A Genuine Catch 22

I am stuck.

Next year Sheri returns to full-time classes at Biola. Which means that while presently we share the responsibility of making the money off of which we subsist, next year I get that job to myself. Unfortunately, there's a problematic factor; we have a son. More to the point, presently I spend a lot of time watching him. Next year, that's not going to be a possibility.

So, here's the problem: I need to work. To work enough to carry us through to the end of Sheri's education, I'll need to work at least two jobs, possibly three simultaneously (stupid, stupid, STUPID for not getting my credential while I was in school...but that's water under a bridge somewhere as they say...) But, in order for me to work that much, we'll need to put Aiden into daycare in one form or another. Daycare costs money...even if its the cheapest available, it costs money. And if I am working like crazy, and Sheri's fulltime in school...we'll be missing a lot of time with our son.

So, what do you do? Worst case scenario, the cost to take care of Aiden could almost cancel out one of my incomes (which we couldn't afford). Staying home and accruing debt doesn't seem like a good option, even if we might need to get more debt despite the fact that I'll be working like crazy...

Sigh.

I hate money. I hate this "in between" period. I'm looking at other Christian schools, but honestly I don't know how good the prospects are. I have an offer for part-time this year, and full-time next year, though even at full-time I'll be getting a salary in the low $20,000's, and that's a year from now. At part time, its a lot less than that (almost 1/2 less)...I love the school, but I am not sure how it can work. I told Sheri that it might work if I pick up another part-time job for the afternoons and extend my Starbucks hours for every night of the week...which allows me almost no time for grading papers, to say nothing of family time or even sleep. A voice in my head is screaming, "Didn't I go to college (and spend/borrow a lot of money I might add) to get something better than this?!?!?!?"

Of course, this wasn't the plan. I needn't mention the plans in college that failed...even in this past year plans haven't worked out the way they were supposed too...I should have guessed--it seemed so possible to make it work out that I should have been clued in. My plans DON'T work out. I worry about money and lose a job I should have had without trying--a job I earned with two years of exemplary work! I work to get licensed to sell insurance and work at becoming a financial advisor...and nobody will meet with me. I know there's a point to all of this...its just hard to accept sometimes.

The neat thing in the midst of a fairly dismal outlook is this recurring fact...God hasn't abandoned us. We were in church yesterday, and were reading John, the 18th chapter...the betrayal and trial and scourging of the Christ. Two thoughts kept coming into my head throughout the service...first, that a faithful God calls for our obedience regardless of the cost because He is faithful and so should we be. Secondly...sometimes that obedience will not result in relief from the trial. We have been growing a lot in the past months. Sheri and I have decided to deliberately change the way we live and to honor God first whether we can "afford it" or not. Generally, this has brought on changes of only good--we feel greater peace in our lives, even though we should have less than before. I keep believing that our faith will not be unanswered, and have not been disappointed...and I suppose I secretly harbor the hope that a miracle will happen and we'll wake up one day and find that we have been given the gift of comfort and security.

But yesterday a possibility that I have considered once or twice made a strong impression on me as I listened to the word of God...what if we are faithful and give and that is good...and God allows us not to survive? What if the storm comes and we cannot weather the waves? Surely God is still good...surely He hasn't forgotten us...but what then? What happens when I cannot take care of my family? It is, unfortunately, a reality I know we are not unique in facing...and I also know all too well how easy it would be to lose all our presumed security. We often assume that faithfulness from God means that we will ride out the waves that come our way...but that's obviously a misperception--even Jesus died in the end. Yes, good triumphs and God is always a good God, and I cannot be convinced that my loss somehow changes the very nature of God. God is good...for that truth I would die without a thought. But sometimes that good God allows us to really, honestly lose, without the hope of ever rising again in this life. That's a difficult truth to process for some reason.

