Notes from Postmodernity

The Redemption of the Tourist: Part IV

2011-06-17T15:03:00.002-06:00

Post subtitle: “There and Back Again – A Tenant's Tale”

“The dragon was dead, and the goblins overthrown, and their hearts looked forward after winter to a spring of joy.”

This post is very difficult for me to write. I feel as if I’m recalling a dream, somewhat nightmarish in nature, trying to sift through vague, bizarre, difficult details and memories. It’s about a time in my life that was all-too real at the time. Now, looking back, it seems nearly unbelievable.

We really did that? We really voluntarily wanted these roles in this story?

It’s quite the drama, actually: there’s Shackleton-like endurance; a dragon and goblins; faulty and flawed, though maturing, “heroes”; plenty of character development; impeccable comedic timing; real-life lessons in redemption; and it conveniently parallels with Lord of the Rings analogies and narratives.

This story recounts our trials and tribulations as the tenants of Catherine Pickering’s basement, and also how God graciously provided a way for us to move back into our old apartment.

Last September, I wrote about how Lindsey and I had moved into the basement of an elderly lady named Catherine Pickering, and about our adventures with her Gollum-like dog, Jiminy Cricket (Jimmy for short).

I am sparing most of the “juicier” details of this story because this isn’t the place for that. My goal isn’t to vindictively drag out all the problems and shortcomings we perceived in our elderly tenant. It won’t do me any good personally to recount specific episodes that still to this day make my blood boil. The goal here is to show that God does work, he does restore, and he sends us through trying times for a reason. Hopefully this is the message that I convey.

For seven months – September, 2010 through March, 2011 – Lindsey I and rented out the basement in the home of Catherine Pickering, an 87 year-old widow with mobility issues. The agreement was we would pay a very moderate monthly rent, but would pay for all groceries and perform most of the cooking and cleaning duties. Through Lindsey’s time voluntarily cleaning Catherine’s kitchen and bathroom through Disabled Resource Services, we saw this as an opportunity to help a sweet, elderly lady in her waning years, all while cutting down our monthly expenses in order to save up more money for a house down payment.

We loved our apartment – it was our first home together – but we weren’t so attached that we were hesitant in taking calculated risks if we thought the outcome would be worth it. My mother, on the other hand, couldn’t believe we were leaving our “cute, little apartment.” But we saw it as a win-win: Elderly lady gets someone to help her around the house and keep an eye on her (mobility issues = high chance of falling), young, ambitious married couple gets an extra leg up on financial goals.

Or so we thought. I’m writing this from my new old apartment, so things obviously didn’t pan out as we had hoped. Proverbs 16:1-2 comes to mind.

It was messy from the beginning. Lindsey and I made a few communication and “assumption” blunders in the first month or so that wouldn’t have been a big deal if we were renting the basement of someone younger than 60, but with Catherine, they proved monumental in scope. We did a lot of learning on the fly with how to live and communicate with an elderly woman whose expectations of us seemed to be exceeding the written and agreed-upon contract. In her eyes, we did very little right. And whenever we were “to blame,” we were screamed at and berated. There was very little “normal” communication with Catherine. Even discussions that began in civil tones often times ended up with her going off on us, leaving my wife in tears and me having to leave the room before I lost my temper verbally.

It was a cycle. There would be two weeks or so of calm, and then out of nowhere – usually when Lindsey and I came up the stairs into the kitchen first thing in the morning – she would unleash a scathing report of how we had failed her recently. We lived in fear of surprise verbal attacks. No matter how much we implored Catherine to simply talk to us, to simply ask us to do something for her, the negative communication – or lack of communication altogether – continued.

On occasion, her niece Barbara – who, along with her husband, had previously rented Catherine’s basement for nearly a year – would play mediator. And it was through Barbara that we learned – after we moved in, mind you – that Catherine’s kids had long wanted her to move into an assisted living facility. Barbara also enlightened us about Catherine’s poor relationship with her late mother-in-law and how that still impacts her personal relationships and communication patterns. And because Barbara didn’t have a day job when she and her husband lived in the basement, she could attend to Catherine’s every beck and call. Barbara was certain that Catherine was projecting those familial expectations on me and Lindsey, and when they weren’t met, we were sure to feel the wrath of Catherine’s entitlement. We also learned that Catherine suffered from short-term memory loss, which explained a great deal about why she thought we weren’t keeping “our side” of the contract.

In one sense, the things Barbara shared with us were extremely helpful. But in another, they were maddening. Why weren’t we told any of this when we were first talking with her about moving in last July? Furthermore, if Barbara and her family knew all of this, why in the world would they let two 20-somethings move into Catherine’s basement when she was in such a precarious state of mental and physical health? We had no business being there. No one did.

One night in mid November, a couple days after the latest blowup, Barbara came over after dinner to tell us that Catherine wanted us to move out. We calmly and honestly told Barbara our side of the story, she took it to Catherine, and she relented of her desire to get rid of us. She said she would do a better job communicating. We said we would too, and that we would use a white board on the pantry door as a two-way message board in hopes that that would alleviate stress and miscommunication.

But we knew we couldn’t keep living like this – especially when we both worked full time and I was coaching. We didn’t feel like we had a home to come home to at the end of the day, and no matter what we did for Catherine, it never seemed to be good enough. I feared going upstairs in the morning before work. We were exhausted and losing hope. I was openly questioning our sanity for making the decision to move in here. We were desperate.

After the meeting with Barbara, we began looking at houses, as well as any cheap apartment we could find. We even called our old landlords, an older married couple living in Windsor, to see if they had any openings in our old building or in any of their other properties. The experiment had failed.

December rolled around, and things started to improve. No more yelling matches. The white board was proving to be quite an effective means of communication between the two parties. Or maybe all the “joy to the world” and “peace on earth” stuff was getting to us all.

Whatever the case, December, then January, then most of February rolled by without incident. Things were pleasant; we had found a rhythm. Maybe the experiment hadn’t failed. We cut back on our aggressiveness to find another place to live. Catherine was pleasant to be around, and Jimmy was getting more and more used to us. There was hope.

On Sunday, February 20, 2011, it was our turn to host our church small group, and we shared with our team our absolute gratitude and praise to God for coming through like He did. We had been through so much, and because of the trials we had learned more about what true contentment looks like. All of the past trials seemed so dark, but we knew that God was using it to grow us up. But things were good now, or at least remarkably better. God had come through for us. We were completely and thoroughly floored by His mercy and provision. Our team rejoiced with us. It was a milestone of a night.

The next day, Monday, February 21 – the day before Dayspring’s district playoff game – I got a phone call on my way home from basketball practice. It was our old landlords. The exact same apartment we used to live in was going to be available at the end of March. Our old apartment. We had the right of first refusal. They needed an answer by the end of the week.

I shared the news with Lindsey that night. To say we were stunned is an understatement. One day after we shared our gratitude and praise with our small group for the work God had done in our situation with Catherine, here, literally, was an open door to get out while the getting was good. So what if we didn’t have enough for a down payment yet? In the midst of the darkest days in the basement, we told ourselves that if our old place opened up again, we’d take it. So here was God, in our minds, really outdoing Himself with generosity, with a place for us to enter into and be revived and restored. After a few days of praying, thinking and talking with friends about what to do, we called our landlords and told them we were in. We didn’t want to chance a Catherine “relapse” into her former ways. We also didn’t want to keep living at such a frantic pace, always walking on egg shells and wondering if we’re doing a good enough job. We were ready to go home.

The move-back-in date was set for March 26. Welcome home. Again.

Sometime on the morning of Monday, February 21, I got a tweet from @JRRTolkien quoting The Hobbit. It read, “The dragon was dead, and the goblins overthrown, and their hearts looked forward after winter to a spring of joy.” I found it an inspiring and interesting quote when I first read it, but after I got off the phone with the landlords, the pieces immediately came together.

Catherine, so often full of verbal flames of false accusation, disgust and disdain, was the “dragon.” Jimmy, petulant, ugly and of dark complexion, was the “goblins.” Or maybe the dragon was the experience of living in Catherine’s home, and the goblins had to do with working at AMG Creative. At any rate, the long winter was coming to an end. God was pushing aside the clouds, letting the light of opportunity into our lives.

He had redeemed our living condition. (I told Lindsey that I felt like a hobbit, that I was going “there and back again.” She didn’t get it.) Maybe He would provide a new place of work for me, a job I could be passionate and excited about. Oh, the hope we felt in the last week of February was so rich, so promising.

“. . . their hearts looked forward after winter to a spring of joy.”

On Saturday, February 26, we told Catherine of our decision over dinner. She took it very well. We were a bit worried she would feel betrayed or abandoned. But she was cordial and understanding. It was going to be OK.

Two days later I was fired from AMG Creative.

Still, our “hearts looked forward after winter to a spring of joy.”

In spite of our reduced income and desire to save for a house, we stayed committed to moving back to our old apartment. March passed slowly for several reasons. Basketball was over. I was unemployed and trying to get my head around that. (Quick side note: being unemployed and living in the basement of an 87 year-old woman is a killer to the male ego. God was really working now.) And Catherine was becoming difficult again. We don’t know if it was in “retaliation” to our decision to move out, but within a week of telling her, her actions and words had made it plain to us that we had made the right choice.

March 26, 2011, dawned warm and glorious. Four hours and two trips with the U-Haul were all we needed to be back where our story began. We said goodbye to Catherine, even giving her flowers and a thank-you note. It didn’t seem to have much of a positive affect: she withheld our security deposit and demanded another 30 dollars because she thought we packed up some food items that were hers. We turned the cheek and paid the extra amount.

We felt bad – and I still do, to some extent – that she felt so ill-treated by us. But I will go to the grave with the peace that God will judge our time and actions there. James 1:27 is no small edict, and we knew the implications of our service when we first moved in. We busted our tails for her. I hope one day she can see the good we did; that God will redeem our time in her basement.

As for Lindsey and I, we love being back home. I don’t think “home” as ever carried as much meaning for us as it does now. Not that I necessarily took that concept for granted before, but being back here, being restored to our former residence, it’s a shadow of Heaven in a lot of ways; it’s an ever-pertinent example of God’s redeeming work and stubborn lovingkindness. We are thrilled for this opportunity, to be with old friends and to live with a revived intentionality to bring God’s love to our new old home.

Not that everything is fully or instantly cured by a change of scenery. I’m still looking for work; Lindsey and I are still sinful people who have unique challenges in our marriage; we are wrestling with spiritual disciplines, time management and making the most of our time in this phase of life; God is still making us into His image – that didn’t stop just because we moved to a “better” place again.

And even though the first official day of summer is only a few days away, we are still eager and hopeful, our hearts looking forward “to a spring of joy.”

Just don’t expect us to sublet your basement anytime soon.

The Redemption of the Tourist: Part III

2011-06-13T11:15:00.002-06:00

Post subtitle: "Moving in a Different Direction"

"Snow is of a loveliness beyond my most secret thoughts. . ." - J.R.R. Tolkien

It was a Monday. The last day of February. Six days after our loss to Heritage Christian in the district playoffs (see part II). I walked through the doors of AMG Creative at 8:03 a.m., ready to bid the first full week of work sans basketball a good morning.

Instead I was immediately ushered into the conference room by Terry, the VP, and Bill, the owner (also Terry’s father-in-law). They closed the door, we sat down, and I knew this wasn’t going to be good.

Terry did all the talking: Let me get straight to the point…we’re moving in a different direction with your position…this is your last day…here’s your last paycheck…you don’t have any vacation time left.

He opened up a manila folder he had with him and slid my paycheck across the desk. He seemed to be enjoying this – or, at least, he wasn’t finding it difficult.

I asked if I could ask why I was being fired so unceremoniously, so out of the blue nowhere.

A brief allusion was made to my performance review back in early December, but Terry repeated more than once that AMG was “moving in a different direction” with the Assistant Creative Director position.

“So, that’s it?” I said a little defensively, a little incredulously. “Nearly three years working here and I don’t even get a one-week heads up?”

Silence.

Finally Bill spoke up. He seemed distraught; almost remorseful. His words betrayed the non-verbals on his face. “Do you want to gather your personal things now or later?”

“I’ll do it now,” I said, snatching up my check and quickly exiting the conference room without another word.

I was able to say a brief goodbye to the two graphic designers (we shared a common work space in the back of the building, the “creative den”) before Terry came back and called them into the conference room. They had no idea what was going on. It became clear then that my dismissal had been a well-kept secret in a company only eight people large.

Bill was polite and calm while I packed up my stuff and cleaned off my computer. I was a mix of anger, confusion, and a desire to try to save face and not douse this bridge with lighter fluid before I crossed it one last time.

Somewhat strange was how Bill hovered over me and frequently came back to see if I was done packing up my things. I later learned that my replacement was waiting in Bill’s office for me to vacate the premises, hence Bill’s sense of urgency for me to get out the door. Classy.

By 8:45, I was out the door. I offered a brief thanks to Bill as I left, hands full of boxes and books, but I don’t think I would have shaken his hand if mine were free, anyway. I sat in my car for a couple minutes, trying to figure out what had just happened, and thinking that this wasn’t how I wanted to part company with AMG.

Not because I loved the company and its management. Far from it. And it wasn’t because I was going to necessarily miss my job duties. Writing ad, website, direct-mail and personalized-letter copy for dental laboratories has a pretty short shelf life of passion/interest, and I had passed that expiration date several months prior to Feb. 28, 2011. But I was going to miss Mike and Mike – the designers – and Ben, one of the account executives. The three of them made my time there worth the struggle.

Now that basketball had wrapped up for the season, I had time to do some job searching and exploring of options. In this economy, I did not want to leave this job until another one had been secured. My animosity towards all things dental aside, I knew that this was better than nothing, and I was still mentally prepared to work as hard as I could, biding my time until another door opened. Lindsey and I were saving up for a house down payment, enjoying every perk that came with being DINKs in this day and age.

As I sat in my car, the future suddenly a blind curve in the Poudre canyon, I felt a little like George Costanza after being served up a deceitful helping of “It’s not you, it’s me.” We’re going in a different direction with your position. It’s not you, it’s the company. From Terry’s indifferent disposition, to the secrecy of the decision and the shame that accompanied the catastrophic suddenness of it all, I was in a state of utter shock and disrespect.
How dare they. I was raw. I had wanted to leave this place on my own terms, and instead I was dusted off their shoulders like an annoying speck of dandruff.

Bill is a certified dental technician, and started AMG specifically to help dental labs in their marketing efforts towards dentists. I would say that 95 percent of AMG’s clientele is from the dental lab industry. I joined the company first as a project manager right out of CSU in 2008, then worked my way up into the creative writer position. In January 2010, I was made ACD. By February, 2011, I was ready for some new scenery, a new stretch of road to experience – even though I was grateful for being employed right out of college. I was tired of writing about fake teeth and dealing with the nepotism and selfishness of AMG’s leaders. I wanted something new, something I was passionate about, something I actually wanted to do. I wanted to start the next journey of my life and career.

But not like this.

I sat in my car, not knowing where to go. I sat in my car, motionless. I sat in my car, thinking that at least I didn’t have to write dental copy anymore.

Events and activities over the next couple of days remain somewhat of a blur. I know there was lots of time talking and praying with Lindsey. I know I started treating my relationship with God like it actually mattered, and the Psalms became my hiding place. I know I tried to get over it too fast, resulting in my first mental and emotional breakdown. I remember going down a long and terrible rabbit hole in my mind, then “snapping.” The tears came as if through an overwhelmed dam on the Missouri somewhere in South Dakota. I cried for minutes on end, clutching my wife like a life raft, confessing my fear through the sobs. I could barely breathe.

The next morning Lindsey texted me Psalm 30:5 from her work and said she was praying for me. My prayers that morning were earnest, feeble, but enlightened with a slight awareness of hope yet to be fully realized.

I needed to get out. Being unemployed and living in an old lady’s basement aren’t exactly the greatest for one’s self-image and self-confidence.

I went snow shoeing in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. Just me and God and the snow that fell periodically throughout the day. I was wanting to go all the way to Lake Isabelle, but the weather looked to be turning for the worse. Gray clouds crashed on the peaks above me; the pass was shrouded in cold secrecy. The high crags passed in and out of view as the clouds swirled. The snow fell harder. I turned home, my back to the wind.

The Redemption of the Tourist: Part II

2011-06-10T11:01:00.003-06:00

Post subtitle: "The First Season"

It’s not easy being a head coach when an assistant coach thinks I’m one of the players the first time we meet.

So I look younger than my ripe, 26 years of age. And at 5’9”, I don’t exactly possess the gravitas of Phil Jackson, John Thompson or Rex Ryan. The only players I stand above are the foreign exchange students from South Korea.

If these opening paragraphs let on a slight sense of self-consciousness and insecurity, well, welcome to my first year as a high school head basketball coach.

I came into Dayspring Christian Academy with pretty lofty ambitions: being a role model of godly masculinity for my guys, instilling life values through the framework of high school athletics, and turning Dayspring into a basketball powerhouse, because why should football get all the glory? But mostly, with this being my first time since 2005 coaching boys, I wanted them to teach, show and gird them with practical and meaningful insight about what it means to be a man. I didn’t want to just win games; I wanted to make them into men.

Except I had no idea how to do that. Or, at least, not a very intentional or mapped-out idea of how to build them up in the ways they needed to be built up. I was flailing and failing to connect with the older players, the captains. When outbursts and sarcasm trickled through my actions and words as a result of not getting respect or not meeting my exact goals or visions, it became easier to focus on wins and losses and not on how well I was lovingly leading these boys in greater pursuits of manliness and maturity.

