FUNNY!!!!!!!!

Apparently these student's need to go back to grade school!

Republican Veep

So McCain has chosen Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin. I said in an earlier post that McCain needed to pick somebody that nobody knew about, like Pawlenty. Well, McCain did me one better and picked somebody I didn't even know existed! And a pro-life woman (talk about appeasing the Right)! Wow! Without knowing one single thing about Palin, I have to say, this is probably a very smart move for McCain. NOBODY has ever heard of this woman, so there's no baggage. And he might bring back all the conservative women that voted for Bush because of security, but were bolting to Obama because of the mess. Not to mention the Hillary supporters that still want a woman to vote for (I wonder what Joan Chittister would say since she is still steamed about the whole thing)! I think this has got to be the first Republican female VP candidate? So, McCain's making some history too. And young. And I imagine it's going to be a lot tougher for Biden to really go after a woman candidate in the VP debates.

Unless the muckrakers find major dirt on Palin (unlikely I'd think), this seems to be an amazing choice. But it's also putting all the pressure on McCain. Really the criticism is going to be that she's not ready to step into the Presidency. There will be comparisons with Quayle. But if she's articulate, she can easily dispel those comparisons. If she's not, it could turn into a disaster for them.

Update: Palin on the issues:

http://www.ontheissues.org/Sarah_Palin.htm

Looks solidly conservative: pro-life, anti-gay, pro-drilling in Alaska, pro-gun, anti-tax. And no information on a lot of the other issues.

Second Update: Yup, the Quayle comparisons are out. Interestingly, re: the VP debates, many are saying that Biden would simply eat her for lunch. I suppose that's possible. I guess there's still some mis-placed chauvanism in me that says that a guy hitting a girl is bad. But I guess if you're willing to do it, there's no doubt that Biden can politically punch her into a bloody pulpy mess on just about every topic I can think of.

Third Update: This is funny. Apparently, when asked a few months ago whether she would be interested in the VP job, she responded with something like, "are you kidding? what does the VP do??" The muckrakers are starting to dig dirt already. Apparently she has her own Troopergate scandal.

Complaining about the columns

This is pretty funny:

Gawd. So they're really going with this, eh? Their attack is going to be that the elitist Barack Obama is using... ETHNIC ARCHITECTURE?

What the h... I mean, how does... with the... and half of D.C... the White House... aaaargh.

Holy Fucking Thundercats, I can't even find words for the stupid. Nobody can be this stupid. Nobody. Not even in politics. Not even among Republicans. I don't care if they're paying you to be this stupid, I don't care if you're having daily meetings to decide how to best be stupid, I don't care if you're an ten-time gold medalist in synchronized stupidity, it's not possible. You could drill a hole in your skull and fill it with mayonnaise and olives, and you still wouldn't be this stupid. You could convince yourself you were a tropical fish, and dunk your head in an aquarium to breathe the cool, refreshing water, and your decomposing body would still be smarter than this two weeks later.

Read the rest here.

Republican Veep

CNN says that McCain has chosen his Veep and is supposed to reveal on Friday. The bookies are giving the odds to Romney (4/6 or 60%) with Pawlenty a far distant second(9/2 or 18%). Personally I think Romney is a sucker bet. I don't think there's a chance in hell he'll pick Romney. I think it's either going to be Pawlenty or Lieberman, and I give the nod to Pawlenty. At this point, McCain needs somebody that nobody knows! There's an outside chance it could be Tom Ridge, but since he really wasn't that great at his job as Home Land Security chief, I doubt it.

A hard teaching

The Lord cares, despite all of our silliness. We are the kind of being God loves. God's love doesn't depend on our doing nice or right things. Yet it's an illusion to think that any of us would operate totally beyond self-interest.

We're doing it in part for ourselves, and God, in great love and humility, says, "That's what I work with. That's all I work with!" It's the mustard seed with which God does great things. Thank God!

True recognition of our basic egotism is a humbling experience, but a liberating one, too.

from Richard Rohr, Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction

Ellen's Wedding

If you haven't seen Ellen DeGeneres' wedding pictures, you should! They're wonderful!

[sigh]

So it's Biden. Ah well. So much for "Change we can believe in." Whatever.

Meanwhile, McCain gets to attack Obama using Biden's and Hillary's own words. You know...Obama isn't ready (Biden) and better McCain than Obama (Hillary). Ouch! Pretty effective I think. I'm bracing myself for a McCain presidency and eternal money- and life- sucking war with Iran, Syria, Russia, North Korea, and whoever else the NeoCons are after.

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald blogs so that I don' t have to.

In other news, much more fun and stress reducing, Dean and I have been playing with Legos. Yes, Legos. They're quite fun. We just finished putting together Dwarves Mine last night.

Veep

Please don't let it be Biden!

Words are Meaningless

There stood the president of the United States speaking passionate words into a Rose Garden microphone. He was excoriating Russia's "dramatic and brutal escalation" of violence toward Georgia, "a sovereign neighboring state," in retaliation for Georgia's suppression of Ossetia, its breakaway province. The action, George Bush said with properly restrained indignation, has "substantially damaged Russia's standing in the world."

It was a stupefying moment. In response to Russia's troop movements into Georgia in defense of South Ossetia ,a province on Russia's southern border, George Bush, architect of the invasion of the still embroiled and desperately damaged "sovereign nation of Iraq" declared to the world that "such action [as Russia took] is unacceptable in the 21st century." Yo, George! Aren't you forgetting something?

So how is it that a president can make such an officious display of condemning - demonizing -- another nation for doing the very thing we have done? How can we possibly threaten them with international opprobrium while we bask in fabricated virtue and ignore public opinion entirely?

In a world that has become the global village Marshall McLuhan predicted in the '60s --20 years before the personal computer - "the medium," has indeed, "become the message." A president who can criticize others with such vehemence for doing exactly what he has just done and can neither redo nor undo nor solve and resolve, is a message for the world: Words are meaningless now.

-- excerpted from Joan Chittister

I'm an Ass, You're an Ass"

"'Oh, how charming you are,' she tells me. There, I received a positive stroke, as they say now. I'm okay, you're okay. I swear I'm going to write a book some day, the title is going to be, I'm an Ass, You're an Ass. How liberating! How wonderful to be able to admit that I'm an ass! And people will tell me that I'm wrong. And I'll just say, 'well, what did you expect from an ass?'"

-- Anthony deMello, Wake Up to Life

Ulysses for President

This is freakin awesome! Jennifer sent me this.

Paying Attention?

Here is a curious English construct I recently encountered:

Have I not been paying attention?

Yes, you have not been paying attention.

No, you have not been paying attention.

