iPandora

The true solution is revealed in the nice lady who says that some bakeries have noted some demand for this healthier fare.
So then why do we not simply allow the market to work? If there is demand for healthier fare, bakeries will take advantage of that demand and work to supply product to meet the demand.

No fines or fees or arm-twisting needed.

No, it is just so obvious that the real reason the city of New York has made this a legal issue is that there are people who believe they know best how we ought to live. And they view themselves are caretakers of the general populace, protecting the idiot rest of us from our own carnal desires. These kinds of people tend to congregate in government, and they find each other.

For their own good, we should outlaw them.

She was smart, beautiful and funny, and most of all, she loved God.

February 11, 2007: Sunday morning I walked into Sunday School with the other Young Adults at Brainard Avenue Baptist Church. It was my second week back after being gone just over two years in California.

I had met the church and felt at home and accepted and appreciated back in 2003, and with that knew that I was to relocate at least for a while to Chicago after spending a few more years at home. After spending just over 2 years back in California, I returned to Chicago at the end of January 2007 and thanks to the generosity of friends church family in the area I was putting down roots.

Little did I know where those roots would grow and how my life was to change. Soon.

Back to that Sunday, February 11th. In my visits back to Chicago while living in California, I’d met some new members of the Sunday School class, students at Moody Bible Institute who were able to drive out to the suburbs for Sunday services at Brainard. It was good to see these people again in addition to the regulars and long-timers.

The Moody students had brought friends this Sunday. One young lady, in her first semester at Moody, had been searching for a church she could feel at home at while attending school, had taken advantage of her friend’s extra car seats, and was visiting the church for the first time.

The quiet, beautiful girl did not return for a few weeks.

When she did visit Brainard again, I made a point of talking with her for a few minutes. Making her feel welcome, I told myself.

It began as a friendship, nothing special. But I quickly moved beyond an average interest in her.

This was a Godly woman, beautiful, caring, very loving. All that attracted me very intensely. I had to get to know her better.

And so I did. Grace visited family in Washington for spring break. I missed her those weeks she did not come to Brainard.

I had offered to drive students to church from Moody when they needed extra seats, and one beautiful spring day they took me up on the offer. Three students needed a ride and so I went out early Sunday morning to pick them up. Due to the beautiful weather, the two others decided they were going to ride a motorcycle out to church that day, leaving Grace to ride with me by herself. She was not exactly comfortable with this situation at the outset, being alone in a car with some guy she hardly knew. But it was that or miss church, and I’d already driven out, so to not make a scene, she got in the car.

We began talking and found we had similar standards and backgrounds, and we both liked country music.

That afternoon several of us spent the afternoon at my apartment eating lunch, playing games, listening to music, relaxing. Grace and I continued to talk and get to know each other. I drove her back to school too, and said goodbye.

Over that spring the associate pastor and his wife invited several college students over for extended times of fun and fellowship, watching movies and entertaining their young boys. Grace was able to take some time off studying to attend one of these, so I volunteered to pick her up from school and bring her out to the suburbs so she could spend time with us.

The other Moody students had come out earlier in the day and so again I was able to spend time just with Grace, getting to know her better.

We also spent a Saturday helping some other students move to an apartment off campus. While there were others around, I sought out Grace and helped her and asked her to help me in specific tasks. I was twitterpated. And I believe she knew I was possibly interested in more than friendship.

Our friendship continued to grow and as the semester drew to a close I was trying to decide if I should ask her if we could move into a potentially romantic relationship or talk to her dad first. Various things led me to decide to speak with her dad first, but as I drove her and a mutual friend to the airport that morning in early May I bit my tongue.

Our parting was awkward as our relationship was possibly changing and yet neither of us had mentioned it to each other. We parted with an awkward side hug and I drove to work while she winged her way home to Dallas.

Earlier in the semester she had given me her cell phone number but had informed me her phone was broken and so I had not called her. As she left for the summer, she left a few boxes of things which would not fit in the summer storage at Moody which I was to take to the associate pastor’s house for storage. The boxes had her home address.

I spent the weekend visiting friends in Louisville, Kentucky and trying to work up the courage to call her or her dad. I still wasn’t very sure of her interest in me and I feared rejection. So I decided to try and talk with her one more time, just to gauge her possible interest.

Leaving Louisville late Sunday afternoon for the long drive back to Chicago, I called her. I’d used the address on her boxes to look up her home phone number in the phone book online. And now the phone was ringing.