As it turned out, the one who learned the most in my first year as head coach at DCA was me. A little about leadership, a little about the game itself, but mostly about my shortcomings, my inconsistencies, and the things I was keeping from God. These painful glances in the mirror were the clearest when personnel issues had to be dealt with, and in my five years of coaching, I have never had a more tumultuous in-house season like this one. My girls’ teams at Thompson Valley in Loveland were less dramatic and contentious.

This first year wasn’t a complete failure, though some of the parents may beg to differ. For the first half of the season I rarely felt like myself, and the team seemed to share in my struggles for authenticity, perspective, self-discipline and faith.

Harley Lowe, the AD, was a much-needed support and sounding board during these early trials. His insights were critical in my own, as well as the team’s, development. Towards mid February, many of the on-the-job lessons I had learned began to bear fruit, and our lopsided losing record began to straighten out. I was being (more) encouraging; the guys began to buy into what we were selling; there was respect and optimism; we were actually looking like a team.

Two games will always stay with me from this season. One was a raucous home win against Longmont Christian, who had beaten us by three back in January. When they came to our place with district seeding implications on the line, we blew them out of the water. My guys played with grit on defense, patience and execution on offense, and our crowd was fantastic. This was the basketball I dreamed about before I was a head coach. This was fun.

With only one game left in the regular season after Longmont, we finally felt our chemistry and purpose coming together. As it turned out, this win didn’t boost us in the district standings – we were basically locked in as the sixth seed – but we weren’t playing like the sixth seed. Heritage Christian would have its hands full with us when districts started in a little less than a week.

Thus, the second game that I will carry with me is the district playoff game against the two-seeded Heritage Christian. We had played Heritage twice during the regular season and lost both meetings by a combined total of 10 points. The recent win against Longmont gave our confidence caffeine high; we had a Cinderella story on our minds. We were a senior-heavy team; Heritage started three sophomores and two juniors. We thought we could handle the playoff pressure better than them. Even though the game was at their place, we knew we could win. After our last regular season loss to Heritage – in their gym – I guaranteed my guys we would beat them come playoff time.

Did I allude to Rex Ryan earlier? My guarantee came up begging. The game started off disastrously: we laid an egg in the first quarter. Yeah. No points. But our defense was playing well enough that Heritage had only scored 11 in that first period. We went into halftime down 15.

I don’t remember exact details from my halftime speech. Looking back on it, I can remember a general sense of what I said. There was a lot of imploring to keep fighting, to stay together, because that’s what we had been doing all year: fighting, playing our butts even when no one believed we could it. This is a football school, look at those poor basketball players, aww, aren’t they special, look at how hard they play. No, no more patronizing. We hadn’t come this far to go out quietly into the cold of late Colorado winter. I think I told them that this comeback would be our finest hour, that life’s great challenges require great resolve and faith, and this was a test of who we were as men.

Andrew Garcia played point for us most of the year, but it had been a massive struggle. Last season’s starting point guard blew out his ACL playing football, and Andrew, a natural scoring guard, was forced to learn how to lead a team. Kind of like his coach. A game or two before the Longmont win, we moved Andrew to the 2-guard spot and Thomas Martin, another senior, to the point. We liked how the experiment had worked so far, but nothing could compare to what happened in the second half.

Andrew came out of the locker room swinging. Three after three after three. Our crowd got into it. Heritage played tentative basketball. We chipped, chipped, chipped away at the lead. In total, Andrew hit six 3’s in the second half. He should have been playing this position all year. With a little over three minutes left in the fourth quarter, we were only down six. We were really going to do it.

But a goose egg in the first quarter of a district playoff game is too steep of a hill to overcome. I think we lost by eight or nine. Heritage hit their free throws down the stretch. When our bus pulled up in front of our school around 10:30 that night, Andrew approached me with a strange request: “Can you open up the gym?” I said I would, but asked why. “I want to say goodbye,” he said.

So he said goodbye, and the tears were still on his cheeks when he exited the gym for the last time about 10 minutes later. This was the same kid who volunteered to help a teammate finish running his 45 suicides because he was 45 minutes late for practice. A kid no more.

Can I get a redo? Can I start this season over again, so I can give Andrew the senior year he deserved? Can we restart this whole thing over again with the perspective, lessons and attitudes that I now have? Please tell me something is redeemable from all of this. I want another shot.

The line between success and failure is very blurred when I look back on this season. There is nothing wrong with failure. It’s a great catalyst; the best of all teachers. It is the best motivator to check where your joy, identity and fulfillment are grounded. But I’m still left wondering about what could have been.

Part of me believes that the reoccurring struggles throughout the season were manifestations of larger stresses in my life. Work wasn’t helping my overall mood and outlook on life. I was coming in early and working through lunches in order to be able to leave early for practice or games. On game days I wouldn’t get home until nearly midnight, and was up in a few hours to start it all over again. I sensed a giant bulls-eye on my back, and the bosses were constantly taking aim at me. On top of that, I was beginning to look for a new place of employment anyway. I had been at AMG Creative since graduating from CSU in 2008, and three years of writing dental laboratory copy can be a little wearisome. I wasn’t checked out mentally, but I had my books in hand and was looking in my wallet for the library card.

And at the time, Lindsey and I were subletting the basement of a house owned by an 87 year-old lady. She was demanding and angry. There was so much going on – basketball issues, work issues, an incredibly delicate situation at “home,” and, oh yeah, I’m married. Our next date night, babe? Try two months from now. Lindsey was more than a trooper; she was so patient, so supportive. I don’t know if I’ll truly know how hard this first season was on her. She was a renewing spirit throughout it all.

Naturally, due all of everything going on and no time for any of it, my quiet times and prayer life suffered. How could I be a godly role model to these boys if I wasn’t being a role model to myself? I was so unbalanced; life was moving too fast. I was running a spiritual deficit: imploring and teaching principles and values that I myself wasn’t practicing in my own life. I honestly don’t know how we got through it, or how things improved later in the season. God’s grace was pulling overtime. I don’t know if I fully realized it at the time.

Coaching is for the young. But the life Lindsey and I were living is for the dogs. We couldn’t keep up that pace. It’s no wonder that God pulled the rug out from under us only a few days after the season ended, but I’ll explain more about that in later posts.

This offseason, I’m reading all I can on leadership and resting in God’s joy. Season of Life by Jeffrey Marx is an invaluable read for coaches, parents and boys; it was convicting and inspiring all at once, and has provided a paradigm shift in my approach to coaching. I’m also reading Tony Dungy’s The Mentor Leader and N.D. Wilson’s Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl. Dungy’s book is tremendous, and Wilson’s is, well, it’s “poetry with testicles,” as he would say. Get all three of these books.

So, you ask, here at the end of this bittersweet tale: Do I think my first year as a head coach was a failure or a success?

With a record of 7-and-10, it’s easy to say it was a failure. But one thing I’m learning is how to properly define “success” and “failure.”

This season was a success – but only because of the failures.

The Redemption of the Tourist: Part I

2011-06-09T09:13:00.016-06:00

"Few can foresee whither their road will lead them, till they come to its end." - Legolas in The Two Towers

I will not apologize for the amount of time in between posts. This space is not a diary; I don’t have to confess my lack-of-posting sins to the existential, or metaphysical, or whatever-isical nature of this space in order to be restored to the blogosphere’s good graces. Or yours, for that matter.

I’ve been on a long road since October, 2010, and my circumstances, emotions and duties have demanded every last second of time and energy. Every exit has passed by in a blur, and, as Garth would say, that white line just kept getting longer and longer. This road has gone ever on and on.

Until recently, anyway.

Finally, a rest stop with a view.

It probably sounds like everything since October, 2010 has been total crap. Not quite. There was actually a lot of good. Yet even the good brought its share of trials and stress. Here, from this brief respite along Highway Life, is what I see when I look back on this road, this weary stretch that's enough to turn the most seasoned tourist into a recluse:

• Coached my first season of high school basketball as a head coach
• Got fired from my first job since college
• Moved out of the basement of an 87 year-old woman and her 87 year-old Chihuahua back into our old apartment
• Took a two week sabbatical in central/eastern Europe
• Ongoing introspection and career counseling in hopes that this 26 year-old will figure out what he wants to do when he grows up
• Still looking for gainful employment in this intrepid economy
• Went on a church flood/geology expedition to Moab
• Am daily getting my teeth kicked in by the tough-loving, determined-to-grow-me-up God of life, the universe, everything

I will take all of these items in turn. Not because I enjoy baring my soul to you, but because God has been incessantly working on my heart and mind throughout this journey, and if there are others out there now who need perspective, encouragement, or hope, maybe they will find glimpses of whatever it is they’re looking for in my story. Life is narrative. This is for the greater good, I suppose, with a little bit of catharsis thrown in for good measure.

So, this is what’s on tap. Hopefully one post per day over the next week or so. Pull over with me if you have the time. Your destination isn't the most important thing, anyway.

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

2010-10-21T14:56:00.006-06:00

At least no one is taking Juan Williams to court over his opinions on Islam:

A Tale of Two Headlines

2010-10-19T09:51:00.001-06:00

Two headlines caught my eye yesterday, one at National Review Online and the other on the BBC website. They speak Dickens-esque volumes about the current and future state of Europe and the West:

“What the Wilders Trail Means”

“Merkel says German multicultural society has failed”

Germany and the Netherlands share a border, and their respective capitals are only separated by roughly 400 miles. But these two countries are oceans apart when it comes to understanding the impact that foreign (read: Islamic) immigration is having on their societies.

Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted that the multiculturalism Germany has practiced – especially in respect to the assimilation (or lack thereof) of immigrants from Islamic countries – for the last few decades has “utterly failed.”

Meanwhile, Dutch politician Geert Wilders is being tried for “hate speech” against Islam. What makes the Wilders trial so ridiculous/crucial is that he’s the leader of the third-largest political party in the Netherlands. In essence, this man’s own country is trying his party’s platform to ensure that no one’s feelings are hurt by said platform. Holy consequences, Batman!

It’s a good thing Chancellor Merkel isn’t an established political leader in the Netherlands, otherwise her “utterly failed” comments could be construed as “hateful” and land her in court.

This dichotomy lays bare the utterly self-defeating and un-multicultural foundation of the multiculturalism. The Dutch are apparently so accepting and inclusive that they can’t quite bring themselves to accept and include a certain culture/worldview if it isn’t, by their definition, “multicultural.” As Mark Steyn put it, “tolerant” liberal democracies pretty much suck at tolerating those who reject the “multiculti pieties.”

Germany, though, appears to be realizing the error of her ways.

Luther as the Rugged Individualist

2010-10-18T12:24:00.001-06:00

I’m slightly perturbed by the bad PR that the concept of “rugged individualism” gets from the Tim Keller/Tullian Tchividjian brand of evangelical Christianity. This hyper individuality, the narrative goes, is a uniquely American ego trip that places the individual above community, relationships, and even the need to be saved. In sermons and books, I’ve been told that “rugged individualism” is a deterrent to godly fellowship and true, Gospel-oriented lives. By pulling ourselves up by our boot straps, we deny total reliance and affection for Jesus, and fall into the American/Western capitalist cowboy trap: living life on our own.

Obviously and of course, there are pitfalls, downsides, and levels of emotional emptiness in this rugged individualist stereotype. I would just ask for some perspective on the issue. The way I see it, this super-individualized, American cowboy trope that is lamented by a popular evangelical leaders actually got its start with one of Protestantism’s founding fathers: Martin Luther.

It was Luther, after all, who nailed home the point (literally) that you don’t have to go through a certain church, or a certain group of anointed men, or succumb to herd-mentality religion to be saved. His message focused on the fact that you – you, the individual – are capable of having an intimate, redeeming and personal relationship with the Creator of the universe. Some guy wearing a big hat and fancy robe has no business arbitrating your relationship with God.

Luther made salvation personal again. The Protestant Reformation was revolutionary precisely because it called attention to the individual, but not in a way that glossed over our sinful nature and need to be saved. Luther recognized that we each have a sin debt owed to God, and no amount of corporate worship activity can redeem and regenerate the individual soul.

The pervasive quality of freedom enjoyed by Americans was born precisely out of this same belief: that the individual alone is accountable to himself and to his God. The government shall have no “positive” rights over the individual, and our fates – as well as spiritual/religious affinities – should not be tied to the “collective” population. I am free. Hear me roar. The Catholic Church heard that roar via Luther, and the British crown heard it all the way across the Atlantic in 1776. What’s the lesson here? That once an individual realizes his freedom in God’s eyes, he can then begin to free the rest of society.

Sure, maybe two hundred years down the line this individualized society has taken that freedom to some unfortunate outcomes: The value, need and importance of building healthy communities – especially the church – can be downplayed in this environment. iPod spirituality says I can still belief in God, pray and read the Bible, but I don’t need those hypocrites at church telling me what to do. Or, individuals become so confident in their own abilities, wealth, and mistaken assumptions about the nature of sin that they don’t think they need to be saved. Epic fail on both counts.

But I fail to see how that is only an Americanized problem – let alone the direct result of “rugged individualism.” Are we the only society in the history of the earth – bloated by wealth, arrogance and pride – to not seek God for fulfillment and purpose? Are the social democracies of Western Europe, crippled with group-first socialism and “let’s all get along” multiculturalism, teeming with spiritually-alive, God-seeking populations? By devaluing the importance of the individual, Europe is choking under a “tyranny of good intentions,” where over-regulation trumps creative choice, and the State poses as a benevolent (albeit a financially insolvent) deity that doles out service after service for the “good of the whole.”

The rampant socialization/communalization of government and society is just as much of an anathema to vibrant, Gospel-focused communities as unchecked rugged individualism. It might behoove evangelical/Reformed leaders in America to pay tribute to the heritage and value of Western individualism, while still exposing and correcting the dangers that come from blind self-reliance.

Otherwise, I think we risk alienating a good chunk of the population that sees “rugged individualism” as more virtue than vice – especially in an election year featuring heavy evangelical involvement and rife with backlash against an increasingly socialized, anti-individual government.

All the Sexy Halloween Costumes Have Daddy Issues

2010-10-04T15:29:00.001-06:00

Steve Silverstein, president and CEO of costume retailer Spirit Halloween, is an unlikely source for commentary on the critical influence fathers have in the lives of their children. But here he is, explaining the basic relational needs of boys and girls and what happens when those needs aren’t properly met by daddy, via the Halloween costume framework:

“Guys want to be funny or horrific so they stand out at the party. . . . Girls want to be beautiful, and when they grow up they want to be sexy.”

Translation: Guys want to be noticed and important, seeking to add value, worth and creativity to their societal and social surroundings. When they don’t learn from their fathers what that significance should look like, they resort to slapstick, superficial means to achieve that end.

Girls need to know they are loved and beautiful. If this security, love and acceptance isn’t firmly established by the dad, she will play up her sexiness so that other men will give her that attention and appreciation. Even if that means dressing like a mini-skirted Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

They Don’t Believe We’re Made in God’s Image, but Their Nutrition Advice is Spot On!

2010-09-24T12:22:00.001-06:00

I came across an interesting post at the Resurgence website the other day, titled, “Pastor, You’re Probably Fat: 6 Things to Do About It” by John Catanzaro.

I am not a pastor, but I wanted to see what the Resurgence folks had to say about the cross-section of nutrition and Godly living. This particular post was part of a larger topic about the theology of the body. I briefly read through some of the previous articles, and liked what I saw – humans are made in God’s image, the body is a temple, it will be resurrected again, God cares about how we take care of our body, no physical/spiritual dichotomy, etc. etc. All good stuff.

But tip #5 on “Pastor, You’re Probably Fat” really threw me for a loop:

Cut your calories by 50% and get them from wholesome food. Eat more green vegetables and quality protein (fish and organic sources of meat). There are wholesome weight reduction programs that include excellent food choices and assist in changing the negative hormone behavior. When a person is fat for a long time the body forgets how to metabolize fat and needs help. I would recommend you see a qualified doctor who can assist you with this. (Emphasis mine.)

This is great. Christian theology of the body is this awesome, awe-inspiring thing and is way better than the secular/materialistic view of human bodyness, but let’s still the follow the out-of-date nutritional advice of the secular humanists to take care of God’s special creation!

Eat more vegetables and organic meat? Who’s been pushing that nutritional worldview if not the secular humanists who run our government health agencies and environmental non-profits? The science behind “more vegetables, less meat – unless it’s organic” becomes more dubious by the day. Everyone at Resurgence is so culturally aware and on top of things, but somehow they missed this study released last summer that found there’s no nutritional difference between organic and non-organic foods.

They also apparently aren’t aware of the latest realization that saturated fats – mostly found in red meat – are actually pretty darn good for you, and that it’s not the caloric intake that matters, but rather the kind of caloric intake that determines your healthiness. The American obesity plague is a result of diets high in carbohydrates (not fat) – especially of the white flour/sugar carbs.

Gary Taubes wrote the monolithically impressive Good Calories, Bad Calories (roughly 1 billion pages long and very technical) and is following it up this December with the streamlined, easier-to-read Why We Get Fat. He debunks decades’ worth of bad fat science that resulted in the detrimental Food Pyramid, among other things. Taubes gets to the heart of the modern diet/nutritional paradigm and why, based on science, its premise – saturated fat is bad for you – has never been proven.

(Here’s a great article by Taubes that serves as a phenomenal introduction to the ideas in his books; I’ll post more nutrionally-oriented links at the end, too.)