According to some handy-dandy reference guide, the question is in the "present perfect contiguous negative interrogative" case. That's the easy part.

Here's the hard part: What is the difference between these two answers? They both seem to say the opposite of each other, and they both seem to say that the questioner has not been paying attention...curious!

Of course, if a person were trying to say that the questioner HAS been paying attention, they could say,
"Yes, you have been paying attention." Or "No, you have been paying attention." Curiouser!!

Is there an English major out there that can make sense of this?

No Politicking

One of the reasons I seem to not be blogging much is that I have been deliberately staying away from politics. I just checked in to my RSS Reader for the first time in about 2 weeks, and it showed that I had over 1000+ blog posts to read. That's probably about how much I used to read on politics. No wonder I needed to blog to get rid of all the garbage I was taking in!

So, I like not being so involved in the politics right now. Really I just hear things 3rd hand in little tidbits, which is fine. So...instead...let's have a little comedy. Like with this:

euthanasia

There's a story on CNN about how a zoo has euthanized an ailing gorilla. I wonder, why is euthanizing a gorilla humane, but euthanizing a human is inhumane (and illegal)?

http://www.wlky.com/news/17199879/detail.html

Simplicity

The scapegoat sequence, without being too clever, goes something like this: We compare, we copy, we compete, we conflict, we conspire, we condemn and we crucify.

If you do not recognize some variation of this pattern within yourself, and nip it in the early stages, it is almost inevitable. That is why spiritual teachers of any depth will always teach simplicity of lifestyle and freedom from the competitive game.

It is probably the only way out of the cycle of violence.

-- Richard Rohr

On Patriotism

The latest critique of Obama is that he painted over the American flag on his campaign airplane, replacing it with a symbol of his campaign.

This, of course, is supposed to mean that Obama is unAmerican. Nevermind that McCain's airplane ALSO does not have an American flag and ALSO has a symbol of McCain's campaign. Nobody mentions that.

I am tired with all the people who mistake a symbol of patriotism (lapel pins, where they put their hand during the pledge) for the real thing.

Anthony Pico

On this week's This American Life, they featured Anthony Pico, a teen who has been in the foster care system. To the outside world, he's a "winner" or "star" because he goes around the country speaking to different groups about the problems in the foster care system and what needs to be done about it. He's very articulate and can easily speak to people.

But internally, the person that most people don't know, is that Anthony is still a kid without any parents. He lives in a building with other teen foster kids, and there are no adults living in this building, and no adults present in the building after business hours.

So Anthony really has nobody to talk to, is years behind in school, and is unmotivated. Public speaking has been the only way he's figured out how to talk to adults and get advice from them, by networking with adults after his speeches.

The show highlighted this important insight -- nobody can make you do anything (like show up for school), and nobody can do anything without help (like show up for school). It is a strange paradox.

Stuff

So, life has been busy this past week. Wednesday I chaired the first Worship Committee meeting at church. Overall it went pretty well. But some people that I was hoping would show up, didn't. So I get to decide what, if anything, to do about that. In the meantime, things roll on....

Work is heating up. Lots and lots and lots and lots of work involved in transitioning systems from Great-West to CIGNA. And here's the thing: I support 5 different systems, and none of them full-time. Yet every system requires full-time effort to transition. So (almost) everybody is expecting me to work full-time on their project. And management is very de-centralized right now. Part of the problem is that when project managers look at their project, they look at dollars. And there are plenty of dollars in the budget for their project. So they think everything is good. It means that they have plenty of money to pay for the work. What they don't have, is bodies. There just isn't enough bodies to do all the work, and it doesn't matter how much money you have if you don't have the bodies.

And training new bodies is a nightmare. If I *don't* work full-time on System A to get it transitioned, it will take 3 or 4x the amount of effort to train someone else to do it. And training takes full-time effort too. Thank God I'm not a manager. I think I'd be having a heart attack right about now.

On Thursday and Friday I went to Souljourners. That went well, although it wasn't my favorite weekend. The topic was on discernment. Which is always a good topic, but it's one we've had before, and sometimes I think we're wasting time duplicating stuff. There's so much ground to cover, that I don't know why we'd repeat anything.

Saturday I went to clay class. Didn't learn much that was new, but spent time practicing. I made a bottle, but unfortunately, I made the bottom too thin, and I lost the bottom when I lifted it. Then I made a bowl, which turned out okay.

This past Sunday I preached. The topic was Friendship with God. Overall I think it went very well. It was really a way for me to introduce the congregation to the Spiritual Director ministry I've been working at with Souljourners. I haven't really had much response from my own congregation, and this last week at Souljourners I talked with Joanie about it, and she gave me some really perceptive ideas why. First, she says, there is always that "who do you think you are?" kind of perception, like when Jesus got a poor reception from his own home town. Second, because Spiritual Direction is potentially a very personal kind of ministry, some people just don't want to talk to someone that they know. So, I may just need to give up on offering this in my congregation and start reaching out to KU and the other area churches.

From MoveOn

Standing before a room of oil company executives in June, John McCain flip-flopped and declared support for coastal oil drilling. Now the Washington Post is reporting that, within days, oil and gas execs ponied up nearly $1 million to elect McCain.1 It's another piece of evidence that in a McCain White House, oil companies will call the shots—just as they have with President Bush.

Fox News Poll

If this isn't a push poll, I don't know what is:

From FOX News:

Have you heard any of your friends and neighbors say there is something about Barack Obama that scares them?
Yes 49%
No 50%

Have you heard any of your friends and neighbors say there is something about John McCain that scares them?
Yes 36%
No 62%

Some people believe Barack Obama, despite his professed Christianity, is secretly a Muslim. Others say that is just a rumor and Obama really is a Christian as he says, and point out he's attended a Christian church for years. What do you believe -- is Obama a Muslim or a Christian?
Muslim 10%
Christian 57%

John McCain was held captive for five years in a North Vietnamese prisoner of war camp. Do you think that experience would make McCain a better president or a worse president?
Better 49%
Worse 11%
No Difference (voluntary) 33%

Do you think Barack Obama's trip to Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East is better described as a fact-finding trip or as a campaign event?
Fact-finding 19%
Campaign event 47%
Both (voluntary) 25%

Obama's 3 Pointer & McCain's geography lesson

Obama's Speech

I listened to the last half of Obama's speech during lunch. Brilliant speech, and he's gotten much better at the teleprompter. He clearly knows how to play to large audiences.

The speech itself was wonderful. Critics will say it is dreamy without substance. But the fact is that it is visionary, positive and hopeful in a way that McCain could never, on his most lucid day, pull off. And, of course, he says things that McCain would never say -- besides terrorism, he talked about Darfur, AIDS, global warming, nuclear weapons, poverty and justice in Africa, fair trade, human rights in Burma, freedom of religion, and trust among nations.