Her mother answered.

“Can I speak with Grace, please? This is Matthew, a friend from Chicago.”

The phone call and the trip went quickly, all 4 hours of both. And I had my answer. We still had not talked specifically of our relationship, but I knew that if it was that easy for both of us to spend 4 hours talking and with similarities between us in standards and beliefs, I knew I wanted to pursue this lady.

The next day I called her dad. I spoke to him on Tuesday and asked if I could begin courting his daughter.

Over the next few weeks he asked me questions regarding my views and opinions on various matters and eventually told me he and his wife would allow me to court Grace.

I was planning a trip down to Missouri by then to see her for a weekend. She was working at Child Evangelism Fellowship’s headquarters outside St. Louis.

June 15th, 2007: The Friday before I drove down to see her, when we were having what by then was a regular evening phone call, I told her I’d been talking to her parents about courting her (she knew that already) and I asked her if she was willing to court me.

She said yes.

Over the summer she traveled to New York to work with children in the projects and other parts of the city, returning to Missouri and then Dallas in August, where I spent a week meeting her family and friends and having fun together.

We flew back to Chicago together: her to begin classes and me to get back to work.

Through the semester and now these months together I grew to appreciate more and more her strength, her tenacious love, her sense of direction and purpose, and her Godliness. Not to mention her beauty and her spirit, her consistency and organization. I knew rather quickly that she was definitely the one I wanted to marry.

Apparently she knew too.

After a winter trip to California meeting my family and friends and receiving further counsel from my parents, I began seriously considering marriage to this wonderful woman God had brought into my life.

After an intense period of counsel, thought, and prayer we were still unsure when the best time would be for our wedding to occur and our marriage to commence: Whether to marry this year or after she graduates in 2010.

Grace and I decided to have a period of time where we were to not contact each other but to spend that time seeking the Lord’s will and answers in our lives.

Ending Valentine’s Day, 2008, these 7 days were painful but rich, and we both, individually, felt God leading us to marry this year.

In the church parking lot, on February 25, 2008, 1 year and 2 weeks after we’d first met in the Sunday School classroom not too far away, I got down on one knee and asked Grace if she would marry me, be my wife and the mother of our children.

She said yes!

American Texan and I will be married August 2nd, 2008, in Dallas TX.

See our website at MattLovesGrace.com

Political Power, unlike money, is a zero sum game.

In order for one to gain and consolidate more of it, another must lose it through neglect and carelessness or bitter struggle.

At the same time, power is not necessarily directly correlated with size. A large organization can run fluidly and freely given good leadership and skilled and involved members. A power-grabbing entity does tend to bloat with those drawn to power and the ease of corruption.

It is not size that corrupts, but immoral people.

The presidential race should give us each an opportunity to see honestly and completely the morals, ethics, and skills of those who would lead us but which instead tends to show us carefully scripted appearances controlled by any number of variously corrupt entities.

The candidates themselves try to control their images. None of them have nothing to hide, and therefore, they dodge and obfuscate.

The media, with it’s control over what is shown in living rooms across the world, has a powerful ability to shape the discourse. If it doesn’t show up on the nightly news, it didn’t happen.

Charles Kessler, in a speech before Hillsdale College summarized in In Primis, speaks to the difference between size and power, and how size and corruption are not necessarily related.

Juan Gonzalez, in the New York Daily News, tells the sordid tale of pork and corruption which has birthed an amazingly idiotic tax hike in downtown New York:

No one could recall such a naked combination of arm-twisting and pork-barrel handouts to pressure City Council members to approve the huge tax increase known as congestion pricing.

The real problem is always complex and deep, but a significant part of the root is that we, the people, don’t really care.

Like Charlie Brown’s baseball team, we don’t want to be held accountable for our government. We pass the buck to the elected officials, who pass the buck on and on.

If we and a larger percentage of the population of America took responsibility for our government, there would not be a problem of usurpation of power and conglomeration of authority.

An aware and concerned citizenry is a powerful citizenry and the bane of corrupt politics everywhere.

         The New York Stock Exchange has been down a lot over the past couple of months.  It’s down about fifteen percent from its high of just over 14,000.  Many people are wondering why and how far it is going to fall.  This is my attempt to explain why it has been falling.