I guess the point of all this is that, if Christians are going to have a theology of the body, how much sense does it make to have a theology of nutrition that isn’t backed by verifiable science and that follows the narrative of very non-Christian sources? It just seems a little self-defeating. I don’t necessarily know what a Christian theology on nutrition would look like, and it’s definitely not a “Gospel” issue, but I’m pretty sure the prophet Daniel got fat because he didn’t eat the king’s ribeye.

On a personal note, I really have a hard time when Christians advocate for organic foods. If we’re supposed to be stewards of God’s planet, organic food production is about the last route we want to pursue (requires more land, resources and money to produce same amount of food as “conventional” production methods; it is therefore less “environmentally friendly” than conventional agriculture). The United States hasn’t fed the whole world by using organic production methods. Guys like Norman Borlaug used those eeeeevil genetically-modified foods to feed starving Indians and Africans. In other words, conventional agriculture has performed some of the greatest “whatever you did for the least of these, you did for Me” acts in the history of mankind.

The advances in food science are also amazing fulfillments of the Cultural Mandate: we have taken God’s creation, and in light of the obstacles of a sin-cursed creation, we have done more with less and “subdued/cultivated” our food sources in the most efficient, globally-helpful ways possible. Only once we emerged from subsistence farming (read: “organic”) has the world enjoyed its unparalleled wealth, abundance and health on such a wide scale. Organic farming is marketed as a central tenet of a caring, responsible lifestyle. It’s all very romantic and noble. But organic farming was all the world had for thousands of years. There’s nothing romantic about starving to death and continually being held at the mercy of the land (that’s not very Gen. 1:25-28, if you ask me). What’s environmentally or culturally responsible with using more land, more resources and feeding fewer people just to have a USDA “Certified Organic” label on your carrots? But it’s a great self-esteem boost, isn’t it?

(Full disclosure: my dad works for one of those immoral and malevolent animal pharmaceutical companies that sell antibiotics and synthetic growth hormones to greedy ranchers. So there.)

If anyone from Resurgence happens to catch this post, which I doubt (thanks for your support, all seven of my subscribers!), I would love to get your feedback/comments. Here are the rest of the links to nutritionally- and scientifically-sound articles that you should find helpful/thought-provoking:

“Study: Organic food not more nutritional” by Jessica Daly, CNN

“High Yields: The Only Farming Answer” by Dennis Avery, Hudson Institute

“What if Bad Fat is Actually Good for You?” Men’s Health article

“Can A High-Fat Breakfast Be Good For You?” by Jonny Bowden, That’sFit.com

“Should We Avoid Saturated Fats? Studies Say No” by Jonny Bowden, That’sFit.com

Type Casting

2010-09-20T08:50:00.002-06:00

Daniel Dae Kim still can’t get off the island:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb-ejxJEgqE

The Globe’s Not-a Warmin’

2010-09-16T15:16:00.002-06:00

I’ve always liked Bob Dylan:

. . . Dylan is an old-fashioned patriot who wears cowboy hats, loves Texas as much as Greenwich Village, and spoke warmly to Rolling Stone of George W. Bush, whom he’d met when the latter was governor of Texas, while also wishing President Obama well. . . .
During an interview with Jann Wenner in the 40th anniversary edition of Rolling Stone, Dylan replied to a question about the urgency of solving global warming with the mocking, “Where’s the global warming? It’s freezing here.”
When Wenner pressed him as to who would solve the world’s problems if not politicians, Dylan came out with words so Biblically harsh or nakedly Libertarian they are frankly astonishing to the modern ear. Forget politicians: “The world owes us nothing,” he told Wenner, “not one single thing.” And: “Human nature really hasn’t changed in 3,000 years. … It’s not meant to change. It cannot change. It’s not made to change.”

Full article about Dylan and how he is the antithesis of the leftist “ruling class” of which he still holds generational clout:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-bridge-bob-dylan-the-ruling-class-and-the-country-class/

The Gollum Upstairs

2010-09-15T09:41:00.001-06:00

Sorry for the silence. The second half of my summer got jammed full of more trips, activities and stuff than a lifetime worth of Summers of George could dream of.

July 14-18, Lindsey and I went with a group from our church on short-term mission trip to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. I helped plan/lead the trip with one of our pastors (I took on this responsibility shortly after I took over as the boys’ head basketball coach at Dayspring Christian, so I had lots of free time).

At any rate, I’ve decided that participating in a mission trip is easier than planning one. Over the next several days, I will be posting a multi-part series about the Pine Ridge trip. It was a very moving and memorable experience, and I want to share some of the thoughts and stories that shaped my journey.

Once we returned from Pine Ridge, it was time to pack up our apartment – our first home together – and move. Just down the road, actually. To a basement. Into the basement of an elderly lady’s house. For almost rent-free.

It’s a nice basement –about the same square footage as our two-bedroom apartment: Living room, dining room, bathroom, two bedrooms and a utility room. The only thing we share with the lady, Catherine, is her kitchen. She has a bad hip and can’t drive, so her two-car garage is ours to use, as well. And she has a huge backyard with maples and ashes and a place for a garden. It’s a great opportunity for me and Linds to save for a down payment. It’s not too shabby of a setup, either – that is, if you can tolerate living in a basement and fending off Catherine’s hell hound, a yippy, nippy little rat terrier: Jiminy Cricket. More on him in a minute.

Earlier in the summer, Lindsey came to know Catherine because she had volunteered to clean her bathrooms a couple times a month. Catherine and Lindsey hit it off well, and Lindsey enjoyed spending time with her when she went over to clean. The only thing that wasn’t enjoyable was Jiminy Cricket, or Jimmy, as Catherine usually calls him.

Catherine found so much promise in Lindsey, however, she thought it would be a great idea for us to live in her basement for practically nothing as long as we cooked, cleaned and took out the garbage. By the end of August, we were in – much to the consternation and constant disapproval of Jimmy.

Jimmy is a Katrina dog: he survived the hurricane and came to Colorado with other pets orphaned because of the storm. Somehow, Catherine found him. Orley, Catherine’s husband, had been dead a couple years by the time Jimmy arrived, so they took to each other right away. Catherine had someone to talk to again, and Jimmy also served as a home-security system. Jimmy adores Catherine, but he utterly despises every other creature on the planet that walks on two legs.

Especially those who live in his master’s basement. Every time we come up the stairs, every time we’re in the kitchen, every time we walk into the living room to talk to Catherine as she sits in her chair, the mongrel lashes out with a torrent of grating sound. He’s bitten my heels more than once and has nipped Lindsey’s on occasion. He is without a doubt the most loathsome, vile piece of flesh I have ever known.

It’s difficult to over state the hideousness of Jiminy Cricket. His legs, bony and knobby, support a fat, aging body of graying fur. The mass of his upper body is so disproportionate to his legs, that when he walks or runs, it appears that he moves sideways; it’s as if his legs are swaying his body from side to side, and he is incapable of walking in a straight line. His coat is course and very off-putting to touch; his ears resemble those of a jackrabbit; his nose is long and skinny. But his eyes – his bulging, black eyes – are the center of his disdainful repulsion. They are dark and putrid, thoroughly black and unmoving, like an orb that has no color or life. When you look into his eyes, your throat tenses with the sensation of disgust; every part of your being wants to shrink away from this foul, filthy animal. Jimmy’s ugliness is of the creepy sort. His tinny, high-pitched yelp pierces skin and shrivels ears, breeding contempt at every meeting.

So there he sits, on Catherine’s lap, raising all manner of hell as you try to have a conversation. There he charges, low and stooping, growling and foaming at the very scent of you. There he stands guard on the back of the sofa that looks across the front yard and driveway, always ready with a snarl and a shriek the moment you set foot on his master’s property. He is completely sold out to Catherine; anyone and everyone not of her is a threat to his peace and happiness.

But one day as we brought over a small load of boxes in mid August, Catherine was out, spending the day with her family. We were ready for whatever venom Jimmy would spit at us. Yet as the garage door slowly slid open and Jimmy appeared in the doorway into the kitchen (Catherine left it ajar so he could use the backyard), he let out not a single rumble, not one skin-curling bark. He even let us pick him up and take him back inside.

It was then we realized that his depraved nature only surfaced when Catherine was around to “protect.” This was a puzzling revelation, one in which I failed to fully understand until a few weeks later.

We had been in Catherine’s basement (or should I say Jimmy’s?) for more than two weeks, and still he treated us like he had never seen or smelled us before. He hated us. And I hated him. I would plot how I would silence him with the spray bottle when he would come barreling into the kitchen spewing hate and envy to greet me as I came home from work. I relished the chance to bombard him with a loud and terrible “Tssst!” if he ever brought his snarling anger too close for my comfort. I was put out by the very thought of him. He was enough to make me move out. He was my nemesis, and I was his thief, coming to steal his master away in the night.

Then just the other day, one morning after Lindsey and I left for work, Catherine fell. They took her to the hospital for x-rays, and as of this writing, she’s still there, recovering and receiving physical therapy.

We knew Jimmy acted differently without Catherine around, and now we would see what he would do without his precious master around for days on end. He warmed to us to fairly well, actually: he sat at our feet during dinner as we fed him bits of food from our meals; he came when we called him to go to the bathroom outside. One afternoon over my lunch break, I sat in the backyard reading, and he ran up to me to sit for a minute, then ran off somewhere else and repeated this activity multiple times.

He even sat on my lap for a few minutes as I watched TV from Catherine’s chair. This, I thought, was unthinkable two weeks ago.

But it is painfully obvious that he misses Catherine. He seems lost and hopeless without her. He sits on the back of the sofa looking out the window, sure that at any moment she’ll be dropped off at the end of the driveway. Every time we open the garage door, he comes bursting into the daylight expecting to see his master coming up the drive.

We don’t know when Catherine will be back. So he waits, despondent and full of longing. And what is this feeling that’s coming over me? Could it be pity for the poor wretch?

Yes, pity. Last night as I did dishes in the kitchen, I heard a cry from the living room. I glanced up to see Jimmy facing Catherine’s empty chair. He let out a series of low, mournful howls – cries of desperation and loneliness. His scrawny head thrown back and his black, vapid eyes closed in sorrow as he wailed for his long, lost precious.

Yes, “precious.” I use the term knowingly. It was that afternoon in the back yard when I first realized that Jimmy is my Gollum and that Catherine is his “Precious.” Sitting in the backyard, watching him run up to me then scamper away again reminded me of Gollum’s interactions with his Hobbit masters, and it was then I knew that he wasn’t just a revolting, angry little dog.

Jimmy is Gollum and Catherine is the Ring. She poisons him with such a deep dependence that he rages whenever anyone threatens her attention. He can’t stand the thought of not having her. He is more than content to sit in the dark with her, to sit at her feet while she sleeps, like Gollum, deep in his cave below the Misty Mountains.

When she is gone, he is somewhat civil, and is even capable of befriending others and feigning sincerity – like Sam and Frodo experienced as Gollum guided them through Middle Earth. Jimmy is trapped within himself; he is Jimmy and he is Jiminy Cricket. Sméagol couldn’t overcome Gollum, and I’m afraid the Jiminy Cricket we’ve come to pet, feed and take care of the last few days will dissolve away into horrible Jimmy the minute Catherine returns.

And I, like Bilbo, Gandalf and Frodo, feel pity for the lowly thing. I nearly choked as I witnessed his cries of loneliness in the thick of his grief. It was a completely different perspective of the natural world for me, and I learned more about Creation’s deep and fatal connection with Mankind, as well as its intense need to be repaired.

Gollum got to hold his Precious one last instant before he melted away. I don’t know what fate Jimmy has with Catherine, but I’m sure she’ll be back soon. I wonder if he’ll remember how he fell asleep on my lap like I’ll remember how he wept.

In the morning as I let Jimmy outside and fill his dish, I’ll look on him with the same dubious antagonism like Sam did with Gollum. But I’ll also see him through eyes softened by pity and grace, like Frodo, who knew the sad history of Sméagol and believed the poor creature was capable of being redeemed.

The Eco-Jihad

2010-07-13T11:06:00.002-06:00

The greenest kids on the block aren’t your Whole-Foods-buying, Prius-driving neighbors with the wind turbines in the backyard. No, the real champions of earth-friendliness are the faithful followers of Islam.

Or so says the Prince of Wales, the royal highness of eco-absurdism.

Speaking at the Sheldonian Theatre on June 9, in a lecture to mark the 25th anniversary of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, Price Charles urged mankind to save the natural world through the means of “sacred traditions.” In the Prince’s ecumenically-patchwork doctrine, our ruthless destruction of the environment stems from an ignorance of these sacred religious and spiritual traditions – most notably Islam.

The Fresh Prince of Fresh Air bemoaned the fact that Islam’s “treasuries of accumulated wisdom and spiritual knowledge” – these “priceless” gifts to the world – are being overshadowed by the “dominant drives towards Western materialism.” You know, the barbaric notion that “to be truly modern you have to ape the West.” If only we could only follow Islam’s “spiritual principles,” said Charles, then our environmental worries will be over!

It’s all very clear now. For the last decade, we right-wing Islamophobes have had it all wrong. We’ve thought that bin Laden and the like were waging their jihad in the name of Allah. But in reality, their global struggles have been about the restoration of a clean, un-Westernized eco Eden.

Ergo, if you’re of the Islamic tradition and you want to save “the environment” and still get a guaranteed spot with the 72 virgins, fly planes into buildings. Blow up the London Tube. Smuggle C4 on a plane via your underwear. Park a car bomb in Times Square. Stage a “massacre” on a flotilla in Israeli waters. Because the worst polluters and CO2-contributors to Allah’s delicate creation are those materialistic Westerners with their abnormal carbon footprints. Felling the Great Satan – surprise-surprise – has nothing to do with a world-wide caliphate after all. Just greener lives for those of us still alive.

This Islamic eco-platitude works just fine if you view the world through multicultural-colored windows. But reality has a way of smashing thinly-paned glass.

Not more than a week after Prince Charles’s hour-long tribute to Islam’s greener side, members of the Muslims Against the Crusades (MAC) group berated British soldiers during their unit’s homecoming parade in a neighborhood of Barking, Essex. Prince Charles was undoubtedly surprised that the MAC’s protest had nothing to do with the soldiers’ Westernized affluence and environmental unfriendliness.

“'This is a protest against parading in a Muslim area. We love death the way you love life,” shouted one MAC member. “Butchers return” and “Murderers” were also common refrains from the MAC contingent.

Muslims cut from this kind of cloth care nothing at all about the state of the “environment.” And about their “sacred traditions” – I wonder if Prince Charles includes female genital mutilation and honor killings among said traditions. Like the rest of the multicultural establishment, Prince Charles probably considers Islam’s “contributions” in areas like architecture and math as evidence of the faith’s noble, culturally-positive legacy.

But as scholar and author Rodney Stark points out, Muslims never “had” it. “The civilization we typically associate with Islam was in fact the civilization of the Christians and Jews they were ruling,” said Stark in a recent interview. “When those Christians and Jews finally disappeared, so too did that advanced ‘Muslim’ civilization.” Oh, well. At least NASA is here to make them feel good about their cultural and religious legacies.

One of the more dangerous revelations from this episode is that environmental doomsayers, like Sir Charles, will bark up any tree they think can help them “save” the “planet.” Climategate and Glaciergate brought the pure, wind-driven science of climate change urgency to a screeching halt, and now it’s time for religion – Islam – to save the day. Allah has gone green. It’s absurd simply writing that. How absurd must it feel to actually believe this nonsense?

I’m not normally a fan of Christopher Hitchens, but he made some pertinent observations about Charles’ speech. In an article in Slate, Hitchens assures us that the Prince’s remarks drew some “wolfish smiles among his Muslim audience.” Hitchens then went on to quote a document published by the Islamic Forum of Europe – “a group dedicated to the restoration of the Islamic Caliphate” and not the saving of the environment – stating that the “primary work” in establishing a global Islamic state “is in Europe, because it is this continent, despite all the furor about its achievements, which has a moral and spiritual vacuum.”

And the Prince of Wales is first among the vacuous.

All is Not Lost: My Lost Series Finale Review

2010-05-28T15:41:00.002-06:00

Those last 15 minutes. Oh, those last 15 minutes. They will go down as the most controversial/gripping 15 minutes in television history.

What was shaping up to be a series finale to end all series’ finales, the last 15 minutes of Lost airtime took a Titanic-sized turn for the bizarro.

I’ve been with Lost since the beginning, and I’m torn in a bajillion different directions about the finale, “The End.” Tuesday morning (I wasn’t able to watch it Sunday night – yea for the interwebs) I tweeted that the whole thing was like the Chronicles of Narnia meets Titanic in a Unitarian church. And because I’m so torn about “The End,” what you are about to read is most likely going to be very random and incoherent. Consider this a “readability” alert.

But before we begin, a few things need to be understood:

1. Any serious viewer of the show knew that going into the finale (and even the last season) there would still be unanswered questions. Even the show’s creators admitted as much. So for all you what-about-the-polar-bears people, just drop it. TV shows aren’t created in a vacuum (especially this one); some things will go unexplained or completely abandoned altogether (more on this later).

2. Even if we knew that some things were going to be left “open for interpretation,” I think it might have also been naïve of us to think that the series would end with a nice ribbon tied around it. Wasn’t in the cards. That’s not how this show rolls (er, rolled). Unconventiality was the norm, so, in some ways, “The End” stayed true to the ethos of the show as a whole.

3. In TV critic Alan Sepinwall’s review of the finale, he said that your enjoyment/disdain of the finale probably depended on where you fit on the character-development or plot-mystery spectrum. Take a second to determine where you are on this spectrum before we move on.

There. OK, let’s get dirty. Thoughts, muses, questions and comments about the good, the bad, and the “what the…?” of “The End.”

