jerry's place

The Florida Republican Primary

2012-01-29T06:13:00.000-08:00

I’ve been a poll worker since 2006 but this was my first experience with a Republican primary. This year I have had the privilege of working on two early voting days. I feel odd saying this but everyone looked alike.

I might not have noticed their similarity had not one looked especially concerned and asked me if I was sure there was no fraud going on. That got me to paying attention. Three people were later turned away. All three were tall and slender, unlike the voters who tended to be heavier though not unpleasantly so. Not being the clerk, I don’t know why they were not allowed to vote. Frankly, I could not answer the concerned man. Everyone who voted looked like someone else who had already come through.

During the two days, I saw one Asian American and four who by their accent were Hispanic but did not really look it. There were three older women in wheel chairs and two older men who needed some special attention because of infirmity. And there were maybe eight young people in their twenties, all of whom looked like siblings. Beyond that, of the 528 voters who came through, it seemed like a social club of twenty couples just past middle age who took turns. I could not tell them apart. One woman made the mistake of wearing the same pink jersey with very distinctive embroidery twice within an hour.

They were all pleasant people, friendly and intent upon making their vote count.

The new voting system with paper ballots to back up the count of the scanning machines is close to fool proof as is the registration by drivers’ licenses. I trust the system which is a great improvement over the touch screens and chads of previous Florida elections.

I’m sure I’m wrong. But honestly, I couldn’t tell.

O. J. Simpson’s “Confession”

2011-11-03T08:07:00.000-07:00

Two years after the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, a book came out entitled KILLING TIME by Donald Freed and Raymond Briggs. It was the first book I bothered to read about the sensational crime.

Having investigated much less traumatic events, usually cases where a minister was accused of sexual misconduct, I wasn’t about to immerse myself in a major crime like that. I watched bits of the trial, scanned some of the articles in the papers, even read an article or two in TIME or NEWSWEEK. When the glove did not fit and the jury voted not guilty, I was satisfied that OJ didn’t do it, though I had no idea who else might have done it.

I saw an interview on TV with Dr. Briggs who described the book. I decided to read it because he brought up the importance of developing a chronology of events, something I did on the church cases.

The book was more than a “how to” book on trying to sort out the facts. It included, among other information that had not been published in the news, evidence of a number of smokers in Nicole’s garage, the fact that she and Ron had black belt karate skills, that there wasn’t a mark on OJ except for a minor cut on his finger which bled because he had taken Nsaids for his arthritis for many years and would have bruised and bled very easily, and, most important, the autopsy reports on the two victims which showed the probability of four different size and shape knife wounds, indicating at least four assailants.

The chronology I developed also showed he couldn’t have done it.

I was writing a novel about an adult Sunday School class that solved crimes and decided to integrate what I read into the story. To be fair, I read all kinds of other books, mostly against OJ. When I got done, I was most moved to believe the jury. Some of them had written a book about what they heard and saw during the trial that persuaded them OJ was innocent.

I sent my book to friend for his critique. He didn’t accept my analysis. I showed it to a crime lab specialist and he didn’t either. Another friend who is probably the most intelligent person I know was still convinced OJ did it after reading my book.

It must be a lousy book because no one agreed so I never tried to publish it.

Some dozen years later, I added as a PS to the first friend I’d showed my book, “OJ didn’t do it.”

He wrote back immediately, “He confessed. He wrote a book about it.”

---To be continued--- (See the posting below.)

O. J. Simpson’s “Confession” Part 2

2011-11-03T06:20:00.000-07:00

Five years ago, OJ tried to publish a book that told his side of the story and included a “confession” which he called “hypothetical.” The last I’d heard, the book was not published because of the Goldman law suit against it.

Turns out that the Goldmans were given the rights to the book and decided to publish it after all.

The library had a copy so I read it this past week.

OJ spent 90 percent of the story describing his marriage to Nicole and its break up. His story was what had been pieced together by Freed and Riggs eight years earlier but had more details which I found persuasive. He was married to an energetic, confrontational, and caring woman who got caught up with a crowd of drug-users and partiers. I do not think he was the spouse abuser poster boy he was made out to be by the anti-abuse movement peaking at the time.

He spent a few pages on his early life and first marriage and a few pages on his reactions to the news of the murders and the police arresting him. The slow “chase” in the white Bronco was revealing because he said why he decided not to commit suicide.

The “confession” chapter was pretty lame because it really did not fit into the narrative, ignoring such facts about his arthritis and his incredible patience with Nicole based on his commitment to parenting established in the rest of the book.

The “confession” also included things that could not have happened.

I reported my findings to my friend who said he was not surprised. “You wouldn’t believe it if OJ came up to you and said he did it.”

He was right! I’d have asked him a ton of questions because I did not think the facts I had would support a confession and he would have to show me how it was possible. I could be persuaded but, for example, he would have to tell me about the cobwebs he encountered just hours before Mark Furman went through them during his investigation.

My friend didn’t think I could ever be shown OJ did it so I challenged him if he was open to the possibility that OJ was innocent.

“Only if someone else confesses,” he wrote back.

I think the killers are long since dead just to prevent that from happening. Besides, can anyone get past the roadblocks to the evidence held by the LAPD. Is anyone else even interested because of the overwhelming prejudice against OJ?

Thoughts on 9/11

2011-09-14T06:58:00.000-07:00

Many people were asked this past weekend what they were doing on September 11, 2001, and what they thought about the planes crashing into the Twin Towers. Even though no one has asked me, I wish to offer my answers to those questions.

But first, a little background: I had just finished writing a novel which included a lot about Israeli-Palestinian relations. My views had sharpened considerably from the typical pro-Israel stance most Americans take to one sharply critical of Israel’s policies toward Palestinians and of the American government giving Israel carte blanche.

For instance, Israel persisted in maintaining its military occupation and building new settlements in Palestinian territories. They were taking over all water sources from Palestinians. They were building highways that split up the occupied land so that Palestine’s economy and social matrix were physically disrupted (farms were separated from the farmers’ residences, commerce between towns was disrupted by forcing Palestinians to drive many miles around the obstructing highways, schools were separated from their communities, etc.). All ports of entry into Palestinian territories were controlled by Israel. No matter what agreements were negotiated, Israel dragged its feet or completely refused to implement what they had officially agreed to.

By 2001, the Israelis had established, as former President Jimmy Carter observed, apartheid in the Palestinian territories.

It had not always been like that. Palestinians, Jews, and Christians had lived side by side in the Holy Land for more than a thousand years. Even with the early influx of Jews seeking to return to the land of their forefathers, even with those financed by the Zionist movement, there was relative peace.

But that all changed. Following WW II, Zionist squads began systematically forcing Palestinians out of their villages using bloody tactics. In response to the flood of refugees coming across their borders, neighboring Arab states sought to halt the flow and demand that the refugees to be returned. Israel ignored them and continued its campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestinian territories so that new Jewish settlers coming from Europe, the Asian subcontinent, and Africa could have some of the better land on which to settle. Despite winning acceptance into the United Nations based on promises to repatriate the refugees, Israel never did.

America consistently supported Israel in the United Nations, vetoing nearly every challenge the UN mounted against Israel’s behavior and practices. We also provided billions of dollars each year to Israel’s military support. It is no wonder America joined Israel as targets of radical Islamic sects' and organizations' wrath-filled rhetoric.

In 1993, one of those radical organizations, Al Qaida, truck-bombed the World Trade Center in New York. A number of people were killed and injured by the blast. The damage was serious but could be repaired. The perpetrators were caught and tried in American courts and life went on.

On September 11, 2001, I was mowing my front lawn when a car from further into our sub-division stopped. The driver told me that the Twin Towers had been hit by airplanes. Since they had been targeted in 1993, I just knew that Al Qaida was looking for more payback.

The attack on the World Trade Center, even if the Twin Towers had been full to their normal complement of 33,000 workers, would not have come near comparing with the thousands of Arabs killed in the various Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Gaza and the hundreds of thousands they had displaced through ruthless treatment of Palestinians, both Arab and Christian, over the previous 60 years.

Americans do not realize just how cruel the Israelis have been to the Palestinians. Bin Laden tried to tell us but his actual words rarely got through the American media. His writings were always described as crazy talk or pure hate speech. But he was trying to point out how America showed no inclination to deal fairly with the Palestinians and only continued disrespect for Arab culture. To Bin Ladin, the American presence in Saudi Arabia added insult to injury.

While a few extremist groups kept some violence going after Israel soundly defeated the handful of Arab nations that threatened them militarily in 1967 and 1973, the political use of fear in Israel overwhelmed the large number of peace-seeking Jews, Arabs, and Christians who were citizens of Israel. The assassination of the last Israeli Prime Minister who actually worked for peace, Yitzhak Rabin, by a right wing Zionist was the decisive moment when the conservatives took and maintained power undermining all peace efforts since.

So, this weekend as the TV, newspapers, and local groups all were remembering the ones who died, especially the first responders, mostly presuming the nineteen men who hijacked the four planes were terrible people who hated us because we love freedom, I prayed for the government to be more aggressive in holding Israel’s feet to the fire and working with other nations to bring about some decent resolution so that there is less reason for the extremists to hate us. . . and just maybe begin a new era of peace in the Middle East.

I wonder how long it will be before there is a national interest in the hijackers, an exploration of why those intelligent, educated young men were motivated to do the horrible deed they did and the impact on their families and friends.

Their unspeakable action should never be trivialized to be understood as the use of a 2-by-4 to get our attention. But neither should the Israeli occupation and suppression of Palestine be interpreted as Israel's "manifest destiny." Nor should our turning a blind eye to Israel's behavior be left unchallenged.

Unless America becomes realistic in viewing the Israeli-Palestinian problem and understanding our policies which fed into that conflict, there will be no chance for a peaceful solution to the Middle East Crisis.

Art Davis' book of poetry

2010-11-09T07:06:00.000-08:00

As I've blogged before, I love the off-beat poetry of Art Davis. We have been after him to organize his lifetime trove for publication. His children also pushed so he pulled together over 200 of what he liked best and self-published. If you would like a copy, send $12 to him at his home, 3006 Caring Way, Port Charlotte, FL 33952.

Just to remind you of his quiet wit and wordsmithing, here's one printed on page 169:

GROWING OLD

Chromosomes begin to tarnish,
my neurons start to rust.
The spice of life no more the garnish,
my engine's losing thrust.

Sadly now I've lost my flair,
creativity is lacking.
I've no longer dapper air
and my memory's sans tracking.

What is left to be desired,
where to travel. what remains?
Ambition lags, now I'm retired,
all that's left are pills and pains.

Medicines do miracles,
prolonging day and night.
Health guided by empiricles,
to pharmacist's delight.

If growing old is such a gift,
why carry vials or pills,
to calm us down, or give us lift,
to greet dementia's ills?

Alas, forgetting comes with ease,
and not without chagrin.
"Has anybody seen my keys?"
a daily-facing warp I'm in.

Growing old, a universal plight,
about it, little can we do.
I think someday I'll try and write,
to share these thoughts with you.

Art understands his place in the universe and what poetry is for him. He put the following in the book as his foreword:

An Ogden Nash,
I'm really not,
Nor Maya Angelou
of hallowed spot.

I write poems
one can understand
of people or
events at hand.

When one takes time
to read my works,
they'll not wonder if
some hidden meaning lurks.

True thoughts on printed page
for all to see;
no need delving
introspectively.

He's in our writer's group which meets today here at my house. He is a delightful and humble friend and I hope I have piqued your interest in his poems.

Substantial Cake

2009-12-24T07:19:00.000-08:00

Ann’s cakes are amazing. She bakes chocolate cake from scratch that stays moist and tasty and light for a long time. We do not know how long because it is eaten up within a few days. It is always good.

So I was excited that she was going to bake our son’s birthday cake again this year. This time she chose to do a yellow bundt cake. That’s fun because she bakes it in a round, donut-shaped pan which leaves interesting grooves in the surface. Even though we were not leaving until Sunday, she baked it on Wednesday and when it was nearly room temperature, she put it in the refrigerator. Freezing it too soon would leave crystals that would spoil the surface when it thawed.

She busily prepared some other dishes that we froze over the next couple days.

On Sunday, there was the bundt cake, still in the fridge. We had put it in a two gallon zip-lock bag so it was not likely to dry out. But the gluten in the flour could firm up pretty much. When we got it out to pack to carry over to Orlando where we were to meet our family, we noticed it was, uh, sort of heavy?

The only way Ann could get it into the packing box was on its edge. Ann is a master packer so you know she was left with a desperate decision. Being a circular cake, and being, uh, sort of heavy? Well, you get the picture. We expected it to sag a little and maybe flatten one edge.

At worst, if the travel took a toll on it, we could break up the cake into pieces, mix them with chocolate pudding, cherry pie filling, and Cool Whip and call it a parfait.

As we put that box into the car, we checked the cake and found it held up on its fluted edge very well so far, no sagging or flattening. It still faced three hours travel time with the occasional bumps in the road.

As we drove, I asked Ann about the texture of the cake. I thought it was supposed to be like a sponge cake, soft and light. She said it was more like a pound cake.

The pound cake one gets at the store is a lot firmer than a sponge cake but still is pretty light.

As I recalled, pound cakes originally were a pound of sugar, a pound of flour, a pound of butter, and some eggs. Three one pound loaves could be made. They were not light, either. But they were pretty soft and soaked up strawberry juice if you used them for short cakes.

As we drove, I began to imagine trying to heft that bundt cake. If it was firmer than a pound cake, I thought about it as a hammer for nails. That was a notion about “pound” cake that ever occurred to me before.

When we got to Orlando and to the site where David found adjacent apartments for all of us, we checked to see how the cake did.

It stood on its edges proud and as round as could be. The fluting was not even dented.

When we got it in to the apartment, we put it into the fridge, keeping it hidden from David. We didn’t know if he’d laugh or cry!

After he and his family were in bed, we snuck out to the kitchen to test it.

It was so, uh, sort of heavy? Still! What else? We set it on the counter which groaned a little as it accommodated to the new weight upon it.

I struggled but finally slid the cake out of the zip-lock bag far enough for Ann to cut a small piece from the bottom of the cake.

It was crispy! And delicious!

We still had two days until we were to take it out and present it with candles and frosting, but we were a little more comfortable with the final result, provided our shoulder muscles held up from handling it.

I began to make comments to David about the cake that withstood riding on its edge all the way over from Port Charlotte. But I left in the air whether or not it would be any good for his birthday.

He didn’t bat an eye or even pursue any lines of questions.

He trusted his mother’s cakes . . . and packing.

By the time we served it on his birthday, he cut it, ate it, and then had another piece. Both were bigger than what I usually eat!

We are all looking forward to eating the rest of this, uh, sort of heavy cake?

A Teaching Moment

2009-07-25T08:13:00.000-07:00

Transcript of the discussion among President Obama, Professor Gates, and Officer Crowley sometime next week:

Obama: I appreciate you both for taking the time to sit down with me.

Gates and Crowley: Your welcome, Mr. President.

Obama: I hope what we do here is something with which you both are familiar, an evaluation of just what happened last week. You both are professionals and are both teachers so please understand that we will find things to blame on each other. That's not the point. I hope we will be able to look at the mistakes as mistakes and figure out better ways to do things so we don't repeat those mistakes. Let's make this a teaching moment.

Gates: Where's the beer you promised?

Obama: Skip, it's right over here. (The President leads both men over to a cooler on the floor next to the desk where they each take a brand of their own choice.)

Obama: Officer, as I understand it, you were sent to Dr. Gates' house because someone called to say someone was breaking in. You arrived within ten minutes. Am I correct to say that you found the house quiet, door closed, and nothing unseemly happening?

Crowley: That's right. I went up to the door and knocked on it. An older gentlemen answered the door, holding mail in his hands.

Obama: Did he appear threatening to you in any way?

Crowley: At the moment, he did not. But I have been on burglary calls before and have encountered all kinds of people, all ages and sizes, and both genders so I had to remain alert.

Obama: Professor, what was your reaction to seeing a police officer at your door?

Gates: The first thing that came to mind was, "Oh Oh, what kind of trouble am I in?" I could not think of any reason for him to be at my door. Where I grew up, when a white police officer confronted a Black person, that was not a good situation to be in. Inside I felt on the defensive but I tried to keep my poise. I invited him in.

Obama: Officer, so far so good?

Crowley: I went by the book and stayed just inside close to the door. I asked him who he was.

Gates: I asked him why he had come. It was my house, after all.

Obama: Officer?

Crowley: He failed to answer my question so I asked it again.

Gates: He failed to answer my question and my fear of something being wrong increased.

Crowley: I realized he was getting tense so I asked more quietly a third time. Whatever he was thinking, he handed me a letter and pointed to the name on it. I was not satisfied because some burglars are cool enough to pretend to be the homeowner when we catch them like that. So I asked him if he had his I. D. on him. He showed me his Harvard I. D. and asked me for my name and badge number.

Gates: That's when he told me to step outside and then turned his back on me and went out onto the porch. "Step outside" was given as an order. I felt disrespected at that moment. He refused to identify himself and he expected me to do whatever he wanted me to do. That angered me. I am a respected professor. My picture was on the I. D. so he had to know I was telling him the truth about who I was.

Crowley: When I realized who he was, I acted on my training which is to get the subject outside as quickly as possible because the perpetrator may still be in the house, a potential danger to all of us.

Obama: Did you tell the professor that was the situation?

Crowley: I would have but he said something about my mother which angered me.

Obama: You know better, Skip. The white community only hears one phrase when the word "mother" is mentioned in anger.

Gates: I was standing there being ordered around and said something that any Black person in the country would have understood, "I won't go outside for anyone but your mama."

Crowley: That's not what I heard.

Obama: Officer, tell me what you know about mothers in African culture.

Crowley: Most African cultures are matriarchal so the mother and grandmother are the heads of the family. Dr. Gates, were you saying I did not have enough stature to make a demand on you, that my mother would have had to ask it for you to do it?

Gates: Either that or "Please come outside with me in case there is a crook inside the house who could hurt us."

Obama: Officer, did you say please or explain the situation?

Crowley: By then, the situation had deteriorated. I was afraid for both of us and he made me angry with his remark which I had never heard before and sounded like a terrible insult.

Gates: When he had not given me his name and badge numbered, I went to the door to ask him again and that's when I was grabbed and handcuffed, read my rights, and hustled off to jail.

Crowley: He was very aggravated and I was ready to also charge him with resisting arrest.

Obama: There were no cooler heads around to prevail?

Crowley: My partner was there as back up but his role under that circumstance was to put on the cuffs and make sure the subject was no longer a threat.

Obama: Did your partner then go in and check the house for a possible burglar?

Crowley: No, by then our focus was on the professor and his anger.

Obama: Skip, knowing what you know now, what do you think you should have done?

Gates: Kept my cool. The situation was exactly what every Black person fears day and night. I should have done whatever he said. That's what I was taught when I was little. Do nothing to add to the confrontation because they have the power.

Obama: But you didn't even come close to doing that. You are a man. You are a distinguished professor. You were in your own home. Is there anything else you could have done to retain those and still not escalate the situation?

Gates: I did not think of what he was up against. He's twice as big as me and half my age. I felt a real threat from him. But police officers face things we do not even realize. I wish I had kept my temper and stayed quietly where I was when he went out the door. I wish I had calmly asked him why he wanted me to go outside. I had no idea he was there on a burglary call. As I said, if he had been polite and explained what he was doing, I probably would have had no problem with him and we wouldn't have made the news.

Crowley: I should have kept my poise and taken a moment to identify myself and my purpose for being there and telling him the potential danger we might be in. Once we got into the tiff, I forgot why we were there. As many times as I've taught this stuff, I never realized how easy it is to lose track of what our safety priorities were.

Obama: So you both will teach your respective classes a little differently from now on?

Gates: I'll teach it differently but I'm not sure I will be able to completely control my feelings and reactions if this happens again. Maybe we will need to practice in my classes. How about you, Crowley?

Crowley: Good idea. I am glad to discover just how deep our respective fears run and how they can disrupt a situation. We will have to practice so we do not let those feelings take control.

Gates: Thank you, Mr. President. I appreciate your bringing us together and thank you for standing up for me the other night.

Crowley: Let me add my thanks, too, but didn't you make a mistake by taking sides the other night and then called my department "stupid?" What would you do differently?

Obama: Who, the President make a mistake? Well, maybe my first this year. (All laugh.) Look, I apologize for using that word. In fact, if I had not, would we even be here?

Gates: Are you saying that you set this all up just so we could open up the country to this sort of discussion?

Crowley: I know you are smart but I still think it was a mistake.

Obama: The real mistake was drawing attention to your case by offering my opinion. I really wanted to stay on health care the whole presser. Some in the public media really want me to fail on this health care issue. I knew that the moment I started to offer my opinion, this would be the subject of the next three news cycles.

Gates: But you chose to let it fly? You still could have pulled back, especially before using the derogatory term about the department.

Crowley: That was like "a shot heard round the world."

Obama: Did you stop to think that the health care issue has been with us sixty years since Harry Truman but the racial tensions here go back to the bringing of slaves in the eighteenth century?

Gates: All that went through your mind when you were making your statement?

Crowley: That is not what went through my mind!

Obama: Mistake, miscalculated or not, let's make the most of it, Gentlemen.

Crowley: I'll drink to that. (The three touch their long necks.)

Gates: Too bad we didn't record this.

Obama: That's what Jerry just did. Hey Eckert, thanks.

JCD 1113

2009-06-07T10:18:00.000-07:00

When George W. Bush was elected President, some of us had already read Molly Ivins’ book about him and had a feeling he was going to be a bad President. He got along with people in Texas but he also signed more death warrants for executions than any other governor in any state in the U. S. We also knew his governmental papers had been sealed in his father’s presidential library with no one being given access.

But the new President Bush would have to store his papers somewhere along with his library so SMU, according to reports, began planning on how that could come to their campus. He said he was a Methodist and his wife Laura was a graduate of SMU. And some of the Bush family friends who had financed much of the new President’s political career were on the SMU Board.

The Bush administration led us into a war of choice against Iraq in 2003 and did it so poorly that American troops had little or no armor to protect themselves from IEDs and sniper fire. The Bush administration turned a lot of the war over to mercenaries like Blackwater who had little or no military discipline and were not held accountable when they violated rules of engagement. The military was encouraged to use torture on prisoners in Abu Graib. Arguments over rights being lost in the Patriot Act and secret policies that were coming to light were not enough to prevent President Bush from being re-elected.

In 2005, a group representing the Bush library asked SMU to submit a proposal. In December of 2006, SMU was named as one of the finalists by the Bush Foundation.

Dr. Andrew Weaver circulated a petition which got 12,000 signatures nationally protesting the Bush Foundation/SMU linkage. Faculty on SMU joined in the protest and at a faculty senate meeting on March 7, 2007, nearly overturned the linkage. Their main object was to not allow an institute which would not be subject to University control.

A week later, a group called the Mission Council which was made up of some bishops and some laity from the South Central Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church voted to allow a lease between SMU and the Bush Foundation. The jurisdiction owns SMU and needed to make the final decision. However, the Mission Council had been formed to provide for inter-meeting decision-making.

Protests continued against the institute and in general against the Bush Foundation as the Bush administration hid behind a unitary executive policy and refused to allow any viewing of their e-mails or meeting notess despite federal law requiring such access.

The Bush Foundation then asked the College of Bishops of the jurisdiction to rule on the authority of the Mission Council to permit lease signing. On January 9, 2008, after a telephone poll, the bishops supported the Mission Council’s authority.

At least one of those Bishops, Scott Jones, was on the SMU Board, the Mission Council, and the College of Bishops. There is no sign he recused himself but more likely that he asserted himself in getting the results that would forward the lease signing.

Six weeks later, SMU signed a 99 year lease with the Bush Foundation for $1,000, with the option of extending that lease out to 249 year. This time line and these figures come from THE DAILY CAMPUS, an independent SMU campus newspaper, for February 26, 2008.

General Conference received a petition from Dr. Weaver requesting that the South Central Jurisdiction drop the lease. General Conference, in May of 2008, referred the petition to the jurisdiction which was to meet in July.

After a spirited debate at the jurisdictional conference, the referred petition was defeated and the conference voted to accept the action of the Mission Council to allow the lease. A Perkins staff member then asked the presiding bishop a question of law in effect asking if the miniscule lease price provided backdoor funding that supported the ideology of the Bush instiutute, something that was contrary to the Discipline and SMU charter.

The bishop responded that the question was moot and hypothetical. But the Discipline requires that ruling and the question be reviewed by the Judicial Council at their October, 2008, meeting. The ruling came too late and so the matter was held over until April of 2009.

The Council ruled that the matter had indeed been before the conference and that the bishop should have answered the question. They went into the Discipline, the Jurisdiction’s own rules of procedure, and the SMU charter to determine if everything was all right with the vote by the conference. They ruled that the conference vote validated the lease and that the Mission Council had acted properly. They did not have the lease information, however, so they were unable to make a judgment on the major issue of the question of law. But since the vote had been made by the conference, they supported the legitimacy of the lease.

One thing some of us wondered about was what the Dean of Perkins would do. He was both on the Judicial Council and was SMU’s PR man for the Bush Foundation project.

As has been the practice with this Judicial Council, he removed himself from the discussion and also did not vote on the case. Another member who had once been on the SMU Board made note of that relationship but said he did not recuse himself because he was not on that Board when the Bush people contacted SMU or during any of the time of the negotiations.

I find two more possible problems in the case which I wish the Council had handled as well.

One may sound more like a “Monday morning quarterback” fuss. The College of Bishops should have reported their ruling to the Judicial Council for review.

Taking the principle of law from Judicial Council Decision 331 that matters that are similar should be construed together, any request for a ruling of law should follow Disciplinary authority (may a secular group seek a judicial ruling outside of the normal appeals and conference processes?) and if so, should that ruling be reviewed as any question of law must be by the Judicial Council?

The Judicial Council should be very sensitive to those who take over their job.

The other flaw I perceive is that the Judicial Council missed a whole body of law in their careful study of the documents related to process and authority: their own precedents in church law made among previous decisions.

As far back as 1946, the Judicial Council ruled that no body can abandon its own powers and grant them to a subsidiary group. JCD 38 says, "No authority is given in the Constitution of the Church for it to delegate its powers in such a manner as to deprive itself of that basic or ultimate power." I was startled at how many decisions since have maintained that precedent.

If that precedent had been acknowledged, the Mission Council’s decision could not have been taken as final and the lease should not have been signed until after Jurisdictional Conference,

Conclusion

The Bush administration’s unwillingness to be transparent may be not only propagated by the institute but may actually interfere with any scholarly and public access to the archives. That and so much about the Bush administration has brought shame to our nation and so much damage to the world (failure to act on global warming, use of torture, using war instead of diplomacy, etc.) that I fear how that will spill over onto SMU.

I see a die cast in which the Judicial Council inadvertently did not prevent and others of us failed to stop.

Regionalization of the UMC

2009-05-31T10:06:00.000-07:00

The largest number of amendments to the constitution of the United Methodist Church relate to a worldview change: instead of continuing to be a dominating colonial-style denomination we will aim for being more equal in standing next to each United Methodist body in each region of the world. Having supported the democratic concern that we not be paternalistic but develop indigenous leadership in a process of missions, I think it is time to take the next step and stand as a partner in operations rather than continue as the head of the business.

What appears to be a reasonable step, amendments changing terminology in anticipation of enabling legislation in 2012, has been seriously criticized by a most unlikely group.

For years now, a caucus in our denomination has been pressing for division into two denominations. Each General Conference occurs with everyone asking, “Is this the year they are going to split the church?” I first heard such talk in 1984. It was so serious in 2004 that some key leaders of that caucus were speaking openly about a split.

I have never taken their threats too seriously. Our demographics have diminished. How that has come to be could be argued, of course. The real reason the caucus won’t split the denomination is because they would then have only half the resources of the whole denomination. They might not be left with very much.

Their threats have proved to be quite fruitful, however. They have gotten the majority to compromise in the name of peace and unity. Compromises have been legislative (some Disciplinary changes have led to passages that, unlike the wise one on abortion in the Social Principles, have just split the church down the middle) and some have been administrative (addition of an extra missionary society).

This past couple years, denominational leaders have successfully introduced the idea of regionalizing the church. It passed at General Conference.

Material from the caucus interested in “splitting” now is actively seeking to defeat the region idea which “splits” the church and its resources geographically. This sudden shift comes from a new situation in the denomination. Over the past decade, a highly successful evangelization of the Ivory Coast has formed a conference so large it would completely change the numbers at General Conference. And they would tend to vote with the caucus! When Cote d’Ivoire is fully seated, the caucus may well have the votes to take over the denomination.

I have friends in the Southern Baptist Church and Missouri Synod and remember the splits that were brought to both denominations when their “caucuses” took over, what that did to congregations and especially to the seminaries.

