Really?!!

So, Now What Do We Do? [Chad]

2008-11-13T13:50:00.007-05:00

Barack Obama is going to be the President of the United States, and that is an achievement of which all people in this country should be proud. There will be countless articles from countelss writers far better prepared to detail why than I. This is not about why we should be proud as a country but why the Republican Party should be ashamed.

The Party needs new leadership, and there is a civil war under way to determine who will lead this party. David Brooks wrote a wonderful article detailing his side of the fight in Tuesday's New York Times (link here.) I would strongly suggest reading it; however, I just as strongly disagree with his conclusion - for I am a Traditionalist.

The total number of votes in this election was less than that in the previous election. And what everybody is saying is that Republicans stayed home. What they will find is that most of the voters that stayed home are the traditionalists that Brooks referenced. These are people that believe in faith, family, freedom and smaller and less government - traits not exhibited by the National Republican Party in some time and certainly not in the last eight years.

This election was not only a judgment on the George W. Bush Presidency, what far too many Republicans will believe this election was about, but it was also about the Party's ability to govern, to act, to speak to the people, to express the ideals of the electorate, to convince and to lead. It is our failure to do this that caused us to lose the election. It is not because the economy tanked at just the wrong time, it is not the war in Iraq or Afghanistan, it is not the price of gas or the "tone" of "politics as usual" in Washington D.C. This is a lesson I fear Republican Party will fail to learn.

So, how do we fix it? We must be willing to recognize the defeat for what it was, and we must be willing to remedy our faults. The party platform cannot be simply a list of all the things that we are against, but we must re-learn how to express what we stand for, what we believe in, what we cherish... we must re-learn how to express our dream of what our country should be. Michael Steele has started that push in his op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (link here). What he says should be read by all Americans.

The Republican Party has lost its way... it has lost its credibility, but it hasn't lost its ideals - ideals that most Americans still support and will vote for. The question is can we, as Republicans, regain our place as thinkers and stand strong on our principles. Can we rise above petty politics and grasp hold of pure politics? Can we lead? Or shall we, once again, fall victim to torpor and timidity?

To quote Michael Steele, it is the "faith in the power and ingenuity of the individual to create the legacy of a nation through hard work, personal responsibility and self-discipline - The American Dream - that is our uniting principle. That is the sacred ground upon which our Republican Party was built. It is the ground upon which we have always stood when we stood at our best."

It is the ground upon which we must stand again.

What is wrong with the Polls? [Jay]

2008-10-17T07:42:00.001-04:00

The polls right now do not make sense.

Here is what I mean. I still think that given the information that we have Obama is the likely winner of this Presidential race, but there is something puzzling about the numbers. Why does Obama continue to fail to jump dramatically against such an incompetent opponent?

McCain is a terrible choice to face Barack Obama. McCain rose through the primary rounds by winning states that were always going to vote for the Democrat in the general election as Huckabee and Romney divided the conservative base between Christians that cannot vote for a Mormon and economic conservatives that think those Christians sabotaged the whole election for the Republicans. McCain is old, not eloquent, famously crotchety, and has spent the last eight years being trashed by conservative talk show hosts for betraying his party. He supports the federal funding of embryo destructive research (which means that pro-lifers are not thrilled with him) and he has trouble raising money. He ought to be the lamb for the slaughter here.

Obama should be running away with this. The incumbent president is incredibly unpopular, only Truman was more so, and the economy is in the tank. (Cue Mike’s rant) We are in the midst of two wars that are perceived (wrongly in my estimation) to be going poorly by the general public. Add to that, Obama is tall, good looking, and athletic, speaks magnificently, and has spent more money than anyone else in presidential campaign history. So why does the new Gallup poll have him in a virtual tie with likely voters?

I heard someone say after the second presidential debate (otherwise known as the worst debate ever) that neither candidate seized the moment. This is the moment in history where you have the opportunity to say things like, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” or “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.” These are times that give us phrases like “the better angels of our nature” or the famous “house divided,” phrases and speeches that live with our nation forever. This is the moment that awaits the man. McCain NEVER promised to be that man, but we were told endlessly that Barack Obama was.

So what did we get when the chips were down? We got Barack Obama ahead in the polls playing prevent defense in the debates and being praised by pundits for winning by not losing his temper and punching the crotchety old man in the face. Wow! How inspiring! We were told endlessly that Obama is unflappable and needed only to keep from losing his cool. So we gauge his victories on his ability to keep from sounding as stupid as his running mate who continues to make the main stream media look ridiculous for insisting how smart Biden is.

All of this underlies the sneaking suspicion that may be growing on people. Barack Obama may and probably will win this election, but Mr. Obama, I have studied great men and I have known some great men. You sir are no great man. You are not the man this moment awaits. You are a garden variety democrat that is running a campaign and not inspiring a nation.

I remember his speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. My wife and I watched him and we were both impressed by that fiery young guy whatever our obvious political differences were. Then you see him again and he is still good, but less startling than before. After a while he is like the song One Week by the Bare Naked Ladies. The first time you hear it you think it is a great song. The one hundredth time you hear the same song it is a bit tired. Years later we look back and laugh about how carried away we all were for Walk Like an Egyptian or the theme from Chariots of Fire.

Obama is struggling to distance himself from a far inferior political opponent. That is because Obama is not the great hope of the future that many thought he was when he burst on the scene four years ago. He is a politically ambitious climber with talent. You don’t believe me. Yesterday a man was interviewed on NPR that was with Obama at the birth of his political career in Chicago. His feelings now? He says he will vote for Obama but he is not thrilled about it. He thought there was more to Obama than the years of political maneuvering exposed.

Maybe he is not the only one with that thought. And before we make too big a deal about him filling stadiums with adoring fans I must remind you that I once sat in a stadium filled with people that all stood up on cue and started doing some ridiculous dance. When I asked the guy next to me what was going on he looked at me like I was an idiot and said, “It’s Macarena night!”

Obama looks less like Lincoln and more like the Macarena every day. If the polls stay in the margin of error that could start to become a problem.

Obama will Win [Jay]

2008-10-03T07:08:00.003-04:00

In 1998 I watched the Denver Broncos play a mid-season game. I returned to work and immediately told my friend in the warehouse at which I worked, “The Denver Broncos will win the Super Bowl this year. I want you to remind me of this later because as we get close to the game my emotions will overtake me and I will start to try to find reasons to believe that whatever NFC team they face in the big game actually has a chance. The Broncos have an offensive line that is unmatched in the NFL and a backfield that knows what to do with running room (Terrell Davis) and time to throw (John Elway). They will win because no other team is anywhere near as good.”

Later that year a Minnesota Viking kicker who had not missed a field goal all season missed one in the NFC Championship and my beloved Falcons were headed to the Super Bowl to face the Broncos. As I mapped out all of the intangibles to explain how the Chris Chandler led Falcons would overcome the hated Elway led Broncos, including the fact that God just liked the Falcons better, my friend reminded me of what I said to him when I was thinking unemotionally and clearly. The Broncos will win. And they did. Rather easily I might add.

Obama will win this election. That is the honest lay of the land. We have known for more than a year that the country was so dissatisfied with Bush/Cheney that whatever Democrat made it through would be moving into the Whitehouse. Heck, McCain was not even the best choice to carry the flag for the losing team this year and is only in this position because of the bizarre split of the conservative elements of the party between Romney and Huckabee.

Let me be clear about one thing. Obama is no better than any other politician and only a hopelessly vain idiot would believe that his 4 or 5 point lead in this race confirms that he is the great agent of change that came from the Father’s side directly into the political arena to save America. He is 5 points ahead because every bad day in America reminds voters that they are tired of Bush. The Obamaniacs can pass out from excitement and freely cry all they want; the American people would give Hillary or Biden or almost anyone a 5 point lead over any Republican at this point. It just is what it is.

Palin changed the status quo for a couple of weeks, but she is not charismatic enough to fight off the ridiculous goings on in Washington over the financial challenges we face. To bail out or not to bail out is the story of the day and that narrative reminds people that they are unhappy with our leadership right now.

You can try to argue facts all you like because they don’t matter. If the American people hate the Democratic Congress even more than Bush why are they so determined to hand the Democrats so much power? Biden distorts the truth either through ignorance or dishonesty almost every time he talks, why is the press giving him a pass on this? Obama shows the same arrogant inability to admit mistakes as Bush does, a characteristic the press hated in Bush but ignores in Obama. None of this matters because you have to be honest about where the country is in their mood.

Can McCain conceivably win? Sure. Things happen that radically impact elections. But that is the key that will help us all relax a bit over the coming weeks. Obama is going to win unless…McCain is going to lose unless…the status quo is that the Democrats win this election. Barring a radical event to upset that status quo this is the Broncos and the Falcons all over again. I do not like either Biden or Obama. I am not a huge McCain fan, but at least I respect him for his military service and the terrible years of torture he courageously endured. I like Palin. In the end though, Chris Chandler does not beat John Elway in the Super Bowl no matter how good Jamal Anderson was that year.

Separation of Reason And State

2008-10-02T13:46:00.001-04:00

Remember all the bluster about the "separation of church and state" that we are subjected to in the hysteria surrounding: the teaching of Intelligent Design; the mission to keep prayer and (God forbid!) the Bible out of the public schools; the rigid denial of allowing religious views to inform the abortion debate or (God forbid!) have a role in overturning Roe-v-Wade; and on and on and on ...

Remember also that this hysteria is invariably brought to us by those on the political left who are: champions of women's rights, defenders of political correctness, and proponents of a secular culture that abhors any attempt to legislate morality in any way.

Remember all that? Well, check this out ...

In Britain, one of the most politically-correct, left-wing societies on planet Earth:

Islamic law has been officially adopted ... with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases. The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.

The folly of this move is almost beyond comprehension -- especially in a society that prides itself on championing the issues mentioned above. For the record, here are some of the views that may come into play in "Muslim civil cases" considered under Sharia Law:

Many interpretations of Islamic law hold that women may not have prominent jobs, and thus are forbidden from working in the government. This has been a mainstream view in many Muslim nations in the last century, despite the example of Muhammad's wife Aisha, who both took part in politics and was a major authority on hadith.
A woman's inheritance is different from a man's, both in quantity and attached obligations. For instance, a daughter's inheritance is half that of her brothers, Sharia law requires family members females or males to support each others as needed.
In instances of rape some interpretations of Sharia law require for an allegation to be validated, victims must have four witnesses to the crime or else the victims risk being charged with fornication or adultery making a rejected allegation a potential death sentence for the victim
Homosexual activity is illicit under sharia, however the prescribed penalties differ from one school of jurisprudence to another. For example some countries allow the death penalty for sodomy though not for other homosexual activities.
Sharia does not allow freedom of speech on such matters as criticism of Muhammad and that such criticism is considered blasphemy against Muhammad ... There is no dispute that anyone who curses Allah is killed and that his curse demands that he be categorized as an unbeliever ... The judgment against those who harm Allah and His Prophet is more severe -- the death penalty.

That's enough, I think. You get the point.

It is ironic that the most precious allies of the political left who adopted this policy are those who will suffer the most under its imposition. For that reason it is astounding that this has been allowed in Great Britain. The ideology that brought this to fruition has been led by its own demands to come face-to-face with the logical conclusions of that ideology. The consequences will be dire for a free, democratic society. We can only hope that an eventual realization of that fact will show, to those who are willing to be shown, that ideas have consequences ... and that the consequences they will eventually be forced to endure are the result of some very, very bad ideas.

Christopher Hitchens on Attacking Palin from the Left [Jay]

2008-09-09T07:30:00.000-04:00

Christohpher Hitchens is a man that has recently been more famous for his bitter assault on any belief in God and his championing of the new atheism. The new atheism is, paraphrasing Jay Richards, a sneer rather than an argument and relies on rhetorical points in contrast to sound argument.

That said, Christopher Hitchens is also one of my favorite political commentators. His bitterness works well in that venue and his sneers are a lot funnier. That combined with the fact that in politics he often knows what he is talking about contra his ravings about religion. And here Mr. Hitchens turns his intimidating eye toward the problems the Democrats have with attacking Palin. I encourage you to read it all, but here are some of the highlights for me:

"I could well be wrong, but I think something similar is involved in the attempt to paint the Palin family as if it were Arkansas on ice or Tobacco Road with igloos and Inuit. Very well, she possibly has had her Troopergate and even trailer-park moments. But whom exactly did the Democrats drown in moist applause, for two nights running, in Denver? The most dysfunctional family ever to occupy not the vice-presidential mansion but the executive one. It's hard to imagine that there will be any more unwanted pregnancies or shotgun weddings when or if the Palins move to the Naval Observatory on Massachusetts Avenue, whereas with the Clintons, the very thing that made all Bill's friends turn white and pee green was that they made him the president, and he still wouldn't stop."

Or this gem

"Her local shout-and-holler tabernacle apparently believes that Jews can be converted to Jesus and homosexuals can be "cured." I cannot wait to see Obama and Biden explain how this isn't the case or how it's much worse than, and quite different from, Obama's own raving and ranting pastor in Chicago or Biden's lifelong allegiance to the most anti-"choice" church on the planet. The difference, if there is one, is that Palin is probably sincere whereas the Democratic team is almost certainly hypocritical."

The power of this piece is that someone who is an actual Communist (no kidding that is why he calls his friends comrades) and who is hostile to religion across the board clearly sees what is beginning to be clear to most everyone watching. Palin’s strength is how she mirrors the weaknesses of the opposing ticket while being a committed Christian conservative. Again, it may not make her qualified but it sure makes her difficult to campaign against.

Picture by FrogMiller

Bump Monday [Jay]

2008-09-08T07:48:00.000-04:00

If you are not familiar with how polling works, the major polls report on results cumalative for the last three days. So the polling data today is the fist of the fully post Republican National Convention, as it is for Sunday, Saturday, and Friday. The MOnday data is the full poll bounce story for McCain/Palin.

Rasmussen has them tied 46% to 46%.
Zogby has it 49.7% McCain 45.9% Obama
Gallup has it McCain 48% to Obama 45%
USA Today/Gallup weekend poll of likely voters (registered voters)skewed McCain 50% to Obama 46%.
Politico has it McCain 48% and Obama 45%.

Bounce accomplished. This is absolutely astonishing because the fervor that the DNC built in the media with Demstock and the Greek columns was supposed to be a level of enthusiasm that was not capable of being matched by the Republicans. The RNC actually surpassed the DNC when it was all said and done.

It is pathetic that Obama referred to the Republicans as attempting to bully the Democrats. It is ALWAYS a bad idea to play the victim. He is a smart guy, though and they will figure that out. The debates are coming and they will be huge for both parties. Look for Obama to fight the townhall style tooth and nail and look for the more formal setting. McCain is a master of the informal debate.

Uh oh, Barack! The Story Just Changed [Jay]

2008-09-03T23:51:00.005-04:00

Let me start out by stipulating that I do not believe that at this point Sarah Palin is a credible candidate for the President of the United States due to her relative inexperience on the larger stage. So in so much as Mike pointed out here that Palin’s limited resume bothers him as much as Obama’s, I agree that neither one has the background that I generally look for in casting my vote for the Commander in Chief of our nation’s armed forces. Palin gets the slight nod on this one to one comparison from me on the basis of having executive experience in public office.

Unlike Barack Obama, though, Sarah Palin is not campaigning to be the President of the United States. She is the VP candidate on John McCain’s ticket and that is a considerable difference. Like John McCain or not, and there are things to not like in my opinion, he cannot be accused of lacking the necessary experience. The idea that Palin needs to be more ready than other Veep candidates in the past because McCain could die at any minute is a bit of a morbid argument. If you think that McCain is going to die any day now it is irresponsible to elect him to the highest office in the land anyway, but since all of the voters that pushed him through the primaries were aware of his age and health let’s assume that the Grim Reaper is not stalking Senator McCain any more than the rest of us and move past this fear. The Democrats that have pushed this approach are clearly ignorant to how awful they sound telling McCain that given is impending passing his choice of a running mate raises questions about his decision making abilities.

For the sake of the rest of this post, assume that this election is not about finding the most accomplished and prepared candidates for office but is about winning. Suppose you are McCain and you are competing against a younger richer better looking guy with a new story. This is important because the press loves stories and McCain is old news. Heck even Hillary is old news compared the new kid in town. When feminist were saying that losing the primary to Obama was like working for years to set up this great moment and then the coolest guy in class comes in and steals the moment they were right. Obama is the “it” boy and can do no wrong because his story is awesome and new. Even if he were not African American his story is great, but you have this guy with this story and in addition he can be the first African American to boot. And did I mention that he is a great speaker?

So McCain is going to lose. He can pick whatever running mate he wants to because in the end people vote for the Presidential Candidate not the VP. Romney is probably the best choice but he is old news. If the pundits can be trusted Joe Lieberman was McCain’s desired pick, but that was old news and political suicide. Any of the obvious choices were all tired old news that would have kept the status quo. The status quo at the time was Obama wins, period. But McCain tagged Palin. And now the story has changed.

At first glance people start shaking their heads and bemoaning the pick because she is not ready to rule the roost, but the amount of damage an unprepared VP can do in office is fairly limited. As long as she is not so daft as to unwittingly offend foreign heads of state and as long as she is capable of being briefed upon events, advised by competent people, and ultimately make decisions I am not certain how bad she could be. Well she came to the Republican National Convention, she spoke, and she is not an imbecile from the back woods. She is the new story and for days before she spoke and after the great speech at Demstock all anyone has talked about is Palin, her family, her credentials, and her comparative history versus Obama’s. There is an old debate axiom that says those who frame the debate win the debate. Obama is talking about Palin an awful lot, and therefore is not talking about what he wants to talk about. That is not really good for any candidate.

Where do you attack her? Small town? Great idea for a candidate seen as a snob that fails to connect to the working class. Inexperienced? No, Obama does not want this to become about whether or not he has more experience than the VP choice on the other ticket. You see it is hard to attack her on anything other than her conservative stances and that makes Obama just another Democrat.

Yesterday I thought that was a good thing, but McCain has now changed the story with Palin. Who will win? Who knows? All bets are off because the Republicans just flipped the field. Is she qualified to be President? Who knows, but she is the new kid in town and she has a great story. And did I mention that she is a great speaker?

If you want the best candidate maybe Palin is not your woman. If you want to win, she may be the person that gives the Republicans their only hope.

Help, My Country is Being Blackmailed [Jay]

2008-09-02T22:41:00.004-04:00

Apparently there is a guy that comes from Illinois that is capable of astonishing things. He can end our nation’s dependence on foreign oil in ten years while making certain that every person in the United States is capable of attending college, presumably with little or no cost. He can make certain that every person in the United States has comprehensive health care coverage. This man can mend all relationships with countries that have been traditionally anti-American in sentiment while convincing hostile foreign powers ruled by madmen to disarm based solely on the power of his personality alone. He can pay for all of this by cutting taxes except of course for those taxes he intends to raise. He can even arrest the gradual heating of the world’s climate and return our average temperature to a polar bear friendly level!

Here is the catch. He will only do all of this for us if we elect him President of the United States. As evidence of this, he has refused to actually do anything so far, one can only presume to demonstrate his resolve to withhold this great power until such time as we fully acquiesce. Nothing, I repeat, nothing gets done unless he is in office. One of his peculiar powers is to be qualified for a position without ever doing anything, a magic he made clear this week is reserved to him and none other. He is qualified, and he alone can be qualified without qualifications.

What do we do? This man is attractive, charismatic, and was wicked good at school. He speaks very well and draws massive crowds of weeping men and women and news anchors that will readily testify through their copious amounts of tears of his surpassing greatness. Keith Olberman is stupefied by his presence and Chris Matthews gets tingles in his leg at the mere mention of the man’s name. How do we turn down this deal? How do we refuse him what he demands when he can do so much if we only put him in the highest office in the world? How can we let him return to Illinois and force him to continue to do nothing when if he were only the President of the United States we would have no more problems anywhere ever again?

Unless of course these are just campaign promises that need not be taken seriously, in which case we can all rest at ease. It seems a bit silly that someone would claim to be able to do such ridiculous things and even sillier that we would believe it.

Wait a minute, apparently there is a guy from Arizona that can do amazing things…

Quick Hits on Obama's Speech [Jay]

2008-08-29T09:52:00.004-04:00

Here is a nice cross section of the wide and varied opinions on Demstock and "The Speech." Gallup has Obama/Biden getting a nice bump from the whole affair (49 to 41). Take it all for what it is worth, but I still think Krauthammer is dead on. Now it is the Republican's turn and perhaps we can get a post out of Chad on Palin soon.

Mickey Kaus: The Mile High Let Down
Hugh Hewitt: Not. Credible
John Dickerson: Obama sacrificed lofty rhetoric for substance—and it worked.
Roger Simon: Obama masters his moment
John F. Harris & Jim Vandehei: Tricky balance: New, old politics clash

Charles Krauthammer is Right Dadgummit [Jay]

2008-08-29T00:15:00.007-04:00

Meet Candidate Barack Obama, Democrat through and through and smarter than I thought. Did Obama live up to the hype? Absolutely not; nothing could live up to the hype of this speech. Over 85,000 people showed up to hear one man speak, which is a remarkable thing in its own right. As most of them begin to openly weep at the mere thought of Obama there is little to learn from images of crying people on the screen.

First of all, let me be clear that I think that going long on political speeches is a mistake that ought to enter our evaluation of the speaker. Bill Clinton and Obama at their best are both capable of being counted among the great speech givers in American political history, but both appear to love the sound of their own voice a little too much to shut it down in a reasonable time. That is a flaw, but since many people will see only the sound bites from this speech it is not a flaw that is obvious to everyone. Barack Obama has bored us to tears with his increasing desire to rise above politics and be some governmental messiah, and a continuation of that tactic in the Greek temple in front of the weepy Hollywood set would have gone over gangbusters with these delegates but would have alienated him from the rest of America.