            Our story actually begins in the housing and sub-prime loan markets.  As many of you know, mortgage companies don’t actually have the millions and millions of dollars they loan to homebuyers.  What they do instead is make a loan, say for $250,000, and try to find some investor (generally a bank or some other financial entity) to buy the mortgage.  The company serves as a middle man between the homebuyer and large financial institutions. 

            What has begun happening recently is firms have been buying large numbers of mortgages of all different sizes and interest rates and rolling them into one package, kind of like a mutual fund.  They then began to sell shares of this “fund” to investors and investment banks.  This has never been done before.  People on Wall Street have never been able to buy shares in a mortgage security because mortgage securities didn’t exist.

            Now investments are rated based upon their safety as an investment.  For example, a triple AAA rating means that the stock or mutual fund you are buying is pretty safe and unlikely to fall far in value – wiping out your investment.  It also means the return will probably not be as high as other investments.  A single A rating means that the stock isn’t as safe as the triple AAA, but could potentially have a higher return. 

            Well the various companies that have created the rating system needed to rate these mortgage securities.  In some cases they gave triple A ratings, in others double and single A ratings.  Then the mortgage securities were marketed based on these ratings.

            So like any bubble, there was far too much exuberance in the market for these funds and they were overpriced and overrated.  That was one problem.  The deeper problem, however, is that mortgage companies began making lots of bad loans (e.g. requiring no down payments from the people they were lending to, not checking credit history, proof of income, etc.)  This was not a big problem until the housing market started to slump. 

When the values of houses started falling, those people who had taken a $400,000 mortgage out on a $400,000 house found themselves with a $400,000 mortgage on a house that was now worth $350,000.  Not a good place to be.  So they just walked away (that means the bank foreclosed on their house.)  But no one is in a good situation here.  The bank is left with a house worth less than the loan it made and these people are down a home.  There were a couple of other issues about variable interest rates that I won’t go into here.  The point is that there was a huge increase in the number of people defaulting on their mortgage loans.

            So big picture, these mortgage based securities that were being doled out like mutual funds, started collapsing.  All of a sudden people began to realize that these securities were not as valuable as they had initially thought.  So the price began to plummet.  And to make things worse, no one really knows how to evaluate the worth of these securities.  The fact that they are so new and the rates of defaults on loans are variable makes people afraid to purchase the securities; even after they have fallen substantially in price. 

            Here’s where it affects the credit market.  Some of the chief buyers of these securities were giant investment banks, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley, etc.  The investment bankers at these firms made varying degrees of stupid decisions.  At Bear Stearns, for example, the investment bankers bought the securities on margin, which means they were borrowing money against their current assets to buy more shares of the securities.  Though always a risky idea, if your investments are good it’s not a problem.  Once these securities started crashing though, the market froze.  No one was willing to buy but everyone wanted to sell.  So Bear Sterns went from having 800 billion dollars worth of securities in its investment branch to 300 billion dollars worth in a week or two (Note, these are not the literal numbers but they are characteristic of the idea).  And, because they had bought on margin, they still owed the hundreds of billions of dollars they had borrowed.

           This is why the market is unhappy.  Hundreds of billions of dollars have just disappeared.  These are not literal paper dollars, but electronic dollars in the credit market.  This is one of the reasons why it is difficult to take out new loans.  The Federal Reserve has stepped in to try and fix the problem, but that is a completely different story.

            What does this mean?  Well, credit markets are in turmoil.  No one knows how to value these securities.  A number of lending companies have gone bankrupt.  These financial problems affect the economy by limiting business’s and individual’s ability to borrow money for various projects.  Don’t panic, it’s not the end of the world.  Give the market time to sort itself out.  We tend to overly concerned about the immediate present rather than the future.  So what if one quarter has slow growth, or even negative growth?  There will be hardship for some people, but the market will come back if left unhindered by government intervention.  Also, it will come back quicker if consumer’s had more confidence.  Consumer confidence tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy as to the performance of the market, at least in the short run.  So be patient, things will get better. 

The New York Times profiles the hero of the Superbowl, David Tyree. Here is a man who needs our prayers and who knows God is the reason for true victory:

“I’m a successful player in the N.F.L., having what most people would desire for their lives,” Tyree said. “I’m at the pinnacle of sports. But I had no joy. I had no peace. My life was obviously in disarray.”

Referring to his role in the Giants win over heavily favored Patriots, he says:

“It’s imperative for me not to act like this was all me.”

Read it all.

