was out of the question. He listed several reasons why he should give up and move on, and they were such formidable reasons that I almost agreed with him. (God could never fix that! Too far gone!)

No Christian who insists that he is unable to do a difficult thing thinks he has a spirit of unbelief. He thinks, rather, that he is a realist. He considers someone with Caleb’s attitude to be nutty at best and theologically dangerous at worst.

God later weighed in on the spies’ reports and decreed that the 10 realists would never enter the land of Canaan. But as for the obnoxious faith fanatic, God said, “My servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit and has followed me fully, I will bring him into the land into which he went. . . .” (14:24).

There are two kinds of Christians in the world: the kind of Christian who goes around expecting too little from God and the kind who goes around expecting too much from God. There is nothing in the middle.

We have made things complicated but they are simple: Put your faith in God, in spite of all outward appearances. And do not go around giving “a bad report” and dousing other people’s faith by always pointing out the negative side of things, the obstacles and probabilities and statistics. Caleb saw opportunities for God to be glorious, where others saw only difficulties. His spirit was, of course, the Holy Spirit.

It used to be very important for me to know who was right about the continuance of miracles and of healing and of shooting up prayers for parking spots. But the case of Caleb slices through all that armchair theology. God favors men who have outsized expectations of his power. That’s enough for my brain to ponder.

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.

New reports trickling out of Europe allege that the return of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi to Libya was tied to the British government’s interest in a multi-million-pound oil exploration deal. According to leaked ministerial letters, the decision to include Megrahi in a deal with Libya to allow prisoners to return home resulted after discussions for the oil deal stalled.

The exploration deal for oil and gas, potentially worth up to £15 billion, was announced in May 2007. Six months later the agreement was still waiting to be ratified.

On December 19, 2007, Straw wrote to MacAskill announcing that the UK government was abandoning its attempt to exclude Megrahi from the prisoner transfer agreement, citing the national interest.

In a letter leaked by a Whitehall source, he wrote: “I had previously accepted the importance of the al-Megrahi issue to Scotland and said I would try to get an exclusion for him on the face of the agreement. I have not been able to secure an explicit exclusion.

“The wider negotiations with the Libyans are reaching a critical stage and, in view of the overwhelming interests for the United Kingdom, I have agreed that in this instance the [prisoner transfer agreement] should be in the standard form and not mention any individual.”

Within six weeks of the government climbdown, Libya had ratified the BP deal. The prisoner transfer agreement was finalised in May this year, leading to Libya formally applying for Megrahi to be transferred to its custody.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw insists, however, that the oil deal had nothing to do with the decision to release the terminally ill Megrahi on compassionate grounds:  “The suggestion that at any stage there was some kind of backdoor deal done over (al-Megrahi’s) transfer because of trade is simply untrue.”

NBC revealed it has hired a White House insider to serve as the Today show’s newest correspondent: former President George W. Bush’s 27-year-old daughter Jenna Hager. Hager, who authored two books and works a reading coordinator in Baltimore, will begin contributing monthly reports on topics such as education.

Good morning!

On this day in 1997: Princess Diana died in Paris following an automobile accident.

Welcome to our daily (except Sundays) open thread, where you, the commenters, choose the topics of conversation.

An Indian man named Suresh dialed the wrong telephone number. He apologized to the man on the other end of the line, then hung up.

Apparently, a simple apology was not enough to cover the mistake. The next day, the offended man and six of his friends grabbed Suresh, shaved his head, tied him to a motorcycle, paraded him through the streets, and thrashed him.

The news story does not provide enough detail to make sense of it all, but I think we are supposed to understand the attack in the context of the traditional Indian caste system, with Suresh being lower than Mr. Singh.

Whatever the reason, I’m glad I don’t live under such phone-call perfectionism. With my clumsy fingers pushing the buttons, I would stay in a constant state of baldness.