Instead, Obama came slamming down to the earth like Batman on Sandman’s van, and he landed as a common everyday dyed in the wool Democrat. And in a world that is tired of the Republican administration that is a pretty good thing to be. Charles Krauthammer was the first to point it out on Fox News. After the panel gave the typical thumbs up or down approach to “The Speech,” Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post opinion columnist, came on and gave expert analysis. The messiah is gone and in his place is a Democratic candidate for President of the United States that is championing a platform similar to any other democrat but with more flair than usual. McCain was chipping away at the Chosen One. He may now find it harder to campaign against a common Democrat who is younger, better looking, carrying more money, and a decidedly better speaker than McCain.

Krauthammer is right. Sure the speech was loaded with the same dumb and unachievable campaign promises. Juan Williams pointed out that a President with a maximum eight year term promising to end our dependence on foreign oil in ten years is a bit confusing. Everyone gets healthcare, everyone goes to college, everyone has a job, rebuild the military for future battles and everything is paid for by closing “loopholes” in the taxes of “large corporations.” This is standard idiotic Democratic fare and it is brilliant. Obama is now a normal ordinary run of the mill Democratic candidate embracing the legacy of the Clintons and the Kennedys. He is even selling the line that got Clinton elected in his first term. Obama is cutting taxes for everyone but the “rich” people that are living high on the hog while the common man is suffering. Clinton clearly lied about that promise in 1992, but Obama will still get a lot of traction from the plan whether he intends to honor it or not.

So in the end, the weeping was a little silly and the fireworks were better than the speech. The spectacle was larger than the man and it may be a good thing for Obama and a bad thing for McCain. Last year we all knew that the polling showed that Democrats would hammer the Republicans. We are about to find out, because the messiah is gone and the campaign is on.

Photo by Jackson Solway

So Why Does the Democratic Convention S*#k? [Jay]

2008-08-27T23:05:00.006-04:00

After watching three nights of the Democratic Convention, two questions remain unanswered. Why is this so weak and why is the media largely not noticing it? Well, perhaps they are noticing it, but they are not saying what is very apparent. This convention is weak. I mean Clay Aiken weak.

Here is my best guess as to why it is nowhere near the launching pad that Obama needs to give him the bump in the polls that his rock star tour of Europe and naming his Veep choice did not. Two words explain it. Old school. Seriously, the power and promise of the Obama message is that he is the great change agent. He is the new blood that will reshape the very nature of all of our relationships both home and abroad. He is the chosen one and the great orator who will not be dragged down to the common vitriolic campaign but will elevate our nation to a new level of civil discourse.

So why is the Democratic National Convention a tribute to the same tired old democratic blowhards that have dominated the last five conventions. The Kennedy night and then two Clinton nights topped off with Joe Biden?!! Where is the great change? This DNC looks like every other convention. The third night gave us the image of Michelle Obama chumming it up with Teresa Heinz-Kerry. Teresa may have done more to blow the last convention for her husband than anyone else, but there she is right in the center of things still.

That is why this DNC is so lame. Now as to why people are having a hard time coming to terms with this and just saying to the Democratic Party, “This is a big let down!” If Obama could not make his own convention something new, what hope does he have to make this nation into something new? It is becoming increasingly clear to anyone paying attention and not blinded by party loyalty that whatever outstanding qualities that Barack Obama has, he is still merely a Democratic politician in your average election. For all those whose legs tingled and who struggled to stay conscious early on in this campaign, that truth will be hard to face.

I will say that I have never seen a man as comfortable in his own skin as Bill Clinton, though. And on a program that goes Bill Clinton, Biden, and Obama, it boggles the mind to see one building containing those titanic egos. And we close with Demstock tomorrow night, so maybe the great orator will rise from his Grecian temple and save the day.

What is Ted Kennedy Talking About? [Jay]

2008-08-25T23:27:00.007-04:00

The Democratic National Convention is here and Ted Kennedy kicks it off! People were understandably emotional as the man who is a Senate institution may be giving his final address to his party that loves him dearly. I am a bit less dewy eyed than them because I have personal issues with the man that do not cause me to reminisce of our many years together. I am terribly sad for Senator Kennedy and his family for what he now faces, but I do not immediately forget the lifetime of abuses that this man represents. That is for another time though.

Here is my big issue. Ted Kennedy says that healthcare is not a privilege it is a right, and I honestly cannot figure out what he means by that. I have an inkling what he thinks he means, but that does not help me grasp what he is actually saying.

You see, there are two types of rights. You have natural rights and positive rights. Natural rights are the rights that you have by virtue of the type of being that you are. You are a human being, a person, and as such our Declaration of Independence says that you have inalienable rights that were endowed to you by your Creator. Among those are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Positive rights are those given to you by the government. They are not yours by necessity but by rule of law. You have a right to drive a car if you are properly licensed after the age of 16. You have the right to vote after you have reached the age of 18 as long as you do not commit any felonious or treasonous actions that would forfeit that right. God did not endow you or anyone else with the right to drive a car or to vote in a representative republic. God did give you a fundamental right to liberty.

Now some people deny the existence of natural rights, but no one argues that there are no positive rights. But by any definition, healthcare simply is not a right that we all have. There is no doubt that Kennedy and others would like to enshrine a positive right to healthcare, but it is not currently a right and I personally hope it never will be.

I think though, that Kennedy is trying to say that as human beings, we have a fundamental natural right to healthcare. I think that is what he is saying because to say the other (positive) is just dishonest and even if one day true it is ultimately a meaningless and trivial statement. At best it says you have something you have. It can be taken away, but you have it. But to say that you have a natural right to healthcare, well now we are saying something. That statement says that you have a God given right to healthcare.

Well our founding fathers said that if a government seeks to deny us our natural rights then we must demand the recognition of those rights or throw off the unjust despotism that denies us our God given rights. That is how seriously our founding fathers took rights. It was the justification of our rebellion against Great Britain. Is this what Kennedy and Kerry are saying? That healthcare is this big an issue? That we have a God given right to healthcare that our current government is withholding from us?

That is what I think Kennedy is saying, and with all due respect to Kennedy and his illness, if he and the other Democrats want to trumpet that line in this campaign they are either hopelessly deluded or colossally stupid. I guess only time will tell.

XM – Week 1 – Costly Grace Part 2 [Jay]

2008-08-25T22:38:00.007-04:00

If cheap grace is grace without costs, what then is costly grace? A first look at the term and it presents itself as an oxymoron. Grace is a gift freely given so what is that nasty adjective “costly” doing in front of it? What can Dietrich Bonhoeffer mean by costly grace?

Let him respond then. “Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it call us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it cost a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: ‘ye were bought at a price,’ and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.”

Bonhoeffer stresses that grace must be the sum of the equation and not data in the equation. Not only that, but it must be the sum reached by God. Here he draws a parallel to Faust. “At the end of a life spent in pursuit of knowledge Faust has to confess: ‘I now do see that we can nothing know.’ That is the answer to a sum, it is the outcome of a long experience. But as Kierkegaard observed, it is quite a different thing when a freshman comes up to the university and uses the same sentiment to justify his indolence. As the answer to a sum it is perfectly true, but as the initial data it is a piece of self-deception.”

He compares this to Luther’s statement, “Sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ more boldly still.” This seems exactly in line with Romans 5:20-21 “The law was added so that trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” We have a sin problem that we cannot overcome but that is no problem because no matter how much sin is in your life God has sufficient grace through Christ to handle it. How we approach that fact is the central difference between cheap grace and costly grace.

Let us look at two guys and see if they can help us get a handle on this. Here comes Brian. Brian loves grace and thinks that we ought to talk about it all of the time. He smiles and tells you, “You have a sin problem my friend. But don’t you worry because we all have a sin problem. And God gave his Son so that your drug abuse and my indifference to obeying God could be forgiven. No matter how much you sin, God can forgive it all! Isn’t that great! Don’t worry about changing when coming to God! He loves you while you are still in sin. He forgives it all so sin boldly!”

Brian is a great guy isn’t he? Uh oh, here comes Bill. Bill is not as fun as Brian. He looks at me and says, “Yeah Brian is right, God will forgive your sins, when you repent of your life. Your life! You can’t just ask God to forgive your sins and move on your merry way. When you repent you are admitting that the life you lead has led you to death and now you wish to give it up for life in Christ. The life you abandon is your own and the life that he gives you belongs to God. He does not redeem you and save you to sin but to righteousness. Those two just must go together.” Bill is not even smiling.

Brian smiles back, “Now hold on their friend! That sounds like legalism to me. Grace is free by definition.”

Bill does not smile as he answers, “Grace is freely given, but it costs something. When we come to the end of ourselves and we can do nothing and we know it, then God offers grace to do for us what we can’t do for ourselves. You can’t claim it BEFORE you repent of your life.”

I like Brian. Brian is smiling and happy and he is not so caught up with all of the things that I am doing wrong. Heck he even admits that he is really screwed up himself. Bill on the other hand is talking about sin as if it were truly a bad thing and not just a thing that needs forgiving. He acts like God wants to forgive my sins so that I can become something better through grace.

You see God wants more than to forgive your sins. He wants you. He wants to walk with you and talk with you and live within you. In order to do that God must clean you up but for a purpose. Jesus says it is so that we can be one with them as they are one with another. We cannot clean ourselves so we are given grace, but that grace makes us something different the moment we accept it. It makes us disciples, or more simply followers of our Lord Christ. We follow not because we are bound by law to do so, but because he lets us through grace go where our hearts long to go.

Bonhoeffer closes the first chapter with this:

“Happy are they who have reached the end of the road we seek to tread, who are astonished to discover the by no means self-evident truth that grace is costly just because it is the grace of God in Jesus Christ. Happy are the simple followers of Jesus Christ who have been overcome by his grace, and are able to sing the praises of the all-sufficient grace of Christ with humbleness of heart. Happy are they who, knowing that grace, can live in the world without being of it, who, by following Jesus Christ, are so assured of their heavenly citizenship that they are truly free to live their lives in this world. Happy are they who know that discipleship simply means the life which springs from grace, and that grace simply means discipleship. Happy are they who have become Christians in this sense of the word. For the word of grace has proved a fount of mercy.”

Premier League is Back Again! [Jay]

2008-08-24T23:01:00.002-04:00

Last year was terrible! To have both the Premier League Cup and the UEFA Cup come down to a the wire against Manchester United and lose them both was more than a Chelsea fan could stomach. The Euro Cup was awesome, though and that cushioned the blow. Now Mourinho and Grant are out and Scolari and Deco are in. Schevchenko is headed back to AC Milan and Italy where he was one of the best strikers in the world and it is a new season in Stamford Bridge.

I will not bore with the results of the first two weeks as our resident Manchester United fans and Arsenal fans are certainly not happy about already looking at the back of Chelsea. Pick your team and follow along because this year is going to be great. Two matches, two goals for Deco, and I am pleased with what the Blues are throwing out on the pitch.

Will Manchester United dominate the European stage again? Will Torres and Gerrard launch Liverpool to the next level? Is Arsenal a young team on the rise or a shadow of their former self? Is this the year that Chelsea puts it all together and plays the beautiful game under Scolari's leading as Roman has always wanted?

One thing is for certain. It is a long season with little room for error. I suggest you buy your favorite squads jersey for $70.00 and wear it like a true soccer snob! I have my eye on Chelsea's new black away kit. Go Blues!!

Joe Horn Says What? [Jay]

2008-08-20T07:20:00.000-04:00

The Atlanta Falcons cut disgruntled wide receiver Joe Horn today in an effort to move on down the road from an increasingly squeaky wheel. In the past two weeks this player that is low on the depth chart of a pretty average stable of receivers went on the Dan Patrick radio show and publicly demanded to be cut or traded (no team would trade for him or he would have been gone long ago), refused to accept a reduction in his guaranteed money as a compromise so that he could be cut, skipped all voluntary work-outs (only voluntary in name by the way), skipped all team off season conditioning programs, showed up to camp and informed his employer that he had not even cracked his team playbook, and immediately “tweaked” his hamstring and sat out of all practices. So the Falcons cut him loose and will pay him the full amount of his $2.5 million contract.

As he is leaving, the Atlanta Journal & Constitution quoted him as saying, “At least I am leaving with my character.” REALLY?!! Let’s take a moment of silence to appreciate this moment of profound self deception…

God speed Joe Horn. You may have been a selfish lazy immature greedy malcontent, but at least you have your character, such as it is.

XM –Week 1 -Costly Grace Part 1 [Jay]

2008-08-18T22:16:00.004-04:00

How do you blog Bonhoeffer? Well you don’t. You just try to discuss the themes that we are talking about in class that are rooted in The Cost of Discipleship. And Chapter 1 is Costly Grace. It does remind me of Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken in that all that anyone remembers about the chapter entitled Costly Grace is the lengthy discussion of Cheap Grace. When the narrator of The Road Not Taken says that taking the road less travelled has made all the difference and suddenly everyone assumes it is a positive statement and that the poem is actually called The Road Less Travelled. Bonhoeffer is highlighting the transformative power of Costly Grace, but it is so much more fun to consider all the people and groups that we know that serve a cheap concept of grace. It is perhaps also more convicting for us all to see our lives dominated by a cheap grace that often rationalizes our sinful condition rather than transforming us into something better.

Cheap grace is grace without cost. Bonhoeffer says that “Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and everything can remain as it were before.” Imagine coming to a new relationship with the risen Lord of all, being indwelt by His living Spirit and remaining absolutely unchanged in every facet of your personality and decision making. It looks crazy when you read it, but that is very often the case for the average Christian. But the problem is more than a personal symptom. It is endemic to our way of life. We have been given grace, and so we embrace the grace that covers all of our sins, even the ones that are lifestyle sins, even the sins we intend to commit tonight.

How did we get to this place? Well Ephesians 2:8 tells us “For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith- and it is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.” We cannot participate in our salvation and so God offers grace to His children freely. The mistake we make is when we hear (1) grace is freely given and we infer (2) that grace has no cost. God forgives all of our sins by grace and I am incapable of earning this grace. So that must mean that God will continue to forgive all of my future sins and ultimately my salvation requires nothing of me. I can’t participate! Party on!!

We see a serious and chilling reminder of this at Cobb Pregnancy Services all of the time. A young woman comes in to take a pregnancy test and upon verifying that she is pregnant she tells our counselor that she intends to abort the child. Why? Is she unconvinced the child is actually a child yet? No, she is convinced that her unborn child is a human being and that by aborting the unborn life she is killing her baby. She is just equally convinced that God will forgive her so she need not worry about offending Him. That happens all of the time and is a chilling extreme example of cheap grace gone horribly awry.

Bonhoeffer asks what happens when this becomes the grace that we as a culture live by? “The upshot of it all is that my only duty as a Christian is to leave the world for an hour or so on a Sunday morning and to go to church to be assured that my sins are all forgiven. I need no longer try to follow Christ, for cheap grace, the bitterest foe of discipleship, which true discipleship must loathe and detest, has freed me from that.” So go to whatever awful movie you want, get drunk, sleep around, and have a huge party. It is on God tonight.

How does this play into the abuses of those modern church leaders that are so eager to tell everyone how much God loves them just as they are, without bothering with those troubling verses that demand the sacrifice of our lives? Does this reflect the pastor that assures us that we are all guilty before God so we must not hypocritically preach repentance and sanctification of the believer? Grace without cost is not grace at all, but I fear, as in Bonhoeffer’s time, we have created an army of followers of cheap grace that will bitterly resist any attempt to upgrade them to costly grace. This is not meant as a condemnation to them, but a challenge for all those who fear for them. If cheap grace is not grace, our greatest challenge may be convincing those who have been told that they are Christians fully forgiven that Christ demands more of them in this relationship than an intellectual recognition of his identity.

Part 1 of this look at our first lesson ends with this heart breaking line on the guilt of the church in all of this. “We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale, we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation unasked and without condition. Our humanitarian sentiment made us give that which was holy to the scornful and unbelieving. We poured forth unending streams of grace. But the call to follow Jesus in the narrow way was hardly ever heard.”

Why identify cheap grace? So we can fix the problem and save those who are unaware that they are in any danger at all. Part 2 on Lesson 1 later.

The VP Choice - Who Should it Be? [Chad]

2008-08-18T21:27:00.008-04:00

There have been countless articles and blog posts about who Barak Obama and John McCain will choose as their running mates. There will be many, many more in the coming days. That being the case, I don't care to try to predict the future (though I'll willfully mock the choices being bandied about in the press at the moment); therefore, I'm going to talk about the choices that should be made.

Yes, you're absolutely right. It is extremely easy to sit at a computer with no responsibility to protect my Party, to strengthen the position of my constituency or to ensure the national security of my Nation. But, come to think of it, isn't that the perspective that we would all like our politicians to take when choosing a VP nominee? Shouldn't they simply choose the best person for the job and trust the electorate to see beyond the shallow and pointless drivel of the stories that are written as an attempt to justify that choice? Are we not all smart enough to do that... (well, perhaps I'll save that discussion for another post later on)?

The press is salivating over the fact that Obama should be making his VP announcement in the coming days. The press is giddy over who that might be. The top choices as of late are Virginia Governor Tim Kaine (could Obama possibly find any other candidate with less experience than he has?). Senator Joe Biden (if Obama wants to lose that badly, why not just drop out of the race?), and Senator Evan Bayh (mmmmmm.... I couldn't imagine a more boring and wimpy choice). I know it's simple for me to throw stones at such a profoundly important decision; however, I'm going to do what I should do - give you the opportunity to throw stones at my decision.

I understand though I don't agree with - not even a little bit - the choice of Bayh. He certainly would bring the state of Indiana into play... at least for a little bit. Regardless of who Obama chooses, Indiana will vote Republican (you heard it here fi... well, probably not).

So who should Obama choose? An excellent choice from a party perspective would be the Governor from Tennessee, Phil Bredesen. He is much beloved in Tennessee, and he could actually make the state a possibility for Obama. Of course, Al Gore couldn't win his "home" state, but I don't know if that's a fair comparison.

The choice that I would make is New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. He would cover the experience issue much like Cheney covered it for Bush, and he would bridge the gap to many of the former Clinton crew. Richardson has served as the US Ambassador to the United Nations and the Secretary of Energy in the Clinton Administration. There would be no shortage of national security experience on an Obama/Richardson ticket, and for all of those stories whining about the Top of the Ticket being weaker than the Bottom of the Ticket, all we need to do is remember that the electorate didn't have that feeling when voting for a Bush/Cheney ticket... twice.

Obama needs to make the choice that is best for the Nation, best for the electorate and best for the long term future of the Democratic Party... in that order. Tune in later this week for my choice for the John McCain Vice President.

She BLEEPING fell! [Jay]

2008-08-17T22:47:00.003-04:00

I am beginning to hate women's gymnastics in the Olympics. I remember a time when the judging was biased but at the same time seemed to make sense. Now, in some bizarre effort to reward people for attempting difficult moves, they give a start value based on difficulty and add it to a possible 10 points for execution. No more perfect 10's in the world of international gymanstics now. It is 15.765 or 16.300 or some other bizarre score.

So how does this make gymnastics better? Well if you are like me, and think that sports that rely on subjective and corrupt judges deciding the winner are already a little less "sport" than others, this new judging will drive you insane. In the world of competetive gymnastics, they have now proven it is more important that you try to do something really difficult and fail than it is that you do something a little easier and succeed. And by succeed I mean trivial things like land on your feet as opposed to on your hands and knees on the vault.

Cheng Fei of China took the bronze in Beijing after she FELL! Alicia Sacramone went first and according to Tim and Elfie (Please let them never come back to television when this is over) she completely killed herself with these little hops she made on two vaults that Olympic judges appear to think every mouth breathing idiot on earth can easily perform. So Cheng Fei, the emotional leader of the Chinese team, attempts to do a very difficult vault and lands on her BLEEPING hands & knees and, no lie, beats Sacramone out for the bronze.

Tim honestly said, she struggled on the landing but there was a lot of stuff in the air. SHE FELL! Ah well, it is just the landing of the whole vault. I can see how that should not matter. Apparently if you try a difficult enough vault you could break your leg on the landing and beat Sacramone. Gymnastics is so stupid! As I write this Elfie is praising a Chinese gymnast for expressive eyebrows! This is not sport.

The Hicks from Kansas Rule! [Jay]

2008-07-25T08:00:00.000-04:00

I know that I say this all the time in many forums, but I love Frank Beckwith. If you are not familiar with his work, he has written two of the most important books developing the intellectual argument for the pro-life position (Defending Life & Politically Correct Death), he is a professor of Philosophy & Church State studies at Baylor University and will be on the faculty of the University of Notre Dame as the Mary Ann Remick Senior Visiting Fellow in Notre Dame's Center for Ethics & Culture in 2008 & 2009. The first Christian philosophy book that I ever read that worked at a more sophisticated level was See the Gods Fall: Four Rivals to Christianity, which ushered me into the modern era of Christian apologetics in earnest. A fact I had the pleasure of telling Frank personally once, though I doubt he remembers.

But what I really like about him most is that he is all of these things as well as an incurable smart aleck, and a wicked smart one to boot. Over at Whats Wrong with the World, a blog that deals with a host of issues including the fact that some Islamic traditions and beliefs are contrary to our way of life (Jihad & Dhimma principally), Paul Cella responds to criticism that this blog is stupid from a rather churlish fellow at Vox Nova who goes by the handle Morning’s Minion. In the comment thread, Morning’s Minion consistently beats the drum that Americans “need” to have some enemy and that we exasperate the Muslim issue by opposing them instead of working to move past the fanatics and draw them into the world culture. Typical of this mindset, we Americans are the bad guys who refuse to just stop fighting and creating more terrorist and by virtue terrorist actions. As the comment thread grew more contentious Frank Beckwith interjected this comment that I must post here:

Morning's Minion commented:

Again, I ask, what is it about that America that always needs an "other" to demonize? From the Salem witches to Know-Nothing Catholic plots to communism to "jihadism" (even to the recent scapegoating of priests)....it's pervasive in the history of this country. I think you all know what I believe on that matter.

Frank Beckwith responds:

Yep, that's right: we Americans always generalize. :-) It looks like Self-Refuting Man has a sidekick, sort of like Robin.

