I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends, Fort Worth Edition

Here are some links from my favorite Fort Worth bloggers, plus one or two from Dallas - our suburb to the east.

Steve-O at The Caravan of Dreams has a post that makes use of the terms "Heineken" and "Proustian memory rush". His office is cooler than mine.

My good friend and grandmother surrogate Dr. Liz briefly wonders how the Southern Baptist Convention can evict Broadway Baptist Church, when they kinda left it about twenty years ago. Dr. Liz's blog, Zbeth Journall, is the authoritative online document covering canine activity at Fort Woof park. I hope she'll start posting a brief review/synopsis of every mystery novel she reads.

Pete at Cowtown Chronicles is offended by the idea of Democrats For McCain. In addition to being a welcome Serial Commenter on this site, he runs something called "Drinking Liberally", a left-wing equivalent to my beloved "Libertarian Meetup".

Ken Shimamoto, The Stash Dauber, in a generous humanitarian gesture, has collected 4 different Youtube clips of The Yardbirds doing the blues classic "Train Kept A-Rollin' ". Ken also runs the I Love Fort Worth blog, where he's got a good list of stuff you can do in The Town Of The Cow for free. Or close to it.

Anton at Deliberate Industries is doing his part to fight Global Cooling. Check out the itinerary. then go forward and backward a few posts. Anton is this interesting kid who wants to be a film maker / director / producer. Somehow, he gets to roam the earth making movies. I stay home and feed weiner dogs. We both probably have the karma we deserve.

Pete Geniella is a pro photographer. Check out the image from inside the shower, which I chose more or less at random. Pete knows his stuff.

Dr. Ralph is getting busier and busier at The Journal of Post Ralphaelite Thought. He's got Bob Barr on The Colbert Report. Like Dr. Liz, he's got some interesting commentary on the Southern Baptists kicking out the Broadway Baptists for providing a welcome sanctuary for the Gay and Lesbian Baptists. The Good Doctor also takes excessive delight in the city of Dallas struggling with Cesar Chavez Boulevard.

Suzette at Morning Coffee, Evening Wine generally raises hell and rolls stumps under it. All the time. East Fort Worth is a better place with her living here. I'm not even bothering to link to a specific post. Suzette grabs an issue, writes emails, takes pictures, picks up the phone, and changes things. Hit that link a year from now, and she'll be doing the same thing about a different problem.

Durango Texas attacks one of our mutual pet peeves in this post, which is a relatively calm attack on corporations getting tax breaks and other Free Lunches. D.T. explains that Cabela's is a company that specializes in tax breaks. That is all they do. Any rumors of them being a sporting goods company are just that. Rumors.

Fort Worth Hole In The Wall likes to eat.

Francis at Food and Fort Worth has a eulogy on the untimely passing of Tim Russert.

And let's close this with a tribute to the late Steve Buckellew, who passed away this April. Steve and I were just beginning to correspond when he left us. He wrote some funny stuff.

For The Libertarian Party of Texas

This is in honor of the Texas Libertarian Party's State Convention, held this weekend in Fort Worth.
In this clip network anchorman Howard Beale, the "Mad Prophet Of The Airwaves", decides he's had enough.
I don't remember the movie well enough to describe what triggered this outburst.

Perhaps Howard has recently learned that his share of the national debt is $30,000.00
Maybe he's learned that we coulda colonized Mars for the current cost of the Iraq war.
Maybe he read a Cal Thomas article that claims Barack Obama is not a Christian.
Perhaps he's tired of watching the 2nd Amendment be dismantled as a result of various Victim Disarmament Acts.
Perhaps he figured out why our Coca-Colas have to be made with corn syrup instead of sugar. (Hint: it has nothing to do with taste.)
Regardless of the trigger, Howard Beale says "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this any more !"



That particular piece of greatness was written by Paddy Chayefsky, for the movie "Network".

Libertarians Will Not Work Hard For You. We Promise.

In one of the more delightful ironies of this decade, the Democrats are shutting down the Senate Dining Hall so they can (audible gasp!) privatize it.

This particular government-run eatery has lost $18,000,000 since 1993. Is there any other restaurant on earth that could lose one million a year and still keep cranking out chicken dinners?

Here's Jonah Goldberg on Senator Dianne Feinstein's decision to shut down the dining hall :

Feinstein, to her credit, witnessed an abject failure of government right under her nose — on her plate, in fact — and did something about it. “It’s clearly not the sort of thing that I ran for the Senate to do,” she said, according to the (Washington) Post. “But somebody has to do it.”

Let's look at one word. Why is it "clearly" not the sort of thing she ran for the Senate to do? It seems reasonably clear that the Senate Dining Hall should've been shut down and privatized about 15 years ago.

Contrast Senator Feinstein's moment of non-clarity with this act of almost total transparency from Rep. Maxine Waters (Hat Tip to Grouchy Old Cripple):

She actually utters the dreaded word "socialize", repents in sackcloth and ashes, tries to think of "nationalize", can't pull that off, and settles for "taking over".

Is there anyone out there, outside of the editorial staff of The Nation magazine, who actually thinks this makes any sense? Does anyone believe Maxine Waters could take over Exxon Mobil and lower the prices you pay at the pump? Anybody? I didn't think so, but the Comment Field below awaits your input....

Look at it this way. I've been handed a trucking company to run. Fuel prices are killing me. Absolutely killing me. I don't have Senate Dining Hall financial losses yet, but I'm not making any money, and am losing plenty. There are all sorts of incentives in place for me to make it profitable. It's just not very easy. I know beyond any doubt that I can't run at a loss for much longer.

But what would happen if I had an almost unlimited trough of money to pull from? Would I still care about making good use of any resources? I don't think so.

I have a tendency to beat this kind of thing to death.
Because someone, somewhere, is still voting for politicians who can advocate government run oil companies, government monopolies in education, and government run health care without laughing. As P.J. O'Rourke said, "If you think healthcare is expensive now, just wait until it's free."
Someone, somewhere will still vote for "Small Government" Republicans who actually voted for that obscene Farm Bill.

**************************************************************************

On a related note, The Libertarian Party Of Texas state convention is in Fort Worth this weekend. The Libertarians have plenty of candidates who are clearly running for office with the clearly stated goal of shutting down all sorts of clearly unnecessary Senate Dining Halls. They are very clear about it, and will discuss it with you for hours and hours with startling clarity. Boy howdy, are they clear.

Did you ever wonder how you got to be $30,000 in debt? (If you're an American reading this, divide a $9,000,000,000,000 national debt by 300 million Americans. 30 grand is your share, so get busy. Get a second job if you have to.) Some of this staggering amount was put on your Mastercard by Big Government Democrats who clearly hesitate to shut down a buffet line that clearly misplaces one million dollars every year. An even bigger chunk of debt was spread out on your Visa, Discover, Sears, American Express, and Target cards by Small Government Republicans who were clearly lying about their identities.

The Libertarian convention is nowhere near as big as the Republican or Democrat equivalents.

This is because they're not trying to get a bigger spot at the public hog trough for their buddies or their supporters.

The Libertarians don't want to fix anything. They want to shut it down. They want to sell it to the highest bidder, and put the profits on your Visa/Amex/Discover account.

They aren't the Candidates Of Changing anything. Why change it if you can end it?

We have no vision, no 10-point plans, no contracts with America outside of what's in the constitution. We'll try to fix the roads, provide for defense, enforce contracts, play referee on the economic externalities, and then do our best to stay out of your way. We're not going to open up any Dining Halls, take over any oil companies, or turn your food into ethanol. We're not going to make you a better person. We don't want to provide much leadership at all. We believe that government's role in the game is to be the cheerleader, not the quarterback. We're all about Life, Liberty, and the reckless goal of Leaving You Alone.

Unlike the Democrats and Republicans who ran up your credit cards, Libertarians will not work hard for you. We promise.

The Vanity Fair Blogopticon

Vanity Fair magazine, in addition to serving humanity by giving Bill Clinton a recent thorough muck-raking, has developed something called The Blogopticon.

The categories of blogs run on a North/South scale from news at the top, to opinion at the bottom.
On the East/West scale, they range from Earnest to Scurrilous.

Do NOT hit that link unless you have hours and hours to wander around in there.

Broadway Baptist Church Might Be Ousted ! ! !

My home church, Broadway Baptist, is in the news again. It's never going to end. My friend Gary alerted me to this jewel on the Fort Worth Star-Telegram website:

Resolution at Southern Baptist Convention seeks Fort Worth church's ouster

To my friend David M., Please make note of the word "ouster"....