P.S. Part of me thinks that it is almost impossible for McCain to win. The bigger part of me realizes that McCain is still polling very well, because half of the voters in the country still live in an alternate universe from the one I occupy.

A Little Bit of Knowledge...

In last week's This American Life, they talked about knowledge.

In one segment, they talked about having a "little" bit of knowledge, just enough to get yourself into trouble. Like, everybody knows that trans fats are bad for you. But nobody knows why. So, when you encounter a person who waxes eloquent on the evils of trans fats, if you ask them, "why are they bad for you?" they will probably try to just make up some plausible story. There's a word for it, and it's called a "Modern Jackass."

I do this all the time with politics, of course. I know just enough about, for example, the latest debacle with Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac to know that I don't like it, but not enough to have actually read the bill and be able to argue intelligently about it if someone asked me any kind of in-depth question about it. I am a "modern jackass."

The next segment was about beliefs we had growing up, into adulthood, that suddenly turned out to be wildly off-target and mistaken--and usually we find that out in some embarrassing situation. Like the woman who thought that the abbreviation "Xing" as in "Railroad Xing" was pronounced "zing". Or the one who thought that unicorns were an endangered species of a real animal. Or the one who grew up having only eaten chicken for lunch and dinner--ever--and thought everybody else did too.

I've had several of these mistaken beliefs too. Some that come immediately to mind are:

1) razor blades last forever.
I remember being a sophomore in college and complaining to my roommate that I hated shaving because it hurt so much. He asked me how long I'd been using my Bic razor blade, and I replied something like, "I don't know 2 years or so." He just stared at me for a while. Then he handed me a new razor blade and said, "try this." And it was glorious. It was actually shaving my beard instead of ripping it out. That was the first time I learned that a razor only lasts for a few shaves.

2) men get haircuts about every 6 -8 months.
I was into my 20s before I read, in a Men's Health magazine, that people are supposed to get a haircut about every month. I was utterly dumbfounded. Literally all my life until the age of 24 or so, I only ever got a haircut when my hair was so out of control (it curls into an afro), that I could not get my brush through my hair. My parents had never, EVER, taken me to get a haircut before I complained that I could not get my brush through my hair--which was about once every 6-8 months or so.

3) Never drain or rinse canned beans.
It has only been in the last 2 or 3 years that I have learned that when people cook with canned beans that they usually drain and rinse the beans before they use them. Wow! What a discovery! Growing up, we never drained or rinsed canned beans--which we ate almost every day of our lives-- and I thought that the nasty bitter taste of the "bean gravy" that I hated was just how beans tasted and was normal.

I'm sure I could think of more. So, what are your dumb discoveries?

Some brief notes...

...church meetings are not my favorite things...
...Obama has been doing pretty good overseas. A huge risk for him, but he doesn't seem to have made any big blunders (unlike McCain who has blundered just trying to criticize Obama).
...I hate the fact that the shareholders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are getting bailed out. It isn't the mortgagees who are getting bailed out, they are still getting foreclosed on. No, just the rich investors who bought the lousy mortgages are getting bailed out. Man that sucks.

Here's a neat poem:


I Sit and Think

I sit beside the fire and think
of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies
in summers that have been;

Of yellow leaves and gossamer
in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun
and wind upon my hair.

I sit beside the fire and think
of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring
that I shall never see.

For still there are so many things
that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring
there is a different green.

I sit beside the fire and think
of people long ago,
and people who will see a world
that I shall never know.

But all the while I sit and think
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door.

JRR Tolkien

Foreign Policy

So, exactly what the hell is going on with our foreign policy?

• Condi is meeting with the unspeakably evil N. Koreans for the first time?
• Bush is doing an abrupt 180 about-face with the even more evil Iran, going so far as opening informal diplomatic relations (which he formerly called "appeasement")?
• The latest intel report says that Iran stopped its nuclear program 3 YEARS ago?
• Bush wants to increase efforts in Afghanistan (instead of Iraq)?

What the hell??
First, it's all good.
So that makes me suspicious right away.
Second, why did they wait so long?
Third, are they really doing this to shore up McCain's campaign as some suggest? Won't that backfire? Won't that make the American people really focus on domestic policy, for which Obama CLEARLY has the edge?

P.S. Why exactly is Obama running away from debating McCain when McCain can't remember that Czechoslovakia hasn't existed since 1993? Twice?

On off-shore drilling

"It is only a truly dysfunctional system that would buy into the perverse logic that the short-term answer to high gasoline prices is drilling for more oil 10 years from now" -- Al Gore


I would also redirect you to the blog post I made some weeks ago where I pointed out that the oil industry ALREADY has millions of offshore locations that they are not bothering to drill in. Why? Nobody wants to. Drilling for oil is hard.

St Bonaventure

St. Bonaventure took Francis' intuitive genius and spelled it out into an entire philosophy.

God is "within all things but not enclosed; outside all things, but not excluded; above all things, but not aloof; below all things, but not debased."Bonaventure was the first to speak of God as one "whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere."

Therefore the origin, magnitude, multitude, beauty, fullness, activity and order of all created things are the very "footprints" and "fingerprints" (vestigia) of God. Now that is quite a lovely and a very safe universe to live in. Welcome home!

--Richard Rohr, Hope Against Darkness

Gene Robinson

Gay episcopal bishop Gene Robinson is in the U.K. Here's a story about it:

Here's to you, Mr Robinson

The irony missed by Christian homophobes is that the gay US bishop is sustained by a faith you could call fundamentalist

All comments ()

Giles Fraser
guardian.co.uk,
Monday July 14, 2008

The emails have been coming in all day. My favourite begins: "Dear sodomite supporter, you are nothing but a dirty sodomite-loving ugly stain of a man who is a disgrace to humanity." It ends "Burn in hell, Mr K." Well, thank you for that, Mr K. I have had a fair number of letters and emails from people who think like you. One suggested that I ought to be executed at Tyburn. Another graphically described the details of fisting.

My crime had been to offer the Bishop of New Hampshire a pulpit to preach the word of God. I usually have the emotional hide of a rhino, but even I was upset by the unpleasantness of the reaction, hiding my hurt in a few too many vodkas at lunchtime. How on earth does Gene Robinson cope with the disgusting abuse to which he is subjected most days – the protester who interrupted his sermon in my church on Sunday being a pretty mild example? Day after day, buckets of spiritual shit are thrown at him, sometimes by fellow bishops, and he just keeps going.