To begin, we must go back to the end of season 5. Juliet falls down the hole of the yet-to-be-built Hatch and “detonates” Jughead – the nuclear bomb that somehow ended up on the Island back in the 1940s. As far as I know, the “conventional” wisdom has it that Juliet smashed the bomb with a rock and it exploded. Giant white flash. Fade to black. End of season 5.

Too bad the bomb never exploded.

Now, I don’t know if that’s a truly novel idea in the whole universe of Lost theories, but I’ve never really heard much talk about it, even amongst my other Lost friends. I don’t believe Jughead ever went off. Maybe it “neutralized” the energy so that the 1970s-Dharma folks could later build the Hatch, but I don’t know how a nuclear bomb “neutralizes” something without blowing that something to kingdom come.

Season 6 starts with the Island in-tact, and the time is “present day.” The Island time-skipping was already halted by Locke before “The Incident,” but somehow Jack, Kate, Sawyer and everyone else are in the 2000s again and not the 1970s. Whatever the bomb did (but I’m fairly certain it didn’t explode), sent them back to “present day” after Desmond blew up the Hatch (end of season 2).

As season 6 opened, we were all under the impression that Jughead’s detonation created a parallel universe (the “flash-sideways”). As Brian Regan might say, we were way off: they were all dead, in heaven! Everything that happened on the island really did happen, thus the bomb didn’t explode, because of it did, the ISLAND WOULDN’T BE THERE. This is one of my main puzzlers that season 6 didn’t do a very good job of clarifying, and maybe I’m making too big of a deal out of it.

But it’s a big deal because until the last 15 minutes of “The End,” all, if not most, of us were under the impression that Jughead’s explosion inexplicably created a different plane of reality, some “real” parallel universe.

Apparently not. Well, it was real, but it wasn’t real in the space-time continuum. All throughout season 6 we thought our lovable bunch of castaways/survivors were living two “real” lives. Nice con by the show’s creators, sure, but what did this purgatory consciousness have to do with resolving six seasons worth of plots and character arches? Why did season 5 come down to this defining moment of blowing up the Hatch when, in the big picture, nothing was ever really defined by it?

This is where the last 15 minutes of frustration and all of “what the…” sentiments come to a boil. The first two hours and 15 minutes of “Then End” were killer. Absolute killer stuff. From Jack’s duel with Not-Locke in the rain (with Jack holding the literal and figurative high ground), to Jack anointing a teary-eyed Hurley as protector of the Island, to Ben finding some peace and purpose in his life, to the many reunions – especially Sawyer’s and Juliet’s – to Miles finally coming to grips with his belief in duct tape, to Jack finally being the man he was never able to be (more on this later), to Locke forgiving Ben for killing him…I mean, how can you fit so many lump-in-the-throat moments in 2.25 hrs of TV? It was true art. It was meaningful from a fan’s perspective and also from a show-completion perspective.

But as “The End” got closer to the end, and some major plot questions were still unanswered, I started to get worried. When Jack’s dad blew the cover off the purgatory existence, a good chunk of the plot, characters and narratives from the last six years – including many introduced in season 6 alone – just kinda fizzled out. What exactly is the Island? Where does the light come from? What was Widmore’s angle? Why was Desmond so important? Why wasn’t Nadiya Sayid’s true love? What new lessons did the Oceanic survivors learn in purgatory that they hadn’t already learned in their time on the Island? Why was so much of season 6 focused on the Temple? They left so much material completely unanswered or “open for interpretation,” and then they have the audacity to end the show by telling us that they’re already dead and running around purgatory waiting to wake up and be with each other?

In some ways, the purgatory consciousness/remembering where they’ve come from makes sense: in the end, everyone goes to “heaven” (apparently God is a Unitarian) and everyone (well, not quite) is together. How many times in the last six years has Desmond said, “See you in another life, brother?” Even in “The End,” it was Jack who said those exact same words to Desmond. This wasn’t completely out of the blue.

The irony is that a sizable portion of Lost viewers (and also actual characters on the Island) thought that the Island was purgatory. Yet in the end, it’s this “other life” that ends up being purgatory. The show’s creators had a good thing going with that purgatory thread, and it makes sense that they wouldn’t abandon it – unlike other major plot devices. The power behind everyone ending up in “heaven,” in the church together, fading into the light, is that like any myth worth its ology, the story doesn’t end in death. We’re left knowing that the cast we’ve come to love over the last six years will spend TV-eternity together. Death isn’t the end; in many ways (especially when viewed in light of Christian cosmology) it is the beginning.

My question, from a purely story-line perspective, is why devote so much time in season 6 to this afterlife place when it had very little to do with the major narratives, questions and character developments from the “real life” on the Island. Yeah, it’s a nice sentiment that they all remembered their lives on the Island/learned their lessons (poor theology aside) then got to spend all of eternity together. But looking back on this season and the show as a whole, this purgatory thing didn’t add a ton to its resolution and Island-centric mythology.

The whole purgatory/let’s all go to heaven bit just seemed…cheesy. Unimaginative. My wife pointed out that it was like Titanic, that after everyone dies (as Jack’s dad explained), they all end up in heaven, be that a universalist church or the ballroom on a big ship. Ending one of the greatest TV series of all time like a James Cameron movie isn’t the way you want to go out, is it? Especially for a show that had proven itself to be very deep, literary and non-run-of-the-mill.

Also, not everyone from the Island was there – like Mr. Echo or, heck, why wasn’t Richard there? He had been on the Island longer than anyone. But Penny, who had never been to the Island, was there. It just felt poorly thought out. It was another incomplete narrative that wasn’t completely needed.

Thankfully, they nailed Jack’s final moments. His life-giving sacrifice to re-cork the Island was beautiful stuff. Here’s a guy who for six seasons has sucked at fixing things and being a leader, and now finally he is able to fix the biggest thing in his life: the Island. As he stumbled back through the bamboo, I couldn’t help but think of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when the Pevensies found their way back to the wardrobe – the place where everything started.

Beginning and ending a show with the same character lying in the same place was true literary genius. Jack’s character went through several developments. He started out strong (though somewhat reluctant), then in the middle he wobbled in uncertainty and weakness. So, for him to act with such faith, clarity and purpose in the end was masterfully orchestrated. Talk about a dynamic character. Seeing him die in the bamboo grove after saving the Island and his friends provided complete closure to his narrative – arguably the crux of all of Lost. (It’s just too bad the confusion and irritation over the purgatory scenes interrupted/de-climaxed his noble march back to the place where everything began.) Based on what we learned from the purgatory scenes (one of this concept’s few pluses), one could even make the case that Jack didn’t start living until he crashed on the Island, and so for him to die in that same place is incredibly symbolic. It’s a great scene, perhaps the defining TV moment of my generation, although it was somewhat robbed of power and vigor by the ambiguity of the afterlife scenes.

So, where does all this leave us? In many ways, in the same place we started. Lots of “whys” and “whats” are still unanswered, many of the threads we had hoped would all come to one singular point at the end didn’t necessarily connect, and Jack lies dead on the same patch of earth his journey began – only as a changed man who found a balance between faith and action.

Maybe that’s what “The End” is trying to tell us: Like those who struggled on the Island, it’s not about how many questions remain unanswered, but the amount of faith we apply along the way and the person we become.

Maybe we’re like Ben, who even at journey’s end and the happily ever-after is at arm’s reach, we still need a few moments outside the church to reflect and assess everything that’s happened.

As a series finale, “The End” does well, but falls short in some areas. If you’re disappointed in the finale and judge Lost likewise, I think you’ve missed the point. Yeah, maybe the creators didn’t have everything as perfectly planned out as we all thought. As for me, I would do it all over again, with the comfort of knowing that in the real world, all of the plot devices and character developments do matter and will eventually come together in one all-encompassing, resolving point.

Well, that’s all I got. My brain hurts. What do ya’ll think?

The Land Before We Knew They Indoctrinated Kids via Animated Movies

2010-05-04T16:34:00.001-06:00

I watched The Land Before Time on VHS with the wifey last night. A few random thoughts:

1. That movie felt a lot longer when I was a kid. Maybe because my soul was so awash in anguish over the death of Littlefoot’s mother, and his ensuing depression, that my sorrow made the movie go by slower.

2. Animated movie story lines haven’t progressed very much since 1988. They still follow this basic pattern: “Hey, I know, we’ll take like five different kinds of [insert category here], have them go through [insert a cataclysmic, life-altering, dangerous event here], and in the process they’ll learn to get along and be tolerant of each other’s differences, and in the end everything turns out OK!” Yeah. Time for some innovation, Hollywood writers.

3. Petrie is gay. No other way to look at it. He “can’t” fly, but then he can. Come on – how can I not read that to mean that he’s coming out of the closet. And with that lisp of his, it’s just a dead giveaway.

4. Holy blatant evolution, Batman! And my parents let me, an impressionable 5-year-old, see this movie and allowed me to think that dinosaurs lived before mammals and human beings. Unconscionable. Maybe they were just too mesmerized by Pat Hingle’s deep, sultry narration to notice the overt evolutionary indoctrination. If there was ever some sneaky liberal agenda smuggled into a kids’ movie, this has gotta be the big one.

5. Littlefoot, Cera, Petrie, Ducky and Spike were really, really tiny dinosaurs. Right before Sharp Tooth smashed Littlefoot’s tree star, they were all sleeping in a dino footprint. Where’s the proper scaling? These were dinosaurs, not field mice.

6. Was that big, old spiky dinosaur that Littlefoot bumped into shortly after his mother died supposed to be a Yoda-like figure? Old, wrinkly dude with bushy eyebrows gives sage/Eastern-religiousy advice, then just wanders off, leaving the poor kid to fend for himself. Real original, George Lucas.

7. How many of those rubber hand puppets from Pizza Hutt did y’all have? We had dozens of them. Pretty sweet stuff.

8. I now know where Spielberg got the notion that he could pull off the ending in Jurassic Park, where the T-Rex “suddenly” appears and snatches the raptor out of the air – all without a single sound, tremor or anything. So, in TLBT, right before the gang dumped Sharp Tooth into the “pond”, Ducky goes into the cave to bait him out into the open. Ducky peeks behind a rock, sees Sharp Tooth, then cowers behind the rock when Sharp Tooth roars. When Ducky looks back up, Sharp Tooth is nowhere to be found. Ducky backs away from her hiding place, then – BOOM! – out of nowhere, there’s Sharp Tooth, right behind her! In other words, Spielberg barrowed a ridiculous, implausible scene from a 1988 kids’ movie to end one of the most ground-breaking films of the last 30 years. Way to think that one through.

All-in-all, watching the Land Before Time as a 25-year-old married, young professional really helped me figure out a lot of things in my life. Plus, it was more entertaining than watching LeBron James suck it up against the Celtics. (Always beware the MVP-award game.) And, most importantly, I was finally able to accept the death Littlefoot’s mother. I’ve been carrying that burden around for far too long. An enormous weight has been lifted from my soul.

IP for 4.29.10: Celebrate Pantheism

2010-04-29T11:13:00.003-06:00

The environmentalist in me likes to stretch out Earth Day celebrations for a whole week. So, in honor of Earth Week, here’s some great articles about the environmental movement, the coming (no, really!) environmental catastrophes, and why hunters are the true conservationists. Thanks for being so enduring, Earth!

This Earth Day, Thank a Hunter by Humberto Fontova

“To date, hunters and fishermen have shelled out over $20 billion ‘on behalf of the environment.’”

Apocalypse Soon by Mark Steyn

“The ‘markets first’ approach was notable by its absence in, say, Eastern Europe, where government regulation of every single aspect of life resulted in environmental devastation beyond the wildest fantasies of the sinister Bush-Cheney-Enron axis of excess.”

Earth Day Turns 40 by Roy Spencer

“In fact, almost all forms of life on Earth feed off of other forms of life. What we consider to be pristine nature is in reality a battleground between different forms of life that are all competing for the same natural resources — if not each others’ heads.”

Earth Day: 40 years of imminent catastrophe by Laura E. Huggins

“Four decades later, the world hasn't come to an end. Most measures of human welfare show the Earth's population is better off today than at any other time in human history. Life expectancy is increasing, per-capita income is rising, and the air we breathe and the water we drink are cleaner.”

Happy Pantheism Day!

2010-04-22T18:08:00.001-06:00

Weather.com posted a list of “50 Green Tips for Earth Day and Beyond” on their site today in honor of Earth Day #40. It’s more like a list of penances enviro-pantheists can perform to cleanse their soul of carbon-footprint transgressions. If the contemporary environmental movement isn’t a religion, then I don’t know what is. Here are some highlights:

15. At holidays and birthdays, give your family and friends the gift of saving the earth. Donate to their favorite environmental group, foundation, or organization.

27. Teach kids about the environment.

39. Go zero! Log on to the Conservation Fund's Carbon Zero Calculator (www.conservationfund.org) and in less than five minutes, you can measure and then offset your carbon dioxide emissions by planting trees.

44. Build a greener home.

49. Plant a forest and feed a family while you're at it.

This, as you can see, is a works-based religion. There’s no saving grace here. You’re not only saving yourself – via carbon offsets or cloth diapers or eating your dog – you’re also saving the divine (the earth) from eternal damnation.

One has to wonder, as Roy Spencer does, if Earth Day is “being used to teach our children the way the natural world works, or is it being used to indoctrinate them into performing rituals that will help absolve them of their eco-sins?”

Oh, and these gods of earth, wind and water are hard to appease.

Allah is an Icelandic Volcano

2010-04-20T12:54:00.008-06:00

I once heard Hendrik Hertzberg say with all seriousness that the God of the Bible/Judeo-Christian worldview is a “Saddam Hussein in the sky,” arbitrarily doling out oppression, pain and suffering on the earth below.

If this is the case, then Allah, god of Islam, is an Icelandic volcano blowing its top.

Said senior Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi yesterday, “Many women who do not dress modestly . . . lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes.”

This is only slightly-less insane than Danny Glover’s explanation for earthquakes: Gaia. See his analysis below. Personally, I think he’s just getting too old for this s***.

“What happened in Haiti could happen to anywhere in the Caribbean because all these island nations are in peril because of global warming. When we see what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens, you know what I'm sayin'?”

Yes, I know what you are saying.

In other news, Pat Robertsons' dog has died from what appears to be a pact made with Kibbles 'N Bits. Official autopsy results have yet to be released or confirmed.

FoCo Tea Party

2010-04-16T10:17:00.004-06:00

Sights from yesterday's Tea Party at Washington Park in Old Town.

There was some pretty good signage going on. I was particularly fond of mine, which read, "Independence Day: July 4, 1776. Declaration of Independence signed by 2nd Continental Congress" on one side, and, "Dependence Day: March 23, 2010. Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act signed by President Obama" on the other. Pretty sweet.

There was a decent crowd, what I thought was around 700 or so. But the Coloradoan reported it was 1,500. It mighta just been me, but it seemed to lack the energy and urgency that last year's party had. The speakers were unimpressive and the whole thing just seemed a little flat. Dunno. Maybe a more detailed post coming.

Anyway, enjoy the pics.

Intertextual Paralogues for 4.14.10

2010-04-14T17:13:00.001-06:00

New “series” here at Notes. Each week (theoretically), a list of similarly-themed “must read” articles will be posted with the goal of connecting the ideas/thoughts from the separate articles in such a way to increase understanding of the world, as well as generate conversations and dialogues about content of said articles. Hooray for big words.

Today: postmdoernism’s intersection with the American Presidency + postmodernism/social science’s influence on big-L liberalism. Happy reading.

A Postmodern Presidency by Victor Davis Hanson

“So what Obama has done is ‘contextualized’ the world, and ‘located,’ as it were, the seemingly hostile anti-American rhetoric of ‘enemies’ into a proper race/class/gender narrative.”

The Descent of Liberalism by Michael Knox Beran

“Liberalism today has lost this equipoise; the progress of the social imagination, with its faith in the power of social science to improve people’s lives, has forced liberals to relinquish the principles and even the language of the classical conception of liberty.”

And Now for Something Completely Different…

2010-04-13T09:20:00.001-06:00

I’ve been away since mid January – adjusting to/figuring out new promotion and time commitments at work, paying taxes (let’s just say Linds and I won’t be getting a refund), paying off student loans (“WE’RE DEBT FREE!!!!” phone call coming to Dave Ramsey very soon), and watching way too much college basketball.

Going two-and-a-half months without a post is just not acceptable, so I’m here to say that the blog posting shall commence anew, like the buds and flowers of spring…or something like that. Anyway, enjoy the new posts. See you in the comments section.

Haiti and Abortion: A Tale of Two Catastrophes

2010-01-28T10:19:00.003-07:00

A big debt of gratitude is owed to Mitch Majeski, pastor at Summitview Community Church in Fort Collins, CO, whose sermon last week provided much of the inspiration for this column.

Hollywood celebrities raised nearly $60 million in abortion-relief funds during last week’s MTV-sponsored telethon. Crisis pregnancy centers were among a handful of pro-life organizations that will benefit from the telethon.

Psych. There was no star-studded, televised charity event aimed at raising money to help the pro-life cause. There was, however, Hope for Haiti Now, hosted by George Clooney and Wyclef Jean, which raised $58 million for Haitian relief efforts.

Let’s face it: supporting Haiti is, like Hansel, so hot right now. It’s the cool thing to do. If Bono, Madonna, Beyonce and Sting show up for a charity telethon, the “cause” must be Billboard Top-20 hip. Haiti is the cause du jour.

On the one hand, the outpouring of support and compassion for the Haiti people is an inspiring testimony of our willingness to help our fellow Man. The best of the human condition is on full display in Haiti, in the midst of unspeakable tragedy and misery.