By TERRY LEE GOODRICH

A North Carolina pastor has recommended that Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth be ousted from the Southern Baptist Convention, saying it encourages homosexuality.

Ousted. There it is again. Ousted. You start using a new word regularly for the first time, and it appears everywhere. (Inside joke....my friend David M. recently did an audio/video presentation about our former pastor, Dr. Brett Younger, and his appearances in newspaper headlines and internet posts. The word "ousted" was quite popular. Click here for recent details. )

Back to the bidness at hand. Broadway Baptist Church encourages homesexuality? Like, in experimental classes? During communion? Field trips to Pier One Imports? Let's read on.

The proposed resolution, made Tuesday at the SBC’s annual meeting in Indianapolis. was referred to an executive committee which will bring back a report at the 2009 meeting in Kentucky.

For those unfamiliar with the Southern Baptist Convention, it's the baptist group that split off from the northern baptists shortly before the Civil War, primarily because the yankees didn't want southern missionaries to carry their slaves with them on mission trips. This, of course, was intolerable interference from the yankees.

Punting awkward resolutions to a committee is a time-honored technique most often used when leadership determines that somebody is making resolutions just to get his name in the paper.

Wait a minute....??? I didn't even know Broadway was in the Southern Baptist Convention....I thought we left it years ago to join the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, or some grouping like that. Isn't this like closing the barn door after the horses have run off?

The action stemmed from a controversy at Broadway over whether gay and lesbian couples could be pictured together in the church directory. In February, to get beyond the divisive issue, the congregation voted to publish a book without individual or family portraits — and with candid snapshots instead. Several gay couples had asked earlier to have their portraits appear.

I thought it was a good compromise. Broadway is going for a very big tent. And speaking of big tents, that Southern Baptist tent? It has lots and lots and lots of gays and lesbians in it. Encouraged or not, they're in there.

The Reverend Bill Sanderson of Hephzibah Baptist Church in Wendell, N.C., declined to answer questions in a phone call from the Star-Telegram.

But Reverend Bill Sanderson of Hephzibah Baptist Church in Wendell, N.C. didn't hesitate to speak from inside the relatively small convention tent in Indianapolis.

If you want to know more about this guy, here's his website.

Here's a video of Rev. Bill. .

Officials with Broadway could not be reached immediately to comment.

Officials? Officials? Hey, we're the real baptists. We don't need no stinkin' officials. We're all about concepts like Autonomy Of The Local Church, and Priesthood Of The Believer. (Click here if you're unfamiliar with the concept. Read what the guy says, imagine strongly disagreeing with him, and you'll know where I'm coming from....)

So I'll make an un-official comment that might work until a more qualified commenter comes along:

(Ahem....) I am deeply, deeply saddened that a sister baptist church would try to gain attention and notoriety by making a resolution to remove my church from the Southern Baptist Convention, the organization that brought us The Disney Boycott, Subjugation of Women, Bailey Smith, and the Jimmy Carter presidency.

Vetting, Defined

Ok, here's my definition of "vetting".
(Because of Barack Obama's loss of a key player on his Vice Presidential Vetting Committee, and because of a quirk in Google's page rankings, people are coming to this site WANTING ANSWERS.)

Vetting - to appraise, verify, or check for accuracy, authenticity, validity, etc.: An expert vetted the manuscript before publication. –verb (used without object) That's dictionary.com speaking.

The word is now used more often to determine if there's any inappropriate stuff in someone's background that would disqualify them from getting elected. Here are some examples.

George McGovern did not do enough vetting when he selected Thomas Eagleton to be his V.P. running mate in 1972. It turns out that Eagleton had sought psychiatric help for depression. Eagleton was dropped from the ticket.

Hillary Clinton claims that she's been thoroughly vetted as a result of enduring Whitewater, CattleFuturesGate, TravelGate, Vince Foster Dying For Your Sins, MonicaGate, Gennifergate, SniperGate, Moving Out Of The White House Like White Trash Leaving A Motel Six Gate, and all the ones I've forgotten.
Lord, I hope she's vetted by now. I don't see how there's room for any more scandals to be vetted in one lifetime.

In 1988, Democratic Presidential candidate Gary Hart opened himself up for intense vetting by telling reporters who had asked about rumors of extramarital affairs "Follow me around. I don't care. I'm serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They'll be very bored."
When the reporters got through vetting him, they had discovered an extramarital affair.

George W. Bush's drunk driving arrest was not discovered until late in the 2000 campaign. Many critics say he should've been vetted more closely.

Clarence Thomas was over-vetted, and shocking comments about pubic hairs on Coke cans were discovered.

This definition has been a public service of The Whited Sepulchre Outreach Ministry.
I'm sure that Comment Field Users can come up with others.

Caption This

I need a caption for this picture:

Sing Along With Saint Albert

Just when I think the world can't get any goofier....

For years, I've had a running joke with a co-worker about going to see a production of "Silence Of The Lambs - On Ice". It cracks me up to imagine Hannibal Lecter skating around an arena in his straitjacket and goalie mask during an Ice Capades production number.

I got a similar kick out of "Backdraft - The Musical", as parodied in Christopher Guest's movie "Waiting For Guffman".

The movie "The Producers" centers around an intentionally bad musical about the life of Adolph Hitler.

I love the idea of taking one art form and cramming it into another that just doesn't fit. It cracks me up every time.

But this? Can it be for real? And who will play Saint Albert, The Goracle of Music City Tennessee? Garth Brooks? Toby Keith? George Strait? Can they cast Placido Domingo as a Polar Bear? Are they going to have a real set and stage, or just use a PowerPoint?

It's a pity they can't give Pavarotti a small role as an iceberg.

Hat Tip to NickM at Counting Cats for alerting me to this opportunity.

On Watching Danica Patrick Not Win The Bombardier Learjet 550K Yesterday

Danica Patrick did not win the Bombardier Learjet 550K yesterday.

Lord knows we wanted her to.

I took The Future Aggie to her first race at Texas Motor Speedway yesterday. She loved it as much as I thought she would, and is already planning to come home from Aggieland for the NASCAR races in October/November. I've always wanted this girl to know that she can do whatever she wants to do.

We tailgated with the good people from Roadway for a while and then went through the minefield of racing concession stands, where I bought her enough crap to fill up the latrines at Fort Pemberton.

This was an Indy style race. For the uninitiated, the best way to distinguish between the mindset of NASCAR and IndyCar racing is via Ferrell's "Talladega Nights". NASCAR grew out of moonshiners souping up their cars to outrun police pursuit. Ferrell's character "Ricky Bobby" comes out of that tradition. The cars wouldn't necessarily turn heads on the interstate if you took the decals off, and the drivers are mostly American.

IndyCar racing features "open wheel" vehicles. The tires are outside the body of the car, and these tires wouldn't fit well on your Volvo. One of these things going down the interstate would get your attention. The drivers come from all over the world. Sacha Baron Cohen's character in Talladega Nights, Jean Girard, the despicable Gay-French-AntiAmerican, is a great sendup of Indy drivers.

We got to the track in time to see Robbie Knievel jump 21 Hummers. There was something involved with Knievel contracting to jump 20 Humvees, and then increasing it to 25, but there was a strong headwind so he lowered it to 20. And the landing ramp extended over the last 3. Or something like that.
The discussions in the stands about the ever-changing number of Hummers reminded me too much of Hillary Clinton electoral math. Here's a YouTube of the jump:

Like most male forty-somethings, I was a huge fan of Knievel's father when I was a kid. It was nice to see a Knievel land in one piece.

We wanted to see Danica Patrick win it. I wanted to watch my daughter when Danica Patrick won it.

Loyalty to sports teams and athletes is a strange thing. As Jerry Seinfeld put it, because of the players being traded, drafted, bought and sold, you can no longer be loyal to a team. You're only "a fan of their laundry". That's why I was surprised at my first NASCAR race when I heard some drivers being cheered and others booed. What offense did the unpopular ones commit? Not saluting the flag? Not wearing a flag lapel pin? Forgetting the words to "Dixie"?

The way The Whited Sepulchre Duo saw it, Danica Patrick winning the Bombardier Learjet 550K would've been a bigger achievement for women than The Hildebeest winning the Democratic Party's nomination for President.

Those are strong words, aren't they? Let me explain....

Hillary was the wife of a governor and then the wife of a President. She was given a relatively "safe" senate seat to run for, in one of the most reliably Democratic states, a state in which she had never really lived.

She's achieved a lot, but only because of her other half. If her name had been Hortense Finklebaum instead of Mrs. Bill Clinton, you would've never heard of her. If she'd won the nomination, it would've been historic, but also would've required a footnote....(spouse of former president).