McCain may not be with conservatives on many social issues, but he’s definitely with us on fiscal issues. He’ll at least work hard to keep America from going broke.

Three articles across the internet today highlight the heart of this issue: the willingness of the candidates to spend money which you’ve given them in self-serving pork projects.

Buying votes with your cash.

First, from the Washington Post: Candidates Earmarks Worth Millions:

Working with her New York colleagues in nearly every case, [Sen. Hillary] Clinton [(NY)] supported almost four times as much spending on earmarked projects as her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), whose $91 million total placed him in the bottom quarter of senators who seek earmarks, the study showed.

Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the likely GOP presidential nominee, was one of five senators to reject earmarks entirely, part of his long-standing view that such measures prompt needless spending.

In the Boston Herald (winner of todays Most Absolutely Annoying And Alliterative Headline: Blustering Bubba Blasts Barak for Babbling Baloney) editorial, The Race For Earmarks, the editors note that Hillary sent $342 million to her own constituents, putting her in the top ten porkers. McCain, on the other hand, was against earmarks before that was even beginning to become popular.The porkers which inhabit Washington desire power. It is not altruism which drives them, but instead a compelling desire to get as many people subscribing to their ascendancy by giving them money.

But whose money do they use? Yours.

If it were their money there would not be an issue, except for the ethical implications of graft and cronyism and what they say of the character of the individual engaging in them.

Further insight into the candidates philosophies can be seen in who they get money for:

As a campaign issue, earmarks highlight significant differences in the spending philosophies of the top three candidates. Clinton has repeatedly supported earmarks as a way to bring home money for projects, while Obama adheres to a policy of using them only to support public entities.

McCain is using his blanket opposition to earmarked spending as a regular line of attack against Clinton, even running an Internet ad mocking her $1 million request for a museum devoted to the Woodstock music festival. Obama has been criticized for using a 2006 earmark to secure money for the University of Chicago hospital where his wife worked until last year.

McCain, for his seeming contempt for many social-conservative causes, respects the citizenry enough to protect their investment in government.

It reminds me of the story of Davy Crockett, who, when a disaster struck his home state while he was a member of Congress, and his constituents begged that he send federal money to help the stricken area, said that he would not.

He stated that money spent by the government can only be used in ways which benefit ALL citizens equally.

If only more in the current crop of public megalomaniacs servants would espouse this truism.

But the porkers currently running for the Democrat nomination do not.

The Scheming Communist Operative, Hillary, does what is best for her and only, ever, what is best for her. If this involves giving your money to someone she thinks can pave her way to power, that’s what she does.

The Idyllic Communist, Obama, only gives to “worthy causes”.

The problem is, people (you and I) are much more efficient and effective at getting money to worthy causes:

• We are better at choosing those causes which are actually worthy.
• We’re less likely to be duped in significant numbers and for substantial amounts of money than the government with its fat-handed largess.
• And it doesn’t cost as much for us to get our money to those causes which are worthy, so more money gets to them overall and less is wasted in the endless iterations of bureaucracy.

Hillary is a smart (not intelligent, just smart) and conniving operative with one goal, her own supremacy.

Obama is an intelligent and misguided idealist. He wants to solve all the world problems, but everything he claims for his plans have all been tried before, and failed. Over and over again.

The picture which comes to mind is that of Kranzy October, the Russian Revolution in “Red” October of 1917.

The idealists, mostly young Russians, many of the Jewish Russians seeking a Utopian society free of the perceived inequities of the Tzarist system followed headlong into the dismal black of Communist Russia. The smart ones saw chance of personal aggrandizement and turned coat. Spying on their idealist brethren and reporting false crimes until they were the only ones surviving. Lenin rose to power in this era not through altruism and idealism but through corruption and power-lust, scheming and buying his way to the top.

Hillary is a Lenin-type, while Obama is a type of the dead idealists.

Both are dead wrong in their goals, but each have their own reasons, methods, and paths to achieve the death of our Great Nation.

Obama is not naive, but he is not a leader.

Check his closet for skeletons.

Danielle from Missiles and Stillettos has posted an article regarding an American Muslim who came to the aid of American Jews who were being verbally and physically assaulted on a NY subway by several people who had wished them Merry Christmas, to which they had replied with Happy Hannukah.

While I’m saddened deeply by the aggressors involving Christmas and by inference the birth of Jesus, I know Jesus is capable of defending His name.