On the other, self-congratulation and self-exoneration seem to be the motivating factors for being charitable. Forget about true broken-heartedness over the catastrophe, the lost lives and the orphaned children. We write checks to ease a guilty conscience, to appear righteous. “I did my part.” The focus is on the giver, not the receiver. Celebrities arrive at and depart from a charity event in VIP motorcades and that makes them compassionate because…why?

Perhaps the biggest fallout of cause du jours is that we lose perspective on more devastating catastrophes closer to home. This last Sunday was Sanctity of Life Sunday, marking the 37^th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Pro-lifers marched and prayed all week in hope that the catastrophe of abortion will eventually come to an end.

Yes, I said catastrophe. It’s time we looked at abortion through this narrative.

Let’s break it down by the numbers. Since 1973, 50 million unborn children in the United States have been sacrificed on the altar of “choice”. Let that sink in: 50 million. Stalin has nothing on us. As of this writing, the estimated death toll in Haiti is approximately 150,000, although 200,000 are feared dead. We would need a Haiti earthquake every day until October in order to reach the death toll that abortion has racked up.

But we don’t see Hollywood elitists rallying to the cause of the unborn. The hypocrisy of the “bleeding-heart” Left runs so deep they’re willing to shell out millions of dollars to help save the lives of those affected by an earthquake, but here at home they champion the choice that has allowed the slaughter of 50 million innocent lives.

We on the Right aren’t off the hook, though. We withhold compassion and generosity because we don’t believe that continuing to throw money at Haiti will accomplish any lasting change, as David Brooks poignantly pointed out in the New York Times on Jan. 14.

So instead of giving money, give of yourself. Go to your local church, or local branches of the Salvation Army or Red Cross, and ask them how you can help the people of Haiti in real, tangible ways.

And if you want to try to bring an end to the abortion catastrophe, volunteer at your nearest Crisis Pregnancy Center, youth groups, community health departments, or on the staff of a pro-life political candidate.

Criticizing the Left in an op-ed column is easy; doing our part to save lives at home and abroad is hard work. But it’s the best kind of work, because we do it out of genuine humanity, not for the benefit of any singular political party or for a boost to our self-esteem.

What You See (is not) What You Get

2010-01-08T15:31:00.001-07:00

From Jay Ambrose’s piece in the Orange County Register today:

Have the citizens of this nation caught on yet that the candidate they saw in the campaign is not the president they got after the election? And on this particular issue, are they aware of how just how cruel a joke the Democratic health plan has become and just how desperately the president and his leftist cohorts want to foist this measure on us, even to the extent of buying Senate votes?

Read the entire piece here, on RealClearPolitics.

Merry Greenmas

2009-12-21T12:21:00.006-07:00

Ever wonder what a truly environmentally-conscious Christmas would look like? Wonder no more:

"No tree. No driving to the tree lot, watching them saw the tree down, wrapping it in plastic and then driving back home. No driving to Target, buying a plastic tree and driving home. We make a tree mural out of shopping bags and leave a few Sharpies around to decorate with. It's personal, meaningful and 100 percent recycled."

This from the Alternative Consumer magazine. They have more Christmas "rules," including, "No holiday hams. French toast can replace tired turkey and ham dinners."

Peace and goodwill to you, too, Christmas nazis.

You can read more about the Alternative Consumer's vision of a merry-less Christmas at Ralph Reiland's Pittsburgh Tribune blog. Plenty other goodies in his post about Christmas for those on the "green" side of life. These people make the Grinch look like Santa Claus.

"Vogon Care" and Saturday Night Lies

2009-11-20T09:37:00.014-07:00

I'm tired of "Obamacare", "Pelosicare", and "Reidcare". Lame. Let's get creative! How about "Shadow care"? "We Really Don't Care about You care"? "Enjoy Your Time in Prison care"?

My personal favorite is "Vogon care". Vogons, of course, are the galactic bureaucrats from Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. According to the Guide, "Vogons are one of the most unpleasant races in the galaxy. Not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous."

Sounds like the people trying to ram socialism -- err -- healthcare reform down our throats. I'll take it! "Vogon care" it is! Vogons, like Pelosi, Reid, Obama, etc., are also in favor of death panels, because they won't even save their grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without all of the necessary (and unnecessary) paperwork.

Similarly, don't let your Congressmen or Congresswomen read you poetry -- it will be as malicious, incomprehensible, tortuous and nauseating as their 2,074-page healthcare bill.

Speaking of which...

Senate Democrats have cleared the way for a Saturday night vote to begin the healthcare debate, a Democratic aide said.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has agreed to relent on his demand for Senate clerks to read aloud the 2,074-page bill and allow the chamber to take a critical test vote, said the aide. Reading the bill on the Senate floor was estimated to take as many as 30 hours or longer, raising the possibility of the Senate staying in session into next week.

Heaven forbid United States senators put in any overtime in debating the most dastardly piece of legislation ever assembled in the Senate. Thirty hours for 2,074 pages comes out to almost 70 minutes of debate a page. Instead, there will be no reading of the bill, and the Senate will take a vote at 8 pm Saturday night to end debate on a motion to move forward with the bill.

Not only haven't these senators read the bill, but these Saturday night vote fests are getting more than just a little worrisome. The House passed this bill on a Saturday night, and now the Senate is trying to end debate on a Saturday night. I might be mistaken, but constituents can't call their senators' office at 8 pm on a Saturday night, now can they? So glad our elected officials are looking out for our best interest.

Hey, waddya know? Another similarity they have with Vogons.

Jumping to All the Wrong Conclusions

2009-11-10T09:52:00.003-07:00

I don't want to jump to any conclusions, but between President Obama's no-show at the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, and his "let's not jump to conclusions" apology in the wake of the Ft. Hood terrorist attack, it's hard not to have any misgivings about Obama's priorities and his increasingly multicultural, morally-relativistic geopolitical worldview.

(On a side note, I just set a personal record for longest opening sentence in a blog!)

Toby Harnden's piece in the UK Telegraph nails Obama's decision not to go to Berlin on the head: "Perhaps Obama felt that celebrating the role of the United States in bringing down the wall would be a bit triumphalist and not quite in keeping with his wish to present America as a declining world power anxious to apologise for sundry historic misdeeds."

Zing!

If it's not about Obama, he won't be there. Harnden notes that Obama was able to find time to go to Berlin while he was campaigning for President, but now? Too busy. But pencil him in for accepting his Nobel peace price in December!

Regarding the PC storm surrounding the Ft. Hood massacre, Ralph Peters writes in the New York Post that in order to "call this an act of Terrorism, the White House would need an autographed photo of Osama bin Laden helping Hasan buy weapons in downtown Killeen, Texas. Even that might not suffice."

Obama's reaction to the Ft. Hood attack pales in its moral decisiveness and outrage when compared to his remarks about the killing of abortionist George Tiller. Did the President "caution against jumping to conclusions"? Did he (and Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano) warn about backlash against pro-lifers? As Al would say, I don't think so, Tim.

So what we have here is a President of the United States who willingly chooses not to celebrate one of the greatest moments of freedom in the history of mankind (and that was brought about directly by U.S. foreign policy and moral resolve), and who lacks the stones to call a terrorist a terrorist because it might offend a certain people group.

Personally, I find it offensive when a U.S. Army major kills 13 of his fellow service members while shouting "Allahu Akhbar!"

But I don't want to jump to any conclusions.

The new heart-healthy workout

2009-09-30T14:13:00.003-06:00

From the always informational Ethiopian Review:

A study by German scientists showed that 10 minutes a day of ogling women’s breasts by men was as good at warding off heart disease, high blood pressure and stress as 30 minutes of aerobic exercise.The five-year study conducted by Dr. Karen Weatherby, followed 200 men. Those who partook in boob ogling for just 10 minutes a day enjoyed benefits equal to those of 30 minutes of grunting, groaning, sweating and doing push-ups at the gym. . . .

“There is no question that gazing at breast makes men healthier,” Weatherby said.

A few things:

1) I don't know if this is good or bad.

2) They needed to conduct a five-year study to tell us this? Really?

3) What about blind people? And eunuchs?

4) Is there a "vice versa" form of this "exercise" for women?

5) I'm glad that I'm married.

6) Feminists can view this one of two ways: Firstly, that this is a sign of women's power over men; or they can see it as further proof that modern science is sexist and men are sexist because they get excited about staring at boobs for 10 minutes.

7) How will the PR departments in the gym/fitness industry respond? "We have large-breasted women for you to ogle while using our state-of-the-art cardio room"?

So a guy with a concealed carry permit walks into a bar...

2009-09-29T21:43:00.002-06:00

I'm movin' to Arizona! From the AP:

. . . a new Arizona law that goes into effect Wednesday . . . will allow guns into Arizona bars and restaurants that serve alcohol.

Under the law, backed by the National Rifle Association, the 138,350 people with concealed-weapons permits in Arizona will be allowed to bring their guns into bars and restaurants that haven't posted signs banning them.

Those carrying the weapons aren't allowed to drink alcohol.

On the Third Day, God and Norman Borlaug Created Plants

2009-09-24T11:47:00.011-06:00

When Norman Borlaug passed away at the age of 95 on Saturday, Sept. 12, 2009, I bet you didn't hear anything about it.

Not that you knew who Norman Borlaug was, anyway, right? I'm not judging; I didn't know who he was either. I met my parents for dinner a few nights ago and my dad told me about his passing and who he was.

"Great American hero" is a good start. I did some researching about Mr. Borlaug and came across a piece by Gregg Easterbrook in the WSJ, which is way better than any of his "TMQ" columns on ESPN.com, by the way.

It's a great piece because it goes into detail about the humble greatness and inspiring work that Borlaug achieved in his life. I found myself awed at the triumphant, life-giving forces that one man brought into our messed up world. What follows is just a glimpse of what Borlaug did with his life, and what he did for the world.

Borlaug spent most of his life in the poorest nations on the planet, "patiently teaching poor farmers in India, Mexico, South America, Africa and elsewhere" the wide-ranging agricultural techniques that came to be know as part of the "Green Revolution." These techniques, writes Easterbrook, "prevented the global famines widely predicted when the world population began to skyrocket following World War II."

Green Revolution methods are universally used to this day. They include hybrid crops specifically bred for vigor; "shuttle breeding," a technique for accelerating the movement of disease immunity between strains of crops; Borlaug was also responsible for helping to develop cereals that were insensitive to the number of hours of light in a day, thus allowing them to be grown in many different climates.

The result? "From the Civil War through the Dust Bowl, the typical American farm produced about 24 bushels of corn per acre; by 2006, the figure was about 155 bushels per acre."

Borlaug's innovation helped more than the American farmer, however. In 1943, Borlaug relocated to rural Mexico to establish an ag research station, which was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Borlaug called his station the International Maize and Wheat Center, abbreviated in Spanish as CIMMYT. Through CIMMYT, Borlaug produced the high-yield, low-pesticide "dwarf" wheat. Most of the world's population still depends on this hybrid crop for sustenance. In 2006, thanks mostly to Borlaug's methods, the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization declared that malnutrition stood "at the lowest level in human history," even though the global population tripled during the 20th century.

In 1970 he won the Nobel Prize for putting an end to India and Pakistan's famine. Back in '99, the Atlantic Monthly estimated that through all of his agricultural-enhancing techniques, roughly one billion lives were saved.

I could go on. Read Easterbrook's article to understand just how much our world has been impacted by Borlaug. Next time you think American's are selfish individuals who should use their resources to help those living in impoverished, famine-stricken countries, think about Norman Borlaug and how his efforts have indeed helped feed the world.

I know. His advanced ag methods left a "carbon footprint." But Burlaug didn't care. He once told Easterbrook that environmentalists "have never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for 50 years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists in wealthy nations were trying to deny them these things."

Borlaug understood that the best resource isn't genetically-modified crops, but people. He was a true humanitarian, and, thus, a true environmentalist. As Borlaug himself said, "Without high-yield agriculture, increases in food output would have been realized through drastic expansion of acres under cultivation, losses of pristine land a hundred times greater than all losses to urban and suburban expansion."

We should have a National Norman Borlaug Day. We will eat the fruits of his crops and seek to acquire his heart for the poor. This might take some time, though, seeing how no one knows who he was.

Here Comes Santa Klaus

2009-09-23T14:15:00.005-06:00

Do I love Czech President Vaclav Klaus because he's the only politician on an international scale to speak out against "global warming/climate change", or is it because his name sounds like Santa Claus?

I say both.

Instead of bringing gifts to the U.N. meeting on climate change yesterday (headlined by Barack Obama), Klaus brought the only voice of rational skepticism about the "consensus" that our world is burning up.

Santa Klaus called the "propagandistic exercise" "sad" and "frustrating."

For Christmas, if Klaus was Claus, I'm guessing he would leave coal in the stockings all of the diplomats in attendance -- out of irony and recompense for being bad/stupid.

Kids Are Told the Darndest Things, Part Dos

2009-09-18T11:13:00.006-06:00

This might be the longest blog ever written. It’s more like a blessay – a blog/essay. It comes in response to a series of questions about my post about President Obama’s public school address. Apologies for taking so relong to reply, but 2,000+ words takes a while to write. Enjoy!

Hi Sides,
I have a few questions for you. 1. Do you believe the school system in the US has a socialist agenda? 2. Is this agenda by the president unprecedented? 3. Because the schools all receive money/laws/guidance/leadership from the federal government, and the fed govt [sic] is run by the current administration, is it wrong for the current admin to "fulfill" this leadership by "leading" the students regardless of what some of the parents want?Thanks for your thoughts!

@Rachel:

I like these questions! They’re much better than the questions on Obama’s original Department of Education lesson plan. Your questions get down to the foundational/worldview level of this issue, which I had been meaning to address. Thanks for the exegesis. Now to your questions.

1. Do you believe the school system in the U.S. has a socialist agenda?

Are you trying to get me in trouble? I have friends and family members who are public school teachers. This is going to be the longest of the three responses to Rachel’s questions, so buckle up.

I believe that American public schools have a mission-statement agenda originating from its governing bodies (the National Education Association/Department of Education). I don’t know if this agenda is “socialist” by definition, or even that this agenda is felt as heavily (if at all) in certain school districts/individual schools. A good friend of mine teaches at a high school in Colorado Springs, Colo., which is the home of Focus on the Family. His district is staunchly “Republican”/non-socialist, which is a huge contrast to, say, the Washington, D.C., or San Francisco school districts.

Even within more “socialistic” districts, or districts that actively push a statist agenda, teachers still have a certain level of freedom in which to operate. Again, this varies by district. A Colorado middle school teacher held a mock trial to determine whether humans are the cause of climate change. Such teaching tools are innovative, clever, and definitely void of any “socialist” agenda.

Examining the level of “agenda setting” on a case-by-case basis is fascinating and insightful, but doesn’t fully answer the question. I think it is fairly plain to see that the public school system over the last 80 years has been operating on a politically and theologically left-leaning axis. Evolution is the only “scientific” theory taught in the text books. Prayer and Bible reading were banned in the early 1960s. Intolerance of the homosexual lifestyle is not tolerated. In practically every respect and subject of learning, the worldview being taught is decidedly antagonistic towards Christian principles and a Judeo-Christian life system of limited government, faith in God and personal responsibility.

If there is any agenda coursing through the public school system, it is one steeped in materialistic naturalism and experiential relativism. For this, we can thank John Dewey, the man unanimously regarded as the architect of our modern education system. His thoughts and theories on education have impacted the U.S. education system (and thus our entire civilization) through and through.

For a good understanding of where Dewey was coming from intellectually, his summary of his religious beliefs is a good starting point. He believed that “. . . faith in the prayer-hearing God is an unproved and outmoded faith. There is no God and there is no soul. Hence, there are no needs for the props of traditional religion. With dogma and creed excluded, then immutable truth is also dead and buried. There is no room for fixed, natural law or moral absolutes.”

Dewey was an avowed Darwinian naturalist and one of the leading pragmatists of his day, along with William James and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. His pragmatic humanism determined his outlook and behavior toward every facet of life. More than just a philosopher, Dewey was a pioneer in behavioral psychology, and his work in this field is a critical component to his education philosophy.

His approach toward educational philosophy was driven by his belief that the “props of traditional religion” are bogus – and that experience is the driving force behind the construction of reality. So he developed a learning methodology that reflected the paradigm that everything – the physical world, animal species, and even the mind – is the product of millions of years of evolution. If everything is matter, and if man is simply “a biological organism subject to the changes and adaptations required by his environment,” then the mind is material as well. Thus, beliefs, convictions, and ideas are ever-evolving survival tools – like teeth, claws, feathers, etc. If an idea works, we can call it “true.” Indeed, “immutable truth is . . . dead and buried. There is no room for . . . moral absolutes.”

What does an education system based on this worldview look like? To Dewey, it was all about the “group.”

As Lewis Alesen wrote in his 1958 work Mental Robots, Dewey believed that since “there is no absolute truth . . . or moral law, the progressive educator sees no use in wasting the students’ time in studying history, because, of course, what other men have done and thought in the past is not of any particular value, as the circumstances under which they lived were entirely different from those facing the student and citizen today.” (This is called moral relativism. “Truth” evolves just like monkeys evolve into humans.)

Instead, the progressive educator seeks to impress upon the students’ minds that the good of the whole or group should come before the development of the individual. As Dewey wrote in 1916 in Democracy and Education:

There is always the danger that increased personal independence will decrease the social capacity of an individual. In making him more self-reliant, it may make him more self-sufficient. . . . It often makes an individual so insensitive in his relations to others as to develop an illusion of being really able to stand and act alone – an unnamed form of insanity which is responsible for a large part of the remedial suffering of the world.

