Success!

Iraqi Elections with large turn out!

And, if you read the article, you'll see that that the divisions of the people are acting to make their democracy stronger. Who knew?!?!? The Sunnis want to vote to show everyone they ARE important! Its fantastic!

Hard Times

Not going into a lot of details right now, but I would appreciate prayer. I am dealing with some on going difficulties, and I really have no idea what the outcome will be.

Tracing God's hand in everything is not always easy to do, though I believe it to be something that is truly a constant. Please pray for me, to be granted wisdom beyond myself, to be granted strength and peace in the midst of challenges. Thanks all.

Wise Words on Evolution and Creation

It is really far more logical to start by saying 'In the beginning God created heaven and Earth' even if you only mean 'In the beginning some unthinkable power began some unthinkable process.' For God is by its nature a name of mystery, and nobody ever supposed that man could imagine how a world was created any more than he could created one. But evolution really is mistaken for explanation. It has the fatal quality of leaving on many minds the impression that they do understand it and everything else; just as many of them live under a sort of illusion that they have read the Origin of Species. ... For a man who does not believe in a miracle, a slow working miracle would be just as incredible as a swift one. The Greek witch may have turned sailors to swine with a stroke of the wand. But to see a naval gentleman of our acquaintance looking a little more like a pig every day, till he ended with four trotters and a curly tail, would not be any more soothing. ... Yet there runs through all the rationalistic treatment of history this curious and confused idea that difficulty is avoided, or even mystery eliminated, by dwelling on mere delay or on something dilatory in the processes of things.

GK Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

Sactus Abbas Quod Virtus Vita

Hopefully that's correct.

Here's a neat article.

What if...

If this had been a story about an American suggesting that the stories of slavery in the South were mythic and the Blacks should be removed to Africa...I wonder what the reaction would be?

But hating Israel is par for the course in the world today. People get tired of all the movies and speaches that glorify the heroes of WWII and deal with the horrors of the Nazis...they suggest that we'll never actually forget what happened. At this point, more and more it looks less as if we'll forget and more like we'll simply stop believing it was even possible.

A Game

One of my students has a blog with this link on it. It seems like something fun to link too...so here it is.

Left in Chaos

Hillary's self-implosion. And still more...

Undermining our troops.

Ignoring the answers they claim they wanted.

Insisting a growing ecconomy is dying.

So much for the toppling of the Right.

Nature is Natural

Who Knew?

I Will...I Won't...Who Cares?

My wife and I have been working our way through the Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel series on DVD through Blockbuster online. Its been a lot of fun, and much more enjoyable than waiting week to week to watch the next episode. We're nearing the end of Angel and we'll need to find a new series to follow. One of the really enjoyable aspects of watching TV like this is that it enables us to have more critical discussions--as we watch in one continuous flow the story is easier to encompass and the storyline is easier to see and think about. All in all, I'd say they were very well done mini-movies.

That being said, one of the more recent episodes, at the end of the 4th season of Angel dealt with an interesting question, revolving around free will and peace on earth, which made me wonder; at what price will we accept paradise? In terms of lives...would we sacrifice someone to afford others peace? What if the world would know peace but 12 preople would have to be sacrificed? Is it worth it?

And when it comes to our will...do we need to retain it for paradise to be paradise? In the show, Angel and his co-heroes end a higher being's attempt at global domination through love, peace, and good feelings...because this higher being removed "free will", and ate about a dozen people a day to sustain itself. Now, clearly, this being wasn't good...but it did bring happiness with it, or so it seemed. The price was some people to feed it, and our collective free will...weighed against the thousands that die around the world every moment, subject to our free will.

How important is free will? Without it, love cannot be real...but with it, men kill each other. We believe in its necessity, yet pray that our wills will be conformed to God's will. Why do I need a free will so much? One day, I will not have a will to hold onto sinful desires...the battle between the dueling wills within me will end...yet I cannot help but wonder...dear God why is my will important enough to die for?

I think in the end, the show got it right. No peace can be peace under those circumstances. If God's own son would die to give me my will, then the price cannot be weighed with simple numbers. We need to be free...even though our freedom affords too many merely fresh versions of hell on earth. We that have seen what a righteous Man may do with His will perfected should use our lives towards correcting the flaw two people once created when they allowed their free wills to divide humanity from our Creator.

Father, forgive me, a sinner, for clinging to sinful wickedness instead of your redeeming hope.

Money Money Everywhere...

But not a cent for me.

Sigh.

So I am working three jobs. This seemed like such a great thing. Unfortunately, they only seem to make me more busy, but no richer. Its discouraging.

On another note, I figured out how to get control of my class today. I threatened to make them stand in the corner. I actually put one kid in it. Its amazing the amount of silence you can get by threatening to slightly embarrass kids these days. Standing in the corner. Who'd a thunk it?

We've also reached two of my favorite periods, so teaching has become much more enjoyable. We're going over the Civil War in US History, and the Crusades and the Medieval period in World History. Its a lot of fun. I was explaining to the highschoolers just how destructive the Civil War was for our nation. THey weren't getting it. SO I asked them what the problem was when a person breaks up with them. They were silent. I told them that when a person breaks up with you, the problem is they don't want to be with you...obviously. And this was the same problem with the states. So then I asked them what the Union had to do to fix the problem...they made jokes until I told them that the Union had to utterly devastate the South to win the war. Then they got quiet. It was really cool. And then I got to talk about what that has done to our country. How in over a hundred years those wounds haven't healed. How there are people today who mean it when they say the South shall rise again. It was one of the few times I've felt like they were really listening. And how even today, the rift that was torn into our nation is one that divides us and will probably continue to divide us for years to come.

Then in world history, I had a real challenge. They added a new student to my class today. This is perfectly fine...except I am talking about the crusades and the new student is a muslim in a predominately Christian group of middle school kids. So I had to explain the reasons for the crusades...how there was a real threat presented by the Muslim hordes before the West launched its Holy war...and I then had to explain my opinion that while tactically it was important for the West attack the Muslims and save Constantinople, that philosophically saying that "God Wills it" with regard to war is ultimately disasterous. It was a very interesting class. Next week I am going to divide them up and let them debate about it. We'll see what happens.

Good classes this week. Now I have some Primerica meetings and Starbucks to look forward too...I just wish that included a decent paycheck.

Alito

New Supreme Court Nominee today.

I wrote, in another forum, my thoughts last Thursday, the day that Miers stepped down from the nomination to the Supreme Court. Here's what I said:

I gotta say, privately I have been wondering for over a week whether this might not all have been intentional--including this latest "un-nomination" (resignation doesn't sound right, does it?)

The reason I have thought this is because the nomination really made so little sense.

Regardless of the qualifications of the woman, she was Bush's personal counsel...and on the heels of the uproar surrounding the former director of FEMA and accusations of cronyism, this nomination made my head spin. "WHAT ON EARTH WERE YOU THINKING?!?!", I yelled to the radio/TV. It plays to obviously into the hands of the critics...so I am just hoping that the next nomination will reveal a little bit of deliberate planning behind this whole mess. I cannot say exactly what that might be...but it seems like such an obvious mistake that I am just hoping there's some design behind it all...making the next nomination easier to get through, or something like that.

As for Miers herself, I have no problem with her...she may have done just fine as a Judge. The biggest problem that I saw was the incredibly bad timing of nominating a personal friend to the position of S.C. judge even as you're being criticized for choosing friends over qualified people for important positions. If she had a public record to back her up, it might have been different...but it was all private and confidential...so it just couldn't have been worse timing. I am sure she'll be fine...it remains to be seen if Bush will make a choice that shows he wasn't oblivious to the criticism he's received in the last two months.

Well, based on the sound of Bush's new nomination, I think I was right. He's very experienced. He's just also very conservative and, clearly, male. But if you wanted one who might not have been as conservative and female, Bush offered Miers, and nobody wanted her. I think this was all one big plan to get Alito (or someone like him) into the position of having a huge surge of support from the Conservatives, and make the left look stupid. I think its working too. We'll see, of course...but I know that those Conservatives out there who have been urging our leaders to stand firmly and proudly as conservatives are happy. I'm one of them. Its a good day!

Happy Halloween!

Got-cha

New Supreme Court Nominee today.

I wrote, in another forum, my thoughts last Thursday, the day that Miers stepped down from the nomination to the Supreme Court. Here's what I said:

I gotta say, privately I have been wondering for over a week whether this might not all have been intentional--including this latest "un-nomination" (resignation doesn't sound right, does it?)

The reason I have thought this is because the nomination really made so little sense.