I am glad to see there is a least one Muslim who has not lost his head.

A friend of mine supports Ron Paul for president. Admittedly, his libertarian views are very appealing to many people feeling as though the Republican mainstream has hung them out to dry. However, there are deep issues that I have with Ron Paul, very deep issues.

My friend and I got into a discussion regarding Ron Paul, and they have graciously given me permission to post it here:

Matthew:

Please tell me you only joined the group supporting Ron Paul as a joke.

Friend:

No, I wasn’t joking. Why should I? Go ahead and convince me! =] I’m game.

Matthew:

His political platform is mostly appealing, I do agree with that. However, he supports pulling us out of a war that, regardless of whether you agree with the necessity of the war or no, you must understand to pull out is to give a victory to an enemy who will not accept our defeat graciously but who will next bring the war to our doorstep again. His consistency on the issues he is most vocal about on the campaign trail is also less than stellar, with a marked propensity for bringing “pork” projects to his district.

Finally, and I know he himself does not espouse these beliefs, but white supremacists have jumped on his campaign, contributing money and support. Ron Paul has not repudiated these supporters or returned their money or prevented their support.

He is not a leader in the sense America needs. And while the the pickings are few in the field, I think of all the candidates running with an (R) after their name, Paul is least qualified.

Friend:

We are in a war that can’t be won. Don’t you remember that Bush declared victory over 4 years ago? Since then, 3,735 American soldiers have lost their lives. If that is victory, then we can’t win this war.

Do you remember Vietnam? We lost that war, and had the common sense to get out of there, (although it wasn’t until we lost 58,000 of our guys) and now? We trade with them! Our relations with Vietnam are as they should be with any country!

If a forthcoming attack is your concern, think about this. When Ron Paul talks about bringing our troops home, he’s talking about bringing home ALL of the troops from over 700 military bases, in over 160 different countries, all over the world. We would not no longer be growing resentment in any of these countries, who all deserve, as much as we do, to run their countries how the want, and not have a bigger, more powerful government come and tell them how to live. How would you feel if China or Russia came over here, and built 15 military bases or more, and started telling us how to run our lives? Would you sit back, and let them? I wouldn’t… I would do everything in my power, (which isn’t much=]) to stop them!

So, who would you stand behind for the next president of the US?

Matthew:

First, what about the war we are currently in is failing so very badly that there is no way the war can be one? Have you followed the news beyond what has been force-fed us by the media? Read the post here to see one side of the new growth of freedom in Baghdad. Even the New York Times, a paper arguably more invested than any other in our defeat in Iraq, last week published on the front page an article telling of the good that is occurring there.

We lost Vietnam because the politicians (the revered but Clintonesque JFK and the worst president in history Lindon Baines Johnson) would not allow the military to prosecute the war as it needed to be. The president selected the military targets, micromanaging far beyond what any true and wise leader would have or should have done. There was a small but vocal contingent at home which proclaimed the injustice of the war, getting their faces (and other body parts) smeared all over the evening news as our country fought for it’s soul. Public figures such as Jane Fonda openly consorted with the enemy while our soldiers, not allowed to fight as they should have, were captured and imprisoned and tortured. We still do not know the fate of many of those imprisoned, as the Vietnamese Communists who gained power through the pride and ineptitude of our leaders at the time, persecuting and killing many of their own countrymen as well as our servicemen.

Comparing that just but unjustly-prosecuted war with the conflict we are currently in, the times when the current was going poorly coincide with times when the military leadership has taken away responsibility and power from their field-level commanders, much as in the Vietnam war. One of the the reasons freedom from tyranny is succeeding right now and we are experiencing success in our military operations is that the generals are giving direction and responsibility and allowing the people under them to work and decide and wage their battles as they know best.

And regarding the justice of the war. Who do you believe attacked us in 1992, attempting to topple the trade towers? And again in 2001? The same people made both attempts. And regarding specifically the portion of the conflict in Iraq, yes, we have not found weapons of mass destruction. But operating on the intelligence we had then, all the leaders, not just Bush, not just Republicans, not just ‘hawks’, and not just Americans, but the UN security council (regardless of the morality of their position) supported us in our use of force to depose Saddam Hussein and protect the world from any furtherance of his tyranny, either on his own people or on others through his state-sponsoring of terrorists and their weapons systems. Important to remember in this is that while we have not found any actual WMDs we have not found evidence that they were not or never there. Instead, the consensus is that they were trucked across the border to Syria and Iran, both countries with despotic governments who are not shy about broadcasting their intentions of world domination by their religion by their leadership.