BTW, I'd take the know-nothings over the brownshirts any day. Come to think of it, I'd take the Salem Witch Trials over the gulags and the concentration camps. I would take George Bush and Richard Nixon on a bad day over Franco, Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin on a good day. In fact, I would take the red-neck "uneducated" ordinary American monolingual fighting men that saved that wretched continent from another one of its many cigarette-smoking coffee-shop dwelling multilingual utopian despots. It was the hicks from Kansas that made possible the pontificating sophisticates that now spend their time pissing on Kansas. I know it galls you, but deep down you know that the only safe place for a metrosexual pacifist to preach unmolested is one in which he is surrounded by armed and courageous men like John McCain who have his back.

I'm going out on a limb here, but I suspect that if those 2 planes that hit the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 were hijacked by members of the Christian Coalition and they flew them into abortion clinics that you would NOT ask, "What did we do to make these religious people do this?" No, you would hold them accountable as moral agents and start investigating whether their like-minded nut case friends are thinking about doing the same thing.

All that some of us are suggesting is that you extend the same respect to the moral agents of Islamofascism, for which you make excuses, that you extend to the agents of Christian fanaticism that you rightly loathe.

Nothing to add to that but God bless the hicks from Kansas.

What Do Cave Dwelling Salamanders And Christopher Hitchens Have In Common?

2008-07-23T11:27:00.001-04:00

Christopher Hitchens is at it again. Weighing in at Slate Magazine (here) about his own "eureka moment" (his description) regarding evolution that has further ensconced his inability to "grasp the gross stupidity of those who repose their faith in divine providence and godly design"

It is amazing to me that a man of his intellectual aptitude and interest in this specific topic would describe his brand new revelation as a eureka moment and scurry off to inform us all about it.

For starters, the blind salamander (Eurycea (Typhlomolge) rathbuni) was placed on the endangered species list in 1967. That's right, Christopher Hitchens' "eureka moment" stems from a discovery that is at least 41 year-old news. I understand the definition of a "eureka moment," but if Hitchens is as smart and motivated as he claims be about proving the gross stupidity of those of us who believe the design argument, it seems that he would have considered this old news long before now. Of course, that observation has nothing to do with his claim -- I just find it interesting.

Second, Hitchens acts as if the stupid creationists deny evolution takes place, and that they would also defend the idea that an all-powerful God would create a blind salamander. But that is not what any creationist is saying!

I honestly do not know a single creationist who denies that adaptation (which would be defined as micro-evolution) takes place within species. But, once again blurring the definition of "evolution" to make his case, Hitchens wants us to accept that obvious fact as proof that salamanders can, and do, change via such adaptations into something other than salamanders.

How?

Where is the evidence for that claim?

Third, the more substantial problem that Hitchens is blind to (pun intended) is the inability for a purely materialistic explanation to account for the incredibly high information content that exists in the DNA of even the simplest living things. We have no other example anywhere in the world where blind, undirected processes create new information. And that is the real point that Hitchens seems to miss.

It is not just the existence of information -- it is the claim that evolution is capable of adding information to the DNA of living systems that is in question. For a seeing salamander to evolve into a sightless salamander entails a loss of information in the salamander's DNA. No one disputes that such a thing could happen. In fact, the second law of thermodynamics demands that this be the case.

What Hitchens must explain is the evolution of sightless salamanders (or anything else) into seeing salamanders (or anything else) -- a process that entails the addition of information to the DNA of the system and therefore defies the second law of thermodynamics. That is the question that Christopher Hitchens needs to recognize as being worthy of constituting a "eureka moment."

One thing you can say about Hitchens is that he is most definitely not stupid. That being the case, there must be some explanation for his missing such elementary concepts as these. If we know that he is intellectually capable of grasping the importance of these questions, the only explanation is that he refuses to consider the answers to them before he goes about asking.

Or, to put it another way, none are so blind as those who will not see.

Asleep At The Yoke

2008-06-26T20:10:00.003-04:00

Report: Sleeping Pilots Overshot Airport By 359 Miles.

For the record, I had nothing to do with this ... and I am against it.

Stupid rich People [Jay]

2008-04-30T12:23:00.006-04:00

My wife and I briefly discussed pitching a show to a producer called “Rich People are so Stupid!” Now if you are reading this and you are offended because you have a couple of million dollars and think you fall into my wheelhouse you can rest assured I am not talking about you. I am talking about people who have so much money that they buy extravagant things simply to identify themselves as obscenely rich.

For instance, if you spend $300,000.00 on a watch that does not tell time, but instead uses the most complex technology imaginable to determine whether it is daytime or nighttime you are a stupid rich person. “But Jay,’ you protest, ‘this watch is made with steel salvaged from the Titanic!” Oh, so you are morbid and stupid. Because nothing says class like a useless watch made from the sunken tomb of 1,517 people.

If you have purchased one of these watches listen very closely to me. Bad rich person! Bad! Stop it!

HT: Whats Wrong With the World - Jeff Martin [Maximos]

Quick Soccer Post [Jay]

2008-04-22T08:46:00.003-04:00

Big week in soccer starts today. Chelsea plays Liverpool in the first leg of the semi-final match in the UEFA (Union of European Football Association). The first leg is at Liverpool and Chelsea needs a good showing here in order to take advantage of having the second leg at home. Liverpool is Chelsea's nemesis in UEFA.

Tomorrow is Manchester United at Barcelona for the first leg of the other semi-final.

Saturday, is Man U visiting Chelsea on a short turn around in a Premier League match that decides the EPL race. If Chelsea wins they are tied with MU with two games to go for both clubs. If Chelsea draws or loses MU is cruising to the title. Chelsea has one chance at the EPL, beat MU Saturday.

That is easier said than done. MU is looking very good.

Needless to say, Arsenal failed to help Chelsea or themselves recently and is no longer in the picture.

Go Blues!!!

Just Chillin' With My Peeps

2008-04-18T19:30:00.016-04:00

It's that time again. The time when professional politicians utilize the photo-op to show us all that they're "just like us." I love this stuff. This past week found Obama and Hillary doing shots ... Obama on the basketball court and Hillary in the local pub throwing down some Jose Cuervo ... with a Guinness chaser.

Brilliant!

These things bring back fond memories for me. Obama's hoop dreams reminded me of Kerry's attempted Jack Kemp impersonation. This on the heels of Obama bowling a 37 the week before. A 37! How does a grown adult of any athletic ability whatsoever bowl a 37? My ten year-old could triple that tomorrow.

And remember the pictures (and video) of Bill Clinton running on the track he decreed be built around the White House driveway? And those shorts he was wearing ...

All these conjure the original photo faux pas image of Mike Dukakis that is forever seared into our collective consciousness.

The opposition couldn't dream this stuff up, yet there the candidates go, apparently confident that they will convince us all that they are just like us.

The intelligentsia.

Now I'm sure that Hillary can rev up the 'ole southern accent (like Kerry in the Ohio gun store in 2004) when she's kicking back in a duck blind with her Remington 12-gauge, sipping some cold ones and talkin' NASCAR, but somehow her attempts to prove it just don't seem to work out. I don't know why.

Just to be fair, the photo-op is a bipartisan opportunity to look foolish. I'm sure George W. would give anything to take this one back. But at least the president was just making an attempt to capitalize on what seemed to be a clear path to score political points by crowing about a national victory. That's the kind of thing any self-respecting president would try to claim for his legacy. Yes, he ended up eating crow on this one but that action seems to be in a different league than the patronizing pretentiousness of the most elite class of human beings on this planet when they try to pretend they are just common folk like you and me.

I mean seriously, when was the last time you think Hillary really drank a beer? Or Obama went bowling? Or Bill Clinton went running?

... or this event was repeated?

Sorry ... but you gotta love election time.

Soccer Post Time [Jay]

2008-04-10T12:55:00.002-04:00

Well I failed miserably to keep this updated during the year, but we are heading toward the end of the season and things are tight all around.

EPL:

Manchester United has a 3-point lead over Chelsea and a 6-point lead over Arsenal. The Arsenal Gunners head to Old Trafford this Sunday to face the Red Devils in a must win game for Arsenal. The Gunners lose and they are out of the race for certain.

Man United has two more games before the big show down against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. Chelsea plays two more as well and it is no doubt an easier road than Manchester United. MU has a home tilt against contender Arsenal and a road game against middle of the road Blackburn. Chelsea play awful Wigan at home and then turn it around in 3 days to play solid Everton on the road.

Manchester United’s Road to the Cup: Just win, baby.
Chelsea’s Best Road to the Cup: Arsenal beats MU, Chelsea wins out including a home victory against MU.
Arsenal’s Only Road to the Cup: Beat MU and win out, while Chelsea and MU both stumble to the finish.

UEFA:

Arsenal fell to Liverpool this week, which means we have 3 of 4 semi-finalists from last year back in UEFA. Liverpool v Chelsea and Manchester United v. Barcelona.

It is almost impossible to imagine Chelsea beating Liverpool at this point, but I am going out on a limb and saying it will happen. They have to play tough at Anfield and then go home for the 2nd leg. Chelsea breaks the curse this year and vaults past Liverpool.

Manchester United has a tough test against Barcelona but they get the final leg at home as well. Lionel Messi returns for Barcelona, which helps, but they have been a bit puzzling all year while MU has looked good for a while. Still, I think MU stumbles and Barcelona and gets to the finals on the backs of Henry and Messi.

Chelsea will be the beneficiary of the UEFA schedule if the EPL title is still in doubt going into the last game. Manchester United is playing in Barcelona on Wednesday while Chelsea is playing in Liverpool on Tuesday. There is a lot going on and a tough road game combined with a 3 day turnaround to the EPL deciding game at Stamford Bridge is a tremendous challenge. If Man U takes that road to the title they are certainly earning it!

GO BLUES!! GO GUNNERS!!

Massachussets: Living the Healthcare Dream [Jay]

2008-04-09T11:06:00.002-04:00

Wesley Smith at Second Hand Smoke had posted on this New York Times article by Kevin Sack discussing the problems that have arisen as a result of Massachusetts mandating universal healthcare. The interesting thing to me about the article is how little a surprise the negative consequences ought to have been.

For instance read this excerpt from the article:

Once they discover that she is Dr. Kate, the supplicants line up to approach at dinner parties and ballet recitals. Surely, they suggest to Dr. Katherine J. Atkinson, a family physician here, she might find a way to move them up her lengthy waiting list for new patients.

Those fortunate enough to make it soon learn they face another long wait: Dr. Atkinson’s next opening for a physical is not until early May — of 2009.

So there is now a problem brewing where all people now equally lack access to preventative medicine. Well not all people, because the people who can afford to do it will merely use their hard earned resources to go elsewhere; i.e. a place that has not ruined its primary care medical community. What about the doctors, will they stick around for this? Lets check back in with Dr. Atkinson:

Officials with several large health systems said their primary care practices often lose money, but generate revenue for their companies by referring patients to profit centers like surgery and laboratories.

Dr. Atkinson, 45, said she paid herself a salary of $110,000 last year. Her insurance reimbursements often do not cover her costs, she said.

“I calculated that every time I have a Medicaid patient, it’s like handing them a $20 bill when they leave,” she said. “I never went into medicine to get rich, but I never expected to feel as disrespected as I feel. Where is the incentive for a practice like ours?”

You might look at that salary and think, ‘Wow, that is good money.” Now consider that Dr. Atkinson studied and sacrificed as a child to prepare herself for the competitive challenge of being accepted into medical school. She then spent a couple a hundred thousand dollars to educate herself and develop a marketable skill. She spent additional time as an intern and a resident to put herself in the position to establish her own private practice. Now her reward is to watch the average orthopedic surgeon make $410,000.00 and the average radiologist earn $380,000.00 while she is asked to take one for the team all the while being overwhelmed in patient load. Do you start to see why she feels disrespected?

Lydia McGrew left the following response in the comments section of Wesley’s post:

I'm sorry, but this is just basic economics. You make a mandate that everyone has to have access to bananas, treating bananas as a universal right, the next thing you'll have is a banana shortage. This is dead-level obvious. I do not understand why people think that we can just go mandating that everyone _get_ such-and-such when it comes to something they consider important, and have such-and-such produced suddenly ex nihilo. Santa Claus does not deliver goods and services overnight to jurisdictions that pass a mandate for the provision of those goods and services. It never works; it never has worked, and it never will work. …there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Likewise, you can't fool Mother Nature, and believe it or not, the law of supply and demand is part of Mother Nature. At least until we find a way to make doctor-slave farms and turn out doctor-slaves to provide free care morning, noon, and night without any normal human motivation for doing so.

Universal healthcare is a great idea! Why shouldn’t everyone get to benefit from the medical technology and expertise now available?

The only problem is that very smart people must be very motivated to pursue medicine in order to become doctors. If you remove the motivation you will lose the smart people and then you will have no doctors. I guess you could start to make it easier to become a doctor; that seems to fit our current model of lowering the bar on expectations to make people feel better about themselves. There is also a proposal to pay doctor’s debts if they set up a practice in “deserving” areas, but that just adds to the cost of the whole disaster. It also places an impossible burden on our government to define the difference between the people who deserve special consideration and the people who do not. And you would still have doctors with skills that would be more profitable and marketable elsewhere being asked to work long hours with little reward other than the satisfaction that they are serving their fellow man.

Hmmm. Lydia is right. Better get the doctor slave farms cranking and we can use the Iowa Basic Skills Test to identify the potential slaves (Oops...I meant medical professionals)early and snatch them from their families. Just think of all the money that we will save on education and salaries if we just force people to do things for free.

Nothing says America like forced labor for low wages and government provided services. No…wait…wasn’t that the Soviet Union. Ah well, it worked out all right for them, right? No…wait…Russia sucks!! Aw man.

How dare you Question the Hope Machine!! [Jay]

2008-03-04T09:59:00.007-05:00

Chad appears to have been spot on in calling the change in tone for Obama after he moved from underdog to the frontrunner. (See Chad's take here) The Daily News story about a friendly visit with the press turning into an actual press conference with questions and implied criticism is encouraging for those who have faith that the press is driven by the need to publish stories as opposed to feeding hype. It is probably way too late to stop the destruction of Hillary, but it sets the stage for an interesting general election. McCain is an ornery old man who is used to being disliked and revels in the confrontation. Barack sure looked like he did not appreciate having to answer for his actions to the press.

After digging through his speechwriter's trash, Really?!! was able to gain an exclusive on Barack’s original response to this episode that was rejected but mistakenly not shredded. I will post it below:

“You are not to question the man of Audacity!! You are to bow down and worship me!! I bring hope and unity to a world of darkness and don’t you ever !#@*%@# question me you insignificant $#@!$$*!!! Look at those weeping college girls! See Chris Matthews tingle all over! That is what I expect from you!”

The speechwriter, who remains anonymous, told this blogger, “Yeah, Barack is not used to being questioned yet. We have started to craft a more measured response.”

Future Contributor to Really?!! [Jay]

2008-02-27T16:49:00.004-05:00

Say hello to Wee One Watts! We hope that this child is blessed with the necessary irreverence to be a contributor by 2030 or so.

Tawnii is nauseus 24/7 and the eldest of the our children is starting to ask probing questions about how his sibling got in mommy's tummy, but over all things are going great. 10 Weeks at this image and growing strong.

The First Official Teddy [Jay]

2008-02-20T22:59:00.007-05:00

This will be the first official awarding of a very prestigious honor. The Ted Turner Award for Outstanding Achievements as the Village Idiot is obviously named after the billionaire land owner former cable mogul who single handedly saved the American Buffalo from extinction so that he could carve them up and serve them to the general public on a plate. The Village Idiot is any person rich or poor that needs only an open mic and sufficient leeway to say something incredibly stupid and, as a result, entertain us all. Ted Turner is the uncontested king of the Village Idiots. Who can forget when he compared himself to Gandhi and Jesus Christ? Who doesn’t smile at the fond memory of Teddy accosting a Turner employee with an ash smudge on his forehead in honor of Ash Wednesday? Mr. CNN has been more than generous with the outrageous statements and deserves to be recognized above all other village idiots.

The always thoughtful and profound Charles Barkley moves into the rarified air of those who have achieved such distinction in the field of idiocy as to earn the Ted Turner Award. Wolf Blitzer tries his level best to help Charles recognize how ridiculous he is being, but in true village idiot fashion, Charles plows right through every warning to deliver the kind of mind boggling lunacy that elevates him above all others this week.

Charles Barkley hates conservatives because they are all fake Christians that are judgmental. Their insistence on judging others makes him sick to his stomach. In his judgment, they are all phony. Do not be mad at Charles Barkley for declaring that he is for gay marriage and outspokenly pro-choice. Stand up in appreciation for a man not afraid to embrace the proud and timeless traditions of the Village Idiots. Without them, we would have no one to point to and tell our kids, “That is not smart, son. Learn from this.” You see Charles; you are a role model after all.

Heads up Alabama and get those Barkely 2014 bumper stickers ready!

Oh, and if you have not figured out why these statements are so stupid then head for the nearest live broadcast and seek some airtime yourself. You are well on your way to a Teddy yourself.

The Press and the "Frame" [Chad]

2008-02-12T19:12:00.001-05:00

There is a knock-down, dragout fight going on within the Democratic race for President, and it's not the fight most people are paying attention to. It's the fight to be the "underdog." And if you pay close attention, you'll see why over the next few weeks.

In the Republican battle for the "underdog" status, Mitt Romney was always the "favorite," and he was always the one that was expected to win. However, as with most fights like this, when you're the favorite and you lose a primary here or there, then all the news articles start to question the "favorite's" position. They question the candidate's campaign -- from the structure, to the strategy to the individuals within it. They begin to paint a picture of a candidate who can't build an acceptable campaign team. The outcome is that it makes the press then question whether or not that particular candidate can govern this country. Then the press begins to say the candidate is "falling apart," "folding under pressure," "panicking" and so on ad infinitum.

Now all this is beginning to take shape in the Democratic race. From day one, Obama has been the underdog (and, in America, even the press likes to cheer for the underdog). However, Obama has had the delegate lead for less than a week, and in the most recent issue of Time Magazine, there is an article entitled "Can Obama Keep the Momentum?" The tide is turning. Obama is now looking like the favorite and the press is getting ready to turn on him. Now, I'm not saying that they'll take the tact they take with many candidates that are the "favorite" and turn all their guns on him. I'm just saying that he's going to need to find a way to fight off this moniker of the "favorite." And if you listen to his campaign, he's trying to do just that at every turn.

He'll win Maryland, DC and Virginia tonight. But what if he doesn't crush Hillary in VA? What if it's not a slaughter? Then you'll read stories that will question whehter or not he knows how to keep the momentum. They'll question his strategy -- a strategy that has been fawned over by the political pundits in the press up until this point in much the same manner as the papparazi would fawn over a night out on the town with Britney and Paris. And if he does crush her in VA, he'll go into the races in Texas and Ohio as the "favorite" from the viewpoint of the press, but his numbers in those states don't show that. What if he loses TX? What if he loses OH? The press will pounce, and then Obama will look like the one that can't seem to keep it all together.

If you don't think the press likes to build someone up only to tear them down, think back to Howard Dean. Dean and his "Deaniacs" were beloved by the press. He was showing promise and "momentum" (that most dreaded of words). But there was also something else going on. The press had been whispering about Dean being a little "volatile" or "crazy." The press was waiting for a reason to pounce, and then they got it -- even if they had to create it.

We all remember the "I have a scream speech" that Dean gave after Iowa. See it again here. However, that's not the true story of what happened that night.

Listen to the crowd. Look at how excited they are. How could Dean not be excited (and excitable) on that stage? How could he not get caught up in the excitement of that situation and those people? Here is what you probably haven't heard -- the speech that night as it was heard by the people in the crowd. Click here.

Where was the scream? It was barely audible. But because the press had it, they ran with it. They had built up Dean enough, and now they were ready to bring him down. I am no fan of Dean, but that situation was manipulated by the press to skewer him, and boy did they succeed.

That Dean scenario should sound familiar to some of you because those exact whispers are starting to come again. The stories of "insiders" talking about a candidate's "famous temper." The stories of "screaming matches" and "exploding" for little or no cause. These are the whispers that are coming out about John McCain. Wait until a microphone catches McCain say something. Wait until he blows up at a reporter or a campaign staffer. In a stressful environment like a campaign, it will happen. And because those microphones and cameras are everywhere, when it does, it will be on every television screen from Miami to Anchorage and back.

Is Obama going to be the Democratic nominee? I don't know. But I do know this - if he falters, if he missteps, if he shows any sign of weakness (real or imagined in the eyes of the press), they'll do all they can to destroy his campaign. For the press, it's not about facts and realilty. It's about the "frame" they construct to tell the story. When the "frame" and the story don't mesh perfectly, they just alter the story to make it fit their "frame."

Oh well... at least it make for some fun television.

Sharpton's Cheat Sheet [Jay]

2008-01-11T11:50:00.000-05:00

Golf Channel anchor Kelly Tilgham was suspended for two weeks after suggesting that the younger players on the tour lynch Tiger Woods as an option for dealing with his dominance of the sport. Tiger Woods, reportedly friends with Tilgham, talked to her and immediately issued a statement that he believed she mispoke and that no racism was intended by the comments.

Al Sharpton demanded that she be fired immediately. He is quoted as saying, "Lynching is not murder in general, it's not assault in general," Sharpton said. "It's a specific racial term that this women should be held accountable for. What she said is racist. Whether she's a racist ... is immaterial. She's a broadcaster. The channel has to be accountable to the public."

So Sharpton is arguing that if she were threatening general murder it would be fine, but racially charged murder is a firing offense. It is encouraging to see that Sharpton had the time in his busy schedule to evaluate the merits of this incident and decide the proper course of action. Most people are too busy to stop everything that they are doing and immediately delve into the specifics of a particular incident.