Regardless of the qualifications of the woman, she was Bush's personal counsel...and on the heels of the uproar surrounding the former director of FEMA and accusations of cronyism, this nomination made my head spin. "WHAT ON EARTH WERE YOU THINKING?!?!", I yelled to the radio/TV. It plays to obviously into the hands of the critics...so I am just hoping that the next nomination will reveal a little bit of deliberate planning behind this whole mess. I cannot say exactly what that might be...but it seems like such an obvious mistake that I am just hoping there's some design behind it all...making the next nomination easier to get through, or something like that.

As for Miers herself, I have no problem with her...she may have done just fine as a Judge. The biggest problem that I saw was the incredibly bad timing of nominating a personal friend to the position of S.C. judge even as you're being criticized for choosing friends over qualified people for important positions. If she had a public record to back her up, it might have been different...but it was all private and confidential...so it just couldn't have been worse timing. I am sure she'll be fine...it remains to be seen if Bush will make a choice that shows he wasn't oblivious to the criticism he's received in the last two months.

Well, based on the sound of Bush's new nomination, I think I was right. He's very experienced. He's just also very conservative and, clearly, male. But if you wanted one who might not have been as conservative and female, Bush offered Miers, and nobody wanted her. I think this was all one big plan to get Alito (or someone like him) into the position of having a huge surge of support from the Conservatives, and make the left look stupid. I think its working too. We'll see, of course...but I know that those Conservatives out there who have been urging our leaders to stand firmly and proudly as conservatives are happy. I'm one of them. Its a good day!

Happy Halloween!

2000 (aka Why We're Losing)

The insurgents in Iraq grow stronger every day, thanks to the help of the people who are supposed to be fighting against them. Every day, instead of standing up and declaring an end to the tolerance of violence, announcing the end of the assistance that the terrorists have grown to rely on, there are people who publically say they want a different world but refuse to act.

Are these the Iraqis? No.

These are the American Progressives, the Lefties, the Liberals, the Dems and the Left Independents. These are the people who do not rejoice over a triumphant election (in the face of seemingly overwhelming adversity, by the by) but instead horrifically glory in the deaths of 2000 men and women. "Its too much!" We have, apparently, zero staying power. Apparently, establishing a working democracy is only worthwhile if it can be done without the cost of lives or resources--regardless of the reasons that might seem to justify extra effort on our part.

But, of course, the elections in Iraq were a success. With 5 Sunni provinces there was all the opportunity in the world to prevent the Iraqi constitution from being ratified. All that was required was 4 provinces that voted against it, and it would have failed. Oddly, even though (apparently) the nationals hate us and the freedom we bring, only 2 of the 5 voted against the constitution, and it was ratified.

But this would be encouraging, this would be good news. Fortunately, the 2000th man died in Iraq, so we need not become distracted with the possibility that our efforts are paying off. Its sick. The insurgents DO have inside help...its called the American Left.

Educated Soldiers

I was driving past the Marine base on my way to San Diego about a week ago. I was thinking about why there are some soldiers today that are criticizing the gov't the way only hippies used too. And then I realized...most of the problems in our nation come from the intellecual class--the academic elite, who have cut themselves off from the mainstream to such a point that their education no longer means anything, they're just stupid.

We have a considerable amount of educated soliders today serving. Now, that is not a bad thing--certainly the men and women that serve our nation in defense deserve educations. But it does seem wrong, sickly ironic even, that several of the institutes that give these men and women educations essentially hate the occupation that these men and women hold.

There is something seriously and gravely wrong with our education systyem...not just the K-12 stuff either. The average higher education is more indoctrinating than almost any church or even political rally. Its disturbing. And, it'll destroy our ability to defend ourselves, because with liberal centers educating the officers that lead the armies of our nation...how can we expect to have the spines necessary to get the job done?

Pre-emptive Politics

The Dems like a pre-emptive strike for their campaigns it seems; at least, that is, when it comes to public appearances.

There have been plenty of instances in the past few weeks where one could point out this trend. Asking Judge Roberts how he would rule on any case regarding a certain subject, as if a judge should know without context what his ruling will always be. They are already gearing up with the same sort of questions for Miers because her personal opinions, supposedly, shed light on whether or not she can sit objectively on the bench. Cases concerning Rove V Wade haven't even come up yet, and the Lefties are already gearing up for war as if "women's rights" are about to be stripped in broad daylight from our system.

Here's the latest--not as sexy as, say, the nominations for the S.C., but yet another example of the pre-emptive politics is this nice little article. The (dis)honorable Sen Barbara Boxer questioning Condi on when we'll get to come home from Iraq. Apparently the last hundred times weren't enough...we'll pre-emptively ask if we any estimation on when the operation will be concluded, even though the mission isn't done and we all know its not done. Its the same as asking a judge to rule on a case that hasn't been filed yet...you just don't do it. Its not merely foolish...its irresponsible. Unlike politicians, who are used to tell everyone specifically what they'll "accomplish" during their time in power, neither the military nor the Justice system works like that.

Its a case by case basis, which doesn't really gel well with the careers of politicians who prefer to make specific promises (which they generally don't keep). Can you picture it?

"Ah yes, Senator, yes; we can tell now, today, this very instant, what it will take and how much longer we can expect to endure before the fight is over for freedom in a country that doesn't understand the principle."

They call Iraq a mistake, the new Vietnam, etc...all the while doing everything they can to ensure that they are self-fulfilling prophets. They ask these questions and then release soundbytes of the discontent they insist is overwhelming the comman man.

Well, this comman man is tired of it. Stop asking stupid questions and then accusing others of idiocy. Start asking important questions, if you still know how too, and then maybe you'll actually matter in the grand scheme of our nation's policies.

Pumpkin Spice Latte

Treat yourself. Enjoy a Pumpkin Spice Latte and make yourself believe, if only for one moment, that its not actually nearing the end of October and still relatively 78 degrees outside.

Its actually quite good...and it you wait until dark it gets better.

Training...And Still MORE Training...

I have been on the receiving end of a lot of training in the last few weeks. Getting licensed to sell insurance, learning how to build a company, qualify people for mortgages, etc, for the financial world, and learning about the intricacies of coffee and the coffee culture in the other world. I have been tempted to suggest a meeting of the two very different worlds...I can only speculate, but I think there would be positive results.

Picture it: I would sit down to discuss the importance of financial planning and security for your loved ones, and then guide you through a sophisticated coffee tasting experience. How could I go wrong? You'd end up well protected AND pleasantly caffeinated.

A real winner, if ever there was one.

Sue the Government!

Sure, they've ok'd billions of dollars in aid just to avoid looking like the weather is their fault...but sue FEMA, sue the Dept of Home Land Security, sue Congress, sue the President, and sue the Supreme Court! Sue 'em all! Yee-Haw!

Sigh. And sigh again.

For more, you could also read this transcript with commentary.

I would love it, I would sincerely crack up, should any lawyer actually have the nerve to take the case, if the government conceded and paid the class action lawsuit for, whatever, $100 million, and then retracted the earlier promise of aid for any groups that receive money from the law suit. Poetic justice...which we'll never see, but I can dream.

A Great Piece

More Rush, this time in an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal.

Enjoy.

Can they DO that?!?

The E.U wants to take the internet away from the U.S.

We made it, they use it, and now a majority of other nations apparently think that they can force us to give it up. This is big enough to make the suggestion of leaving the U.N. a truly legitimate proposition. What's next? Defense Secrets that we are "forced" to share because otherwise its just not fair?

I'm almost speechless...almost. It reminds me of the Godfather, when the other crime families inform Don Corleone at the council after Sonny gets shot up that in fact he doesn't get to keep his power to himself, but must share his political connections with the other families. Well, we all know what happened to the other crime families, right? Watch your back, E.U. The next time we go to a baptism, its all over.

Ridiculous.

Judge Robert's First Case

The first case brought before the new Chief Justice of these United States was to address the issue of "Death with Dignity". Oregon allows it, and some 200 + people have used the right to request assisted suicides to end their lives. And now the Supreme Court of the land is hearing a case, originally brought up by the previous AG (Ashcroft) against this ruling, which the people of Oregon voted to enforce.

There are several questions surrounding this issue. Does the Federal Government, particularly the Judicial Branch, have any say over issues that the states have voted on and decided for themselves? We bring everything back to the courts these days it seems. Eventually things will always end up at the S.C.'s bench and that's really not what the S.C. was intended for, but that's the environment we exist within. When in Rome.

So, as things are, the question cannot be whether or not the court should be hearing this case, since we settled that by twisting the purpose of the Judicial branch a while ago. The question, it seems to me, is what power does the government have over how we live (or end) our private lives? Is there a good reason the government should ban these practices? Is the argument that the drugs being used to induce death are not being used with their original intent the right way to go?

There are two different dissenters in this argument. One group says that in this instance, as in other instances, where there are "natural causes" in effect, the government needs to butt out--its only our personal choice how we adjust to the designs of nature and no government can decide that life is "sacred" at the expense of our rights to end that life, or that one attraction is right, another wrong, etc. Oddly, this side still wants government intervention when our private choices would have negative affects on minorities or what not and they insist that the government stand ready to give money to us to assist us in our private choices, but when it comes to medical marijuana, assisted suicides, homosexuality, etc--they feel its none of the government's business what we choose--they just want the benefits.