So, from my perspective, the real issue is control of the denomination. As I perceive Scripture and the Holy Spirit, we are to seek to mutually respect one another, to work together in Christ’s name, and to share the task of passing on the Good News of salvation and sanctification (fancy word for going on to perfection in love as Jesus called us to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect).

While my experience with members of the caucus individually is of caring people and good pastors and mission-minded folks in nearly every respect, they tend to draw circles that exclude rather than include. They do not see that as a problem, certain that they are right and the rest of us just have an awful lot of changing to do before we get it right.

I have no trouble working with caucus folks. But on the political level, I’m not ready to submit to their leadership and to turn the clock back on our relationship with our sister churches in the other parts of the world.

This is the unspoken argument over the regionalization issue.

For missional, theological, and political reasons, I encourage you to vote yes on all the amendments on regionalizing the church.

More from Art Davis

2009-04-28T13:04:00.000-07:00

This poem by Arthur H. Davis is submitted here by his permission. At the end of his poem, he hand-wrote, "Too Long?" Our writers' group unanimously said it was just right.

Art is a gentle soul who is as proper as one can be and still be warm and human. He also wrote at the bottom, "This is from my Dark Side twin." We knew it was from the Art who stays up late, alert to his wife's "every sigh, every move . . . ."

His imaginative mind plays in those dark hours of the night in place of "unfettered sleep." And my 43 year old son would love where the 92 year old Art takes his creativity. Both love a variety of music, including this one!

Flatulence --- Excuse me!

Flatulence? Yes, the passing of gas,
is one of the gifts of growing older.
Everyone faces some
degree of embarrassment
in their daily rounds,
but, the passing seems to increase
as those "Golden Years" approach.

It has been suggested
that the elderly are a
prime cause of Earth's warming,
so they immediately write to AARP
to contact their friends in Washington
that we the elderly might be
exonerated.

Most of the Congressional people
are quite elderly, so must
be careful no legislation is voted
upon, regarding the elderly
on this matter.
If and when they do sit
in those chairs of power,
they probably face similar dilemma.

I often wonder if it affects their vote?

One of the problems, if you care,
if you were brought up in a relatively
civilized environment,
is the suppressing of these
tuba-like emissions.

Now "tuba-like" isn't everyone's gift.
There are those among us who emulate
the oboe or the flugelhorn,
a bit higher pitched.
The clarinet?---I don't think so.
The thrum of cello, a possibility.
Drums, particularly the timpani
could typify pressure, but,
I do perhaps, venture too deeply
into instruments of the classic realm.

Flats and flatulence have nothing in common.

Living among a predominantly aging
group, I've often thought of going to my
buddies to see if a quintet of us could
try some ensemble work.
We'd be known as the
Fanny-Fare Five.

Such an idea was voted down sans
debate and I should have been
aware the idea would be doomed.
Of necessity, all rehearsals would have
to be held outside!
A foul idea if ever one.

At the height of my exuberance
for such an experiment,
I had already selected
Hold that Tiger
for our first endeavor,
and as my detractors ambled away,
buns swaying to the cadence
of the amble,
my selection was vindicated.

To retrain or cover this predicament,
most find it, more times than not,
difficult to do.
Pressure makes it almost impossible
to avoid the embarrassment
because fate ordained
someone always be nearby.

In the process, if you are
in the proximity of the player,
you might detect
an apoplectic behavior,
or the flatulentee furtively looking
about to determine if someone
is tuning in to this gaseous concert,
the while searching spastically
for a secluded space.

If I may insert a word of warning
to the reader,
Summer is at hand.
Should you be grilling,
or working around an open fire
and a bit of flatulence seems imminent,
don't turn your back to the fire!
To do so, you run a very high risk
of getting hot, very cross buns.

In closing, I modestly confess
my contributions to this common bane.
At my age, I am well aware
the social consequences,
but, when in territory wholly devoid
of my friends, or fellow citizens,
the happening is in a more carefree
mode of gratitude
and I march uninhibited
to French horn virtuosity.

(Copyright: Arthur H. Davis, 1/17/09, 2/9/09, 2/27/09, 3/3/09)

Art Davis poetry

2009-04-28T11:26:00.000-07:00

Arthur H. Davis and his dear wife Margaret are spending time with his family up north for the summer. Our writers' group met with Art before they left. We were moved especially by his poem on life with someone requiring succor:

Caregiver's Lament - - -

Days drudge down to uneasy calm.
Night arrives draped in fear
of what might happen--
based upon what has happened..

How I long for unfettered sleep....
The sun sets again on the undone.
The moon rises,
red from the warming,
Dimly lights my place,
this spit of sand.

The one I've loved so long
sleeps fitfully,
A body racked by age and Rxs,
Systems confused and dosed
by Science's fiction.

The night is kidnapped once again
by Dawn -- relentless the routine.

The loved one wakes - -
the one upon whom I shower care,
The one who reacts in temper to the
"Please Dear do's and don't's,"
My admonitions, attempted guidance,
Questioning, "Who prescribed that?"

Of what reward is this?
The battle of therapy continues unabated,
Therapy the enemy,
Pills the dwarfs of repair,
The caregiver, ever the necessary evil,
The bane of days -- Vigilante 24/7.

Visitors visit. Prayers vented.
Love brings sustenance.
Mail brings love.
The Children come,
bless them each.
They bring gifts, do things,
make decisions.
They cook, they clean, they depart.

The Caregiver remains, to wonder,
fear, mop, launder, cook -- HA!
React to every sigh,
every move, as the past is recalled....

Sleep still eludes each glue-footed
moment--every one. Searching
Heavenward I pray -- mutely ask
God, Have you heard my prayers?
So far, no thunderous response, no
burning bush, no prick of brain.

But dawns another day of survival, in
reasonable comfort. Another day to
care, to love, to hope.
He must have heard

(Copyright: Arthur H. Davis, 5/30/08, revised 3/25/09 -- used by permission)

No Accountability?

2009-04-19T16:04:00.000-07:00

For eight years we watched George W. Bush and his administration take us into unnecessary war, screw up our economy, violate our rights, and all the other things reasonable people like us resented and tried to change.

When the stories of torture came out, we could not stand it. We could not get a new President and Democratic Congress soon enough.

Now we have the Democratic President and all but two Democrats of the sixty necessary to control the Senate, and the President is resisting any holding of the Bush administration accountable for their terrible acts.

Why in the world would he back down from a campaign promise? How can he allow one of the cruelest insensitive Presidents ever to get away with it?

He says it would be taken as retribution and partisan.

But the law is on our side! Ask nearly any constitutional lawyer and each will say the former President and his people violated the law. A Spanish judge, the UN legal minds, several European courts, all point out the illegality of the torture we did and how the Bush policies violated international law to which the U. S. was a signer.

And the Obama administration is refusing to even have a special prosecutor to investigate.

What is the problem here!?

Let me suggest some things that might be involved.

Forgive me for going anthropological on you but Americans think in binary fashion. Things are right or wrong, black or white, win or lose, true or false. Not you, of course, or me. We think in plaids, shades of gray, multiple factors.

Do you have any idea how hard it was for our teachers to get us to think independently and break from bifurcated thinking?

And do you have any idea how many kids never caught on to that? Guess how they voted?

How many of them are there as compared to how many of us there are?

Which leads me to a second thought: How patient are we? How respectful of their lack of information are we? How successful have we been in giving them enough information to catch up with us? Whose fault is it that they do not respect us and our opinions?

Do we really understand the world of folks that think that they are in danger of socialism from that man that wasn't even born in the United States?

You know some of those folks, the ones you do not want to engage in conversation because they will be off and running on politics no matter what you offer for conversation.

And you know they have two things that keep them living in that world: Rush Limbaugh and not much interest in news, even the kind that we see on the major networks which never talk about depleted uranium (used to harden bunker busters) that contaminates much of urban Iraq.

And you know they are passionate about their opinions.

They already do not want President Obama to be President. It is not enough to say they lost. Their world has been taken from them and they are grieving for what they thought President Reagen brought them, "morning in America."

Is this the time to tell them their leaders were criminals? Is this the time the new President pushes in any way questioning the character of the former President?

The atmosphere of the country not only has the know-nothing toxicity that has grown since schools were underfunded in the early 1980s, it faces the grief of major change overtaking close to half of the nation.

Okay, when can war crimes be brought up within our judicial system? When the grief-stricken finally hear from one of their own, someone they trust. Probably someone they elected to the Presidency. Otherwise, they would never believe that a challenge was not partisan.

And is it irrelevant to ask, "How many AK-47s have been sold in the last few months?"

You be President and face that set of dynamics.

What would you do?

Rep. Rooney's mistake

2009-04-09T06:05:00.000-07:00

Under current law, unions may ask workers if they want to unionize by signing a card which goes to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) who certifies the results. The employers do not get to see who signed the cards.

If 30% of the workers want a union, the union may ask the NLRB to hold a secret ballot. Unions tend not to do that because they really need 50%.

If 50% secretly sign the card for union representation, the employer may then ask for the secret ballot. Since it takes at least a couple weeks before the NLRB can set up the election, employers can “persuade” workers or hire specialized companies who will do that for them! It is not uncommon for workers to be scared out of voting for a union.

The EFCA bill is designed to minimize corporate manipulation by allowing the secret card signing by 50% of the workers to be the vote to unionize.

Unions would be much less necessary if employers had their employees’ interests at heart.

While the St. Petersburg Times fact-checking website (www.politifact.com) says there would be fewer secret ballots under EFCA, their description indicates the card signing is kept secret from the employers and other votes, though secret, would be less needed under EFCA.

Rep. Rooney made the mistake of using a “talking point” about EFCA without reference to what is involved in current labor law and practice.

Professor Obama

2009-04-09T05:45:00.001-07:00

I know just enough law to be dangerous, I suppose. But let me respond to the angst I see among progressives over the Obama administration's response to a law suit about invasion of privacy/wiretapping.

Here's my premise: if the President wanted to get rid of bad law, one of his routes would be to get the courts to rule the laws are unconstitutional or otherwise illegal.

If there is a lawsuit aimed at a bad law, his Justice Department has two choices. One is to accede to it and not contest it. That might mean a particular case is no longer "on the books" and the plaintiffs win.

The problem with that, according to my limited knowledge f law, is that the case makes no precedence and therefore the legal flaws which allowed for the dropping of the case are not really settled.

The other option is to press the opposition to the suit and let the matter get the full attention of the court and get settled there after full argument so that a precedent is set which has a lot more weight of law than a "settlement out of court" which is essentially what would happen under option one above.

And if the case is to have even more weight, every possible, obscure, and arcane law that could have been used to support the bad law has to be adjudicated in the course of the case.

With any luck, the judge and the plaintiffs do their job more effectively than the Justice Department, at least in terms of being the more legally persuasive so that the final result will stand throughout appeal. In fact, to really nail it down, the full appeal of a particular law all the way to the Supreme Court could end such a law for the foreseeable future.

Don't forget, we went through something like this during the Nixon presidency so maybe we need to go through this every quarter century!

If my premise is correct, the Justice Department is going further than the Bush people with an eye to clearing the decks so that no future administration can go back to some old law to justify such invasion of privacy in the future.

President Obama is pushing our legal system to function properly.

What do you think?

Attention, Christopher!

2009-03-29T09:52:00.000-07:00

Thank you. I just love attention!

I even like negative attention. Feel free to challenge me any time.

(If you haven't read the last couple posts, you will have missed a comment by Christopher to which I offered a response. I've decided to challenge him a little more than I have so far. He still has not contacted me directly.)

Let me remind you of how I view bi-partisanship.

The point of my post was to say that while I have chosen sides, while I have a lot of confidence in my views and the solutions I have worked on for years, I have learned that I have probably missed something. If my suggestions are not challenged, they could fail for that reason. I could have missed something.

What worries me is that not everyone else is willing to give thought to the possibility that they might have missed something important in their enthusiasm to get their suggestions accepted.

A true bi-partisan is one who has taken a side but is not closed to other information s/he has not taken into account.

That's why partisan solutions tend to fail. Their proponents fail to listen. They fail to think the other side may have an important point.

So, when you disagree with me, give me your best information and I just may change my mind. -- I await the copy of the EFCA bill you offered.

And as my post of the other day indicated, arrogance is bad enough when it comes to decision-making but adding greed is really a bummer. Any thoughts on that?

Next time, when you comment, put the shotgun down and tell me specifically why you think I am wrong. We all need to help each other. This is not a team sport where only one side wins. We're talking about the game of life where bad decisions and failure to communicate can lead to all of us losing.

And don't give another thought to my grammar. Have you noticed most people have trouble with grammar? Bring it up only if you want to help me improve my writing.

Okay?

Christopher comments

2009-03-27T07:26:00.000-07:00

To my last posting, "Christopher" offered a comment. Unfortunately, along with grammar, I have an ineptness with handling the internet so I find myself responding by posting.

Here's my response to Christopher, who if I read his comment correctly, must be from this part of Florida. Hey, he's a neighbor. How about that?

Welcome, Christopher, to my blog. Thank you for commenting.

Okay, you caught me. I haven't read the EFCA bill. I've taken the word of several different sources who said that secret ballot is an option if the workers choose to use it. The real issue appears to be who sets how the vote shall be taken, the employers or the employees.

Please send a copy and tell me where you got it.

Finally, be kind enough to point out what grammatical mistakes I made (am making here too?). I'm bad enough at grammar that I'm not even sure which mistakes you are talking about.

I'd have sent this by e-mail but I don't have your address.

Again, thank you for offering your thoughts. That's how we get to know each other. After all, we may agree on something else on which we must work together.

Conservadems

2009-03-25T18:36:00.000-07:00

I believe in bi-partisanship. I'd love to think I have the best ideas but I learned a long time ago that Me and Mine only see part of what is going on. Me and Mine can't do it alone.

But then, if You and Yours won't consider helping unless you can get stuff for yourself, which is what President Obama ran into with the Republicans on the Stimulus Package, maybe someone else saw that and want in on the payoff.

I could sit here and say that the Blue Dog Democrats are trying to serve their conservative constituencies in order to keep their own election base firm and behind them. That I could understand.

But somehow the payoff of that only keeps them in the game. To really become a player, they have to leverage their vote to where it has a much higher payoff for them.

They can affect their standing in a committee or in a change to a better committee. They can get more for their district/state as a compromise for their vote than if they are simply good soldiers.

Why should we be surprised? Change comes hard.

So, let your Congress members know you are watching and interested and want them to put the country first.

I don't mind a serious difference of opinion and some alternatives that may sound contrary but are based on reality.

I do mind political leveraging as much as I hate it in finances or personal relationships.

Where did all the money go?

2009-03-14T12:57:00.000-07:00

When we listen to many commentators talk about the current recession, they make it sound like trillions of dollars have just disappeared.

I know about fifty percent of our savings has disappeared.

But I began to wonder where it went and what might get it back into circulation.

Ah, the commentators say that it is just gone and will not come back in any direct way. We will have to work our way out of this recession, we are told.

Okay, I will help do that the best I can.

But it's not like we are completely broke. I know we have our income and that we spend all of it just getting by. We are avoiding tapping our savings, of course, because that's all we have for the future our good health will let us live in!

Here's my question, what did the one who sold the stocks when they were at their highest point do with that money?

Think about it, the wise ones who didn't just listen to CNBC but knew what was really going on got out with lots of cash while the getting was good. Where did that money go?

To the banks caught up in the derivitives, hedge funds, and mixed batches of mortgages and other paper? Not likely.

Probably, they held on to it in some form of savings. And they are holding on to it, and like most of us, waiting until we can be confident that our investments are growing again.

Somehow I think that CitiCorp, BoA, Goldman Sachs, and some of the other huge financial institutions have been holding out for what they could get by pushing forward figures that supported their "need" for recapitalization from the public trough. When they were being looked at more closely, suddenly, they are able to report they made a little more profit than expected in January and February.

That may be pretty cynical. The actual money that has begun to move back into the market may be private individuals. After all, if our resources of labor, raw materials, transportation systems, and communications are largely unaffected by the recession, then that capital can provide grounds for expecting profit from their investing.

No one in their right mind will take my ideas here seriously. After all, I'm not a CNBC, Wall Street Journal, or Washington Post financial reporter.

Saying it again!

2009-03-14T12:35:00.000-07:00

President Obama reminds me of a college professor who intentionally laid out a line that he wanted us to disagree with.

When we sat there like lumps, the prof would smile and say, "Well, you missed that one! You've got to do better and react, you guys."

Most people are busy with their lives, especially now with the economy stressing them. So it is not unusual that most of them do not react to what is going on.

What if the President only changed from using the term "enemy combatant" but did nothing to change those folks' actual circumstances?

I can see Professor Obama looking around the room, especially at the ones who got "A" in "progressivism" and "activism" classes.

"Come on, you guys. Fight me on this! How am I going to show that policy stinks to the other side who want me to continue holding onto the powers of the Bush administration?"

Looking over our heads at the press corps behind us, he asks, "Are you going to leave it up to Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Keith Olberman to be the only ones to notice and respond?"

Even if I am wrong about what the President is doing on some of these new policies that change little or nothing, we still have to react and then find a channel to let him and the rest of Washington know we will not tolerate lousy policy.

If he is being the teacher, then he is preparing us for his successor who may not be as open to our concerns and insights so we are effective in standing up for what is right . . . within the system.

The "ditto heads" get a lot of help to shower Washington with their opinions. We better learn how to do that or the wingnuts will appear to outnumber us and encourage the nay sayers and power grabbers to keep it up, to the detriment of our country.

I find Michael Moore's website offering routes to sign petitions. Moveon.org and groups like IAVA for veterans issues often provide a chance to do a timely response to things we are concerned about.

There are a lot of groups that will want and get your e-mail address once you start signing petitions. In many cases, that's a good thing. You will then have a better chance of being able to let Congress or the President know where you stand.

Better get used to it. If we don't want corporations and know-nothings to retake our government, we have to be involved.

Holler if you want to know more websites or have some good suggestions so we can link for better responding.

Pushing Obama?

2009-02-22T12:19:00.000-08:00

During the election season, I ended up signing petitions and writing letters to the editor and calling Congress at the behest of a number of "progressive" groups because I had opinions about the issues they were raising.

That meant that related groups found out about my involvement (along with the Bush White House, I suspect - I had a "red" file in Milwaukee in the 1970s and '80s at the police department). So every day I get at least a dozen e-mails from some of the groups asking for my attention, my action, and/or my money. It's the price I pay for trying to be an activist on the current political scene.

Among the recent communications was one where the writer spoke of having a face-to-face chat with President Obama. The President thanked him for his support and the work of his organization to get some legislation passed. The writer then challenged President Obama for some decisions with which he disagreed.

The President smiled and said, "I agree with you on that but let me just say, you are going to have to fight for it."

Back during the two weeks while the Stimulus Package was before Congress and the President was trying to get Republicans to vote for the bill, one of the progressive groups sent out an SOS, saying that the rightwingers had mobilized their forces so that Congress was receiving 100 letters against the Stimulus to every letter for it!

So if you have opinions about any of the issues and legislation coming along these days, then you better do something. Positive things will not happen in Washington without our input! Even on policies that are now coming out of this Administration related to continuing to hide Bush administration e-mails and keeping Bagram prison in Afghanistan open, we need to put in our two cents worth (preferably after checking the facts).

President Obama does not mind being pushed. How great to have an adult in that office!

Rush Rules

2009-02-13T17:48:00.000-08:00

The media, especially the liberal/progressive folks, have been aware that so many folks listen to Rush Limbaugh every day that Rush himself is really the leader of the Republican Party, no matter who the GOP leaders chose (Michael Steele).

What I'm not hearing is that Rush's voice pounding away at the stimulus bill for weeks has led to undermining public and congressional support. At one point, a progressive group sent out a note asking their supporters to write to Congress immediately because the conservatives were were sending letters at a rate of 100 to 1 over progressives.

The President went out into the country this week to counter the impression that the opposition to his bill is the majority.

And President Obama was successful.

But will he have to do that every time he needs to get people behind his program?

The reality is that conservative talk radio covers so many people in the U. S. and is not countered with facts by the rest of the media. Even normally moderate to liberal folks have him on their radios because there isn't that much else to listen to. Most radio stations are owned by wealthy conservatives who want their point of view to dominate.

But now we have a new problem. Analogue TV ends and the little boxes to translate digital TV signals won't work in many (most?) places in the U. S.

That means the only voices heard by a lot of folks will be that of Rush and his like. Even the main stream media won't reach them any more.

President Obama mentioned concern about extending analogue broadcasting until mid-June. By then the severity of the problems with the small black boxes will be much more widely known. Meanwhile, AM radio will be alive and well.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Senator Judd Gregg

2009-02-13T14:02:00.000-08:00

A friend claims he's quoting Mark Twain when he says, "I'm having a hard time hearing what you are saying because your actions are so loud."

Whoever said it, it applies to Senator Judd Gregg's warm and thoughtful statement explaining his withdrawing his name from consideration as Commerce Secretary.

There are two actions which are part of the backstory to his accepting the nomination that lead to a third thing that I hope someone can check out.

1. I understand Sen. Gregg was concerned about having something to do in 2010 when he was pretty sure he would be retiring from the Senate. (He has since confirmed he does not plan to run then.) I can see that as a crucial motive for Gregg's earnest petitioning of the Obama administration for the Commerce job.

2. He obtained a promise from the Democratic governor that the appointee to the Senate to replace Gregg would be a Republican or Gregg would not accept the Commerce position. Word came out that the appointee would be Gregg's chief of staff.

What I want to know is, has someone come forward with a position for Sen. Gregg when he retires from the Senate that is more to his liking than working for the President?

Others have already compared Gregg's politicking around this nomination to that of Illinois Governor Blogojevich. That's why it is particularly important to find out if Gregg did get another job offer. We may not find out until he retires in two years. But I will watch, if only out of curiosity.

I can easily imagine the whole scene was a ploy to get a better job for his retirement, what with the grief his Republican colleagues put him through, something he knew would happen. It is easy to imagine that he was waiting for the one Republican who would offer him a job he would not refuse. And he would not have any guilt about it, any more than ex-Gov. Blogojevich had.

Update: Daily Kos has quite an extensive article connecting Sen. Gregg to Jack Abramoff. See it at

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/2/13/32013/1373/707/696949

I hope future vetting, particularly of Republican nominees for Cabinet posts, for connections with Mr. Corruption. Oh yes, and also Democrats . . . .

And I am still hoping someone can find out if he now has a job to which he will go in 2010.

Turning Point?

2009-01-03T14:32:00.000-08:00

Up till now, the Obama administration team has acted as though no matter what Israel did, it was okay. Nary a word except to say the Israelis have a right to defend themselves after the home made rockets of Palestinians landed in the fields a little way in from the border. (Yes, some rockets are more sophisticated and have caused four deaths and two dozen injuries. But that is a far cry from the two ton bomb dropped on a Hamas leader . . . and his family . . . and his neighbors.)

With SoS designate Clinton entering a non-elected position, she may now be free to look more objectively and pragmatically at Gaza and Israel and go back to a view she held when she became First Lady, that Palestinians had rights that needed Israel's attention and respect.

PE Obama has obligated himself to AIPAC but may be able to step back, remember his promise to speak to all parties (Hamas in cluded), and challenge a terrible policy that will be no more successful than the attack on Hezbollah in 2006.

Maybe not this year! But I can fantasize. . . .

But what may prove to be the turning point is that the politics of this Gaza invasion may bolster the Israeli peace movement instead of bolstering the Israeli hawks. It appears that the reason Olmert is pushing this invasion of Gaza is to take votes away from the super hawks of Likud. Initial polls support that strategy. Olmert's supportive legislators are up in the polls.

But as the truth about this invasion continues to get out, Israeli dissidents will gain in popularity. Unlike in the US when we read the papers about Israel, Israeli press is very open to conflicting viewpoints and challenges of government spin. By putting Israeli sons and daughter on the ground to fight in Gaza where the Palestinians live and know the landscape, Olmert has lost the world's support and will lose Israeli popular support.

Can PE Obama read this seed change? Of course. Can AIPAC? Not likely. PE Obama and SoS designate Clinton may have more negotiating to do with AIPAC than with Hamas! The success of that diplomacy is what may finally change our policy toward Israel and Palestine.

Rev. Rick Warren's Invocation

2008-12-19T15:07:00.000-08:00

When I first heard that President-elect Obama invited Rev. Warren to give the invocation for the Inauguration, I was saddened. There are so many other pastors to whom he could have turned, Rev. Jim Wallis, Rev. Jesse Jackson, a Catholic bishop, or a Rabbi. Why the pastor who rigged the debate between the two nominees for President? Why the pastor who supported California Prop 8 and verbally beats up on some folks he disagrees with? At least, the pastor giving the benediction, Rev. Joseph Lowrey, is going to get the last word.

Then I saw an article about Rev. Warren which explains some good things about the man. I was much impressed with how he gives 90% of his income to help the poor. Somehow he looks like he is doing very well on the 10% that's left but, still, he has few peers in the generosity department.

I sent the article to my liberal friends and got a response which reflected how I originally felt but quite a bit more angry.

So I tried to figure out why the choice of Rev. Warren might make sense.

The main reason, of course, is what the President-elect said, that Rev. Warren had invited him to speak at Saddleback Church early in his campaign, knowing they disagreed. Sen. Obama reaches out . . . . And he is willing to take the heat from constituents who disagree with him.

My friend said he really shot himself in the foot. Of course, the promises Sen. Obama has made about changing law and policy in ways supportive of the GLBT community are yet to be actualized, but we will be surprised if he does not follow through.

Then I realized that by giving the invocation on Jan, 20, Rev. Warren may not be as effective in furthering the anti-GLBT agenda he has led. Further, even all this negative publicity and controversy puts the subject on the front pages. As they say in the entertainment business, even negative publicity is better than no publicity.

But more moving to me is that Sen. Obama may be forgiving Rev. Warren for the stunts related to the Saddleback debate.

So how will the modern day Billy Graham respond? Will he even look at the forgiveness angle? Will he presume he deserves the attention? Will he actually begin listening to those he has condemned?

Cynics don't like to take a chance on giving an inch to their enemies, certain they will take a mile. Jesus was willing . . . and got crucified. But He changed things.

Who knows? Sen. Obama, a "sermon-soaked pew squatter" for twenty years, may actually be trying to do the Word, and not just be a hearer only.

The "War" on Christmas

2008-12-17T18:01:00.000-08:00

The American version of Christmas is pretty complex. While it centers on the birth of Jesus, and while many of the icons and much of the music refers to Him, other figures like Santa Claus, Christmas trees, and presents have become very important.

As early as mid-summer, stores have sales based on the Christmas theme. Around Labor Day, sections in some stores are decked out in reds and greens in anticipation of Christmas, usually containing toys and home decorations for the holidays. Gradually, over the weeks between Hallowe’en and Thanksgiving, nearly all the stores get serious about displays and setting up their holiday merchandising. The day after Thanksgiving has traditionally been the biggest shopping day of the year.

That same day is often when lights and decorations put up between Hallowe’en and Thanksgiving in the business sections of town or on private homes are lit at night. In addition, some radio stations begin to play Christmas music 24/7.

Most churches join in with the pre-holiday festivities. Many add a life-size scene on their grounds including a barn-like setting, a feed trough for cattle, a mother and father, a baby, some farm animals, sometimes some shepherds, and sometimes some oriental wisemen, They may be plastic statues or they may be live.

Therefore, during the late fall and early winter, America prepares for the celebration of Christmas. For more than a month, folks have around them the sights and symbols and sounds of the season.

In the late 1950s, a movement started to counter the commercialism surrounding the holiday. The first thing challenged was the use of X in an abbreviated form of the word Christmas (Xmas). The X is the Greek Letter “Chi,” and was used in ancient manuscripts as shorthand for the word “Christ.” But since most people do not know that, the movement succeeded in eliminating that usage.

Now it is common this time of year to see “Put Christ back into Christmas.” The intent is to refocus people to be sure that “Jesus is the reason for the season.”

In the 1960s, satirists also took a shot at the practice of businesses using the music and icons of Christmas in advertising. Some of the more gross ads showing Santa smoking cigarettes have not appeared in magazines or on TV since then, though Americans tolerate nearly everything else.

The wedding of commerce and the celebration of the birth of Christ has not ended in divorce like it did in the Puritan eras in Massachusetts Bay Colony or in Cromwell’s England during the 1600s.

However, that does not mean that there haven’t been controversies related to the holidays in recent years.

With cable news channels running all day every day, some commentators have become famous for raising the specter that atheists are trying to eliminate the celebration of Christmas altogether. They point to situations where public schools are challenged for changing their annual seasonal music programs to drop direct references to Jesus. They are also angered when atheists are allowed to put up displays on public property along side Christian displays.

The personalities making the biggest fuss call such events “battlegrounds of the war on Christmas.”

And once in awhile it does appear that some of the decisions to change Christmas into a more generic “holiday” do not make sense. Removing absolutely everything related to the Christian religion from public buildings and schools seems like a little over much.