Contrast that with the historic potential of Danica Patrick. Like every other driver, Patrick has a massive support team and pit crew. But no one drives that car around the track but her. Name recognition counts for nothing. The fact that she's a woman doesn't get her any sympathy laps, and The League Of Women Voters doesn't protest after her losses. Her husband is relatively unknown.

Unfortunately, Danica started in 5th and finished 11th. Scott Dixon won it.

Bummer. One day, it'll happen.

Wait a minute, I hear some of you saying. Danica Patrick has already made history by winning the IndyJapan 500. Why are you acting as if no woman has ever won an Indy race?

Well, maybe I've got a NASCAR Ricky Bobby mentality.

That stuff that happens over in them foreign places like Japan? It don't count.

You've Been Left Behind....Would You Mind Taking Care Of The Weiner Dogs?

I have found a website that makes me happy. I'm grinning like a mule eating briars. My world is a better place with these folks in it.

No, it's not meg_ryan.com or hillaryantichrist.org. It's better than that.

Every time I go off on a Liberal Theology Rant, I get emails or anonymous comment posts that either a) damn me to an eternity of torment, or b) express genuine concern for the state of my soul.
(For those of you new to this site, I believe that most of our scriptures and holy books are best understood as metaphorical and symbolic.)

So, Ladies and Gentlemen, please let me introduce You've Been Left Behind. What are they about? Here's some text from their site:

We all have family and friends who have failed to receive the Good News of the Gospel. The unsaved will be 'left behind' on earth to go through the "tribulation period" after the "Rapture". You remember how, for a short time, after (9/11/01) people were open to spiritual things and answers. (We are still singing "God Bless America" at baseballs' seventh inning stretch.) Imagine how taken back they will be by the millions of missing Christians and devastation at the rapture. They will know it was true and that they have blown it.
There will be a small window of time where they might be reached for the Kingdom of God. We have made it possible for you to send them a letter of love and a plea to receive Christ one last time. You can also send information based on scripture as to what will happen next. Each fulfilled prophecy will cause your letter and plea to be remembered and a decision to be made.
"WHY" is one last chance to bring them to Christ and snatch them from the flames!

In other words, if and when Jesus returns and takes all the believers to glory, those left behind can get an email from you explaining what has happened, asking them to repent, etc etc etc. Or maybe you just want them to feed the cat and change out the litter box. It's up to you.

How does it work? How can they release the emails if the site administrators aren't on the planet to hit "send"?

We have set up a system to send documents by email, to the addresses you provide, 6 days after the "Rapture" of the Church. This occurs when 3 of our 5 team members scattered around the U.S fail to log in over a 3 day period. Another 3 days are given to fail safe any false triggering of the system.

It only costs forty dollars to send post-rapture emails to 60 of your lost friends. If you are a literalist, you really have no choice but to take advantage of this. You're only risking $40 dollars, an insignificant sum compared to the loss of just one of your friends suffering for eternity in the flames of hell.

I happen to believe that all the apocalyptic stuff at the end of the New Testament was written about 1st century issues, not the end of the world. But that's just me. Millions of people disagree.

If you truly, honestly, believe that God is going to take a few of us into the sky and leave the rest behind, you WILL immediately log onto youvebeenleftbehind.com and give them $40, won't you? And you'll send me a username and password? Because I'm going to write post-rapture letters to the online acquaintances of mine who probably won't make the cut, just in case I don't have a way to get in touch with them:

The Grouchy Old Cripple
Greta Christina
The Bacon Eating Jew
Hell's Handmaiden

and lots of others. All good people, who just can't swallow the atonement concept.

Wouldn't you spend $40 to save one person from cancer, a relatively mild, short-term earthly disease? Surely you'll spend the same sum to save up to 60 people from eternal pain.

I eagerly await your response.

The Minimum Wage Increases Are Working ! ! !

Bloomberg.com has announced that the new minimum wage increases are working !

As the arbitrary amounts that must be charged for teen-age labor are dramatically increased by congressional mandate, demand for teen-age later decreases ! Businesses are responding rationally by hiring fewer low-skilled workers.

I'm sure that the ultra-compassionate individuals who lobbied for this are pleased. I know I am. You know why? I'll tell you later....

We've got two more increases to go ! There is no telling what kind of unemployment we can achieve among low skill workers and teenagers if we just keep trying. So let's get out those hacksaws, and slice a few more of the bottom rungs off the career ladder, shall we? You know why I want Congress to slice a few more of the bottom rungs off the career ladder? I'll tell you later....

Let's do what we can to destroy the ladder for racial minorities. The Davis-Bacon act, one of our first minimum wage laws, was highly succesful in its stated goal of ensuring full white employment at the expense of African-Americans.

Let me quote the great Dr. Thomas Sowell: "Most economists have long recognized that minimum wage laws increase unemployment among the least skilled, least experienced, and minority workers. With a little experience, these workers are likely to be worth more. But they cannot move up the ladder if they can't get on the ladder."

But I don't want them on my ladder. I think it's mine by birthright.

So lobby your congressperson and your senators for more increases in the minimum wage. Hell, let's double it. It's highly effective when the government jacks around with the economy. Especially if you're an old white guy.

Heh heh heh heh....

Dear Daughter....

The Future Aggie graduated from Paschal High School in Fort Worth last night.
At the party afterwards, a friend of mine recommended this recent column by Leonard Pitts of The Orlando Sentinel. Mr. Pitts has a daughter the same age.
Good stuff.

I'm also saving it here, just in case the Sentinel takes it down.

Caption This

I need a caption for this picture.

Cal Thomas Says Barack Obama's Not A Christian

Journalist Cal Thomas has written a column entitled "Barack Obama Is Not A Christian".
Hmmmmm.....
I'll be needing a few tools....

Scalpel - thanks.

Laptop - got it.
Righteous Indignation - I've got plenty.
Various Unitarian Websites - check.
Online Concordance - there are dozens.
Chainsaw - yep.
Let the Fisking begin ! Here's Cal Thomas:

Religion is a topic that makes most journalists uncomfortable, unless they can expose hypocrisy — as in preachers who speak of virtue while carrying on an affair — or outrage such as Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the doings at Barack Obama’s now former church in Chicago.

Let's divide journalism into reporting and editorializing.
The reason for the journalistic discomfort is that journalists are supposed to deal with facts, and only facts, when doing straight reporting.
Journalists are supposed to combine logic and opinions when editorializing.
But religion is an area where many of the "facts" are debatable, and logic is secondary to emotion, feeling, and tradition. Therefore, it's difficult to do straight reporting or editorializing about religion unless the thrust of the journalism is something like exposing hypocrisy or generating outrage.
For instance, amazing things happen during Pentecostal worship services. When taken at face value, these events are credited to the movings and workings of the Holy Spirit. Many Pentecostal worshippers believe that God, in the form of the Holy Spirit, enters their bodies and allows them to speak in foreign languages, have feelings of ecstasy, etc etc etc. Anyone attempting to "report" on this would have difficulty determining what is fact. Anyone attempting to "editorialize" on this, would probably be skeptical. But the True Believers would then claim that the journalists simply don't wish to transcend themselves or take a journey of personal and spiritual discovery.

Most journalists think taking religion seriously might require them to study the claims of various faiths and too many of them have already decided this might lead them to a faith higher than themselves or politics and they don’t wish to take such a journey of personal discovery.

Yeah, that's what it would sound like.

That is too bad, because such an attitude exposes one of the main gaps between most Americans — who believe in God — and most journalists, who don’t.

At this point, Cal does a bit of equivocating. Most of the time when we say "equivocate", we mean "to use intentionally misleading language". But in the rhetorical sense, To Equivocate is to toggle back and forth between two different meanings of the same word as if they meant the same thing.
The Americans surveyed above who believe in God are referenced as if they're a unified block.
That ain't the case. Muslims, who believe in Allah, generally take offense to being lumped in with the Jewish devotees of Yahweh. Many Christians believe that God is not one, but three. Others see God as a life force, or the driving energy behind the universe, like Paul Tillich's "The Ground Of Our Being" concept.
Either way, our beliefs in God aren't all the same.

An exception is Chicago Sun-Times columnist Cathleen Falsani, who interviewed Obama in 2004 for her book, “The God Factor: Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People “and asked him specific questions about his religious beliefs.
“I’m rooted in the Christian tradition,” said Obama, who has declared himself a Christian. But then he adds something that most Christians will see as (gasp) universalism: “I believe there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people.”