Anyways, things will work out. We'll have to work hard, and life may not always resemble the goal that we have for it, but that doesn't mean its over. Aiden will grow up fine and Sheri and I will, God willing, love each other for decades. That's a success, especially in today's world. I want to leave a mark on the world, other than being one of those that worked three mostly unimportant jobs to make ends meet...but I can leave that fight for another day. Today, I just take another step on this road and trust that the God I have commited to serve with my life will always be the one guiding my road, wherever it leads.

Half Myself

I want to be about half myself. This is an uphill battle. I like food. I enjoy cooking. But there comes a time where you have to decide whether the little things you indulge in are going to temper the entire future outlook of your life, or whether they will be restraint forevermore to the category of "indulgence" and behave more like the highlight they were originally intended to be than like the common fare they have become.

Such is the task before me. This was never a problem 6 years ago, but in 6 years things have changed and I am deciding that though they have changed they will not define my health and physical abilities for the rest of my life. I'll be half myself.

I'm a Whole City!

You Are Boston

Both modern and old school, you never forget your roots. Well educated and a little snobby, you demand the best. And quite frankly, you think you are the best. Famous people from the Boston area: Conan O'Brien, Ben Affleck, New Kids on the Block

What American City Are You?

Argument for Education

I am going to be arguing in a debate this Monday that the Federal Government is responsible for providing basic public education for all of its citizens. This argument joins me with friend Lindsay Marshall, who I have often debated against with regard to other social/political issues--she is, after all, a democrat (or at least a democrat-minded independent). We'll be debating two Libertarians, Andrew Bailey and Tim Heggem. They will be arguing that Federal Tax Money shouldn't be taken from people to fund public schools.

I'm really looking forward to it. Reading up on my Federalist Papers, Tocqueville, etc. I know I'm wierd, but this is my idea of fun.

The Lame Duck

We need to remove the term limits for Presidents. It is, in my opinion, seriously damaging our society. Especially in today's world of polarized politics, I think getting rid of the term limits to the office of the President is essential. The debate should be held annually every four years--every politician should be responsible for his behavior and decisions and the people should have the chance to prove at every election where they really want the nation to be headed.

Yes, I realize that the party in power typically brings this argument up...and yes, I realize that if we had allowed Reagan to reverse the law, Clinton might still be President. To these concerns I say this: I don't care. The law is a stupid one, and is making the second term of the president less and less effective...and that is backwards thinking in my opinion. We cannot effectively knock the legs out from under our leaders directly after their successful re-election for fear that they might continue to be re-elected by virtue of their political success. That's madness. The circumstances that produced the 4 terms of FDR don't happen everyday. I think its far more likely that the office of the President would grow in its ability to accomplish something than that it would immediately evolve into our own version of a dynasty.

I suppose this seems as if it came out of no where...I have heard too many discussions recently about the dwindling support of the President and the "fact" that he's a lame duck, barely two years into his second term...and I just get tired of it. I don't expect it to change anytime soon--neither side wants to give up power to the other, and ultimately Congress doesn't want the office of the President to have more power than he absolutely needs...but if we were actually trying to fix things that have gone wrong in our country, that would be one of them.

Pictures...

I realized recently that I hadn't posted any pictures in a while. I was watching them rotate on our screensaver, and thought...I should post some...so...here you go...

Consider the Lilies of the Field

We have a great God. Of course, this is not merely demonstrated when the small details of our personal lives are taken care of, but surely seeing His provision for those details must summon us to praise Him.

Our car has had problems...something you may or may not know. The problems were fairly extensive, and though fixable, they were expensive. The mechanic I *randomly* asked to take a look at these problems seemed to be being fair with me when he offered to cover the cost of taxes for the parts and labor, and to give us a 10% discount right from the start of this process, cutting it down from roughly $2600 to $2300. We still needed to consider how best to proceed and asked him to wait a few days. He called me yesterday to tell me that he had done some thinking and talking with his boss, and they had decided to reduce the price even further, to an even $2000. And they would offer us a free rental car for the time that they would need to take care of the repairs. We are doing one or two checks to compare prices (just in case this offer seeming to be to good to be true in fact is) but at this point, from counsel I have sought from others with more experience than myself, I feel fairly confident that this will be the way we go about dealing with this problem.