The problem public officials face is that America is not just Christian but is also Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and any number of other faiths. America has always had diverse religious groups. Many times, because the major religious tradition has been Christian, its celebration has been enforced to the extent that failure to participate in the Christmas music programs in school affected the grades of those who for reasons of religious conscience could not participate.

The Constitution of the United States calls for the free expression of religion with the state not being allowed to support any one faith. That was made fundamental law for America to prevent forcing non-Christians into performing Christian acts. The early leaders in America had seen how such disrespect for other traditions actually violated Christianity’s own teachings of “doing unto others what we would have them do unto us.”

But the struggle against disrespect of non-Christian traditions and people has been on-going and unevenly applied. Human beings have the tendency to want to think their own way is superior to others. So Americans will probably always have this problem.

But this is not a “war” against Christmas. It is the attempt of Christians to live respectfully with their neighbors.

There is at least one neat thing about Christmas as we celebrate it with all its secular commercialism and saturation of our life during the fall and early winter. No matter who fusses, big name radio or TV or political person, he or she is pretty much drowned out in the joy and excitement the color and light bring during these long nights and often dreary days.

The Green Bay Packers

2008-12-08T11:32:00.000-08:00

When the Houston Texan field goal kicker, who had been terrible all day, kicked that 40 yard field goal in the closing seconds to beat the Packers, I felt awful.

Like many Packer backers who live out of state, away from the likelihood of getting to see our team on TV this year, following the scruffy play-by-play on NFL.com, I still was caught up in the ebb and flow of the game.

Collins injured? Oh no, that guy's a walking ambulance passenger. Tausch is out with a wrecked knee? There goes the right side of the offensive line. Hawk hasn't made a tackle all game? That groin injury really messed him up. Bigby can hardly move? No big hits from him for months.

And middle linebacker Barnett and DT Cullen Jenkins are on IR? Who's left to play defense?

But somehow, the Packers were still in it till the very end. . . for the fifth time to lose by less than four points.

There are many (including some of my favorite sportswriters) who are saying the Packers have lost it and aren't going anywhere because of this coach or that misplay or the general manager or even the club president.

But let's remind ourselves of a few things.

One, the Packers had one of the easiest schedules last year because they were playing teams with terrible records from the year before.

Two, they knew they lucked out in some of their games because they played some of the better teams when those teams were down because of injuries.

Three, they got some calls and breaks that helped keep them in the game.

Four, they won several games by less than four points.

Five, Brett Favre and Rob Davis's mature years were still not enough to keep the Pack from being one of the very youngest (and least experienced) teams in the league.

It was an incredible season topped off by playing even up into overtime with the team which went on the win the Super Bowl. That feat, though a losing effort, really validated their right to their record, even though it was obtained with no small amount of luck.

That the general manager and head coach were able to provide what the team needed in that sterling season cannot be overlooked.

Major league sports are games of inches and seconds, of speed and power, of injuries and luck.

This year, playing against a much tougher schedule which included many teams on the rise like Tennessee and Carolina who pulled out tight wins against this still immature team, it is amazing to realize that with a little bit of luck, maybe this bunch could have been 10 and 3 instead of 5 and 8.

We fans live and die emotionally with our team. We put a lot of ourselves into hoping and, well, physically pushing and squirming in our chairs as we watch.

Calling forth that kind of involvement from us takes its toll when our guys lose. It is a little harder to watch in that circumstance. But we come back next time and hope and squirm some more on the chance that we will see a victory.

That's entertainment!

As Jim Irwin, longtime sportscaster at WTMJ Milwaukee who called many Packer seasons, used to remind everyone: Hey, it's a game.

We get to watch grown men play a boy's game for entertainment. If we were not in it for the entertainment value, there would be no explanation for how come there are still Cub fans!

I look forward to Packer games. Win or lose, they give me a few hours of distraction. Having been a fan for over 65 years, I understand how sports franchises often survive recessions because they are so successful at giving us something else to think about.

I'm really feeling good about this year's team and its coaches and management. The games are entertaining, keeping me on edge and hopeful for a good result, right down to the end. Even the blow-out in New Orleans was a treat because I did get to see one of the finest exhibitions of passing I've ever seen, even if it was against my favorite team.

This is a good year, despite the losing record, for my Green Bay Packers. So, despite the negative press and comments from disgruntled fans, next Sunday can't come soon enough. I know the team will give its best effort. Maybe the breaks, the calls, the luck will go for us this time. And maybe all the rookie mistakes will be behind us. And maybe we'll finally get off the snide and our guys will come home with a victory.

Even if that doesn't happen this time, there are still two more games to anticipate.

OJ's finally going to jail

2008-12-06T12:52:00.001-08:00

The judge just couldn't insist enough that she was not punishing OJ to make up for what so many think should have happened to him years ago. How many times did she insist? Enough to think she maybe "doth protest too much."

Ann and I looked at each other when we heard the news and asked, "What do ordinary people get for doing something stupid like that?"

Yah right, they get hit with a fifteen to thirty three years sentence.

How about six months in jail with time already served counting against that total? And maybe a year of community service.

Good grief. No one was hurt. No property damage occurred.

A badly handled misunderstanding does not deserve such a sentence.

-----

Would someone please look into who is bankrolling Fred Goldman so he can devote full time to harassing OJ?

Recession: Our Great Opportunity

2008-12-06T12:24:00.000-08:00

Ann and I enjoyed a visit in Den Haag, Netherlands, where our son works and where his family recently took up residence.

I was struck by how few old cars and trucks there were. Despite being an "old" nation, Holland is sparkling and mostly fresh-faced. Same with Belgium where we visited Brugge over the week-end.

Our son works for one of the major banks there so we talked economics a lot.

One of the things he made clear is that there is a load of money on the sidelines. Trillions have been lost on the stock markets of the world but major stake holders pulled out their money early on and will jump back in when they see things headed up.

Another thing is that although millions of people are struggling, millions more are not. Everyone is being frugal right now until everything settles down.

So there is a lot of corporate money and a lot of personal money squirreled away waiting to be spent.

What will "settle everything down?" A vision of what changes can be made to improve everyone's lot.

In our country, our infrastructure desperately needs attention. Our cars need to be replaced with fuel-efficient ones and with mass transit systems. What a time for a renaissance!

Having mostly gone backwards over the past eight years because of inattention to so many problems, our country really has no place to go but up.

In ten years, I don't think anyone will be thanking President Bush for letting everything go to pot so bad that we almost had to start all over again. But now seems like a good time for freshening up our own face, not just with cosmetic changes, but with serious restructuring. Now is the time to let our creative juices flow so that the future that we dreamed of as kids can come closer to being a reality instead of just an extension of the way things used to be.

Rather than getting more specific, I'll let you begin to fill in the opportunities that lie ahead. We will inevitably drag along some old ways, because new things are not always better.

But we are on the verge of something that can renew us. Enjoy the ride! With your seat belt on. . . .

Casting a ballot in Florida

2008-11-06T09:29:00.000-08:00

A few weeks after the Republican Convention, I got a letter from the McCain Campaign asking for a donation. Once I saw that, I put the letter and its enclosures into the recycling pile. A couple weeks later, I heard someone else got the same letter. He took the time, even though he was a Democrat, to look through the papers and discovered the letter informed him he was a registered Republican, including an elections' office registration number. A call to the office cleared up the matter quickly but it was confusing for him for awhile.

That was not a nice passage through which to go to get to vote.

To vote in Florida, you may be automatically registered when you get a driver's license. -- I'm not positive because there is also the requirement that registration must be at least 29 days before the election. --

That's the easy part, presuming you can afford to drive a car regularly.

Finding the polling place may be a project. Sites are changed for many reasons and can be changed any time. Our poll is in its third home in three years. In addition, the addresses used to identify the polling places come from phone directories and lists that were made up before Hurricane Charlie four years ago.

At the polling site, upon getting to the first table, the voter need only present a driver's license. Those that have none may bring their passport or something like a credit card with the voter's picture and signature on it. Without something with a pic and signature, the person may do a provisional ballot which is not counted until the ID has been checked. We encourage that voter then to contact the supervisor of elections office frequently over the next two days until that is resolved. The office is supposed to handle provisional ballots within 48 hours.

Even in our small precinct with adequate booths and two counting machines, we frequently had someone sitting on the side filling out something or waiting while the clerk was on the phone. Other voters could see the disruption the person was involved in.

The voters with the needed pic and signature is next asked to confirm their address. It should be the same in the book we have and on the license. If it is, then the voter signs the book, fills in a small oval like the one on the ballot, and then signs a signature slip (about 2" x 8-1/2").

If the addresses differ, the voter is given a change of address form and is sent to the clerk to verify with the elections office the change of address. The office checks to see if that address exists and is the same as their most recent address information. That usually clears the matter and the voter then proceeds.

We had a case where a brand new house in a section previously undeveloped was not anywhere in the records at the office. That man got a provisional ballot until his location could be verified with another county office.

The voter then goes to the "next" table. There, the white signature slip is taken and a tag torn off the bottom of the ballot which includes the ballot number. That tag is then stapled to the signature slip and kept to verify the count (and could be used to trace the ballot if someone wanted to know how that person voted).

The ballot is then given to the voter with basic instructions about filling in the ovals next to the ones they are voting for.

The voter then goes to the next open booth to fill out the ballot using pens provided in each booth.

Besides filling in ovals for candidates for the various national, state, and local offices, the voters face "yes or no" votes on a half dozen sitting judges' effectiveness in office.

The hardest part of the ballot is the constitutional amendments everyone is asked to vote on. The ballot print is small, the light by which to read them is 25 watts about two feet from the ballot, and the amendment is summarized. This time there were seven. Six were obsurely worded about property and tax policies the legislature wanted the voters to decide about and one which glorified marriage as possible only between a man and a woman without saying it would abrogate rights already in Florida law for other kinds of partners (not just homosexual).

Many people had studied on the amendments and came with sample ballots from the newspapers to aid them in their filling out the ballot. Those who had not prepared but wanted to try to be conscientious took the time to try to figure out what those amendments meant. Those folks took up to a half hour.

Once a ballot was completed, it was taken to the poll workers who showed how to insert the ballots into the counting machines. It was no problem for most to go through (we only had two clog but clear after only a couple minutes of unlocking and opening various gates to the innards of the machine). The voters were then given a sticker saying they had voted and were sent on their way with thanks for coming.

Those with stickers could go to several fast food places to get a sandwich or drink or other benefit offered to encourage voting.

If I wanted to discourage people from voting, the first thing I would do would be to put at least a half dozen obscurely worded amendments to the constitution on issues that most people had no notion about. Being expected to sort that all out before comng to the polls is bad enough. Having to wait for others who had not prepared is really bad! While the tactic looks legitimate, it is really discouraging.

Another tactic is to make sure that the equipment is barely adequate so that things like poor lighting or paper clogging can happen easily without looking like a set up.

The third tactic I'd use would be to change the poll sites frequently in those precincts I wanted to discourage. I would say it was to use free facilities even if those facilities were built for elementary school children with few if any adult-sized chairs and tables. Hopefully, the new site would be a long walk inside a large building. That would seem like good use of county-owned resources even though it would be uncomfortable for many people, especially the differently-abled and elderly.

Then I'd make sure the addresses were not right. That would look like incompetence but not intentional voter suppression.

I'd then make sure that the person coming to vote could not use the voter registration card sent out a month or so before the election but had to use something the voter might not have. Not many poor people have passports or credit cards with their pictures on them. Not all of them have driver's licenses.

Then I'd have everyone have to sign twice and go find another table to get a ballot.

This kind of thing is Katherine Harris' dream-come-true.

And it is how we operate here in Charlotte County, Florida.

Voting in Florida

2008-11-06T08:20:00.000-08:00

Charlotte County Office of Elections hires and trains folks to be the poll workers for elections. I signed up two and a half years ago and have worked five elections, including this general election.

Sometimes it has been real fun. As I've posted in the past, working the polls is almost more like attending a family reunion because many workers and voters are old friends and neighbors. The workers often bring food so that we have a continuous "buffet" (more like a snack bar). And I hear some stuff that's pretty funny.

Valerie, who sat with me at the ballot table, told me that next week, there will be people in the streets, the government and all the banks will be closed down, there will be armed soldiers marching in the major cities, there would be demonstrations . . . or whatever else people do on Veterans day. - She had me worried for a moment there!

She had a tiny bit of history that I had not heard before. Margaret Truman got fed up with hearing her father, President Harry Truman, constantly using the phrase "cow manure" in his speeches about the politics of the day. Her mother Bess responded, "You don't begin to realize how hard it was for me to get him to say that instead of what he wanted to say!"

We had fun with a very simple thing. There were two people checking the voters in. They were at the first table. Valerie and I were at the next table to hand out the ballots as each voter brought us a "signature slip." The ones checking the voters in said, "Take this to the next table." However, our two tables had one long table cloth covering both so the voters invariably were looking for the "next" table somewhere else in the room. We had to wave our hands or yell we were the next table as they wandered by. That usually brought a smile because of the silliness of how we were handling it. It didn't hold anyone up, really, and it seemed to add a cheery note to what was going on.

Sometimes I was awed. In our precinct which still had about 400 eligible voters (we had about that many who already voted early or by absentee ballot), we had five people on crutches and two who obviously limped and should have been on crutches who came in to vote. We had some very elderly who barely tottered on their own who came to vote. We had whole families (one had six children on tow) there. We had people who had changes of address or anomolies in the registrar of voters records who patiently waited for as much as an hour while the precinct clerk sat on the phone trying to clear up the snags. Somehow, we seemed able to reconcile the problems and only one person left in a huff out of the 250 who passed our way.

Tom was awesome. In his seventies, he took the voters with their ballots to the booths with a friendly word or two. But he often took it upon himself to talk to the children who were waiting while their parents voted. Because one parent took a lot of time to read the amendments carefully before voting on them, Tom ended up staying engaged with two grade school boys for twenty five minutes. That was amazing!

Sometimes I was scared. This was the third location in three years for our precinct's poll. On top of that, the address given for this site is for a different building on the corner and a security fence keeps people from getting to our poll from that side of the school where we are located. Next time, I am planning to have a friend stand at that corner to give folks directions to our polling place.

In addition, we have no idea what is on the chips in the machines which counted the paper ballots. A ten percent flipping of votes built into the main chip could not be subjected to legal challenge since that chip's makeup is considered by the courts to be "proprietary." It happens that the totals of our vote gave the precinct to Sen. McCain by ten percent. From personal experience, I know the current supervisor of elections is a nice man who trains us to help voters have a good experience, though I do not know if he is partisan enough to be willing to go along with rigged machines. And now a new supervisor from the same party has been elected and I know nothing about him.

My experiennce, as you can see, is that there are so many points of interest in developing a voting process and then carrying it out, I am glad to be a small part of it.

But I will be even gladder when Congress revises election processes to remove the legal impediments to finding out if the critical computer chips are skewed and to remove the elections offices from partisan hands.

-----

Update: Just for the record, when I compare the voting patterns in our precinct from pevious elections, we had many more Hispanics (I'd guess about ten times as many) as before. All of them looked professional and were bilingual. We had fewer African Americans than any previous election even though we had more than twice the turn out (we had maybe eight or so at previous elections but only about five this time - I'm told the precinct has practically no African Americans in it). We had 121 voters in the September primary and 247 voters Tuesday. We had ten privacy booths for voters to use to fill out their ballots and two scanners to count their votes. We had only two ballots clog in one machine but which cleared easily once we found how to get at them. There were no lines that lasted more than a few minutes except when we opened at 7 am. They were all through by about 7:20. Voting was pretty steady all day. We were able to take breaks for rest stops and snacks and stretching legs without holding up any voters.

In another post I will talk about the specifics of voting and some miscellaneous stuff that doesn't quite fit in this essay

We Won!

2008-11-06T07:34:00.000-08:00

Today Ann and I finally were able to celebrate the election of Sen. Obama. Yesterday I was recuperating from working at the polls on Tuesday. (More on that in another posting.)

We went out for breakfast where I splurged and had corned beef hash and eggs while Ann went for the scrapple.

We know how to kick the lid off!

It is hard to conceive that the American people voted for someone who represented "promoting the general welfare" phrase from the Constitution rather than for someone who represented the life of wealth and privilege to which we all aspire.

It is welcome news that the majority of Americans now are willing to look past the tactics of fear and vote with hope.

Hope does not include for me that all the promises made by President-elect Obama will come out in the forms he stressed during the campaign. The Obama I voted for is the consultative, collaborative, collegial-style leader, the "Jean Luc Picard" who gathers his top experts to consult together before falling back on his roll as the "decider."

That means the only promise I expect Obama to keep is that he will listen to all sides before taking action and will work with all parties-at-interest on developing legislation and policies.

If the Clintons had done that, they would have been far more effective.

I want to see the tax cuts for the middle class but I will be happy if more comprehensive tax policies are developed which are even better for everyone. That would come out of a bigger "committee" of concerned people from all perspectives.

I would be delighted to have the status of forces agreement with Iraq include an extension only for the purpose of safe withdrawal of our troops and provision for the safety (allowing emigration to the US) for those who have been specifically protected by us. But if a better plan with the same long range results was developed, I would be happy even if it meant troops staying there a little longer.

I think that the President-elect really cares about finding what is best for all of us in the US, not just the ones "at the top" of our society. I think he really cares about folks all across the globe. I think he has the intellectual curiosity so lacking these past eight years that he can understand consequences so much better than his predecessor.

Imagine! Someone smarter than me will be President! Someone smarter than you too!

For all those reasons, we won.

A Friend's Response to the Election

2008-11-05T14:40:00.000-08:00

A pastor friend from Alabama wrote the following letter to some of us to share his reaction to the Obama election. His father, also a pastor, had been very active in civil rights as had his sister, and he in his own right:

Dearest Ones,

One of the memories seared into my soul from my childhood is the presence of the black people who worked for us in and around our home. We, like so many other white families, employed black domestics on a regular basis for years in Montgomery and Mobile. I was a child at home in Montgomery, not yet in school, and later in Mobile, I was the elementary school boy with more time spent on the homefront than my teen-age sister. So, I got really close to our “help.”

When I would talk to them, which I did at length on lazy old sunny days, I would listen to their stories and their reports on the status of things in their families (not always good) and feel so big. I thought I was their confidant, which I kind of was. It was not unusual in the South of that day for little white children to be the only creatures a black person would dare to reveal more than perfunctory details of life to. They were wise. They knew children would not run off and tell everything to white grown-ups, because a child seriously values being talked to without condescension and reveres the one who shares so intimately. In the child’s eye, it is all a huge, mysterious, sacred secret between the conversing parties, and the “spell” is broken if anything is leaked to those on the outside.

So, I would spend hours with Katie and JoJo and Fax Oliver and Silvie, soaking up the treasures of heart-to-heart exchanges, but mostly just listening to them and being exposed to a rich vein of human experience and insight. The thing I most remember about them physically was how natural their facial expressions were and how easily they made eye contact as our gabfest unfolded.

Mother and I would go shopping downtown in Montgomery and Mobile. As we passed black men and women on the open streets, there was no conversation, barely even an acknowledgment that they were there. Gone was the conviviality of the backporch chats I had with my buddies at the house. Most memorably, the faces of these people were blank, unreadable. And their eyes were downcast, their heads lowered. I did not know then what to call it, but I saw it. Later, I would learn that you label such a thing subservience.

This morning, I went into a fast-food place for a cup of coffee. While seated fixing my brew, a black man about my age stopped near my table to rearrange his sack of breakfast goodies before going back outside to his car. I was reading the morning paper—the election edition of the Montgomery Advertiser—and looked up at him. I said, “That was quite a night last night, wasn’t it?” He replied at once, with gusto: “I mean to tell you it was!! I only wish my mama and papa were alive to see this day. Has there ever been a more beautiful day than today? I told my son this morning, ‘Boy, you take this day off from your job and just sit and contemplate what has happened! Your grandparents laid the foundation for it and you owe them homage!’ “ Then, he smiled as big as Satchmo, and wheeled around to go. As he departed I called out, “I wish my folks were around for this, too!” He turned back to me at the door and nodded his head, departing with these words. “Mine and yours are aware of it, I just feel it.”

Two things stayed with me long after he left. One was that it seemed I was back in my boyhood and had just finished one of those cherished dialogues. The other was that this time there was no secrecy assumed or needed. Oh, and one other thing. We were very much in public but he never once erased the true emotion from his face or lowered his head to me. He just said his piece and walked out into the sun with confident eyes wide open and head erect.

One measure to me of the extent of the meaning of last night’s victory by President-elect Obama is the distance between expressions of real humanity by blacks during my childhood, which only emerged when I was alone with them and otherwise stayed hidden when they were in plain view of The Man, and the joyful exclamations of my restaurant friend given right out front without hesitation or apology. He could do it now, though his forebears could not, for many reasons all of us who know our country’s history could recite. But the newest reason is that The Man is no longer of my tribe, but is personified in a black man from Illinois.

I know. He had a white mother. Race isn’t the only barrier that needs to be taken down. He represents lots of intersecting human realities, but he is only one person and exclusiveness is a disease curable only when all are accepted for who and what they are. This venture we are about to embark upon could become embittering if he proves to be less than meets the eye. Only fools place their hopes on one leader. And so on. But I for one will return to all that in due time. It all contains much truth and will always be there to work on. Just not today, please!

I am reminded of Jesus’ last week on this side of the grave when he was trying to rest at a friend’s house in Bethany. Some woman broke a jar of expensive ointment and poured it over his feet and bathed them in it. The crowd around him took her to task, saying the stuff had been wasted, that it could have been sold and the money used for the needy. But Jesus shut them up and said that what they had missed, and what the woman understood, was that on this day in this place Jesus was alive, available, a presence worth celebrating and honoring. It would not always be so, he said. There would always be more justice work to do, a society to perfect, etc (the poor are always with you). But at that precise moment, it was time to appreciate the man of the hour, to prepare him for his near-at-hand ordeal, show solidarity with him, and pay beautiful tribute to his impact.

Of course, I am not equating President-elect Obama with the fellow from Galilee. I do have a few parameters left that I observe! But all I am saying is that those of us who recognize what has just happened for the singular thing that it is need to stop and thank God we are alive on this day. Of the future, we know not. But today, a bugle has blown. A harmonious chorus is out performing a discordant one. A link has been forged between an ignominious past and a redemptive present. Break a jar of something expensive. Let it flow. Savor this time without reservation or skepticism. Our homeland has done a good thing. It has done a great thing.

“I only wish my mama and papa were alive to see this day.”

“I wish my folks were around for this, too.”

“Mine and yours are aware of it, I just feel it.”

Spencer Turnipseed

Favre and Rodgers

2008-10-20T14:25:00.000-07:00

Most of us Packer fans have kept an eye on Brett over these opening games of this NFL season. We hated that he left the way he did. We felt bad about it and were not very happy with what appeared to be his presumptuousness.

How would a prime athlete hold up with little or no active conditioning program during the off-season?

How would a declining talent be rejuvenated?

How would the drag of all the in-season preparations feel once the newness of being with a new team wears off?

How would the cold weather affect those older joints in his hands and knees?

By the end of October, the answer to those questions should begin to be defined.

With Aaron, the questions are also still not fully answered.

While he has proved he can play with great pain, has he proved he can hold up for a whole season?

As some of the better teams prepare for the Packers, will they now have enough of a body of Rodger's work to be better prepared for him and thus be able to make him look like the first year QB he is?

Will his smaller hands make it harder for him to function in the colder weather he will encounter after the bye?

Let's hope both do well during the rest of the season. It will be interesting to watch.

The Last Debate: A Fantasy

2008-10-10T19:58:00.000-07:00

As I heard replayed several times, Sen. McCain finally has come to his senses and realized his campaign has been so negative that it may be approaching being dangerous to the life and health of his colleague, Sen. Obama, as well as to the destruction of his own ambition to be President.

His running mate will now be seen as just another politician scraping by after unethical behaviors of her own, which added to his makes his election unlikely.

Should he withdraw from the race and concede? Probably, but what would the Republicans do then? They'd figure out something because, after all, Sen. McCain at his age is vulnerable to a demise of more natural sorts. There is probably a contingency plan in place should the unthinkable happen.

But what does a man bound by duty and honor do, especially in the coming debate next Wednesday, short of leaving his party in the lurch?

Here's my fantasy:

After sitting at the table with Sen. Obama and Bob Schieffer, Sen. McCain says, "It's time to put down the boxing gloves and the campaign hats and try something that might be worth everyone's time. I propose that we spend as much of the hour and a half that we have conducting the bipartisan discussion that needs to be going on now. Our Congressional colleagues are doing it in Washington. We should show to the world what we mean by 'reaching across the aisle.' Besides, we need to be doing this after Inauguratiuon Day whichever of us wins."

Having broached the idea with the other two men and gotten their assent before coming out on stage, Bob Schieffer should announce they had agreed before the debate to do just that and then turn to Sen. Obama and ask, "What do your advisors say are the critical problems in this economic crisis? Then we'll turn to Sen. McCain to tell us what his are saying. Then we'll see how far we can go toward identifying the problem and go from there with your respective solutions. Sen. Obama?"

Imagine, if you will, two strong thoughtful people trying to make sense of a complex issue and seeking to understand it so they can begin considering how their own best ideas would contribute toward a solution both could live with.

Would an hour and a half be enough time to come up with a clear direction? Of course not. But just think of how Wall Street and the American people and those folks struggling in Congress to be bi-partisan would feel to see the example the two Presidential candidates were setting.

There is enough time for the two candidates to discuss this fantasy.

What is your best fantasy in this situation?

The MOMENT

2008-10-09T05:37:00.000-07:00

In many of the Presidential races through which I've lived, there is a moment when you realize one side or the other has lost. It is usually an obscure moment. And many may miss it or not agree.

One obvious one for me was the moment when Jimmy Carter failed in his effort to show how serious nuclear proliferation was by quoting his daughter, whereupon Ronald Reagan jumped all over him for turning to a family member for nuclear policy advice.

Another obvious moment was Howard Dean's excited scream after winning in New Hampshire's primary.

Less obvious was George H. W. Bush's curiosity at a supermarket scanner. How out of touch could he be?

When George W. Bush used the ad where he hugged the 13 year old girl who had lost a parent in 9/11, I knew he'd win. And that was on top of the "I voted for it before I voted against it" problem John Kerry never was able to answer.

I think Al Gore lost the moment he gave in on the issue of tax cuts as a way of dealing with the budget surpluses from the Clinton Administration. I always thought they should have gone to cut the national debt.

But maybe the strangest moment happened the day after the Palin-Biden debate. John McCain was so proud of the job she did. "Heh?" He repeated his statement of pride and followed with another "Heh?" Then a third, "Heh?" It was as grating a sound as has ever been recorded. As one commentator suggested, "How would you like to listen to that for four years?"

There are many other major factors in any candidate's winning or losing the Presidency, but I still think there is a moment when a candidate does something innocuous and everyone finally knows it's over.

The Presidential Debates

2008-10-05T20:48:00.000-07:00

When Senator McCain and Senator Obama meet to debate this week, it looks like they will have to set the rules and enforce them themselves.

Most of us expected to see Gwen Ifill stand up to Governor Palin when she announced she was going to say what she wanted no matter what the moderator or media expected.

Who is supposed to enforce the rules of the debate, if not the moderator?

Based on what she said in response to Tom Brokaw this morning on “Meet the Press,” she figured neither was going to answer the questions but say what they wanted.

I agree that Sen. Biden pointed out when he could the ties between Sen. McCain and President Bush but he at least responded to the questions. But Governor Palin made hardly any such efforts, especially after she “blew off” Ms. Ifill.

Now that the debates are back where there can be no challenges about “victimizing” Gov. Palin, it looks like Sen. Obama is going to have to be sure what the rules are, who if anyone is to enforce them, and then carry on whatever the style of “discourse” has been defined.

That may be harder on the “town hall” format which is supposed to happen Tuesday night, and may be a little easier to get defined when Bob Schieffer moderates the discussion while sitting at the same table with the two candidates next week.

Sen. Obama may have to do that at the outset of each broadcast while on the air in public view so those of us watching will know the rules too.

PS If I remember this correctly from seminary, those from any university should answer the questions asked, those from Yale should then discuss what lay behind those questions. Those from Harvard must then also answer the questions that should have been asked!

Conviction of OJ Simpson

2008-10-05T19:17:00.000-07:00

He didn’t do it.

I’m not sure what the facts are in the current conviction of OJ Simpson over the memorabilia. My guess is that he was probably caught in the middle of a situation where a friend brought the gun and the DA would ordinarily have charged him with a misdemeanor . . . if it had been anyone but OJ.

For some reason (my opinion is that it is deep-seated racial prejudice), sane, intelligent people want to punish OJ for his ex-wife’s death even though a jury (mixed racial) found him innocent. They (including some dear friends and relatives) were glad when the civil trial (with an all white jury) awarded millions of dollars to the Browns and the Goldmans. And when he was able to protect enough of his wealth to be able to support his family (another civil court going on at the same time as the suit by the Browns and Goldmans awarded OJ custody of his kids, which a lot of folks do not pay attention to), the public seems to delight in scrapes he has gotten into and hope the judge in this memorabilia case put him into jail for life.