Obama could've quoted some Saint Paul at this point: "Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous." (Rom. 5:18-19)
Or Obama could've continued by simply stating "I refuse to believe that God is creating people by the billions, simply to torture them forever for non-belief."

Falsani correctly brings up John 14:6 (and how many journalists would know such a verse, much less ask a question based on it?) in which Jesus says of Himself, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
That sounds pretty exclusive, but Obama says it depends on how this verse is heard.

Mr. Obama is correct on this point. Not only does it depend on how the verse is heard, it depends on whether Jesus really said it. According to the near unanimous opinions of the Biblical scholars in The Jesus Seminar, Jesus didn't say it.
Americans not only have widely divergent beliefs about God, they have diverse beliefs about scriptural authority.

According to Falsani, Obama thinks that “all people of faith — Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, everyone — know the same God.” (her words)

Cool. Does this mean we can stop killing each other?

If that is so, Jesus wasted his time coming to Earth and he certainly did not have to suffer the pain of rejection and crucifixion if there are ways to God other than through Himself.

Only if the entire universe has to conform to the belief system you grew up with, Cal. One of my favorite theologians, a guy named Culver Nelson, has hypothesized that Jesus simply taught love and compassion and stood up to authority. This got him killed. The substitutionary atonement business got projected onto Jesus after the fact. Click here for details.

Here’s Obama telling Falsani, “The difficult thing about any religion, including Christianity, is that at some level there is a call to evangelize and proselytize. There’s the belief, certainly in some quarters, that if people haven’t embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior, they’re going to hell.” Falsani adds, “Obama doesn’t believe he, or anyone else, will go to hell. But he’s not sure he’ll be going to heaven, either.”

OK, from what I've read here and elsewhere, George W. Bush believes that other people will go to hell, and he's going to heaven. Forever. Barack Obama doesn't believe that anyone is going to hell, and Obama isn't sure he's going to heaven.
Think about that a few minutes, and let me know which person you'd trust with the nuclear football.

Here’s Obama again: “I don’t presume to have knowledge of what happens after I die."

The rarest of all commodities: A politician telling the truth for a print publication.....

"When I tuck in my daughters at night and I feel like I’ve been a good father to them, and I see that I am transferring values that I got from my mother and that they’re kind people and that they’re honest people, and they’re curious people, that’s a little piece of heaven.”

Tucking in your daughters, being a good father, kindness, honesty, curiosity - those attributes are worth more than every creed, dogma, and doctrine ever invented.

Any first-year seminary student could deconstruct such “works salvation” and wishful thinking.

I believe that condemning your enemies to eternal torture and rewarding yourself with eternal bliss is "wishful thinking". Wishful thinking for sadists. But that's just me.
One thing I've noticed, though....you're correct that first-year evangelical college seminary students would probably deconstruct this as "works salvation". Willingness to do so tapers off at the Doctoral level, though. It's difficult to study Church History, Biblical Origins, and Textual Criticism at that level and see these little debates the same way.

Obama either hasn’t read the Bible, or if he has, doesn’t believe it if he embraces such thin theological gruel.

I suspect that Obama has read some Bible. I suspect that Obama "believes" the Bible is worthwhile. But I suspect that Obama has read some other books, books that lead him to believe that the Bible was created by a small group in a small place by people who had no idea that God just might like other people too, and that their enemies weren't necessarily God's enemies.
These people remind me of Cal Thomas.

Obama can call himself anything he likes, but there is a clear requirement for one to qualify as a Christian and Obama doesn’t meet that requirement.

A clear requirement? One clear requirement? Does one have to be baptized? Does one have to receive the Last Rites from a priest? Does one have to accept the doctrines given by the angel Moroni to Joseph Smith? Become a member of a Church Of Christ or some other restorationist denomination?

One cannot deny central tenets of the Christian faith, including the deity and uniqueness of Christ as the sole mediator between God and Man and be a Christian.

No, if Bob Barr can sponsor the Defense Of Marriage act and oppose all medical marijuana laws and still be called a Libertarian, then we can call Barack Obama a Christian.

Such people do have a label applied to them in Scripture. They are called a “false prophet.”

I prefer the term "Whited Sepulchres", but that's just me.
The best rebuttal I know of for this nonsense, if we're going to go Biblical, can be found in Wikipedia's "False Prophet" entry. None of these scriptures remind me of Barack Obama. But if you can read those verses without thinking of Benny Hinn, John Hagee, or Oral Roberts, then you're not watching enough religious programming.

I hope some national journalist or commentator with knowledge of such things asks Obama about this and doesn’t let him get away with re-writing Scripture to suit his political ends.

People have gotten away with re-writing scripture for 2,000 years.
I hope some readers with knowledge of such things will e-mail Cal Thomas about this, and not let him get away with spiritualizing politics to suit his political ends.

The world was our oyster

If you think our tendency toward nation-building is out of control now, check out this map. It was apparently drawn sometime in 1942 as the outgrowth of FDR's "Four Freedom's" speech - an address that I used as a jumping-off point for this post.

Looking back on it, the arrogance is astounding.

It takes a little while to download, but is worth the wait. You can click to zoom in or out.

Check out bullet-point number 26.

Bob Barr and Wayne Allyn Root - Non Factors?

Stuart Rothenberg, who writes The Rothenberg Report for Roll Call magazine, asks "Will Bob Barr And The Libertarians Be A Factor In The Presidential Race?"

Discouraging stuff, in need of rebuking.

Dr. Ralph, whose comments on 3rd parties can be found on almost every post I've done about Barr (click Bob Barr's name below), believes that 3rd parties can't resist the temptation to put a "sorehead" at the top of their ticket. The sorehead wants either revenge or attention; the 3rd party wants some name recognition. And attention. Because they're soreheads.

Discouraging stuff, in need of rebuking.

I'm still going to attend the Libertarian Party meetings, mostly because I've not found any other group whose beliefs about how the world should work so closely resemble mine. Plus, they're great people, interesting to talk to, and one day they just might nominate some people who can be a factor. I'm going to do what I can to support some of their candidates at the local level.

But Bob Freakin' Barr?

I Think I Can Live Without Books

Damon W. Root, of Reason magazine, has an interesting little nugget in this month's issue. It's called "I Cannot Live Without Books".

Writing from the annual publishing industry brouhaha BookExpo America, which is being held this year in Los Angeles, New York Times reporter Edward Wyatt chronicles the fear and resentment sparked by electronic reading gadgets such as Amazon's Kindle. Have e-book buyers forsaken the physical originals? "We don't see people buying both versions," one publishing executive told Wyatt. "I think there is almost a one-to-one cannibalization."For a more optimistic, or at least more idiosyncratic case for the printed word, the great urban historian Luc Sante offers this gem at the end of a long, discursive Wall Street Journal essay on the endless book collecting that has shaped and dominated his life:

I would very much miss books as material objects were they to disappear. The tactility of books assists my memory, for one thing. I can't remember the quote I'm searching for, or maybe even the title of the work that contains it, but I can remember that the book is green, that the margins are unusually wide, and that the quote lies two-thirds of the way down a right-hand page. If books all appear as nearly identical digital readouts, my memory will be impoverished.

The comment field on all of Reason's online articles are usually instructive and entertaining.
My favorite of this batch is in response to remembering that "the book is green, the margins are wide, and the quote is two-thirds down the page...."
A commenter named Austin suggested using CTRL-F.

Sometime soon I'm going to go way out on a limb and put all of my CD's on an iPod, or an MP3 player, or whatever the heck it is the kids use these days. My child hasn't bought a CD in two years, but my bedroom is covered with them. I think it's a matter of trust, since I've lost so much stuff with computer crashes.

If they ever come up with long-lasting batteries for a Kindle or its Sony equivalent, 90% of my books are going away.

Black Jack, Missouri

Black Jack, Missouri, the town that would've turned away Joseph, Mary, and baby Jesus.

Click here for details.

Hat Tip to Radley Balko of Reason magazine and The Agitator Blog.

QUEERS AND DYKES ARE GONNA GET MARRIED ! ! ! so don't worry about anything else

And so it begins.....
When California recently lifted the ban on gay marriage, it gave Republicans their first ray of sunshine in a long, long time.

This discussion will take the place of Iraq, socialized medicine, ANWR, free trade, tax rates, and just about every other vital issue.
Motherhood and the flag and Americas families will be invoked. Old Testament prophets and New Testament rabbis and 21st century witch doctors will be quoted at length. Priests, preachers, Imams, and Christian Science Reading Room attendants will appear on CNN and Fox News. Their words will be solemnly analyzed for their impact on the upcoming election.

Dr. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission will be shown uncensored on The O'Reilly Factor, strenuously digging platitudes from his nether regions.