Spending some time with him over the last few days, I have discovered how he does it. He is the real deal. He is a believer. Responding to attacks that he had a "homosexual agenda", he insisted: "Here and now, in St Mary's Church, Putney, I want to reveal to you the homosexual agenda. The homosexual agenda is: Jesus." He went on to preach a fiery, almost revivalist, sermon, calling on Anglicans to take Jesus into their heart and to allow Him to cast out their fear.

What makes this person so interesting is that he has lost any sense that he is able to support himself spiritually through his own effort alone. His recognition of his "failure" to cope is precisely his strength. The theology is pure Luther: only when you recognise that you are unable to make yourself acceptable to God under your own steam can you collapse back upon God as the sole source of salvation. Later in the sermon, he described going from a meeting of the US House of Bishops to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, and being relieved that, at this second meeting, he could at last speak about God.

Forget what you think you know about Gene Robinson – his is Gospel Christianity of a very traditional kind. This is what Christianity looks like once it has got over its obsession with respectability.

Women Bishops

The Church of England on Monday voted to permit the ordination of women bishops. The Catholic church immediately issued a statement saying that it "regrets" that decision and that it creates a "rift" in the ongoing efforts at reconciliation.

The most-oft cited reason why women can't be bishops, as the article says, is that Jesus' apostles were all men, and therefore, Jesus only wanted men to be bishops.

What these traditionists don't think about is that Jesus only chose Jews to be apostles. So, why are gentile males permitted to be bishops in the Anglican church? By the same reasoning, they ought not to be.

Local Food

I have often wondered why it is so hard to find locally grown food in the middle of Kansas. Why, for example, our local grocery has almost no produce, and what they have is often old. Why, for example, our local meat market sells only beef, and only frozen. Why, for example, the Lawrence Farmer's Market is only open a couple of days a week. I have had some conversations with people about all the reasons, but this excerpt from an NPR story really helps to solidify what's going on:

Ira Flatow: You show an interesting illustration of the state of Iowa, which we all know is a great agricultural state, but the people buying the food there — none of it's local except maybe the corn.

Mr. Halweil: Right. The irony of the whole sort of center of the country, the Corn Belt, is that most of that corn and soybeans goes elsewhere, and those very productive agricultural counties end up importing most of their food. The folks at Iowa State University at the Leopold Center looked at a typical meal consumed in Iowa — some beef, some string beans, some carrots, some potatoes, berries for a pie, wheat for bread — and what they found is that most of those ingredients came from between 1,000 and 2,000 miles away, from as far away as Chile and mostly from California, even though Iowa is perfectly capable of raising all of those ingredients for the vast majority of the year.

And most importantly, what they found is that long-distance meal consumed 17 times as much energy in transportation as that same meal raised within 50 miles of the university itself.

So not only is it gobbling up a tremendous amount of money, but it's actually taking dollars out of the state, dollars that could be going to Iowa farmers.

Ira Flatow: And why isn't it grown there then? If you can do it, why not do it?

Mr. Halweil: Well, it gets back to this sort of economic calculus that defines global trade, that defines trade anywhere at this point. And that is, if a store in Iowa can find a sack of potatoes grown slightly cheaper than it would cost them to grow it in Iowa, they get it from wherever they can. And because fuel is relatively inexpensive or a relatively small part of that cost, we're willing to ship those potatoes from as far away as China.

And we don't really attach a lot of value right now to the fact that those potatoes might have been grown locally, which might mean that they're fresher and tastier. It also means that we're not causing all this pollution and congestion as a result of the energy use. And also means that we're keeping money in our local economy.

Ira Flatow: Dr. Wilkins, you write about fossil fuel consuming a huge portion of our food costs.

Dr. Wilkins: Well, it certainly does. Our food system is very fossil fuel-dependent and very heavily uses of fossil fuels. It's estimated that about 20 percent of our fossil fuel use is used in the entire food system, from production to getting food on our table.

For every calorie that we consume, about 10 calories of fossil fuel has been used to produce that.

Ira Flatow: You wrote an article in the Times-Union, the local newspaper in Albany, New York, saying food policies fail to spur good health. And you talk about something that sort of flies below the radar screen of most Americans, most politicians. And that is the legislation that sets up the farm bill. What goes on in the farm bill affects just about all kinds of things that we eat. Talk about what your concerns are.

Dr. Wilkins: Well — and this gets back to our concentration of supporting very few commodities, as opposed to supporting diversity and variety, which we promote in the dietary guidelines. So our dietary guidelines are very sound in what they're promoting in terms of eating a variety of fruits and vegetables and eating whole grains and, you know, a variety of different kinds of foods.

Yet our production system that we support with policy is very narrow in what it supports. And the Economic Research Service of the USDA has estimated that we would need to put in six million acres more in crop production to supply the kinds of foods, if people shifted to the dietary guidelines, and produce far fewer acres of corn and far fewer acres, about 10 million fewer acres of soybeans.

So we're producing foods that are then converted to being available as commodities to the food industry that then finds multiple uses for them. We have, you know — walk into a supermarket today and see nearly 40,000 items in the supermarket. Gives a really great impression of a lot of choice. But when you start really looking at the ingredients in a lot of the packaged foods and the highly processed foods that we have in the supermarket, you'll start seeing the same ingredients all over the place.

And high fructose corn syrup, which didn't exist before 1970, is now pervasive throughout our food system as is a lot of added fat from soybeans.

healthcare, poverty, justice

I have been involved in an online group that has been discussing health care, poverty, justice issues. Normally the people here are very enlightened, but on this issue, they are really out to lunch. Some refer to government-assisted health care as immoral "coercion." Others suggest that the Bible really doesn't have much to say about the poor. I doubt that most of them have ever gone hungry or been unable to get medical care for a day in their lives.

Well I'm done with it for a while. Weary. Need to recharge, so I'm separating myself from that group for a while.

McCain on Vietnam

McCain on Vietnam: we could have won if we kept fighting.

Scary.

FISA history

A good article on the history of FISA:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18650

The Little Things....

Lately I have read a lot of comments like this,

"Do you think God would waste his time caring about xxxxx? Don't you think he has more important things to worry about?"

Do the people who say this really think that God is running out of time?

I think that God cares about the little things. When I told a friend this a few months ago, he said, incredulously, "what, you think God cares about whether I had an egg mcmuffin instead of a fruit plate for breakfast?"

[sigh] When I say that God cares about the little things, I don't mean that God cares in a judgmental way about the little things. God is not looking down from the clouds with a frown ready to pronounce judgment on every action we take (or don't).

But I do think that God cares. God cares that my friend got to have breakfast that morning, and, indeed provided it. God cares that my friend got nourished, got a belly ache or not, that he noticed the taste of the bread, the smell of the orange juice. None of that is a "waste" of time for God. None of it is unworthy of God's care. God has all the time in the world to care about the little things. And God still has plenty of time left over to care about everybody else and hold the whole universe in God's hand. I guess that's why they call him God.