As far as defense goes. The worst defense is the kind where all your assets are kept close by. With the world getting “smaller” as technology and transportation move more and more people further and further more and more quickly, and with weapons capable of striking anyplace from anywhere in mere hours, being “on-site” and in the region of conflict is a much more effective defense.

Regarding the bad feelings we are breeding by our presence in the regions. First, America is the only superpower in the history of the world which has neither forced it’s culture upon those it is around as superior, nor have we failed to relinquish sovereign control of the nations we’ve fought in to legitimate governments of those nations in most cases (several islands in the Pacific being the only exceptions to that). Instead, we fight alongside indigent warriors to free their nations, then we spend billions upon billions of dollars to shore up those nations economies and social structures. The hotbeds of hatred spring up wherever they will regardless of our presence. And to remove from the area would only grant unwelcome power to an unworthy underclass of malcontents and misfits.

I am not sure who I’m supporting for the nomination. I will support any Republican nominee in the main presidential race because: 1, they are all and each morally and pragmatically superior to any of the Democrat nominees, and 2, third party candidates are never a viable option except to take votes away from one of the two main party’s candidate (yes, liberal third partiers… keep up the good work, grin).

As far as the nominees, I’m becoming more and more convinced that Rudy is bad news, and his promises to set up conservative judges are likely to be empty. Romney, I think most of his detractors are picking at straws in their critiques of him, but I do not think I’ll vote for him in the nomination for his lack of history to his moral beliefs regarding abortion. Thompson is (little) talk and I think he’ll fade away soon. Huckabee looks good but I’ve heard those close to him call him a pro-life liberal. I think he’d make an excellent VP if given a position of counsel and some authority. I’m not sold on him.

Of all these, I think Huckabee, if he shows strength continuing into these upcoming primaries, is my preferred choice, pending a bit more investigation.

We didn’t continue the conversation further mainly due to busy-ness.

Huckabee is looking to be less and less of a man I’d want to lead this country. He’d make an admirable vice-president, but his fiscal and many of his social programs are not good. He does not see that the best way to help people is to remove all government-sponsored assistance and as much government-required hindrance and and encourage as much private assistance as possible.

Instead his proposals include large amounts of money to be given to people by the government. Government money is never free and it always comes with strings. And it costs you and me. Why not just take less to start with?

But Ron Paul is the last person this nation needs. He does not appreciate the necessity of remaining in Iraq to bring it to a place of stability. A process in which much progress has already been made. He is not a man of his word.

Tom McClintock, a great man from California, has spoken truth. Excerpts follow:

You have extended me a very dangerous invitation tonight – to speak to a gathering of political conservatives on the day that Al Gore has received the Nobel Peace Prize for discovering that the earth’s climate is changing.

(I)ndulgences will be used for such activities as planting more trees to absorb carbon dioxide. After all, young trees absorb an enormous amount of this “greenhouse gas” – far more than old trees. But isn’t replacing old-growth timber with young-growth timber what lumber companies used to do until the radical environmentalists shut them down?

(T)here are only two ways of generating vast amounts of clean electricity: hydroelectricity and nuclear power. But there’s no faster way to send one of these Luddites into hysterics than to mention that inconvenient truth.

(A)t Al Gore’s rally to save the planet in New York in July, no less an authority than Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that those of us who still have some questions over their theories of man-made global warming are “liars,” “crooks,” “corporate toadies,” “flat-earthers” and then he made this remarkable statement: “This is treason and we need to start treating them now as traitors.”

Ah, the dispassionate language of science and reason.

I got to high school in the 1970’s and learned from the Al Gores of the time that we foolish mortals were plunging ourselves into another ice age. All the scientists agreed.

I believe it was Ogden Nash who wrote:

“The ass was born in March
“The rains came in November
“Such a flood as this, he said,
“I scarcely can remember.”

(W)hen the global warming alarmists predict worldwide starvation, they’re right. They’re creating it.

(R)adical laws now in place in California are having a dramatic impact on energy production, agriculture, manufacturing, wine-making and construction, just to name a few sectors of our economy.