What would happen if gay and lesbian couples were allowed to have the same kinds of multiple marriages that John McCain, Dr. Phil, Newt Gingrich, Ted Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan experienced? Would the world spin off its axis if gays and lesbians could enter a sacred and holy matrimonial state like the one recently savored by Britney Spears? Even if Britney's only lasted for two and a half days?

The libertarian concept of "no harm, no foul" should be the guiding light here.

This will become a hot-button wedge issue only if we let it become a hot-button wedge issue.

It's going to become the #1 issue in the campaign, isn't it?

A Few Predictions

Several months ago, I congratulated Al Gore for winning the Nobel prize.
This was only noteworthy because at the time, Al Gore had not yet won the Nobel prize. The winner wouldn't be announced for another week.

Since that worked out well and got this site its first attention, I thought I would lay a few other predictions out for all the world to see. I'll follow up on these shortly before George W. Bush leaves office.

1. Congratulations to Barack Obama for not selecting The Clintons for Vice President. Obama realizes he needs someone to help him carry some swing states, and those two can't do it.

2. Congratulations John McCain, President of The United States of America.

3. This one is a "pivot". The crystal ball is cloudy. But I think one of these two things will happen: We will capture Osama bin Laden, possibly in Iraq, shortly before the election. This will give everyone some warm and fuzzy feelings about our military adventure over there. OR.... Osama bin Laden will release a very scary video shortly before the election, scaring the crap out of everybody and putting John McCain in a better position to live in the White House.
Either of these scenarios will benefit Republicans.

4. The Dallas Cowboys will not win a playoff game this year.

5. Fuel prices are going to keep going up. So shortly before leaving office, George W. Bush will move to open ANWR and possibly more areas in the Pacific and Atlantic to oil rigs. No one in the house or senate will have the cajones to oppose it. Fuel prices will go down shortly afterwards.

Charlie Rose and Susan Schwab, Interpreted

A few weeks ago, Charlie Rose interviewed U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab.
Ms. Schwab's words should be chipped in granite and placed in the Alabama courthouse that recently housed the controversial 10 Commandments monument.

Even now, as we speak, her every utterance is being memorized by the prisoners I keep in my backyard mini-Guantanamo Bay re-education camp for unrepentant Nancy Pelosi supporters. (For every five minutes of text memorized, they get another helping of tuna.)

Here's a somewhat edited video of the interview.


Fortunately, for the benefit of future generations, I happened to TIVO the complete interview. This portion was worth transcribing:

Charlie Rose: Where is there protectionist legislation that embarrasses you...when you're having to deal with foreign trade negotiations?

Susan Schwab: The most embarrassing legislation right now is the legislation that is not moving. None of our trading partners can understand that when we have these really really strong trade agreements with Korea, with Panama, and as we're currently talking about with Colombia, why the Congress of the United States is not rushing to get these put in place.
Because all of our trading partners? They're trying to do (trade) deals with those same countries....
Unfortunately, as we sit there, on the sidelines, waiting for Congress to act, they are out there negotiating these kinds of agreements. There are over a hundred bi-lateral and regional trade deals being negotiated by other countries and with each other that have the potential to lock us out of preferential deals.

Charlie Rose: In other words, you're saying (that) while the Congress fails to pass trade legislation, other countries are going in and by making other agreements for themselves, they will close out the United States from opportunities?

Susan Schwab: (unhhh....Yeah !) See the video.

I know that many of my readers tend to doze off when uninterpreted trade/free market/geek stuff is presented without translation. so here's an interpretation of what's really being said in the interview:

Charlie Rose: Susan, you sound vaguely embarrassed that you have to represent a nation where someone as fundamentally ignorant as Nancy Pelosi can stop something as beneficial as the Colombian Free Trade Agreement. When you sit down at the bargaining table, do you feel totally humiliated? Do they laugh with you, or laugh at you? Is there anything you'd like to get off your chest? Want to take a penalty kick? Take some cheap shots?

Susan Schwab: Thanks for asking Charlie....yes, I would like to explain what its like being the figurehead on the bow of a ship of fools.
If I'm sitting across the table from the trade negotiator from, say, Liechtenstein, and they're proposing that both nations eliminate tariffs on each others' products, I have to stop and explain Pelosi. I have to explain the Democrat congress. I have to explain that they can be bought by anyone with $20 and a KFC 10-piece bucket.
The negotiator from Liechtenstein looks up at me, and says "You know, we're also negotiating with Bulgaria and Eritrea and The Vatican and just about every other nation on earth, right?"
And I'll have to say, "Yeah, but what can I do? Nobody understand that these agreements make our products more attractive overseas."
And then the Liechtensteinian negotiator will say "You're shitting me. You can't be serious."
So what can I do?
And then we'll have to wrap things up, because I can't get anything done with that unrepentant protectionist witch in charge of the legislative branch of our government. And you know what really makes me feel bad? When we all go out for drinks afterwards, LIECHTENSTEIN picks up the tab. Freakin' Liechtenstein. They feel sorry for me.

Charlie Rose: In other words, you're saying (that) while the Congress protects a few jobs at the expense of many jobs, other countries are going in and by making other agreements for themselves, they can close out the United States from opportunities? Sorta like General Nathan Bedford Forrest's theory about "getting there firstest with the mostest"?

Susan Schwab: (unhhh....Yeah !) See the video.

Caption This

I need a caption for this picture.

What NAFTA Superhighway???

The Nation (a fascinating Old Leftie magazine), Lou Dobbs, and The John Birch Society all oppose the proposed NAFTA superhighway.


With a Trifecta like that all in opposition, it's GOT to be a great idea.
Have none of these jackasses ever ready any history? Do they not know that trade is the greatest builders of a nation? Amsterdam? Great Britain? Hong Freakin' Kong? Aren't they aware huge swaths of Africa remain impoverished, partially because of a lack of good deep water ports?

Nobody has ever protected themselves to prosperity. No, that's not true. Small numbers of people are trying to protect their prosperity at the expense of the larger group.

Imagine if you could only trade with relatives.
Or just people on your block.
Then imagine that there's an idiotic demogogue, like the ones above, who is warning you about the evils of mixin' and minglin' with them dern folks on the next block who do thangs different, and tellin' stories of Mexican truck drivers out of their minds on Mexican drugs.

Imagine if you could only trade with nearby states in the U.S.
Imagine that it's pre-1982, and there are idiotic shipping regulations that keep carriers from going across state lines.
I could go on forever.
Do people buy into this guy because he's on TV ? Is that it?
But there has to be a large contingent of Lou Dobbs viewers out there who finished grade school and who can read without their lips moving.
Does anyone know anyone Lou Dobbs loyalists that they can introduce me to?

I want to meet one, and study its habits.

Because you know what I really love about this? (there is no NAFTA superhighway ! read the Nation article !)

Sparrows Are Falling

One of my employees rescued a kitten today. We had some sudden rain, and it was trapped in a truck well beneath an elevation ramp.
The kitten's eyes were swollen shut, probably from an infection, but my guy got some paper towels and started gently rubbing the kitten's face and eyes.
The cat can now see, but we didn't have any milk for it, and it's probably not old enough for solid food. It turned down hot dogs and Pringles.
I have three cats. If I came home with another cat, it would probably have to go live with the pig.
None of my employees need a cat.
The shots, food, getting it "fixed", etc., will be expensive.
If we take it to the animal shelter, they'll put it to sleep within a few days.
There are probably 5,000 kittens just like that one in Fort Worth. I bet 5% of them die every week.
It seems hopeless.

I volunteer for a charitable program called Family Pathfinders. A group of us try to help struggling families with job training, filling out job applications, financial aid, learning to call in to the workplace when running late, and all the tens of thousands of little skills that many of us take for granted.
We were assigned our first family about 9 months ago, and met with them as often as we could, and helped them as much as we could.
The family consisted of a single mother and her three daughters.
We eventually gave up and had to end the relationship. The mother wouldn't tell us the truth about where their money was going, and she wouldn't show up for meetings or appointments.
But I'm haunted by those three little girls. They're doomed.
What the hell do you do? Adopt them? Do what the State of Texas did at the YFZ Polygamist Ranch, and take the kids away from their mother?

A cyclone has hit the nation of Burma, a nation ruled for decades by its own military. Their government is so paranoid, they won't let aid flow into the country.
The United Nations, truly one of the most useless organizations to ever exist, is doing nothing but rationalizing ways to justify doing nothing.
Our Right Wing isn't willing to intervene, perhaps because there is no oil or any strategic advantage for doing so.
Our Left Wing isn't willing to intervene, because they have a puzzling infatuation with totalitarian governments (see Mao, Castro, etc etc etc.)
The Libertarian types generally oppose intervention because it's none of our business.
The suffering in that miserable nation is almost too great to comprehend.
What can we do?