Best Pixar Movies

So NY Entertainment is listing the "best" Pixar movies in order. Unfortunately, they get the order all wrong.

Here's the right order:

8. A Bug's Life(1998)
7. Toy Story (1995)
6. Toy Story 2 (1999)
5. Ratatouille (2007)
4. Cars (2006)
3. The Incredibles (2004)
2. Monsters, Inc. (2001)
1. Finding Nemo (2003)

On Waking Up

From Anthony deMello:

Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don't know it, are asleep. They're born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, and they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence.

All mystics, Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, they are all unanimous, no matter what their theology, on one thing, and that is that “all is well.” All is well--everything is in a mess--and all is well. Strange paradox. But tragically, most people never get to see that. Because they are asleep….

Most people tell you that they want to get out of kindergarten, but don’t believe them. All that they want for you to do is to mend their broken toys. Give me back my wife. Give me back my job. Give me back my money. Give me back my reputation, my success. This is what they want—they want their toys repaired.

Even the best psychologists will tell you that. They will tell you that people really do not want to be cured. What they want is relief. A cure is painful. Waking up is unpleasant, you know. It is nice and comfortable in bed. And as long as you are asleep, it is irritating to be woken up.

It is said that the wise guru will not attempt to wake people up. I hope that I will make no attempt to wake you up if you are asleep. None of my business. My business is to do my thing. To dance my dance. If you profit from it, fine. If you don’t, too bad. As the Arabs say, “the nature of the rain is the same, but it grows thorns in the marshes, and flowers in the garden.”

"Torture Team" on Fresh Air

Been catching up on my favorite NPR shows. Here is one from 6/19 about Guantanamo.

Here are two things that are most jaw-dropping for me:

(1) the guy who is said to be the "20th" hijacker, in the face of the recent Supreme Court ruling stating that detainees had a right to access to the courts, has had all charges against him dropped, so that the government would not have to reveal in court how they tortured him.

(2) in the first year, the guards at Guantanamo realized that most of the detainees there are useless individuals--people who were simply swept up in the chaos, sold for money by Saudis and others, and have no military value and are not threats to the U.S. The guards went to the Pentagon to tell them that they need to release these detainees to free up resources for the real criminals. The Pentagon told them that to free them would mean admitting a mistake, and that the guards could go take a hike.

And that is where we remain to this day, with some 600+ detainees in Guantanamo, most of whom have nothing to do with this war so that the administration can save face, and the people who DID have something to do with this war, will soon be let go, so that the administration can save face.

Un. be. lievable. This sums up the Bush Administration for me. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER admit a mistake, NEVER back down, ALWAYS strike first. On an enneagram, I think he's a classic 8. Others think he's a 6. I could see it go either way. Here are two articles:

http://www.9types.com/writeup/enneagram_bush.html
http://www.lessons4living.com/enneagram6.htm

Here's the summary of an 8.

The Gut Center: Moves against others - Over Does Anger
Original Loss: "I was too weak."
Problem Emotion: Anger
Basic Decision: Being strong and in control allows you to survive and be loved.
False Claim: "I am always powerful and in charge."
Four Adjectives: Self-confident and decisive, but aggressive and combative.

Self-image: I am invincible.
Compulsion: To always be powerful and in charge.
Avoidance: Weakness.
Sin: Lust - Take what you want.
Gift: Strength, protection, and leadership
Seven Wing: More extroverted, enterprising, energetic, quick, and egocentric..
Nine Wing: More mild-mannered, gentle, receptive, and quietly strong.
Stress Point: 5 - Withdraws, avoids people, observes and thinks, consolidates plans.
Security Point: 2 -Protector of the weak, generous, helpful, charming .

God save us from this nightmare.

Glenn Beck, Conservative

Glenn Beck's article defines conservative. I give you a helpful interpretation of his bullshit.

Glenn Beck’s Version of Conservatism	My Interpretation of Glenn Beck
A conservative believes that our inalienable rights do not include housing, healthcare or Hummers.	The poor have a right to be homeless, sick, and walk to work. Conservatives have the inalienable right to destroy the environment with gas-guzzling Hummers if they want to.
A conservative believes that our inalienable rights DO include the pursuit of happiness. That means it is guaranteed to no one.	A conservative has the right to be greedy.
A conservative believes that those who pursue happiness and find it have a right to not be penalized for that success.	A conservative believes in selfishness and the right to screw the poor out of the little they have.
A conservative believes that there are no protections against the hardship and heartache of failure. We believe that the right to fail is just as important as the chance to succeed and that those who do fail learn essential lessons that will help them the next time around.	A conservative believes that there are no protections against failure, unless you are rich or have connections, in which case, you can hire a good lawyer.
A conservative believes in personal responsibility and accepts the consequences for his or her words and actions.	A conservative only believes in personal responsibility for others. If you are Glenn Beck (who failed to be responsible for his own sickness), or Rush Limbaugh (who failed to be responsible for his own drug abuse), you get a pass.
A conservative believes that real compassion can't be found in any government program.	A conservative believes that there ought to be no such thing as compassion because it is weak.
A conservative believes that each of us has a duty to take care of our neighbors. It was private individuals, companies and congregations that sent water, blankets and supplies to New Orleans far before the government ever set foot there.	Conservatives believe only in helping neighbors if helping them also helps you (c.f. Barbara Bush’s Katrina donation that went directly to her son’s business of which she was on the board).
A conservative believes that family is the cornerstone of our society and that people have a right to manage their family any way they see fit, so long as it's not criminal. We are far more attuned to our family's needs than some faceless, soulless government program.	Conservatives believe that people have a right to manage their family as long as they are not gay or working single mothers. Oh, and conservatives believe in the right to beat their children as long as nobody notices.
A conservative believes that people have a right to worship the God of their understanding. We also believe that people do not have the right to jam their version of God (or no God) down anybody else's throat.	Conservatives believe in a Christian nation, state-sponsored prayer in public school, and destroying the separation of Church and State, and lie about it too.
A conservative believes that people go to the movies to be entertained and to church to be preached to, not the other way around.	Conservatives believe that preaching belongs only to the pastor and to conservative media pundits like Glenn Beck.
A conservative believes that debt creates unhealthy relationships. Everyone, from the government on down, should live within their means and strive for financial independence.	Conservatives believe in corporate instead of individual welfare. They also believe in owning a house on a ranch to get farm subsidies, a personal hobby of playing golf so that they can take corporate right-offs, and the best off-shore tax shelters money can buy.
A conservative believes that a child's education is the responsibility of the parents, not the government.	Conservatives believe that only rich children should be educated.
A conservative believes that every human being has a right to life, from conception to death.	Conservatives believe that fetuses have a right to life, but not to health care, shelter, food, or healthy parents.
A conservative believes in the smallest government you can get without anarchy. We know our history: The larger a government gets, the harder it will fall.	Conservatives believe in the largest corporations you can get, with or without anarchy. We know our history. The larger corporations get, the richer conservatives get.
Those are the things a conservative believes in, and they're the things that I believe in. Now, if only I could find a candidate to match.	Those are the things Glenn Beck believes in. He should run for President.