The other dissenters say that this doesn't merely apply to those effects of nature, but that the government should butt out entirely--that our private life is our private life and the government was never intended to mandate anything inside that shell of privacy. Well, at least they're consistent.

From what I can see, both of these groups of dissenters view life as strictly a physical thing, that the government is only in place to oversee a very narrow slice of the physical world, and therefore should keep its nose generally out of the non-physical world, and even out of certain parts of the physical world when it pertains to only us. They seem to think that we are islands, able to separate ourselves from impacting others if we so choose.

I think this is preposterous. But then, I think we have souls. I think that what we do, even when it "only effects ourselves" effects society at large, if not in physical terms, then in spiritual ones. I think this can be applied to a multitude of levels.

When we tell people that pain is a good enough excuse to commit suicide, that severe suffering is grounds for ending life, then how can we tell teenagers with rampant angst that they still have things worth living for? As far as they are concerned, life is over because of the pain that they feel after a break-up or whatever...why shouldn't they kill themselves?

If we say that certain things should be allowable because they only harm the users (pornography, certain drugs, etc) then why not allow all things? If we truly want to open our society up to accountability, then why don't we treat our citizens as if they're accountable?

Gambling should be legalized. Prostitution should be too-and while we're at it, ALL drugs. I've suggested this before and people have flinched, saying that there is a difference between porn, marijuana, assisted suicide and cocain, prostitution and gambling. Somehow I am not convinced. They tell me that with porn, with marijuana and assisted suicide we harm only ourselves, but with those other, more extreme vices we start harming others.

But we don't make all of our rules based upon the possibility of harm being done to others. What about other things that we allow in our society, like guns and alchohol? They certainly harm more than just the users--people get killed all the time by drunk drivers, and though I'm no gun control enthusiast, lets be honest--bad guys get guns and kill people with them. If we're out to protect our society, shouldn't we remove these threats? Or, if we're out to prove society can handle the choices for itself, then why do we still try to restrict the flow of certain vices? Let's at least try to be consistent. I think we need to say no--our society does NOT accept the premise that we as individuals can chose for ourselves what is the best good for ourselves with regard to life and death--at least, not to the point of helping us kill ourselves.

The government exists to rule man in the physical world, its true, but as our government governs we cannot pretend that we are merely physical creatures...and certainly no man is an island.

Three Jobs

I am working three jobs! I have officially been hired to work at Starbucks for 32 hours a week. This means I will be dividing my time between jobs at the Gorman Learning Center, Primerica and Starbucks.

It feels good to be busy. Too busy to blog much...hardly a serious dilemma!

Coming soon...a rant on the problems of the financial world and praise of the wonders of term insurance, Primerica, and companies that understand the right way to do business. Branching out from the political, but I have some thoughts which, time allowing, I will be sharing soon.

Church Question

We are in the middle of a transition. I recently (read, within the past 5 months) realized that indeed, I did long to do things with ministry in my life. Missionary work, or pastoral, I am not yet entirely sure, but I know that I don't want to go to church merely to be fed. Well, that means I need to be able to serve in the church that we would be working with, right? Hence the problem.

We have attended since before our wedding the Anglican church of the Blessed Sacrament in Placentia, and now we are leaving. I love the liturgy. I love the creeds. I love the reverance. I just don't believe in the Sacraments the way that they do. My son will NOT be baptized before he knows what it means. I believe pretty much the opposite of the Anglicans when it comes to those two issues...I see communion as merely a symbol (an important one, but a symbol nonetheless) and baptism as something that actually signifies something which the baptized must understand and "mean" in order for it to actually be a baptism.

However, I am having a hard time with being content in the regular evangelical churches we have attended during this time of transition--because I miss the worship of the communial reading of the creeds, the congregation reading the Psalms together, the beautiful hymns...honestly I often feel as if I were a member of the audience not a participating member of the worshipping congregation when we are at the evangelical churches.

I was talking with a friend who attends a Lutheran church (i.e. high church too), and he asked me if perhaps there was a reason that evangelical churches lack the beauty of the liturgy? I admitted that very likely there was a connection between the beauty that comes from the liturgy and the presence of the belief that high churches hold with regard to the sacraments. So here's the question...is that actually so? Is there no hope of finding the beauty without the sacraments? Must I accept the idea of real presence to find the beauty of worshipping as the Anglican's do throughout the rest of their service?

This is a hard time.

Car Troubles

I have them. I hate having to worry about them too. All in all, a fairly stressful time.

Impromptu

I have the privilege and the joy of working with Torrey Theatre this semester as an "Advisor to the Director". Such fun!

Last night I went and led them in a night of impromptu work. Now some might assume that there hardly a need to teach actors how to act without a script--after all, we give them a script to use, not ignore. But, obviously, things don't always go according to plan. In those instances, its better for them to know how to get back on track themselves than have them figure it out in front of the audience.

So we played impromptu games. I haven't acted in...about 10 months. The last thing I did was a short appearance in the Christmas Carol last year (Mr Fezziwig). I couldn't get to sleep last night. I was bouncing off the walls after the practice...I wish I had the time to get involved in an amateur theatre production somewhere. Its inappropriate for me to act with Torrey any longer...they have other people who deserve that experience. But I miss it.

I think that's one thing that amateur theatre offers which professional theatre cannot. When you're acting for your paycheck, its not fun...its a job, and a stressful one at that. Its why I quit the theatre department when I came to college...I didn't want that to be my life. But when its amateur...its for the joy of the thing, not because you have to make rent or eat this month.

I love theatre.

Disneyland Hong Kong

$3 Billion Dollars. And one of the most prolific entities of American life. Now up and running in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong used to be free. Then in 1998 it was turned over to the Chinese (something only a free society like Britain or the United States would even consider doing, based on a nearly hundred year-old contract...amazing--and it was done peacefully no less...unheard of, even it was unfortunate). People were convinced that the Communists would destroy the city. But the Communists hurried to ensure everyone that they appreciated the wealth the city represented--and everyone knew that Hong Kong was worth what it was because it enjoyed freedom the rest of China hasn't known in decades. So they let it be, generally, and Hong Kong hasn't drastically changed--so far as I am aware. It belongs to China, but it still practices free market values, and is hardly a great bastion of communist ideals. And now Disneyland has come.

How have the communists accepted this? Why would they allow this? Take our money, that's one thing...but take our amusement parks? An amusement park whose theme speaks of fairy-tales which are completely incompatible with the ideals of communism?

Some people are complaining about the costs--that the money should have been given to New Orleans instead of funding a new amusement park. I think that's ridiculous. Communism is truly dead--and even the last greatest of its proponents now has one of its prized cities not merely wealthy with capitalist dollars, but amusing itself in America's Happiest Place on Earth. China needs many things--with so much of the worlds population within its borders we would be remiss to forget that...I think this is something that will mean good things to come for the people who have lived and suffered under that evil idea called communism. Its a good day when your enemies start allowing your amusement parks to be constructed in their cities! Especially Disneyland...when you grow up with the Sleeping Beauty Castle at the end of Mainstreet USA, how can you possibly believe in the madness of Communism? Or Fascism? Militant Islam?

Today is a victory.

Hurrah for Walt...defeating the Communists decades after his life ended!

Everybody Loves Me Baby...

...what's the matter with you?

If there is a single statement that sumarizes the feeling of having everything going well but for one stubborn detail (which detracts from everything else), I think this could be it.

What's more irking than having that one flaw in an otherwise perfect situation? That one nagging thought which won't allow you to enjoy a day at Disneyland...the one small piece of lint that won't come out of your sock but also won't let you stop fidgeting with your toes through the lecture you're supposed to be keyed into...that one piece of information that taints anything else you hear or think about, no matter how many good things your hear...etc.

Somedays you just want to look at that one remaining offender and ask them, "What's the deal?"

I'm having a good day. Just sometimes I wonder...what's the matter with you?

Annonymous Ad's?

Ok. Now, this is just sad. Anonymous comments which pretend to compliment my blog for the sake of plugging a website or product? That's kind of insulting.

I'm gonna...go...cause, that's just a little too stupid for 9 am on a Thursday morning. The only comments I get are from spammers who don't even bother to attack my email mail-box...they post rogue comments on my blog. What kind of sad life do you have to have to waste time doing that? What kind of sad blog do you have to publish to get that sort of traffic?

Sigh.

Dawn's Rose Tipped Fingers...

...and the Wine Dark Seas.