In an uncharacteristic moment of sloppiness, Reverend Sharpton left behind a sheet of paper entitled "Public Offenses and the Carefully Measured Appropriate Responses to be Sought." This explains a little better how he is capable of responding so quickly. If you are interested I am including the contents of the memo below:

1. Offense – Racially disparate hiring practices – Proper Response – A Big Fat Check to National Action Network & a public apology

2. Offense - Racially Charged Remark – Proper Response – Immediate termination of employment & public apology

3. Offense – Racially Suggestive Remark – Proper Response – Immediate termination of employment & public apology

4. Offense – Inappropriate joke – Proper Response – Immediate termination of employment & public apology

5. Offense – Joke I don’t get – Proper Response – Immediate termination of employment & public apology

6. Offense – Failure to return my e-mails in a timely manner – Proper Response – Immediate termination of employment & public apology

7. Offense – Looking at me funny – Proper Response – Immediate termination of employment & public apology

8. Offense – Late to Dinner – Proper Response – Immediate termination of employment & public apology

9. Offense – Shushing me during a movie when I am talking too loudly at inappropriate moments – Proper Response – Immediate termination of employment & public apology

10. Offense – Failure to properly signal when changing lanes – Proper Response – Immediate termination & public apology.

Mouseketeer Parental Hall of Shame [Tawnii]

2008-01-07T20:42:00.000-05:00

Upon my return from a glorious Disney vacation, I find myself needing to hand out a few awards. While I could spend this blog singing the praises of princesses who spent extra time doting on my uncharacteristically shy daughter, or castmembers who cheered tirelessly over my son's birthday button, or the handful of gentlemen (my husband always among them) who remained standing on the transportation until all women, children and seniors were seated--I am well aware that many of you would be bored beyond measure. Instead, I would like to hand out my top five Parental Hall of Shame Awards.

5) We had the pleasure of sharing one of our Magic Kingdom Ferry's with a thirteen year old boy who brought along a magazine. When his mother chastised him for this move, he informed her (in that special "all knowing" tone only achievable by teenagers) that "The Magic Kingdom is boring. Everything there is stupid, so I'll need something to do." At this point, dad got involved by taking up junior's cause and assuring mom that he would be happy to tote the magazine if his son got tired of it. My suggested solution is simple...spare us all and leave the too cool teen at home. I appreciate your desire to preserve that all too elusive family vacation, but why waste several hundred dollars so that young Holden Caulfield can wreck the magic for you and your younger children?

4) Our lovely resort played host to a very talented gentleman who drew caricatures. He had a good eye for what made each individual distinct. He highlighted the most prominent features. He drew quite a crowd. As we waited for our son's portrait, a bevy of giggly tweens and their parents approached. They quickly filled the artist's list for the evening and commandeered his sketchbook. A particular tween with straight platinum hair and "entitlement" written all over her approached the artist. "Could you draw as a mermaid, but give me curly hair?" Smoothly, politely, and without missing a stroke on my son's portrait, he replied, "No, that wouldn't look right. It would look like you're wearing a wig." In response to this rejection of her artistic suggestion, Veruca Salt sulked back to mommy. Upon reaching her, she grabbed her mother's arm and whined, "Mommy, make him give me curly hair. Make him." I watched, confident that mommy would do the right thing and tell little princess that if she didn't want the picture the way he wanted to draw it, then perhaps they should retire for the night and spend their Disney dollars elsewhere. I was wrong. Her mother said, "Don't worry, honey. I'll take care of it." Was she an artist capable of adding the curls post creation? Was she going to slip the artist an extra tip for altering their reality? At this point, the platinum cherub plagued with a waveless coif abandoned whining and began to screech "Mommy, make him do it. Make him do it now!" I am sad to say that at this point we were paying the artist and ushering our younglings to bed, so we missed the final chapter. I would guess that mommy headed over to guest services where she demanded that Disney either force their castmember to comply with their wishes or produce a stylist that could give her daughter an instant perm.

3) There are many time consumers and schedule drivers at Disney. Some people tote autograph books, some wear lanyards covered with pins both prized and tradable, and some hunt the ever elusive "hidden Mickey's". We dabbled in the pursuit of character photos. Our children had their favorites, and I knew a few tricks to maximize our photo opportunities while minimizing our line time. A good strategy, but not without its flaws. On our last morning, my daughter spotted the stars of her favorite show. She asked politely, sacrificed rides willingly and waited patiently while singing their theme song. I believe we waited longer in line for this meeting than we waited for anything else on our trip. I do not regret the choice; however, my teeth grind even now remembering the moment as we waited and watched a pair of grandparents reach the characters. I have no problem with granny and gramps waiting in line to have their picture made. What got my ire up was the high sign they made towards the playground next to us where their four grandchildren (with autograph books) and their parents were bounding about. Don't misunderstand me. I have no qualms with the grands, its the parents I'm hot with. Clearly they thought their kids shouldn't have to wait in that long line in the hot sun. So why should the grandparents? Why not let Granny and Grandpa play with the kiddos while the parents wait in sticky Florida sun? I say this assuming the grandparents came on the trip to be with their grandkids. If, in fact the urchins are a source of stress and strain on the grandparents and it was an act of kindness to give them a momentary reprieve from their presence, then I retract the Hall of Shame title and offer kudos instead.

2) On this vacation, we enjoyed the Disney dining plan. This afforded us the opportunity to eat several nice meals on a simple budget. We chose to spend one of these meals at the Biergarten in Epcot. There was delicious German food, an Oom Pah Pah band and even a dance floor. We loved it --with the exception of a little mongrel at a table next to us, and slightly elevated. This small boy, I'm guessing around three or four years old, would not leave my children alone. He growled at them, spit paper at them, taunted them, and even tossed a few scraps of food at them. I was stunned to see his parents ignoring this. I know what you're thinking, perhaps they were unaware of the Beaver's mischievous behavior. Not true. Not only did mommy see him tossing objects at my children, she also saw me glaring at him with my best no nonsense teacher stare. Her response? She turned her chair towards the rest of her table and her back to me and the Beaver. I have another suggestion. If that's the best skills you have for controlling him or you think vacation should be your one chance to escape your little scamp's hijinks, then might I recommend Disney 's lovely Kennel Service for your little beast? I think we might all enjoy our meal a little better.

1) This is a special group award. It goes out to all the parents who knocked one or both of my children out of the way to beat us to a line, parade, or character meeting with special recognition to the grown woman who pushed my son and jumped in front of him to get a picture of Lightning McQueen. But I'm over-reacting. I'm sure the picture was worth it. She was probably working on a covershot for TIME Magazine. She'd probably waited her whole life to get this picture. REALLY?!

Merry Christmas -- Not Merry Solstice [Bob]

2007-12-13T20:38:00.001-05:00

Many Christians these days make a scene about boycotting Christmas. That's their choice but I'd like to humbly offer a rebuttal to the notion that all the Christmas symbols (trees, mistletoe, Santa Claus, gift-giving) and most notably the date we use for Christmas are nothing but an acceptance of paganism with which no "real" Christian should agree. I don't accept that. Here's why ...

First, what's wrong with stealing stuff from the pagans? Before I go any further with this, please hear me out. I know that probably sounds flippant but I don't mean it that way at all. Not to mention, I don't accept it. But here's the thing -- if we co-opt some formerly pagan practices and use them to celebrate our holiday, I don't see a problem with that. The pagan connections have long since disappeared. I, and my family, have never even considered their pagan roots (if indeed they even have any). They have always, and will always, be Christian images, symbols and practices to us. We associate them with the incarnation of Christ and celebrate that fact in our home. We've never considered otherwise. So please don't accuse me of capitulating to paganism. That's not what I do.

Besides, in keeping with the often-invoked Great Commission, and with Paul's exhortation to "be all things to all men," I don't see a problem with using those pagan symbols to attract pagans, then redefining them in Christian ways. In this way, the pagans are redirected from their journey down the wrong path and onto the path to the real Truth. I think that's a good thing.

Second -- and this applies mainly to the date we use to celebrate Christmas -- who says it has pagan roots?! Many people claim that Christianity uses December 25th as the date because we have caved to the Sun worshippers who give spiritual significance to the Winter Solstice. Not so. For starters, the Winter Solstice occurs on December 21st. But that's just the beginning.

Additionally, there are very distinct Christian-based reasons for selecting December 25th as the date of Christ's birth. For an excellent analysis of those reasons, please read William J. Tighe's, Calculating Christmas. It is a fascinating article that chronicles the origin of the date. I offer a brief summary here:

There was a common belief called the Integral Age of the great Jewish prophets that claimed they were born, or conceived, on the same day they died

"Modern scholars agree that the death of Christ could have taken place only in A.D. 30 or 33, as those two are the only years of that time when the eve of Passover could have fallen on a Friday, the possibilities being either 7 April 30 or 3 April 33."

By the time of Tertullian the Western church had concluded that he died on Friday, 25 March 29. In keeping with the Integral Age theory, Christ's conception would be the same date -- putting his birth 9 months later -- on December 25

The Eastern Church, for a different set of reasons (and with a different set of calendars), concluded that Good Friday was actually April 6. Using parallel reasoning, the Eastern church began celebrating Christ's birth on January 6th -- and still does so today.

With an open admission that calendar differences necessitate that these dates are probably not correct, it remains demonstrably arguable that the date for Christ's birth is NOT tied to pagan origins. It was the early church's best attempt to get the birth date right. It was a carefully calculated, conscientious decision based on Jewish tradition that led to the date we use today.

So I won't accept the pagan accusations or the scorn of those who try to put them on me. My family will celebrate Christmas on December 25th like we always do. We do so because we accept the historicity of the incarnation and the reality of the salvation it brings us all. We hope you'll do the same.

Enjoy your Christmas. I hope it is a blessed one.

Top 10 Most Disappointing Movies (In no particular order) [Jay]

2007-12-11T22:17:00.000-05:00

1. The Village – M. Night Shyamalan still owes me the killer movie that he advertised in the previews. I went expecting to see monsters and villagers fighting it out and I got a bunch of Ivy leaguers in weak costumes scaring their children to protect the commune they created. I want real monsters!!

2. Men In Black – Now you watch it and it is kind of funny, but on opening night this blockbuster had promise to be one of the great action comedies of all time. Will Smith was launching to super stardom. Tommy Lee Jones was at his peak. Barry Sonnenfeld had done some very good work and was coming into his own. Then Vincent D’Onofrio starts chewing the scenery like the hack that he is. Now add a weak climax that looked like they were trying to save money by not having to hire any more actors to bring this home strong and I am left feeling like I just sat through a Heroes finale. Of course it would be years before I was able to articulate that, but you get the point.

3. Jurassic Park 2 – T-Rex rampages through San Diego a la Godzilla in Tokyo. It is moments like this that make me wonder how Spielberg can also be responsible for Amistad and Saving Private Ryan.

4. Star Wars Episode III – Revenge of the Sith – In episode IV we were told that Vader helped to hunt down and kill al the Jedi. By that, apparently Obi Wan meant he attacked a day care and then killed some politicians on a distant planet. The “higher ground” battle between Obi-Wan and Vader is only slightly less irritating than Padme staring out windows. Memo to George Lucas: Only Siths think in absolutes is an absolute statement, moron.

5. Godfather III – A year or two will go by and I will start to believe that Sophia Coppola can not be as bad as I remember. I get an itch to see Andy Garcia and Al Pacino mobbing it up and ruling the world, so I pop the DVD in and…Wow, Sophia Coppola is really really bad. I do not think that Francis intended for me to cheer when she finally was shot in the end, but I was just so happy for all of us that she could not possibly ruin another scene.

6. The English Patient - As much as I enjoy adulterous sex to the tune of Silent Night, this film more than any other proves that Oscar voters lack any true concept of love and duty. I want my three hours back.

7. City of Angels - This movie was so bad, I have only recently stopped retching every time I hear the Goo Goo Dolls' song Iris. Who knew that being a fallen angel was a good thing? Satan is so misunderstood.

8. The Matrix Sequels - Take your pick which one. This is what happens when you praise pseudo intellectual movie directors with an S & M fetish for their philosophical complexity. I am now forced to pretend that these movies do not exist so that I can still fully enjoy the original.

9. Apocalypse Now Redux - I have rarely been so excited to see a film. This is proof for everyone that editors are a good thing. The added footage diminished the narrative flow to such an extent that I actually like the original theatrical version a little less. How did Coppola not know that Kilgore was perfect? Seeing Martin Sheen steal his surf board like an adolescent idiot was only the first of the many additional scenes I wish I could unremember.

10. War of the Worlds (Spielberg) - This has the singular distinction of becoming terribly disappointing during the screening. This movie was absolutely brilliant until Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning ran into the basement with Tim Robbins. It was as if the stupidity of Tim Robbin's character infected the whole film from that point on. A brilliant and terrifying film suddenly became silly and ultimately a little embarrassing for everyone involved. The "Christmas party in Boston" ending where the son who was on a hill that exploded with fire is waiting in a brownstone with the rich side of the family makes so little sense that I am forced to wonder if the writers left in the midst of production.

NFL, Shmen-F-L, You Gotta Like This Guy [Bob]

2007-12-10T11:55:00.000-05:00

Yes, we (Navy) won the Army-Navy game handsomely. That requires no comment. With a son at West Point I think it would be piling on to point out that Navy has won the last 6 in a row (a historical record) and currently leads the series between the two rivals by 3 games (52-49-7). It would also be rude to point out that Navy will be participating in its 5th Bowl game in as many years, and that we have won the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy for 6 consecutive years. So I won't even mention any of those things. It just wouldn't be right.

What I really want to point out is a quote I just uncovered by Naval Academy senior Adam Ballard in National Review. It is reported in the December 3, 2007 issue that Ballard, a big, bruiser of a power fullback, has been asked if he will attempt to forgo his military service obligation and pursue the interest that has been shown in him by the NFL. Here's what he said ...

"Being a Marine fits my mentality," he said, explaining why he's seeking a commission that would deny him a shot at a professional [football] career. "I don't see myself as someone who sits back. I like to be down in the dirt ... When I'm older, I want to be able to look at my kids and tell them why they can go to any church and why your mom doesn't have to wear a burqa."

Oo- rah

Rediscovering the Eagles

2007-11-28T18:30:00.000-05:00

Usually the pattern works. We have things that we discover in our youth, become enamored with, overexpose ourselves till we can no longer bear to be around the thing, and then move on. It works the same with music. We all go through our Led Zeppelin phase. We all liked Cult of Personality a little too much. My whole school system filled out thousands of stupid note cards in an effort to win a contest. On the note card our school wrote, “Wheeler Wildcats walk like an Egyptian.” We actually organized large scale grass roots movements in an effort to see The Bangles! Do you see the wisdom in letting the past lie where it belongs? There was a period that Vanilla Ice would be mobbed by adoring fans if he showed up in public. He was recently arrested for possession of illegal drugs while he out in the middle of night skate boarding. Time exposes those things that are stupid and forces us to abandon those things. We idiotically assume that the free space in our attention span must be filled by a new thing that is as equally inane as that which preceded it. This generation is learning that lesson with the unbelievable fall of Brittany Spears. The beat goes on.

On the other hand, some things should come back. The Eagles are performing again. That fact in and of itself does little to move me, but when you here people mention a band long enough they start to creep into your subconscious. In bygone days of yore, I loved the Eagles. I listened to them incessantly, sang Hotel California at high school parties, looked off to the horizon to the haunted melodies of Desperado, and tried to convince everyone I knew of the hidden genius of The Long Run. I loved them and listened to them until I woke up one morning and realized that Don Henley’s voice grated me, Joe Walsh was insane, and Glenn Fry was a big dork. Witchy Women sent shivers down my spine and not the good kind. I ate the candy until it made me sick, admitted I was a victim of love and moved on to Van Morrison like every good American.

So what was this nagging voice from my past telling me to try and love again. Life in the fast lane of music had led me far down the road from that band and there had been many new kids in town since. As a last resort, I pulled up my on-line music store and downloaded Hotel California without hesitating. The album zapped into my pocket player, the ear buds went in and I took a trip through time. Then something truly remarkable happened. I loved the album again. The tracks were alive with regret and soulful consideration of possibilities lost. There was hope for the future and some genuine reflection on how current pain may mean something more in a future context. To be certain, there is also indecipherable silliness, but the older I get the more such things seem the harmless expression of hubris. After all, most polls demonstrate that as soon as entertainers start to share their minds on issues that extend beyond the pale of crying, loving, and leaving the overwhelming majority of people immediately tune them out. Letting them vent about their causes is similar to letting Ringo sing one song on a Beatles album. Let the baby have his bottle as long as he is willing to give me Wasted Time in return, I can live with it.

It also reminded me of a couple of other things. Great albums are rare. The Beatles made it look easy, but the truth is most albums stink. Some artists come out with a couple of good songs and then surround them with other songs that are so bad it boggles the imagination how the same performer could have produced them. Every blue moon great performers get in a groove and put together a collection of great songs in a magical order that seems to communicate a narrative. Hotel California has great songs, but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That does not happen often, and when it does I think it ought to be criminal to remove songs from their proper context and slap them into some greatest hits mess.

Finally, I remember how important music is to my life. There were days of my life that I survived because Rich Mullins loved God and sang about that in ways I identified with. There were troubled nights in my youth where a moment of identification with a melancholy blues riff from the Grateful Dead reminded me that I was not alone. U2’s One spoke to me at a time that the person I loved the most in this world told me in no uncertain terms that she no longer loved me. I am tied to the soundtrack of my life in ways I do not comprehend. So as I lay in bed listening to Try and Love Again for the first time in years and read "I am Legend", I love the song. That reminds me that I love my life and I look across the bed and see my wife and as crazy as it sounds, I love her even more. I don’t know why and I don’t care. I just love this album.

Handicap the Republican Field [Jay]

2007-11-09T21:06:00.001-05:00

Equal time for banging on candidates. I want to briefly run down the field of Republican candidates for president and my off the cuff opinions.

1 – Rudy Guiliani - Pat Robertson says that he is our guy! Newsflash, if you seriously consider Pat Robertson’s opinions when making any decision at any time then you have not been paying attention for the last 20 years. Rudy thinks that abortion is a woman’s right, but he would nominate judges that are likely to restrict abortion practices and undermine that right. The sheer stupidity of that position alone is reason enough not to vote for him. If it is a right, why do you want to restrict it? If it needs restricting, how can it be a natural right? His upside seems to be that he is electable. We are constantly told that because he stopped crime in New York he is our man for the job. Oh yeah, he was New York City’s mayor during 9-11, which of course means that he is tough on terrorism. My brother-in-law was in New York that day as well, so does that make him qualified to be Rudy’s running mate?

Views: Iran - "No Nukes!", War in Iraq - For it, Abortion - For it, Taxes - Lower taxes to stimulate economy, Healthcare - Lower taxes to free people to buy their own, Supreme Court Nominees - He likes Scalia and Thomas as models, Immigration - Build that Wall!

2 – John McCain – Really?!! Again? How many times are you going to make us tell you no. We appreciate what you did and how you served your country and suffered for freedom which makes it hard everytime we are forced to tell you we do not want you to be president. Seriously!

3 – Fred Thompson – Remember that girl you saw from a distance (or guy if that is the case) and said, “Wow, that girl is smoking hot!” Then you crossed the street and she wasn’t all that great. But like and idiot you rushed to see her and she saw you and noticed your enthusiasm so you have to talk to her. You think, “Who knows, maybe she is cool.”
Then she starts talking and you immediately realize that you have to figure out a way to get away from her because every word irritates you more while you promise yourself never to do something like this again. That is how I feel about Fred. From across the street he looked a little like Reagan, and so we ran across to see him and he isn’t Reagan. He is just some lawyer that played a lawyer on TV. And he starts talking and suddenly I am looking over his shoulder and trying to find some way to let him down easy. Sorry big guy, maybe you should have stuck to Leno. You are not what I thought you might be.

Views: Iran – May fall under its own weight if we help it, War in Iraq – For it, Abortion – Agin’ it, , Immigration – Considers securing the borders a national security priority, Staunch Federalist who believes that we ought to ask “If this is something that the Federal government ought to be doing?”

4 – Mitt Romney – This is the sexy pick. He is a Mormon, but that does not matter too much to me. He looks a little too campaignee, though. You can argue that his shifts on position came from genuine change of heart, but he shifted right at the same time he wants my right leaning vote. Hmmm. He does seem to say the right thing all of the time. I keep waiting for his a-hole moment. You know? That moment when his guard is down and we see ROMNEY.
Admit it, you liked Bush better when Cheney pointed out that guy and said he was an a-hole and Bush responded, "Big time." You liked it even more when he did not apologize. What happened to that Bush? He was the guy I voted for. Romney needs a real moment before I buy into him. I like his looks, though.

Views: Iran – They need to know that we are serious, War in Iraq – For it, Abortion – Agin’ it, Healthcare – Encourages mandating employer provided coverage where reasonable and state subsidized programs where needed, Immigration – Against Amnesty but equally against aggressive prosecution, Unique view: We need to reengage the French in a meaningful diplomatic relationship.

5 – Ron Paul – The libertarian’s Republican. He is the Alan Keyes (circa 2000) of this election to me. His campaign will put his issues out there and we will find out if there is a significant percentage of the Republican voters that are leaning libertarian. He will not be president. He will not be vice-president.

6 – Mike Huckabee – He might as well stamp RUNNING MATE on his forehead. He is not going anywhere in the primary, but he is just Christian enough that people might want to carry him on the ticket and throw an olive branch to the evangelicals. He is a good guy, but he lacks the money of Romney and RG and so he is going nowhere except on another’s coat tails.

Views: War in Iraq – For it, Abortion – Agin’ it, Taxes – Lowering taxes stimulates growth.

Now if you are not on this list but feel you ought to be ie Tom Tancredo, Alan Keyes, and Duncan Hunter. No offense, but…well you know. But keep living the dream!

This is clearly not a bunch that excites me. No one really jumps out at you as the man I want to be president. But in the immortal words of Seymour Skinner from “The Simpsons”, “Prove me wrong, children. Prove me wrong.”