George W. Bush Sewage Plant

Man I love this idea:

...a group going by the regal-sounding name of the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco is planning to ask voters here to change the name of a prize-winning water treatment plant on the shoreline to the George W. Bush Sewage Plant.


Rest of story

Two political stories

Two very different political stories today, with an underlying commonality:

Story 1: Obama and other Democrats cave on FISA (telecom immunity), in order to keep the issue off of the general election radar and look "tough" on terrorism. So Obama and the Dems do the WRONG thing, for the political expediency.

Story 2: The Justice Dept. Inspector General released the first of a series of reports investigating the politicization of the Justice Dept. He pulls no punches in the report and says that two of the government officials, in regards to one of the Justice Dept. programs that deliberately chose Republican over Democratic lawyers, not only broke Justice Department policy, but also broke the law. So Inspector General Fine does the RIGHT thing, despite the political pressure to cave and give Justice Department officials a pass.

P.S. Obama's excuse for voting for FISA this time because, "the phone issue doesn't override the security interests of the American people" is simply despicable.

P.P.S. Feingold and Dodd did the right thing.

American Oil

So the next time you're tempted to open up Alaska for oil drilling, just come back to this article.

America's untapped oil

Lawmakers lay into big oil for leaving million of acres untouched while at the same time asking to drill in Alaska and off the coasts.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Oil companies and many lawmakers are pressing to open up more U.S. land for drilling. But the industry is drilling on just a fraction of offshore areas it already has access to.

Of the 90 million offshore acres the industry has leases to, it is estimated that upwards of 70 million are not producing oil, according to both Democrats and oil-industry sources.

If all these areas were being drilled, U.S. oil production could be boosted by nearly 5 million barrels a day, up from about 8 million barrels a day currently.

That compares to an increase of maybe 2 million barrels a day experts say opening up other coastal areas and the Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge might yield.

Rest of article:
http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/23/news/economy/oil_drilling/index.htm?cnn=yes

I'm Baaack

So I'm back from Souljourner's. Unfortunately, it was such a busy week, an the Internet access was spotty, so I wasn't able to blog as much as I wanted to. No matter.

Souljourner's Day 2

Yesterday, we began the day at 6:30am with morning prayer. After breakfast, we had a great lecture from Margaret Guenther on Jesus as Spiritual Director. She took us through a variety of scriptures (Samuel & Eli, Story of the Rich Young Man, Story of Zaccheaus, Beggar at Pool of Bethsaida, Woman at the Well, and Blind Bartimaeus) and reflected on how Jesus acted as a spiritual director in those contexts.

Then we broke up into our small groups and practiced spiritual direction in our dyads and shared feedback. It was a very emotional time. For midday prayer, we had a "this is holy ground" kind of meditation. It was okay, but I was tired from the lecture and the emotional small group and had trouble focusing. My advisor had his laptop stolen from his car in the parking lot over night. That was a real bummer.

For lunch we had grilled chicken alfredo with a salad. After lunch, I met with my advisor, and then we listened to another lecture, this one on the Practice & Pitfalls of Spiritual Direction.

After vespers, we had dinner (ham salad sandwiches with potato salad), and then we broke up into an "enrichment" experience. We had the choice of any one of: clay, energy medicine, or sacred beads. Since I took the clay class last year (and I'm taking a pottery class at the Lawrence Arts Center), I skipped clay, and instead went to sacred beads. We talked a little about the history of sacred beads and the use of sacred beads in many religions of the world (hinduism, islam, orthodoxy, catholicism, anglicanism, buddhism, zoroastrianism, etc.). I made a set of anglican prayer beads. Dean would be proud! :)

It took a while to get those beads done! By the time I was done, the building was closed for the evening (but I wasn't the only one there, in fact others stayed long after I left), and I was hungry. So I took a quick trip to McDonald's for an apple pie dessert.

After I got back to my room, I had a quick chat with Dean and then went to bed at about 11:00pm, exhausted. Just before I went to bed, I remembered about my advisor's laptop, and got dressed again and ran out to the car to get my wallet--I have this bad habit of leaving my wallet in my car--and took off the stereo faceplate and brought it inside. Then I went to bed.

P.S. Just came across this great quote from Gerald May:
"Wondering how you can get out of the situation you are in, is the realm of psychological counseling.
Wondering what God would have you learn from this experience, is the realm of pastoral care.
Wondering how to remain in relationship with God in the midst of whatever is going on (difficult or joyful alike), is the realm of spiritual direction."

Souljourner's Day 1

Yesterday was the first full day of my second Souljourner's residency. The day began at 6:30am with morning prayer in the monastery chapel. After breakfast, we listened to a lecture on three images of spiritual direction: hospitality, teaching and midwifery. After that, we got into small groups and practiced. Just before lunch we had midday prayer, which was a body-oriented meditation/blessing led by a woman from India who does justice work for women in India. After lunch, we had a brief sabbath time followed by a lecture from another person on energy medicine (most of which I am skeptical about...but I'm practical too--if it works, do it!).

Just before dinner we prayed vespers at the monastery chapel, then had a large group session in which we shared stories about our favorite saint (which may have been a real saint, or just someone you really admired). Many of the participants chose their grandmothers. That would have been hard for me! I never met my grandmother on my dad's side, and my grandmother on my mother's side doesn't speak English, so we have never really gotten to know each other. Anyway, I chose Sts. Brennan Manning and Henri Nouwen for their work on the Beloved and the false/true self.

After that, we had a brief social, and went off to bed early. I was exhausted and was in bed and asleep by 9:45.

More tomorrow.

14 Precepts

Here is an excerpt from Thich Nhat Hanh's 14 precepts from the book, Peace Is Every Step:

1. Do not be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory or ideology. All systems of thought are guiding means; they are not absolute truth.

2. Do not think that the knowledge you presently possess is changeless, absolute truth. Avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views.

3. Do not force others to adopt your views. However, through compassionate dialogue, help others renounce fanaticism and narrowness.

4. Do not avoid contact with suffering or close your eyes before suffering. Find ways to be with those who are suffering.

