Oddities for a Cold Day in January

When the Treasury Department was asked why the new 20, 10, 5, and 1 dollar bills that beamed brightly in vivid color in the dark did not work when used as decorations on a Christmas tree, they replied, "Everyone knows that money does not glow on trees."

Who ought to be in jail? The !&%$#@! people who leave their #@%$#& grocery carts in the parking lanes, especially on a rainy day.

In with them and Bernie Madoff should be the ^&%#!) folks who straddle two parking places in order to create distance between them and the law-abiding citizens who park inside the lines. Thus do they create distance and reduce to the danger to their -- usually large -- vehicles.

Russia has started passing gas toward Ukraine again. Paradoxically, this is good news.

President Bush claimed that he was a unifier not a divider. Exactly. More than 2/3 thirds of Americans are united in disapproving of his presidency.

Memo to Liberals: Cool it!

We have gotten so sensitive in this country that every group across the ideological spectrum dares anyone to offend them. So my message is: cool it, calm down, take it easy, get a sense of perspective.

The latest example is the liberal furor over the Obama choice of Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation. It would not have been my choice, and I am on record as an advocate of gay marriage and have performed one for my son. Granted, some of Warren's acts and comments have been despicable. But he has also broadened the evangelical agenda and has devoted enormous energy to fighting poverty, AIDS, and global warming.

The liberal criticism magnifies the significance of this prayer all out of proportion. Did liberals not hear what Obama said repeatedly throughout his campaign -- that he intends to cross ideological and political boundaries?

Anyway, the bigger story is that Rick Warren has agreed to pray at the inauguration of a pro-choice, pro-gay rights president.

Ignored is the fact that Joseph Lowery-- a civil rights hero and an advocate of civil unions -- is giving the benediction.

No one could get elected who ran on my agenda regarding cultural, political, and social values. But Obama's aim is to govern effectively not to be doctrinally pure. After eight years of government cronies who were ideologically correct but sometimes incompetent, we should welcome Obama's more ecumenical approach.

My main concern would have been that Warren and Lowery not give a sectarian prayer in the name of Jesus and would have made that a condition of appointment.

So, Americans, calm down, develop some tolerance for others while vigorously pursuing causes dear to you.

Would I have made the same argument if the appointee had been a vicious racist? Probably not, unless he or she had overwhelming countervailing values on other vital issues backed up by deeds -- an ulikely possibility. Lines must be drawn between the tolerable and the intolerable. Knowing when and where to draw them is the challenge to social wisdom.

The Common Good: Difficult to Define

Everybody believes politicians should seek the common good not some particular private or selfish good. But seldom does anyone define what the term means. It turns out to be a complex notion, as slippery as a live, wet catfish.

A beginning can be made by saying a good is common if all participate in it. Two dimensions can be specified:

A. it refers to the general structures and processes necessary to there being a community at all worth living in -- a well-functioning democracy, a system of law and law enforcement, a peaceful social order, and the like with all the conditions that undergird them.

B. Closely connected but distinct are particular goods from which everyone benefits. Roads, bridges, a postal system, an electrical grid, and the like benefit us all or nearly everybody and certainly are essential for a functioning society. Other things benefit many or most but not necessarily all -- airports, e. g., except in some diluted or secondary form. If we don't fly, we may get UPS packages that came most of the way by air.

After that it get more difficult. Take the trio all, some, or none. Some things benefit all or almost so. Few, if any, things generated politically help absolutely no one. "It's an ill wind that blows no good."

I suspect that most goods benefit some and not others and may harm others. This is what we fight about most of the time. Who is helped and who is hurt and who is not affected at all? Politics, we say, determines who get what.

We all like to identify the good we seek with the common good. "What is good for General Motors is good for the country." (former GM CEO Charlie Wilson) We were told that Main Street had to to help bail out Wall Street, or we would all go down together. Enough people in power believed it to make it happen.

What about the auto bailout? Agricultural subsidies, NAFTA, state subsidies to foreign car makers versus a federal bailout for the American Big Three, etc., etc., etc.

Too much of our discourse is conducted in a Manichean framework in which a sharp dualism of good and evil reigns -- a policy is either good or bad, right or wrong, desirable or undesirable, common or private. Is it safe to fly in an airplane? Meaningless unless you define safe. Then we can state facts and don't need personal opinions, unless we are just asking whether someone is afraid to get on an airplane, i. e., feels safe. Are we safer now than before 9/11? What does that mean?