I know a lot of people who take comfort in Jesus' words in the Gospel of Matthew. Here's Matthew 10:29-31.... "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows."

Taken at face value, Jesus seems to be saying that God is aware when sparrows fall. "Apart from the will of your Father....", that phrase implies that the sparrow doesn't fall unless it's the will of God. And we are worth more than sparrows.

The kitten, who is now in a box in one of my offices at work, probably weighs as much as two sparrows. Do I take it back outside, now that the rain has stopped, and hope that Mom shows up? Do I get it over with, and simply wring its neck? Take it to the pound? Buy milk, teach it to drink from a saucer, raise it to adulthood, and turn it loose in the neighborhood? And what about the other estimated 4,999 stray cats in Fort Worth? They're out their breeding like, like....well, cats.

What do we do for the three little girls? Our Family Pathfinders group will be assigned a new family soon. Do we just give up on this other family and hope for the best? I can promise you, the girls aren't going to turn out OK by mistake. Not in that environment.
As upper income families have fewer and fewer children, the lower income families, right or wrong, perceive more and more economic advantages in having more kids. It is staggering to think of.

In Burma, at least 20 people died from neglect, hunger and exposure in the time it took you to read this far. Their military won't allow anyone from the outside to help. What can be done?

Sparrows are falling everywhere. What are we supposed to do? Just watch, pray about it, and congratulate ourselves for not being among the fallen?

And now that I've put all this in perspective....does anybody want a cat?

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I Get Questions....

Bloggers generally try to be helpful. They usually have an agenda that they believe will benefit humanity.
So in the name of bettering our species, I'm going to post a few of the search engine inquiries that have guided people to this site. According to my Statcounter, many were phrased in the form of a question, as if Google worked like a "Magic 8-Ball".
It doesn't.
I've given links to the post they were directed to, plus I'll try to give a better answer than I provided in the original post, if I gave one at all. I'm deleting a few numbers from each server address just to protect the privacy of the questioners....Here goes.

h149..40.69.ip.alltel.net (Alltel Communications Of North Carolina) [Label IP Address]

North Carolina, Matthews, United States, 0 returning visit

Date Time WebPage
26th May 2008 21:11:49 www.search.com/search?q=i went to a nascar race and now my ears are ringing how do i stop it
thewhitedsepulchre.blogspot.com/2008/04/texas-motor-speedway-samsung-500-my.html

This person, a North Carolinian from the cradle of NASCAR, went to a race and wants ME to explain how to stop his ears from ringing.
The short answer: it can't be done. When I went to the race that I blogged about above, my host gave me some earplugs shortly after we sat down. Take some with you next time.

76-14-0-12.sf-cable.astound.net (Wave Broadband) [Label IP Address]

California, San Mateo, United States, 0 returning visit

Date Time WebPage
26th May 2008 19:33:04 www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=when will recession be over&btnG=Google Search
thewhitedsepulchre.blogspot.com/2008/05/recession-is-over.html

When will the recession be over? There isn't one. All the talk of a recession was designed to increase Guvmint control over the economy, and give politicians a reason to do something, anything, other than leave everything alone. Which, of course, would be the most helpful course of action. (I still don't have my stimulus check....Just an FYI to the Keynesians out there.)

c-76-1-164-190.hsd1.pa.comcast.net (Comcast Cable Communications Inc) [Label IP Address]

Pennsylvania, Canonsburg, United States, 0 returning visit

Date Time WebPage
26th May 2008 05:31:39 search.yahoo.com/search?ei=UTF-8&y=Search&fr=yfp-t-501&p=can gunpowder be attracted to a magnet&
thewhitedsepulchre.blogspot.com/

I've gotten a lot of people wondering about this....
Somebody in Canonsburg PA wants to know if gunpowder can be attracted to a magnet.
They've obviously seen that waste of an Indiana Jones movie.
The answer is "no". But in the movie, gunpowder, light fixtures, and swords are attracted to magnets. Gun barrels are not.
A friend of mine suggested that I pay attention to how quickly peoples' shirts dry off around the waterfall. I don't plan on seeing the movie again, but thought I'd throw that suggestion out there.
Here's another one:

pool-96-22-188-193.tampfl.fios.verizon.net (Verizon Internet Services Inc) [Label IP Address]

United States, 0 returning visit

Date Time WebPage
25th May 2008 21:59:49 www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=barr libertarian not
thewhitedsepulchre.blogspot.com/2008/05/bob-barr-libertarian-for-president-why.html

Barr Libertarian Not?
I agree. Barr Libertarian Not.

This has been a public service of The Whited Sepulchre Outreach Ministry.

Memorial Day Motivational Poster

Bob Barr is the Libertarian Party candidate for President

Bob Barr is the Libertarian Party candidate for President.
Bob Barr is the Libertarian Party candidate for President.
Bob Barr is the Libertarian Party candidate for President.
Bob Barr is the Libertarian Party candidate for President.

I think I could type it a dozen more times, and it wouldn't truly sink in.
I feel like one of those Hillary supporters who say they're going to stay home on election day if Obama is nominated.

I can't see Bob Barr as a Libertarian. Bob Barr is not a Libertarian. Or he wasn't when I was keeping up with him. What the heck is going on here?

Radley Balko, of "Reason" magazine, and author of the link above, states that he's "become rather fond of Barr over his 5-year conversion to libertarianism."

And I've became rather fond of Herman Goering over the course of his 5-year training to become a rabbi.

Bob Barr, at least on social issues, was one of the leading anti-libertarian politicians we've known. Maybe he's converted. Maybe he was struck blind for three days on the Damascus Road.

Maybe he's going to start working gun shows, lobbying for marijuana decriminalization, and building floats for gay pride parades. But isn't this rather sudden?

As one Baptist preacher told me when I was doing church music in Mississippi: "Allen, I don't have anything at all against reformed whores. But maybe you should wait a few weeks before you let them lead out the choir."

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends - The Watchers Council Edition

Watcher of Weasels (love the name !) runs something called "The Watchers Council".
It's a group of a dozen bloggers who, every week, submit their best piece of writing to the rest of the council. They use a complicated Watcher of Weasels-like percentage vote on who did the best job, and the winner gets lots of links and web traffic to whatever he/she wrote.

They also nominate one blog post apiece written by someone from the outside.

Wolf Howling, who has been in the blogroll to your right from day one, took a liking to this thing I wrote about Blog for Human Rights Day. Mr. Howling threw it in the ring for consideration by the Watchers Council.

These people, out of all the stuff blogged about last week, out of all the millions and millions of worthwhile blog entries out there....they decided that my Human Rights Day thing was the best. So now I'm getting traffic from here and here and here and here and here and here and here and about eight other places.

If I were a Democrat, I'd say that I'm humbled by the recognition.

But that's a total misuse of the word "humbled", isn't it? If people throw rotten vegetables and eggs and dead animals at you, and then say you're a total idiot, then you're humbled. How did we ever start using the word "humble" incorrectly? Any time someone gets an award or recognition, they say they're humbled. In my opinion, when you don't get an award, or win the game, or finish the marathon....you're humbled.

Instead of saying "I'm humbled", I should say that I'm pretty dang proud to get some recognition from The Watchers Council.

In the name of LinkLove, here are my picks for the best things written by the Watcher's Council:

The Education Wonks have an interesting post on the recent gang warfare in the Los Angeles Public School System. Read this, and tell me if any parents in their right minds would consider sending their kid to these schools. One thing that would've been an interesting side note.... No real teaching is going on in these places, since they're Gladiator/Gangsta Training Academies, and students risk their lives by showing up. So what's the biggest news in education from California these days? The teachers union is lobbying the state to outlaw home schooling. The mind recoils.

The Glittering Eye is running a series of editorials that Gittering Eye's father wrote for The Saint Louis Post-Dispatch. The first one, Adolph The Great, is about students at Yale (and Time magazine) nominating Hitler as "Man of The Year" due to his turnaround of Germany's economy. There are several other pieces by his father in there - just keep hitting the "father's editorial" links.

Rhymes With Right takes one of my least favorite politicians to the metaphorical woodshed. Iowa Senator Tom Harkin recently claimed that John McCain's family having four generations of military service somehow makes McCain unfit for Presidential leadership. Mr. Rhymes With Right has some harsh words for Senator Harkin, and says he should be ashamed of himself. I agree, but for totally different reasons.
Tom Harkin, the senator from Archer Daniels Midland, should be ashamed of himself because he's a whore for the ethanol industry. A worn out, pimped out, used up, totally bedraggled slut. John McCain has proven that he can take care of himself.