I read more on the original case than I wanted. But the most convincing pieces of evidence are the autopsies of the two victims.

There were two major factors which people seem to want to disregard.

One, there were bruises on the bodies, mainly on Ms. Simpson’s head and Mr. Goldman’s hands which show they both inflicted damage on the attacker(s). The hand bruises show significant injury was inflicted and the head bruise is where it would be if she had head-butted an assailant who was behind her holding her, possibly breaking his nose.

Both victims were athletic and had training in karate.

Careful examination of OJ at the time he voluntarily went in to talk with the police showed no bruises or injuries. If he had been the attacker, there is no way in those close quarters of the murder scene that he would have come out with only two small breaks in his skin of one finger.

Two, the autopsies indicated stab wounds from FOUR different knives from multiple angles which could only have been inflicted by multiple attackers.

The autopsies are printed in more than one book on the case and can probably be found on the internet. I saw them in the book KILLING TIME by David Freed and John Briggs.

I also wrote a novel which goes into the timeline and the blood evidence and hypothesizes who the real murderers were. If you are interested, I can send you a copy electronically.

OJ did not commit those murders most of America want to believe he did. And now we wait to see if the judge puts him away for life or is willing to face the howling masses if he does anything less.

It was a trap

2008-09-26T04:41:00.000-07:00

Rovian? Machiavellian? Bushist?

Politics at its worst . . . .

The goal: Make the Democrats look like the bad guys so that the Republicans could pull out a win in November and win even better in 2010.

The tactic: get the Dems to pass the bail out only to have it structured to fail.

The strategy: Set up the bill to look bi-partisan by sending it from the White House and encouraging the moderate Republicans in Congress to work with the Democrats.

The sting: leave two poison pills in the bill (no oversite and putting the Secretary of the Treasury in charge). Then leave the key Republican leadership out of the discussions so they could claim no responsibility for the bill.

The set up: with some deft trades by wealthy Republicans, encourage market swings on Wall Street so that the Dow becomes the bellwether of the backdrop which appears to show the positive and negative responses to various news about work on the bill.

Serendipity: Disrupting the first presidential nominee debate can become an excuse to change the subject of the latest news pattern. It could make it appear that the President wanted to listen to "both sides" with Sens. McCain and Obama at his photo-op table with a handful of Congressional leaders but give cover to Sen. McCain's distance from the Senate of the past two years. And if the Democrats pass the bill, it could be voted against by Sen. McCain who could claim to have tried to save the country from a legislative failure. And the disruption to the debates could mean the dropping of the vice-presidential debate or even one or more of the presidential debates.

Results: If the President's bill is passed, the Dems take the fall for its failure.

If the Dems change the bill, the Dems take the fall for being "partisan."

If it takes awhile for the bill to be shaped, the Dems are held up from campaigning which helps the Repubs who are facing defeat but would now have something to use against the Dems.

If the Dems stop work on the bill because of having insufficient time to do it right, they can then be castigated for not staying in Washington to finish the job. And McCain might gain points in a close race by running against a "do-nothing Congress." Congress does, after all, have a rating lower in the eyes of the public than President Bush!

If the market does collapse (free market Repubs would call it a "market correction" even if it was a Depression!), that would also be laid at the Dems feet.

IT'S A TRAP, BABY!

Is there a way out?

If Congressional Democrats work to prepare a bill that strengthens the credit markets based on models that have worked in the past in Sweden, Japan, and the US, and sell it to the people through Sen. Obama and Sen. Chris Dodd as well as other leadership, and don't panic (the President used some "panic" terms in his statement to the country the other night), they will do better no matter how it is framed by the Republicans.

It will help if Former President Bill Clinton is campaigning all over the country and giving the Congressional Dems a chance to finish the bill, along with ads saying where the Democratic Party Congressmen and women are (the Repubs will tend to feel, as a minority anyway, that they aren't needed in Washington so they can go campaign).

Senators Obama, Dodd, et al, CALL THE BLUFF!

Take your time and do it right.

Including doing all the debates, with or without the Repubs.

Bail Out

2008-09-25T14:05:00.000-07:00

On my way to the Y, I saw a bumper sticker which said, "Friends do not let friends vote Republican."

On Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show Tuesday night, she reported that a Bush spokesperson said that the bail out bill the President brought out last week-end had been prepared and was sitting on his desk for a couple months. The spokesperson said they were waiting for a propitious time . . . like right before Congress would adjourn for the elections. When asked if that wasn't cutting it a little too close, the spokesperson said, "They can get it done in a few days."

That is one very good reason not to vote Republican! They pulled the same stunt to get the Congressional support for the Iraq war out of which the President not only took authority to pre-emptively strike Iraq but also trashed the Constitution with the first Patriot Act, which was also trotted out in a similar time-limited manner.

One Congressman was infuriated at the two and a half page bill from the President which gives the Secretary of the Treasury unchecked authority to spend $700 billion dollars. "That is one of the biggest power grabs I've ever seen!" he said.

Past interventions by governments to help a credit crisis in their banking system usually included an independent board with checks and balances to play that role. The acquisitions of bad assets in the most successful interventions included ownership, as we did with the AIG bail out where the taxpayers have an 80% stake in that company now. That way, if the assets ever return to value, the profits are shared with the taxpayers. Some interventions paid off with a profit for the tax payers as happened in Sweden some years ago.

The S & L crisis which involved Neil Bush and the Keating five (including Sen. McCain) was resolved with a board which was not fully supervised, resulting in an $85 million dollar loss to tax payers.

When a country goes into credit crisis as we have, people hang on to their money, if they have any. That goes for the rich as well and corporations and banks . . . .

So money is being hoarded and not let out for credit. However, because banks and financial institutions and other businesses end up in bankruptcy, someone with money can buy the valuable portions of those businesses for bargain basement prices. Bear Stearns became part of a growing J. P. Morgan financial empire that way. Merrill-Lynch was bought out by Bank of America. So there are very wealthy individual and companies that are making out like bandits accumulating assets.

This bail out lets the American people become the "white knight" that can step in and help companies survive the credit crunch and avoid bankruptcy. . . if it is structured correctly.

The President's proposal gives all the power to Secretary Paulson. Secretary Paulson was head of Goldman Sachs which has somehow stayed out of the limelight. I'm sure Sec. Paulson had opinions of his competitors on Wall Street. Is there a chance he didn't like Lehmann Brothers for some reason? That's the one corporation that didn't get help so far. When one individual has so much power, personal motives can come into play.

I can see him and his Wall Street friends having a great time if he ends up in charge of this bailout even with having to report what he's done . . . after it has happened and can hardly be reversed, as of the latest I heard about accountability in variations of the bail out bill.

I hope financial historians were at the meeting today with the President and the two nominees and Congressional members. They need to slow down the drive for sticking with the President's terms. Otherwise, it looks like the President will have brought off the biggest financial coup for his real base, the corporate barons who financed his run for the White House in 2000 and 2004.

No, my friends, I must warn you not to vote Republican!

A Republican Friend

2008-09-11T11:35:00.000-07:00

All of us have friends from the other party. With some, we avoid discussion about politics. Maybe even with most. After all, religion and politics are usually not the subjects of conversation if those friends take them seriously.

But once in awhile, a friend is willing to engage me. And he is quite good at it.

We grew up in the same Sunday school. We were in classes from seventh grade through graduation. We were in a Young Republicans Club in high school together during the McCarthy era. We took the same civics classes. Our political milieu was Wisconsin Progressivism of the Bob LaFollette variety (combining politics and university research applied for the common good).

I hadn't see this friend until our fiftieth high school reunion five years ago. He retired to a red state and I retired to whatever color Florida is!

We have exchanged materials and observations on politics for the last couple years. Recently, he sent me one that had incredible racism in it. I was absolutely flabbergasted! I responded that I couldn't believe he'd actually think that way! I wrote back and gave all kinds of historical background and anthropological information to say just how far off the mark that stuff was.

He never responded.

He and I still do some exchanging, me more than him lately. But he has given me some interesting websites to go to. More on that in a minute.

That racist article was so out of bounds that it has taken me awhile to see what he may have been doing.

You almost have to be from Wisconsin to follow my logic at this point. Maybe other parts of the country may do what we sometimes do for fun.

You may be able to tell I take my opinions pretty seriously. I also take my facts seriously. I don't really think of myself as a wonk. But as I look back at how my brother and brother-in-law could rile me, I wonder if I come across sort of dorky.

Jack and Lynn have laid out awful partisan lines. When I jumped all over them, they'd just laugh! "Gotcha!"

I think my Republican friend may have been playing "Gotcha!" with me. I know he is extremely bright (as Lynn and Jack have always been). I think he has been playing with me.

Okay, Pal, you got me!

I do expect he will vote Republican because he has offered me some real challenges, not just the wild kind.

And he has given me two websites to explore which have proven to be interesting. I have not found them to be fully truthful because they carry a number of ideas and assertions that have proved to be false.

But they also have carried stuff I haven't seen at my favorite websites. And I haven't seen that stuff corroborated or challenged on FactCheck.org or any similar sites.

The sites my Republican friend gave me are worth checking out. They are www.hotair.com/ and www.theobamafile.com/.

Both have the sense of honesty about their intentions which I find in the liberal/progressive websites that are my favorites.

But what is stunning about them is that they paint such a different picture of reality that I am persuaded they live in a different universe . . . just like their readers probably would think I am not of this world!

That's a little shaking.

If America is ever going to get back together over the partisan divide, we are going to have to find some common ground of information that we both trust.

I like to think that sites like FactCheck.org would be that kind of place.

I hope my Republican friend would too.

I'm not optimistic. After spending time on the sites my friend suggested, I am convinced he would not think of those fact-checking sites as helpful.

I hope he would not be put off by them. I hope he is willing to realize Stephen Colbert's observation about the current political atmosphere is true, that "Reality has a liberal bent."

Political ads

2008-09-10T13:04:00.000-07:00

In one of the blogs I was reading today in www.crooksandliars.com, the writer bemoaned how pedestrian the Obama ads are. I have some ideas about what should be used in their stead, permission being granted by the original writers or speakers of course:

From Gov. Palin's speech - "You don't say one thing . . . and another in San Francisco . . . ." followed by former House Speaker Gail Phillips of Alaska after quoting Gov. Palin about the bridge to nowhere and a quote from her supporting that bridge from 2006, "You don't tell a group of Alaskans you support something and then go to someplace else and say you oppose it."

From The Daily Show - John Stewart's juxtaposing the acceptance speeches of George Bush from 2000 and Sen. McCain's from 2008 - almost identical wording!

From The Colbert Report - Stephen's quote about the Hindenburg from his appearence at the Correspondents' Dinner from 2006.

These are just a few possibilities. Nearly every night during Keith Olberman's, Rachel Maddow's, and Comedy Central's news and satire, there are some great lines that should get wider hearing.

He might even use some of his own lines from a speech of his today:

“Suddenly [McCain’s] the change agent!” Obama laughed. “He says, “I’m going to tell those lobbyists that their days of running Washington are over.” Who’s he going to tell? Is he going to tell his campaign chairman who’s one of the biggest corporate lobbyists in Washington? Is he going to tell his campaign manager who was one of the biggest corporate lobbyists in Washington? Is he going to tell all the folks who are running his campaign who are the biggest corporate lobbyists in Washington?”

“Who is it that he’s going to tell that change is coming?” he added, “I mean come on, they must think you’re stupid!”

It appears that Sen. Obama is rethinking his opposition to the use of 527 ads. If his campasign won't use them, maybe the 527s will put some of these great quotes up on their "flagpoles."

Oops?

2008-09-05T04:43:00.000-07:00

There was a line in Sen. McCain's POW story as told by him at the RNC last night that caught my attention. "I was feeling terrible after one interrogation. They had broken me and I was as low as I had ever been."

He then told of how another prisoner reassured him by means of taps through the wall that he would come out of his depression and was okay.

"They had broken me," Sen. McCain said.

In the context of statements by another POW that McCain became an advocate for normalization when he returned from Vietnam, that little phrase leaves me wondering: what did McCain give up to the Vietnamese in that incident? What did he promise? What did he gain by breaking? What happened that depressed him so much as he returned to his cell?

In one sense, I do not care what actually happened because under the circumstances, I cannot say I would have done anything differently. I can imagine being tougher but no one who knows me would believe it.

But in another sense, I would really like for Sen. McCain to explain what actually happened that particular time and any other times he has not acknowledged during which he may have given in to his captors.

Why? Because then maybe we'd have a better idea what has motivated him all these years.

If I understand Sen. McCain's history correctly, he did not start out fighting corruption when he entered Congress. He was a "loyal footsoldier" for President Reagan. He did not get interested in fighting corruption until after he was caught in the middle of the Keating Five scandal. Was it just good cover to become outspoken against the very thing he had been caught doing?

Is it just good cover to play the POW card all the time for every challenge because Sen. McCain has been some kind of "Manchurian Candidate" since he returned from Vietnam?

I wish Sen. McCain would tell the story behind his being "broken." Up till now, I had the impression that he had never been. Did I miss something?

What is that all about?

2008-09-04T13:06:00.000-07:00

There are some puzzling things going on that I hear from the internet but not from the mainstream media.

In Denver, three men with a large camera hollowed out to contain a gun, high-powered rifles and ammunition, and stating they were planning to kill Sen. Obama during the convention, were arrested. They were caught with a little meth. The federal attorney, an old colleague of Karl Rove, chose not to charge the men with anything serious. "They are 'meth heads' and weren't ever a serious threat." That got about twenty seconds on one of the nightly news programs.

Meanwhile in St. Paul, armed police and sheriff department squads of two to three dozen men surrounded and disrupted peace groups who had rented homes in the Twin Cities. Pictures showed up on the internet but not on TV.

Thousands of protesters paraded peacefully in St. Paul but I never heard a word about them in the news. Thousands? No notice to the rest of the world on the public media. . . .

At another demonstration that started peacefully, the police moved in sweeping up everyone "that was in their way." Two of those people were wearing press credentials and were preparing to video the gathering when the police moved in. Those two, one with a Hispanic name and one with a Middle Eastern name, were being physically hassled when Amy Goodman who is a well known journalist (also wearing press credentials) came up to the officer who injured her staff only to herself be arrested. The video is on YouTube . . . but not on television.

One of the guys involved in the "Swift Boating" of Sen. John Kerry, Ted Sampley, is quoted as saying that John McCain has never fully disclosed the "extent to which he cooperated with the Vietnamese." Sampley is also angry with how McCain actively advocated for normalization with Vietnam after the war, an action which essentially ended efforts to return POW/MIAs, despite "credible evidence" that there were Americans still alive there.

The Manchester GUARDIAN printed an interview with Sen. Joe Biden who reaffirmed that in an Obama administration, the Attorney General would research what is already known to see if any of the things done by the Bush Administration were criminal, such as torture, rendition, etc. Too bad Manchester is in England! This hasn't been reported here.

Did you know that Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who still has delegates ready to vote for him instead of Sen. McCain, held rallies in Minneapolis that brought more people than the Republican National Convention? The rallies were planned after the planning committee for the RNC offered no place on the program for Rep. Paul. If it hadn't been for the internet, I wouldn't have known it either!

A new ad involving a former Vietnam POW mentions that not long after Sen. McCain was captured, Ho Chi Min died. The new government was not nearly as cruel in their treatment of POWs as Ho had been.

I've only seen these bits online myself. But I don't have the resources to research the issues and background which the media have to check out the meaning of these bits.

Maybe I'm getting old and incompetent but when I run into things like the above that seem to be newsworthy, but are not noted in the press or network news, I really have no idea what that is about.

Gov. Palin

2008-09-04T05:52:00.000-07:00

The Alaskan Governor is a very good public speaker. She delivers a speech, while written by others, in a way that shows she can put her own voice into it. In other words, she owned it. And the Republicans at the convention loved it.

She learned from the Obama acceptance speech to look into the camera nearly full time. That may have been a wiser choice of camera location than for Sen. Obama. So she may have connected better with the TV audience.

She also learned a lot of international politics in a hurry because she traversed the pronunciations and ideas in the most complex part of the speech. What she actually knows may not be relevant because she can present it with a little background and practice, something most politicians have to be able to do since the world is so complex.

She is not to be underestimated . . . even if she says "noocular" like President Bush. She is a formidable opponent for the Democrats as far as stage presence and cleverness is concerned.

-"Cleverness" is to be distinguished from "intelligence" in my use today in this way: intelligence includes a vast amount of information at the disposal of the clever mind. Spin doctors like Dan Bartlett are clever too. It takes intelligence to realize what the spin is and to counter it.* -

She will be effective in the debates. One of her opponents in the governor's race failed to get her to be more specific in her responses to questions. She is very capable of presenting generalities which are hard to disagree with and can stay among them despite pressure to give more content. In her speech last night, she was given specifics to counter that critique. But she will probably be capable of sounding good in the debates without them.

She is a popular governor. Alaskans voted for her because she promised to involve them in the profits of the energy companies. She negotiated a different deal than her predecessor and as a result, during her first year in office, every Alaskan man, woman, and child, received around $1,600. That would give any governor an 80 per cent approval rating.

She is a clever person. She has spun that negotiation into "standing up to the oil companies" without having to say she is also fully supporting their expanded exploration and exploitation of Alaska's energy.

Will she draw the disenchanted "Hillary voters" to the Republicans?

That is the major gamble of her selection by Sen. McCain.

That is hard to say.

If the Republican women had come to Sen. Clinton's aid when she was concerned about sexism against her, there is a good chance the Clintonites might vote Republican this time. Instead, she was called a "whiner" by Republicans (including Gov. Palin!) and their women remained silent.

If Gov. Palin was pro-choice, there would be a chance of cross-over voting.

Most likely, the followers of Sen. Clinton who refuse to vote for Obama will just pass on that vote but vote for Democratic Congressional candidates. That will be terribly important in final results of the Nov. 4 elections.

In the meantime, what I will be most interested in watching is how soon Gov. Palin takes the spotlight away from Sen. McCain and how he will react to it. We may see as soon as Sen. McCain's acceptance speech tonight . . . .

-----

*Update: There are many words related to the intellectual capabilities of a person. My little statement about "clever" and "intelligent" doesn't come close to adequately assessing Gov. Palin's astuteness.

She is a very sharp person. As a colleague said of her, "She's a quick study." That was apparent to me as I noted above.

Wise? Intellectual? Scholarly? Reasonable? I am not ready to use those words to describe Gov. Palin. But she has as potent a set of "smarts" as any of the major politicians today and I hope the Democrats will not learn that the hard way.

Politics, A-r-r-g-h!

2008-09-01T10:35:00.000-07:00

Let me add my voice to the ones pointing out how the hurricane is being politicized!

I am most disturbed by the way Sen. McCain and President Bush feel they have to be present among the people who are working on preparations for and recovery from the hurricane.

When a major political figure shows up in such places, the disruption is incredible. Each of those men has with him Secret Service who have to disrupt what is going on to assure security. In addition, all the staff each brings take up space which emergency activities need to be left open. On top of them, are the press who will not only take up space but be asking questions of emergency personnel for their stories.

Maybe worse is that all transportation around the visit has to stop for the reason of security along all travel routes of the two politicians and around where they are.

Every stop the President and the Republican nominee makes along the route of the storm increases the disturbance to the efforts!

Sen. Obama has been wise to stay away even if that does not seem as "Presidential." It is just a lot smarter. He (and the President and Sen. McCain) should stay at a place where communications are excellent to keep up with what is going on and from which they can "call in" their concern and support during the storm itself without causing logistical nightmares for the people on the ground.

The disruption of the people who are trying to organize relief and response to the storm just to get photo ops for political reasons is an absolutely unnecessary stress.

Dems in Charlotte Count,y FL

2008-08-29T06:41:00.000-07:00

John Hackworth, a reporter for the Sun-Herald newspaper in Port Charlotte, reported three incidents which illustrate what sometimes happens to Democrats where we live.

On Election Day, a Democratic Party member found a nice downtown corner in Punta Gorda to put up some signs for Democratic candidates. It was nowhere near a polling place. But police said she was violating some local ordinance or other.

Another Democratic Party member handed out materials outside a polling place in Punta Gorda only to be confronted by a poll worker who charged up to her and demanded she leave and take her handouts with her. She told him to go call the police because she knew she was in the right. This time, there were no police. Other poll workers apparently reminded the aggressive one that the line was 100 feet from a polling place beyond which politicking is legal.

The city council of Punta Gordsa did a thoughtful thing. They allowed the Republicans who won the primary to leave their signs up until November. They did not happen to also allow Dems to put up their signs sooner than 45 days before the election, which is the usual requirement.

A couple years ago, a Dem took a sign into the local county-supported cultural center where Governor Jeb Bush was speaking. The lone man stood quietly against the wall opposite the entrance to the meeting room. His sign was critical of the Iraq war. The county sheriff himself arrested the man for disturbing the peace, handcuffed him, and escorted him to a deputy who drove him to the court house where he was released.

As my friend Garrett said, "Some folks want to have a police state, as long as they can be the police!"

I must add that the sheriff took a lot of heat for his actions.

At the polling places where I've worked, you really can't tell which workers are one party or the other or neither. Each polling place has to have at least one of each. Usually, the atmosphere has been like an "Old Home Week."

I really haven't heard of others given the unfair treatment I listed above.

But as I reported in my previous blog, several things are either incompetently done or are intentionally done to discourage voters.

The first time I worked in the precinct was also a primary. The precinct had just changed the voting site, giving an address that put people on the wrong street. Further, the people at the former voting site did not know where the new site was. Sounds familiar! Even so, 152 people made it for that election.

We had 121 this time.

We had ethnic families vote that year and in the Presidential Primary last January. No ethnic families came this time even though school was out. White mothers with kids came this time in numbers I don't remember from before.

Another problem was the various ID numbers we had to record before we started and reconcile after closing the polls on sheets that were not always clear about what they wanted. In fact, one key sheet was on the very bottom of the main materials bag, something we did not find until after the poll had to open.

There are always glitches when a new system is tried. It will be interesting to see if those same glitches plague us in November. . . .

Prospects for the Two Parties in November

2008-08-20T18:05:00.000-07:00

Let me try to sort out some of the major factors that will work in favor of each party in their congressional races and the Presidential race. This is not a fully informed analysis but contains some things I think are significant and need to be taken into account.

For the Democrats, the Congressional prospects are quite good. Republicans have been in charge from 1996 to 2006 and, except for the Clinton legacy of a budget surplus, much of what has happened since belongs to the Republicans, most of it because of the rubber-stamping of the Bush administration’s policies and failure to investigate serious violations like the torture issue.

Because many of the Republican congressional leaders have retired in order to get cushy jobs as lobbyists, something the main stream media (MSM) has reported, and because so many have been convicted of sex or corruption charges, also reported widely in the MSM, Democrats in most states and districts have an excellent chance of winning those House and Senate seats.

Since those are mostly “local” elections, that is, are usually matters of which candidate will represent the mood of that district or state re: their particular needs and views, those races will not be overshadowed by foreign or even many domestic issues that may flare up between now and November.

Not everyone is savvy to how obstructionist the Republicans (both in Congress and in the Administration) have been since the Democratic takeover in 2006, the rest of the problems facing the Republicans will overcome that ignorance. The Democrats will win enough Senate seats to override a filibuster (more than 60). And the House majority will be strong enough to override a veto. That will put most Republicans into the situation where they will want to collaborate

Will progressives be the major power in the Democratic take-over? That will depend on their success in the primaries. Those that become the candidates will have a good chance of winning because they will reflect the mood of their constituencies. But many “blue dog” candidates from conservative states will win and Congress will end up having to work across the benches as well as across the aisle.

A partisan problem will not be eliminated by the likely Democratic congressional victory because districts will still tend to be gerrymandered so that whoever is elected will tend to operate on behalf of the base that elected them from their districts.

Only an Administration that is intent on collaboration and bringing everyone to the table can reset the mode of operation in Washington to work past that. It will be a tough sell.

If the new Administration blinks, it will be Washington as usual, only the fights will be between the progressives and moderates with the Republicans being spoilers.

It appears the prospects are excellent for the Democrats in both houses of Congress.

Prospects for the Presidency for the Democrats are better than for years.

Senator Obama has mobilized more people into his organization so that not only will Democrats be campaigning actively in all fifty states which helps the local Democratic Party as well as the national ticket, that mobilization has already out-raised and outspent the Republican Party. One significant recent report shows that military contributors back Sen. Obama over Sen. McCain by a margin of 6-1.

The strengths of the Obama campaign are that they have reached out to every group in the country, not just the traditional core groups of the Democratic Party. They have engaged young people way beyond anyone’s expectations. They have engaged all of the minorities far more successfully than the Republicans have. Since minorities are becoming majority in many parts of the country, that is a major plus for the Democrats.

Use of the internet has been incredibly effective so far and will continue to be through November, far more effective than what the Republicans have done in terms of quality, organization, and immediacy.

Sen. Obama himself is a far more winsome candidate and far more thoughtful and articulate candidate than Sen. McCain. Sen. McCain’s moral lapse in divorcing his first wife and the pettiness and ignorance of the rich guys campaigning for Sen. McCain will encourage a lot of moderate folks to vote against Sen. McCain and for Sen. Obama.

I think that Sen. McCain will drive off pro-Sen. Clinton supporters and will send them into Sen. Obama’s camp where they will vote. Things will be so bad on the Republican side that even the staunchest Clinton supporters will have to vote against McCain some way.

But will all of that be enough to provide a Democratic victory for Sen. Obama?

The first observation that needs to be made is that the American electorate tends to vote one way for Congress and the other way for President. They tend to not want to put all the political power into one basket.

That has not been true between 1992 and 2006, though in some districts it was clearly so.

--Note: I cannot document the above statements nor most of my other assertions, so take these as hypotheses which I think have been documented by others. You will hear them from others and maybe someone will show some of mine are not correct!--

My second observation is that the electoral processes all across the country have some real problems. While Ohio and Florida are the best examples of conflict of interest where Republicans and the computer voting machines of Republicans, even with the paper back-up, can leave a dark cloud of suspicion over the results.

Here are some of the problems in a little more detail. The county elections offices control the voting processes. Often, they are backed up by the state election officials (office of the Secretary of State). Decisions made by those local officials are crucial and often are potentially partisan.

The clearest example was the 2000 Florida Presidential election. Control of the kinds of ballots used, the format of those ballots, and the poor security around recounts all fell back upon Republican operatives.

That conflict of interest has not been addressed in Florida as yet.

Nor has it been addressed in Ohio, to my knowledge, where Diebold who makes many of the nation’s voting machines, is run by a Republican who was on President Bush’s state election committee in 2000 and 2004.

All it would take in most districts is a chip in the computers used for voting to switch 3% of a vote to make it possible for a candidate to “win” without raising a challenge. Since voting machines and their respective chips are considered by the courts as business secrets and cannot be checked, there is no way to know if the computers have been tampered with.

I still think something was fishy when in the 2000 and 2004 elections, exit polling and election results differed. To my knowledge, that had not been so in all previous elections.

--This is one more of my hypotheses based on my recollection of decades of watching elections.—

The Republicans still hold this edge and it could make a difference in who ends up being our next President.

Another problem where Republicans are in control of the election processes is that they determine whether or not someone may vote. In the last two elections a Texas company gathered all the names of felons and distributed them to election officials across the country. The lists were so long that there was little checking of the accuracy of the lists. Consequently, people with the same name, especially if they were ethnic (read that African-American), were turned down at the poles even if there was information which would have ordinarily qualified them to vote (like never being convicted anywhere, let alone of a felony).

I do not believe that possibility has been eliminated as we head into the 2008 elections.

News reports indicate that some election officials are not recognizing the voter registration of groups working with college students, minorities, and the elderly. If those folks show up at the polls and are turned away without having been warned that they were not yet registered, that will be horribly discouraging to potential voters.

I do not believe that issue has been addressed. It is likely to take law suits that are costly and time-consuming to resolve, so those voters will be disenfranchised for this election.

In Florida, voters must present a driver’s license. In Missouri, that is illegal because courts have ruled that it discriminates against the elderly and ethnic and student voters who do not drive nor have the resources to go to an obscure office to get some other kind of comparable ID. Despite that, election workers in Missouri were trained to turn down voters without a driver’s license!

For years, all I had to show was my voter registration card. Now it is no longer enough. There needs to be a national policy that is enforced across partisan lines and meets constitutional tests.

There are subtle ways that voters can be discouraged. I am a poll worker here in Florida. There are many things that bother me.

One, our precinct has been moved for the third time in three years with no notice of change being posted at the previous sites.

Two, we have an elderly population but the polling place has been moved to an elementary school which has long halls, too few staff to give direction and assistance in those long halls, small chairs and restroom facilities, obscure restrooms, an incorrect address, and a small amount of space for two precincts to function. We have informed the county elections office and do not see most of these problems being resolved. The school is free for the use of the election office.