Approve or disapprove? Ask me if I approve of Barack Obama, and I will ask you whether you mean in all respects, in some particular respects, or in no respect.

Social reality is complex and ambiguous -- a mixture of good and bad, costs and benefits. But we cheapen and trivialize discourse by framing it in terms of of a shallow dualism.

The press, including print and electronic media, could serve a valuable service by helping us sort all this out instead of simplifying most everything to sound bites and offering us banalities, pablum. Thank goodness for PBS and C-Span -- a small oasis in the "vast wasteland" of TV (Newton Minnow).

We cannot do without reference to the common good, but it would serve us all if we defined what we mean by it and insist that all everyone else do the same.

Buzzards and Journalists: How They Are Alike

• The cartoon pictured two gaunt buzzards, obviously very hungry, sitting on a bare limb on a leafless tree in a barren wilderness. One says to the other, "Patience, hell! I'm gonna kill something."
• The election excitement is over. Obama's moves have been flawless and his appointments impressive. We are in the holiday season when much else clamors for time and focus. What are the poor political journalists to do to grab attention?
• You would think the bleepin Blagojevich scandal would be bleepin juicy enough for them. But Obama is the center of the political world right now, so they are straining every nerve, looking under every rock, parsing every word he or his staff utter or write, following every lead large or small and otherwise turning the universe upside down to find something that stinks linking Obama to the Governor. Leading the pack, of course, are the slobbering Republican operatives who have been dispirited since November 4. Right alongside is Fox news drooling at even the prospect of some hint of scandal. But even the more sober journalists can't resist the hunt.
• Meanwhile, out in the real world many struggle to pay the mortgage, keep or find a job, and otherwise stay afloat in these perilous times. The rest are too busy with Christmas, Hanukkah, or the non-offensive generic "holidays" to care about the trivial pursuit the hungry birds are undertaking.
  
• So leave Obama alone unless you find something worth reporting and go spend some money shopping. That would at least help the economy, while all this furor over trivialities merely annoys.
• Be patient, you buzzards, until something dies, and you can follow the bad odor to relieve your post-election hunger for some Obama excitement. Meanwhile, I can understand your feeling that you may be forced to kill something.
  

Biblical Exegesis Will Not Solve Gay Issues

Anyone who thinks that finding out what the Bible really teaches about same-sex love will resolve the issues for churches and individual believers misunderstands how things work in the real world. What the Bible really teaches is a function of somebody's interpretation. As my country relatives in Georgia used to say, "You can prove anything by the Bible."

A more humane view of gay marriage and its attendant issues will come like the resolution of African slavery, the right of women to vote, segregation, and the role of women in the church. It will come as a result of a change of consciousness in the secular culture and in the minds of Christians.

Slavery, the denial of women's rights, and segregation were all once defended on biblical grounds by wide segments of the Christan world, including biblical scholars, theologians, and lay people. They are not any more because the Christian community came to recognize that what they had been defending and supporting was wrong, and accordingly exegesis now easily produces a different result aided by hermeneutical miracles that are always available when needed.

Christians never let the Bible when it is speaking as the Word of God support or condone what is known or strongly believed to be either untrue or immoral. Check it out in church history.

The same pattern will repeat itself with regard to same-sex love. Southern Baptists apologized some years ago for defending segregation. Bob Jones University has decided its ban on interracial dating was a matter of culture and not a scriptural mandate. Nobody today thinks the Bible supports slavery.

With regard to homosexuality we are now where we were with slavery in 1850 and segregation in 1950. Biblical scholars at the moment divide sharply on the question of whether the Bible forbids and condemns same-sex love as immoral. In a half-century, I predict the exegetical, ecclesiastical, and theological worlds will sing a different tune. The Roman Catholic hierarchy moves at its own pace, but eventually will come around as it did on Galileo, evolution, democracy, separation of church and state, and other things.

Meanwhile, in the secular and political world change is coming slowly, and it is coming generationally, geographically, racially, ethnically and in terms of social and cultural location. New New England led the way, and California and New York are moving along. The upper Midwest could be next. The South, Midwest, Plains and Mountain States will follow in time.

Many highly-educated whites in the knowledge and professional classes are further along than many African Americans and Hispanics, especially the more religious ones, although education, culture, and class matter here too.

In the meantime, it you wish to gauge the opinion of Christians ask first not about their church membership but about their zip code.

When all the nuances, qualifications, and caveats are added, I will stand by the claims herein.