Its difficult to say exactly how amazing this is from our position...I only share actual numbers in the hope of lending some idea of the full measure of grace that I believe we are experiencing. $2000 is still a large amount for us, but that additional $600 being simply taken care of by the mechanic's shop and provision for transportation so we can continue to work through the repair time is a true blessing. Beyond that, my parents have offered to help us with the cost. They're missionaries, and I had not anticipated them being able to offer much help, but God has provided for us it seems by providing for them and they are insisting on helping.

It is amazing to see the faithful provision that God has already prepared for us--especially in those times when there is no hope of fixing the problem on our own.

Random Survey Thingy

I'm bored...watching a tutorial class...and I found this on a blog, and thought, "heck, why not?" So here it is...mostly for me, read if you like.

1. First name: Christopher

2. Were you named after anyone? : First name, nope. Middle name, yes--my uncle.

3. Middle name? : Alan

4. When did you last cry? : Church, two Sundays ago.

5. Do you like your handwriting? : Yes

6. What is your favorite lunch meat? : Smoked Turkey, deli sliced.

7. Birth date? : The day is the same as the day that Britain and France declared war on Germany in 1939.

8. What is your most embarrassing CD? : ...I don't keep the bad stuff. Maybe a Yanni CD.

9. Do you have a journal? : Nope.

10. Do you use sarcasm a lot? : Yes.

11. What are your nicknames? : C-Dog. No, not really...just Chris.

12. Would you bungee jump? : I doubt it. If it was with a friend...perhaps.

13. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off? : Nope.

14. Do you think that you are strong? : Yes.

15. What is your favorite ice cream flavor? : Mint Chocolate Chip.

16. Shoe Size? : 10.

17. Red or pink? Red.

18. What is your least favorite thing about yourself? : I am often lazy.

19. Who do you miss most? : Besides my family...I'd have to say I miss one of my best friend's, BJ Cadd.

20. Do you want everyone you send this to, to send it back? : ...

21. What color pants and shoes are you wearing? Blue jeans, and brown sandels.

22. What are you listening to right now? In my head, I am listening to a mix of Coldplay, Switchfoot, Dashboard Confessional, Damian Rice and the Beatles.

23. What was the last thing you ate? : Dinner, last night. French Bread Pizza.

24. If you were a Crayon what color would you be? : Some kind of deep green.

25. What is the weather like right now? : Regular La Mirada day...sunny, with a chance of showers.

26. Who was the last person you talked to on the phone? : My wife.

27. The first thing you notice about the opposite sex? : The face. Always look at the face!

28. Do you like the person who sent this to you? : ...

29. Favorite Drink? Right now I enjoy drinking Sprite.

30. Favorite sport to watch? : Wrestling (the real stuff, not the fake stuff), then football.

31. Hair Color? : Brown and curly.

32. Do you wear contacts? : Nope.

33. Favorite Food? : Pizza/Italian variety. And steak.

34. Last Movie You Watched? : Fun With Dick and Jane.

35. Favorite Day of the Year? : Christmas

36. Scary movies or Happy Endings? : Happy Endings

37. Summer or winter? : Depends. Either way, it should be real, none of this SoCal half-way crap. Give me heat so I can go swimming in the ocean, or give me snow so I can go sledding in my backyard!

38. Hugs or Kisses? : Kisses.

39. What is Your Favorite Dessert? : Hmmm...Molten Lava Fudge Cake with Ice Cream is really good.

40. Who Is Most Likely To Respond? ...

41. Who Is Least Likely To Respond? ...

42. What Book Are You Reading? : That Hideous Strength...after trying for a while I am really getting through it finally.