Three, the new ballot system does include a paper ballot on which voters are to fill in small circles with a pencil that is then read by a computer which has its “proprietary” chips. It will take a fair amount of time to fill out. I can foresee our older voters pondering and penciling for more than a few minutes. I foresee the long lines in November. The Republican officers in charge of this election loved the touch screen computer voting machines and are choosing a paper program that is clearly more time-consuming even though there are other machines which print out the results of a touch screen system which is as fast as clerks use at McDonalds.

Back on the national stage, the MSM (mainstream media) seems to continue to slant its news about the candidates so that they will appear to stay close. They also may be very much more interested in protecting the business interests of the corporations that own them. I think that will be hard to overcome. The internet can do only so much.

The Republicans have no problem with telling the truth. For them, under Richard Viguery and Karl Rove, they will say anything they think someone will believe even if it is not true. They are already sending out e-mails which are well-designed and cleverly written but which are not signed. And they intend to play on the fears and prejudices of Americans. That may backfire as people become skeptical of these attacks . . . but maybe not.

Finally, the deep-seated prejudices in many individuals and communities and neighborhoods will operate in many folks’ hearts when they are in the voting booths. They want to believe all the bad stuff they hear about Sen. Obama so they can justify keeping their racial prejudice but have an excuse that doesn’t sound racist..

How many of them are there? A lot more than we want to think. Enough of them to make a major difference in this election? Possibly not just by themselves. But with all the other factors to the advantage of Sen. McCain, the Republican candidate won’t turn these votes down.

A frightening problem is that the lies and fear-mongering will persuade someone to try to assassinate Sen. Obama. The Secret Service is very competent but there have already been complaints about them not providing tight security in some contexts.

The chances are very good that they will see to it Sen. Obama will be safe for the rest of his life.

MY CONCLUSION

Based on this set of observations, I believe that more Americans will vote for Sen. Obama than will vote for Sen. McCain. Despite all the tricks, electoral process advantages, and lies of the McCain supporters, Sen. Obama will maintain his lead and will win more states and more electoral votes than Sen. McCain.

Sen. Obama will have a Congress with which he can work his collegial style. America has a chance to come out of its funk.

Tire pressure and Newt Gingrich

2008-08-20T13:24:00.000-07:00

I understand from a variety if sources that Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich told a national audience via FOX new that Sen. Obama's tire pressure talking point really benefited Big Oil because air pressure pumps at gas stations were not free and the profit went to Big Oil.

How silly can such an allegedly intelligent man get? Quite silly, as a matter of fact.

Remember how George H. W. Bush lost a lot of credibility when he went into a grocery store and had no idea what the scanner was where the clerk checked out the customers. Silly.

The wealthy have no idea what is going on in the world where people buy food and gas and clothing every day.

Soon after our current President was elected, George W. Bush said he'd talk to his friends if gas prices went up. He was asked more recently to do that and he said, "I tried." Silly!

Sen. McCain owns ten multi-million dollar homes so he will not be able to really understand what the foreclosure situation is. I expect he will say something silly soon. I may already have missed it!

And here is Speaker Gingrich too rich to know better telling us something stupid. Big Oil has its name on local stations but the local stations are independently owned and operated by local business people. By the time the local dealer finishing paying for gasoline off the tank trucks, Big Oil has already got every penny it is going to get. Actually, every dollar! The dealer gets pennies by how much s/he marks up the price to cover the business expenses.

If s/he decides to put in an air pump, that is a business expense to that dealer. The air that is pumped is free. Big Oil has not got its hands on that yet. So the profit, if any, for pumping air into tires goes to the dealer and not Big Oil.

I love it when some of these rich politicians say silly things. Folks in the backwaters of the country, in the slums, in the small towns, in the neighborhoods, even in most suburbs, know dealers and how their costs work. We learned when we fussed with them about the rise in prices two years ago when gas went to TWO dollars a gallon.

Rich folks don't even buy their own gas so they never notice.

Sen. Obama knows these common kinds of things. Properly inflated tires cut into Big Oil profits.

Maybe the best ones to help Sen. Obama in his campaign for President are the rich politicians trying to run him down. Their own ignorance will sound silly to everyone else.

Saturday Debate, Part II

2008-08-19T11:10:00.000-07:00

From Salon.com, I've borrowed the following quote from Dan Gilgoff of Beliefnet.

Dan Gilgoff: Some Obama supporters are claiming that McCain saw the questions before the forum began, giving him a leg up on Obama.

Rick Warren: They're dead wrong. That's just sour grapes. They both did fantastically well. The only question he knew, I gave them the first question and I was changing the questions within an hour [before the forum began]. I talked to both of them a week before the debate and told them all the themes. I talked personally to John McCain and I talked personally to Barack Obama. I said, 'We'll talk about leadership, talk about the roles of government,' I said I'd probably have a question about climate change, probably a question on the courts. I didn't say, 'I'm going to ask which Supreme Court justice would you not [nominate]. They were clearly not prepared for that.

D.G.: A source at the debate tells me that McCain had access to some communications devices in the few minutes before he went on stage with you and that there was a monitor in his green room, in violation of the debate rules.

R.W.: That's absolutely a lie, absolutely a lie. That room was totally free, with no monitors -- a flat out lie.
Hmmm. . . . I was right that Rev. Warren did some pre-debate discussing of the questions with both candidates. If I had been him, I would have done the same thing to reassure both candidates that it was a legitimate event. The difficulty is that if he as moderator has a preference between the two, he may say a little more to one than to the other. The moderator's credibility is on the line since it is his opportunity to gain national stature. Who knows how honest he was in his pre-debate discussions?
Well, Rev. Warren's honesty was put to the test because while he told the audience that Sen. McCain was in a room where he couldn't hear what was going on onstage, Sen. McCain's staff reported that he was still in his motorcade on the way to the event. For someone who had so much at stake to put on a responsible effort with a national audience, Rev. Warren had to either know of Sen. McCain's actual whereabouts or presumed too much. He certainly had not accompanied Sen.McCain to the room as a matter of hospitality, which would have been what I'd have done.
Rev. Warren failed that test.
How much of the debate Sen. McCain heard is not clear from this snippet. But other reports say there was a monitor in the green room where Sen. McCain was supposed to have waited and that it was turned off (disabled?). But Rev. Warren offers a different response. There was no monitor!
Is this a big deal?
Is truth telling a big deal? Was it the Packer offensive line whose names Sen. McCain used when he was asked for names of his unit as he wrote in a book about his POW experience or was it the Steelers' defensive line as he told a Pittsburgh crowd this year?
Somehow those who do not worry about the truth in little things do not worry about it in the big things.
Update: You may have noticed that I removed the reference to the "cross in the dirt" vignette that McCain uses and some have said was borrowed by McCain from Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I still have my doubts but researchers at FactCheck.org have found that the story could have happened but no one will ever know. The alleged borrowing is unlikely because of the differences in the details, the likelihood of numerous such communications among the many Christians under persecution, and the ambiguity about Solzhenitsyn's actual use of the story. - I've tried to find the blogs where I originally got information related to the vignette and I can't find them now. . . .

Saturday Night's "Debate" in the California Church

2008-08-18T14:44:00.000-07:00

We got the impression that the questions for each candidate would be the same, would be given to each fresh (Sen. McCain was assigned a seat in the "cone of silence" so he would not hear the questions and Sen. Obama's answers), and thus each would be spontaneous and unrehearsed.

But I had the impression that both candidates may have seen copies of the questions ahead of time. Both candidates, as I saw them interact with Rev. Warren, seemed to be aware of the questions and responded not as much with spontaneity as with their typical way of answering.

Despite Rev. Warren's intent, it appears the questions fit better into Sen. McCain's talking points than with Sen. Obama's.

In fact, there seemed to be a sense that Sen. McCain had his answers ready and pounced on most of the questions.

Some bloggers and the Obama campaign committee now claim they think that McCain actually did hear some if not all of the questions and Sen. Obama's answers.

There was one moment about 19 minutes into Sen. McCain's time for which I reran a recording to see if I heard him right.

On my way there, I heard Sen. McCain open with a response to Rev. Warren's concern about his comfort in the "cone of silence." "I was trying to hear through the walls." Motive was there, but not enough to be decisive. At the nineteen minute mark, Rev. Warren asked the question about abortion to which Sen. McCain responded he would be the "Pro-Life President" if elected. Then he asked, "Are we going to get back to the importance of Supreme Court justices?"

When I heard it Saturday night, my impression was that he was referring back to when Sen. Obama talked about the justices that he would not have nominated.

As I watched the rerun, I was not far from keeping that interpretation. But the actual words do not provide any clear alternative to his simply wanting to discuss Supreme Court nominations as part of the abortion issue.

But I still feel that McCain had time to prepare his answers and that Obama may have.

There is no question that McCain knew what he wanted to give that friendly audience.

I was not happy with his failure to answer some of the questions but inserted his talking points instead.

And I think he may have really lost the women's vote by proclaiming he is the pro-life candidate.

But it is hard to say whether or not he cheated and was not in the cone of silence.

Update: Criticism of the "debate" Saturday includes the possibility that McCain came late to the site and therefore had an opportunity to listen to the broadcast in his car as he was driven in. While he apparently went to the green room, which Rev. Warren jokingly called the "cone of silence," where the monitor in there was turned off (Rev. Warren asserted), he may have heard enough of the broadcast to have time to anticipate his own responses.

I recall that in the lead up to the broadcast, Rev. Warren said the two candidates would meet briefly at the beginning of the broadcast and then not be on stage together at any other time. It was smoother to have the two meet after Sen. Obama had concluded his turn. But if that was not the original plan, then Sen. McCain could have had a major advantage.

I hope there is a careful review of what happened.

Further update: The McCain people stated that Sen. McCain was still in his motorcade on the way to the site when the broadcast was going on.

News Media Priorities

2008-08-09T12:03:00.000-07:00

David Gregory heads up the NBC election coverage team. White House correspondent for many years, sometimes pressing good questions, Gregory also attained the respect of (was co-opted by?) the White House who had him on stage, dancing with Karl Rove, at a recent correspondents' dinner in Washington.

Gregory, showing his earnestness to cover the election scene, jumped all over the story of John Edwards' admission of an affair, and asked the question, "How will this affect the Democratic candidate's chances?"

Let's see. Former Senator Edwards admits to a brief affair. Senator McCain refuses to talk about his relationship with a young blond woman who traveled alone with him several times this past year and somehow the press has not really had an interview with her?

Well, that's not the same thing . . . .

Neither is the way the Republican members of the Senate applauded when their colleague David Vitter was welcomed back after admitting to buying the services of Washington prostitutes. . . .

No, you see, Elizabeth gained some public attention with her fight against cancer. That means the philandering of Vitter and possibly McCain are minor deals. Their consorts were not in the public eye. That changes the media's priorities.

A cardinal rule of what makes news is that it is about a significant person. Elizabeth is a significant person. David Vitter's wife and prostitutes are not. Neither was that McCain assistant.

This priority is not new.

When we lived in Louisiana, we noticed that President H. W. Bush frequently flew into New Orleans, fouling up traffic in order for his car cavalcade to make its way from the airport into the city and then later, usually the same day, back to the airport. Whomever he visited was not an important enough person for the media to report. His frequent trips were not noted in the national news.

Coincidentally, a high end house of prostitution in the Garden District was closed down. That closing made those prostitutes news. But of course, former President Bush did not visit New Orleans after that so there was no media attention.

During this flap over the Edwardses, Harriet Myers and Josh Bolton want to have a judge (a Bush appointee) postpone their appearance before Congress where like other Bush appointees, they will not remember, or will claim executive privilege, or offer some other excuse for not answering questions. Somehow they are no longer significant persons so the media hardly notices.

The Republican members of the House are trying to call the Democrats back from Congress' summer break because they say the House should pass a bill allowing off-shore drilling. They do not seem to be significant people either because their ploy is largely ignored by the media.

That's probably good because they are now claiming credit for the drop in gasoline prices which happened at the same time. Everyone knows that prices dropped because of people suddenly got serious about conserving gasoline by driving less, keeping their tires properly inflated, and buying cars that use less gasoline. And the oil companies are trying to backtrack a little after being able to brag they had after another record high profit quarter.

But then, we aren't significant persons and the oil companies are not seen by the media as significant persons so all those stories disappear behind the glare of what the media sees as news about a significant person, Elizabeth Edwards, who happens to be married to former Senator John Edwards and that spills over, in their minds, onto the Democrats' prospects in the fall election.

I guess the media's brief flirtation with reporting the truth last week was an anomoly.

Brett Favre, Gorman Thomas, and Sports

2008-08-08T11:09:00.000-07:00

Bud Lea, writer emeritus for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, made an interesting observation. He said that watching the Packers practice the day Brett left wasn't any fun.

He put his finger on one aspect of sports that we all know but often overlook. Brett is an entertainer. He may not be conscious of it but he is willing to show enthusiasm, smile, and play. Yes, I mean "play." It's all a game, really. And his style of play, whatever skills he had, didn't have, or lost, made winning and losing almost irrelevant.

That spontaneity is probably why Commissioner Goodell leaned so hard on Brett and the Packers to resolve this thing in a way that kept Brett playing as long as possible.

Those old enough to remember Gorman Thomas who played for the Brewers some years ago may also remember that the Brewers lost some of their spark when he was traded to Cleveland. "Crash," as he was sometimes called, never saw an outfield wall he felt should stop him in his effort to catch a fly ball. He was the club house clown. The Brewers smiled a lot in those days before he was traded.

Milwaukee had great crowds when he played for them. Things went south for the next couple years and the team worked out a trade that brought Gorman back.

Others will have to say whether or not his spirit perked up the team again. I was out of the state.

But any sports franchise that has an "entertainer" draws those who appreciate that kind of entertainment. The whole country appreciated Brett's kind of humor and childlikeness. Goodell is smart enough to want that kind of spirit alive and well, not only for the positive aspect of it but for the fact it counters the negative attention-grabbing stuff some players use to entertain "their" fans.

That raises two questions. 1) Will a new clubhouse clown step up and bring smiles back to the Packer lockerroom? 2) Will Favre be eaten alive by the stress of the Commissioner's expectations, especially on the East Coast stage and also after a spring and summer of little athletic training to be ready for the NFL?

We'll see. . . .

Good Luck, Brett

2008-08-06T13:17:00.000-07:00

Brett Favre is going to need all the luck he can get.

There is a real possibility that he will not be welcome in Tampa Bay or any place else right now.

I heard part of an interview on the NFL Channel with Steve Mariucci. "Mooch" is a personal friend of Brett's and called him this morning. After that forty minute talk between the two, "Mooch" called in to the TV channel. He described the group including Frank Winters, Deana, and Bus Cook sitting on the couch in Brett's Green Bay home. After Brett reported how he felt unwanted and unwilling to play for Green Bay any more because of the hurt, "Mooch" said to him, "You need to get off your butt and get to training."

He said Brett laughed and said, "You want me to start running down the street here with the neighbor kids running along like Rocky Balboa?"

I confess to not remembering how "Mooch" responded. I was so struck by that response that my brain went numb. "Yes!" I wanted to yell at Brett. "That's exactly what a champion is willing to do if he really cares about getting in shape. You have to start somewhere!"

I do wish I had listened to find out what "Mooch" did. How do you tell a good friend who has spoken to you whenever you needed something for the NFL network that he needed to grow up and get his butt in gear if he wanted to be a professional athlete?

Brett now has to live with the attitude he has taken. Maybe Jon Gruden can to get through to him.

I suspect Brett is looking for a coach who will let him have his way as he did under Mike Sherman. I do not think that is "Chuckie," who has a stinger nearly every player who has been coached by him has felt at one time or another. That may be why Ted Thompson was unable to do the press conference this morning. Gruden may have talked to Brett and discovered what so many of us have seen, a lack of commitment to do the work it now takes to be an NFL quarterback.

He either will have to be lucky to get to play with another team or he will have to get real.

If he gets real, he will return to the Packers, put aside his hurt against Ted Thompson and anyone else who told him he was no longer prepared to work professionally, go to work to get into playing shape, start at the bottom, and be ready to play when the chance comes along.

I do not know what lucky thing will happen to bring about that result. Whatever that would be, I wish it for Brett.

Good Old Harry

2008-08-05T16:25:00.000-07:00

A friend received the following from a friend so I can't vouch for its accuracy. But I sure like it. I heard him speak and the quotes in this essay sound just like him. If you can verify any of it, let me know. Thanks.

-----

When President Truman retired from office in 1952, his income was substantially a U. S. Army pension, $13,507.72 a year.

Congress, noting that he was paying for his stamps and personally licking them, granted him an allowance and, later, a retroactive pension of $25,000 per year.

When offered corporate positions at large salaries, he declined, stating, "You don't want me. You want the office of the president, and that doesn't belong to me. It belongs to the American people and it's not for sale."

On May 6, 1971, when Congress was preparing to award him the Medal of Honor on his 87th birthday, he refused to accept it, writing, "I don't consider that I have done anything which should be the reason for any award, Congressional or otherwise."

Today, many in Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, have found a way to become quite wealthy while enjoying the fruits of their offices. Political offices are now clearly for sale.

Was good old Harry correct when he observed, "My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference anymore. I, for one, believe the piano player to be much more honorable than many current politicians."

Too bad we can't come up with someone like Harry today.

Propaganda

2008-08-01T10:32:00.000-07:00

A friend sent me a copy of a letter circulating through e-mails that makes Obama look bad. Here, in part, is what it says:

Hello everyone,

As you know I am not a very political person. I just wanted to pass along that Senator Obama came to Bagram Afghanistan for about an hour on his visit to 'The War Zone'. I wanted to share with you what happened. He got off the plane and got into a bullet proof vehicle, got to the area
to meet with the Major General (2 Star) who is the commander here at Bagram. As the Soldiers where lined up to shake his hand he blew them off and didn't say a word as he went into the conference room to meet the General. As he finished, the vehicles took him to the ClamShell (pretty much a big top tent that military personnel can play basketball or work out in with weights) so he could take his publicity pictures playing basketball. He again shunned the
opportunity to talk to Soldiers to thank them for their service.

It was almost that he was scared to be around those that provide the freedom for him and our great country.

What you see in the news is all fake.

In service,
CPT Jeffrey S. Porter
Battle Captain
TF Wasatch
American Soldier

Really sounds plausible and looks authentic to the average reader.

But you may also have spotted a few things that should raise questions as to its veracity.

1. You know the press was on top of the Obama trip to see if this greenhorn would make any gaffes. The one time they made a fuss was over his not talking to the troops at the German hospital. They never mentioned his walking past soldiers in Bagram. In addition, I remember seeing Obama shaking hands with lots of soldiers.

2. "You know that I am not political." I don't know that at all. I do not know the man who signed this letter. Add to it that he feels it necessary to include "American Soldier" at the end, so it seems like he is "protesting too much." That makes me uncomfortable.

3. He closes with a classic line, "What you see in the news is all fake." He is trying to make you disbelieve what you may have seen with your own eyes. Oh we must "test every spirit" but we must also test the spirit of this writer!

The plausibility of this story is that visiting dignitaries often are there for photo ops and cut out everything in between. Part of that is the tight schedule and part is security.

But the realitry is that no one else reports the events the way this letter writer does.

Okay, so I've picked up on a few things that are more like propaganda than a true letter.

There are at least three places you can check to see if this letter has a history that has been checked for being factual: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/, http://www.vil.mcafee.com/hoaxasp/, and http://www.urbanlegends.about.com/. There are others.

Check to see if they will fact-check something you can send them.

I also received an e-mail from a dear friend that showed ANWR in gorgeous pictures which included a bear walking on an oil pipeline and all kinds of elk on oil fields in another part of Alaska. The claim was that ANWR would hardly be touched and that the current kind of oil extraction programs are immensely wildlife friendly.

It was persuasive until I noticed no credits given to the photographers. Then I remembered "photoshopping," the simple technique where with your computer you can move items in one picture into another. That bear picture began to look phony. And finally, no one took credit for putting together this sophisticated piece of work. It was unsigned.

Propaganda looks very plausible. But it usually tries to cover its tracks so it is hard to blame the ones who did it or to really check back.

I don't always document every source for my opinions. That puts this blog on the verge of being propaganda!

But at least you know who wrote it and can challenge me.

Feel free!

-----

From the first comment:

"I also suggest www.snopes.com to test the validity of such emails."

Out in 16 months?

2008-07-31T12:56:00.000-07:00

I'm against the occupation. I believe the only reason we are still in Iraq is because the Administration wants to get rights to Iraqi oil.

The Iraqis are smart enough to wait till we withdraw before settling their regional differences over oil revenues.

So maybe in 16 months, we will have withdrawn over 100,000 troops, leaving 10,000 to 15,000 for special ops and training and guarding the most expensive American embassy ever built anywhere!

I'm thinking most of them should also be out but I'm open to considering need for some very modest presence.

I'm open to allowing those troops who are working as volunteers on schools, hospitals, etc. to be able to be there, preferably under some international charity group auspices.

But the ones I really think need to leave as soon as possible are the 150,000 contract soldiers, mercenaries hired by Halliburton, Blackwater, and all the other corporations that won no bid contracts to provide security paid for by US taxpayers . . . at ten times per person the cost of enlisted US military personnel!

No one talks about them. And they are the ones under the least control and are most hated in Iraq. THEY REPRESENT THE U. S. in the eyes of the Iraqis as much as our regular military.

Get them out of Iraq.

The Mainstream Media takes another look

2008-07-31T12:35:00.000-07:00

Maybe the real journalists finally talked back to their producers. Maybe the advertisers spoke up to the executives. Maybe the Bush-McCain messages have finally become so unreal that even Republican-sympathizers among media circles are offended. Maybe the liberal blogosphere is finally being heard and supported more than the mainstream media.

Or, maybe the reality of the Obama change is finally sinking in and the corporations are wanting not to be on his bad side.

They know what it is like to get on the bad side of the Bush Administration. They are seeing what it is to be in the bad side of McCain. Now they may actually hope that Obama will win, knowing they will then have less to fear in terms of retaliation.

Now if only the Jim Adkissons of the world (the folks who think it is open season on anything liberal, even Unitarians), can somehow be reached and dissuaded from fulfilling the fantasies of O'Reilly, Limbaugh, and some of the other outspoken commentators. . . .

"Big Men Avoid War"

2008-07-21T16:50:00.000-07:00

In a review of a new book about the Cuban Missile Crisis, Jackie Kennedy Onassis is quoted as saying, “Small men start wars. Big men avoid them.”

The reference, of course, was to the decisions made when the Russians were shipping missiles to Cuba.

At the time, America had a major strategic advantage over the USSR with its missiles and atomic warheads. There were several key military leaders who felt that if we attempted a pre-emptive war with the reds, we’d easily win.

President Kennedy asked what would happen if even one Russian missile made it through. He was told that it would mean a half million deaths. He is said to have responded, “We lost that many during the Civil War a hundred years ago and the nation still has not recovered.”

He chose not to go with his military leaders.

He found some US missiles in Turkey that America had promised to remove years before but the military had dragged its feet. When he negotiated with Secretary Kruschev, he was able to “swap” missiles in Turkey for missiles in Cuba. Both men knew this was a face saving agreement but they knew it was used it for the larger goal of avoiding the deaths of millions of people.

It was to this decision that Jackie was speaking.

The impact of her words on me were very relevant to what I see in our rush to war in Iraq. Did our President ask how many people could be killed if we undertook the war? Would he have considered the Iraqis who would die? Did anyone anticipate the estimated million Iraqis killed and injured because of our invasion, many the “collateral damage” resulting from our military actions?

If no one had that foresight, it does not matter. Iraqis will not forget.

Big men avoid wars.

A Proud American

2008-07-18T06:31:00.000-07:00

(With acknowledgment and thanks to anthropologist Ralph Linton’s 1936 book THE STUDY OF MAN and French writer Sigrid Hunke's “Le soleil d'Allah Brille sur L'occident: Notre Héritage Arabe" which means “God’s Sun Shines on the West, Our Arab Heritage").

Ginger Shaw, a busy mother born and raised in Cairo (known by everyone who lives there as “Kay-Ro” though named after the ancient Arab capital city of Egypt), Illinois, was slow to roll off her damask ("demashk," a colorful fabric invented in Damascus) -covered mattress (“matrah,” developed by nomadic tribes in what is now the Arabian peninsula) . She put on her satin ("sataan", a silky and shiny cloth devised in an ancient Arab domain now in Northern Syria) robe, and wandered into her breakfast nook where she took a cup of coffee ("cahwa", made of coffee beans called "Arabica" and grown for thousands of years in Yemen) with one sugar ("sukkar" first grown in the Jordan Valley and refined into brown sugar in Palestine), sipped it leisurely as she sat on her ottoman ("othman", a comfortable stool that originated in Turkey and aptly named after the Ottomans) covered with Moroccan leather. She was careful not to spill her orange (imported plants from China and domesticated in the plains around Jaffa, the City of Oranges in Palestine) juice on her Persian (designed and made for hundreds of years in what is now Iran) carpet. She next helped herself to a glass (first made over thousands of years ago in Palestine) of water.

She wanted to prepare a nice meal for her friend who was coming at midday. She had chosen a capon (roosters first neutered in Egypt for the purpose of turning them tender and plump), rice ("ruzz" domesticated in Indonesia and South China and imported into the Middle East by Arab traders thousands of years before European traders discovered it), and spinach ("sabanegh" , its Arab ancestry is so old it is common all over the Middle East) with an artichoke (domesticated and grown along the Fertile Crescent from Iran through Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon to Palestine and whose Arabic name "Ardi chokeh" means "spiny ground fruit") salad. She thought a little saffron ("zaafaran" a common Arabian delicate spice also used as a dye) would add a touch of color to the rice. Cumin ("cammun" first used in what is now Palestine long before the Christian era) would spice up the capon a bit. And dessert would be apricot (first grown in Persia) tarts with Pistacchios ('pfustuk" first grown near Aleppo in Northern Syria) and a spoonful of orange sorbet ("sherbet" invented in Jaffa, Palestine) on the side. Lovely, she thought.

She took a few minutes to check the algebra ("al jabr", a form of mathemetics expanded upon by Arab scholars between 523 and 1300 AD) assignments her ninth grade daughter had completed. She also checked the logarithm ("al-khawarism," invented by Arab mathematicians during that same era, the mathematical language still used in advanced mathematics and computer analysis) assignment that her twelfth grade son asked her to go over before he turned it in.

She looked at the astrology (a study of the interplay of stars – astronomy which was developed and originally used by sailors in Iraq and the Gulf States -- and human life, established and widely used by Arab astronomers) section of the morning paper to see what to expect for her day.

The paper’s headlines spoke of troubles in the Middle East and Ginger ("zanjabil" also a plant root used as a spice first domesticated in what is now Yemen and Southern Saudi Arabia) thanked God (who, alone among a number of deities the Hebrews worshiped in the Arab wilderness, chose them to be His people) that she had nothing in common with those people and was one hundred percent American.

(Special thanks to Hasan Hammami, Sid Glaser, and Bob Grumman for information and editorial ideas.)

Dear Brett

2008-07-15T05:34:00.000-07:00

Dear Brett,

Remember that we love you dearly. We hope this kafuffle passes quickly.

As you said when you retired in March, you were having difficulty psyching up for the preparations to play. You were clear that Sundays would be something you could get excited about. And you said you expected to get the urge to return as the season approached. You and Deana talked at length. In March, you knew that to be the player you have been, it would take more than you could give.

You brought the rest of the country along with the pain of having to admit you were no longer able to do the whole job. You knew that on Sundays, you would miss the excitement, the camaraderie, the challenge. We saw the old fire horse raring to go when the bell rang, but whose will might not be counted upon the rest of the time. We wanted the best for you and retirement seemed like it was the best for you and for your family. We cried when you gave us your final word. We hoped you’d find something satisfying to be your new vocation.

Now you are telling us you really wanted to play all along and that you were pressured to retire,

If you were serious about coming back, you as a pro would have been working out very hard for the last two months, not just going over to the high school once in awhile. Think about what the other players have been doing. To do less would be to let them down.

If you were serious about coming back, you and your agent would have done the paperwork to retire to end your contractual ties to the Packers or to seek reinstatement through the commissioner’s office.

I wish it didn’t look this way but blaming the Packer organization for pressuring you, grousing about decisions the Packers made that went against your opinions, and asking for release sound more like sour grapes than a reality-based decision.

Here’s what I wished you’d have done:

1. Come back to Wisconsin for the charity softball game and golf outing.

2. Hung around during the voluntary training activities, working out with the guys.

3. Sat in on meetings with the new quarterbacks.

4. Accepted the role as elder statesman and accepted Aaron Rodgers in the number one role.

5. Asked for reinstatement if you felt at home doing the above.

6. Been willing to accept the possibility that the team might not need you unless there was a catastrophic injury to Aaron and accept returning to whatever status the team could pull you off of quickly in case of emergency.