Santa Told To Slim Down [Jay]

2007-11-05T16:58:00.001-05:00

In a shocking turn of events, the Brits have told Santa that he must lose weight. A quote from this article:

Fiona Campbell-Reilly, spokeswoman at the shopping centre, said: "Santa has been around for years, but society has changed and our Santa needs to reflect this.

"Bluewater's Santa Boot Camp is getting Santa in shape and setting a good example to children who idolise him.”

In a related story, a recent study demonstrates that the Brits in general and Fiona Campbell-Reilly in specific have way too much free time and need to get a life.

Developing.

Right Barack At You! [Jay]

2007-11-01T22:12:00.000-04:00

Recently a commenter asked for us to address the substance of Barack Obama as a candidate instead of using him for cheap laughs. I love cheap laughs, but well here I go. Obama has differentiated himself from other Democratic candidates by asserting his willingness to personally negotiate with Iran if elected President. He seems to feel that the best way to encourage Iran to stop threatening to destroy Israel, stop infiltrating Iraq and destabilizing the region, stop working to become a nuclear power, and stop working hand in hand with terrorist organizations is to go visit them and possibly offer them a membership in the World Trade Organization.

I understand the philosophy that if you are able to include a country in financial trade with the rest of the world then stable world markets are an incentive for that country to play nice. That said, nations have to be accountable for what they have already done. Why not open up the door to North Korea while we are at it as well? If we are developing a tactic of rewarding rogue nations with legitimacy, perhaps we should call up good ol’ Kim Jong-il and tell him he was just psychotic enough to get an audience with the president of the United States.
Heck, Iran has been participating in blowing up innocent Iraqi civilians for years now, so being a dictatorial mad man within your own borders is hard to hold against him. Hey, I have a great idea. Lets give Ahmadinejad the Nobel Peace Prize while we are at it. He probably hates Bush even more than Carter and Gore, so he is immensely qualified for it.

Or we could just stop and get some perspective on Obama. He is a GREAT speaker. He is good looking. He is articulate. And he is apparently insane and dangerous when it comes to international relations. If you think that Bush has mismanaged the war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan, I promise you the answer is not to turn around and shake hands with the devil. New tactics may be necessary. Offering legitimacy for a nation who openly discusses destroying our ally with the nuclear weapons they are rushing to build, denies the holocaust happened, and fuels terrorism forces that kill our soldiers is objectively disgusting. But hey, it sure makes him stand out in the crowd!

Dennis Kucinich sees UFO [Tawnii]

2007-10-31T10:09:00.000-04:00

Presidential Candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich from Ohio in the most recent Democratic Presidential Candidate Debates claimed to have seen a UFO at Shirley MacLaine’s house. He later asserted that the aliens have universal comprehensive healthcare and hate us for invading Iraq just like most of Europe.

The state of Ohio would only respond with a flat, "No comment."

The National Anthem and Barack Obama [Bob]

2007-10-30T13:08:00.001-04:00

I'm not sure if I need to even add a caption to this? Any of your inputs are welcome ...

Doctors Without Scruples [Bob]

2007-10-23T12:19:00.000-04:00

Just under a year ago, Dr. Esam Omeish, President of the Muslim American Society, could be heard here defending the stance that moderate Muslims are the majority in this country, while denying the claim that extremists are making it their mission to recruit for the cause of jihad in American prisons. Fair enough. Because of his moderate stance, and because he is "a respected physician and community leader," Omeish was appointed by Virginia Governor Tim Kaine to the Virginia General Assembly's Commission on Immigration. Great ... until recently when he was forced to resign.

Here and here are a couple of speeches Dr. Omeish has given, one as recently as three weeks ago. Quite the "moderate," eh? Forget the political question concerning how it is possible that this guy could be on a panel that advises anyone on official U.S. immigration policy. That is not the point I want to address. What blows me away is this "respected physician's" call for "the jihad way."

Consider this. In July, the world watched as Scottish police unraveled a failed bomb plot by eight doctors in Glasgow. The leader of the radical Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, who was recently killed in an Israeli raid, was a trained pediatrician. Theodore Dalrymple, in his National Review piece, "Cutthroats In White Coats," reports on a few other infamous cases:

Dr. Petiot is suspected to have killed 60 people in Paris under the occupation, promising to arrange their escape to South America in return for 25,000 francs, which he pocketed while killing and incinerating them;

Dr. Shipman of Cheshire, England, is thought to have poisoned upwards of 200 patients during his career as a general practitioner, for motives that remain, and will probably forever remain, unclear.

Vera Figner, one of the assassins of Czar Alexander II, and a founder of the terrorist organization Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will), was a doctor.

The role of doctors in Nazi Germany and Japan during the Second World War was not such as to give the profession much cause for pride.

Dr. Ernesto “Che” Guevara took an excessive pleasure not only in revolution itself, but in post-revolutionary executions.

Osama bin Laden’s deputy, after all, is a surgeon.

George Habash, the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and a man of unstintingly violent opinions and inclinations, trained as a pediatrician.

Admittedly, these are an infinitesimally small number of the actual doctors who have served humanity well. And Dr. Omeish has not committed any violent act. But recent events show us that the jihad he has been promoting has, shall we say, led to a little violence here and there. What strikes me as a little weird though, is that so many of those trained to "first do no harm" have also been some of the most violent criminals in history. Why would that be? In the same article, Dalrymple (a retired doctor, I might add) has some ideas.

First, he points out, "doctors must train themselves to be dispassionate in the face of suffering, and be prepared to do things that might cause their patients discomfort and even pain, for the purpose of the good of the patients." One need look no further than the infamous abortionist Dr. George Tiller of Kansas, to see this tendency incarnated. Tiller is the doctor who has (perversely) perfected the late term abortion procedures with which we have all become so familiar. Tiller's motivation?

"Specialists in 2nd Semester elective and 2nd/3rd trimester therapeutic abortion care" ... We have a national and international reputation for providing the highest quality abortion services in a safe and caring environment. Kindness, courtesy, justice, love and respect are the cornerstones of our patient-provider relationships.

... He's doing it for the women. Tiller, blinded by the "tree" of protecting a woman's "right to choose" what she does with her own body, fails to see the "forest" of a complete lack of regard for demonstrating "kindness, courtesy, justice, love and respect" to the pre-born human beings he destroys every day.

Second, Dalrymple says, this numbness to pain and suffering must be attached to some kind of ideological cause that can lead to a terrorist mindset. History has proven that such an ideological call is, almost without exception, appealing to the highly educated among us. Though the uneducated masses may carry the banner of some such cause, it is the highly educated who lead it. Add these two traits together and ...

Solzhenitsyn pointed out in a different context, it is ideology that allows people to commit the most terrible acts in the belief that they are bringing about a better world.

This is not to pick on doctors (after all, some of my best friends are doctors). The tendencies at play here exist in every human heart. But because they have demonstrated a unique, and highly public, proclivity for perpetuating evil acts, doctors offer us a unique example of the promise and danger inherent in the apologetic project.

Our ability to argue for the superiority of the Christian worldview lies in how successful we are at appealing to the ideological passion of society's leaders. Paul knew this. Though many of us have a picture of Paul wandering the desert preaching the Good News to John and Jane Doe, the Bible tells a different story. Paul went into the synagogues, sought out the cultural leaders, argued toe-to-toe with the elite philosophers on Mars Hill, and won each of them to the cause of Christ. Only then did the crowds get with the program.

Paul's success teaches us that ideas have consequences and that those who combine intellectual acumen with passionately held beliefs can be the most successful -- or the most dangerous -- people on earth. Paul spent some time in each of those camps.

It follows that we who claim to be apologists for the Christian worldview are morally and eternally obliged to determine the truth in the ideas we espouse and their ability to cohere with the way the world was designed to work. A failure to do so creates people, like the doctors listed above, who are dangerous to all that is good, and beautiful, and true. Success in the endeavor creates movements that are dangerous to the self-centered notion that man is the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong. That is a sickness for which no human doctor could ever offer a cure.

Dr. Beckwith Comment Jackpot! [Jay]

2007-10-19T12:14:00.000-04:00

I sometimes wonder why I bother reading the comments at so many blogs and websites. Most are information dumping and silliness. I have personally ceased to comment on other sites after finding out through some considerable effort that people are not listening. Occasionally I will be moved to contribute, but only when I feel like the thread is so missing the point that a new thought needs to be introduced just so that it is there in the midst of the mess of argument. Then I find stuff like this at STR Blog and I remember all over again that you never know who you are going to run into.

Frank Beckwith decided to post a small rant in reference to this post and this story in Newsweek about a shift in the evangelical mindset toward a greater tolerance for homosexuals. The answer is pure gold and the type of comment searching jackpot that will keep me mining for intellectual gems.

This story is the secular equivalent of the naive, though well-meaning, white person who refers to his black friend as "well-spoken." It reveals, in other words, the latent bigotry harbored by secularists who have come to believe the stereotypes about Christians that they helped to perpetuate over the past thirty years.

Admittedly, we don't help ourselves, at times. Nevertheless, it is clearly the case that Christians are far more tolerant of their moral deviants than are secularists. Christians have ministries to those struggling with sexual identity; secularists have "sensitivity classes"--quasi-fascist re-education sessions--for those who challenge their orthodoxy. Christians can sit through college classes for 15 weeks hearing their faith attacked, and they pray for their professors, and often inquire with folks at places like STR on how to best address these attacks in a winsome manner. Secularists alert the thought-police and scream "hate crime," homophobe, intolerant, etc. Christians put up with incessant media attacks upon their virtue. We can't even get a soda or haircut or go to a doctor's appointment without being forced to listen to some trashy music or subjected to some ridiculous soap opera. In fact, I am at Starbucks right now with a coffee cup that includes some crazy "wise saying" by some pontificating half-wit. We are confronted by entertainment options that include scores of sit-coms and dramas where nobody goes to church and their are more homosexuals than southern Baptists, though in the real world it is quite different. We put up with some s**t that we should be put in the tolerance hall of fame (if there is one).

When was the last time you heard of a Christian group requiring the state to conduct church services in a gay bathhouse? Yet, if an elderly Christian couple does not want to rent a room to a an unmarried cohabiting same-sex couple, the PC police will scream discrimination and force these Christians to have sin take place under their roof. All in the name of "tolerance."

Rant over.

But it was not over, because another commenter jumped in where fools rush in and mistakenly challenged Frank on the rights of Christians to discriminate in the use of their private homes as rental property. It must be noted the commenter later claimed that he thought the discussion was over a public business and not a private home, but the response from Dr. Beckwith is classic none the less.

I didn't get the memo in which the secular society was given the metaphysical power to be the arbiter of the parameters of Christian belief.

The couple in my illustration own their home--their private domain; so private, in fact, that the Supreme Court has asserted that the government cannot tell them whether or not they can use contraceptive devices, engage in sodomy, or arrange for an abortion at the local clinic. And yet, if they want to exercise their religious liberty by forbidding the occurrence of sin on their property, the government will intervene and force them to disobey conscience.
It is beyond me how anyone cannot be disturbed by this state of affairs.

I cross posted this at LTI with a post script that addresses my admiration for Dr. Beckwith as a Christian. I never cease to be amazed at how cool the internet can be. You get real time comments and ideas from people that many years ago would have been completely inaccessible to the general public except through broad publication.

HT: Stand to Reason Blog

Short Fuses [Jay]

2007-10-18T23:27:00.000-04:00

According to this article, a new report indicates that short people tend to consider themselves less healthy and less happy than do those who are average in height or taller. The sample shows that the shortest group, men 5’4” and under and women 5’ and under, were the most likely to report that they felt they were not in good health. There is no data on the actual health of the short people in question, only their perception of their health in comparison to others.

The article says that short people have a chip on their shoulders and that this is why they are less healthy than taller people who seem to feel better about their lives and their health.

Ironically, a flood of angry and bitter comments from short people complaining about the unfair tone of the article and the caricature of them as having “short man’s syndrome” seems to support the findings of the study.

Randy Newman could not be reached for comment, but a source close to him speaking under anonymity said, “Randy has been singing about this for years. Now science is catching up to him.”

HT: Drudge Report

Nancy Pelosi, where is your dignity? [Jay]

2007-10-02T23:37:00.000-04:00

I know that reading a story about how the terminally imbecilic show The View has again made headlines makes me a contributor to the problem. It boggles my mind why so many people of influence frequently are guests on a show that is most popular with people that are watching a group of women talk about meaningless dribble while the rest of the world is at work, but this particular incident does not make think less of the hosts of The View. Indeed that may be impossible at this point. It very definitely makes me think less of the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

You see if I were Speaker of the House and some crazy old biddy was saying how one of her co-host would like to do my spouse who was sitting a few short feet away and then the other host suggested that they would like to do both my spouse and I, well I would have to say something. It was all in jest you say? That does not matter. Some jokes ought to be inappropriate and some people ought to care enough about holding themselves to a higher standard.

Nancy Pelosi, I disagree with almost everything you stand for but until this episode I at least thought you might have some sand or grit. At least a modicum of dignity. Tell the increasingly incoherent Barbara Walters that your husband deserves more respect than that. Remind the irrelevant Whoopi Goldberg that you are third in line for the Presidency and the highest ranking member of a whole branch of the government of the most powerful nation this world has ever seen. Explain to the people of this insipid show that you, your position, your family, and our government deserve more respect than to have talk show hosts discuss doing you and members of your family in an interview. Get up and leave the show on live television and tell them you might come back when they grow up.

Or you could just do what you did. Say nothing, because the really unpardonable sin would have been to look uncool. You can let your PR people put a playful spin on the whole thing later. You can act like some sycophantic fan of some silly celebrities and not confront them on their show for fear of offending their delicate egos.

This is troubling. It is troubling that our celebrity politicians seem more interested in courting the talk show circuit and looking “with it” than behaving like people who are running the governmental affairs of the greatest nation in the free world. Nancy Pelosi holds an important and dignified office. Today the credibility of that office is diminished because of the person that holds it. Not because she is liberal, but because she is either a coward or as depraved and immature as the people that she chooses to share her time with on national television. Grow up Whoopi and Barbara! Grow a back bone Madame Speaker!

Appomattox, What is that? [Jay]

2007-09-21T12:19:00.000-04:00

Lets say you send your child to Duke University with the hopes that this fine and prestigious institution will help your son or daughter achieve the academic edge they need to distinguish themselves. Now you click this link and find out that Duke and a few other prestigious universities actually sucked American civics information out of your child’s head for all of that money. That is right, according to this study freshman at Yale, Duke, Princeton, and five other universities that were part of a 50 university study actually scored higher in a 60 question American civics test than seniors at the same university. Whatever else you learn at Yale, on average you apparently forget some American history.

Harvard seniors actually scored the highest of all universities and Yale and Duke freshmen scored higher than most of the other schools seniors, but how does 4 years at the best schools lower your scores?!

The most interesting thing to me about the findings of the two surveys was that the more active you are in politics or social movements, the more you tend to know about American history. If you value our history read the following and shudder:

*Seniors do not know basic facts of American history. Only 45.9% know that Yorktown was the battle that ended the American Revolution.

*Seniors do not know the basic timeline of American history. Only 47.7% know that Fort Sumter came before Gettysburg and that Gettysburg came before Appomattox.

*Seniors do not know America’s founding documents. Only 45.9% know that the line “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” comes from the Declaration of Independence.

*Seniors do not know the rudiments of America’s historical relations with the world. Only 42.7% know that NATO was formed to resist Soviet expansion.

Yikes.

I leave you with this quote from John Quincy Adams:

In 1802, John Quincy Adams, then a state senator, gave a speech honoring the pilgrims of Plymouth Rock. "Among the sentiments of most powerful operation upon the human heart, and most highly honorable to the human character, are those of veneration for our forefathers and of love for our posterity. They form the connecting links between the selfish and the social passions," he said. "Respect for his ancestors excites in the breast of man, interest in their history, attachment to their characters, concern for their errors, involuntary pride in their virtues. Love for his posterity spurs him to exertion for their support, stimulates him to virtue for their example and fills him with the tenderest solicitude for their welfare."

Can you imagine any of our politicians today saying anything close to that?

Take the quiz yourself if you want to. Share the results if you wish.

HT: Stand To Reason

Great! Now excuse me while I get sick! [Jay]

2007-08-23T10:16:00.000-04:00

In this story, it is reported that senior citizens are surprisingly sexually active. The New England Journal of Medicine study report states:

“Sex with a partner in the previous year was reported by 73 percent of people ages 57 to 64; 53 percent of those ages 64 to 75, and 26 percent of people 75 to 85. Of those who were active, most said they did it two to three times a month or more.”

In a related story, an unusual number of people have called in sick to work today as reports of uncontrollable retching and violent shivering are coming in from all over the U.S.

Developing

Drying Up, Baby! [Jay]

2007-08-17T14:25:00.000-04:00

According to recently released reports, the available drinking water for the city of Las Vegas could be dramatically reduced within 3 years. It appears the city faces a realistic possibility of completely insufficient water sources in comparison to the needs of the growing area. Quoted from the story:

“The news coming from the Southern Nevada Water Authority Thursday about the valley's future water supply is worrisome. Unless we act quickly, there will be no water for hundreds of thousands of Las Vegas Valley residents in just three years…

Any water projects delays like building a pipeline, or adding the pumps could mean Las Vegas may run out of water anytime after 2010…

Even if all of the water projects are finished and everything starts working on time, the Southern Nevada Water Authority still predicts a shortage.

That means by 2010, the valley will be short 64-million gallons of water a day.”

The city-planning group was contacted for a response. No one would speak on record but one man was quoted off the record as saying, “We totally didn’t see this coming. Apparently deserts are very dry by nature.”

There is no truth to the rumor that the group that is running out of water from building a major U.S. city in the desert is associated with the group that built another major U.S. city under sea level in a hurricane zone. An unnamed 4-year-old source commented, “Daddy that just doesn’t make any sense.”

Developing

What Happened to Sports? [Jay]

2007-08-17T11:21:00.000-04:00

Here is a short-list of the recent fun. Roid monster Bonds breaks Hank Aaron’s Home Run record. Michael Vick is the East Coast kingpin of illegal dog fighting, and a NBA referee is officiating in games that he has illegally wagered on with organized crime. What a great time to be raising young children to be sports fans!

As an Atlanta native I tried to encourage my 4-year-old son to enjoy watching the Falcons and Mr. Vick. One odd shampoo bottle, a missed appointment with the U.S. Congress, a profane puppet show, and several dead dogs later I am feeling a little foolish about that move.

One of the greatest sports records on the books fell this year, in Hank Aaron’s all time home run mark, but how can I encourage my children to celebrate this guy. Even if he were not an obvious roid head, this is a guy that is so charming an ESPN correspondent assigned specifically to follow Bonds around said, “People come up to me all of the time and say, ‘You won’t believe what that guy just said to my 8 year old.” Classy!

Maybe a little basketball, you say? Except that Tim Donaghy confirmed everything we always suspected when watching NBA officials make up the rules as they go. These guys can not be trusted. Basketball is by far the hardest sport to effectively officiate already, but throw in a little money owed to the mob and your judgment is suspect. Add in the stud program that the NBA has been underwriting sending all of these players all over the country to sire illegitimate children and a strong suspicion that these inflated bodies did not come naturally and we have a wee bit of a problem.

Perhaps we can seek refuge in some lesser-watched sports? I don’t think so. Cycling apparently is either the most doped sport on earth or the most honest. Either way, the signature event of the season, The Tour de France, had last year’s winner (Floyd Landis) all but stripped of his title for doping and this year’s leader (Michael Rasmussen)fired mid-race. The best of the cycling world were already NOT competing due to doping suspensions.

Soccer you say? Well you know I love the beautiful game, but one look at the fiasco last year in the Italian league and the punishments for fixed matches and you know they are not immune. Track & Field, forgive me while I get my laughter under control. Swimming has been dirty even back to when I was active. I knew of young swimmers on the juice in the 80’s when the German women were growing beards and shattering world records.

Less traditional American sports powers, maybe? NASCAR wears their rule breaking like a badge of honor, with the motto, “If you’re not cheatin’, you’re not tryin’.” Hockey would be great if I wanted to teach my children that part of sports is periodically turning to the guy next to you and wailing on his face for a minute or two especially if you are losing.

Little league is still pure right. Well that is when the parents stop beating each other long enough to lie about the age of their children and scream profanity laden tirades at 12 year-olds.

And there you have it. What happened? How can you want your child to aspire to this? Work real hard and you too can one day add performance enhancing drugs to your body, cuss out some small children, arrange death matches with the neighbor’s dogs, and create an illegitimate army of kids while seeing the world. Go for it, son!

I Love My Father [Jay]

2007-08-15T00:32:00.000-04:00

There is an upside to having your own blog. It means I can pretty much write whatever I want to without worrying about what others think. Most of the time I use that power to be as stupid as I feel like being but not tonight. My father is dying in an ICU unit here in Marietta, GA. No doctor has told me or my family that he is, in fact, on his death bed, but when a man lies in intensive care for nearly 3 weeks and is not physically progressing it does not take a Rhodes Scholar to see the truth. It may be tomorrow, next week, or next month, but he is dying.

Our relationship has never been perfect. He is an alcoholic and a heavy smoker, facts that are wreaking havoc on his body right now. He was an adulterer who left our family when I was nine years old and is now divorced from his third wife. During my teenage years, I was a self destructive little punk that rebelled against everything. In my twenties, my new found faith drove a mild wedge between us. In my thirties, my father was given the option of walking away from alcohol and keeping his relationship with his grandchildren or continuing to drink himself to death and be cut off. He chose the latter.

Tonight I walked into his ICU room and saw a body that is not long for this earth. More importantly, I saw my father struggling with life. A chair was sitting in the room and I pulled it next to his bed and wept for several minutes. I wept because I love my dad. I do not care what has happened between us or the years of bitter dispute that have passed. I love him and it is killing me to watch this.

It is a fact of biology that I am my father’s son. I can see we have the same oddly wrinkled and heavily lined hands. Our arms share the same shape. His face and body structure are now mine. I look like him, and sometimes when I lose my temper with my young children I hear my father’s voice booming out of me. For years I tried to shake the imprint of my father from me, either out of spite or then later out of fear of becoming him. It became clear to me as I matured that I could never stop being my father’s son.