I participated once again in the Homer marathon. Read the Illiad and the Odessey straight through, up all night with at least 20 other people, and reading and listening to the first great legend. Been there every year. I love it...one of the most rewarding experiences of my entire college experience. Gathering around a fire at 4 AM as we journey with Odysseus through Hell...even if you're not big on the classics you have to admit that sounds kinda cool.

This year I was thinking about the effect that Homer must have had on the Greeks that heard his tales. What kind of culture comes out of the myth that lays the heritage of its civilization depends entirely on the nature of the myth. Spencer gave the English Saint George and the Dragon. Homer gave the Greeks the Illiad and the Odessey. Alexander admired Achilles, that man of war, the god-man who raged with unbearable fury. How would the world have changed if Homer had allowed the Trojans to survive? What if Hector had been our true hero, not merely a heroic man on the wrong side of a bad war?

And the best question brought up this year...why do so many people in the Illiad pity Patroclus? He's Achilles best friend...and the reason Achilles finally kills Hector is because Hector killed Patroclus...but I have a hard time understanding why the best friend of the god-man is respected and loved by so many. He stands by when Achilles misbehaves, and encourages him to the slaughter...yet he's called innocent. Its a good question.

Thank you Homer, for the myth you gave us.

Sing oh Muse...

Too much real world politics. Too much. Need something...other.

I am listening to Coldplay presently. Old stuff...Scientist. I am one that hated Coldplay when they first came out...and has since learned to love them. They are great for certain moods actually...and oddly enough the mood I have frequented the most recently is one that really enjoys Coldplay. The only thing that would help this more would be a good rainy day...and late nights...I think I should move to Seattle.

Here's a question: what is more important when deciding where you will "put down roots", as they say; the people you know or the area its in, or the opportunities available to you? Lets assume that the opportunities are basically the same...friends or a nice place? You can make new friends in a nice place...but its hard to make LA nice. If I wanted to live in a parking lot, I'd stay here...but I really don't.

With Half His Brain Tied Behind His Back...

...and talent on loan from God; words from Rush.

You know...its really a lot of fun to make a rant and then hear the same sort of thing you've been thinking and saying privately from someone much bigger, much more respected, etc. Its cool. Here's Rush on the disgusting politicizing that has taken place since Katrina...and remember, he lives in Florida and weathered the storm--he heard the warnings and saw people ignore them and react to the storm. Enjoy.

We've Witnessed the Utter Failure of the Entitlement Mentality and Big Government
September 6, 2005

RUSH: What I want to do is summarize some of the things that I think really define this and then spend the rest of the program today going into some detail about these and add some things to it, of course, because the news continues to break and the news continues to happen. I, like you, spent a lot of time over the weekend watching all this, frustrated and angry and nonplused at the same time. Let's just start with the summary here. These are my thoughts, and as I say, we will expand these and detail these as the program unfolds. What we have seen in New Orleans -- and we have not seen it in Mississippi, and we have not seen it in Alabama -- what we have seen in New Orleans is first and foremost the utter failure of generation after generation after generation of the entitlement mentality. The lesson to be learned from this is just profound, folks. It is huge. We have learned that large bureaucracies that grow ever larger by the year cannot handle circumstances like this. We have also learned that the failure of such entitlement programs and thinking only leads to more proposals for more entitlements and more entitlement-type government, and we have also learned that the utter failure of large bureaucracies only begets hearings by those bureaucracies, which will serve really one purpose, and that is to give themselves excuses and reasons to further enlarge themselves, which will only compound our problem. We are also looking here at utter incompetence, total incompetence from the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana. We know this now. We know there was an utter failure to execute an evacuation plan that was long in place.

We know that none of these people, the poor people of New Orleans who had no way out of there on their own, we know that no effort was made to move them before the storm happened. No effort whatsoever was made at the local and state level. You've all seen the pictures of the buses, the school buses and the municipal buses that are flooded and ruined. I know they were told to go to the Superdome, but even then they had to walk to the Superdome. And they had to bring their own food and water to the Superdome. Why? Because even the local experts thought it was going to be just a period of hours that they will spend shielded and protected from wind and rain and they'd come out and go home. We also know that when any level of bureaucracy fails, the first order of business is to point blame at some other bureaucracy to try to take the heat off the of the people who are directly responsible for the failure to enact already written, documented, and even tested evacuation plans. We have other ample evidence that there's one organization, that when given the responsibility, can go in there and make things happen, and that is the United States military. General Honore in one day got 20,000 people evacuated from the convention center with a ground and air evacuation, 20,000 people in one day. Somehow this is the fault of somebody rather than this being an absolute tremendous story with a lot of praise and credit flowing to those responsible for it. I want to take you back also to the early days after 9/11. It was the Democrats that proposed a new federal Department of Homeland Security, and I've got the sound bite. I want to go on record as saying this is not the way to handle this. Make this an even larger government, create an even bigger bureaucracy? Then they faulted FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, into the Department of Homeland Security. Republicans went along with the Democrat idea because that's the natural tendency of bureaucracies. When they fail they go and say, "We need to get even bigger. We need to be even bigger," and we have the evidence right in front of our faces that it's the bigness, the largeness of these bureaucracies that causes paralysis. Nobody knows who's in charge.
There's not one person that could give the order to go take care of something when it has to be taken care of or when it needs to happen, and when that one person doesn't come forward because there isn't such a person, guess who then gets the blame depending on his political party and affiliation? If it's a Republican president, he's going to get the blame. Why do you think there's no blame of the local incompetence from the mayor and the governor? Because they are Democrats. They have run that state. You know, Frist called for investigations. Bill Frist was the first to call for a congressional look-see into this, and guess who's not happy about that? Democrats. Democrats are not happy about this because any legitimate investigation is going to have to focus on what happened in Louisiana, which has been run by Democrats for all of these years, and it's been run, particularly New Orleans, not only with an entitlement mentality, it's corrupt. Over the weekend I was with some friends who grew up in New Orleans, and a guy was telling me, "You know, the funniest bumper sticker I've ever seen, David Duke was running against Edwin Edwards for governor, and the bumper stickers around town read: 'Vote for the Crook. It's important.'" Meaning Edwin Edwards.

Now, I don't know if people are going to be willing to go this far and say, "Yeah, we've got a corrupt state and had a corrupt state for a long time, we have an entitlement mentality down there. How you can blame anything that happened there--" by the way, let me just stress here, as I said all last week, this is repugnant to me to be talking in these terms, but we get up here and look at what's happening and feel the need to defend the people and the institutions that I happen to think make this country great. When they're under assault, I'm going to come defend them. I feel a compunction and a need to do that today because it's continuing, even though the effort, I think, has largely failed. The first poll that's been out on this, the ABC/Washington Post poll shows that Bush is not taking the brunt of the blame on the part of the American people, because they can see. We can see the effort has been made -- and I'll tell you, one of the reasons why this fails, and I know so many of you over the weekend were scared. "Oh, my God, they're finally going to get Bush now!" and I was never of that attitude because I don't think this is any different than Bill Burkett and the forged documents. I don't think it's any different than Cindy Sheehan. As Wesley Pruden wrote today in the Washington Times, "Cindy Sheehan could come out standing nude in nothing but her Birkenstocks and say that she was going to sneak into..." I know it's an unpleasant sight, but imagine it, if you will. She could come out, stand nude except for her Birkenstocks and claim that she was going to go into Bush's house to find evidence down there in Texas or whatever. She couldn't get one camera down there today. Her time has come and passed. So you have just a progression of opportunities for the enemies of George Bush to try to nail him to the wall, and this one is not going to succeed either and it hasn't succeeded up until now. I'll tell you why.

It is becoming clear, and has been for two or three days here, of the utter failure of local government and state government to handle the circumstance. Everybody is out there saying, "We need a Giuliani! We need a Giuliani!" What was Rudy Giuliani? He was a mayor. Has anybody seen Ray Nagin? Was Ray Nagin at the Superdome? Was Kathleen Blanco at the Superdome? Were these people there? We saw Rudy everywhere. Yeah, we need a Rudy, fine, but Rudy was not part of federal government, folks; Rudy was not part of any FEMA organization; Rudy was not part of any federal bureaucracy. He was mayor of New York, and when you saw pictures of Rudy on TV he was flanked by the New York police chief and he was flanked by New York fire chief, and he was flanked by New York City officials, and the governor, of course, Pataki was there as well. But you haven't seen that in this circumstance. We also know that President Bush on Sunday begged the governor to get everybody out there, declare an emergency. She said, "No, I need 24 hours to decide." We now have the mayor, Ray Nagin -- and we have the audio of this. It happened on CNN today. The mayor is now trying to pass the buck to the governor, claiming that the governor was the one that was holding up the decision-making process. We also know that the governors are in charge of the National Guard. Everybody wants to know, "Why didn't Bush send the Guard?" The governors have to do this, and that's why Bush wanted her to declare an emergency so that he could get a foot in the door. You notice there are no law enforcement problems in Mississippi? There aren't any law enforcement problems over in Alabama. You haven't seen the looting; you haven't seen the utter chaos, but you have seen the destruction. There are reasons for this, and we will get into them this afternoon. The New Orleans police disintegrated, and now the mayor wants hotel vacations for them in Las Vegas (story). Yeah, he wants Las Vegas to donate hotels -- the mayor, yeah, Ray Nagin -- wants Las Vegas hotels donating hotel rooms for his beleaguered police force because they have had so much stress.