43. What's On Your Mouse Pad? : I'm at school...so, flowers. At home, an old fashioned globe.

44. What Did You Watch Last night on TV? : Alias...we're watching it on DVD. And American Idol.

45. What's in your CD player right now? : I have an i-Pod. See the mix in my head for an idea...add some U2 to the mix.

46. Favorite Sounds? : Rain on a tin roof, and the waves in Hawaii...and the sound of a plane taking off when I am in it.

47. Rolling Stones or Beatles? : Beatles every day on the week.

48. What is your Favourite Pastime? : Reading...playing strategy games...talking with friends...watching good movies and talking about them...cooking.

49. What do you do for a living? : A variety of things...I am a barista at Starbucks, a teacher at the Gorman Learning Center, and a financial advisor for Primerica Financial Services.

50. If you could go anyplace in the world, where would it be? : Europe...Britain, the Med, Italy, Greece, Germany, I guess France, Austria, Russia, Turkey...

The Fallout

I had an accident almost 2 months ago. It was decided by the police that it was her fault, and the insurance company has already settled. So why am I still dealing with these people?!?

I have now received what I would consider a threatening phone call from someone connected to the lady I was in an accident with nearly two months ago. I am assuming (I refuse to talk with them, per all the advise I have received from everyone I have sought counsel with) that they are upset because since they were found at fault, they have to cover their damages themselves. Today, "Carlos" called me to tell me "there are other ways of dealing with this...there are other ways..."...it may not sound terribly threatening, but you can hear it in his voice...he at least intends to be intimidating. Fortunately, I have him recorded (technically...he recorded himself, as he left it in my voicemail...) and am calling the police to ask them to deal with this harassment. However...I work nights, and they have our address...one of those things about exchanging info at the scene, etc. So pray that they are just full of hot air, and more than that, that whatever happens Sheri and Aiden be kept safe.

I just keep repeating to myself "I bought this lady juice. JUICE!" Oh well. I rest in the peace that I did the best I could at the time...I think I honored God before myself in the situation...and whatever comes of this is in His hands.

Courage of Conviction

Over the past several months there have been several opportunities to reconsider exactly what I believe and hold as relevant truth. To be candid, the nature of God has often been at the center of these reflective periods. That, and what my professed faith in the Christian God will mean in my life, and in the lives of my family.

A perfect example occurred this past week. I was on my way to work, and for no reason whatsoever, I decided to pick up C.S. Lewis' Perelandra, the second book of his space trilogy. I was already half-way through another book, so picking this up was completely random, and I wasn't really interesting in rereading it until I had finished the book I was in, but for some reason I wanted to take a look at Perelandra. Randomly I opened the book to the section where Ransom is coming to the realization that he has been sent to Perelandra to do physical battle with the "UnMan" who has possessed the corpse of his old rival, Weston. The stakes are high, as the UnMan will essentially ensure the Fall of Perelandra, just as we fell here on earth. Ransom is arguing with himself, that surely he is not the last great hope for the salvation of Perelandra. Surely, since the evil opponent is unnatural, something equally powerful, and certainly greater than he will be sent to save the day. But, as the other voice within him whispers, its not for nothing that he is called "Ransom". He realizes this...

"His journey to Perelandra was not a moral exercise, nor a sham fight. If the issue lay in Maleldil's hands, Ransom and the Lady were those hands. The fate of the world really depended on how they behaved in the next few hours. ... Either something or nothing must depend on individual choices. And if something, who could set bounds to it?"

I read this and meditated on it for the next few days, thinking what a great truth it was.

Then we went to church on Sunday.