In My Pedagogic Creed, written in 1897, Dewey stated:

The only true education comes through the stimulation of the child’s powers by the demands of the social institution in which he finds himself. Through these demands, he is stimulated to act as a member of a unity, to emerge from his original narrowness of action and feeling, and to conceive of himself from the standpoint of the welfare of the group to which he belongs.

The success and health of the at-large “group” (a collective population under a massive, government body) is paramount even to traditional courses of study. Dewey went so far as to say that “introducing the child too abruptly to a number of special studies [including] reading, writing, geography, etc.” results in the “sustaining force behind individualism.”

Translation: it is more important for students to assimilate to the group, thus ensuring a better adaptation (behavioral psych, anyone?) to their environment, than for them to learn life skills. Why? Because then the students are dependent upon the institution (“the group”) for their happiness – the chief aim in a life that is only composed of matter and lacking any transcendent truth. And in a world where there is no Higher Being to look to for purpose and value, the State becomes that force of divinity and higher calling. The goal of Dewey’s education model was to create entire generations of mind-numb citizens dependent on a system of government/bureaucracies that manage every aspect of their lives.

If any of this sounds socialistic/statist in nature, we’re getting close to answering question #1. But fellow Humanist Charles F. Potter clarifies how high/how important the stakes are in education: “Education is thus a most power ally of humanism, and every public school is a school of humanism. What can the theistic Sunday school, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teachings?”

Dr. Chester Pierce, speaking at the Childhood International Education Seminar in 1973, called every five-year old child “insane” because “he comes to school with certain allegiances to our Founding Fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity.”

What do you do with insane (read: sick) students? You heal them. Pierce’s remedy: public education. “It’s up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well – by creating the international child of the future.”

These “international children” are necessary for what Dewey called the “larger social evolution.” Individualism (insanity) kills all evolutionary progress.

In 1932, Dewey became the honorary president of the NEA. In 1933, he helped write the first Humanist Manifesto. The rest, as they say, is history. Today, the NEA is the leading lobbying group for teachers and the elite, professional educational community. Suffice it to say, they haven’t deviated from Dewey’s course.

2. Is this agenda by the president unprecedented?

Hard to say. There wasn’t much of an “agenda” in the President Obama’s speech. There was an agenda in the first draft of the “lesson plans” that sought to positively reinforce the students’ image and grandeur of Obama. Talk about behavioral psychology. But, no, the President’s speech was generic, positive platitudes about working hard and doing well in school. Fine. That’s great. But knowing what we know now about the original goals of public education, is it really so great that the President pushes a dependency on the public school system and excelling in that arena?

3. Because the schools all receive money/laws/guidance/leadership from the federal government, and the fed govt [sic] is run by the current administration, is it wrong for the current admin to "fulfill" this leadership by "leading" the students regardless of what some of the parents want?

It’s permissible and that’s where the problem lies. Can someone please explain to me why the President of the United States (ANY President at ANY time) should be “leading” the students in the public school system? Shouldn’t be his job, shouldn’t be on his radar. Yet since the public schools are government-owned indoctrination centers, you’re correct in stating that Obama’s actions are merely a logical follow-through of his leadership over the entire education system. That’s a frightening thought.

The biggest issue I have with the public school system is the lack of local/parental control on the curriculum and programs being taught. Like I said earlier, though, the “agenda” isn’t pervasive. Location, demographics and size of school/school district have a lot to do with what is taught and how it’s taught.

Again, teachers still have some freedom as to how they prepare and present information. Parents still (depending on district location/size) have a say as to what is being taught. The VP of the ad agency I work at signed his kids out of the classes they would have been in during Obama’s speech. A couple of the private schools in Fort Collins didn’t even show the speech. It seems undeniable, though, that this local/parental control has been gradually slipping away over the last few decades.

But do you think Dewey cared what the parents want? According to Pierce, young students are “insane” because they have been reared and have received values from their parents. Someone with Obama’s background – “community” organizer, a statist in a populist’s clothing – buys into the “good of the group” mentality. Why else does he keep calling for us to be “our brother’s keeper”?

I should note that the John Deweys of the world have failed to create the “international child” – on a massive scale, anyway. In 1918, the British sociologist Benjamin Kidd wrote, “Give us the Young and we will create a new mind and new earth in a single generation.” I believe our country (and most of the Western world) has been feeling the effects of Dewey’s vision over the last few decades, but it has definitely taken them much longer than they originally hoped. And certainly individualism is still the norm in American life, and not the exception. In Europe, however, it’s a different story.

Dewey and the other progressive humanists underestimated the will of the American mind. Once a people get a taste of individual liberty and responsibility, and the fruits of that freedom, they don’t like it when those freedoms are taken away. That, in my mind, is why the health insurance "reform" battle is so critical. The dependence and assimilation that Dewey wanted to imprint on students’ minds is finally making good on the trademark issue of socialism and abdication to the State: government-run health care.

Globalism has in its roots humanistic/statist elements because it de-emphasizes the individual. From “universal health care”, to a global currency and trans-national governing bodies like the U.N., the goal is to strip away local responsibility and individual freedom. How do you work to herd the masses into these constricting, authoritarian states? How do you breed the “international child”? I think Potter had the best answer, with “a five-day (per week) program of humanistic teachings”.

I would be more than remise if I didn’t close with recognizing the people who have stood their ground to fight the naturalistic relativism and state-glorifying humanism. The thousands of Christians who teach in public schools deserve our never-ending gratitude. So do the thousands of Christian parents who continue to instruct their children and take an active role in their education. From a biblical viewpoint, parents are ultimately responsible for the education of their children. But together, God-fearing parents and teachers have fought for Truth in a truth-less world, preserving the Gospel and individual freedoms for past generations and even the generations to come.

Anyway, if you haven't clicked-out or fallen asleep yet, I hope this whole thing made sense. Thanks for being here.

Just the Facts, Sir, Just the Facts

2009-09-10T09:08:00.002-06:00

The articles below provide you with just about all you need to know about President Obama’s speech to the jointly divided Congress last night. In the words of the always feisty and tantalizing Camille Paglia, “Who is naive enough to believe that Obama's plan would be deficit-neutral? Or that major cuts could be achieved without drastic rationing?”

Obama on Health Care: Irresistible Rhetoric Meets Immovable Stalemate by Pejman Yousefzadeh, TNL

FACT CHECK: Obama uses iffy math on deficit pledge by Calvin Woodward & Erica Werner, Associated Press Writers

The Obama Supporter Bit Me! And It’s Still Hurting!

2009-09-03T11:43:00.003-06:00

This is an American-success story if I’ve ever seen one. From the AP:

California authorities say a clash between opponents and supporters of health care reform ended with one man biting off another man's finger.

Ventura County Sheriff's Capt. Frank O'Hanlon says about 100 people demonstrating in favor of health care reforms rallied Wednesday night on a street corner. One protester walked across the street to confront about 25 counter-demonstrators.

O'Hanlon says the man got into an argument and fist fight, during which he bit off the left pinky of a 65-year-old man who opposed health care reform.

A hospital spokeswoman says the man lost half the finger, but doctors reattached it and he was sent home the same night.

She says he had Medicare.

Had this happened in the UK or in Canada, this poor man might have had to wait weeks – maybe months – before he could get his finger put back on. Worse, he might have even been forced to die prematurely, as is the case under the NHS. Thankfully for him, though, he lives in America, where emergency health care is still available without the wait list.

I was at the scene in California and captured the incident on camera. This is groundbreaking stuff. Enjoy.

Kids Are Told the Darndest Things

2009-09-02T09:42:00.003-06:00

I think President Obama is going to put any and all town hall appearances on hold for the time being. He’s learned that adults are far too disruptive and cynical.

Like a determined scientist, the President is experimenting with tactic after tactic to find the reaction he desires to help see through his agenda of “hope and change.”

I believe the President is now targeting the chil’ren. Two events of late support this theory:

1. The “Regional Energy Forum” in Fort Collins, CO. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, Colorado Rep. Betsy Markey, and the White House Council on Environmental Quality Chairwoman Nancy Sutley hosted the invitation-only event at Fossil Ridge High School. “Energy and climate stakeholders” were invited, but the Fort Collins Coloradoan noted that students from the high school were also in attendance.

So, only certain business and policy “stakeholders” are invited to hear what the propaganda machine has to say – while the rest of the public has to stage a protest rally outside the high school – yet students are allowed admittance?

2. Obama is to address all of the nation’s students in a speech. The speech is schedule for Sept. 8, and the U.S. Department of Education has even concocted a lesson plan of sorts to augment the President’s speech. The whole thing seems to be focused on the students’ acceptance of and gravitation towards Obama and his presidency.

Some of the questions teachers are prompted to ask their students (in grades K-6) during the speech include (emphasis mine):

“As students listen to the speech, they could think about the following: What is the President trying to tell me? What is the President asking me to do? . . .

“What do you think the President wants us to do? Does the speech make you want to do anything? Are we able to do what President Obama is asking of us?

For middle school and high school students, teachers are advised to ask their students questions such as:

“Why does President Obama want to speak with us today? How will he inspire us? How will he challenge us?”

Hmm. Someone's insecure after taking a month-long beat-down in the ratings.

Actually, the thought of the President of the United States giving a speech to all of the students in the country (something entirely unprecedented) is eerily reminiscent of a scene from “V for Vendetta,” which isn’t so cute. As Chancellor Sutler charged, “What we need right now is a clear message to the people of this country. This message must be read in every newspaper, heard on every radio, seen on every television...I want everyone to remember why they need us!”

Well, broadcasting a speech from the White House Web site, supplemented with an administration-directed teaching plan, to every school in the country will suffice for now. Even if his remarks are generic and educational-policy oriented, do we really want the President of the United States attempting to “woo” the young’ns to his side? Asking questions like, "How will he inspire us? How will he challenge us?” or "Are we able to do what President Obama is asking of us?" is nothing short of indoctrination.

Obama is no fool; he’s very sharp – perhaps shrewd is the better word. And this move to take his ethos to the young skulls full of mush is no random thing. This is cold and calculated. He knows that students won’t (and can’t) stand up and rail against health care and cap ‘n trade while they sit at their desks.

But their parents sure can.

High School Never Ends

2009-08-27T18:27:00.002-06:00

This has happened to all of us, in some way, shape, manner or form:

Your older sibling has a group of friends and they either form a club (like a tree house, when people used to build tree houses…BTW, what’s the carbon footprint of building a tree house? It’s in a tree, so does that increase or decrease the footprint?) or the older sibling never lets you go out with his/her group of friends.

So what do you do? You throw eggs at the tree house, or vandalize their room while he/she is out with the friends. Or you do other, more mean-spirited stuff. But the point is you get mad at their snobiness and show them that they’re a real jerk.

This is how politics works. The imprint for our 21st century political process is a direct descendent of how we responded to unjust exclusivity during our growing-up years.

So today's by-invitation-only “Regional Energy Forum” held by Obama cabinet folks and Democratic politicians from Colorado, and the subsequent protest of the “forum” is even more ironic because it took place at a high school – the contemporary birthplace of all cliques, clubs, arrogant and ineffective class presidents, and viral social retaliation!

Sometimes things just come together. And it was truly an all-American scene at Fossil Ridge High School today.

By nearly 1:15 p.m., somewhere in the vicinity of 100 protestors lined the entrance to the high school. A man dressed in 18th century drum core regalia played a tune on his fife while chants of “Drill here, drill now!” were struck up by the throng.

American flags large and small rippled in the warm afternoon wind. An occasional car exiting the school would honk as it passed the line of the non-invited. A single-prop airplane even circled overhead, with “No Bama” written on the underside of the wings. When it passed overhead, the crowd found a common cadence of “No Bama, No Bama!”

Picket signs of various size and slogan bobbed up and down. One read, “Shame on you, Ritter and Salazar, for shutting down Colorado’s energy!” Another: “Cap & Trade Is Voodoo Economical Farce.”

In a crowd such as this, opinions were freely given and accepted. One gentlemen in the line scoffed, “How come Ritter showed up in a Yukon SUV? Hypocrite.”

A Loveland man, Carl Langner, accused the Obama administration of using the “excuse” of global warming to wean the U.S. off fossil/nuclear fuels and onto the exponentially more expensive “clean” energy sources.

When asked what he thought about the by-invitation-only forum, Langner said it “sucks.” And about those who were invited? “I call them cronies, but I guess they’re business people.”

Ric Hicks, a representative from Americans for Limited Government, was signing protestors up for a postcard campaign that is to be delivered to Rep. Betsy Markey asking her to vote “no” on a series of Democrat-proposed legislation. Markey was one of the forum’s hosts, along with U.S. Interior Secretary Salazar, Gov. Ritter and White House Council on Environmental Quality Chairwoman Nancy Sutley.

“Maybe there will only be 80 or 100 of these postcards on her desk,” conceded Hicks. “But it lets her know that these 80 or 100 people used their lunch break to voice their concern over where America is heading.”

In a press release issued by Gov. Ritter’s office about the forum, “hundreds of energy and climate stakeholders and business and civic leaders” were in attendance.

“Colorado isn't just a mile high state – we're miles ahead of the rest of the country when it comes to creating a New Energy Economy,” Ritter said during the forum.

Colorado is unfortunately near the end of the pack when it comes to opening up meetings of such magnitude to the general public. Wind energy won’t power Ritter’s Yukon, but it will put more money in the pockets of the “energy and climate stakeholders.”

We're Not Invited

2009-08-26T16:54:00.003-06:00

It’s their party and they’ll invite who (whom?) they want to.

According to the Fort Collins Coloradoan:

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley will host a forum at Fossil Ridge High School [in Fort Collins, CO] on the economic impacts of clean energy development. The invitation-only meeting also is hosted by Gov. Bill Ritter and Rep. Betsy Markey and will include business and community leaders focused on the issue.

“Invitation-only,” huh? I for one am SO glad we elected a president that believes in a transparent government. Also, do you see anybody that would have an “R” in front of their names that got an invitation or are going to present? Didn’t think so.

The Coloradoan op-ed notes that Salazar and Sutley will put forward Obama’s plan for “jump-starting the American clean-energy sector to create jobs while reducing pollution . . .”

Awesome! If only the general public were “allowed” to come to the meeting so they could also see how awesome this plan will be. Too bad. Why couldn’t the Obama administration create some economic stimuli and, you know, actually open this event to the public by creating 100,000 invitations that could be printed at various Fort Collins print houses?

In an e-mail from a Colorado citizen action group, the Obama Administration and Colorado officials will answer questions from stakeholders about the local/regional energy issues. The e-mail also said that U.S. Senators Udall and Bennett also got an invitation and will each address the attendees. A protest of the invite-only shindig is planned to go down at 1 p.m. at the Fossil Ridge High School in Fort Collins, where the event is being held.

Gov. Ritter was quoted by the Coloradoan as saying, “Just as the industrial revolution created jobs in the 20th century, we now usher in a new century of innovation, creativity and entrepreneurial vigor.”

I wonder if the pontificators at this private pow-wow will mention the Spain study that found that for every renewable/green job created, two jobs in some other industry got axed. My gut is telling me no.

I don’t know what bugs me more, though: the fact that our politicians are having policy meetings in a “boys only” tree-house club kind of way, or that the Coloradoan spent half the article talking about how green the venue is. FRHS is, apparently, one of a hand full of high schools in the U.S. to get a “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building” certification.

Woot woot! The Coloradoan continued its drooling: “They couldn’t have picked a better location for a forum on this issue.”

Well ladi-frickin-dah. Too bad they couldn’t have let the energy consumers – all of us who don’t hold a political office and aren’t multi-million dollar stakeholders – get in on the forum action. Hurray for hope and change.

". . . the future belongs to those who show up for it."

2009-08-25T13:59:00.004-06:00

Many stories, articles and happenings to post about today, but this one seemed to jump out at me more than the others. This also augments my "Dying to Be Green" post from a few days ago. From SteynOnline (where else?), I give you "Brewing and Breeding". Truly a great, yet harrowing, read.

Teaser:

Britain has a below-replacement fertility rate; its population increase depends entirely on immigrants and their children. If Scots and Ulstermen and the like are despoiling the planet, you can tie their tubes. But their place in the maternity ward will be taken by Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, and even some virtuous Ethiopians: As Europe already knows, no matter how fast you self-extinguish, First World infrastructure does not stay empty. Ethiopia comes to you: Abyssinia in all the old familiar places.

A Link a Day Keeps the Socialism Away

2009-08-21T09:07:00.004-06:00

Just think what four will do for you!

Hope and Change Has Become Predictable Liberalism - by Troy Senik.

It would be safe to say Troy is a "senik" (ha, ha, ha) of the Obama administration's ability to lead. Highlight from the column:

"But as the first act of [Obama's] presidency has played out, he has shown himself to be anything but transcendent. Instead, he is an utterly predictable creature - a conventional liberal who mixes the weakness of Jimmy Carter with the ideological rigidity of George McGovern. And he is thus engaged in a conversation that the rest of the country concluded decades ago."

The Left’s Double Standard on Dissent - by Ken Connor.

The days of "dissent is patriotic" are long gone. As Connor notes: "The Democrats’ handling of public criticism over proposed health care reform, however, reveals a sinister side of the Left that is about as intolerant, undemocratic, and illiberal as it gets."

Canadians visit U.S. to get health care - by Patricia Anstett at the Detroit Free Press.