7. Faced the fact that your iron-man record is ended and that you no longer bear the load of central player.

8. Faced the fact that Randy Moss gamed you into thinking he’d come to Green Bay but was really planning to get as much out of the Patriots as he could.

Here’s what would have happened:

All fans would be glad to have you around again along with the few who can’t get it through their heads that you have gotten older.

You’d have the fellowship of being a part of the team.

Because the life of a quarterback is so tenuous in light of the sophisticated defenses and athletic players, you would be on the field for those times Aaron goes down.

You would still have some moments when you make plays (I’m 73 and I can still shoot baskets and defend players bigger than me . . . though full court play is not possible yet as I recuperate from my latest physical setback!).

But there will be days when you wished you had stayed retired. The cold gets colder as we age (we moved to the south to get away from it!).

And you might find a new role to play as Rob Davis did. You might make the transition from player to coach or administrator over time.

We know you can thrive under coaching as you showed since Mike McCarthy came, even if you found it harder work than you had during the period between Mike Holmgren and McCarthy. Maybe another coach and another team will not push you the way the two Mikes did but you would never play as well, either.

Finally, you’ve told us that your dad insisted that you be a team player. If you want to be around the team and if you are willing to be a role player, good things will happen. But if you forget that, the chances are you will not regain your full potential ever again, no matter how pumped you are right now, no matter where you’d get to play.

We hope you find your way through this that is a credit to you and your family.

Respectfully,

Jerry

Caregivers' Psalm

2008-07-13T12:23:00.000-07:00

How can one smile watching a loved one wanting to die?
Perhaps not consciously wanting -- but an innate desire to "go home."
The Life Everlasting beckons --
The Earthly one cries, "Enough!"

And so it is with her. "I'm 88," she whispers. "Let me go!"
God quietly intervenes.
"I make the call. I'm the One Who gives. I'm the One Who takes.
You have miles to go, to serve, to do good."
What do you know of the future, of My plans?
You may have an old man to bury, to bid farewell --
Then Paradise will accept you both."

This is as it is written:
The Caregiver awaits you and you shall dwell together in the House of the Lord forever.

Art Davis
Copyright - used with permission

Those Limping Methodists

2008-07-11T07:40:00.001-07:00

California's high court challenges the USA with respect to marrying of homosexual couples. Two United Methodist Annual Conferences challenge the UMC by supporting homosexual marriages and seeking no sanctions against over sixty retired clergy who are willing to violate church law to marry Gay and Lesbian partners.

In an article for United Methodist News Service by Marta Aldrich, the two approaches to the issue are clearly drawn. On the one side which the conferences have affirmed is the view that our image as an open Church requires pastoral sensitivity to the experience of the love between same-sex partners. The other side says that Scriptures are clear about the practice of homosexuality being against God's will.

The basic argument between the two sides is no less resolved on the national church level. The General Conference affirmed both in its quadrennial meeting in Fort Worth in late April.

The supporters of the authority of Scripture argue that 98% of world Methodists are against same-sex marriage. Those supporting such legal bonds say they find it hard to take seriously those who choose only some Scripture to be taken literally and others to be interpreted in other ways.

One anti-Gay marriage proponent reminds us through the Aldrich article that the issue seems to lay in the experience of the "pro" group but that there are three other grounds to examine an issue, Scripture, tradition, and reason.

General Conference was offered a resolution from the "Reason" approach but rejected it. In essence, the resolution (yes, it was mine) described how modern science has determined there are some genetic grounds for homosexuality to exist and some research showing that hormonal conditions of a mother at birth strongly determine the sexual orientation of her sons. If we are willing to accept this new scientific evidence, then we must admit that some homosexuals are God-made.

Social scientists have long known of how different cultures have dealt with homosexuals, many having good ways to integrate homosexual relationships (one being the "birdache" system among Native American tribes).

Social scientists have also observed that some homosexuality has its basis in psychological or socialogical pressures (such as needing to be "homosexual" in order to gain access to certain levels of some specialty vocations). So some homosexuality is man-made.

Since the Church has ministry to all, there really is no reason to be saying one side or the other is right.

Both sides have to look at what they have to offer to the various kinds of homosexuals.

The General Conference voted against a resolution which would have granted respect for two different views. Maybe when the science (Reason) is given its appropriate respect, we will move away from the kinds of fear and antagonism generated especially by those who are against same-sex unions of any sort and toward loving our neighbors as ourselves.

Barak, Barak, Barak!

2008-07-09T19:19:00.000-07:00

They have you turning into a Washington insider!

Your dream of being a different kind of politician is dissipating into becoming a proclaimer of positions from which you will have a hard time backing away. That allows your opponents to back you into corners and disturbs those who have been your friend.

Do you actually believe there are a lot of women who wait until the last two weeks of their pregnancy and then on a whim go for a late term abortion? I hope Hilary and Michelle and any other intelligent woman who knows you has gotten on your case big time!

You almost make a save by bringing in the concern for the medical necessity to save the mother with which nearly everyone agrees. But you let the questioner or your opponent or your advisors put forward something that is so unlikely that it is an urban myth.

Those ultra-conservatives who believe in welfare queens and careless abortions won't vote for you anyway! But now you are stuck with a public statement of policy which makes you sound like a wingnut.

That's the problem. Old time politics is made up making pronouncements. You've already had to go back and try to clear up something you just said a few hours before. Try not to let anyone set you up to make you have to do that.

If you have to do that, I appreciate it that you take responsibility yourself instead of letting someone else cover a mistake and speak for you.

But as I understand your basic political mode, it is to consult with those who know something about the concern, including the victims, practitioners, opponents, students, and scholars as well as politicians before making a decision.

Your best opinions on complex issues cannot possibly be formed in 95% of the areas you are being questioned about! Who cares about your damned opinion!

I know you can't put off all statements until you've had a chance to consult across the board and across the aisle. But you can at least leave us hopeful that you have not absolutely made up your mind on more than just a few very basic things, like knowing you don't yet have a full set of information on most things!

And that you cannot see the Iraq occupation continuing any longer than the safety of our troops and of those Iraqis who need to come out with us allows.

And that you can provide your fundamental principles without necessarily prejudging the best solutions.

All the folks who wish they were President want desperately to be able to make other people take their opinions, whether fully informed or not, as the last word. The current President thinks he is the decider. And no one really pays any attention to him any more, not even himself.

That is the "old" politics which allows for partisanship which tears apart the government.

Don't fall into that mental trap!

A philosophy professor once said to our class, "How do you know what you'd know if you knew what you don't know?"

Be cool. Be humble Be open. Don't let us feel like you've already made up your mind on things we know are really tough. Tell us your starting point but be careful not to tell us your last word on anything but the most basic things important to you and about which you really do know! If you really do know, then teach us so we understand how you got there, as you did on the issue of race.

Oh yeah, it would be great if you do that on any other major decision you have to make, preferably before you set that decision in stone.

Temptation to have to offer your opinions on everything is a power game you must avoid.

Caregiver's Lament

2008-07-08T17:50:00.000-07:00

Our favorite poet, Art Davis, takes care of his wife full time nowadays. They are a devoted couple. Even while she is trying to recuperate from a number of things, operations and infections, she noticed that since she was going to be under the care of a therapist, he was free to come to writers' group. It's the first time since mid-March he felt he could attend.

Here is what he shared with us:

Days trudge down to uneasy calm.
Night arrives draped in fear of what might happen - -
based upon what has happened.
How I long for unfettered sleep.....
The sun sets again upon the undone.
The moon rises,
red from the warming,
Dimly lights my place,
this spit of sand.

The one I've loved so long
sleeps fitfully.
A body racked by age and Rx's.
Systems confused and dosed
by Science's fiction.
The night is kidnapped once again
by Dawn--relentless the routine.
The loved one awakes --
the one upon whom I shower care.
The one who reacts in temper to the
"Please Dear do's and don't's."
My admonitions, attempted guidance.
Questioning, "Who prescribed,
Who said that?"
Of what reward is this?

The battles of therapy
continues unabated.
Therapy the enemy.
Pills the dwarfs of repair.
The caregiver, ever the necessary evil.
The bane of days--Vigilante 24/7.

Visitors visit. Prayers vented.
Love brings sustenance.
Mail brings love.
The Children come,
Bless them each.
They bring gifts, do things,
make decisions.
They cook, they clean, they depart.
The caregiver remains, to wonder,
fear, mop, launder, cook -- HA!
react to every sigh,
every move, as the past is recalled.....

Sleep still eludes each glue-footed moment -- every one.

Searching the clouds I pray -- mutely ask God,
"Have you heard my prayers?"
From what I've been told of God--
I suspect His answer would be,
"Why else are you courting another day to care, to love, to hope?"

5/30/08
Copyright- Art Davis

Republicaniztion of the media

2008-07-05T10:54:00.000-07:00

After Tom Brokaw retired, I was not surprised to see Brian Williams take his chair on the NBC Nightly News. He had good ratings in MSNBC's 9 pm news and commentary slot. I was not real happy, though, because I found I could not watch him very long before seeing him ignore information and stories that put Republicans in a bad light. So I stayed away from NBC for news.

I thought that Peter Jennings was solid as a newscaster, and, like Tom Brokaw, had been even-handed, as far as I could tell. I usually watched Dan Rather but would switch to Jennings during special events because ABC was less repetitive in what they presented. Between the two, I felt I was getting a fair picture of the event.

But Jennings retired and Charlie Smith took over. It wasn't long before he sounded more like a Fox newsman than a true successor to Peter Jennings. I haven't watched ABC for any news since.

I stuck with Katie Couric after she took the Rather chair. I thought she was more fair about the news than any other network except PBS.

Then she had to take vacation (I do not know why she began to be away from the news desk so often . . . I presumed some was to be on assignment but I kept hearing "Katie is off tonight.")

She had been refused more time for her broadcasts (an hour was longer than CBS wanted to let her have) and so she had even less time to do the human stuff she is so good at as well as solid news which she also does well, I think. The ratings didn't agree with me.

She missed doing the news frequently this psta week or so. Harry Smith, the morning guy, took most of the nights and, like his "brother" Charlie, was more like Fox than anything. It was hard for me to listen to his ignoring things that I thought were common knowledge in order to spin the news in an unbalanced and unfair way. I couldn't wait for Russ Mitchel, who I have always trusted to be straight and solid.

But he is starting to slant things in ways I've never heard him do before. I got to wondering who writes for these people, the Republican Natiuonal Committee?

Obviously this is an opinion piece and not a documented statement. If I could have taped, transcribed, and then offered those moments when I felt betrayed by these otherwise admirable journalists, then you could see what I'm taking about.

Just watch for yourself. Watch to see if the texts they read ignore the real activities and voting record of John McCain and see how they keep finding fault with Barak Obama without providing the full context of Obama's words or actions.

It seems to me that something is happening beyond the media just trying to be sure there is a "horse race" in November to spur people's interest in watching their respective newscasts. Are the corporations that own the big three networks clamping down on their news departments? Do the former good guys have to now be good "soldiers" for their bosses?

How long will the news people with integrity last? Where will they work after they have been either discredited or "let go" in some kind of staff reorganization or programming reshuffle?

I wonder how long Jon Stewart and Stphen Colbert will last . . . .

The tragedy, of course, is that the networks are losing credibility just at a time when their honesty and truthfulness are most needed. They blew it when the Bush war machine rolled over Colin Powell and the rest of the country. Only Couric admitted she missed opportunities to follow up while Williams and Smith both claimed they did not fail in their duty as premier newscasters. Will they blow it as the Iraqi war winds down (hopefully!) and the elections draw near? Or will they rediscover integrity?

Memorial Day

2008-05-25T18:50:00.000-07:00

Andy Rooney gave a moving statement about Memorial Day on “60 Minutes” tonight.

I was very much open to something after attending church this morning where the pastor thought he was celebrating Memorial Day by quoting from a Pentagon officer about Memorial Day.

Andy said that the holiday celebrates bravery in one of the worst of humankind’s practices: war.

He said he didn’t need a holiday to remember the ones he knew during the war he covered as a correspondent. Those memories were always with him.

He concluded that what he wanted for a national holiday was a celebration of those who found better ways to resolve disputes by peaceful means.

Amen!

To see what he said, go to the following URL:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/26/60minutes/rooney/main697964.shtml

General Conference ping

2008-04-20T06:48:00.000-07:00

I plan to blog daily from Fort Worth,TX, where the United Methodist Church is carrying on its quadrennial "ecumenical council."

The content will be oriented around what goes on there and what I wish would happen! Consider following my observations at http.//aiateam.blogspot.com.

I'll ping you if I do anything for this one.

"Patriotism and the Pulpit" by Rev. Jack Copas

2008-03-28T06:47:00.000-07:00

My friend Jack has put together a very helpful response to the Rev. Wright flap being used to counter Senator Obama's presidential campaign. Jack doesn't take sides, unless one thinks that challenging someone's thinking is partisan. Here are his thoughts:

The latest news these days about our Presidential election comes from a most unlikely arena. Barack Obama has been roundly criticized for sermons his pastor, The Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, preached in the pulpit of the Trinity United Church of Christ. This really intrigued me because I have been criticized a time or two for preaching sermons people strongly disagreed with. Yet to the best of my knowledge no one in any church I have ever served has ever been held accountable for words I said. Some reporters even asked Senator Obama why he still attends that church since he repudiated what his pastor said. Some said he waited too long to distance himself from Dr. Wright. The reason people were so angry about what Dr. Wright said was his words were perceived to be a direct assault on The United States of America. Our traditional definition of patriotism was being challenged and folks get mighty testy over that subject.

When I first heard about this story I thought it was amazing the media was so focused on some minister’s sermon and whether what he said could have some reflection on Senator Obama’s candidacy. This sounded like lunacy to me because Dr. Wright’s statements had nothing to do with Barack Obama. I felt the same way about this controversy as I did when two other prominent ministers endorsed John McCain for President. One of them said the Roman Catholic Church was a “whore” religion and the other pastor said as Christians we must kill all Muslims. Astoundingly that minister even gave some Scriptural references to make his points. My point here is that neither John McCain nor Barack Obama should be held accountable for the statements of preachers who support them no matter what comes out of their pulpits. Why? Because as United Methodists we believe in two things. One is called “free will”. You have the freedom to decide in your own mind and heart how much (if any) of the pastor’s sermon is something you believe in or agree with. Your faith journey is yours alone to walk. The other is freedom of the pulpit which means pastors are free to make prophetic pronouncements at their own peril without requiring the congregation to go along with them.

How you would feel if people asked you why you still attend this church because of words I may have happened to preach in our pulpit? Is the church all about the minister? What about other reasons you belong to church? What about your church family and the nurture you give to each other? If you were married in this sanctuary and if your children were baptized here would you simply walk out if the current minister preached what you felt was an inflammatory sermon?

One thing is for sure after all is said and done - nobody can ever accuse Barack Obama of being a Muslim anymore. He has been a member of that United Church of Chist congregation for more than twenty years.

The reason I feel this controversy is important is because of the way we define the role of “religion” in politics. Let’s face it, we won’t dare elect an atheist to the Presidency and we have equal intolerance of anyone who asks God to “damn America”. We tend to gravitate to preachers who fuse together our national pride with our faith in God. There are no politicians worth their soul who do not usually end their speeches with the phrase “God Bless America." Yet I recall Sinclair Lewis predicting this jolting forecast: “When fascism comes to this country it will be wrapped in a flag carrying a cross!”

I suppose we would all agree that patriotism in and of itself is a good thing and we should encourage people to take pride in this country, right? Of course it is except when our love of this nation blinds us from self-reflection. As Christians we are not called to merely praise our country and reap the harvest of our national bounty. If that were true then we could say “lucky us being born into wealth and privilege and too bad for those unlucky Mexicans or Cubans or Haitians trying to get here. But if they get here we will hire them off the books."

There is a danger in believing that we are entitled to living lives people all over the world can only dream of living. And there is an even greater danger of practicing historical amnesia when we have to answer for how we attained all these things. I read an article that said the United States is on the verge of economic collapse and Godless China is poised to become the new superpower of the world. How would that sit with you?

So what exactly is the role of “religion” in our nation? Well one thing I know is that the Church gives up its authority when it only blesses the established order. Many ministers who have chosen to cozy up to power lose their ability to remain objective. Pulpits all across America are supposed to critique our government leaders and the Gospel requires us to speak truth to power. The Church is not some social organization that has gone mainstream. We must confront powerful sources that cause powerlessness and remind America of what real patriotism is and, more importantly, what it is not!

Personally I grieve over the shallowness of our national pride. The selfish rhetoric about the greatness of our country pales in comparison to the atrocities we have committed throughout the world. Instead of trying to live up to what we stand for as a nation we defend our torturing and we never admit when we are wrong. I doubt I would ask God to “damn America” but I am asking God to “help America” recognize its own arrogance. We have been guilty as a nation of the very things we claim to oppose. Claiming to defend liberty, we have trampled on innocent people trying to enhance our prosperity. We can’t stand for high moral ethics when our national behavior contradicts our words. People all over the world hate America not because they are jealous of our freedoms or what we value. They hate us because we hurt them. I am anxious when the world views my country as an imperial bully whose foreign policy is designed to taunt its enemies.

Few people want to hear sermons that challenge us to live up to the true meaning of our creeds. On the other hand, we all want our country to stand for nobility and honor. We want our leaders to find new peace initiatives to work with hated neighbors and we demand that our leaders stop lying to us. We want our country to actually be the land of the free and the home of the brave. And when our country displays itself to be less than that we must call it to account and make the necessary changes for it to be so. Real patriotism settles for nothing less. It takes a lot of courage to preach a sermon like that.

I love The United States of America and cherish the Constitution we uphold. But, like Dr. Wright, I must express outrage in the pulpit if my country demonstrates conduct that contradicts that very same Constitution. And all ministers must exercise their prophetic call to encourage this country to live up to its own principles. Real patriotism is much more than waving a flag and reciting the pledge of allegiance. Real patriotism for the people "of" God is when we work for justice, when we hunger for peace, when we share our blessings, when we love mercy, and when we walk humbly "with" our God. That is what I think of when I hear Kate Smith sing “God Bless America”.

Grace and peace,

The Rev. Jack M. Copas, D-Min.
Pastor

Science and the Bible

2008-03-27T13:12:00.001-07:00

My friend handed me an article on how NASA scientists proved two miracles in the Bible. He got it on the internet. The article said one scientist who tried to calculate exactly where a space probe needed to be to go into orbit around a distant planet kept coming up with the wrong figures despite his best computer work.

“The problem,” he told a colleague, “is that when I use calculations based on time, I’m off by over a day.” Time he needed to account for went back at least eight millennia in order to establish the distance and location of the planet.

The colleague, according to the story, said the solution to the anomaly was in the Bible, two places where the sun and stars operated erratically. When those hours were entered into the calculations, the scientist was finally able to successfully conclude his calculations.

My friend was so pleased to give the story to me because it proved to him that the Bible could be taken literally, miracles included.

When I had a chance, I checked a website that researches urban legends (www.about.com) where I learned the story was a variation on one written in the 1930s about an event in 1890 where a mathematician could not solve a different problem until he took into account the two Bible stories. The scientists who had been named in each story did not happen to have any witnesses to the conversations and the respective colleagues had both died. Notes on the respective calculations had also not been kept. NASA scientists, when asked about the story, said they never needed to use past time in any of the calculations they do because they work with current speed and direction of their targets to anticipate their future locations.

My friend’s “proof” was based on stories which themselves had no corroboration.

I got the article on Monday. The Friday before, the newspaper carried a story from Associated Press in which the writer pointed out a place where science and the Bible agreed. The article opened with a paraphrase of “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” The writer then described several experiments where people were asked to rate their degree of happiness and then were asked about the use of their incomes. Those who spent about 7 percent or more of their incomes on others (gifts to family and friends plus gifts to charities) tended to be the most happy and those who spent only on their own needs and wants were the least.

I think my friend missed an opportunity to make his point in a better way, one I could agree with, and one that would not be debunked as an urban legend.

But I rarely hear from evangelical friends about how social sciences support many religious concepts in the area of compassion, forgiveness, and other matters of human relations. That kind of science doesn’t seem to carry any weight for those bent on proving the Bible is true.

When “science” is touted as proving Biblical stories that are only about events, how strange is that? But real science is ignored or, as in the issue of evolution, is condemned when it is more successful describing reality than the Bible.

What keeps me from getting all upstrung about it is this: more important than what they say or believe is how they act. And how I act as well.

It’s by our fruits that we’ll finally be judged.

"Let There Be Peace on Earth"

2008-03-22T08:25:00.000-07:00

In this morning's paper, a local gentleman wrote in the "Letters to the Editor" section his appreciation for the opening of a new mosque in our town. He wished them well and had a couple suggestions for them. This is my response.

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Dear Editor,

I’m sorry I missed Alan Levin at the inauguration of the new mosque. We left right after the ceremony to work on our house where a water pipe broke under the slab.

I find Mr. Levin’s concept for the mosque’s members to be an opening for discussion. He suggests that they seek to end contributions to those minority groups in the Middle East that prevent freedom for women and non-Muslims and that they seek to change the educational systems in those countries to train children for productive work rather than for martyrdom.

I admire his hope that a group that small (I saw about fifty men, women, and children among their participants) could begin such a movement.

Our church has only a few more members. Our Muslim friends should call on us to cut off funding for radical Christian groups who hate Catholics, Jews, and all other people not of their persuasion and to make sure that all home schooling and Christian academies teach real politics instead of the kind that feels American militaristic imperialism is God’s will.

My church should ask Mr. Levin’s synagogue to seek to end funding to those Zionist groups that have led Israel to subject Palestinians to apartheid and that we should urge Israeli schools to teach that they are to be a blessing to the nations in order to deserve any God-given land rather than operate as the only ones with a right to the land.

Smaller groups than ours have provided the impetus to begin such movements.

We sing a song at the end of every Sunday service, “Let There Be Peace on Earth . . . And Let It Begin with Me.”

Let it begin with us all.

Favre and Moss

2008-03-04T08:32:00.000-08:00

Word is out that Brett Favre has retired. His agent thinks Brett could have and wanted to play one more season. The timing of the announcement of his retirement was within hours of Randy Moss re-signing with the Patriots after letting out word that he was serious about playing with Brett and the Packers.

Randy Moss strikes again.

I think the man is poison. He was "flirting" with the Packers last year just enough to get Brett to take him seriously before Moss signed with the Patriots knowing he would have many more years with Tom Brady than he would with Brett Favre. The minute he got Favre to go public about his disappointment that Moss wasn't picked up by the Packers, Moss set in motion a ploy that got played out this year. By again flirting with the Packers and Favre, he got the better deal with the Patriots that he wanted. He didn't want to come to Green Bay. He knew there was maybe a year left in Brett's tank. But Moss is good for several more years.

The sad part is that Brett seemed to believe Moss. And that is such a shame.

Democratic Presidential Debates

2008-02-28T14:22:00.000-08:00

Barak Obama is different.

I watched the debate the other night and saw something I rarely see among those debating for political office. He listened and gave credit for points well made. He even admitted a mistake no one had considered bringing up.

In contrast, Senator Clinton seemed to need to be defensive of her points, never admitting that Senator Obama might have been right on something.

One could say that he is using a calculated device meant to hide his inadequacies compared to more experienced debaters and politicians.

I’m not even sure I should have offered that view of what Dr. Obama did. It is really quite cynical. Cynicism is easy in this day of politicians who say one thing (e. g. “family values” devotees who actually have been caught in sexual misbehaviors and crimes) and do another. Hypocrisy reigns . . . sometimes.

What we as citizens need to do is pay attention, get more information (not cherry-picked by ourselves or our favorite news sources), and see what makes the most sense before we make an opinion.

The more I think about what I saw, the more I think that Professor Obama is acting out in the debates what he says he will do as President and what he says he has done as a state and senatorial legislator: listen, take the best of what he is told by another, and give it credence by taking it into his current position. He doesn’t just accept anything. He stands up to what he sees as errors. But he doesn’t slash and burn in response. He tries to lay out why he has taken the position he has.

In the next President of the United States, we desperately need someone who does not feel s/he has to be right. We desperately need someone who understands why s/he thinks the way s/he does and presents those facts and ideas as an opportunity for others to see, respond, recognize common ground, and want to keep trying to come to a workable agreement.

That bodes well for a kind of Presidency that will bring people together. When someone pays attention and listens to you, you feel a lot better about working with that person.

Based on the way he has conducted himself in these debates, I believe Barak Obama will learn very quickly what the various sides of a problem and possible solutions are and maintain respect for those who are honest with him so that he can work with them to develop a reasonable resolution.

And if he is willing to listen to the experts who differ with his advisors, he will not fall into the trap most of the rest of us do, thinking we are on the right track and don’t need to listen to other alternatives.

Finally, for my purposes in this essay, add to that way of operating the fact that he can go back and see a mistake he made, he could be one of the wisest Presidents we’ve ever had.

The Latest Nastiness in Politics

2008-02-17T13:35:00.000-08:00

You have to know how impressive it is in the current campaign for the White House that THOUSANDS of people are showing up when Barak Obama speaks.

In any setting, it is unusual for anyone to get thousands of people to come for s SPEECH, let alone a POLITICAL speech. In my life time, which goes back to watching my brother take campaign material for Wendall Wilke around to neighbors' homes, I have never seen anything like it.

As a professional public speaker (I am an ordained minister), I'm envious of Obama. Billy Graham needs weeks of preparation by local pastors beating the hustings on his behalf to fill a stadium. Obama has been doing it overnight. I don't think Ronald Reagan could do that.

And how have the media "talking heads" responded? Just as you would think jealous people would respond: by twisting the phenomenon to look like something else than the curiosity, appreciation, and hope that it is.

Instead of realizing that Obama has real class, good manners, and a way with words, they say he is "all words and no substance." They obviously have not looked at his website where there are all the details of his current proposals.

Instead of seeing the obvious enthusiasm for a politician who actually knows something and who speaks with much more respect of his opponents than they do of him, the "wise ones" now think he is some kind of mystical cult figure.

The point of their jab is to put down something they cannot engender with their own public speaking. They explain away something they cannot do themselves, get large numbers of people excited and moving into the political process.

They want to turn a political movement into something lesser, a "quasi-religious" movement.

Now they are trying to discuss something I know a little about.

A cult is a closed movement surrounding a manipulative personality. A cult has a central character who is the father-figure for the followers. That central person has to control how his followers will behave and will try to separate them from the real world where the cult's ideas would not stand up to scrutiny. The leader of a cult takes on almost divine traits. He wants to be the center of his followers' lives.

Do any of those characteristics sound like they are true of Barak Obama?

The ones who are trying to strike at Obama's vulnerabilities now are attacking those who come and end up cheering him on.

I don't think that strategy is going to work. It just offends me.

There are even worse things that are happening. In particular, someone has said he is like Adolph Hitler in his charisma. Hitler used the brownshirts, youth willing to do violence in his name, to get support. And Barak's middle name (Hussein) is used to try to associate him with Iraq's dictator and with terrorists in general.

Such nastiness revs up more than the partisans who want to win by any means. It revs up those who think they should cleanse the earth of such people. It provides a culture that is so poisoned that it allows people to feel they are serving the common good by assassinating the Obamas of the world.

It reminds me of how it was in Dallas in the early 1960s after John Kennedy became President. I was in Seminary there at the time. It was so bad that when one of the area's major high schools put on SOUTH PACIFIC, the most crucial song in the whole musical, "You Have to be Carefully Taught," was edited out of the performance.

Just after I left, Kennedy was assassinated. Students in many of the schools in Dallas heard the news and cheered.

Is the political atmosphere becoming that bad? Will it be that deadly?

Whether or not we prefer Barak Obama as our candidate for the Presidency, a whole lot of us are holding our breath and hoping the Secret Service is completely successful.

Bush and the Foreclosure Problem

2008-02-16T07:00:00.000-08:00

The following was posted yesterday on the "Crooks and Liars" website. H equotes the current New York governor, Elliot Spitzer who was an attorney General when the predatory practices first began. He explains how come there was no blocking of the practices by the states.

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Bush Administration invoked an obscure Banking clause 1863 to enable predatory lending practices
By: John Amato @ 3:16 PM - PST

Gov. Elliot Spitzer explains:

Predatory lending was widely understood to present a looming national crisis. This threat was so clear that as New York attorney general, I joined with colleagues in the other 49 states in attempting to fill the void left by the federal government. Individually, and together, state attorneys general of both parties brought litigation or entered into settlements with many subprime lenders that were engaged in predatory lending practices. Several state legislatures, including New York’s, enacted laws aimed at curbing such practices.

That sounds good. I witnessed such practices and saw prices skyrocket before my eyes . That was a huge reason that the Bush economy held up as long as it did—I think Bush called it the “ownership society.” I guess we can call it the foreclosure society…. The right wingers usually try to say that we blame Bush for everything. Well, let’s see how he did, shall we…

Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.