Done With Mirrors takes a look at the problem we Christians know as "theodicy". Prompted by the historical and theological explorations of Reverend John Hagee, Done With Mirrors asks, as an outsider, how can monotheists reconcile the idea of an all-knowing, all-powerful God with some of the totalitarian outrages of the previous century. (The short answer: We can't.)

Joshuapundit specializes in deep lengthy posts about the Middle East, almost all of which are worthwhile. But I've got to give you a link to this YouTube parody of an academic sensitivity training session. Funny stuff.

SoccerDad is another blogger who focuses on Jewish issues, Israel, and the Middle East. He's got so much interesting stuff in there that my head hurts. I look forward reading all these people in the future. If I have to settle on just one post to highlight, it would be "What Makes A Pro-Israel President?"

The Colossus Of Rhodey has some commentary on a Mark Steyn piece about John McCain vs. The Democratic Party . Senator Tom Harkin, who is shaping up nicely as the villain of this post, also comes in for some well-deserved abuse. But not nearly enough.

Bookworm Room liked the new Indiana Jones movie even less than I did. She's correct when she states that Cate Blanchett looks fabulous. She's mistaken when she states that (the fight scenes were) "like a Rock ‘em Sock ‘em robot, only the heads stayed attached at the end," because Cate Blanchett's head doesn't. But that's trivial. The movie was not good.
BWRoom also has a link where like-minded commenters can recommend their favorite books.

Cheat Seeking Missiles has a discourse on the lowered height requirement in the North Korean Army. (It's now 4'3". That's four feet, three inches tall.) Cheat Seeking Missiles believes this is due to systemic malnutrition in the Socialist Paradise of North Korea.
Well, there's a perfect control group of people with identical ethnicity in the Raging Capitalist Hellhole of South Korea. I wonder how the two nations compare? Can someone let me know if the South Korean military has to admit 4'3" recruits? I think not.

Wolf Howling, who was good enough to get me into all this, has a post on Oil, Gas, Supply & Demand. He talks about the belief that supply and demand have nothing to do with cost and price. He's also the 3rd or 4th one of these folks to post the YouTube video of Rep. Maxine Waters threatening to nationalize the oil companies.
As a small "l" libertarian, I think Maxine Waters' statements are mildly comical. (Imagine what The U.S. Postal Service could do for UPS. Imagine what a V.A. hospital could do for Harris Methodist hospital in Fort Worth. Imagine what the Department of Motor Vehicles could do for Toyota.) The Watchers Council apparently thinks this video is knee-slapping, rolling in the floor laughing, blow-your -drink-through-your-nose funny.
If you can imagine Maxine Waters and her minions taking over an oil company....yeah, it's pretty funny.
Also, while you're in there, check out the various wolf pictures above each blogroll category. The first time I saw the one he picked for "The Left", I laughed for hours.

Hillbilly White Trash has some marketing advice for the Republican party in "Rebranding The G.O.P." One explanation that may be needed for those with other belief systems....RINO stands for "Republican In Name Only".
The Hillbilly has the largest blogroll I've ever seen. He also did 2,200 posts in 2007. The Hillbilly is committed to his cause.
In his leisure time, he runs something called The Hillbilly Ecosystem. (Go ahead and click the link.... it's a blog traffic ranking system using redneck stereotypes as the hierarchy categories.) By one of his standards - blogrolls - I'm a Heavily Armed Moonshiner. By another - hits and comments - I'm a Heavily Armed Saloon Keeper.

Perhaps if all these good folks keep sending traffic my direction, I'll achieve a solid "Heavily Armed Saloon Keeper" status by the end of summer.

Free Trade's Benefits Are Not A Paradox (Shhh...The children might be listening.)

James Surowiecki, of The New Yorker's Financial Page, has written an excellent article called:
The Free-Trade Paradox
by James Surowiecki May 26, 2008

Mr. Surowiecki has written some excellent stuff in the past, my favorite being "The Wisdom of Crowds", a book about majority opinions, elections, betting lines, and how something as goofy as Wikipedia can grow to be more helpful than an encyclopedia.
I agree with what he's written here, for the most part. This posting will be a sort of anti-Fisking. What I hope to do here is draw attention to how gently, calmly, and lovingly Surowiecki takes his almost exclusively Democratic Partly Loyalist audience by the hand and tries to lead them to the conclusion that The Sky Is Blue and Grass Is Green.

All the acrimony in the primary race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has disguised the fact that on most issues they’re not too far apart.

Actually, the acrimony hasn't disguised anything. Take the names off their websites, and 95% of us couldn't tell which is which.

That’s especially the case when it comes to free trade, which both Obama and Clinton have lambasted over the past few months. At times, the campaign has looked like a contest over who hates free trade more: Obama has argued that free-trade agreements like NAFTA are bought and paid for by special interests, while Clinton has emphasized the need to “stand up” to countries like China.

The Clintons' position of "standing up" to China is like Neiman-Marcus "standing up" to Dollar General for providing products at a lower cost.

Two weeks ago, both senators signed on as sponsors of a new bill that would effectively impose higher tariffs on China if it doesn’t revalue its currency.

YEAH ! That will show....us. Put a tariff on their stuff so we'll have to pay....more. With friends like Hillary, who needs....Obama.

The candidates are trying to win the favor of unions and blue-collar voters in states like Ohio and West Virginia, of course, but their positions also reflect a widespread belief that free trade with developing countries, and with China in particular, is a kind of scam perpetrated by the wealthy, who reap the benefits while ordinary Americans bear the cost.

Actually, with these trade agreements running into the thousands of pages, we don't have true Free Trade with anyone outside our borders. But more trade is better than less.

It’s an understandable view: how, after all, can it be a good thing for American workers to have to compete with people who get paid seventy cents an hour?

How can it be a good thing for everyone who reaps the benefits of lower costs on anything? How can it be good for American oil companies who can only produce oil at $130 a barrel to compete with companies who can bring it in for $90? I believe if confronted with that situation we would all collectively say "Screw the American oil companies". And their employees and their household pets. The benefits for everyone would be big enough to counteract the harm done to someone. It's that simple. But unions are somehow seen as more wholesome....

As it happens, the negative effect of trade on American wages isn’t that easy to document.

Hmmm....wonder why. Could it be that the individual negatives are totally blown away by the group positives? Please remember, Mr. Surowiecki is trying to teach Democrats why their beloved Government Economic Control does more harm than good. Be patient. A master is at work here....

The economist Paul Krugman, for instance, believes that the effect is significant, though in a recent academic paper he concluded that it was impossible to quantify.

I've now read enough Paul Krugman to believe that he couldn't quantify two-for-one pricing at The Dollar Store. Nope, says Dr. Krugman. You can't quantify it, but I know it's bad.

But it’s safe to say that the main burden of trade-related job losses and wage declines has fallen on middle- and lower-income Americans. So standing up to China seems like a logical way to help ordinary Americans do better. But there’s a problem with this approach: the very people who suffer most from free trade are often, paradoxically, among its biggest beneficiaries.

Notice Reverend Surowiecki's continued use of the word "paradox", both in the previous sentence, and in the title of this sermon/essay. He's saying that Free Trade's benefits defy intuition, much like the idea of a round earth defies intuition. Saying it's a "paradox" doesn't imply that the Free Trade skeptics are dumb. It merely suggests that the skeptics don't know what everyone else has clued in on since 1936.

The reason for this is simple: free trade with poorer countries has a huge positive impact on the buying power of middle- and lower-income consumers—a much bigger impact than it does on the buying power of wealthier consumers. The less you make, the bigger the percentage of your spending that goes to manufactured goods—clothes, shoes, and the like—whose prices are often directly affected by free trade. The wealthier you are, the more you tend to spend on services—education, leisure, and so on—that are less subject to competition from abroad.

Wal-Mart denim jeans are subject to the benefits of Free Trade. Houses in The Hamptons, tickets to The Met, and subscriptions to "The New Yorker" are not.

In a recent paper on the effect of trade with China, the University of Chicago economists Christian Broda and John Romalis estimate that poor Americans devote around forty per cent more of their spending to “non-durable goods” than rich Americans do. That means that lower-income Americans get a much bigger benefit from the lower prices that trade with China has brought.

Surowieckie has now removed his Clue Stick from its scabbard, but he has not yet struck anyone about the head and shoulders....he takes a few practice swings....