All right, I have an idea: let's revamp our health care system so that it looks like Canada's/Great Britain's! No? Fine. But think of all the foreign countries you'd get to visit because you'd have to travel abroad to get the care you need!

Tourists warned as Asian hornets terrorise French - by Telegraph.co.uk staff report.

Oh, come on! Are we gonna have to save the French again? Seriously.

Dying to Be Green

2009-08-19T21:05:00.004-06:00

I came across this article a few weeks ago and haven’t had time to comment on it until now.

Titled “Save the Planet: Have Fewer Kids”, the article begins with this statement: “For people who are looking for ways to reduce their ‘carbon footprint,’ here’s one radical idea that could have long-term impact, some scientists say: Have fewer kids.”

“Radical” is one way to put it. Morbid might be another term. Apparently, statisticians at Oregon State University determined that the greenhouse gas impact – or “carbon legacy” – of an extra child is “almost 20 times more important than some of the other environment-friendly practices,” including driving Priuses, recycling, or buying mercury-filled light bulbs.

One member of the study team, Paul Murtaugh, is quoted as saying, “. . . we tend to focus on the carbon emissions of an individual over his or her lifetime. . . . But an added challenge facing us is continuing population growth and the increasing global consumption of resources.”

The article states that in the United States, “each child ultimately adds about 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average parent – about 5.7 times the lifetime emissions for which, on average, a person is responsible.”

Translation: If you really want to do your part to stop climate change, plan on really small family reunions in the coming years.

Of course, these statisticians aren’t pushing for some kind of child-limit law, but “they simply want to make people aware of the environmental consequences of their reproductive choices.”

Hmm. Makes you wonder if these same statisticians will now push for abstinence-only sex education in public schools. Somehow I doubt it. Having sex should have no relation (pun intended) on procreating.

This article reminded me of another green/population growth article that appeared in the Times Online back in March. From the other side of the pond:

Jonathon Porritt, one of Gordon Brown’s leading green advisers, is to warn that Britain must drastically reduce its population if it is to build a sustainable society.

Porritt’s call will come at this week’s annual conference of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), of which he is patron.

The trust will release research suggesting UK population must be cut to 30m if the
country wants to feed itself sustainably.

Take a guess at what Britain’s total population was in 2008. Go ahead. If you said slightly more than double (61,270,000) the 30 million Porritt wants to annihilate then you get a smiley face sticker. Porritt’s proposed reduction would bring the population back to Victorian-era numbers.

But should all countries send half of their populations to the death camps?

Many experts believe that, since Europeans and Americans have such a lopsided impact on the environment, the world would benefit more from reducing their populations than by making cuts in developing countries.

How…noble of us?

You might be asking the question, “How do they propose cutting entire population’s in half?” Answer: Britain's Tory leader, David Cameron, suggested that the UK needs a “coherent strategy” on population growth.

Oh, I know: How about we limit the number of babies a couple can have! It’s working for China, right? The good of the planet is at stake.

The irony is that most of Europe has already subconsciously enacted a birth-limit policy. By 2002, all of the member states of the European Union had a birth rate below the sustainability level (2.1 children born per woman). Spain’s birth rate in 2000 was 1.07 per woman, and rests precipitously today at 1.31; Italy’s birthrate is also at 1.31; Portugal’s is 1.48; Poland’s is a disastrous 1.28. Demographers believe that it is virtually impossible for a nation to recover once its birth rate dips to 1.3. In the United States, the latest numbers put our birth rate hovering somewhere around the sustainability level.

There’s more to this story than just declining birthrates. In 2000, 15% of Europe’s population was 65 or older. By 2060, there will only be two workers for every person 65 years or older. A Business Week article from October of 2007 noted that European Union residents 65 years or older outnumbered those 14 and under. Yikes.

(By the way, the European Muslim birth rate is three times higher than Europe’s non-Muslim population. The Muslim population in Europe will double by 2015, while the rest will shrink by 3.5%. Do you think Allah cares about carbon legacies?)

So what do you get when you cross a self-sterilizing culture with a rapidly-aging population? The Oregon State statisticians would probably say a positive, earth-friendly carbon legacy. So would Jonathon Porritt and other British greenmongers. My answer would be the end of democracy and Liberalism in Western Civilization.

Here’s the larger point, though. God’s command in Genesis 1 to “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it,” doesn’t exactly line up with the worldview/climate-change-combating measures of the Jonathon Porritts of the world. Nor do the Scriptures that praise children as a blessing from the Lord. It's one thing to be a steward of God's earth. But that stewardship needs to be anthropocentric. Calling for a nation's population to be slashed in half to save us from global warming is the furthest thing from a Biblical mandate on how to care for God's world.

Obviously, Europe’s declining birth rate can’t all be chalked up to a desire to live greenly. The anesthesia of socialism that has lulled Europe from its personal responsibility is largely to blame for the lack of kids that aren’t there now.

But it would be a mistake not to believe that a sizeable portion of the European population is making family decisions with an earth-first mindset – demographics and the survival of their culture be damned.

A 2007 story from the UK DailyMail tells how three individuals in Britain have had abortions and have been sterilized – all because they thought they were saving the planet. A certain Mark Hudson proclaimed, “That’s why I had a vasectomy. It would be morally wrong for me to add to climate change and the destruction of Earth.” His fiancé, Sarah Irving, quipped, “When I see a mother with a large family, I don’t resent her, but I do hope she’s thought through the implications.”

This kind of green fanaticism is setting the standard for what it means to live a truly environmentally-friendly, climate-change-combatting life.

Sure, you can drive a Prius, use public transportation or buy locally-grown food. But if you really want to save the world, don’t procreate. That’s as green as green can be.

Well, I'm Back

2009-08-18T09:56:00.002-06:00

Lindsey and I returned from our 10-day journey through New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado Sunday night.

This was one of the greatest trips of my life and rates right up there with the honeymoon, to be honest. We were both exhausted yet happy when we arrived home Sunday night, with frames and fragments from the last 10 days spinning in our minds. We dubbed it the “Marriage Building Traveling Seminar.” Hooray for euphemisms.

Many pictures were taken, and for a mini-blog of all that went down, visit www.facebook.com/tsides. I will hopefully be posting pics and maybe even a Bill Simmons-ish retro diary of the trip sometime on here in the near future.

In the meantime, I am back to the blogging. Stay tuned and keep your stick on the ice.

The Road Goes Ever On And On

2009-08-06T22:21:00.005-06:00

Tomorrow at 5:30 a.m. my wife and I are taking a 2nd anniversary/both of us finally finished with school (she just finished her BSN)/going to visit her father trip to Jerome, Ariz.; hike around Moab for a couple days, then chill in Vail on the return trip. Don't expect many posts until the Aug. 17. Until then, make the most of the time you've been given, and enjoy the journey. As the Bagginses might say:

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

Healthy Criticism

2009-08-06T22:18:00.003-06:00

Nevada must be bursting. From the AP:

The Senate’s most powerful Democrat on Thursday scolded health care protesters dogging his party’s lawmakers at local meetings, arguing that some critics on the political right have run out of ideas – and ditched their civic manners. Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada accused the protesters of trying to “sabotage” the democratic process.

So, pushing for a House bill that is too large to read and bad-mouthing “the people” isn’t sabotaging the democratic process? And is House Leader Nancy Pelosi claiming that health care protestors are “carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town hall meeting on healthcare” a positive example of civic manners?

The problem with expanding government is that once it hits a certain waist-size, it thinks of itself as a kind of god appointed to tell the people how they should live their lives. After all, we’ve given government that power, we’ve forfeited individual and community responsibilities to them, so why shouldn’t it act as if they know better?

For all intents and purposes in several aspects of our American lives, we’ve given the Federal government the green light to run our lives. Europe is suffering the consequences of this good-willed totalitarianism that has been suffocating their culture and individual freedoms for most of this decade.

When the “common people” protest and criticize, the Reids and Pelosis take it personally. It’s an affront to their reality that they are a morally-enlightened group of people who know how to run our lives better than we do. That’s why they call protestors Nazis and saboteurs. Even if the government did know how to run our lives better, it would still be wrong of them to do so.

As Mark Steyn puts it, “I’d rather be free to choose, even if I make the wrong choices.”

Opening Up LaHood

2009-08-05T08:52:00.005-06:00

I love David Harsanyi. Really. I think I have a man-crush on him (and he lives in Denver!). Why? Because he writes about the "Cash for Clunkers" program with lines like this:

Then again, in Washington, a place where elected officials are astonished -- astonished! -- when a program doling out free cash is popular, success often translates into higher costs and fewer results.

Satirical and beautiful! Harsanyi opens up the hood to see what "Cash for Clunkers" is really all about:

A survey of car dealerships found a relatively small differential in fuel efficiency between cars traded in and those replacing them. A Reuters analysis concluded -- even with the extended program in place -- "cash for clunkers" would trim U.S. oil consumption by only a quarter of 1
percent.

As an economic stimulus, the plan is equally impotent. As James Pethokoukis, a columnist at Reuters, succinctly explained, "The program gets much of its juice via stealing car sales from the near future rather than generating additional demand." . . .

This week, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood claimed that "cash for clunkers" had benefited domestic car companies, particularly Ford. When The Associated Press requested data to verify this contention, the most transparent administration ever to grace God's soon-to-be-unblemished Earth refused to release the data.

Hmm. So you're telling me that destroying perfectly-functioning automobiles for government-preferred "green" cars won't boost the economy or "save" the planet? And it also hurts the poor and charities?

Sounds like hope and change to me.

Blamestorm Season

2009-08-04T09:41:00.003-06:00

Timothy Geithner let off some steam about stimulus and financial regulation troubles.

From the New York Times:

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner blasted top regulators in an expletive-laden tirade amid frustration over President Barack Obama’s faltering plan to overhaul financial regulation, Reuters reported, citing a Monday story in The Wall Street Journal.

And these people want to run our healthcare? I don't think so, Tim.

cheesey line about how my blog is new and improved

2009-08-03T23:13:00.003-06:00

Welcome. I have revamped my blog and will actually make posts more than once every couple years.

You'll find everything here: current events, political commentary, religious dialogue, and probably even some sports and culture stuff. We're in postmodernity, baby, so everything is connected and nothing off limits.

I will be adding gadgets and features to the blog as I go along, so please be patient as I get things up and running. For now, enjoy the posts, leave a comment or two and feel free to join.

Peace out.

Did Imus something?

2007-04-12T09:52:00.000-06:00

Radio shock jock Don Imus should really get this year’s Darwin Award for calling the Rutgers women’s basketball team a bunch of “nappy-headed hos.” Talk about evolution in reverse. He won’t be surviving much longer if he keeps this up.

I mean, the guy’s a media veteran and should know that the unforgivable sin in America today is making “offensive” statements about African-Americans.

Imus’s comments were out of line and stupid. There was no need for them and he was making a poor attempt at being funny. But Imus’s idiocy was like blood in water: once the media got a sniff of what he said, they and every savvy politician and pundit came swimming like a swarm of sharks, looking for someone to devour.

Honestly, I don’t know. Imus apologized, saying he made a “stupid, idiotic mistake,” and that he’s not a racist. For his words, Imus will be suspended from the air for two weeks, a judgment he deemed fair.

But apparently it’s not fair enough. In a world where a contrite apology will get you out of any sort of trouble, Imus is finding that the standards are unreasonably high in his case.

Democratic Senator from Illinois and 2008 Presidential hopeful Barack Obama called for Imus’s firing and said that Imus’s comment is “one that I’m not interested in supporting.” Man, you gotta love Obama and the strong stances he takes on issues.

And, of course, the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson were there from the beginning also calling for Imus to be fired. Sharpton pitted Imus’s statement as “racist” and “diabolical.” I wonder if Sharpton would consider the time he was convicted of libel when he falsely accused a white district attorney of raping a black woman to be “racist” and “diabolical.”

Jackson was indignant over Imus’s two-week suspension, calling it a “slap on the wrist,” and demanded that Imus undergo “serious sensitivity training.” I wonder if Jackson, while campaigning for the Presidency in 1988 called New York City “Hymietown,” will consider accompanying Imus to therapy sessions.

I don’t know who appointed these two goons – Sharpton and Jackson – as God the Father and God the Son when it comes to racial issues. Sharpton and Jackson have all the freedom in the world to criticize Imus and his lack of judgment, but it’s a just a bit like the pot calling the kettle black. (Pun intended.)

By the way, why weren’t Sharpton, Jackson, Obama, and others calling for Rosie O’Donnell’s head when she compared conservative Christians to Islamofascists? That’s a fairly “insensitive” and “offensive” statement; why did she get off the hook but Imus is being reeled in and gutted?

Speaking of Rosie…she weighed in on this whole fiasco and, ironically enough, came down on Imus’s side.

Well, maybe it’s not so ironic. Maybe Rosie is still worried about her job because, after all, her comments were more vitriolic in nature than Imus’s. But on the April 11th edition of “The View,” Rosie made strong and emphatic comments in support of Imus.

Said Rosie, “But the point of the story is, if it impedes on free speech in America, democracy is at stake. Because democracy is based on freedom of speech and freedom of the press. So we really have to worry about that in this country.”

Moments later she added, “. . . it’s not a freedom if you outlaw certain words or thoughts, because then the thought police come and then before you know it, everyone’s in Guantanamo Bay without representation.”

Gosh, I’ve seen it all, now. Take me home, Lord, for I just found myself agreeing with Rosie O’Donnell.

There’s certainly something to be said about freedom and responsibility, though. Imus is a doofus and should have thought before he spoke. Even Obama said (what is wrong with me today? First Rosie and now Obama?), “We all have First Amendment rights. And I am a constitutional lawyer and strongly believe in free speech, but as a culture, we really have to do some soul-searching to think about what kind of toxic information are we [sic] feeding our kids.”

It remains to be seen how many kids actually listen to Imus, but most Democrats usually end up making everything about the kids.

I feel sorry for Imus – not because of what he said – but because of how he’s being treated. It seems that the mainstream media and members of the Left hold whites, Christians, Jews, etc to a different standard. The Rosies, Sharptons, and Jacksons of the world can get away with anything and, it should be noted, don’t even care to apologize.

Imus apologized; he’s going to serve a two-week suspension, but it still isn’t good enough. What ever happened to tolerance? To free speech? It’s one thing to criticize and condemn comments like Imus’s, but firing the guy?

I think Someone once said, “He who has no sin, throw the first stone.”

Why can’t the white man say “n****”?

2007-03-27T11:17:00.000-06:00

I know I wrote about Barack Obama last time, but the media coverage surrounding him is fascinating, and as you’ll see, also a bit saddening.

A little over a week ago, LA Times columnist David Ehrenstein wrote a piece entitled “Obama the ‘Magic Negro.’” It’s a strange and wild bit of writing and it raises questions – not to mention eyebrows – about how Liberals view the issue of race and how they view people of different races.

Here’s the link to Ehrenstein’s column to prove I’m not making this s*** up: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ehrenstein19mar19,0,5335087.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail.

Ehrenstein begins his column affirming that “every carbon-based life form on this planet” knows that Obama, Senator, D-Ill., is running for President. Ehrenstein posits that Obama is also running for “an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination – the ‘Magic Negro.’”

According to Ehrenstein and Wikipedia (LA Times columnists are quoting Wikipedia now? There’s journalistic integrity for you.), the Magic Negro “is a figure of postmodern folk culture . . . who emerged in the wake of brown vs. Board of Education. . . . to ‘help the white protagonist.’”

Furthermore, explains Ehrenstein, the Magic Negro is there to “assuage white ‘guilt’ (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American History, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest.”

Well, if that’s not stereotypical and racist, then I don’t know what is. Apparently it’s ok to be racist towards people who have acted as racists in their past.

But I digress. Ehrenstein argues that the Magic Negro is most prominently portrayed on the Silver Screen by actors such as Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman, Scatman Crothers, Michael Clarke Duncan, Will Smith, and, “most recently,” Don Cheadle. “And that's not to mention a certain basketball player whose very nickname is ‘Magic.’”

Ehrenstein writes at length (see above link) about the roles these actors have played in several movies in which they benevolently help in-need white folks. Some of these Magic Negro figures in the films get killed for helping the white protagonists, to which Ehrenstein quips, “See what helping the white man gets you?”

But the example he gives of “David Hampton — a young, personable gay con man who in the 1980s passed himself off as the son of none other than the real Sidney Poitier. . . . Hampton discovered that countless gullible, well-heeled New Yorkers, vulnerable to the Magic Negro myth, were only too eager to believe in his baroque fantasy” in order to obtain entrance to Studio 54. In the very next sentence, though, Ehrenstein notes that one of the few who didn’t fall for Hampton’s tricks was Andy Warhol, who, according to Ehrenstein, “had no need for the accouterment of interracial ‘goodwill.’”

Excuse me? Because Warhol wasn’t conned by a con man means he’s biased against black people? That’s some great logic.

All the above is s**** and giggles compared to what follows. Ehrenstein really shows how highly he holds white Americans with this preposterous proclamation: “But the same can't be said of most white Americans [comparing white Americas to Warhol], whose desire for a noble, healing Negro hasn't faded. That's where Obama comes in: as Poitier's ‘real’ fake son.”

Ehrenstein chalks-up Obama’s political success to his speaking eloquence, his books, and the way his criticisms have “magically” been “waved away.” Writes Ehrenstein, “Obama's fame right now has little to do with his political record or what he's written in his two (count 'em) books, or even what he's actually said in those stem-winders.” No worries, though, because Obama’s “tone is always genial, his voice warm and unthreatening, and he hasn't called his opponents names (despite being baited by the media).”