5. Do not accumulate wealth while millions are hungry. Do not take as the aim of your life fame, profit, wealth, or sensual pleasure.

6. Do not maintain anger or hatred.

7. Do not lose yourself in your surroundings. Be in touch with what is wondrous, refreshing and healing, both inside and around yourself.

8. Do not utter words that can create discord and cause the community to break. Make every effort to reconcile and resolve all conflicts.

9. Do not say untruthful things for the sake of personal interest or to impress people.

10. Do not use the religious community for personal gain or profit or transform your community into a political party.

11. Do not live with a vocation that is harmful to humans and nature.

12. Do not kill. Do not let others kill. Find whatever means possible to protect life and prevent war.

13. Possess nothing that should belong to others.

14. Do not mistreat your body. Learn to handle it with respect.

The Girl Gets Banned Again

Joan Chittister has a new article up on NCR, written before Clinton ended her campaign. I have to say, it is the only occasion in which I have agreed with most of the comments on her article, more than Joan. I think that in this instance, Joan was off the mark.

The Future First Ladies

So I just read an article on CNN about the future first ladies ("Many Judge the President By the Spouse"). Here's the first thing I noticed about it: the article had almost twice as much to say about Cindy McCain as Michelle Obama. In fact, I counted. Out of a total of 393 words about the two, 249 (63%) was about Cindy. 144 (37%) was about Michelle. Note: I didn't count introductory words that were not about either one.

But there's more. CNN has a web page that has a "profile" article about the two candidates. The "profile" article about Cindy is the same article ("Many Judge the President By the Spouse"). The "profile" article about Michelle is an attack piece questioning her patriotism ("Michelle Obama Likely Target of Conservative Attacks").

So...what's that about?

The Parable of the Contractor

"John was a contractor for a construction company. To increase his personal income, he routinely cheated on materials that went into the homes he built. He was so adept at concealing his shortcuts that he joked to a close friend that even he couldn't detect them once they had been made. John's last construction project before retiring was the one he cheated on most. It was supposed to be a luxury home. Even John worried that he had gone too far this time. Imagine his shock when the company gave him this house as a gift for his years of service."

From Challenge by Mark Link.

Terrorist Fist Jab

Are you f*ing kidding me?! Holy crap. Just when you think Fox News can't sink any lower...



P.S. Re: Hill's non-apology apology, you just try to find any reference, anywhere, to a terrorist fist bump that isn't hers.

Update: Apparently E.D. Hill just lost her job. No reference to this incident, but can't help thinking that it's quite the coinky-dink.

The Golden Rule

The Golden Rule:
"Do to others what you would have them do to you." (Matthew 7:12)

In other faith traditions:

• Buddhism: Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful. (Udana-Varga 5,18)
• Confucianism: Surely it is the maxim of loving-kindness: Do not unto others that you would not have them do unto you. (Analects 15,23)
• Islam: No man is a true believer unless he desireth for his brother that which he desireth for himself. (Azizullah - Hadith 150)
• Taoism: Regard your neighbor's gains as your own gain and your neighbor's loss as your own loss. (T'ai Shang Kan Ying P'ien)
• Zoroastrianism: That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not good for itself. (Dadistan-i-dinik 94-5)
• Jain: A man should treat all creatures in the world as he himself would like to be treated. (Wisdom of the Living Religions, #69 - I:II:33)
• Brahmanism: This is the sum of duty: do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you. (Mahabharata 5,1517)

Ad censorship & a broken FCC

Glenn Greenwald has a good article about a case of ad censorship.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/index.html?source=newsletter

In this case, Comcast is refusing to air an advertisement for a company criticizing Rep. Carney for supporting telecom immunity. Comcast is a big contributor to Rep. Carney, and could potentially be a target for telecoms who broke the law.

But it astounds me that the corporations that run our public airwaves have such power for censorship. It reminds me of the pro-gay UCC ads ("God is still speaking") that NBC refused to air.

Sadly, our FCC is doing nothing. These entities, in order to have a license, are supposed to be operating for the public trust. In 2007, the FCC dismissed the UCC's complaint, citing that local stations should not be held liable for national network policies. This despite the fact that in the past, the FCC has ruled that it is the local stations which own licenses, not that the national networks (and thus ruled in the opposite direction when complaints were filed against national entities).

Sometimes I Hate Email

This never fails to happen to me. Probably 2 or 3 times a month, I get a request at work to do something, and I do it.

Then the person writes back a week or two later to tell me that whatever I did, I did it wrong, and that I need to do it again. Sometimes they are polite about it. Sometimes they're not.

So I haul out my old emails--I keep about 3 months worth, which is about 2,000 emails--look the request over, and 99 times out of 100, I see that I did EXACTLY what the person asked. It is indeed, the originator who made a mistake and not me.

My next step is usually to reply to the person's email and say something like, "here is your original request. Did I misinterpret it?", and I attach the original email.

That's usually enough to get things back on track. (The main reason why I bother with this CYA-type step is because my customers have a say in my performance review, so it's important to me to keep the record straight).

Now, here's why I hate email. Every time I start to do this, is exactly the time that my email decides to freeze up on me, and I have to either wait forever, or shut it down and start it back up again.

ARGH! So, here I am, poised at the keyboard, ready to defend myself(!), and my computer gets stuck.

It's like a knight who leaps off his horse to face the dragon, draws his sword...no wait, my sword's stuck in the scabbard. Um, hold on a minute there, Mr. Dragon, I'm having a wee bit of a problem here. Just a minute... (pull, pull, wrench, wrench)...

Tech Support IV

Start at the bottom and work your way up.

Tech Support III

Tech Support II

Schmell Tech Support

Australia gets two female bishops

Canberra (ENI). After decades of debate, Australian Anglicans have one female bishop, and they will get a second within 10 days of the first woman's consecration.

On 22 May, West Australian Archdeacon Kay Goldsworthy was consecrated Australia's first female bishop. Canon Barbara Darling's consecration was to follow on 1 June in Melbourne.

Supporters of the move described it as a breakthrough for the equality of women in the church. However, opponents of consecrating women bishops warned it may further divide Anglicans across Australia.

Sydney's archbishop, Peter Jensen, and the bishop of Northwest Australia, David Mulready, were among Anglican clergy who did not attend Goldsworthy's consecration because of their opposition to the ordination of women ministers.

Bishop Goldsworthy, who is 51, is married and has two sons, and she was one of the first women to be ordained in Australia, when in 1992 the country's Anglican church opened the priesthood to women.

She will serve as assistant bishop in the Perth diocese.