Right before the program started today we had a joint press conference with Maine Senator Susan Collins. She's the chairman of the homeland security committee in the Senate, and the ranking Democrat with Senator Lieberman -- and she's demanding an investigation, too. She wants to chair a nonpartisan committee to get to the bottom of this and find out what happened. We will be watching this very interestedly, folks. We just witnessed, again, how a large series of bureaucracies utterly failed as they always will by virtue of their unwieldy size alone. Yet, if we're not careful, the Collins hearings are going to serve as an excuse to expand the federal government even further. "The government's not big enough," is what it we're going to hear. "It's not big enough. This episode proves it's not big enough." No, it's too big, it's too unwieldy. It's so big that nobody can possibly know what anybody else in any other agency is doing. Ask yourself this question after witnessing this for the past five or six days. Would you want your health care administered by this bureaucracy, as Mrs. Clinton sought to do in the early nineties? See, to me we already know what went wrong -- and to me, it's strikingly simple. The governments of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans failed to execute even a minor portion of their own evacuation plans. It's that simple. Now, what complicates this is a desire to spare these local Democrats of any blame and at the same time, use this as an excuse to expand an all-powerful federal government because that's what interests on the left really believe in. We also found out what works the best, and that is the United States military. Were it not for the US military and that general, that John Wayne general they're calling him, this would still be today as bad as it was last week, and they're already pumping water out of New Orleans. We heard about how horrible it was going to be, and it is. But the gasoline supply nationwide is coming back to normal. The refineries are going online a lot sooner than anybody thought they would. Gasoline prices are coming down, the oil price per barrel is coming down to pre-Katrina levels now and it's been just a week. Last week all was lost. It was over. It was panic city. We're doomed. Thankfully the people who have rolled up their sleeves and gotten down there and done the hard work didn't listen to the doom and gloom and have, therefore, made the doom and gloom once again totally wrong and erroneous.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let's go to Gloria in Coral Gables, Florida. I'm glad you called, Gloria, and I'm taking your call early, earlier than I would normally because you're asking a question here that is going to launch me into one of the areas I intended to discuss anyway. Welcome to the program.

CALLER: Yes. Thank you, Rush. I mean, you know, I'm afraid about the response because what would happen if we had an attack, say in the -- on the northeast area of the United States. I mean, if the response was so slow for one city, I mean what if we had a big attack, and now we're vulnerable, because our enemies see this.

RUSH: Wait, wait, wait. Gloria, hold it. Hold it! Hold it now. You're assuming that something went wrong in New Orleans.

CALLER: Well, something did go wrong with the local government as you have said.

RUSH: I want you to tell me, though. Yeah, expand on that. Tell me about what you know about what went wrong in New Orleans -- and there's no right or wrong here. I'm just conducting a little test.

CALLER: The levees broke and they knew they would break.

RUSH: No, that's not what went wrong. Hold it. I mean, the levees broke, yes, but everybody knew that was going to happen.

CALLER: Exactly.

RUSH: So you can't say that went wrong. Everything that we were told would happen in such a storm happened. What went wrong?

CALLER: It doesn't matter that we knew. It went wrong. It doesn't matter that we already knew.

RUSH: Yes, it does. That is the point, Gloria, it does. In this case, I understand the desire that people have to compare this to a terrorist attack, and I understand the thinking that goes into that, but there's a huge, huge difference. We can plan for all kinds of terrorist attacks, but we can still only guess what they might be, where they might take place. This storm was well advertised as a monster, killer storm for three days. I was watching it, and it became a cat five, and for a while it was headed right at New Orleans even. It only veered to the east late in its path. We were told that the levees would fail at a cat four, cat five, and that the levees had only been built up to category three. I'll discuss later why they weren't built to handle anything more than a cat three. I don't want to go there right now. The point is, we also had an evac plan. You can go anywhere on the Internet and you can read the evacuation plan. You can go to one of them, page 13, paragraph five. This is what the New Orleans plan says: you are on your own getting out of here. "The vast majority of our residents will rely on personal vehicles. For those who do not have personal vehicles, municipal and city transportation will be provided to remove you or them to higher ground and shelters throughout the state." We cut next to the picture of the school buses and municipal buses by the hundreds that are flooded and ruined that were not used. The thing that didn't work was the implementation of the plan. We had a plan.
Or they had a plan, and it was a plan that had plenty of time to be implemented. But it wasn't implemented. The plan was not implemented at all. Having people walk to the Superdome, walk there and told to carry their own food and their own water, no provisions in the Superdome. I want somebody to tell me how this is a failure of the federal government? And I want somebody to tell me how this is a failure of FEMA. And I'm not defending these institutions by saying this. But when you think, "Okay, New Orleans was a failure," and, "Oh, my gosh! How are we going to handle something else that happens next time that's on this scale?" I don't accept that kind of thinking. I am not willing to believe or accept that every community that has been working on such plans is inept and is as incompetent as the state and city governments in Louisiana and New Orleans were. We know that New York isn't. We have evidence. New York does a much better job. They didn't know that was coming. They had no clue that was happening. Folks, if we want to be honest about this then we can be honest about it as we're being. If we don't want to be honest, if we want to sugarcoat this and try to avoid hurting people's feelings, we can do that, too. I just don't think it's productive to do that. But when you think you know what went wrong in New Orleans, the levees broke. Everything that happened had been predicted as possible, and a plan to deal with it was in place that was not implemented, not even close. Not even close to being implemented. It makes you wonder if the current government officials even read the plan and knew it existed.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now that some of the hysterical media clutter is settling down, we're beginning to get the real story about who's responsible for what down there. We know Susan Collins and Joe Lieberman announced that their committee is going to have this big investigation. President Bush says he's going to lead an investigation. Bill Frist says he's going to have an investigation. That's all well and good, but I'll bet you these congressional investigations leave somebody out. I bet they don't investigate themselves. You ever notice how members of Congress end up being portrayed as innocent bystanders in all this? Somehow the president and the federal bureaucracy always take the blame, the state government and city government, they're going to get a pass on this, it looks like, maybe not. But somehow the White House, the president's going to get the blame. It's easy to focus on one man here, I suppose. The Homeland Security agency, by the way, that, whole idea was Joe Lieberman's -- and I want to remind you I opposed this when it happened, and I'm not saying it because I'm ragging on the agency. I'm just telling you so that you know I'm being consistent about what I think about large, unwieldy bureaucracies. They get so big, and nobody answers to anything. I mean, how do you point a finger of blame at a bureaucracy? It's like trying to blame "the Pentagon." Let's blame a building for this. That's the way to get ourselves out. It's like for 9/11 and Able Danger, "Let's blame a building on this! That's how we'll save ourselves, blame the building, the people in it." We're going to blame FEMA, now. We're going to blame homeland security, and we're going to blame -- if you want to be honest about the blame, if that's the game we want to play here, and since people do, I'm going to join in. I'm just going to be honest about this.

Congress is going to do all this investigating but they're not going to look at themselves. No spending could occur unless they vote on it, no priorities can be determined without Congress making them. All anybody else can do is suggest. And that's about it. The president can suggest. Yeah, he has some power, legislative liaisons to get what he wants, but Congress is the ultimate authority, and they will not be looked at. And I notice all these libs now love the military. They love General Honore, comes down there, John Wayne, kicking ass and taking names and getting it all straightened out here in one day, 20,000 people at the convention center. Is this the same military that was torturing people at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay? Is this the same military that is not fit to be deployed around the world because it's just a bunch of murdering thugs? Isn't it interesting here to watch the shifting allegiances as episodes like this unfold? Now, our last caller had this question about, "Well, if we can't even protect ourselves in a circumstance like a hurricane, what are we going to do with a terrorist attack?" Hey, folks, you know, it's time for some reality here. If we have a big terrorist attack on one of our cities, there will be many casualties. There are going to be lots of casualties. I hate to say this, but it's true, and this is why we're trying to kill as many terrorists as possible overseas before they attack us here. Some people don't want to acknowledge that, some people don't want to get that, but that's why we're at war. So I find it very interesting that at the same time we're supposed to be getting of our Iraq, that Iraq is a wasteful exercise, it took too many National Guard. What an absolutely asinine thing to think, that it took too many National Guard troops away from the disaster area. "We ought to get out of Iraq." Now the some people who want us out of Iraq are worried about a terrorist attack. Well, what are we in Iraq for, or what are we around the world for?