As a Christian, it often feels like I understand certain big concepts. God’s unmerited favor for example. My mind grasps the explanation of what it means, but as with many of the truths of God that I think I understand, time and events often expose the ignorance of my heart. Tonight was one of those lessons. As I held my father’s hand, prayed and sang Rich Mullins songs, I had a hard time understanding the true differences between us. I was an adulterer in my youth. I was a drunk. I abused drugs that my father would never dream of doing. I lied to my mother and betrayed her trust. I alienated my family just as he did. As my father groaned in pain and shifted in his bed to relieve the agony of the cost that his choices are exacting from his last days, I was at a loss as to the qualitative difference between the man that is in the hospital bed and the son that sits by his side. I am no better than he.

The answer is grace. The grace of God dominates my life. And here is what I never fully understood until tonight. I might have been able to say it, but I never fully got it all the way through my whole being balls to bones as the oracle in The Matrix would say. God’s grace transforms my life because I let it. Not because I am a good man, and not as a result of proper works. It is God’s desire to love me and somewhere along the road I started to get myself out of the way and let Him. That is all the difference, but it makes all the difference in the world.

At one point I realized that my father’s eyes were open and so I moved into his field of vision. There was not a flicker of recognition in his gaze. His motionless eyes did not even track to my movement. I sat back down and prayed even harder that he would wake up and that I could talk to him for a moment. A few minutes later as his eyes suddenly darted in my direction in response to a comment I had made. I stood up and moved around to the other side of his bed and back into his field of vision. He watched me all of the way around and looking into my eyes the whole way. After a moment, he dropped his gaze.

“Daddy!” I called to him. I know it is odd that a 36 year-old man with a dysfunctional relationship still calls his father daddy, but I don’t care. His eyes shot back up. “Do you know who I am?”

He ever so slightly nodded and said what passes for yes in the garbled voice that is left to him for this time. My father was before me and with all that I had been thinking about for the last hour I tried to decide what I most wanted to say. “Do you know how much I love you?” He answered yes. “I am here with you,” I told him. The corner of his mouth drew up ever so slightly into a smile. I talked to him about God and other things, but in that one moment I realized all that truly mattered.

Paul said that we all sin and fall short of the glory of God. That there is none righteous, no not one. Whatever plans or prayers I had about how my father may turn his life around they all crumbled to the ground the night of July 26th, when I heard the message on my answering machine that he had been found unconscious and unresponsive. Whatever problems I had with him in the past or unresolved issues still exist, they are meaningless now as well. He is pitiful, frail, dying, and it is all his fault. So how is he any different than the rest of us before God. We can never get what was lost to our poor decisions and choices back, but we can hold on with furious passion to the hope for our future. For me and my father, that future contains the moments that I have left with him now and the hope of eternity with him then. It is time to start getting into practice for the future relationship where all that is left in the end is faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love.

EPL is Here!!! [Jay]

2007-08-13T12:14:00.001-04:00

Soccer post time!! English Premier League began the season this weekend. If you have not picked your team to follow yet, then you better get going. Here is the current run down of teams.

Chad loves Arsenal (Beat Fulham 2-1)
I am a Chelsea nut! (Beat Birmingham 3-2)
Mike has backed Manchester United. (Boooo!) (Drew a scoreless with Reading)
Tawnii is on the Liverpool bandwagon. (Hisssssss!) (Beat Reading 2-1)
(ALL RESULTS)

For the uninitiated, here are a few things that you need to know. The Premier League Championship is won on points accumulated over the course of the season. You get 3 points for a win and 1 point for a draw. Those are called results. You get nothing for a loss. The games are 90 minutes long with two 45-minute halves. The clock runs forward and the box scores will show you a goal and the minute of the game in which it was scored. The clock never stops, so if play is held up for injuries or penalties the officials keep track of how long it was and add the time on at the end of the half. This is stoppage time.

The Premier League title is only one of the championship that the clubs (most of them that matter anyway) will be competing for this season. The FA Cup is a tournament that lasts all season long. This has over 700 teams from all of the different British leagues. (Chelsea won last year) The UEFA is a tournament of all of the best teams from the major European Leagues. (AC Milan from Italy won last year, but Liverpool made the final and MU and Chelsea made the semis)

One thing that is truly awesome to me, the 2 worst teams in the league get sent down to a lower league at the end of the season. THAT IS AWESOME! Can you imagine how much harder the Pirates and Devil Rays would try to win if they knew that losing meant you were headed for the minors? I love that.

Chad can fill in anything that he thinks I missed.

**Wayne Rooney, the Manchester United Striker and hero/thug is out for 2 months with a broken foot. That should not hurt MU too bad as they just signed Teves, a strong young Argentinean striker, that has a very similar game to Rooney. Strikers play forward and are there to put the ball in the net.

Hey Dad, Turn Off the Radio! [Serge]

2007-08-10T11:59:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to attend a Detroit Tiger's game with my soon to be 7 year old son and his grandfather. Comerica park is about a 2 hour drive from our home, and I expected to drive most of the way listening to my IPod as my son quietly took in some Disney movie in the backseat (the trip must be greater than an hour for us to play a movie). I must admit, I was looking forward to some time with nothing but what I wanted to listen to.

Ten minutes into the trip, my son asked for me to put a movie in for him. We quickly realized that in our rush to get out of the house, we forgot to bring a DVD. My son simply said, "Oh well Dad, I guess we are going to have to talk for the whole time." Two hours conversing with a seven year old.

It was great.

We talked about what he likes and doesn't like about being home schooled. A slowdown at a construction site turned into a discussion about what each of those trucks do, and how his Dad sometimes feels he could trade in his surgical career just to run that large backhoe. We talked about the time my Dad took me to Tiger Stadium when I was young and how we sat through a rain out and punched All Star ballots for hours. I challenged him with math problems, including how much larger Comerica Park is than Dow Diamond, where we frequently watch minor league baseball. When it began to rain for earnest, we both prayed that the game would be played, but acknowledged that there were things far more important, including the time we were sharing.

The game did get played, and we had good seats (see picture). The Tigers stunk up the place, but that really didn't matter much. The highlight of the whole trip for me was not watching the game or even riding the baseball ferris wheel. The highlight was the trip down.

I'm going to be forgetting the DVD and neglecting to turn on the radio more often.

Ugly Men in Trenchcoats [Tawnii]

2007-08-09T13:20:00.000-04:00

After a very unfortunate incident at church, I feel obligated to enlighten the population of shiny, happy church goers who are currently bathing in the safety of their parallel universe. The incident involved my beautiful, almost three year old daughter and a male Sunday School teacher.

On Sunday morning, a friend of ours entered the supply room at church to pick up paper for a craft. While she was there, this male parent volunteer (her regular teachers were absent) walked into the supply room carrying my daughter. The friend left the supply room; however, her own motherly intuition drove her back to confront the man on why he was there with someone else’s child alone. He responded about a need for craft supplies. My friend wondered why he wouldn’t leave my daughter in her class so he would have both hands free these supplies. My friend waited for this man to gather his supplies and return my daughter to her class. When the preschool director was informed of the incident, her response was to verify who the man was and assure us not to worry because he is a nice married man with two kids of his own.

Now, if your spider senses aren’t tingling at this point, you are one of those aforementioned shiny, happy folks. I am so sorry to have to be the one to burst your psychedelic bubble of joy and safety, but I really think you should know this: CHILD MOLESTERS DON’T WEAR TRENCH COATS. They are not ugly, creepy men who hang out in alleyways. Where am I getting my information, you may wonder? We used to have one in our Sunday night small group. My husband taught Sunday School with him. My friend married him. And countless parents at our church wanted him to coach their kids, babysit their kids, or just come and hang out with their kids at the pool. He is now in prison (most likely for life) on 21 counts of child molestation. No one saw this coming. No one ever dreamed a good looking, church going, Sunday School teaching, married man would do such a thing. Now, we all have to live with this nightmare.

This is not an issue of social sensitivity. It is a matter of protecting children who cannot protect themselves. We have to be their advocates and do whatever is necessary to ensure the safest environment possible. Our church has gotten too comfortable with it’s background checking system. They believe that if you are cleared by it, you’re one of the good guys. Here goes another bubble popping...the aforementioned molester would have passed the background/security check with flying colors. Oops!

Step out of the clouds and pay attention. Child molesters construct their lives to provide the maximum opportunities to be alone with children. They often marry, have children of their own, coach kids’ sports, lead kids’ clubs, and yes, even teach Sunday School.

Whether my daughter’s Sunday School teacher was truly up to no good or just a colossally bad decision maker, we may never know. I do know that I am greatly appreciative of my friend’s intervention. Don’t ever be uncomfortable questioning someone’s actions if any part of you suspects a child could be at risk. Child molesters count on your desire to avoid confrontation to enable their behavior. Open your eyes and step up...even at church.

Russia Claims North Pole, Santa Silent. [Jay]

2007-08-06T22:51:00.000-04:00

Russia claims the North Pole as Russian territory by taking a submersible vessel to the ocean floor and planting a Russian flag. The area is rich in fossil fuels and may hold 1/4 of the world’s untapped oil reserves. Most officials see it as a cheap publicity stunt, but Canada, Norway, the United States, and Denmark are all preparing to make similar claims.

Santa Clause could not be reached directly for comment, but an elf speaking under agreement of anonymity did say that they had no intention of letting anyone just walk in and claim the North Pole. He was quoted as saying, “This ain’t Paris, buddy. And these world leaders better be careful of the enemies they are making. The big guy can just as easily bring hand grenades down the chimney as gifts.”

Developing.

Quiz: What Causes STI's? [Jay]

2007-07-20T09:51:00.000-04:00

This article in The Canadian National News’ Brooks Bulleting reports about how teen pregnancy rates and abortion rates amongst teenagers in Canada are at their lowest numbers in over a decade. This is attributed, of course, to the widespread sex education policies and access to contraception. The only little fly in the ointment is an increase in STI”s over the same period.

Here are some excerpts:

But in what seems like a contradiction, the same social climate that gave rise to fewer pregnancies and abortion may also be responsible for an increasing rate of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), that includes chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, human papillomavirus (HPV) and HIV…

And more:

But the dividends don't extend into all areas of sexual health. In another study, the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada found that "STIs disproportionately affect adolescents."

The chlamydia rate, for example, rose from 1095.1 infections per 100,000 in 1991 to 1378.6 in 2002.

Chlamydia infections increase the risk of HIV infection and, if untreated, can result in pelvic inflammatory disease, infertility and ectopic pregnancy.

The study reported 40 per cent to 70 per cent of chlamidial infections have no noticeable symptoms, which means the rate is most likely higher than reported.

"However, it is very clear from the available data from many sources from Canada and other countries, the actual prevalence of chlamydia among the youth and young adult population may not be increasing but is remaining stable at a dangerously high level," McKay said

Now, wait for it. What do you think they attribute the rise in STI’s to? Remember the progressive sex education and contraceptive policies get all of the credit for the good, so what gets hammered for the bad? Take a guess. OK, here is the answer:

And experts feel serial monogamy may be to blame.

That’s right! Monogamy! They say that the sexually active young people take safe sex seriously, but when they get older and get in more committed relationships they stop wearing condoms and start using the pill. Then they get diseases. One problem with this scapegoat is that someone had to bring the infection into the monogamous relationship. So someone did catch something while they were being oh so safe prior to this “committed” relationship. If both parties are clean entering into a monogamous relationship then they are clean leaving it. If someone has an infection going in, then the wonderful world of safe consequences free sexual activity has ALREADY FAILED!

Oh, Canada. You are so nutty! I am sure that any serious study of history will prove this analysis correct. Monogamy leads to STI’s just like abstinence leads to abortions and teen pregnancy. As the Sundance Kid told his partner, “You just keep thinking, Butch. That’s what you are good at.”

COMEBACK, BABY!! [Jay]

2007-07-18T23:31:00.001-04:00

As reported by Rueters,A spectacular Brazilian blue parrot, the Lear's Macaw, has come back from the brink of extinction with more than 750 birds in the wild counted in a recent survey, wildlife conservationists said on Wednesday.

That is more than 10 times the number reported in the wild in the late 1980s, according to the American Bird Conservancy, which attributed the creature's comeback to protection of its natural habitat in the state of Bahia in northeastern Brazil.

When asked to comment on the comeback, a Macaw that goes by the name Big Mac said, "We just never stopped believing in each other! We felt like no one respected us and everyone else counted us out, but we all knew what this species was made of. I'm just so proud of all of these guys."

A Lesson in Circular Reasoning [Jay]

2007-07-12T16:06:00.000-04:00

My son and daughter gave me a fitted baseball cap last year for Father’s Day. It is khaki and has the honorary title “Best Daddy” sewn in bright red letters on the front. It is my favorite hat for obvious reasons and I wear it frequently.

My son and I were lying in his bed the other night and talking. After a pause in the action he said, “Daddy, I love you.”

“I love you too, buddy,” I responded.

“You are the best daddy in the whole world.” Now I am usually inclined to agree with such claims without much demand for evidence, but on this night I felt like pushing for more praise.

“Why am I the best daddy, son?” I asked certain that a full list of all of the qualities that push me beyond all of the rest of you fathers would be forthcoming. My smugness was palpable.

“Well, your hat says you are.”

I explained to my four-year-old that this was circular reasoning. My hat said this because he had it put on my hat. I needed to have exceptional qualities that entitled me to this elevated station. He needed to think for one moment and start giving me the list of things that I did that qualified me for the title of Best Daddy.

Apparently I introduced him to M & M’s, peanut M & M’s, I buy him orange juice to drink in the morning and I take him swimming. This is not the list I had hoped for and the more I pressed the issue the less my son seemed to have valid reasons for his adoration of me. It turns out that sons often just love their Daddy’s even when we are not worthy of such affection.

But the hat says I am the best, and I no longer care if the reasoning is circular or not. The hat will be admitted as evidence. The Best Daddy can make such allowances.

Bring Out Your Dead!! [Jay]

2007-07-09T17:15:00.000-04:00

In honor of the NAACP symbolically burying the “N” Word in an effort to kill the socially accepted status of the word in our culture, I thought that I would bury a few things that I think need to go as well. I intend to symbolically lay to rest everything on the following list in my back yard. If you have something that you want me to throw in, just post it in the comments.

1 – The Major League Baseball Record Books
2 – Senator John McCain’s Presidential Hopes
3 – The word “irregardless.”
4 – Worldwide Benefit Concerts
5 – Sean Penn
6 – Car Decals with Calvin Peeing on Anything
7 – Deepak Chopra
8 – The Last Remnants of Paul McCartney’s self-respect
9 – Golds (Gold teeth)
10 – The Van Dyke (This is the actual name for the facial hair configuration most people call a goatee)

The Two Table Theory [Jay]

2007-07-02T22:37:00.000-04:00

I am finding it more and more fascinating to sit and talk to my children. Not baby talk or a condescending feigning of interest, but genuinely carrying on a serious conversation that helps me to see what they are thinking about. My son and I were talking at the dinner table recently and he told me in the most earnest tone imaginable with no instigation whatsoever, “My friend Ellie is allergic to nuts, peanuts, and peanut butter.”

“Is she allergic to all nuts?” I asked him as if he were a man of forty and not my four-year-old son.

“Yeah, even cashews!” This fact is particularly troubling to my son as cashews are the nuts of choice for my children. That really is saying something, for both my children seem to preternaturally desire nuts.

Now, again, this is a serious conversation, so I think for a moment about what he is saying. “ Is this a friend from Sunday School?”

“No, she is in my Wee School class. Ellie is in Wee School, Daddy.”

Another moment of thought passes. “But you take peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and cashews to school all the time don’t you?”

“Yeah.” He says matter of factly.

I pause for a moment as if he were going to connect the dots of my line of questioning. Because he is four, he continues to dab his finger into the salt on his plate and lick it off.

“Does she ever have trouble or an allergic reaction because you bring peanut butter to class?”

He looked up from his salt with an expression that made me feel stupid for asking something like that even though I still did not know the answer. He then shook his head and assured me, “They have a separate lunch table for people that bring peanut butter for snack. They have one table for Ellie and anyone without peanut butter and one for everyone with peanut butter.”

He kept looking at me and nodding slightly for a moment after finishing that thought. Then after a deep breath in he summed it all up. “That is pretty much what Wee School is all about. One table for those with peanut butter and another for those without.” He immediately started back on the salt and left me to reflect on that nugget of wisdom. Two days later I am still not sure what it all means, but I am convinced he is really on to something there, perhaps a deeper understanding of life. The metaphor is so intricate and layered I may even write a book on it one day.

Two tables. Two disparate groups daily changing constitution based on possession. One Wee School. That is what it is all about. Mind boggling.

I Hate MLB! [Jay]

2007-06-26T21:37:00.000-04:00

I hate Major League Baseball. There, I said it and I will not take it back. Baseball was the great American pastime of my youth. My father and I grabbed our old weathered and perfectly worn gloves and threw the ball every chance we got. I get a huge lump in my throat when Costner asks his father if he wants to have a catch at the end of Field of Dreams. (Just writing about that scene makes me misty) When the guys in City Slickers say that no matter how messed up their relationship with their father got they could always talk about baseball and that was real, I get it. I even love the line in Searching for Bobby Fisher when Joan Allen asks Joe Mantegna, “How many little boys go up to bat in baseball afraid they are going to lose their father’s love if they strike out?” and he yells back, “All of them!” A baseball bat signed by Hank Aaron hangs in my den/kids playroom and I long to pass that item on to my son one day as a prized heirloom. And yet, I now hate Major League Baseball.

This started as I was driving around tonight running errands. An ESPN radio commentator asked the question; what is a bigger accomplishment, getting 3,000 hits (Craig Biggio) or hitting 600 home runs (Sammy Sosa)? Then he said the thing that set me off. “Some people are going to want to throw out the word “steroids” but I want to avoid that if at all possible.” And now I hate MLB. I hate it because that idiotic attitude is what got us here. I hate it because two great current players that do not show signs of steroid use, Ken Griffey Jr. and Frank Thomas, are at the end of splendid careers that seem somehow diminished because they are not hitting towering home runs and breaking decades old power records in their late 30's like other more obviously chemically enhanced sluggers are. I hate it because the refusal to address terrible deficiencies in the game has been rationalized and excused under the conceit of “tradition.” I hate the fact that you can usually set the final standings of any division in the preseason because many teams can not compete. I hate the fact that every reporter that covered MLB for the last 30 years admits that everyone knew that these players were on steroids, but they were so happy ratings were back up to pre-strike numbers that they did not want to ruin it. I hate the fact that every modern day record ought to be looked at suspiciously. Yes that includes Cal Ripken Jr. as one of the principle benefits of steroids is injury recovery. Yes it includes the long career of our generations most dominant pitcher Roger Clemens. Everything is tainted! Everything is suspect! And all Major League Baseball and the paid pundits can do is say that they want avoid the montrous glaring elephant in the room and that “real” fans are not fixated on this!

Mostly, I hate MLB because the bat on my wall means something because the accomplishment by the man that set that record was momentous. Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays. Those are the names that I think of when you say home run hitters. Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and Barry Bonds are the names that come to my mind when you say steroids. Years from now I will give my son the Hank Aaron baseball bat. I will tell him about the record, about Babe Ruth and the M-A-N, man who fought more than time and major league pitching to ascend that mountain, but the irrational hatred of other men as well. I will tell him that growing up in Atlanta, this young white man worshiped that athlete without any idea that we were different. Something and someone that Major League Baseball and our national pastime can and should celebrate.

In a few short days an unapologetic steroid abusing self centered grouch named Barry Bonds will become the new all time home run record holder of Major League Baseball. This record should not have an asterisk by it. MLB ought to have to live with the shame it cultivated, ignored, and ultimately tacitly encouraged for a long time. This ugly black eye is what MLB deserves. This pock mark on its conceited face that will hopefully last a long, long time. Maybe A-Rod will help them out and remove it for them. Hopefully, the embarrassing and painful exhibition of watching the greatest record held by a genuinely courageous player fall to Barry Bonds while the nation stands by and cringes will wake them up once and for all about the state of affairs in a game that ought to have so much to celebrate. I sincerely doubt it will though, and that is why I hate Major League Baseball

U.S. Wins Gold Cup [Jay]

2007-06-24T21:44:00.000-04:00

The US Defeated Mexico in the Gold Cup Final today 2 -1. This is the second consecutive Gold Cup championship and the first time we have beaten Mexico in the finals of this tournament. An interesting thing occured while watching this game. Apparently, the people working in the kitchen of the establishment where I watch such things were largely fans of Mexico, while the patrons were all U.S. fans. Additionally, we were watching the game on satellite TV while they were listening on the radio. This meant that we had short lag time between the explosions of reaction from the kitchen and our chance to find out what happened on TV. The Mexican goal was so much more depressing when you knew it was coming. It was like watching a predestined event. The Mexican player is streaking down the side and you hear the kitchen celebrating and cheering. Now you know something awful is happening and you can do nothing to stop it. Also, my 4 year old son decided that soccer fans are way too prone to explosive yelling for his taste. He chose to stay with daddy at the restaurant while Tawnii ran some errands. His studies of the number four were periodically interrupted by moments of sheer terror as adult men spontaneously screamed in one accord.

Anyway, the next tournament is the Copa America. Group play begins Tuesday night. We are in Group C with Argentina. They are really good. We play them this Thursday night at 8:50 ET. Mexico plays Brazil Wednesday night at 8:50 so if you are out at a restaurant this week and the kitchen explodes with celebration you have been warned. Don’t count on it though, as Brazil is usually the best team in the world.

A little Premier League News Flash: Thierry Henry is leaving the EPL for La Liga’s Barcelona. Henry is one of the greats of the game. This is wonderful news for Chelsea fans everywhere. Possibly bad news for Real Madrid fans. I am both, so this is a terribly conflicting moment.