"I am delighted that we in the church of Perth continue our unwavering commitment to Christ's Gospel by recognising women and men as equal partners in the world," Perth's archbishop, Roger Herft, had said in a statement before the ceremony.

Canon Darling will be an assistant bishop in the Melbourne diocese and she will take responsibility for youth and children's ministry and the hospital chaplaincy. "I'm thrilled there will be two of us [women bishops] to support each other and share together," Darling told The Age newspaper.

The turning point came in September 2007 when the church's highest court ruled that there was no legal barrier to women becoming bishops. Women with extensive leadership experience such as Goldsworthy and Darling were now considered eligible for these roles.

"A lot of these women would have been consecrated already," Val Graydon, president of the Movement for Ordination of Women, told Ecumenical News International.

However, the announcements were met with concern by some Anglicans from the Sydney diocese. Equal but Different, a Sydney-based coalition, has argued against both the ordination and the consecration of women. Its spokesperson Claire Smith warned that differences of opinion may lead to divisions in church leadership.

"There will be a fundamental disagreement on the understanding of the ministry that's sitting around the table," said Smith.

In April, Australia's Anglican bishops released the Protocol for Women in the Episcopate to address this contentious issue. The protocol provides for alternative ministry where people are unable to accept a female bishop's leadership.

Smith questioned whether the protocol would be effective. "Those who have been affected by this change will be waiting to see how those opposed to this innovation are cared for," she said. "You've just got to wait and see."

In contrast, Graydon said that the church's unity depended on both sides acting in good faith. "I believe the church is able to act with a gracious spirit and with a sense of understanding of each other," she said. "We can continue to minister together."

>

ENI featured articles are taken from the full ENI Daily News Service. Subscribe online to the Daily News Service and receive around 1000 full-text articles a year. ENI featured articles may be re-printed, re-posted, re-produced or placed on Web sites if ENI is noted as the source and there is a link to the ENI Web site www.eni.ch

© 1994 - 2008 Ecumenical News International.

Lessons

There's a story on CNN about a student with cancer who is not being allowed to graduate with her class.
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2008/06/04/cancer.student.graduation.kxtv

The long-and-short of it is, because of her struggle with cancer, she failed a couple of classes and, therefore, is short on credits to complete her graduation. She's expecting to go to summer school and graduate after that.

She, her mom, and other supporters, are upset because the principal and the school board will not allow her to participate in the graduation ceremony with her class--because she has not, in fact, completed the requirements of graduation.

Whatever the merits of either side, from where I stand, there is an important life lesson for Leanna. In my life, I have had many ups-and-downs with my health. I nearly failed my high school freshman year because of my health. I remember walking into class after major surgery and my English teacher asking me, "are you still in my class?" I remember having to drop out of seminary because of my health. Life happens. Disappointments cloud our dreams. We have to face the fact that, sometimes, we will not achieve something we were hoping to achieve, and we have to learn to dream new dreams.

Moreover, I have often found that, because of these struggles, something better comes along. Dropping out of seminary was actually the best thing that could have happened to me, because, otherwise, I might still be a fundamentalist Baptist, in-the-closet, gay man trying to live a lie.

We have to stand up and forge ahead. We ought not, and indeed need not, expect others to "fix" our dreams. Leanna is stronger than she thinks. She is capable of living her life without having graduated with the rest of her class. And if she has cancer, she's going to need to learn just how much inner strength she has.

They Make Speeches

Obama's speech after "clinching" the democratic nomination. At 30 minutes, it is too long to keep my attention. But, I will say, he looked good, and he sounded good.



Clinton's speech after winning SD. I'm not sure why she is in New York to thank South Dakotans, but whatever. At 21 minutes, it still didn't keep my attention. She says nice things about Obama and his supporters, but she doesn't concede the race in any way.



McCain's trainwreck of a response to Obama's speech. At 21 minutes, it was a fun watch for a while, but then I just had to stop.

World's Most Efficient Car

The World's Most Efficient Car gets 12,670 miles per gallon. Read that one again. 12,670 miles. It runs on a hydrogen fuel-cell. It's only emission is water. And the whole car only weight 30 kg. Somebody fast-track production of that car! (And the fuel-cells).

False umbrage

Once again the news is full of false hubris. Cheney makes a crack about inbreeding in WV and Byrd gets so mad he has to go to the hospital. Clinton calls a reporter a scumbag. And everyone fakes shock, dismay and offense. And the next day the offender has to apologize. It isn't as if anyone is really offended, nor is anyone really sorry.

So this is what we're supposed to watch as news? What silly name somebody called somebody else?

But here's what's REALLY funny. Bill Clinton saying of that one reporter, "he's just a dishonest guy; [he] can't help it." My, isn't that the pot calling the kettle black? Or as they say in Hungarian, "the owl telling the sparrow it has a big head."

Ellen DeGeneres' Blog

Ellen DeGeneres has one of the most entertaining and funny blogs around. I wish I had 1/10th of that writing talent. I don't know if she writes it herself, or if she has writers that help out. Either way, I've been reading it for a couple of weeks now, and it's good day-in and day-out.

Check it out here:

http://ellen.warnerbros.com/ellens_thoughts/

Good Night & Good Luck

This weekend was relatively tame. On Friday, Dean and I saw the new Indiana Jones movie. I enjoyed it very much, although the beginning was just a little slow. Shia LaBeauouf's (whatever) performance was okay, but not great. I think they overdid the 50s "style" a bit too much. The director made it look a little like Grease meets Indiana Jones. I fully expected Shia to break out in song every time he pulled out his comb and re-did his hair. I don't think I put the blame on Shia, because I expect he did was the director asked for.

I was supposed to catch up on my reading this past weekend. I didn't get very far. Instead I watched a lot of tennis and saw the movie Good Night & Good Luck about Edward R. Murrow (that one twice, once on my own and once with Dean). Very good film. David Straithairn was perfect. At least to this person who never watched Edward R. Murrow.

It strikes me that there is nobody like E.R. Murrow today. But worse, it strikes me that, if there were, the American people wouldn't be interested in hearing him. Sadly, our media has let us down so badly, has become so married to the political machine, that the American people simply doesn't trust anybody to them the truth, least of all, a media pundit.

I fully expected to experience some commonalities with contemporary politics, but was unprepared for the force of some of Edward's quotes.

Here are a few:

Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.

Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit.

No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.

Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.

People say conversation is a lost art; how often I have wished it were.

We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.

The actions of the Junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his, he didn't create this situation of fear, he merely exploited it, and rather successfully.

We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.

If this instrument is good for nothing but to entertain, amuse and insulate, then the tube is flickering now and we will soon see that the whole struggle is lost. This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box.

[Quoting Shakespeare] "The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves...”

Good night, and good luck.