The administration accomplished this feat through an obscure federal agency called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The OCC has been in existence since the Civil War. Its mission is to ensure the fiscal soundness of national banks. For 140 years, the OCC examined the books of national banks to make sure they were balanced, an important but uncontroversial function. But a few years ago, for the first time in its history, the OCC was used as a tool against consumers. In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative.

Nuff said….

Pro Bowl Observations

2008-02-11T06:15:00.001-08:00

I enjoyed the Pro Bowl yesterday. I have to say it was a very satisfying game to me.

Just as the Packers started off terrible against the Seattle Seahawks and came back to win, the NFC team did the same with the AFC team.

So, you ask?

Mike McCarthy and the Packer coaching staff handled the NFC team.

The coaches of the teams that lose in the conference championship games take the all-stars of their respective leagues for the Pro Bowl. If anyone had any doubts about the quality of coaching the Packers have had the last two years, he or she should be assured the McCarthy group knows what it is doing.

The AFC has been dominant in recent years. But yesterday, McCarthy "put players into the best position to win." The NFC players had a few more such moments. The slant passes at the six yard line were brilliant. With the corners not being able to play bump and run at the six yard line, one yard from where the game's special rules allowed it, the NFC was able to quickly get TDs. And when the AFC defense was looking for it at the end of the game, McCarthy threw a run at them which was successful.

The defense was restricted by the special rules of the Pro Bowl. Al Harris had to play back because of the no bump rule. There was a rule against blitzing. And yet, in the second half, the NFC's defense held the AFC's high-powered offense to two field goals. And the twist which brought Aaron Kampman up the middle for a sack to stop the AFC at the end worked perfectly. It seemed to be the only time it was called. Bob Sanders' style of defense clicked.

Packer fans have every right to be proud of how the coaching staff did in the Pro Bowl.

Super Bowl XLII

2008-02-04T12:48:00.000-08:00

Yesterday's Super Bowl was definitely one of the most exciting I've watched. Two great teams really fought it out all the way to the very end. It was sixty minutes of drama well played on both sides.

It was not anywhere near the surprise upset that the Jets pulled in SB III. Having watched the Giants beat the Packers two weeks ago, I thought they showed they could hurt anyone. Their pass rush was superb and Eli was nearly flawless against the Pack. He had found his stride in the previous games going back to the time they faced the Patriots in December. So I really expected he would keep it together and the defensive line would challenge anyone successfully.

What really helped the Giants was the injury to an offensive guard in the Patriots' line. It is harder for an offensive line to work with subs having to play. The Giants showed what having a healthy o-line means. Eli hardly got his shirt dirty where Tom will have a huge laundry bill!

I like to think the Pack would have done well against New England in light of the success of the Giants. After all, GB took the Giants to overtime before losing while the Pats couldn't do it. If the Pack had made the SB and if the Pats' o-guard had been injured early in the game, who knows how well the Packer defense would have rushed Tom.

But that takes us to next year if we want to see such a thing. I expect to see the Pack and Giants fight it out again because both have many young players just now coming into their own. Hopefully, next year, the result will be different and it will be Favre v. Brady in SB XLIII.

Little Things

2008-02-04T12:45:00.000-08:00

Anyone watching the national political scene is aware that policy decisions made quietly in some corner of the administration and not widely reported by the media often lead to some serious consequences.

Both political parties have moments of such activities. But anyone who knows me and reads my blog realizes I am more likely to notice those from Republican administrations. You must also realize that I am just as unhappy about Democrats who make bad decisions and do things that harm the common good. None of those made my listing for today, though you will find some further back in my blog.

The “O” rings were frozen and the gases in the solid fuel tanks leaked and ignited and then exploded. It was the day before Ronald Reagan was to give his State of the Union address during which he was going to speak with Christie McAuliffe, the first teacher in space. He really wanted that moment for his speech so postponing it would have been a major disappointment to him. He didn’t give his speech as planned, postponing it after the death of the astronauts in the space shuttle, including Ms. McAuliffe.

President Reagan also worked hard to change the policies of the Federal Transportation Administration so that trucking companies could put trailers on our highways carrying 80,000 pounds rather than 72,000 pounds, something that the engineers designing and building highways and bridges had never envisioned. His policy was accepted and the roads and bridges began to take an extra beating. One inch connector plates such as those on the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis probably weren’t enough for that additional stress.

George W. Bush told audiences all over the country that the best way to grow the Republican Party was to enlarge the pool of home owners in the United States. Free money started showing up in lending companies that allowed people with no financial strength to buy homes . . . starting at low interest. These loans became known as “sub-prime lending.”

Am I the only one who noticed such little things? Or am I wrong about the facts and possible connections I’ve picked up from here and there?

If I’m right, shouldn’t we all be watching the little things?

RECESSION?

2008-01-22T10:24:00.001-08:00

I don’t know what all the fuss is about over the use of the “R” word. All we have to do is consider what we’d do if there was a serious downturn and that should clear up the question.

If we were in a recession, we would cut the number of shopping trips we make each week. We would shop only if we were going out for at least one other good reason (doctor’s appointment, church meeting, etc.) The more errands in the one trip, the better.

If we were in a recession, we’d turn off the lights and any other electronics that were not in use to save money.

If we were in a recession, we’d make food preserves, like squeezing all the citrus in our backyard and freezing the juice in plastic bottles we’ve saved from milk and fruit drinks.

If we were in a recession, we wouldn’t buy expensive presents for our kids and grandkids but rather make sure they can come for the holidays by getting them plane tickets and telling them to not bring us any gifts.

If we were in a recession, we’d move some of our investments into money market funds which have a stable interest rate.

If we were in a recession, we’d try to spend less than comes in from our pensions and Social Security so we go out less either to eat or for entertainment.

If we were in a recession, we’d pass along any canned goods, clothes, and bedding we can to the food pantry at our church that serves the needy.

If we were in a recession, we’d re-use bottled water containers and fill them from our refrigerator’s spigot.

If we were in a recession, we’d do the laundry every ten to twelve days instead of once a week in order to have fewer but larger loads.

If we were in a recession, we’d go more frequently to the local merchants than to the big box stores in order to help the locals survive the pinch.

I’m not saying we are in a recession. But I can tell you that we’ve been doing all of these since last summer and most of them since 2005.

Election finances

2008-01-07T13:57:00.000-08:00

Have we caught on to how important it is to know who is giving money to which candidates?

Iowa put a lot of votes into Huckabee and Edwards, neither of whom is working with huge warchests.

In 2004, normally Republican oil interests contributed to John Kerry's campaign just when it looked like he would drop out of the race. It is not a coincidence that the Republicans were ready to "swiftboat" Kerry and make him into a flip-flopper. They could not do either to Howard Dean or to Dick Gephardt. Kerry would have been a good President but the Republicans knew they could beat him. Like Gore, he did not have the charisma to carry him past the election frauds of Ohio and Florida.

So who would the Republicans like to have run as the Dem candidate? I think they have already let us know by who has the huge campaign warchests.

If you haven't figured it out already (or if you haven't heard this story before), let me describe a conversation between an advocate for single parents and Hillary Clinton. As the wife of the then sitting President, Mrs. Clinton had been very supportive of issues related to single parents such as the high interest rates and penalties on credit cards. When she ran for the Senate, she suddenly stopped being supportive and went silent. The advocate encountered her and asked her why she would not speak out against the financial community that supported the high rates. "They are my constituents too," Mrs. Clinton said.

Senator Obama receives money from the health insurance industry. His health insurance program keeps their position in place and largely expands it. I'm not sure that makes it a better program than what has been proposed by Edwards and other Democrats. If he sees his donors as his constituents, well, the bigger the donor, the bigger constituency!

It will be very interesting to see if New Hampshire voters picked up on that exchange in the debate the other night.

And will South Carolina have noticed what the Iowa and the New Hampshire vetters see from their eye-ball to eye-ball meetings with the candidates? Or will we all end up being snowed by the mass media blitzes of the moneyed candidates when the rest of the primaries roll around?

I hope that Dem candidates maintain rapport so that after the primaries they will unite and form a solid leadership team which then goes on into office next November.

But the exchange between Edwards and Clinton over the old established politics and the new should haunt all the candidates, especially the ones who finally win their respective nominations.

And let's hope the news media realizes that it is news and spreads the word when a major donor contributes to a candidate.

Review of TRAGIC REDEMPTION by Hiram Johnson

2008-01-03T17:17:00.000-08:00

Review by Dr. Donald D. Budd*

The author, Reverend Hiram Johnson, brings some fine credentials for the writing of this book. He is both theologically trained and a professional counselor. He is a United Methodist clergy and is under appointment as a counselor in private practice. Asbury is the seminary where he received his Masters degree in counseling. He has an MSW from the University of Kentucky. He has credentials as a board certified diplomate in clinical social work.

The author intertwines two themes throughout the book. They are:
1) therapeutic insights and
2) his spiritual journey from faithlessness to faith.

The story line is interesting. He tells of being the driver in an auto accident that killed a 17 year-old female passenger on Christmas Day. Then he traces his journey through various therapy situations to deal with his guilt and shame. In a way the book can be compared to a “before and after” experience, that is, before faith and after his conversion.

The narrative also mixes his theology and his therapeutic insights. For example, right after the accident, many friends tried to share Scripture with him and he found that more disruptive than helpful. He writes, “All Scripture is pure and true, but the timing and context in which it is read or heard makes the difference as to whether it is significant, embraced, or from our perspective, feels downright cruel.”

Throughout the book, he quite successfully uses Scripture texts where he thinks they do work. He also pulls in quotes from all kinds of sources. This reviewer did enjoy the quotes. In fact, they were one of the book’s strengths, taken from a wide range of writings, including many with which the reviewer is familiar. When looking at the issue of personal flaws, something he had previously seen as objects of guilt and shame, he found this from Harold Kushner, “Although God may be disappointed in some of the things we do, He is never disappointed in who we are, fallible people struggling with the implication of knowing good and evil.”

Rev. Johnson’s greatest contributions are his counseling skills, wide reading, and experience.

This is not to say that there are some concerns which the author doesn’t address.

For all the talk of faith and grace redeeming persons through appropriate Scripture and belief, this reviewer found it very interesting that the author came to faith via community. It was through the church that God revealed God’s self to the author. The author found Christ through people. It was not just God’s use of the accident and its aftermath that brought him to faith but the faithfulness of believers.

Another concern the book does not address is post traumatic stress syndrome. It was not helpful to this reviewer who has to deal with PTSS. I am a Vietnam Veteran. Anger and hate were my issues; guilt and shame were not. With so many Iraq occupation casualties and veterans having PTSS, the author misses the chance to acknowledge them. The difference between the stress of his experience and that of a vet is like the difference between apples and oranges.

The book clearly is not an academic treatise. He makes many assertions without verification. But it is an enjoyable read for nonprofessionals as are most books for the popular market.

While Rev. Johnson really does not add anything new or unique to counseling theory, any Christian counselor or pastoral counselor would accept the book with gratitude. His emphasis is on grace, on Christ’s forgiveness of our sins which in turn enables us to forgive ourselves and others.

Psychologically the book is very helpful, i.e. the definitions of key counseling words and the problems of guilt and shame.

Virtually all persons who counsel deal with these issues.

To whom is Rev. Johnson writing?

How about Conservative pastors/theologians? They will be accepting of the book and find it profitable reading. This will be especially true for those who are not trained in counseling or have little exposure to counseling theory. The conservative pastor/theologian will appreciate the combining of counseling insights and belief system, even if he/she disagrees at some points with the author’s theology.

The book is not intended to be a methodology book or a how-to book. This being the case I do not see how it will help an untrained counselor to bring healing to a client. However, the book introduces many key clinical insights that can open up to the novice the breadth of issues a counselee may be facing and hopefully be encouragement to pursue in further study.

I would be very careful about passing it on to lay people. If their
guilt/shame is severe they would need a therapist to help them. Hopefully, the book will be a catalyst helping readers to recognize that help is available.

Would a liberal theologian/pastor find this book helpful? Theologically the help offered has usually been considered and found by them to be inadequate. The value of the book is how it presents a conservative approach to counseling as well as a bibliography which includes the key texts used in conservative circles. All have things to learn from each other especially since many of our parishioners tend to be conservative.

I am glad to have read the book and have the distinct privilege of reviewing it.

Rev. Donald D. Budd, D. Min.

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Editor’s note on Dr. Budd:

He received his BS degree from Southern Nazarene University. Double majors: philosophy and Christian education

His graduate degrees are a Masters in Religion Education from Nazarene Theological Seminary, Masters degrees in Church Management and Pastoral Counseling from Olivet Nazarene University and his M. Div. equivalent and D. Min. from United Theological Seminary

His counseling ministry was a part of his parish ministry from which he is now retired.

Lay Theologians

2007-12-13T08:55:00.000-08:00

I am a professional theologian. That is, I have extensive training and study which have established a wide body of theological ideas and findings which enrich my spiritual journey, usually giving me direction for life decisions.

Lay theologians ordinarily do not have that kind of educational background unless, much later in life than us professionals, they choose to attend seminary for the purpose of learning and not just making a living.

It has been my privilege to bump into four lay theologians over the last year. Dee Lambert I’ve known for over 30 years and she is now helping two little churches keep going by being their lay speaker. I’ve posted one of her poems on my blog. See October 26 below for it.

Barbara Wendland I’ve known about fifteen years and she continues to actively stir up the denomination not only in her part of the world (Texas) but reaches many people around the country through her newsletter (www.connectionsonline.org).

Art Davis, my poet friend, has always been insightful but he recently showed me an essay in which he argues that God may be tired of creating new earths which seem all to end in environmental or military catastrophe. Our earth is number 7. His closing words are “Will any survivors report to Me? PLEASE. UFOs up to family-size are ready!” At least God is willing to try again, Art says.

Natala Orobello teaches English at a local college and has published her first book, DESTINED FOR GREATNESS (available through AMAZON.COM). It is one of five she has finished. When asked why she chose this one to be published first, she answered, “God told me.” When you read it, you can see why.

I read her book as I read other novels, a little bit at a time, usually just before bed. That works for novels just fine. But when I finished, I found I had to go back, not for plot points or character names, but for insights which she slips in all through the book.

The format is “novella” but the purpose is “spiritual journey.”

She does not preach. But she illustrates her main proposition that God intends greatness for everyone but each one of us makes choices which even to God, come “as a surprise to us!”

Professor Orobello was born in Sicily and was raised in the Roman Catholic Church. The standard theology she heard from the priests left many questions for her which usually, when answered at all by the priests, were called “mysteries.” She wasn’t satisfied with that and has thought through what her experience and educational background provided as substantive answers. DESTINED FOR GREATNESS does not trace her spiritual journey but is more the result of it, with hints of how she struggled to get there.

Her book deserves to be read as part of one’s devotional practices. But it is not didactic. You will be tempted to keep on reading at the close of each of her brief chapters.

What I like the most about a lay theologian is the freedom to explore thoughts which those of us with traditional theological training hesitate to do. Are the results of their explorations going to become mileposts in humankind’s spiritual journey? Who knows? Quite possibly!

To me, they are a sign that God continues to converse with us and those who hear are sharing their thoughts in creative ways.

Short Christmas Sermon

2007-12-12T15:35:00.000-08:00

The local paper asked me to write a sermon for their series "SERMON OF THE WEEK." Here's my offering:

Christmas is my favorite time of the year. I love the lights, the music, the stories, even the commercialism! While a lot of advertisements are gross and the desperation to sell gets annoying, it still seems as if all of America and much of the western world finds a way to be brighter, be cheerier, be more generous than any other time of the year. And that sure helps us pass through the darkest days on the calendar, those around the winter solstice.

Far more important to me than the flurry of exciting activities and decorations which lighten the season is the Incarnation. “God with us,” God becoming human to live with us, walk . . ., sweat . . ., work . . ., attend worship . . ., deal with difficult people . . ., struggle with all the issues of humanity including physical suffering and death. He knows first hand what we go through!

He also lived in a time when power was international, except we need to realize his country was the one being occupied.

And he taught that his nation was ordained by God to rule the world. HA! No, Jesus’ kingdom was not of this world. Somehow we’ve forgotten that part of His message.

He taught many things but the key to his call to us is that we are to also incarnate God’s love. As He came to live God’s love among us, so we are to do the same, live God’s love with everyone else. And the Judgment of God about our lives will be based on whether we fed the hungry, welcomed the stranger, healed the sick, and visited the imprisoned. The Bible says that and I believe it, and that settles it!

That “final exam” described in the Book of Matthew, 25th chapter, verses 31-46, takes us way beyond any belief system which we follow in our religious life. I’ve discovered that people who believe differently than I do and take Jesus as seriously as I do, are the last to presume immigrants, legal or illegal, are evil and need to be removed from our midst. I’ve discovered that people of other religions not only welcome the stranger, they feed the hungry and clothe the poor and care for the sick and imprisoned.

“You will know them by their fruits,” Jesus said (Matthew 7:16).

What then is faith? Fear for our immortal souls? Fear of disobedience? Fear of being wrong? No. As the angels told the shepherds, “Fear not!” Doubt is not the opposite of faith. Fear is.

Faith is far simpler. It is trusting God.

For months, Annie prayed for a horse for Christmas. She did it each night before she went to bed. Even though the main focus of her prayers was to bless her parents, neighbors, friends, and even the strangers in her town, she slipped in her desire to get the horse. Her parents having only a small apartment for the three of them had no way to afford a horse or renting a place where it could be boarded. But they didn’t have the heart to challenge Annie’s earnestness and faith that she’d get the horse.

Christmas came. Annie gleefully jumped out of bed and ran into the living room to check out her presents. She found a doll buggy and a new doll under the tree. She put the doll in the buggy and went door to door on her floor in the apartment building, showing everyone what Santa had given her.

Her parents were stunned. Annie said nothing about there being no horse. She was just full of joy to have the new toys.

When she got back from her trip to the neighbors, they talked to her. “Annie, we’ve always told you that God answers your prayers. But he didn’t answer the one about your wanting a horse.”

“Oh but God did answer my prayer,” Annie said. “He just said ‘No.’”

That’s faith.

Coach's strategies

2007-12-03T13:00:00.000-08:00

One of the marks of Coach Mike McCarthy's work with the Packers is that his game plans have been effective. How else do you win when you do not have a running game?

One of the things you do not see on the game films of opponents is the opponent coach's game plans. You can get an idea but until you have a history in the league and against a particular opponent, it is hard to know what to expect.

McCarthy's plan to attack the Cowboys deep last Thursday night was a great idea. For a lot of reasons, it failed. It appears the Cowboys' defensive game plan anticipated just that attack. Perhaps they are better at self-scouting than the Packers are just now. Given the average and injury-struck defensive backfield, any smart coach might have done the same as McCarthy did.

McCarthy learned a lesson. Sometimes you have to plan to go strength on strength and let the attack on weaknesses come later. If the Packers get to play the Cowboys for the conference championship, the game plan is more likely to be just that.

But first, McCarthy will have to prepare the team for an emerging Oakland Raiders. The Bears are coming on and the Lions will have nothing to lose. The Packers will have a whole set of battles to win before they can start talking about game planning for the Cowboys!

Green Bay Packers' Game Plan

2007-11-30T06:38:00.000-08:00

The sports writers and announcers do not seem to have grasped what the game plan was for the great game between the Packers and the Cowboys. It was obvious to me that the Packers thought they could jump all over the Cowboy corners with long passes.

There were two goals: one, wear out the corners for more success against them later in the game, and two, get a lead so that Cowboy quarterback Tony Romo would have to play from behind, something he may not be able to do yet.

It almost worked. But the Cowboy corners held up well enough to stay with the wide receivers of the Packers and Favre was just a little off in his throws. Also, the offensive line was not as capable of holding off the Cowboys defensive line as they had hoped.

Even if Favre had not been hurt, the Packers' plan was most likely to go back to the short pass/five receiver scheme with which they had been successful and proved to be early on during the opening series of plays.

Now the Packers know how far they have come as a team, having played mostly teams with losing records. They know they need all their troops and that they cannot look on any of their up-coming games as "easy." They are capable of winning them all, but sometimes, having one or another key player out will make them vulnerable.

But they also know they can run with Dallas and are not afraid to return to Dallas for a play-off game. Favre still has to win at Texas Stadium. And he will.

Art Davis poem - By My Beard . . .

2007-11-04T18:40:00.000-08:00

Mr. Davis is a good church member, a dedicated Christian who has not only given much time, resources, and skill to the churches of which has been been a part both up north and here in Port Charlotte, but he has lent his "bum" to more sermons than you. So he is aware of Scripture passages like, "You will know the false prophets by what they do" (Mt. 7:20) and songs like, "You will know we are Christians by our love," (folk hymn from the 1970s).

His fertile mind plays with phrases like that and he comes up with the some wonderful stuff:

By My Beard You Shall Know Me

Oh hear me, Muse,
I do implore.
Prevent my penning
Words that bore.

In searching through
My poetry books,
I found a sim-
Iliarity of looks.

Longfellow, Whitman,
Elliott, and Keats,
All giants of
poetic feats,

I realized,
You'll think it weird,
Those titans each,
I found with beard.

The question broached
Is not too hard.
Without a beard,
Can one be a bard?

Once I'm bearded,
I'll overnight
Then take my place,
Midst those classed erudite?

I label writing
Rather hard,
For I could end
With beard, and yet
Still not be a bard. . .

Arthur H. Davis
4/11/07
Copyright
6/12/07
Posted by permission of the author

James Holsinger's Recusal

2007-10-31T10:59:00.000-07:00

I have watched the Judicial Council for many years.

Back in 1993, something happened that I did not know could happen. Rev. Zan Holmes recused himself from consideration of the case of a Perkins School of Theology professor who was a member of the annual conference to which Dr. Holmes belonged. See Judicial Council Decision (JCD) 696.

For years, a key member of the Judicial Council had given in writing, by phone, and in personal conversation ex parte opinions to bishops in cases that were headed for the Judicial Council. That kind of "help" by a Judicial Council member was finally ended by General Conference in 1992. See Paragraph 2607 of the 2004 Book of Discipline.

Dr. Holmes' recusal set a precedent of integrity that was honored by a number of other Judicial Council members when cases came from their respective annual conferences. For instance, a recent case caused the secretary of the Judicial Council to remove himself from any action related to a case during his annual conference so he would be free to fulfill his role as a Judicial Council member. He spelled out his actions in his concurring opinion, last paragraph, of JCD 1032.

One might think that maybe Dr. Holsinger, president of the Judicial Council, is showing a similar ethical concern by withdrawing from the Fall Session of the Judicial Council held last week. Unfortunately, I cannot believe that is so.

In the past, during his seven years on the Council, Dr. Holsinger did not recuse himself from at least two cases before the Judicial Council in which he had significant relationships with parties at interest. Now he recused himself from a session in which there were some cases dealing with controversial matters. No matter how he would vote on them, it would not affect his integrity but it could affect his chance to become Surgeon General.

The issue of his ethical practice recently has become a public matter through reports about his role involving the disbursal of proceeds from the sale of an annual conference property. Some of those proceeds were donated to programs at the university where he worked. When that story came out a few weeks ago, in my opinion, Dr. Holsinger should have resigned from the Judicial Council then. But if he had, how would that look going into the Senate confirmation hearings? If he is confirmed by the Senate, then he can resign from the Judicial Council for a positive reason.

It is time for Dr. Holsinger to face his past unfortunate decisions and actions and the serious questions they have raised. He can show the same integrity as his predecessors by resigning now from the Judicial Council, not simply recusing himself for this session because his nomination may be an "unnecessary and unproductive distraction."

--This post is also published as a commentary on UM NeXus, http://www.umnexus.org--

"Trilogy of Cancer"

2007-10-30T10:20:00.000-07:00

One of my colleagues, Ann Freeman Price, went through cancer recently and put her experience to paper in poetry and song in a wonderful book entitled "Trilogy of Cancer - The Jolt, The Journey, The Joy." (Copyright 2007 - Ann Freeman Price) It is worth every penny of the fifteen dollars cover price.

Some of her verse is plain. Some goes to songs we samg at camp! She even includes handwritten staffs of music in case you don't know the tune. She includes blessedly brief notes on aspects of her experience.

The concluding poem to her first section is set to the tune of "Home on the Range."

Oh, Lump-ec-tomy!

O sing me a song
'Bout a day that went wrong
When they did the lumpectomy.
Well the nodes were bad too
So they took out a few
And two scars for Ann you can see.

OH, lumpectomy.
It's a pain and that I'll agree.
So let's move on right now.
I'll be showing you how.
We're gonna be finding the key.

She speaks of "healing circles" and drum therapy and a number of thinsg that sound strange to most folks but once inside her work, they make all the sense in the world.

This is from "Healing Drum."

simple hand drum
steady beat
five minutes
a day

five minutes
to feel my hand
touch skin of drum
synchronize with
heart and blood

five minutes for
cancer cells
to scatter from
the pounding
and the pulsing
of the ancient sound

five minutes
to feel vibration
connecting cell to cell
organizing life stream

five minutes
for beat and breath
to gather energy
for the day

the day which
starts with
drumming

Contact Ann at annfreemanprice@embarqmail.com for further information how to get a copy of her book. - Contact her quick because I did not get her permission to publish her pooems and this blog may disappear!

Theology

2007-10-28T09:37:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to share with you the work of others that I like -the work and the others! The following is a poetic essay on The Rev. Dr. Dennis Reedy's personal theology:

I’ve “threatened” believers on both sides of the aisle.

To my conservative brothers & sisters, I say: “You must be born again;” O.K. but that’s the starting point, not the goal.

To my fundamentalist brothers & sisters, I say: “Are you saved?” … yes, and I am being saved every day.

To my liberal brothers & sisters, I say: Show me your faith by your works; and love as Jesus loved.

To my deist brothers & sisters, I say: Yes, God did set the cosmos into its cycles; but God is also involved in the tiny, daily details.

To my modernist brothers & sisters, I say: Yes, Jesus is the example; but more than a moral example, Jesus is the complete image of a man of God, walking in the power of the Holy Spirit.

To my holiness brothers & sisters, I say: “Repentance” means turning away from self and toward God; but it’s Grace that saves me, not works.

A friend in Christ has suggested that, in fact, I am really a “CharisFundaConservaLib.”

"If There Were No God" by Dee Lambert

2007-10-26T04:29:00.000-07:00

This week a friend sent me some of her poetry. I think she should be published. She gave me permission to post this one:

If There Were No God

If there were no God,
How would I explain
A bright red bird on a dark and dreary winter day?

If there were no God,
How would I explain
A cooling breeze on a hot summer day
That seemed to come from nowhere
Just to cool my face?

If there were no God,
How would I understand
The bittersweet pain of a baby's cry?

If there were no God,
How would I ever know
The rocking arms that held me in my greatest pain
And shared in the tears that came,
So that I would know I was not alone?

If there were no God,
Who would I thank
For boundless joy that comes from
Nothing extraordinary?

If there were no God,
Who would have heard my borning cry
Or stilled my fear of dying?

When all others have gone, and centuries have passed,
Who would remember that I was here
If there were no God?

Copyright 2008, published by permission of Dee Lambert

-- The writers' group which critiqued her work hopes she will build a new poem around one passage we redacted:

If there were no God,
Who would live on the mountain tops
Where wind echoes across ancient graves
Nestled on the edge of cliffs
At the edge of Time?

Occupation

2007-10-24T03:50:00.000-07:00

I wonder how it is that Americans have forgotten what an occupation is like.

Every time we visit some historic site on the east coast, we discover something new about the occupation of America by the English during the Revolutionary War.

When we visited New Jersey, we learned that the colonists there were not especially excited about revolting. Then a squad of Red Coats came upon a farmer’s daughter and gang raped her. Word of that event spread like wild fire through the colony. Farmers out in their fields began carrying their muskets, ready and loaded, and then leaned them against a shock of corn stalks. As a squad of Red Coats marched by out on the road, a farmer could easily slip over behind a shock, take the rifle, pick off one of the occupying soldiers, put the gun back, and return to his field work as if nothing had happened.

When we visited Andrew Jackson’s childhood home along the Waxhaw River, the story there was that his neighbors didn’t want the Brits intruding upon their little township. When they tried to stop the Red Coats, they were slaughtered. The soldiers than went through the settlement and killed a number of the women and children there. North Carolina “remembered” the Waxhaw massacre and joined the Revolution. Jackson witnessed the slayings as a teenager. He spent time as a British prisoner. When the Red Coats came back in 1814 and tried to take New Orleans, Jackson commanded the forces of pirates, renegades, mountain men, and regular soldiers that crushed the proud troops of the British Empire and saved the Mississippi River from their control.

Along the Blue Ridge Parkway is a tourist center called the Virginia Explore Park. Among its living exhibits is one from the 18th century. The story told there by the docent was that Virginia, the largest and most productive of the British colonies at the beginning had little interest in the Revolution. Many of its men had served with the British against the French and Indians in the 1750s and 1760s. Unfortunately, about the time those men were to receive their major benefit for their years of service, land on which to settle, the King proclaimed that there would be no settling allowed in the very territory that had been set aside for those veterans.