Speaking this past week was a guest from International Justice Mission. He's a lawyer, formally a D.A. for Washington D.C. He has gone around the world assisting people in an effort to show them that there is a God who cares for them. I have heard this story before, and its truly a great thing that they do. However, I admit I was not completely moved by it, because I have lived outside the U.S. and know a little about what injustice looks like. Rarely do the wrong doers get their just rewards, and even more rarely do the oppressed receive deliverance from their plight. Throughout his message, my cynicism, or "realism" kept getting in the way. He told us about a child-slavery ring in Asia that they visited. They collected the info and prepared to go before the magistrate to present their case. But the meeting was on a Monday and they were there for the weekend, so they decided to attend a local church and pray for God's blessing the next day. As this man spoke, I almost audibly said to myself, "But what could possibly happen? The magistrate probably works with the slavers...there's no hope." Then the speaker said the one thing that I couldn't have hoped to hear, and the thing which had surprised the speaker himself when he experienced it...the preacher at the church they visited was the magistrate they were to visit the next day.

I cried. Well, I teared up. Even as he started to say the unbelievable truth, something in my heart knew what he was going to say. Of course that was the man they would meet at the church they randomly attended. God could not be God if He was unable to do such a miraculous thing. All that was need was the attempt, even in the face of hopeless despair, when it will clearly do no good...and He assures us it will be enough.

The man who spoke to us on Sunday had prefaced his message by asking the question frequently asked by non-believers..."How can such pain exist in this world if there is a God and He is good...and more importantly, WHY doesn't He do something about it?!?!" The answer is...He did do something about it--He put us, the body of Christ, on this earth instead of removing us to heaven. We are God's solution to the problem...if we will only go, and have the courage of our convictions to do what we "know" to be useless in the face of the problems that assail us. Jesus keep us, for we are weak and the road is daunting.

Benefits (Seen & Unforseen) of Working at Starbucks

So, I work at Starbucks. I enjoy working at Starbucks, most days. I'm a closer, and closing is in some ways more fun than the rest of the day. Its more work than anything other than opening the Store, and even then, though I've never opened the store I'd say we do a fair share of work because we're prepping the store for the openers. Course, we don't have to wake up early, which is a huge benefit of closing.

Generally I can deal with the customers. Keep smiling and "just say yes" to pretty much everyone. Occasionally there are problem customers--the guys that steal drinks or our tips, the ones that make huge messes in the lobby and DON'T tip, and of course, the customers that consistently come into the store approximately 2 minutes before our official close time and ask for a "Joe to Go", which is a very long process, and specialty drinks when we're trying to shut things down. Technically we're required to serve them...but there's no rule about resenting those that are so inconsiderate that they make a habit of inconveniencing people. 10 minutes before we close, you wanna ask me for an extra hot white mocha with extra caramel, soy, no foam, extra whip with 2 Sweet-N-Low's, that's fine. When everynight you walk in to make your order even as I am clearly dismembering the bar and taking things to be cleaned and order your special drink...that's just kinda rude. More importantly, NEVER tipping when you do this should be grounds for expulsion from the store.

But, I work with good people generally. And I get lots of free stuff--drinks obviously, sandwiches, sometimes fruit plates, etc. But one cool thing is a skill that has been developed in me since working at Starbucks that I hadn't anticipated. My aduio-recall abilities are much sharper today then ever before. I can be standing two feet away making another drink, reading the recipe to make sure I get it right, and as long as the noise coming out of the next customer's mouth can be heard, I don't have to think about what they're saying. I hear it, and process the words he/she said about 30 seconds after they stop talking, so that before the person who is actually taking the order has written everything down I can already start the drink. Its kinda cool. The difference, in case I am not making myself clear, is the difference between hearing and listening. I am not attending to you when I hear you...my ears are merely properly functioning, whilst when I am listening, I am deliberately paying attention to what you're saying. Well, I have found that I can essentially hear you and replay what I heard in my head with nearly 100% accuracy.

I thought it was kinda cool. Work at Starbucks...your hearing will...improve.

A New Job

So, I have applied for a position teaching History full-time (yes, FULL TIME!!!) at Santa Fe Springs Christian School. It doesn't pay the greatest, but it would be nearly enough I think. And I would have a classroom, be teaching at the same school as a good friend, old room-mate and groomsman, Justin Rupple, and I would be in an environment to teach kids to love history and to see how wonderful and reassuring it is to trace the hand of God's providence throughout the ages. I am totally stoked.