Free Fallin' [Bob]

2007-06-23T10:05:00.000-04:00

I've been flying airplanes for 25+ years now and it has never occurred to me to jump out of one -- unless, of course, it was on fire. So when my wife and kids surprised me for Father's Day with a skydiving ticket I was, shall we say, less than enthused. They told me I could wait to decide whether or not I really wanted to do it.

"Yeah Dad," said my oldest (home from West Point with his first two free fall jumps completed and scheduled for his third with me), "we can just go out to dinner or something ... and you can wear your dress."

That was enough to put me over the edge -- literally. If you've seen previews for the reality show "Wedding Crashers" on NBC, my instructor is the guy who skydives into the wedding party and destroys the gazebo. He's a piece of work. While "training" me he covered all contingencies and added, "Now if there is a problem with the reserve chute, I need you to take a deep breath, relax and hold it for about 20 seconds ... that way you will be my airbag when we hit the ground."

Nice.

During the free fall from 13,000' to 5000', he seemed less concerned than I was about our situation. Is he really asleep while I'm checking our altitude?!

Anyway, it was the most exhilarating thing I think I've ever done. No way to describe it.

I have had an infatuation with flying since I was 5 or 6 years old. It's all I've ever wanted to do. But after 25 years of actually doing it, flying has become nothing more than a job to me ... with four exceptions. The first was my introduction to soaring with my friend Buddy Denham in a two-seat glider at Woodbine, Maryland in 1984. The second was entering "the break" (traffic pattern) at 400 knots, then stopping in mid-air in my first hop in a Harrier in 1986. The third was a Stearman (open cockpit bi-plane) ride in California's wine country with my best friend (and wife) as a 40th birthday gift in 1999. This was the fourth.

Each of them is burned into my memory forever. When I dreamed of flying as a kid these were what the dreams were made of. Quiet, peaceful, free from "the surly bonds of earth," gazing down at the majesty of the Creation. It is good to be reminded of what first drew me to the air.

My thanks and love to my wife and kids for an afternoon I will never forget.

Rare Canadian Soccer Fan Spotted [Jay]

2007-06-22T09:11:00.001-04:00

The US won their Gold Cup semi-final match last night against Canada 2-1. The ending was controverisal with an on-sides goal called off-sides against Canada in the final minute of stoppage and some strange distributions of Yellow and Red cards in the game.

But by far the craziest thing that I saw all night was an honest to goodness die hard Canadian National Team soccer fan in the heart of Marietta, Georgia. I do not want to stereotype here, but I was unaware that the people of the Maple Leaf got excited about much other than hockey and …well hockey. The idea that a Canadian man exists that would shriek “Cheater!” at the big screen when an American executes a hard slide tackle or would jump up and obnoxiously celebrate the one goal “Oh, Canada” scored in the midst of a very partisan (and surprisingly large) US contingent at the restaurant boggles the mind. The idea that such a man can be encountered this far south is incredible. I had to fight the urge to put an ear tag on him and track his movements. This is a rare beast indeed. I might have been less surprised if a Gryphon had lighted on the roof of the building after the game.

Remember that Canadians are out there amongst us. They look just like us and the do not necessarily have to say “eh” or “oot and aboot.” Until the moment this man accused an American player of cheap shots, I thought he was one of us. It is scary. And even worse, he was nowhere near as polite as Canadians are famous for being. He was every bit the psychotic soccer fan everyone else watching the game was. Except he was Canadian. I still can’t make sense of it.

US versus Mexico in the finals Sunday.

Researchers Ignite Bear Paternity Controversy [Jay]

2007-06-20T23:22:00.000-04:00

State bear managers in Montana caught a 7 foot 6 inch grizzly bear that weighed 750 lbs. after hibernation. The bruin is the second largest male bear ever caught and tagged in this area and the researchers, in an effort to demonstrate why they are scientists and not even a touch cool or original, named the bear “Big Daddy.” Mike Madel, bear management specialist with the state Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, said he “wonders if the bear he trapped this spring was sired by the largest male grizzly ever recorded in the Northern Rockies: an 8-foot, 800-plus pound bruin trapped in 2003 in the Blackleaf Wildlife Management Area northwest of Choteau.

‘This bear,’ he said, ‘looked very much like that bear.’

Madel collected hair from the 2003 bear, but an Idaho lab lost the samples, making it impossible to know if they're related.”

When asked to comment, Big Daddy’s alleged father said, “There is no proof that boy is mine. His mother and I hardly knew each other. Madel is crazy. That kid looks like every other grizzly in the area.”

Big Daddy, aka Dennis, said, “We all know the truth. I mean look at my eyes. I don’t need him anyway. I have made it on my own all this time.”

Madel could not be reached for further comment as he was unexpectedly mauled.

HT: The Drudge Report

Soccer Post Time [Jay]

2007-06-19T17:17:00.000-04:00

Now is the time to pick your favorite English Premier League Club and start to prepare for next season. The Really?!! team has two teams set:

Jason is an avid Arsenal fan. I am a Chelsea nut.

If you are not familiar with the insanity of Premiership football (Soccer for we Americans) then go to this site,pick a team and root for them all of next season. You can also look at teams here as well. I will update you on weekly standings and Cup competitions starting in August.

Here is how they all finished in the Premier League Standings last season.

Chelsea did win the FA Cup (Beat Manchester United) and the Carling Cup (beat Arsenal). If you pick Tottenham you will immediately be Jason's mortal enemy.

***United States plays Canada this Thursday at7pm in the Gold Cup Semi-Finals***

What Do You Get When You Give A Terrorist A State? [Jay]

2007-06-15T08:48:00.000-04:00

I thought that they were terrorist because they did not have their own state? Well apparently they are terrorists no matter where you put them. Love the dress code Hamas. Thank you for trying to teach us this lesson. I somehow think there are those who still believe the answer to your behavior will be to give you more of what you want. Baffling.

Just Wave You Ungrateful &#@$! [Jay]

2007-06-13T22:36:00.000-04:00

Here I sit in traffic and once again there is a fellow human being who needs to get in my lane. I ease off of the accelerator and wave them in, because civilization is built on such niceties. The person comes over and I smile and wait...and wait...and wait...

Where is my wave? Who do you think you are? The Queen of Sheba? The Prince of Persia? Do you think that you have some divine right to enter the space in front of me without so much as a half hearted acknowledgment that I LET YOU IN?!!

I want my trifling insignificant wave! Lift your hand in the most pitifully easy and effort free motion known to man and move it in some fashion. Let me know that you are aware that I am here and the area that your automobile now occupies belonged to me just moments ago. I ceded it to you because I am polite and believe in the civility that is the backbone of all that is good in our blessed nation. We carry each other, and help each other even though we are complete strangers. And when you fail to wave you threaten that order! You make me want to ram my car into yours to prove my point!

Non-wavers, know this truth. Your are treading on the very grace that got you where you wanted to be by refusing to do something any two year old can learn to handle correctly. When others do something nice for you, break out of your bitter, angry, ego centric existence long enough to make your hand visible in thanks and we will all get along just fine. Failing to do so makes you an enemy of truth, justice, and (Oh, yeah! I am going there!) THE AMERICAN WAY!

God bless the U.S.A and remember to wave to your fellow Americans!

Is There A Message Here? [Bob]

2007-06-10T22:51:00.000-04:00

So we're driving up I-75 today when we spotted a fairly nice minivan which had its entire rear end (bumper, rear door, partial rear window) COVERED with bumper stickers. Though this is not an actual photo of said van, it is a fairly good representation (and please pardon the offensive ones -- this is what I found with as an example with a quick Google image search). An incomplete list of the ones I can remember from today included the following:

"War is not a family value"
"Listen to the Earth"
"Crawford Texas called, their village is missing its idiot"

... you get the picture...

My wife, who I am proud to say, had no use for politics until I corrupted her into quite an opinionated political monster, made the following observation:

"Why is it that whenever you see a van plastered with bumper stickers like that, it is ALWAYS a liberal?!"

Now that is not only a good observation, but a great question. I invite all who visit here to offer explanations for this bizarre phenomenon.

Impossible Dreams [Tawnii]

2007-06-09T21:33:00.000-04:00

When did virginity become an impossibility? I must have missed that memo.

In the past few weeks, I have been repeatedly told that the maintenance of my daughter’s virginity until she is married is just not a viable reality. PEOPLE, SHE’S NOT EVEN THREE YEARS OLD YET! Call me old fashioned. Call me an idealist. Call me a winged princess of the magical realm of Narnia, if you will. But I am not ready to write off my daughter’s purity.
Planned Parenthood defines "continuous abstinence" as not having any sexual play as opposed to "periodic abstinence" which means you only have sexual play sometimes. (I’m curious, does that mean that somewhere out there are people who are having continuous sex?) They claim the drawback to continuous abstinence is that most people find it difficult, especially when they find themselves in sexual situations. Well, gee. Who could possibly expect their child to do something difficult?

My daughter at under three is fearless. She tackles every piece of playground equipment she can get near regardless of height or age recommendations. She can already dribble a soccer ball and hold her own when wrestling her much older male cousins. She even begs her father to let her tackle a full size climbing wall. Does this sound like a girl who couldn’t possibly handle something others have found to be "difficult"?

Of course, we’re not talking about a climbing wall...we’re talking about sex. Could I realistically expect a girl to wait until marriage to engage in such a media celebrated, socially accepted (and for the most part expected) behavior? YES-- I DID! I know what you’re thinking. I must have grown up in a quiet little Amish town where I was never tempted, or perhaps I was severely overweight and unattractive, or maybe I just had no interest in sex. Wrong! I grew up in an upper-middle class suburb, was attractive enough to garner offers, and was interested enough in sex that my friends felt obligated to warn my fiancé not to be afraid if I came out of the gates on the honeymoon a bit strong...after all, I had been saving up for over twenty-eight years. Of course, many people would argue that times have changed. In regards to having sex, no they haven’t. It is still a yes or no question. Sure, there may be more offers at a younger age and an information superhighway of porn and sexual playthings, but her response to all of those pressures will ultimately be reduced to a choice of one of two words: yes or no.

So, I am standing my ground with my old fashioned ideals (and my wings) my daughter deserves to have someone rooting for her...aren’t I the logical choice?

O-VER-RAT-ED! [Jay]

2007-06-08T13:42:00.000-04:00

Here is a quick list of random but overrated things and people with absolutely no justification given or explanation offered. This is intuited all the way.

1. George Clooney
2. NASCAR
3. American Beauty (The Movie)
4. Gore Vidal
5. The Nobel Peace Prize
6. Notre Dame Football
7. Aaron Sorkin
8. Dan Marino
9. Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans
10. J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye

And one thing that is as good as advertised:
Dental Floss

Gisele's Advice to my Daughter [Jay]

2007-06-07T13:32:00.000-04:00

I thought about doing an article on this, making fun of supermodel Gisele Bundchen’s speaking out against the Roman Catholic Church’s teachings on sex, condoms, and abortion. Then I realized that making fun of her would be only momentarily satisfying. Her arguments are not unusual, and many people that are not best known for looking good in clothes hold the position that she expresses. So let us look at her claims and leave the beautiful Gisele alone.

Gisele says:

"Today, no one is a virgin when they get married,”…

"To prohibit condoms is ridiculous, just think of all the diseases transmitted without them," the 26-year-old supermodel told the newspaper.

She added: "How is it possible to not want people to use condoms and also not have abortions? It's impossible, I'm sorry."

Let me see if I can break down the position endorsed by this statement. She seems comfortable with the fact that the pool of sexually active adults is rather contaminated with disease, or else she would not use the spread of disease as a supporting argument for condom use. She also seems to have grasped the idea that unplanned pregnancies often end in abortion. She actually claims that abortion naturally follows unplanned pregnancy and it is impossible to imagine a world where this is not a fact. Oh yeah, unmarried individuals universally practice sex.

Let us play pretend for a moment. My young daughter is now a hormonally charged teenager. She comes to me and says, “Dad, I want to have sex. What can you tell me about this?”

Gisele desires me to say the following:

“Sissie, you can not be expected to not have sex before you are married. Let’s be honest, everyone is doing it. Furthermore the group of young men you wish to engage in these acts are increasingly infected with sexually transmitted bacteria and viruses. So make sure you have a full stock of condoms that are successful against guarding you from infection and pregnancy at varying levels based on the competence of the young teenage boy we are trusting to use said condoms correctly. This will give you a better than average chance of not contracting a lifelong disease. Also, if you get pregnant it naturally follows that you will get an abortion, and you may have noticed that Daddy hates abortion more than premarital sex. So protect yourself with condoms and spare me the details, please.”

Gee, that does sound like a good way to keep her relatively disease and abortion free. The Catholic Church would have me tell her the following:

“Sissie, sex is something that God intended for you and the one that you are committed to in a marriage relationship. It is normal for you to be curious about it, but you need to be aware the God’s law is not unreasonable and is meant to protect you. You can not see sexually transmitted infections, and a large percentage of the people that have them are unaware. Condoms are not 100% reliable to protect you from these bacteria and viruses of differing levels of consequences up to and including infertility, birth defects in your children, and death. That means that I can not endorse that you use them because I want my daughter 100% protected from consequences that will impact her life forever. Furthermore, young women who get pregnant feel incredible pressure to “fix” the problem through abortion. As much as I do not want you to get pregnant, I abhor elective abortion and know that the only way for you to avoid that pressure is to wait. It is not easy and it may not even be the norm, but waiting will give you the best opportunity to enjoy all of the things that life has to offer from a healthy sex life with your husband to raising children. If you think it is impossible talk to your mother and several of our friends who managed to pull this “impossible” feat off. Again, spare me the details on the sex life.”

Sorry Gisele. Your ideas lead me to giving advice that sounds a little more likely to produce abortions and sexually transmitted infections in my daughter. I do understand that the latter position may require that I am willing to be unpopular with my daughter and provide actual parental boundaries, but I am OK with that. I am giving this one to the Catholic Church, but I appreciate you thinking about this. Let me know whatever else occurs to you on the runway and I will consider

Obama Hates Hair Bands [Jay]

2007-06-05T14:20:00.000-04:00

Drudge Report had the following headline today:

Obama Warns of 'Quiet Riot' Among Blacks

In the article, Obama asserts that “the Bush administration has done nothing to defuse a "quiet riot" among blacks…”

Quiet Riot could not be reached for comment, but a die hard fan I asked said “the band just wants to play Come on Feel the Noise and melt faces off. They do not care what color the audience is.”

Story Developing.

The Griswolds Go To Canada [Bob]

2007-06-03T23:09:00.000-04:00

Our clan has never been camping. We always thought it would be too difficult (dangerous?) with little kids. OK, that's a lame excuse but it's the best I can come up with. So, now that our youngest has turned 10, we decided to join my wife's brother and his family for their annual Memorial Day camping extravaganza to the Pinery Provincial Park in Ontario. Beautiful place right on Lake Huron. We pulled into our site only to find that everyone surrounding us -- and I mean everyone -- was a professional camper.

Yeah, and here we were with our newly bought tent, a bunch of tarps still wrapped in their original packaging, 14 pocket knives (somehow the boys thought that packing a pocket knife, or two, would automatically transform them into "campers"), a few pots and pans, a camping stove that we had never used and ... well, you get the picture. As we unloaded our van I felt the pall of an unidentifiable doom descending onto my shoulders.

Oh wait. No, that was just rain.

We had done a practice tent set up in the backyard at home, but that trial run did NOT include the somewhat more complicated task of identifying the "perfect" spot on which the tent should rest. I won't bore you with the details but I will offer advice to those rookie campers who are less experienced than we ...

Though you doubt the odds of it, it may rain every day you are there.
Probably not a good idea to climb a tree to saw off a branch that is encroaching on the "perfect" spot for your tent. First, it's illegal (as your neighboring campers will soon let you know). Second, hanging parallel to the ground and sawing don't go well together. I offer as evidence denuded forearms and a bruised shoulder.
As for sawing, may I suggest a sharp saw that does NOT jump out of its assigned groove to unapologetically attack your too-close-for-comfort thumb. The Frankenstein resembling gash you get from such an encounter will ache for the rest of your camping trip and bleed profusely, thereby posing the danger of attracting vermin.
As for vermin, leaving the bread on the picnic table when you leave the campsite area is not a good idea. Yes, the vermin can identify food even if it is still in the "wrapper." Failure to adhere to this guideline will render you bread-less for the rest of your stay.
Raccoons are bigger than you think. When you hear them rummaging around the campsite after you've called it a night, shining your flashlight in their beady little eyes will not faze them in the least. However, if your wife is looking over your shoulder as you do so, her blood-curdling scream may attract more unwanted attention than you desire.
Everybody can hear everything you say from the tent next door. 'Nuf said about that.
Kids DO NOT understand the concept of keeping the sand, dirt, mud and water on the OUTSIDE of the tent -- no matter their age.
Though you may think you're really smart hoisting a giant tarp above your campsite to protect you from the rain (did I mention it rained all weekend?), and though you may actually think you've done well to have the tarp drain away from your tent -- if the tarp drains to a point that is uphill from your tent, the water will eventually find its way downhill to puddle at your tent's front door.
Smoke follows ugly too.
It will take you 8 days (or 9 showers -- whichever comes first) to get the smoke smell out of your hair.
Lake Huron in May is really stinkin' cold.

There is more but I forget it all. Having said all that I must also include the good stuff ...

The Great Lakes have THE BEST round, flat skipping stones on Earth.
The Official World's Record for skipping a stone is 16. This includes an estimate of 6 or 7 for that part when they seemingly hover on the water with miniature skips right at the end. This record is not contestable -- even in a court of law.
Your kids will never forget the skipping stones contest. They will, however, collect buckets full of those perfect skipping stones for use on small ponds around your home neighborhood. Being calm, these ponds could provide the perfect location to break the Official World's Record for skipping a stone ... stay tuned for updates.
Though the water temperature on Lake Huron approaches absolute zero, you must still enter the contest to see who will be the first one to go all the way under water. It's a test of manhood -- even if your wife wins.
The Official World's Largest Ant Hill is in the Pinery Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada. We almost stepped in it.
On the hike when you find the Official World's Largest Ant Hill, you may not stay on the well-marked trail meant for hiking. That's boring. Climbing steep cliffs, wielding sticks as weapons, and finding the poison ivy is much more fun and memorable.
It is possible for teenage (and pre-teen) boys to spend 3 days NOT surgically attached to a computer or video game but outside in the fresh air. In doing this they can also thoroughly enjoy themselves -- even if it is raining outside -- and not declare that they are bored or that there is "nothing to do."
"The Camping Song" and "It's Gonna Be A Fine Day," when played from the stereo speakers of your van at 270 decibels, will cause you, and many of those around you (some of whom you have never met in your life), to dance and jump around like complete fools. This especially true when said songs are played immediately following a downpour and prior the next one starting.

Camping is the best vacation because the fun doesn't end when the trip is over! When you get home you get to set up all your tents and spread out all your tarps again to clean off the sand, and dirt, and mud, and water (on the inside AND outside of the tent). Then you get to dry them and refold/repack them all for a second time. You get to hose off all your chairs, air out all your sleeping bags and wash all your clothes (8 days or 9 times, whichever comes first) to get the smoke smell out of them.

It's the vacation that never ends -- especially if it rains every day.

The Mask Plays [Jay]

2007-06-01T13:55:00.000-04:00

Yeah, there are so many important issues about border control, world wide epidemic control, and medically resistant TB set loose on my home town.

But am I the only one who thinks the mask is a good look? Mysterious, sterile, and somehow alluring. Remember when the OJ chase spurred people to buy White Broncos? I am thinking that I ought to buy one of those masks and get ahead of the trend on this one.

Oh, yeah. I Remember this Feeling [Jay]

2007-06-01T10:17:00.000-04:00

There are things that I thought were no longer a part of my life. Moments that marked our childhood, like going in to your mother or father and explaining that you were very innocently playing Bruce Lee in the basement and you somehow mistook a lamp for Chuck Norris in Return of the Dragon. I once was forced by circumstances almost entirely beyond my control to inform my friend’s parents that my car was hanging off the bridge that they had inexplicably located in the middle of their driveway. You know the shining moments of your life where it is inescapable that you have done something colossally stupid and you have no option but to tell an authority figure. I believed that those days were long past and that my life had entered the stage where I could expect to be the one being told bad news instead of delivering it.

That was until last night when I had to sulk into my local Quicktrip and tell the cashier in his early twenties that I had driven away from the pump with his nozzle still in my tank. Yeah, I could take solace in the fact that apparently this happens enough that they design the nozzles to break away. I could plead the distraction of a difficult day combined with several mitigating factors that conspired to create this humiliating moment. I was multi-tasking at the time. You try cleaning windows, returning videos to the library for my wife, learning how to use my new device that allows me to play my ATRAC on my car radio, enjoying the rhythm of “Atomic Dog,” and pumping gas all at the same time. The cashier clearly was not too worried by the news. He just looked mildly surprised and assured me that it was all right. Another patron even remarked how much fun the whole incident was to witness. (He was even younger than the cashier was and so it was look stupid in front of young people night for Jay)

All that rationalizing aside, you probably do not know how stupid this feels. Let me walk you through it. I pulled away from the pump with George Clinton pleading that it is just the dog in him as a defense for his behavior and feeling relatively cool. Then a strange sound and the unmistakable vibration of something falling off of my car stopped all of that. As I pull over, my mind is racing about what I could possibly have left on the roof that made that noise. A quick glance toward the pump reveals nothing odd on the ground. I immediately park at a strange angle in the QT lot, and jump out of the car worried for one moment that someone will think I am idiot for having stopped there. Then I see the nozzle still hanging from my car and check the pump to see the severed line dangling from the place I just left, and I am now certain that it will not be my parking that betrays my idiocy to the customers of the local QT. Leaving the nozzle on the ground next to the pump seemed like the best option for some reason, and I realize that I have to go in and tell them what I have done. This Quicktrip is about 1 mile away from my house and I visit it daily. They know me. On the short drive to the door I start to make the decision of how to break the news to the cashier. Has an alarm gone off in the store? Do I cavalierly barge through the door and pronounce it as if I was proud? Do I sulk in and beg forgiveness? I decide the self-deprecating, “I am such an idiot” approach is the best as it is the most honest as well. And here I am, sitting in the parking lot of QT revisiting a sick feeling I believed had long since been left in my youth. The quiet moment of reflection before I inform someone in authority that I have broken something important and have no idea what the consequences will be. One thought races through my mind, “I am in so much trouble.”