I'm going to tell you, if you leave the running of the country up to these armchair quarterbacks who come out with these emotional reactions in the midst of a crisis, we're going to pay an even bigger price than we're already paying, and I'm not saying that what happened down there is inspiring confidence. I'm not saying that this made me feel positive. Nobody is, but at the same time I think it's getting put back together and the problem is being dealt with a lot quicker than anybody thought it would given the tone of the coverage and the appearance of the pictures coming out of New Orleans last week. I think it's also important to point out that this hurricane hit a lot more than New Orleans. This hurricane devastated Biloxi, Mississippi, and Gulfport, Mississippi, and some places in Alabama got hit pretty badly, too. Why are we not talking about the same kinds of things happening in those locations that we're talking about in New Orleans? It's not simply about levee breaks. Let me go back here to the top of the program, and I want to expand on something I said because my first observation here when I went through a laundry list of things, I was trying to keep it simple, because this is not complicated as people trying to make it. One of the things that's on rampant display and ought to be noticed by everybody is the utter failure of entitlement thinking. The utter failure of the entitlement state, the utter failure of a way life that tells citizens, "Don't worry about anything; vote for me; your government will take care of you."

That's the essential message of entitlement thinking, and entitlement thinking ends up keeping people poor because it takes away from people their incentive. It says, "Okay, my government will take care of me. My government is going to take care of my needs and my emergencies and so forth, because I'm voting for the people that are going to do that," and as we know from world history, or this country's history, there is no successful example. Call it the welfare state. Call it socialism, whatever you want. There's no example of it ever working. Now, you take these poor people down in New Orleans. That state has been run by the Democrat Party for as long as I've been alive. That's a given. It's not arguable. We also know that that state and that city have been run by people who have held the beliefs of the Democratic Party close to their hearts for all of these years. So for generation after generation after generation, people who are what I call victims of the entitlement state have been given a false promise. They have been told all of these years that their government is going to make life fair for them, their government is going to prevent them from suffering any kind of discrimination or inequality, that their government is going to see to it that they're protected, that they've got unemployment insurance, and they've got health care, whatever it is. They have been taught, they have been continued, they have been practically raised to rely on a centralized government for their needs. Now, just as a matter of human nature, when you rely on somebody else for your needs -- we all have needs, we also have wants -- when you rely on somebody else for your needs, you are placing yourself in a risky circumstance. But if that's all you know, if that's what your parents did, if that's what your grandparents did, and if that's what you've been raised to do, then that's all you know. So what have we learned here?

Whether you want to blame it on the federal government, I don't care, blame it on the federal government, blame it on FEMA, blame it on any government, state, local, federal, blame it on any bureaucracy you want for the purposes of this argument, what we have learned is that your government, wherever it is, cannot protect you, save you, from these kinds of things. It just can't. Not as well as you can yourself. I hear the catcalls. "Rush, I can't believe what you're talking about. You're talking about people with no means of transportation. You're talking about people that are so poor they had no way out." I understand that. I'm asking, "Why are they poor?" I'm asking, "Why are they hopelessly poor? Why are they simply accepted?" I mean, I've got a story somewhere in the stack today, it's a Boston Globe story, some guy is actually happy that this will now focus America's attention on our genuine problem of the poor. We all ought to be ashamed and embarrassed that such poverty exists in the country of such prosperity. But we also know that even with a country of such prosperity, we cannot, via welfare transfers or wealth transfers, make everybody middle class. Simply not possible. We don't have the money. And speaking of money, I know that people are donating to charities, and that's a wonderful and great thing, but you know where we could find about 25 or $30 billion today?

If we go back to the highway bill and members of Congress would act as big-hearted as they're asking everybody else to act and say, "I'm going to cancel the pork project for my district and I'm going to send that money down to New Orleans for the relief effort." If every congressman would simply forgo the pork that is in that highway bill and send it for relief efforts, then that's something that would be decent and productive that the federal government could do. That would be the wise, proper allocation of resources, given the existing circumstances. But to me it's just a crying shame to me to see human beings as they were pictured and as they were existing all of last week, and it was clear that many of them had no idea what to do. They have no idea what to do because they've been told somebody else is going to take care of it. They've been told that somebody else will fix it. Somebody else will make it right. You can't really blame them if they've never known anything else, if that's how they have been raised, if that's how they have been programmed, if that's what they've been told is fair and just and right, you can sit there and you can blame all day long the people that had the means to get out of there. You can blame all day long the people that had the wherewithal and the ability to get out, but who are they? The one thing we know they aren't, is members of the entitlement state. They were not part of the entitlement mentality. They were not waiting around for Ray Nagin to take care of them. They weren't waiting around for Kathleen Blanco. They weren't waiting around for George Bush or anybody to take care of them.

They got the notice to get out of there and they got out. Do you know that the New Orleans evacuation plan even has a procedure to reach people that don't even have enough money to have televisions and radios? It even has a chapter on how to get out to people who don't know that there are bad things coming because they don't have television sets and they don't have radios. It even allows for that, and that was not implemented either. So, you know, the entitlement mentality and what it does to people, been a theme of mine on this program for the 17-plus years that we've been doing this, and here it is on just crystal clear, 100% utter display. If you want to start examining failures here, we can just count up our side of them, too, and you can ask, "Well, Rush, how does that solve the problem?" Well, it doesn't solve this problem. It ought to be an eye-opener to people that when it comes time to plan for something like this in the future, why condemn the people who could get out, why get mad at them? Why get mad of them because they had the means to get out? Because they didn't take anybody with them? If that's all you can say, fine, I'll grant you that. It makes them not as good a citizen as we wish they were, but still they were able to get out and some weren't, and the people in charge of getting those out who couldn't get out didn't help them. They just didn't, even though there was a plan to do so.
END TRANSCRIPT

23 & Hurricanes

On Saturday I turned 23. It was a great day. We went up with some friends to do some horseback riding in Big Bear (which was great) got some jerky from the "House of Jerky" in the Village up there, then came back and had a BBQ in the TriCity Park in Placentia/Fullerton (I don't know the third city...). It was a great day. And during the drive up to Big Bear I finally got a chance to release a rant about the situation in New Orleans in such a way that I was able to come to some firm conclusions...which I now feel able to put down in words here.

Katrina. She caused some real problems. Its tragic, and aside from the serius, obvious pains that it inflicted (deaths and injuries) it cannot be overstated that losing your home is a hard thing to live through. I lived in the Philippines, remember--I know what real storms can do. California's big record breaking 30 odd inches of rain in a year is what falls in the first hour or so of the typhoons back home. We lived, generally, in better areas, and we still had to leave our home once for a storm--though we didn't lose everything, what we did lose was hard to let go of, and the aftermath was definately no fun. I say all this to ensure that its clear...I understand the plight and have sympathy for those who have lost, some much more than simply everything they own, but even loved ones. Its a devastating thing to survive.

However...that doesn't mean that most of the skepticism is warrented. Here are some facts that people seem to be overlooking as they respond to the devastation of Katrina's wake:

1. Storms are unpredictable...and we had no way of knowing this would be the way it was till it was too late. Predictions don't count as a sure thing.

2. We're at war--whether you like it or not, that means that the nation's resources have many different needs to meet. This means priorities and sometimes things don't work out the most convenient way we hope they will. This means that we may chose not to spend money in some areas that seem like less of a problem and we have to hope, to some extent, that that's the right decision. It would irresponsible to spend money that needs to be spent elsewhere on preparing for the possibility of a natural disaster which we cannot control. In otherwords, if Bush had ordered everything to be ready to rush to New Orleans and Katrina had simply died out or hit Mexico or whatever, we would today be complaining about his tendecy to over-react or some such nonsense, and we would be saying he should be focusing on the problems we were obsessing about last week. We cannot do everything all the time. Its just a fact.

3. Even in a first world nation, its unreasonable to expect the devastation of this kind of scenario to be resolved. It still takes time, even here, to fix a city that's literally uninhabitable presently.

4. Like it or not, people stayed in New Orleans. They were warned. Even they didn't expect it to be as bad as it was...and that's just the gamble they took. That doesn't mean they aren't a priority, but that doesn't reflect on the government. There are still people refusing to leave.

5. New Orleans is hardly Maybury. People that are shocked by the evil that took place in the absence of authority need to wake up--its not exactly a surprise. If something crazy turned Las Vegas into chaos and anarchy, would you expect a bunch of upstanding citizens, or a rash of crime harming even the other affected citizens of Las Vegas? You're fooling yourself if you expect a city that is as dirty as New Orleans of Vegas to behave itself when the authorities cannot enforce the law.