Signs of the Times

News headline:

Cell Phone in Man's Chest Pocket Stops Bullet
Associated Press, Nov. 20, 2008

It used to be that pocket New Testaments did that. My how times have changed.

Oh No, Barack, Not That!

Most of the time I agree with Barama on issues and have defended him even when he is a pure politician, i. e., have recognized pragmatically that idealistic purists win only moral victories and never get elected. But now he has gone too far. He has endorsed a playoff system for college football and says he will throw his weight around to bring it about. Terrible, terrible!

A playoff system to be fair must include more than eight teams. Basketball starts with sixty-four. It would extend the football season even further into the New Year. Who says we have to determine a number one anyway? Better to have something to argue about over the winter. Besides one game does not necessarily decide which is the better team. Too many things can happen to determine who wins on a given day.

I will throw my weight around to return to the good old days when the major bowl games were on January 1, and we were done with it after such a major overdose on one day. Today's money-driven system is crazy, beyond redemption.

College football is thoroughly corrupt anyway. Consider the salaries and perks of the big-time coaches compared to that of the best professors and presidents of those schools. Utterly absurd. It is a sport driven by money and fat TV contracts, an abomination for educational institutions.

So Barama, get real. If you really want to do something worthy of your office, denounce it for the corrupt system it has become.

OK, OK, I know supporting a playoff system will get you lots of plaudits with thousands of fans who are beset with the same delusions you apparently share. So much for new politics.

Post-Election Reflection

1. Some of us remember a song from World War II -- When the Lights Go on Again all Over the World. Well, they went on about 11 PM, November 4, 2008. when the TV announcers said that Barack Obama had been elected President of the United States.

2. I cried twice on election night, once when I first knew that Barack Obama had won and thought how wonderful and again when I first knew that Barack Obama had won and thought how awful it was to have the job given the mess we're in. As The Onion put it in a headline, Black Man Given the Worst Job in the World.

White House Tour: Toilet in Lincoln Bedroom

When Laura was showing Michelle around the WH, I hope she warned her that you have to jiggle the handle in the toilet in the Lincoln Bedroom after every use to keep the water from overflowing. That always annoyed me when I was there.

And I thought that handwritten note that Rosalyn Carter had taped on it in 1979 reminding everyone to jiggle after flushing was a little tacky.

Maybe with all the books Barack is selling since his election, he could afford to bring in a plumber to fix it. Actually, I would do it free if they wanted, just to save taxpayers a little money, what with the deficit and the economic crisis and all.

Famous But Fatuous Political Statement

Some of the most famous statements in recent political history are bull biscuits.

In 1933 Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." Nonsense. People had a lot to fear, during the Great Depression, things like unemployment, poverty, homelessness, hunger, and the like. Just ask my Dad, who lived through it.

In his campaign for VP with Michael Dukakis in 1988 against George the Elder Bush, Lloyd Bentsen said to Dan Quayle, the Republican candidate, "I know Jack Kennedy . . . and, Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy." That statement was mean, gratuitous, insulting, vacuous, obvious, just to get started.

In 1961, John Kennedy said, "Ask not your country can do for you but what you can do for your country." Nice rhetoric, has a nice sound to it, clever to use the reverse images, etc. But the statement is empty without some specifics to give it content.

And not universally applicable, e. g., those who were sent to Iraq to fight this senseless war have every right to ask what their country can do for them when they return -- if they do.

Kennedy's speech to the Baptist preachers in Houston in 1960 is lauded as a clear-headed statement on church and state, but it is actually shallow and confused regarding the difference between church and state and between religiion and politics.

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkhoustonministers.html

Maria Cumo and Obama have a much better and more profound grasp of the issues.

See my article:
http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/presidentialreligionpolitics.html

Why, then, are they so famous and so often repeated? Beats the heck out of me.

Trust Obama, Oh Ye of Little Faith

Some are already criticizing Obama for designating Rahm Emanuel as his Chief of Staff -- one of his very first choices -- because of his close Israeli ties.

Here is my theory about Rahm Emanuel. First, it is a gesture to the Jewish community that will help him to get tougher on Israel later on. Second, he knows that to get stuff done, he has to pass legislation through Congress. RE is just the kind of tough SOB who can help with that.

Whether my theory is right, you can be sure that Obama had clear purposes in mind that had been thoroughly thought through when he chose RE. I trust him. He succeeded in the primaries and in the election by ignoring the advice I gave him.