Among those who earlier fought by the side of the Red Coats was George Washington.

As I think about these incidents in American history just from the Revolution, I wonder how anyone who has visited any major historical site related to the Revolution could be comfortable with sending our soldiers to occupy any foreign country. The dangers of the rogue action of just a few individuals changes hearts dramatically. The occurrences of “overkill” (we call it “collateral damage”) are not forgotten. The broken promises antagonize friends and make them enemies.

Wasn’t the situation that led to the Revolution one where England faced losing wood and other raw materials for its industries because of its autocratic and distant policy making? And when they sent troops to occupy the colonies, didn’t they aggravate the situation?

The purpose of sending our troops to Iraq was a little more complicated than that. Iraq dropped Scuds on Israel during the first Gulf War under President Bush 41. Then “Poppy” Bush was the target of an Iraqi attempted-assassination. Then not long after that war, Saddam Hussein violently suppressed Shi’ites America encouraged to rebel. And finally, control of Iraqi oil looked like it was slipping away. So we sent in the troops “to find weapons of mass destruction” and kept them there until the oil question was settled so our companies would gain the benefit.

The longer the Iraqis put off making that decision, the longer we have had to be there. All the timelines for projected drawdowns used to be tied to the oil decision. Now they are tied to the depletion of our military.

Occupations are chancy things. How many times over the decades since the end of WW II have there been riots and demonstrations in places like the Philippines and South Korea and Japan to close our bases and remove our military?

We should know from first hand experience that occupations are really not the best tool to resolve an international problem. Just because we are the ones doing it does not make it right. You’d think we know better.

Have you ever - - -

2007-10-13T03:42:00.000-07:00

Art Davis let me take two of his poems to publish here:

Have you ever - - -

In all my life that's gone before,
I've never heard a cricket snore.
Nor have I heard an earthworm yawn
While inching tunnels 'neath my lawn.

Do baby kangaroos cry "Ouch!"
In case they fall from Mother's pouch?
Has anyone yet heard a sigh
From a fluttering butterfly?

Do dandelions in seed go puff-f-f
When they release their fuzzy stuff-f-f?
I've heard the hum of honey bees
But from pollen never heard them sneeze!

Does the praying mantis really pray?
Unanswered questions of the day!
I wonder if when cows go Moo-o-o
They're telling they've got milk for you.

Well, quite enough this wondering
Like - Is God mad when thundering?
Now don't let the "silence" bore you.
Stay alert for others, I implore you. . . .

(Art Davis, 5/24/07 and revised 9/14/07, copyright)

* * * * *

REMEMBERING...

Another day gone by at moon's rising,
to add to the lengthy skein of days assigned.

Ironically, it means one less day to live,
but--one less day of affliction,
a day wherein one forgets
what was spoken but a few breaths ago.

To tamper the brain,
forget recent moments of devotion
by those who selflessly serve
with their gifts of love and patience,
such to bloom happiness,
evoke childlike laughter
over gossamer weight matters.

The mind, despite the grasp of those who care,
suddens into the quicksand of failure
to recall a grain of love,
a trumpet of joy;
the madness of forgetting,
robber of tranquility
from all who loved;
a slow downward spiral
into blurred emptiness.

The syptoms we know and fight
to stem the torture of it all.

Silently, systems rebel.

Sadly, one coils fetal as life commenced
who now slowly exits life's arena,
perhaps never telling those care-givers,
those who untiring served,
that they were loved.

No doubt somehow
they would have shown gratitude.

They just didn't remember . . . .

(Arthur H. Davis, 9/3/07, copyright)

Dick Selchert

2007-10-06T08:37:00.000-07:00

My cousin died since the last World Series. He and I were born three months apart and, from seventh grade through high school, were in classes together and played on intramural sports teams together.

In the days before the Braves moved from Boston to Milwaukee, we were both Cub fans Growing up just outside of Milwaukee, my allegiance switched the moment Joe Adcock hit the homer that drove in Billy Bruton with the winning run in the home opener. Dick's, however, stayed with the Cubs even when they traded Andy Pafko to the Braves.

Dick stuck by the Cubs through the eras of Phil Cavaretta, Hank Sauer, Ernie Banks, all the way up to Kerry Woods and beyond.

The cockles of my heart were warmed by Warren Spahn, Eddie Matthews, Johnny Logan, Henry Aaron, and all the other Braves that got into the playoffs and World Series while I was young. When the Braves moved to Atlanta, I tried to be a fan of the Brewers and saw a number of their games. I enjoyed Harvey's Wallbangers, especially Gorman Thomas, and the World Series games they got to play.

As I've gotten older, I've lost track of Milwaukee major league baseball.

But Dick stayed faithful to the Cubbies through thick and thin (mostly thin) to his dying day.

I saw in the local paper (the Charlotte Sun-Herald, Port Charlotte, FL) that the Cubs are in the playoffs.

I'd like to think he has great seats from which to watch his beloved Cubs and cheer them on to the World Series.

Florida Primary

2007-10-01T19:30:00.000-07:00

I can understand the thinking which wishes Florida Democrats would not vote before Iowa and New Hampshire.

It's based on the principle of smaller committees who understand something based on intense investigation and making recommendations to the larger body. Most legislative bodies do something like that. On the national level, Iowa and New Hampshire have a lot of meetings with small groups all over their states with each of the candidates. We may never get the chance but they do the eyeball-to-eyeball thing we wish we could do. They usually do well in picking out the top candidates that way. After those are done, it's pretty much boring debates and soundbite TV ads ad nauseum for everyone else.

The Republicans run the state of Florida and may have realized by moving up the Presidential Primary that the Democrats would be in trouble with the national party. Far as I can tell, it makes no never mind to the Republicans. Ron Paul is the only one on that side that is making any sense and he has a long way to go to get out of the lowest tier of their candidates.

Personally, I hope the candidates show up down here before January 29 but I really want them to prioritize their time to be in Iowa and New Hampshire. I trust those folks to get a decent reading on which of the candidates is real.

But I confess I will vote on Jan. 29 even if my favorite candidate gets no official credit for it at the Democratic Party's convention.

I want someone to see Dennis Kucinich got a vote. Imagine, he actually wants to impeach Vice President Cheney, like all the rest of the country does, and he wants to set up a Peace Department as a counter to the Defense (War) Department. Imagine what would happen if we spent as much money seeking peace as we do seeking excuses to use our military arsenal so we can pay some corporation exhorbitant prices for new materiel.

I am tempted to vote for Bill Richardson. Do you know he was nominated for a Nobel prize? And he has been a good governor for New Mexico. And he actually knows Spanish, compared to the President who knows a few phrases. What would it be like to have a President who can speak Spanish in this day and age!

While I love those two guys, I will not be unhappy no matter which Democratic candidate is chosen. America is so lucky to have such a talented group of people running.

So, America, encourage all the candidates to have to go one-on-one in Iowa and New Hampshire to do what we would like to do ourselves. Look at Florida's vote as a straw vote which just might mix up the respective packs of "runners."

SubordiNation

2007-09-30T09:38:00.000-07:00

NATION WITHIN IN A NATION

What Laws Apply to Clergy

Liberty is one of the cherished features of living in America. As citizens of the United States, we are protected by the Constitution from abuses like cruel and unusual punishment and unreasonable searches and seizures. We have the right to face our accusers, trial by our peers, impartial juries, assistance of counsel when facing criminal prosecution, due process, and seek redress. These are all guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments spell them out.

While I could now take off on why I think the current administration has undercut America’s credibility in the world by refusing anything approaching these rights to prisoners in their “war on terror,” I have a very different reason for reminding us of these precious gifts of liberty in our country. I would like to call your attention to the fact that these same individual rights are already being ignored in one of our society's most cherished institutions, the United Methodist Church. The victims are not terrorists; they are pastors.

Local pastors can be removed from office without any chance to defend themselves against whatever accusations caused their being fired in the first place.

Pastors can be refused the right to view the files kept by the Cabinet which the Cabinet then uses as the basis for decisions about appointments of those pastors, incorrect materials and all.

The Cabinet, which has the right and often abuses that right to sign the complaint against the pastor, picks those who make the decision about the guilt or innocence of a pastor in a church trial, a group called the “trial court.” The accuser gets to pick the jury!

Pastors are brought in by a superintendent for an innocuous reason and “ambushed” with a verbal lashing based on an unwritten complaint and coerced into withdrawing from ministry.

The opinion of the bishop about the guilt of a pastor usually guides the deliberations of the groups meant to check the facts and make the judgment.

Bishops often decide to handle a complaint administratively that should have gone to church trial.

Pastors have been suspended just on the word of the bishop without the proper consultation required by the Book of Discipline.

It takes a higher standard of proof to convict a church leader who violates due process rules than to convict a pastor of a chargeable offense.

How can there be such a disparity between the rights we have as American citizens and the rights clergy have within the United Methodist Church?

We clergy live in a different nation. “Subordination!” according to a Minnesota state court examining the right of the church to have secret files on clergy.

Most clergy, trained in a variety of backgrounds and with different jobs, still have the general experience of citizenship. Consequently, we presume that the U. S. Constitution has a higher priority on legal civil rights than anything in the Discipline. That presumption is wrong.

In 1976, the Supreme Court made a ruling on a case from the Syrian Orthodox Church. In their decision, they said that civil courts had no jurisdiction over churches that have a judicial system (as the United Methodist Church does) even if that system is not followed. Yes, you read that right. The Supreme Court allows churches not to have to follow their own judicial procedures.

Civil courts hate having to deal with church cases because judges face re-election by voters who go to church.

But the real problem faced by judges is that to take a case about a church personnel matter would require the court to have to make a judgment about matters as defined by that faith. The doctrine of separation of church and state declares that no court should do that. And so, since 1976, the United Methodist Church has drifted further into counting on that protection. Now the easiest route lawyers representing the church have is to say to a civil court that the case is a personnel matter and judges tend to drop the case.

As a result, any careless or intentional failure on a church leader's part which violates a pastor's rights under the U. S. Constitution AND/OR under the Book of Discipline is seen by church leaders as inconsequential. If they have an opinion about a pastor, they can act on it without reference to church law or civil law!

So if the civil courts can't protect a pastor from abuse by church leaders, why not use church law? Aren't there provisions for a complaint process against bishops? Indeed there are. A complaint against a bishop goes to the president of the jurisdictional college of bishops. No bishop wants to have another bishop interfere in his/her own conference matters and so there is a tacit agreement that anything that is not a sexual misconduct accusation against a bishop is dropped. So bishops have no accountability to anyone for their behavior toward pastors.

Can the Judicial Council be called upon to respond to a challenge of a bishop for procedural problems?

Since 1980, there has been a personnel case before the Judicial Council nearly every year. Sometimes there have been as many as six. There are at least four cases before the Council this October. In 1996, the Council went so far as to say the following:

"It should be emphasized that both the administrative and judicial processes in the Discipline are carefully and specifically designed to protect the rights of clergy and of the church. The steps set forth must be followed carefully and explicitly or injustice results. Lack of diligence, integrity, care, or compassion in dealing with a case almost always results in irreparable harm to both the individual and the church. That has usually happened by the time a case of this nature gets to the Judicial Council."
Judicial Council Decision 777.

Despite that observation, even the Council has not always supported the rights of pastors when they have been violated by Cabinets and Boards of Ordained Ministry. Even the decisions that have supported pastors are ignored across the Church.

So pastors have a real problem. Even though they are United Methodists, they cannot assume that their right to a church trial will be honored.

They cannot assume they will be presumed innocent until proven guilty in a trial. They cannot assume they will be treated with respect until a resolution is developed. They now must assume their own words will be used against them, that declaring innocence will be seen as defensive and all the more reason to judge them as guilty, that they will not see the accusations nor the accuser unless the bishop decides that should happen, among other things.

United Methodist clergy no longer live in the "nation" of the United States and its personnel laws and rights. In fact, they cannot count on living in the "nation" of the United Methodist Church's personnel and fair process laws.

The only "nation" left is "subordination" to the bishop who hopefully understands legal civil rights and fair process protections under church law. Since no bishop is required to have competence in either of those in order to be a bishop, there is a chance a pastor "doesn't have a chance!"

What can be done about this?

First, all pastors need to know their rights as laid out in the Book of Discipline. They should read Paragraph 362.1-3 and Paragraph 2701. Even if they are never accused themselves, they have every right to ask conference leaders to describe what was done so that they could be assured Fair Process was followed or challenge actions that fail to do so. If the pastors are accused, they should immediately go online to .

Second, the General Conference needs to establish a new study commission as they did in 1988 to re-evaluate how church leaders should and actually do handle complaints and suggest new laws for consideration of the next General Conference.

Three, General Council on Finance and Administration and Annual Conference need to report the costs of church trials and civil court actions to the respective Annual Conferences and to General Conference. (Detail of many cases cannot be divulged under confidentiality agreements but those costs need to be added in some reasonable way to what can be reported. There are costs for episcopal autocratic behaviors

Four, General Conference should require a substantive training program for all Cabinet and Board of Ordained Ministry members so that they will understand the concepts of due process in civil law, fair process in church law, and personnel policies required under federal law.

And finally, the General Conference needs to change how complaints against bishops are handled so that those who elect them take responsibility, as Judicial Council Decision 475 required. Similarly, superintendents should not have the "hidey-hole" of Paragraph 429.3.

There is a saying in politics: "If they can, they will." To me, applied to the leadership of the Church, "they" can and "they" already do!

Because clergy do not really live in liberty, protected from abuse, and free to properly defend themselves, it is long past time to open discussion of this grievous state in the United Methodist Church.

(Note: For non-United Methodists, the Book of Discipline is the listing of our denomination's constitution and by-laws. References to segments of law called "Paragraphs" are from the 2004 edition.)

--Shortly after this was written in 2006, Diana Henriques of the New York Times ran a series of articles about how this same kind of injustice is occurring in other major religions and denominations.—

Revised 9/30 07

Thanks, Michael Moore

2007-09-27T19:47:00.000-07:00

This Administration, since 2001, has been one of the most astounding in American history.

Those who have tried to follow current events since we were taught to do so in grade school have been on a rollercoaster ride. It seems that every few days, some new bizarre twiist to managing government comes out in the news.

Even though the news covered it quite well, the elections in 2000 had some of the most distatsteful things occurring from the repainting of Max Cleland and John McCain into something they weren't to the practice in many states of minorities being disdallowed to vote because they had the same name as a felon to the attack by a white-shirt-and-tie crowd of Washington-based Republican staffers on poll workers in Florida who were trying to recount the vote.

The rumors that the Clinton staff had removed W from all the computer keyboards to President Bush going on vacation shortly after coming to Washington to being asleep at the switch before 9/11 and then on 9/11 to promulgating a war in Iraq that was irrelevant to fighting the terrorists who did 9/11 were all just opening vollies on our senses and sensibility. Colin Powell was used by the Administration to be their front man at the UN on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (so much like General Patraeus being used by the Administration to keep the war going). Then there was Abu Graib where most of the prisoners were guys brought in because they were Arab guys who were then treated the way the Israelis treat Palestinians in prison. And the occupation of Iraq with too few troops that led to the insurgency. And on and on.

Then there was the Swift Boat ads and Jack Abramoff and Republicanizing K Street and Tom DeLay and Vice President Cheney saying the most awful things as if they were true and the President making sure dissenters were not allowed anywhere near where he was speaking and then allowing in only those loyal to him. And Alberto Gonzolaz Republicanizing the Justice Department. And on and on . . . .

I firmly believe that the strategy was intentional to pull so many bad stunts so that they kind of disappeared behind each other and fed the premise that government is bad so people would not vote or even care about what happened in politics. The voices of those outraged by everything as it happened soon were on television so much that they lost the uniqueness of their challenges. And reporters and netwoirk news executives were intimidated and the whole belief that there was news which could be unbiased becoming the "liberal press" compared the the "fair and balanced" stuff at Fox News so that now no news is given any credence because it is all boased anyway!

Into this kind of crazy setting comes Michael Moore. He picked a subject and he has stayed with it. His website has always been a source of news about some of the craziness but he has, like Al Gore, focussed on one topic among all that have flowed from the political gatling gun of this Administration and kept us focussed on something specific and have fought hard for that so that it does not get lost in the swirling absurdity called governance and news these days.

Future Americans will look back on this eight year period and wonder how we could let those people get away with so much in such a short period of time. I hope they see the evil genius in that strategy and not allow it to occur in the future. And I hope they have a Michael Moore to jump all over one subject and move toward action that helps us regain our true nature.

Empire America

2007-09-13T03:20:00.000-07:00

Not all prophets have long white beards, wear sandals, and live in the desert . . . or even the Middle East.

Barbara Wendland is a housewife who went to seminary and writes the most prophetic commentaries on religion and the church, which carries her into seeing things most of us are too busy to see or think about.

You can find her observations at www.connectionsonline.org.

You should find her observations! This time, she is looking at American imperialism in the second of a three part series. Her observations about how empire operates should shake even our most conservative people.

It won't because, as she says, Empire suffuses the air we breathe and we just assume it is God's wish for us.

Her next observation will be about how Jesus and Paul resisted imperialism.

This prophet wears a dress and lives in Temple, Texas.

The Cabinet's primary task

2007-09-03T06:38:00.000-07:00

During my forty or so years of experience as a pastor in te United Methodist Church, I have watched my superiors in office change from fellow ministers to distant bureaucrats.

I'm told by clergy friends from larger conferences they always saw the Cabinet (bishop and district superintendents who make the decisions to which church ministers are appointed in our system) as distant bureaucrats to be avoided at all cost!

Having had three superintendents who are friends to this day and having met a number of superintendents who are not caught up in the general tendencies I'll describe below, I still have hope that my earliest experiences can be brought back into the present day church.

Here's what I saw happen in this transition that I experienced. Bishops no longer chose superintendents as teachers and mentors for the pastors they supervised (what else does supervise really mean?).

The bishop chose pastors who were compatible with him (it was a guy in that case). They were younger, ambitious, and more willing to be "yes" men (again, in that case it was all guys). He then assigned them to be his extension on the program committees of the conference in order to have more influence on the missions and ministries those groups carried out across the state. That gave the bishop bragging rights over successes that brought attention.

The bishop saw to it that superintendents also got onto national boards and agencies so they would have the chance to become a bishop like himself, since he had succeeded by going that route.

Suddenly, friends of mine who became superintendents stayed friendly but no longer listened to my ideas or concerns. THEY WERE TOO BUSY! And they really only saw each other between jaunts all over the state and nation working on their programmatic responsibilities and meeting those who could help them advance in the Church.

Because they really had only each other as their core relationship, being unable to sustain friendships they'd had before becoming superintendents, they began to suffer from what Irving Janis called "Group Think," taking all their views of what was going on from each other. They were in a "bubble" long before George W. Bush came along.

The old timers that were superintendents for the last six years of their careers before retirement and knew all the tricks of the trade and all the wise ways to deal with conflict and all the sanity saving activities that had helped them survive, wonderful things to pass on to the newer pastors, were quickly gone from the scene.

In their place were good pastors who got swept up into a completely different model of superintending. They were no longer the mentors and support staff to help the pastors of their district. They were the "up-and-comers" serving as the right hand of the bishop.

They no longer visited their clergy. They were never home if the pastor happened to be in their town of residence. If the superintendents showed up at a church function, it was because their busy schedules were open that day when the invitation came.

The worst symptom of superintendents' distance was their willingness to believe the first complainer who came to see them when they assumed the office . . . or worse, when they had been superintendents a long time and still immediately believed the complainers.

No matter what the facts of the situation were, an oral complaint against a pastor was an interruption to their busy schedules and the pastor should never have let something get bad enough that it turned into a complaint that ended up on the superintendent's desk!

Experienced old-timers, even in their first week as superintendents would rarely think that way. They'd have too much respect for the training and years of experience the pastor had. They'd remember when antagonists in their churches had tried to pull that kind stunt.

On top of this dynamic change, the Church gave superintendents a new power. In 1980, the General Conference of the United Methodist Church passed a law that allowed superintendents to initiate a complaint against a pastor.

In conferences where the bishop or superintendent felt they could go see a pastor, demand his credentials, and have him on the street by nightfall, this new law seemed good. It made the Cabinet member have to write something down first that could then be processed through a committee before the pastor would be out on the street.

In conferences where Cabinet members had been collegial with pastors, this new law brought a terrible wedge that ruptured the covenant of the clergy. The superintendents had a new power. They were sheriff now. And it went to their heads and the pastors did not dare trust them with anything sensitive or difficult.

In all conferences after only a little while, now superintendents not only had the power to appoint them to their next church but also had the power to destroy their ministry.

You can imagine the pressure on pastors to conform, to not take chances that could lead to complaints, to not rock the boat so the next appointment would be a better one, and to avoid the superintendent so as not to disrupt his attention in any way.

Of course, the ambitious ones saw this as an opportunity to play up to the superintendent to gain favor and attention so that s/he'd (there were women superintendents by this time) have a favorable impression when new appointments were being made.

The mix of immaturity, ambition, and fear has given us, relatively speaking, superiors in office who do not think first of the pastor's needs that only an outsider like a superintendent can fulfill.
How can we turn that around to where the Cabinet can change?

There are several things that need to be done. It would be great if they could all be done at once!

First, Cabinets need to see that their first responsibility is TO HELP PASTORS SUCCEED IN THE CHURCHES TO WHICH THE SUPERINTENDENTS APPOINT THEM.

Second, superintendents and bishops must not have the authority to initiate complaints.

If a pastor shoots and wounds a superintendent, of course as the victim, the superintendent has the right to lodge a formal complaint. And if after supervising an ineffective or unmotivated pastor by working together over at least a year on remedial education, finding medical or psychological therapy that could help, and providing support for follow-through, a superindendent would be a witness to the lack of success of those efforts and thus a proper one to initiate a complaint. The file would be thick to back up the complaint.

Any other use of the power to initiate a complaint would be hearsay or power abuse.

Third, the Church needs to pare down what it expects of its Cabinet members. Program in the conference and in the general church should be done by volunteers or those on special appointment so that bishops and superintendents would not have to use their precious time shilling for national programs or sitting in on meetings where they were not needed.

That would mean some kind of watchdog group would have to oversee the national boards and agencies to keep them from becoming feifdoms of charismatic leaders. We currently make bishops be the watchdogs.

Fourth, Cabinets have to appoint experienced pastors near the end of their careers to be superintendents. Ambition would be expressed by effective pastoring for many long years rather than by who one gets to know. And respect for the realities of ministry would replace impatience.

Fifth, bishops and superintendents would all have to take salary cuts until the church could afford to reward them. As it is, we reward them just because they are superintendents, not because they are of any help to the local churches and pastors.

Sixth, we need to elect bishops who do not need the attention which having successful splashy programs provide, men and women who are willing to be content with doing a great job matching pastors and churches and helping them both succeed. Maybe someone needs to establish an award for bishops and superintendents who work on that most primary task.

Will we get back to where superintendents and bishops are there to help the local church and pastor succeed as disciple- and apostle-makers, as "hospitals for sinners," as the vine that nourishes its branches, as the "bread of Christ broken for many"?

Do we have the grace?

"Siesta Dreams" - a poem by Art Davis

2007-08-28T14:02:00.000-07:00

With Art's permission, I publish here one of his delightful poems:

"Siesta Dreams"

While on these lazy, hot and humid afternoons I snooze

And once asleep, my Walter Mitty complex courts the Muse.

Solzhenitsyn raves about my poetry; it's so nice!

With Bush, Chirac and Putin crave political advice.

I've urge to storm the lofty citadel of Pulitzer,

Brusquely stopped by surly surrogates suggesting, "Cool it, sir!"

Yes - in my mind, I know, if given chance I'd show 'em,

If they'd allow me to recite for them my latest poem.

Or - team me up with Ginger Rogers. I say, "What a pair!"

Doing intricate routines, so eat your heart out, Fred Astaire!

Or, playing the piano as dear Mother used to do,

Dazzling all at Carnegie Hall, playing "Rhapsody in Blue."

On the operatic stage, I know they'd breathless watch me

And listen to my tear-voiced presentation of Paggliaci. . . .

I'd make them soon forget the one and only Pavotatti

As they listened to my dulcet tone-enraptured "fa-sol-la-ti!"

I would design, as Architect, tall buildings touching star,

Or put to canvas beauty such as found in a Renoir.

Alas, all such pleasant dreams do surely fade away.

The dreams now done, I waken to reality of day.

Arthur H. Davis

8/28/07 (based on a poem of 4/21/93)

Mother Theresa

2007-08-28T13:54:00.000-07:00

Mother Theresa is probably the most outstanding modern era saint of the Roman Catholic Church. And so it became “news” that a biographer printed letters she wrote to various confessors over her career that point to a “dark ‘life’ of the soul.”

History contains saints who often had the “dark ‘night’ of the soul” experience. John Wesley who founded Methodism, for example, within days after his Aldersgate experience when he felt even his heart strangely warmed and his sins were forgiven, wrote in his journal that he never felt further from God.

Martin Luther had terrible periods of depression. One vignette tells of his being particularly depressed and his wife wanting to do something about it. While he was stewing in his office one day, she scrounged up every piece of black clothing she could find and put it on, completely covering herself. She then went upstairs. When he became aware of the silence of the house, he called for his wife. No answer. That surprised him. And worried him. He called again. This time he heard a sound from upstairs. He ran up to where he thought the sound came from and heard quiet sobbing coming from the bedroom. He burst in the door and found Katherine, his wife, sitting in the middle of the bed, dressed with black dress, black stockings, long black gloves, and heavy black veil, crying into a black kerchief.

“What’s the matter?” he yelled, rushing to her side.

“God is dead!” she cried.

Luther howled with laughter, and that period of depression came to an end.

There are many more such stories of how the inner lives of the saints were tormented. Psychotherapists point to the fact that many suffered from clinical mental illnesses, particularly bi-polar disorder and depression.

These kinds of illnesses often become grounds for removing pastors from ministry even if they have been brought under control by therapy and medication. Thank God the church did not put all its mentally ill on disability but allowed them to struggle through to sainthood. - There are some sociopaths many wish had not been allowed to take positions of authority in the church but that requires a separate treatment.

Since the focus of the letters chosen for the recent book on Mother Theresa were from her descriptions of her darkest times described for her counselors, it is hard to tell if she suffered from debilitating disorders that sometimes overwhelmed Luther and Wesley. We do not see anything of the moments she may have felt otherwise, if those even exist.

From what I gather, given quotes from her letters, I want to offer another view on the reason for her suffering.

There is a pietist movement in Christianity that encourages us to look for assurance, to believe that “He’ll come to you if you ask Him; He’s only a prayer away.”

The more committed one is to that piety, as many monastics tend to be, the more difficult their faith becomes for them if, by chance, they do not feel God’s presence.

The Early Church, as reflected in the New Testament, gives a good deal of attention to the issue. Without going into the nature of the differences among people, those writers offered alternatives to the pietist notion of personal assurance.

Two passages best provide the argument: “By their fruits ye shall know them,” says Matthew 7:16. Matthew 25 says, “If you have done it unto the least of my brethren, you have done it unto me.”

Matthew 25:31-46 describes the final judgment. In this story, all the nations are gathered and the Lord separates them as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He points out that the “sheep” have served him. Many of them say, “But when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and gave you drink, or a stranger and welcomed you, naked and clothed you, sick or in prison and came unto you?” And the “goats” ask the same question from the other side, “When did we not see you hungry . . . .?

The real power in Mother Theresa’s life was how the poor, “the least of these my brethren,” motivated her to do her ministry.

The fruit of her efforts have certainly been honored by the “World,” most notably by the Nobel Prize. Her work continues even after her death, though her charisma is certainly missed.

Yet she suffered in anguish over the feeling of emptiness and loneliness confessed in her letters, feelings which lasted the larger number of decades of her ministry.

My first impulse when I read of her pain was to offer assurance from these other Bible texts which are not traditionally pietist. I wanted her to know that assurance comes through the eyes of the Christ in the poor she so urgently served, and that not all people can have the sense of Christ’s presence emanating from the great beyond or even from their own hearts.

But to God, Who made us each to receive Him/Her in our own way, it is the good that we do, no matter how it is motivated, that is what finally counts, is what separates the “sheep” from the “goats.”

When I decided to go into the ministry, I remember on two occasions seeking a sense of God’s presence. I was on my knees at a church altar rail in both situations. And nothing happened. I don’t even remember the moment or how it came about that I decided not to worry about it. I was majoring in anthropology at the time. I must have figured out that God wasn’t going to come to me that way. Blessed were those who had that experience, I guess. But more blessed are those who seek to do God’s will without some kind of pay off.

I wish I could have met Mother Theresa, given her a hug she seems to have needed very desperately, and reminded her of Matthew 25.