6. The President is not the Mayor, neither is he the Governor. The State authority exists for a reason, and until certain steps have been taken, it would be entirely inappropriate for the President to impose his authority over that of the still standing Mayor and Governor. If they want help, they can ask...but he cannot just butt in, otherwise a line has been crossed and Pandora's box opened. The mayor of New Orleans needs to look in the mirror, or ask for help and relinquish power--but he needs to stop whining about the lack of Federal presence in his city.

7. Finally, what should be drastically clear in this situation is that we have created a poor society in this nation that are completely helpless when they are not receiving aid from the government. That's not to say that aid isn't needed...but in other nations with poor (the Philippines) and our own past, the poor know that they need to be able to fend for themselves. They create solutions--even when they don't permanently fix the problems, they don't wait for the rich person or the government to come along and help--for many reasons. The government moves slowly. The rich don't give things away for free. But the poor in New Orleans seem helpless. We have made them that way...so now they really don't know what to do with themselves. The great society the President references that rises from the rubble isn't what we're seeing in New Orleans...I could be wrong--perhaps once the initial grief has passed they will dig in and work to make their city great once again...but right now, we're seeing the result of a society that has been taught that the government is the only one responsible for their well-being. Its a bad thing.

So...those are my thoughts. God be with them...this is a hard time and I do pray for them.

Liberty and Equality

I am teaching a high school US History class. Its a new challenge. Afterall, by the time you get to high school, either you hate school or you love it. In college things may change...I get one day a week with them and its very unlikely anything is going to miraculously open up as a result of my personal fascination with the subject. But I'm trying.Today we looked at the Declaration of Independence. Such a masterful document. So well worded. And, for my purposes, perfect for breaking down one of the questions I want my enrichment class to struggle with.I have asked them if it was acceptable for colonists to break from a mother country. I asked what the acceptable terms would be. I asked if there was a reason that the mother country should refuse to allow the colonists to decide for themselves their own future.But mostly, I asked about the nature of government. They all seemed perfectly convinced that power is the basis of most governments--in fact they didn't even consider any other way. When I even asked them about the current government of their own nation, they dismissed that as also being one of the same--governments of power, withholding and threatening.So I talked them through the Declaration of Independence. I made them examine the ideas behind the principle that all men are created equal. Initially they interpretted it as being the same as saying all men are equal, a lie our society instills in children from their first educations. Eventually they saw that it means that all men, rich or poor, have equality in certain aspects--though obviously not all. ALL men have certain rights. Specifically, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Liberty being the most interesting of those three to these kids.What is Liberty? Are we actually free to do whatever we want? I told them, yes, we are. Anyone who says differently is opposed to the right to liberty common to all men. However, that doesn't mean that our actions have no consequences. Nor does it mean that there are no laws. Liberty refers to your right, as a free person, to chose. You can chose to make something of yourself, or to live in a van down by the river. You can chose to abide by the law, or disobey the law. The choice is yours...and so is the responsibility for the consequences that come with the choices you make. A free society founded on the belief that men must have responsibility for the rights that they enjoy. How far we have come. Then class was over.

I love US History.

Assassination Revisited...

Though I am still not entirely sure of the ethical implications of assassination...I think I can now say that Mr Robinson would have done better not to say what he did...and this is the reason that I say this.

I don't care if the world claims that he just made us look more like the tyrants they all believe us to be. Global opinion of the strongest nation on earth is never positive--heck, even when it was us or Hitler, us or Tojo, us or Stalin, public opinion has never been all wonderful and great (perhaps I should specify that by "public opinion" I mean the opinions of Europe and parts of the Middle East...there are and have been huge portions of Asia and parts of Africa that appreciate a relationship with the United States). The French in particular have, especially throughout the 20th Century, been at best friends of convenience. So I am not really concerned with whether or not everyone likes us. However, we need to command respect, and command influence--and nobody could ever deny that being liked helps with that sort of thing.

However, this touches an issue completely apart from international politics and power. This is a Christian minister making his words concerning politics and power the center of international attention and as a result making the ministry of missionaries in Venezuela that much more difficult. And for that, Mr Robinson should not have said what he said, even if there was merit to it.

Picking our battles. As Christians its a real challenge to discern what that means. For though we are not to be of the world, we are in the world, and that should mean that we have an effect not merely in church and ministry, but in every area of life--politics and international power included. Our involvement in those other aspects of life may be harmed by our association with Christ and our belief in absolute truth, righteousness and sin, judgement and forgiveness. That is the price we pay for being in the world and not of it. However, when our involvement in those other aspects of life harms the mission of the church...then we're losing sight of our priorities.

sigh.

The Fantastic Rush Limbaugh

This will probably sound too typical; I like Rush Limbaugh. A lot. I enjoy listening to him, and have since I started listening to radio as a kid. I know that radio isn't well respected...and I know that Rush in particular gets a lot of garbage thrown his way because he makes himself an easy target...any man who consistently opens a show informing his audience that his talent is on loan from God is bound to tick someone off. But I really love listening to him, and even when he's exagerating, he's one of the best at summing up a problem and addressing it intelligently.

Well, this is pulled from his page--which I have linkedon the sidebar--pulled, more specifically from his quotes section. Mr Limbaugh, though I'm fairly sure you'll never read this, thank you. This is just awesome.

"The French found two suspicious, questionable substances in Lance Armstrong's hotel room in 1999. They were later identified as soap and deodorant."

Ah. Wonderful.

Hawaii or Virginia?

Having lived in both, the question was posed to me...where would you rather live: Hawaii or Virginia?

Of course, the question assumes that the means to do so are not a problem--since Hawaii is considerably more expensive than Virginia.

Some might think this is an easy question to answer. Who wouldn't chose paradise? But then I'd suggest that paradise is great to visit...but an island can be claustrophobic to live on. Plus, there are seasons in Virginia...and the great city of Washington D.C. in the north of the state. And D.C. is one of my favorites places in all the world. And then there's all that history literally all over the place in Virginia. Still...being able to go swimming and surfing literally all year long (without a stupid wetsuit) does sound ideal...fortunately both Virginia and Hawaii get a lot of rain (which I love)...but in the end, I think I would chose to live in Virginia, and have a vacation home in Hawaii.

Since money is no object, of course.

What would you do? If not Virginia, then what else compares to paradise for you?

Leadership

You know that whole idea, that people complain about the way that they never get the one thing that they want, but when that thing finally comes around they ignore it completely--even attack it because they weren't actually looking for it, but for their idea of it? Well...if you are familiar with that idea, I thought you might enjoy this article. Its from Newsweek, yes, but its actually very good I thought.

We have an excellent leader. Those people that are too busy screaming their anger to think (all the while stating that they represent the only rational voice in the "dialogue") don't realize just how good a leader we have.

God be with you Mr President.

100 Posts

Cool.

To celebrate this minor milestone for this blog, I will tell you about my first day teaching in a formal classroom. I know--hold onto your seats, this may get to exciting for some of you!

I was subbing. Subbing a class called "7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens". Still--my first class, officially. I was late. Traffic was awful, and we hadn't planned on the fact that we both had work this morning. I got to the school 5 minutes late, after spending over an hour driving around. I had no syllabi, no handouts, nothing. And I couldn't leave them in the classroom alone. Somehow it all went fairly well though. I gave them the "7 Habits", talked with them about what they meant, and then gave them a personality test their regular teacher had prepared for them, and them had them write a mission statement for their lives based on some of their top priorities in life. It was really cool. Some of them will have my history classes too. I think I am really going to enjoy teaching!

100 Posts. Yay me.

Assassination

This leaves me divided in my response.

On one hand...Pat Robinson has said some really stupid things in the past...so even if he has a point, perhaps he should be quiet.

On the otherhand...he's actually right (I think). Surely I have heard, even from the Left , that when the problem seems to revolve around one man, one evil dictator, why not take him out instead of going to war? Surely this question has been asked with regards to Saddam. And we all know that it was an accepted premise that anyone with a shot at Hitler would have taken it. So I am a little curious as to why there has been such a stink over this issue.

Is it the Christian problem, or is there a problem with Assassination in general? The government suggests that we just won't deal in that kind of trade. I don't entirely accept this, but it makes a little more sense than that a Christian needs to oppose such actions. There is a difference between hoping that the government established for the protection of the people will aggressively protect us and act with justice and personally carrying out the killing of evil people. Pat Robinson hasn't crossed that line with this statement...he's expressed a desire to see a bad man removed from power--and usually the only way to effectively do that is through force.

So I am not really sure what the problem is...and my conclusion is that the Left is just starved for issues to whine about. That's ok, I guess...pretty foolish and really getting old, but within their rights to do.

Therapy

So I was away for a week at the Royal Family Kids Camp working as a relief Counselor. It was a good time...met some very neat kids, some very good adults and generally had a good week at camp. We stayed at the Green Oak Ranch down in the San Diego area--which apparently has a good deal of history itself with the old stage coach lines. I would have loved more time to find out more of that history, but that was more of a side note than anything else.