Ehrenstein wraps-up his racist rant with this paragraph, and I will quote it in full so that all of its absurdity can be appreciated:

Like a comic-book superhero, Obama is there to help, out of the sheer goodness of a heart we need not know or understand. For as with all Magic Negroes, the less real he seems, the more desirable he becomes. If he were real, white America couldn't project all its fantasies of curative black benevolence on him.

Let me interpret for you: white Americans are racist because their support for Obama is purely racial.

I coach girls’ high school basketball in Loveland, Colo. I’m the C team coach, and the Varsity coach, Jay Klagge, is a liberal democrat from the lakes of Minnesota. Six months ago Jay had already plastered his mini-van with an “Obama ‘08” bumper-sticker. Jay’s a great guy, great coach, and a civics teacher. We don’t agree on anything politically, but I don’t believe for a minute that he is a racist and would support a black presidential candidate to “assuage his white guilt.”

And no, I have no white guilt. Why should I? I never owned slaves. I never called a black man a “n*****.” I never participated in any racial segregation. Heck, the whole northern and western parts of America were bastions of freedom for people of every “color.” “White guilt” is something that the mainstream media and the world of academia try to pour on us poor white folks whenever they get the chance.

The very idea that white Americans are as shallow and as guilt-ridden as Ehrenstein thinks them to be is highly offensive, stupid, and a tad bit racist. No white support for Obama is good enough for Ehrenstein because we obviously can’t like Obama for political reasons because he’s only been in the Senate for two years and doesn’t really say anything anyway he speaks, anyway. To Ehrenstein, the only reason why white people have jumped on the Obama bandwagon is because this “Magic Negro” will save us from our past.

How do you think this piece makes Obama feel? Like those song-and-dance n******? Like an empty, black bucket of pretty rhetoric, only popular because of an entire demographic’s “guilt”? Like nary a politician but very much like a “fake” folk hero? Like a Magic Negro and nothing more?

Still it amazes me that black people – like Ehrenstein (yes, he is black) – can feel no guilt or shame whatsoever by flinging around “n****” or “n*****.” I mean, if it’s wrong for white people to use the word, why is OK for black people to use it? But if that’s the case, only w**** people should be allowed to use the term “w****” in describing themselves. Or, at the very least, a w**** person should be allowed to use “n****” and “n*****” just as freely as the black people do.

In the world of political communication, columns like this send us back a couple hundred years. We’re told over and over again the racial demographics play a large role in elections, but isn’t Ehrenstein going a bit too far?

Isn’t it fascinating that the leaders of academia and the Left almost always seem to point out the differences of people before any other characteristic. No one is ever a “candidate” or “American,” especially in the political arena. There’s always some identity tag that is applied to political figures, whether they’re male, female, black, white, etc, etc. Obama can never only be a presidential candidate – Ehrenstein made that quite clear.

If we as a society are trying to move away from racism and segregation, why do people like Ehrenstein continue to see color and other differences before they see anything else?

And the Lord said y’all got to rise up!

2007-03-06T11:36:00.000-07:00

Senator and 2008 Democratic presidential candidate Joseph Biden, let us all know that Barack Obama, fellow Senator and candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential ticket, is a “clean” and well-spoken black man.

Thanks for coming, Mr. Biden. Be sure to run again next time.

While politically suicidal, Biden’s comments do shed light on Obama’s rhetorical abilities. Obama’s eloquence is no secret and his lucidity is responsible for his popularity amongst the press and people. I don’t think Obama even knows where he stands on the issues of the day. But the brother can speak!

The Illinois Senator visited his people this last weekend in Selma, Alabama, speaking at the Brown Chapel A.M.E. church on the 42nd anniversary of the civil rights protest known as “Bloody Sunday.” On March 7, 1965, hundreds of black protesters were beaten and sprayed with tear gas as they marched cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. The event eventually led to the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Obama, being black, was given the prestigious honor of speaking on Sunday morning at the church where the march began 42 years ago. Hillary Clinton, being white, spoke at First Baptist Church, just down the street from Obama. Both candidates littered their speeches with religious talk, especially Obama, who talked at length about Moses and how he led the Israelite’s – or, in this context, black’s – out of slavery into the Promised Land. Obama dubbed this generation the “Joshua generation” because they still need to continue the fight for racial equality.

But the big topic of the day was race and racism and how far a certain race has come in its struggle for freedom.

Hillary took the noble path and neglected the bitterness between her campaign and Obama’s, saying that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 paved the way for Obama to run for President. She continued, noting that “by its logic and spirit, it is giving the same chance to Gov. Bill Richardson to run as a Hispanic. And, yes, it is giving me that chance.”

Well, I’m confused. Does Hillary think she’s black? Andre Sanders, 31, an auto parts supplier in Selma, is confused as well. Said Sanders, “Folks are saying, ‘Yeah, we're going to get us a black president with Obama.’ But Hillary's something, too. She's game tight. You can't run a scam on her.”

“Game tight”? Ballin’!

But apparently there was lots more confusion going on in Selma. Obama and Hillary were in such a tizzy to reach out for more of the black vote – I mean – to commemorate the history of black civil rights in America that they forgot who they were. Hilliary, obviously, forgot her skin color, and Obama forgot he was a “clean” black.

Obama’s speaking style adapted to his religious African-American environment like a gecko against tree bark. Reading the transcript of Obama’s speech is misleading, for it lacks his – how shall I say – southern subtleties.

In his speech, Obama went to great lengths to show that he is indeed part of the heritage, history, and honor of Selma. Being the offspring of a white Kansas woman and a Kenyan makes Obama only “half-black,” and being raised in Hawaii and Indonesia doesn’t do much for his desired connection to the civil rights movement. But Obama talked about his ancestors who were slaves and his father, Barack Obama, Sr., who immigrated from Kenya to America, all thanks to the brave people of Selma and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

When talking about how his father and mother (whose ancestors owned slaves) got together to have a family, he described their unpopular union of a white woman and black man as “some good craziness goin’ on.” In the speech text, it’s “going on.” Not so in the audio.

Obama continued:

“There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born. So don't tell me I don't have a claim on Selma, Alabama. Don't tell me I’m not coming home to Selma, Alabama.”

In the video, “coming” is “comin’,” and the second instance of “Selma, Alabama” is slurred together so that it sounds like one word, Southern style.

The very next sentence, Obama proclaims, “I’m here because you all marched for me.” On tape, however, Obama goes South yet again, and his “you all” is really “y’all.”

Obama’s southern/black pandering continues: “If it hasn't been for Selma, I wouldn't be here. This is the site of my conception. I am the fruits of your labor. I am the offspring of the movement. When people ask me whether I've been to Selma before, I tell them I'm coming home.”

But I heard this clip on the radio, and Obama’s “before” is “befo’.” “Befo’”? This guy graduated from Columbia with a B.S. in political science and from Harvard with a law degree, and suddenly he’s speaking with a southern drawl in an African-American church in Selma’labama? He’d better watch his step befo’ he alienates his white constituents.

Al Sharpton, referring to Obama and his quest for the White House, said, “Just because you are our color doesn't make you our kind.” I wonder if the Rev. Sharpton would take back that statement based on Obama’s style and “blackness” in his Selma speech.

But the degree to which Obama is gunning for the black vote is astonishing. Obama is bending his own history in order to appear more “black.” His father didn’t come to America because of initiatives spawning from the Voting Rights Act, and Obama himself was born in 1961 – four years before Bloody Sunday. Obama was born in Hawaii, not Selma or anywhere else in the South. When people ask Obama if he’s been to Selma befo’, the truth would be something like, “Hell, no, dog. I was born nearly half-way ‘round da globe. But I’m still black. Vote for me.”

To Sharpton and others, being “black” is being a descendent of slaves. To Hillary, being “black” is being married to Bill Clinton, America’s “first black President,” and she actually brought her hubby to Selma in order to bolster her black credibility. To Obama, being “black” is being the offspring of a black man and a white woman and also speaking the southern, black lingo in order to impress the to-be voters.

It’s sad to see the disregard of an ethnic group’s heritage all for their political support. Some would say we’ve come along way, and we have. Racism will never be completely wiped off the map, but when we look around America today, we see all sorts of ethnic groups in all sorts of high-profile and prestigious positions.

But to me it seems flagrantly racist when politicians change their rhetoric, style, and skin color in order to get a few more votes. Obama and Hillary didn’t go to Selma to honor those who marched for freedom four decades ago; they went to Selma to exploit an ethnic minority and to use their heritage and bravery for political purposes. Obama and Hillary didn’t see Americans; they saw votes; they saw blacks.

And all God’s people said, “How long? How long must we wander in this wilderness?”

Science runs amuck: film at 11:00

2007-02-22T11:59:00.000-07:00

February 1, 2007, was a dark day in Paris…sort of.

In a gesture of good will, the city of Paris doused the Eiffel Tower’s 20,000 lights for five minutes on the eve of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report consenting that global warming is “very likely” manmade.

“Very likely” manmade? Such strong, scientific rhetoric has not been used since the Catholic Church’s assertion that Galileo was full of heresy in his defense of a sun-centered galaxy.

Strangely, some experts frowned on the Parisians’ politically charged (and uncharged) move. They said that the lights-on, lights-off maneuver could actually consume more energy than simply leaving the lights alone because of a massive power spike when all the lights turned back on.

Still, it’s the thought that counts, right?

The communication and rhetoric used and surrounding the global warming issue is, well… let’s just say it doesn’t really fit a scientific issue at all.

Phrases like “consensus” (another favorite proof of the pro-global-warming group) and “very likely” go better with election results than the scientific true or falsity of global warming. The question of global warming is a scientific one, not one of consensus. Science isn’t consensus, because what is a consensus? Agreement. True science isn’t based on blanket statements of consent, for if it did, our earth would still be the agreed-upon center of the galaxy and bleeding would still used by doctors to heal the sick.

There’s also been a lot of name-calling. Usually scientists reserve the name calling for kingdoms, phyla, classes, orders, genera, specie, etc. But with global warming, the names are being pelted on people.

Scott Pelley, correspondent for 60 Minutes, compared skeptics of global warming to “Holocaust deniers.” And back in September of 2006, Grist magazine’s David Roberts wrote, “When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards – some sort of climate Nuremberg.”

Professor emeritus William Gray from Colorado State University, a staunch global warming skeptic and the World’s Most Famous Hurricane Expert, said in a Washington Post story that Al Gore believed in global warming “almost as much as Hitler believed there was something wrong with the Jews.” Elsewhere, Gray took a swipe at noted Colorado University climate researcher Kevin Trenberth, accusing him of “selling his soul to the devil to get (global warming) research funding.”

Ding-ding-ding. End of round one, everyone back to their corner.

Interestingly enough, Gray has been one of the few to acknowledge the lack of love surrounding the topic of global warming. “Yes, I’m incendiary,” Gray admitted. “But the other side is just as incendiary. The etiquette of science has long ago been thrown out the window.”

But if manmade global warming really is happening, if it really is a fact, then why doesn’t the entire scientific community agree to the facts? Facts are facts. The way I see it, there are only two possible explanations for the bickering and heated disagreement amongst the scientific community: (1) Someone is right and someone is wrong and the wrong side is unwilling to admit their wrongness, or (2) The heat of the global warming debate is being supplied by political and not scientific forces.

Last April, 60 scientists and climatologists came together to put in writing their views of global warming, and it’s safe to say they didn’t consent to the “consensus” of manmade global warming. The prominent scientists declared, amongst other things:

“Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future . . . It was only 30 years ago that many of today's global-warming alarmists were telling us that the world was in the midst of a global-cooling catastrophe. But the science continued to evolve, and still does, even though so many choose to ignore it when it does not fit with predetermined political agendas.”

The incendiary Gray would agree. “It's about politics,” he says. “Very few people have experience with some real data. I think that there is so much general lack of knowledge on this.”

In this Postmodern world, aren’t all viewpoints encouraged? Why the inconsistency with “global warming deniers”? Science is all about debate and not about silencing viewpoints that run against the politically correct grain.

“This scare [world destruction via manmade global warming] will run its course,” asserts Gray. “In 15-20 years, we’ll look back and see what a hoax this was.”

Why does no one listen to the skeptics? “No one can hear without a preacher,” the saying goes, and the mainstream media has clearly shown itself to be on the side of the alarmists. One of TIME Magazine’s recent cover headlines read, “Be Worried. Be Very Worried.” Frantic attention was paid to the story about stranded polar bears, but Sweden’s reindeer, starving due to the thick ice that’s guarding their lichen food source, were ignored.

Roger Pielke, who runs the Climate Science Weblog (climateschi.atmos.colostate.edu), said, “If the media honestly presented the views out there, which they rarely do, things would change.”

Another reason might be due to the money flow. Global warming alarmists are green in more ways than one: Virgin Air’s Richard Branson gave $3 billion dollars to the global warming cause; the Sierra Club’s 2004 budget was $91 million; the Natural Resources Defense council boasted of a $57 million 2004 budget as well. Who wouldn’t want to consent to global warming?

Is Gray getting in on the money? Hardly. Gray often attributes Al Gore’s rise to the vice presidency as the beginning of funding battles. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA both left Gray out in the cold and began channeling money to those who would consent with manmade global warming.

Then, of course, there’s the UN, which has the power to dish out money and prestige and recognition like ushers hand out bulletins on Sunday mornings. And that’s precisely what politics is all about: money and prestige and power. Neither Gray or other skeptics, like famous meteorologist Neil Frank, have been approached by the IPCC.

Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, sent a mass of chilly air towards the UN and its IPCC, saying, “It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it's a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor. It's neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists . . .”

Global warming isn’t solely a scientific issue. It is intrinsically political, for both sides of the argument, but the stronghold of consensus, supported by pillars of political correctness, is debunked by a large number of scientists who refuse to play the PC game.

I don't consent to your consensus

2007-02-09T10:45:00.000-07:00

Check it out: more evidence of "global warming." Wait, I'm sorry. Citing record snow-fall and cold weather isn't legitimate evidence against global warming. Everyone who's in "consensus" about global warming can use specific cases of abnormally warm weather, but if you're not in the "consensus," then you don't have any idea what you're talking about. Great logic. Thanks, Al.

“Two Americas” and two John Edwards

2007-02-08T11:11:00.000-07:00

In his 2004 Democratic National Convention speech, Senator and then vice presidential nominee John Edwards spoke of how much work he and Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry needed to do in order to strengthen America.

Said Edwards, “The truth is, we still live in a country where there are two different Americas . . . one, for all of those people who have lived the American dream and don't have to worry, and another for most Americans, everybody else who struggle to make ends meet every single day.”

And true to his word, Edwards got to work.

He and his family recently moved into their 28,000 square-foot home in Orange County west of Chapel Hill in North Carolina. The home itself is worth over $4 million, and the 102 acres of land that the home sits on is valued at another $1.1 million.

This marks the first time in American political history that a candidate followed through on a campaign promise without getting elected.

“The Edwardses’ residential property will likely have the highest tax value in the country,” Orange County Tax Assessor John Smith told the Carolina Journal. Smith also thought that the Edwardses’ estate is probably the largest in the country.

Edwards’s crib is reported to have five bedrooms, six-and-a-half baths, a “Barn” that has its own set of living quarters, and is modestly equipped with a handball court, a basketball court, and an indoor pool. Oh, and it also has a four-story tower so Edwards can look down on “everybody else who struggle to make ends meet every single day.”

Edwards and his mansion (see the house here) stand in hypocritical contrast not only to his 2004 DNC speech but also to his 2008 presidential platform grounded in anti-poverty. In December, Edwards announced his bid for the Democratic nomination while standing in an impoverished and Katrina-wrecked home in New Orleans.

But Laurin Easthom, a Democrat on Chapel Hill’s town council, defended her Senator. “I see somebody who has come from a very humble background and with really hard work has gotten to the point where he is,” she said.

I have no problem with Easthom’s statement or Edwards’s estate. There’s nothing wrong with building a palace like Edwards’s if one has the means. It’s one of those “American success” stories. It’s what makes America beautiful and hopeful. President Bush used to own a Major League Baseball team. He’s loaded. And that’s fine.

But what isn’t fine is the Left’s say-one-thing-live-another lifestyle. How demeaning and insincere of Edwards to talk of “two Americas” and pose in New Orleans as a champion of the poor and oppressed and then to own a home that’s worth nearly $5 million.

“Well, I think we know which America he’s living in,” jabbed Jay Leno on the “Tonight Show.”

The Left has made an art of inconsistency and hypocrisy. It begins with well-intentioned words but falls apart in application.

Says the Left: “President Bush shouldn’t politicize the war in Iraq!” The next minute the Left is politicizing and commercializing the war on AIDS. A handful of corporations offered special “RED” products and promised to donate a portion of the sales to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS. Those corporations made a profit off others pain. But at least we felt good buying those products.

Says the Left: “We need to save people dying from AIDS!” A noble cause, but, in the name of “choice,” they’re all for the abortion of over 47 million children in the United States since 1973 and the 50 million children who are aborted every year worldwide (http://www.guttmacher.org/sections/abortion.php). An AIDS epidemic? Sure. But how about an abortion epidemic – the leading cause of death worldwide (go here and here to compare the numbers).

Says the Left: “President Bush is ignoring our rights and liberties!” But the people on the Left have no problem telling us what foods we can and cannot eat; where we can and cannot smoke; what type of light bulbs we can and cannot use; what type of cars we should and should not drive, and what type of gasoline we should and should not use.

The Left wants to stand for life and freedom, but their actions don’t support their words. For the Left, there are two Americas: one where they say what we want to hear and one where they do the exact opposite.