BO will certainly make choices that will make those of us on the idealistic left squirm. We should not hesitate to criticize him when we think he is wrong. He plays a tough political game. He obviously catered (pandered?) to farmers in Iowa and Illinois in supporting ethanol subsidies. He broke his promise on public campaign finance. He has been quiet on Israel's sins, etc., etc. Jack Kennedy's father bought West Virginia for him in the primaries by paying off the country sheriffs in 1960, as I understand it.

He could not survive politically if he tried to satisfy my tendency toward democratic socialism, even if he shared my views. The question is how does Obama balance realism and idealism, pragmatism and principle, in the long run, especially on the big issues.

For the moment, I trust BO more than I do the people so eager to criticize him so early. I think we should give him a break and allow him some time, but when appropriate we need to be critical as necessary, and I think he would want that.

Cloning Extinct Species

I read in the paper this morning that scientists hope to clone extinct species. My understanding is that their first effort will focus on the Republican Party.

Ten Reasons Why John McCain Could Still Win the Election

Watch the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2XgR10u_Mk

10. Sarah Palin climbs on a big rock in her back yard to get a better view of Russia, and when it rolls over discovers a new oil field that has more oil than Saudi Arabia.

9. Michelle confesses that her secret wish is to start a madrassa in the White House and teach Wahhabism to black kids from the D. C. ghetto.

8. Barack acknowledges that a spell has been cast on him such that if he even glances at a full moon, he will turn into Dick Cheney and look like Alan Greenspan.

7. The Pope puts Sarah on the fast track to become a saint.

6. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet agree to pay off the national debt if Sarah Palin with go with them on a 10 day moose hunt in Alaska with only a very small tent to sleep in while Todd stays home with the kids.

5. Michelle admits that she slept with Bill Clinton to get him to campaign for Barack.

4. Obama admits that McCain has found him out and confesses to being a terrorist, a socialist, and a Muslim cousin of Saddam Hussein, from whom he got his middle name.

3. An angel appears on Mt. Sinai with irrefutable proof that McCain was born of a virgin.

2. Osama bin Laden helicopters into the middle of a rally in Ohio and personally surrenders to McCain.

1. President George W. Bush endorses Obama.

McCain-Palin -- a Poetic Reflection

See the video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2030649403297420759

Have no fear. All is well.
McCain's chances have gone to hell.

He chose to go with a beauty-queen hottie.
Now his hopes are in the potty.

A bridge to nowhere: Sarah Palin.
M's gimmick -- deservedly failin'.

Let them throw their dirty dirt.
It will not Obama hurt.

Will be seen for what it is:
A final, desperate, worthless fizz.

Socialist, terrorist -- it didn't work.
Just showed M to be a jerk

Have no fear. All is well.
McCain's chances have gone to hell.

Still we wait, dreading the worst.
Surely our bubble yet will burst.

Yet on we go trembling with hope.
Please ruthless fate don't say NOPE.

Nader Revisited and Obama Praised

My first blog was about Ralph Nader (April 19, 2004). The main point of it was Nader is a secular prophet and saint, a political idiot, and a massive ego burdened by self-righteousness.

I was reminded of this last night when I heard him on the NPR News Hour. He is right on all the issues from my point of view.

He pointed out, for example, that both candidates speak always of the middle class, never of the poor. That simply indicates that a presidential candidacy based on Nader's ideas has a zero chance of success in the prevailing political and cultural climate. This morning on NPR Kevin Phillips repeated some of Nader's themes.

I fervently hope that Barack Obama is elected president. That for me will be a day of great rejoicing. I think he will be as good a president a political reality will allow to be.

The problem is that both parties are ruled, or at least constrained, by the wealthy and the corporate class. They provide the money without which political success is impossible, but it is a corrupt system. Obama is the victim and perpetrator of it. He received in 2008 693 thousand dollars from Goldman Sachs alone and hundreds of thousands more from similar institutions.

The cultural reactionaries, among whom are many Protestants, and the plutocracy have far too much influence.

White Protestants have helped elect Republicans for decades since the era of FDR and the southern embrace of Republicans since the Civil Rights era. White Protestants gave us Nixon, Regan, and two Bushes.

Obama will be less bad, even much better than McCain, but from the perspective of this democratic socialist, he cannot be a good president because the system will not allow him to be even if he wanted to be, and I am not sure of the latter.

Until we have a radical social, political, and cultural transformation, improvements in justice for the poor, the working class, and the middle class will be at the margins. However, as Reinhold Niebuhr pointed out decades ago, even minimal advances toward justice can make a great deal of positive difference in the lives of large numbers of people.