Then, too, the specific products that middle- and lower-income Americans buy are much more likely to originate in places like China than the products that wealthier Americans buy.

He is now raising the Clue Stick above his head....

Despite a huge increase in imports from China—they sextupled as a percentage of U.S. imports between 1990 and 2006—Chinese products are still concentrated mostly in lower-price markets. (By some estimates, Wal-Mart alone has accounted for nearly a tenth of all imports from China in recent years.)

Using perfect form, Surowieckie swings towards the addle-pated noggins of his audience with all his might ! ! !

By contrast, much of what wealthier Americans buy is made in the U.S. or in high-wage countries like Germany and Switzerland.

The Clue Stick makes contact ! ! ! And now, the follow-through....

This is obvious when it comes to luxury goods—Louis Vuitton bags, Patek Philippe watches, and so on—but it’s also true of many other goods, like electronics, kitchen appliances, and furniture, categories in which American and European manufacturers have continued to thrive by selling to the high-end market. According to the Yale economist Peter K. Schott, machinery and electronics products made in developed countries sell in the U.S. for four times the average price of Chinese products. And, since the late nineteen-eighties, that price gap has widened by almost forty per cent.

But, but, but....Hillary said all this was bad ! ! ! How can this be ? ? ?

This may not always be the case; as China’s economy continues to boom, its companies will likely move up the quality ladder and, eventually, become serious competition for high-end American and European manufacturers. But for the moment the benefits of free trade with China, at least when it comes to shopping, are concentrated overwhelmingly among average Americans. And the result is that, in the past decade, the products that they spend more on have become a lot cheaper compared to the stuff that rich people spend more on.

NO ! ! DON'T SAY IT ! I WANT TO LIVE OUT MY LIFE AS A XENOPHOBIC TRADE BASHER ! ! ! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DON'T TAKE THIS AWAY FROM ME ! !

Broda and Romalis, in their recent paper, calculate that between 1999 and 2005 alone the inflation rate for lower-income Americans was almost seven points lower than it was for the wealthiest Americans.

IT'S NOT TRUE ! NOT TRUE ! I DON'T WANT IT TO BE TRUE ! trade&business&freedom are bad!!!Hillary&Barack are good ! ! ! NAFTA is bad ! ! Freedom is bad ! ! Excessive regulations are good ! ! Pelosi told me so ! AAAaaaarghhh !

That means that free trade with China has made average Americans, at least as consumers, much better off—in the sense that it’s made their dollars go further than they otherwise would have.

There, there now....I know this is hard to take, Surowiecki is saying. Maybe this next part will help you feel better.

Now, there’s a lot that’s left out of this equation, such as the fact that free trade may help richer Americans by increasing corporate profits.

O thank God I can still say the rich bastards benefit from trade. Thank you James Surowiecki, thank you thank you thank you....

And cheap DVD players may not, on balance, make up for lost jobs.

But notice that Reverend Surowiecki say "may" not. He's having a Krugman moment....

But the reality is that if we toughen our trade relations with China the benefits will be enjoyed by a few, since only a small percentage of Americans now work for companies that compete directly with Chinese manufacturers, while average Americans will feel the pain—in the form of higher prices—far more quickly and more directly than rich Americans will. Obama and Clinton, in their desire to help working Americans—and gain their votes—are pushing for policies that will also hurt them.

Ok, did James Surowiecki's sermon convert anyone? No? You're still going to base your beliefs about trade on pure emotion?
Thought so.
But before you click away, look at who made your computer.
For another take on this essay, click here to go to a Blog called The Economist's View.

Indiana Jones And The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull

I saw the new Harrison Ford movie "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of The Crystal Skull" tonight. Maybe it was last night. Maybe I didn't see it at the theatre. Maybe I saw it on a rerun of the X-Files.

Compared to the earlier Indiana Jones movies, it doesn't. Compare. At all. It's no more than a 6 on the 10 scale.

The script is some standard silliness about a missing blah blah blah that has to be reunited with the other blah blah blahs before the blah blah blah can happen. God knows I'm tired of that plot. All of this is tied together with some semi-entertaining dialogue, but the storyline feels like it was written by a committee.

The great John Hurt is in there somewhere in a beard and wild hair, muttering cryptic couplets about...who knows? Who cares? Anyone could've played that part.

It even has a self-congratulatory ending, where Indiana Jones and his bride are applauded by the congregation after their church wedding. God knows I'm tired of movies where movie extras gather around and applaud the heroes. Somehow, it's supposed to make the audience feel like they should applaud the movie.

It's set in the 50's, and Spielberg and Lucas feel obligated to show the FBI being intrusive in the name of anti-communism. One character changes sides 3 times, not for any rational reason, but to keep the plot rolling. Something was going on about magnetism and magnetic fields, but I lost interest in following it. Swords, light fixtures, and gunpowder are attracted to this magnet, but gun barrels are not.

There were some cool scenes involving jeeps and amphibian watercraft going through mountain roads in Peru. The first 15 minutes worth of action in the "Raiders Of The Lost Ark" warehouse, which turns out to be the infamous "Area 51", those are a fun 15 minutes. The videogames should be excellent.

And eventually they put the missing blah blah blah into the blah blah blah where it's belonged ever since it was stolen by blah blah blah and this causes all of the blah blah blah to start happening and the villain who wants to experience blah blah blah gets her head blown up.

I promise, you've seen it all before. For those of you who aren't 46 years old, you have no idea how much fun the first Indiana Jones movie brought to the screen. We had never seen anything like it.

You've seen this one before. Lots of times.

John Hagee, Jews, Hitler, Zionism, Theodor Herzl, Israel, and The Holocaust are now a bigger problem than Jeremiah Wright

Here's Pastor John Hagee, holding forth on what the prophet Ezekiel had to say about Hitler, the Jews, Zionism, Theodor Herzl, the birth of modern Israel, and the Holocaust.
McCain formally accepted Hagee's endorsement a few months ago.
My previous Youtube post on Hagee dealt with one of his discourses on Roman Catholics, and Catholicism essentially being the "Whore of Babylon" referenced in The Book of Revelation.
There must be something floating around out there where he attacks Hindus, because people keep putting "Hagee" and "Hindus" in the search field for this blog.

Hagee, in the video below, states that the Jews have "dead souls".

For betting purposes, I'm setting the over/under for McCain formally repudiating this guy at Saturday, May 24th, at 12 noon.
If you pick the "over" that means you think McCain will throw Hagee under the bus sometime AFTER lunchtime on Saturday. If you take the "under", that means McCain will distance himself from Hagee BEFORE lunchtime on Saturday.
If the Archangel Michael appears in The Promised Land riding a three-headed horse and blowing a trumpet, followed by four additional horsemen named War, Pestilence, Death, and Famine, then all bets are off, and no wagers will be paid.

Gar, German Girls, Gays, Guns, and Good Beer

This past weekend I went to my second meeting of the Tarrant County Libertarian Party, held at the Rahr Brewery south of downtown Fort Worth.

Lord have mercy, it was a good time.

I met some more great people, including a guy named Gar who runs the Random Ramblings blog. Gar's wife/fiance/simian (see picture at link) is from Germany, and at one point they ran into massive bureaucracy problems. This made him question what the heck government was doing in the Marriage Sanctioning Industry to begin with, especially regarding our gay and lesbian friends. So he's firing off letters about the issue to Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. Maybe he'll give us the text of these soon.

Gar doesn't realize that Senator Hutchison is too busy trying to preserve ethanol mandates at their current levels to worry about preserving or preventing marriages to Germans. Unless, of course, gays people are involved.

He was also kind enough to send me an email explaining how to get the "Digg" button to appear at the bottom of every post I write. If I'm succesful, it's Gar's fault. It it's a total failure and 8 months of rants go off into the void, that's Gar's fault also.

If you've never been to the Rahr Brewery, check it out via the link above. There were probably 200 people in there, sampling samples and yelling at each other with intense gusto. The Libertarian meeting almost got drowned out by a guitarist playing better-than-average teen angst music. Plus, the Stars hockey game was on the big screen.
I believe the brewery is open every Saturday afternoon. It's one heck of a marketing campaign.

The next Tarrant County Libertarian Party meetup will be at the state convention, conveniently held in Fort Worth at the Raddison Hotel on Meacham Boulevard, June 13-15th.

In the meantime, I've been asked to help staff the Libertarian Party information booth at the Fort Worth Gun Show, June 7-8th. We're all about 2nd amendment rights. I've also been asked to help with a float for the Dallas Gay Pride Parade. Well, whatever it takes to get Kay Bailey Hutchison's attention.