Anyways, I was out of the city and away from pretty much all types of media for a total of about 6 days...and it felt wonderful. Now, obviously I am not an anti-techie or anything like that. But at least once a year, preferably once every six months I have real value on getting away from the city and relishing the untouched, unrefined parts of life (though admittedly, in this case we weren't exactly "roughing it"--it was still camp). One night we went on a hike up a hill to a cross that overlooked a city that was on the other side of the hills that surrounded and enclosed the camp from the rest of the world. There was a full moon out, and even though you could see city lights at the top of the hill, generally the darkness was unbroken by anything but natural light in the sky. I stepped away from the campers for a moment and realized just how easy it was to believe in God and Christ in the middle of that quiet, moonlit night--and just how distracting the life in the city is. In the quiet of nature that isn't being interupted constantly by the noise we have grown accustomed too in the city, its not hard at all to believe without reservation, and its not even a struggle to decide to change one's life for a principle that you believe but cannot touch...it was truly theraputic.

I used to get time like this more often. My family would go on vacation somewhere out of the city, often to a resort on a lake, surrounded by lush grass and jungle and mountains. I would climb up to a tower and watch the sky or the sunset or the stars, or just look at the grass from the highest point around...and just absorb the beauty that was there, and when I came down, everything felt very different. I think that is an important point...the times that I removed myself and just appreciated nature to its fullest were not clouded by a lot of thought or agenda on my part. Sometimes I would pray, sometimes sing praise songs...but generally I would just watch, with as few deliberate thoughts as possible, and just enjoy what was there. In fact, often if there were concerns weighing me down, if I cleared my mind during these retreats to the top of the tower and didn't try to figure them out myself but just enjoy what God had created, when I came down I found that I had the answer almost without conciously understanding it beforehand...wisdom from God I believe. Perhaps this is why I really accept the statement in scripture that creation shows the glory of the Lord...I think God is evident in the world without the distraction of man's appetite.

This is all to say...I feel much better. I got (quite literally) beat up during this past week--from running around to wrestling with a dozen kids in the pool everyday...but I feel more rested and refreshed after these past 6 days than I have almost the whole Summer, and certainly since I last left the city to just rest in the untouched refuge of nature. I highly recommend it.

Intelligent Design

Its so ironic really. At the Academy, we had one of the biggest names at Biola talk about exactly this issue...and then the week that the Academy ends this story started coming out. In case you were living in a hole for the past two weeks, here's the story. This is the link from the NY Times article concerning the issue. You'll probably have to register--its free though.

There's a lot out there...I spent over half an hour yesterday writing a long post on this, including links to others with more to say (who also say it better) and my thoughts on the subversive nature of late-night comedians in this debate. I won't duplicate the post...it got lost when I tried to post it, not realizing that Blogger was down for maintinence, and trying to duplicate it would be frustrating, and probably less effective. My main thoughts were that its truly disturbing how, through a dumb little skit on the Conan O'Brien show that officially is designed to mock Bush and present him as an idiot, a comedian is also weighing in on I.D. and the question of whether or not evolution is the only science or not, etc. They didn't even do very much--they simply made their charicature of Bush read what Bush actually said and that's enough. Disturbing.

Anyways, here's the other links that I thought were really worth reading. They're to Reynold's blog, and include articles from the press that he is responding to, and a response to a letter responding to a radio program that he was on discussing the viability of teaching ID as a theory of origins in the classroom. Read, read, read! It should be noted--those are three different links. If you're interested at all in the issues being debated--and more if you want to hear a good arguement from the I.D. perspective, I suggest taking a look.

Wow.

Lots of stuff happening and I have been gone for a while. Ok...first, the updates...

I am currently putting together a couple of syllabi for some history classes I will be teaching. As I write them, I am shocked by how harsh they sound. Actually, in all fairness I need to say, I took the example that they passed around (having never written a syllabus myself) and editted it appropriately for a history class, changing some things here and there to meet with the actual design and function that I had in mind for my class. The overall tone was set by someone who has already taught classes and did well there as well as when she was an actual student. Maybe that's why I think its harsh--I'm guessing she wrote a syllabus based on what she knew she would expect of herself and from her experience teaching...and she was a much better student than I ever have been, and I haven't really formally taught anyone anything. I;m sure I'll be glad of the firmness inherant in her overall design, which is why I kept it...I was just shocked at how quickly I went from being annoyed with teachers like this to becoming a teacher like this. Though...again, I was more frustrated with teachers that had open-ended syllabi than the teachers that told you firmly and bluntly what they expected. So this is probably a really good thing.

Right now I am in the middle of the end of my two weeks off between the Academy and other stuff. Sunday I leave for San Diego for a week, where I will be working with the "Royal Family Kids Camp" for a week as a relief counsellor. Basically its a camp for foster kids and is an opportunity to show them some Chrisitan love without any strings attached. There's no altar calls, no follow up stuff or anything like that--its one week, unconditional love. We don't exchange information or anything like that afterwards, because the idea behind the camp isn't supposed to be that they make us their new friends or family...but its hoping to show these kids that they are important too. I have never done anything like this...I worked with AWANA's in the Philippines with the kids from the Depressed areas, but they had families--families are really big in the Philippines. So this will be something new.

I am praying that God will lead and help me to be what I am needed to be during this week. The wierd thing about doing something like this is that you know that the idea behind this camp is a good thing...and because of that I think its easy to struggle with two extremes...feeling too good about yourself, and so completely missing the point of making the week about someone who doesn't often feel good about themselves...or reacting to that and feeling a self-effacing guilty humilty. I think both are bad...both prevent you from actually helping anyone because you're too focused on yourself. It reminds me of the Screwtape letters--what the demon wrote about the nature of prayer, humilty, pride, etc. So...if you do pray for me, pray that I would be what I should be, and just that...and that I would rejoice in being that and only that.

After next week, I start working on a regular basis. Teaching US and World history at the Gorman Learning Center on Thursdays, and when I'm not doing Substituting work in public schools I'll be working on mailing letters for a loan consolidation company. Some of that is exciting...some of it sounds boring but pays. I'll leave you to figure out which.

Oh, and Aiden is even now at the doctor's office getting shots. They measured him and weighed him...apparently the boy that was so big is no longer so big (though he still seems big to me). They are estimating he'll peak at about 5'8". Doomed to a life of average height. But, at least he'll most likely not grow up and be able to tease his old man about being short...since he'll be seeing me eye to eye (literally) when he's done growing. Its ok though...5'8" puts him at a perfect height to be a very good wrestler. And he's certainly strong enough--all I need to do is help him with his speed and he'll be unstopable. I love that kid.

I'll talk about Bush and ID in my next post. This was just a brief update. Feel updated? Good.

The Academy

One week down, one left to go. Its better this year than last.

For those of you that don't know, the Academy is (presently) a summer conference that I have had the joy of working for two summers now. Presently its geared towards high school students headed towards college who will be faced with the challenge of maintaining their faith in the midst of a secular world that awaits, even in Christian Universities like Biola. An alarming number of Christian teens fall into apthay or leave the faith altogether upon leaving home, and we feel it has a great to do with the fact that they have never learned to think hard. For more info you should really visit the Academy site which is on the right of your screen even as you read this. Or follow this link. Now you can't even use the excuse of being too lazy to find my link.

So, I spent a week with amazing kids and very good friends and incredible professors talking about living a virtuous life, seeking truth, and finding courage.

My take away question, which I did ask the kids but have been thinking about myself is this: can there be courage in heaven? I think its not far off to suggest that courage requires the presence of fear...and it seems unlikely that there would be fear in heaven, so is there courage in heaven? If not...that too seems wrong, since courage is a virtue and it seems unlikely that it should pass away.

My theory? I think that there is courage in Heaven. Lets say that often sin lies in chosing one lesser good thing over a better good that has been shown to us to replace the lesser good. We become attached to the thing itself instead of simply wanting whatever good God offers us. This is because we know and love what we have and cannot be sure that the new good will actually be better for us...we doubt God or believe another good is better than what He is offering, and that is sinful and wrong. Well, in heaven, we will forever be seeing a newer and greater good, eternally replacing our previous ideal with the new that God has revealed in Himself. I believe this because, as Lewis says, there will forever be further up and further in for us to travel, always finding more and more of our great Lord.

Well, we remain ourselves--creatures of free-choice--and so while we are perfected and WILL choose the greater good rather than the lesser good, the choice remains ours, and everytime we trust that the unknown will be better than the known, that God will not disappoint us and in Christ there is ever more for us to know and love, everytime we forsake the old for the new that God reveals we are being courageous.

That's my theory. Courage in Heaven. I am very excited about one more week of this.