That is why I fervently hope that Obama will be elected president.

What Do You Mean, Who Won?

After every debate the great question is, Who Won? But nobody ever defines what winning means. Therefore, any answer is meaningless. I can think of several possibilities:

1. X was the better debater -- better informed, all factual claims were accurate, more articulate, logically compelling arguments, and the like.

2. X had the sharp zingers that will dominate the news the next day.

3. X won more voters for his/her candidate than the other.

4. X was more personally engaging, made better contact with the audience.

5. I preferred candidate X for my own reasons.

6. A combination of some or all of the above.

7. None of the above.

Next question: Are we safer now than before 9-11? Adapt the above argument to this one, i. e., meaningless without definition.

Selah!

In Praise of Sarah Palin and all the Unqualified

I'll tell you, I am just sick and tired of hearing people say that Sarah Palin is not qualified to be Vice President. Of course, she is not, but so what?

There are millions and millions of people in this country, including myself, who are not qualified to be Vice President. The unqualified deserve to be represented just like everybody else. She is one of the unqualified, so who better to represent the unqualified than she?

On Getting Sick Enough to Vomit: The Discipline of a Good Depression

We all know that you feel better after you vomit, but nobody wants to get that sick.

It is horrible to think about it, and I feel guilty for even letting the idea surface. But I will proceed anyway. Would a serious economic depression be good for us in the long run? It might.

Could a good depression revive the prudence, discipline, and caution that the Great Depression reinforced in the generation represented by my parents and grandparents.? If so, America might be the better for it.

In recent decades we have developed some toxic cultural habits -- runaway consumerism, an unrestrained self-indulgent hedonism promoted by corporate advertising, disdain for delayed gratification, greed for bigger houses, cars, and the latest gadgets, a pattern of living beyond our means, a careless attitude toward debt aided and abetted by the easy availability of credit and credit cards, failure to consider the consequences of our reckless extravagance, and the like.

To revive an old phrase, the "Protestant ethic" has died. Even many of the churches that are growing rapidly are preaching a gospel of prosperity that a shocked Calvin would have abhorred. Paradoxically, it was the disciplined style of life that valued work and thrift as a divinely-approved virtues that helped generate the widespread prosperity subsequent generations enjoyed. In capitalism individual self-interest was supposed to produce universal welfare. Sadly we find in the current generation a bastardized form of culture that lacks the self-restraint and prudence of the stringent ethic of the past and retains only the desire and expectation of the unlimited possession of material goods in a life of self-indulgent gratification.

No, I don't wish another Great Depression on myself, my children, and grandchildren along with the whole lot of us. I just wish that we could recover the ethic strengthened by it for a generation badly in need of repentance and newness of life. But sometimes we need to get very sick before we can vomit and feel better.

Damnation by Designation: the "Bailout"

What's in a name? A heck of a lot.

The rescue plan that was defeated today was damned from the start once it became known as a "bailout of Wall Street by taxpayers." Of course, we all hate that.

But that's about all that got through apparently. The dire consequences of not rescuing the financial industry was only a echo of the original ear-splitting blast.

Once the idea of a bailout of Wall Street became the way most people thought about it, proponents failed to make the point that the "bailout" was the means. The end was to save us all -- Wall Street and Main Street. In the glare of a"bailout" of the very financial geniuses of Wall Street who caused it (forgetting about all the greedy people who foolishly bought houses and cars, etc., etc. etc., and got themselves into unsustainable debt) the little glimmer of light that failure to do so would sink us all never got into the public mind, despite all the warnings from all sides.

My understanding from the economists I trust is that while the rescue plan was badly constructed and probably not the best way to accomplish the objective -- saving the financial system -- it was better than doing nothing and was the bill before us.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/where-will-the-money-come-from/

Once the serious consequences of a failure to get credit flowing again begins to hurt masses of people, maybe some constructive action will follow.

Now if only the politicians would stop trying to exploit the issue for partisan purposes, but, uh oh, I am dreaming again.

Quasi-Acerbic Oddities for the Day

I am now convinced that Bill Clinton wants Obama to lose, so Hillary can run in 2012. He is oozing with enthusiastic praise for McCain and Palin and damning Obama with "Oh, he's nice too" remarks. I take back the nice things I said about him after his Convention speech.

Sarah Palin is self-destructing. She has been knocked off her lofty perch, has lost confidence, and is giving 10th grade answers to simple questions, and looking like a simpleton. Can she recover? Maybe.