Hail to the Chieffff!! [Jay]

2007-06-01T09:16:00.000-04:00

New jobs for tommorrow!! That is grreat nnewss!!!

HT: Drudge Report

Men: See Hair, Cut Hair [Jay]

2007-05-29T15:20:00.000-04:00

Men, it is time that we discussed stray hairs and grooming. All too often I am trying to have a conversation with a fellow man only to be incredibly distracted by the virtual shrub growing out of his nose, or the wild and untamed eyebrows that remind me of Thufir Hawat from the David Lynch film DUNE.(For the uninitiated, those are big honkin' eyebrows) Perhaps I am discussing important issues with an otherwise well-groomed individual that appears to have small rodents living in his ears. I had a boss who was a successful small businessman and man of education who had embraced the Howard Hughes approach to his fingernails. He let them grow uncomfortably long until every conversation we had was drowned out by my inner monologue trying to figure out why this does not gross him out the way it does me and “WHAT IS THAT STUFF UNDER YOUR NAILS?!!”

My point is that as adults we are all aware that hair grows. So do finger nails. We ought to have a full inventory by now of all of our accessories that need occasional attention. If some new patch of hair has started to grow at a more accelerated pace then cut it back more often. It is your responsibility.

Lest you confuse this advice with vanity, I make the following distinction. Vanity is more of an obsession about how you look to please some idea about yourself. Cut your nose hairs for the rest of us. Control the ear hair, the Groucho Marx eyebrows, and the creepy finger nails for all of humanity. I promise you that the time investment is not prohibitive. Before you leave look in the mirror and say, “Is there any stray hair that will be drawing attention away from my witty repartee and banter? Does some ungroomed aspect of my appearance overwhelm my personality?” Here is a check list for you all to make it easier: Nose, ears, eyebrows, finger nails.

As a general rule, remember that you can not be cool or good looking enough to overcome these three things: Terrible body odor, rancid bad breath, and wild patches of hair growing out of inappropriate places. We are usually solid on the first two. We need to work a little on the hair thing. It is that important. I am not over reacting. I post this out of love for all of my brothers right now that think they are laying on the charm, while the beautiful woman they are talking to is transfixed and horrified by the explosion of nose hair that is at her eye level and impossible to miss. It is a “show killer” fellas.

Transformers HD Trailer [Jay]

2007-05-27T00:27:00.000-04:00

How is it that a 36 year-old husband and father of two with a serious job and a passion for social and cultural reform in the United States can get so stupidly excited about seeing Optimus Prime?

Oh well, if you want to see him as well, here is the link to the new Yahoo preview.

Go Autobots!! OP RULES!!

The Decline and Fall of Line Etiquette [Jay]

2007-05-25T21:35:00.000-04:00

I am becoming increasingly convinced that you can chart the degradation and general decline of our culture through the respect or lack their own for lines. I know Francis Schaeffer would have us look at art and architecture or the fascination with pancratium, but I really think that lines are the bellwether for the condition of our society.

Think about it, in a broad sense of what a line is, they exist everywhere. A line of traffic waiting to get off the freeway at a particular exit, waiting in line to get into the newest blockbuster movie, awaiting your chance to ride a roller coaster, the DMV, fast food restaurants, waiting with your kids for their chance to get on a swing, etc. Everywhere we go we wait in line. And more and more, everywhere we go some dip wad thinks that they are above the line, looks to cheat the concept of the line, abuses the person holding their place in line, etc.

There are those of us who believe in the sanctity of the line. We understand that the line is the measuring rod of our system of order. No one wants to wait in line, but we all queue up and wait our turn. We know that mass chaos and anarchy ensues if we run to the front. The will of the strong becomes the law of the land if we suddenly fight to skirt the process. All culture would devolve into a Nietzschean “will to power” petri dish where all that matters is who is willing and able to exercise the most force to circumnavigate the tedious time of waiting for everyone who arrived first to go first. We know, as well as we know that if you light a fuse to a bomb then the bomb will explode, that throwing out the time honored tradition of waiting your turn is the end of all things civilized.

Then there are those who think the rest of us are just stupid. They cheat, and jump to the front of the line. They sometimes use the “I am so innocently dumb I had no idea there was a line so please let me in” approach, as a coworker of my wife did for years. She drives past traffic everyday in a “turn only” lane, and then everyday she acts so embarrassed and smiles at some idiotic man. He, being desperate for any attention from a woman apparently, very chivalrously enables this travesty for one more day. Sometimes they blatantly break, but refuse to make any type of eye contact to avoid the shaking of fists and evil stares that the rest of us law abiding citizens use to no effect as our only limp and useless weapon in this war. But more and more the line breaker is an outright scofflaw.

At Six Flags over Georgia, my wife and I, my brother in-law, and sister in-law were waiting to ride Goliath when we noticed a very large and EXTREMELY unpleasant looking women boldly enter the line in the middle in outright violation of the clearly posted rules of line etiquette. THEN, when she reached the front a whole herd of VERY large and ultra unpleasant looking children that could have only been sired by this woman came barging through the line telling everyone that “their mother was at the front and that they had to meet her.” Many people in the line protested and argued but eventually they got to the front because the institutions that create these lines long ago ceased to enforce the posted rules and penalties. Instead, the park employees sat in plain view of the rest of us text messaging some friend and chatting up co-workers while on the clock, leaving the rest of us to deal with the disorder and disrespect without the authority to punish. I could go on and on with anecdotes of rudeness including the ever popular throw your small children to the front and wander up later like you have NO idea how they got to the front so fast, but aren’t they SOOO cute, but posts are supposed to be relatively short and the list of serious violations is long and ever growing.

That is my point. This happens everywhere. The line is being abused more and more. People take advantage of the fact that the rest of us respect the system to bypass the cost of order. Line jumpers! Scoff laws!! How does it continue? Because those who ought to protect the integrity of the line no longer care. They are too busy looking angry that employment is necessary and treating costumers like a terrible burden they must endure. They leave us alone to sort it out. We can only speculate where management is and what they are doing while these highly qualified and motivated teenagers are running these establishments. One thing is certain. The seeds of anarchy grow as those who want to maintain order without proper authority have no alternative but to revert to the rule of power. The whole system is awry. The worse the lines get, the more I fear for our culture.

Say it with me...NEWS ORGANIZATION [Jay]

2007-05-24T09:33:00.000-04:00

I am sitting at my desk working and a radio promo for a nighttime news show comes on. “There is a new form of TB out there, it is deadly, and there is no cure, tune into ______________ tonight to find out what you and your family need to know.”

Really?!! News organizations are running commercials where they claim to have possibly life saving information for me and my family and they are TEASING me with it? NEWS ORGANIZATIONS!!

Perhaps you do not remember that there was a time when news organizations believed that there job was to get important news to the public. There was a time that making certain that I knew what measures I needed to take to save my family from a deadly medically resistant strain of TB would have been more important than whether I watched there show that night. No more! The commercial’s message, watch our show or you and your family might die!!!

Now maybe they are exaggerating the danger to peak my interest. Is that better? What a great world we live in when NEWS ORGANIZATIONS are trying to create a healthy fear of imminent death to raise their ratings. Super!

Here is a wild idea. Why don’t you report the news that we need to know? Instead of acting like a sit-com or a network soap oepra, why don’t you try giving me the information that you have that is important to me and let me decide if I want to get more details by watching your extended report later. I am not a huge fan of local news precisely because of this type of nonsense. If it is a slow news cycle, do us all a favor and DO NOT make a small story more dangerous sounding than it is. I studied journalism in college and am familiar with the order of importance of news items. (Death comes before injury, which comes before property damage) But would it be the worse thing in the world to open local newscasts by saying, “Thank God, we have little to report tonight in the way of mayhem and death?” Oh yeah, people are less likely to watch when they are not terrified to miss your show. That justifies it all.

put down the cell phone and no one will get hurt [Tawnii]

2007-05-22T15:04:00.000-04:00

FROM THE DESK OF TAWNII BOULEVARDE:

As any good mother of young children can attest, we are true survival artists.

I remember as a child watching "Let's Make a Deal" and marveling at the last five minutes of the show. Those of you too young to know what I am refering to, the host would wander around the audience handing out cash to anyone who could produce certain objects not normally found in one's pocket or purse (ie a boiled egg, a light bulb, etc). I wondered how anyone could anticipate what would be needed in that moment.

As MOYC, I have spent the last four and a half years attempting to master the bag of the unexpected. My sister-in-law has a flair for producing anything a child between the ages of 3 months and 7 years could possibly desire as a source of entertainment while waiting for food to be served in a restaurant. Her bag, a small, sleek, black backpack reminds me of the magically bottomless carpetbag sported by Mary Poppins. I have seen her produce colorbooks and crayons, matchbox cars, rattles, books (enough for not only her children, but any others within earshot as well), and enough individually bagged snacks to feed the Osmond Clan. She is my baglady hero.

In addition to the bottomless bag, before leaving the house, I must run through the twenty minute "We need to leave right now" drill. This includes an often lengthy hunt for one shoe and the ever popular "you're going to try whether you think you need to go or not" speech. This ritual is frequently interupted by phone solicitations (let me save them some time: I don't get to listen to the radio, I rarely get to go out to movies, and I buy the cheapest brand, and I have no extra money to buy a subscription to anything...SO STOP CALLING ME!)

Thanks to the safety regulations of our day (how ever did we survive our own childhoods without all of these precautions?), my children cannot be self sufficient about getting in our out of the car. I must open childproof locks and buckle five point harnesses before placing the magical bag and myself in the car. (Extra equipment that must be packed in the car at all times includes windbreakers, umbrellas, an all purpose medical bag, and a change of clothes for each of us--the kids accidents are not always self-contained).

Now I am ready for the drive to the store. Once I park my car, I shift to high gear. This is not a casual stroll through the food mart, people. I have goals; I have a list; I have two ticking time bombs in the driver's seats of the car buggy. The window of shop time is constantly shrinking. I must reach the car before either one needs to go potty, take a nap, or figure out how to drive the buggy into the endcaps.

So, now that you have a somewhat clearer picture of what we MOYC are in the midst of when you see us at the grocery store, if you still consider yourself too valuable an employee to waste your time bagging our groceries, helping us to the car, or distracting our children, then could you at least be so kind as to not block the exits while talking on your cell phone because if you do it again, I WILL RUN YOU DOWN WITHOUT REMORSE AND ENCOURAGE ALL OTHER MOYC TO DO LIKEWISE!

A Little Help? [Jay]

2007-05-08T22:43:00.001-04:00

If anyone has any information on a little monster that my son has seen skulking around our house every morning, I would appreciate some help. His general description is as follows:

He is a small (rat sized)flesh colored robot. He lacks knees so he clickety clacks when he walks. He wears a Batman shirt and Monster and friends(??) shorts. He is bald and answers to the name Mr. Shorty Pants.

My son says that he is from New York and his family's house just gets up and walks around. Apparently he comes to our home when his house hits the Atlanta area, which lately is every night. Any information on this particular monster would help. I have convinced my son that the stuffed gorilla and bulldog that I sat at his door to keep watch can handle the problem, but Joey, my son's invisible friend that refuses to go home, thinks this is a stop gap measure at best.

Just to Say Something [Jay]

2007-05-07T11:02:00.000-04:00

After some pressure to post something irrelevant I am taking the advice of a friend and writing what I know best. Things that really bother me. Here is a short list of some pet peeves:

1. People who use the term “pet peeves!”
2. Anyone who calls a chimpanzee a monkey. If you do not know why then consider yourself warned and look up chimpanzees and monkeys in an encyclopedia.
3. People who applaud movies at the end. It is not a stage show, the actors can not hear your appreciation and the projector operator’s job is getting easier every day. Who are you applauding?
4. All other drivers.
5. Any person who walks slowly across the parking lot while I wait because they seem to think that they are so tough that they do not have to fear my car. Newsflash, tough guy! The only thing that prevents your flesh and bone body from being horribly crushed by my gas powered steel projectile weapon is the courtesy and respect that you are flaunting with your slow saunter in front of me.
6. The continuing abuse of the term ironic. In fact, I resent the fact that the dictionary changes definitions to accommodate the widespread abuse of terms. If you misuse a word long enough it is no longer misused?!! We just change the definition to accommodate your inability to learn what the word ACTUALLY MEANS!!!
7. The use of horribly inappropriate songs as jingles for products or services. Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” as jingle for a family cruise line?!!
8. Anyone who says that we only use 10% of our brain. This factual error usually goes hand and hand with the claim that we have all of these untapped powers available to us if we could only activate the dormant 90% that we do not use.
9. Noam Chomsky.
10. Anyone who assumes that I do not like Noam Chomsky because I either have not read his works or do not understand his particular genius. We know he is there. We have read his works. We understand what he is saying. We are just not impressed.

I will do more later, I was tripped up by the enormity of my piece on how Glenda the Good Witch is the real power player in the movie The Wizard of Oz. I am still gathering the evidence to publish on how she orchestrated the hostile take over of Oz and systematically eliminated her competition before sending Dorothy home. In the meantime, I will resume my thoughtless banter.

Children are being sent to Iraq?

2007-03-09T10:00:00.000-05:00

I was recently alarmed when I found out that we were sending children to their deaths over in Iraq according to democratic politicians. I had no idea this was happening. I am staunchly pro-life and would not stand for this sort of atrocity in my country without speaking out against it. I envisioned secretly conscripted middle school aged children being flown over to the Baghdad and thrown at the enemy as human shields in some insidious murderous plot.

A little fact checking cleared this up for me though. Apparently when these democratic elected officials use the term children, they are actually talking about American soldiers serving in a theatre of war. This confuses me. You see I have children in my house and I have seen the men and women who make up our armed forces. I stood in the midst of a large number of Army soldiers getting a last visit to McDonalds before being deployed to Iraq a couple of years ago with my then 3-year-old son. He asked me who they were. I told him they were the soldiers who make certain that we can sleep safely at night by volunteering to risk their lives to protect ours.

Only an idiot would confuse my child and a soldier. The soldier is trained and prepared to face conditions that terrify normal people. They volunteer to put themselves in harms way and serve with dignity and honor for their fellow soldiers and their country. The soldiers are magnificent men and women who live a life of sacrifice and devotion to a purpose and duty larger than they are. Their wives, children, friends, and families are all forced to do without the constant presence of their loved ones because of the soldier’s commitment. These families usually face this sacrifice with honor as well. Because they understand what the idiots that call them children do not. The U.S. Armed Forces soldier is something that we can all get down on our knees and thank God for every day of our lives. They are not helpless children powerlessly thrown into a meat grinder. They are warriors who gave themselves to this country of their own will and who enter into life threatening situations as the greatest fighting force the world has ever seen. Even if you disagree with the war, please cease to refer to our soldiers as children. They deserve your respect not your condescension.

If you truly can not tell the difference between a soldier and a child then you are a card carrying blooming idiot who should not be allowed to operate heavy equipment much less represent a constituency in a position as an elected official. If you can, then develop an actual argument and stop trying to create emotional images of what is happening to our armed forces that diminish the men and women that serve with honor and strength to helpless children.

My Wife Does Not Like Clapton

2007-02-13T14:06:00.000-05:00

My lovely and brilliant wife informed me recently that she does not "get" the whole Clapton thing. She feels after 8 years of marriage that it is time I knew some things. I feel like a fool for every time I listened to "Bell Bottom Blues" with her and thought we were having a moment to remember. Apparently she thinks he is vocally weak and wallows too much in his emotion.

Our marriage is safe and prospering, but what is next? Will this new era of honesty yield new surprises?

I know that one thing is undeniably true about us. We sort through the emotion and ugliness of this world in entirely different ways. I love to listen to Opera. She likes contemporary Christian. I love tragedies. She loves Pollyanna. I enjoy broad sweeping epics that encompass the full spectrum of experience and suffering. She enjoys romantic comedies.

This is instructive in every facet of life. I need to know that when my brilliant wife is struggling I can help by doing something as easy as putting the kids to bed and popping in You’ve Got Mail. As important, if I know that she is having a bad day it does no good to play Eric Clapton or Pink Floyd. Even "Pancho and Lefty" is too depressing for her. Just writing that line hurts me.

Ah well. I guess I can go home, stay up late watching Gandhi and deal with this new development. And I can stop hoping that “Wonderful Tonight” will do anything other than irritate her that Clapton got drunk at the party and needs help getting to bed. She does not get Clapton.

Serge is no Lifeguard

2007-02-07T22:30:00.000-05:00

Over here on the LTI Blog, the brilliant surgeon (AKA Serge, and I just got that!) has posted a provocative piece on the morality of varying methods of terminating an ectopic pregnancy. The comments and follow ups are on a high level so I must say that I am disappointed that I am the only one disturbed by the analogy of the drowning man. The analogy is below:

What if I were attempting to save a very large man from drowning, and he unfortunately panics and pulls me down with him. Assume that there is no way he's going to make it. It seems via this analysis, it would be wrong for me to push him away in an effort to save my life, for this would be a direct action which causes him to go further under the water directly resulting in his death. However, it seems it would be permissible for someone to amputate my arm that the man had grabbed on to, for this would not directly result in his death. Of course, in both cases, he still died, and in the first, I would retain use of both arms. But according to this analysis, the second case would be morally preferable.

FYI As a former certified and professional lifeguard the proper procedure in this case is to retreat to a safe distance from the drowning victim and let him tire himself out. Then swim in and rescue him. If he has hair on his head, use that to drag him to safety. That gives you a good grip and keeps you safely away from his arms while having the added bonus of punishing him for being to panicked to realize that you were trying to save him. So if Serge or anyone who reads this is ever faced with that situation, you do not have to let the man die. We are pro-life for goodness sakes!

The Muddled Morality of “House”

2007-02-06T22:52:00.000-05:00

I am not usually given to commenting on TV shows, but I have to get something off of my chest about the medical drama “House.” You may think that I am lashing out because the episode last Tuesday night (1-30-07) ended with a woman terminating her pregnancy that resulted from a rape. You would be partially right. That was certainly the emotional fuel that drove me to put this down, but the truth is that Dr. House has been on my last nerve for quite some time. My wife is a fan of the show, or was before it began to derail this year for her. I enjoyed it early, but it quickly wore thin for me. My irritation with the show is with the worldview that is consistently argued by the main character. He spouts the most contradictory nonsense about morality and the existence of God, but the writers of the show are apparently incapable of creating a character that understands anything about a rational belief in God and absolute morality to balance these flawed rants.

This character believes that God does not exist and that life is meaningless. Only the material world matters and we create meaning by what we do. He is a sort of Nietzschian hero with the honesty to see the world for the purposeless mess that it truly is and the courage to carry on doing things to infuse life with meaning by sheer force of will. Of course, much like Nietzsche himself, House is miserable and off-putting to say the least, but that is not the principle problem. A good sample of what angers me was when House railed on the pregnant woman that the “right” thing to do was to terminate her “rape baby.” For the sake of clarity, he ackowledged that the unborn child was alive and that the abortion would terminate that life. The baby just did not matter.

Here we get to the problem that House represents. He claims that there is no God and that the universe is devoid of meaning, but then he says things like humans are “evil” by nature and our ability to reason gives us the capacity for “good.” I find myself wanting to hear someone ask him some pointed questions. Why is it the “right” thing to do to terminate a rape pregnancy? What is your basis for that value judgment? What do you mean by evil and good? Those words imply a standard by which to judge don’t they?

Instead, the people of faith end up saying things like the pregnant character said last night. We need to believe that there is a reason for everything. These writers express their main character's views, but they are terribly ill equipped to properly craft a Christian response. I do not believe in God or Christ because it fulfills a felt need. I moved from being an atheist to a Christian because, among other things, I became convinced of the historical evidence for the resurrection of Christ. That combined with some very strong arguments for the metaphysics and philosophical foundations of the Christian worldview put Christianity on the table as a live option. Reducing my faith to something that helps me cope with tragedy is insulting. I am reminded of watching Dr. William Lane Craig debate Bishop John Shelby Spong on the historicity of a physical resurrection of Jesus. Bishop Spong made the statement that he did not need the resurrection to be physical and that the idea of a reanimated corpse did not appeal to him. Dr. Craig immediately pointed out that it hardly mattered what we need or what we find appealing. The question is what happened? If the evidence is strong that Jesus arose from the dead, then our needs and desires must be tabled for accepting the best explanation for the evidence. Where are the Christians like Dr. Craig and J. P. Moreland in these fictional realms? Where are the men that feast on weak and flawed arguments?

They do not exist in the world created by the writers of mainstream TV and movies. Why do I care? Because the power of myth in a culture is well documented. There is a reason that people accost soap opera stars on the streets for the actions of the fictional characters they portray. The line between reality and fantasy can become fuzzy. If the mythmakers keep portraying us as intellectually dishonest, the message will sink in. Worse still, people who watch these shows and have no idea about the actual debates that are being waged in peer review journals on a scholarly level will believe this nonsense is representative of our arguments. Don’t be ridiculous you say? I still remember sitting across the table from an otherwise intelligent and successful man who confronted me with the incredible and groundbreaking work called “The Da Vinci Code” that exposed all of the dark secrets of the church. He suggested that I read it so that I would be informed. He was dumbfounded when I informed him that I had read the book and it was total nonsense.

House tried to bully a woman into aborting her “rape baby.” When that failed, he helped her to realize that she could face a world that lacked purpose. This honesty led her to the decision to terminate the life of her innocent child. Nowhere in this dialogue was the voice of a reasonable response from faith. Such responses only exist for those who seek them beyond the mainstream media. Those numbers are too few for me not to be concerned about the flawed metaphysics of a popular TV doctor.