It'll be some time before they can give me an answer, but I am hopeful. Of late I have been praying very hard for this, among other things, and I deeply believe that this is God answering my prayers for a way to provide for my family as Sheri returns to full-time status as a student. Whatever happens, He has led us this far, and will not forsake us in the middle of our journey. There is great comfort in that!

Narnia in Text

I am rereading Narnia. Its been over a decade since I read them through, and I have found that I had forgotten their charm. I am presently in the middle of Voyage of the Dawn Treader, reading them in chronological order (not as they were originally written).

The thing I have found interesting this time, as I read them, is how deeply the interactions with Aslan affect me. I was always a fan, but now I am most excited when Aslan is present in the book. The moment that quite literally brought tears to my eyes was when Alsan finally becomes visible to all four of the children after their return to Narnia in Prince Caspian, and he comes to speak to Edmund and merely says, "Well done." As any lover of fantasy could tell you, when you read a good fantasy you cannot help but imagine yourself as one of the heroes you are reading about. Peter, or Caspian were the heroes I dreamed about when I read Narnia before. But today I feel more and more of a connection to the character of Edmund. I have lost any annoyance I might have once had for Lucy and find her admirable and beautiful in her joy and simple faith. I used to be disturbed by Susan's lack of faith in the end, but now I read it and I think I can see it creeping in all along the way--I see more clearly now the seeds that she allowed herself to sow that would keep her from answering Aslan's call in the end. I know that I am no Peter, nor am I a Caspian (Lewis' equivalent, I think of David in the Bible)...and I don't think I have ever been an Eustance. But Edmund I feel a kind of connection too.

I am glad that Lewis wrote fantasies that have allowed me to grow and enjoy them more.

Scary Times

We are living in frightening times. The Middle East is daily becoming more and more volatile. Lord God where will this end?

Alito Revisited

So it looks good.

I just have to say...I am pretty happy with the way things are going. I listen to AM 1150 "Air America" out here fairly frequently...I guess I have a masochistic edge or something...anyways, I listen to them and they are really funny (when they aren't being out and out imbeciles). The most enjoyable part is listening to their over confident, condescending attitude, as they judge the half of the country they berate for being judgemental and condescending, etc.

Anyways...I'm feeling good. Even if November is everything the Dems wish it could be (which it won't be) they won't have the court, which is unfortunately too powerful. Still, I'd rather control the nuclear bomb and talk about trying to get rid of it than let it go and try to convince the new owner of it that they should give it up, know what I mean?

Sharon: a Question for the World

I will be very interested to see how the world reacts to the passing of Ariel Sharon. I know he's not dead yet...but he's awfully close, and it got me thinking. With the brouhaha that erupted following the death of a known terrorist (Arafat) and the ridiculous claims that he was some sort of great humanitarian, I wonder what they will do if and when one of the most effective leaders in the Middle East passes on. Arafat, when he wasn't commiting/leading/sanctioning acts of terrorism was pretty much useless. Sharon has actually taken steps, unpopular to his own people, to try and bring some peace. What will the world say I wonder.

Its been a long period of silence.

In the time since my last post, several things have happened.

Narnia was great. I got sick. My first semester teaching ended with my students bringing me presents--I was totally unprepared. I stayed sick. We said goodbye to family visiting from Africa where they serve our Lord faithfully. Aiden got sick. Christmas came, without a tree or serious decorations in our home, it came nonetheless. I remained ill, and Aiden mostly recovered. We enjoyed good family time. We had a wonderful evening with the Reynolds family. My Grandmother died. I worked New Year's Eve. A New Year began. I remained sick. School started up again, and I have finished ther first day of classes in the new year. I remain somewhat ill.

Its been a busy last couple weeks. God has been very good to me and my family. Thank you Lord for Christmas, and for this New Year.

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.

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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.

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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.
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