In normal times, citizens don’t pay a lot of attention to public policy, and that’s why democracies occasionally drift off course. But when a crisis approaches, that’s when you see democracy engage. One by one, citizens sense the approach of a common danger and they rise to the occasion. They focus – they look beyond the symbols and rhetoric – and they begin to make very good decisions. Political majorities can shift very quickly in such times. Polls can reverse themselves almost overnight in such times. And I believe that day is now rapidly approaching.

People ask me all the time: “What can I do?” And the only answer I can offer is the answer the great abolition leader Frederick Douglass offered to a young protégé. He said, “Agitate. Agitate. Agitate.”

The Good:

Justice Clarence Thomas has been in the news recently because of a book he has written, a memoir of his life heretofore. He’s making the rounds of radio and TV talk shows and Rush and Hannity, Miller and others are uniform in their approbation of his story. And it is not just conservatives enjoying the narrative of this amazing life. Deborah Douglas of the Chicago Sun-Times, a self-described liberal who believes Anita Hill’s story regarding sexual assault by Thomas, has a few wise words of support and agreement with the aims of Thomas’ life:

…my elders always said, “You may not respect the person, but you have to respect his position.”

Thomas strikes me as trying hard to envision the day when race doesn’t matter, and he offers a strict approach to the Constitution that backs that up. He’s a firm believer in a meritocracy, which becomes devalued when clout, patronage and nepotism persistently usurp it.

The problem is that so many people feel that day is so far away, they can’t take a chance on a guy whose misplaced colorblindness could undo years of racial progress. A man who has tried so hard to flee the burden of race has found, perhaps, that burden is inescapable.

Compare this with the New York Times’ printing of a article by Prof. Anita Hill, one-time subordinate of then Mr. Thomas, in which she continues to maintain the veracity of her story against the oft-reviled Justice. For further enjoyment read the Letters to the Editor regarding Hill’s editorial.

The Bad:

Close to home, in Oak Park, IL a school thinks it can prevent walkway roadblocks and last-minute dashes to class by outlawing “group hugs” at the school. Umm… does this even need commentary?

What about punishing lateness to class. Not allowing ‘lip’ to teachers. Teaching academics instead of the worthless garbage required by so much state and federal oversight and union hand-tying. Creating an environment where learning is the method and creating intelligent, functioning humans is the goal.

Good friends of mine teach at a private school where there are few, if any, field trips, and the students learn classical Greek and Latin as regular parts of their curriculum. When asked when they get to have fun the students themselves respond that learning IS the fun.

Reading the article it seems as though assault and molestation seem to be part of the problem. There is not a right to education, if the person decides they would rather be bringing bombs or molesting others or anything which prevents others from getting the education they are trying to get, kick them out, and send their parents to school instead where they might learn how they need to challenge, lead, and discipline their children before sending them to school.

There are plenty of remedial education options for those who find they really need to learn what they thought they didn’t need to know earlier.

The Ugly:

Dad’s abdicating their responsibility in the home. Living a life of half-way fatherhood, being “men” when others are around and being craven power-whores when they don’t think others see. Yelling at wives and children, psychologically abusing those they’ve sworn to honor, cherish, serve and protect. Psychological abuse is as harmful, if not more so, than physical abuse. Scars on the skin fade with time, scars in the heart only heal with mercy, grace, and forgiveness.

Yes, that’s all I have to say.

The Relative:

Dawn Eden, author of “The Thrill Of The Chaste”, a book on the better way of chastity in today’s unchaste world, debated Virginia Vitzthum, author of “I Love You, Lets Meet”, a book on hooking up through personals ads. In response to a question from the audience regarding why Dawn feels as though she needs to “evangelize” Dawn answers that she is speaking from the position of one hurt by the lifestyle and now speaking against it to protect others. Virginia begins her response calling Dawn “sincere” as though she were some little child, but worse than the haughty snub is the relativist thought that what is right for Dawn isn’t right for everybody else.

One of the most pernicious lies of out time is that of relativism. Humans are relative in that we perceive things relative to other things. Darkness is the absence of light, cold feels more pervasive and “cold” when we’ve just come out of a warm shower, listening to loud noises and we have trouble hearing a whisper we could’ve heard without problem prior. Standards are not relative. Humans invent some standards, such as for gaging temperature, noise, and light, in order to empirically relate different things. But just as the pot has no control over the wheel which spins it and has no say with the potter in its construction, there are standards which govern humans and which brook no relativist comparison. One is either right or wrong (we as humans, being inside the system, often do not have the faculty for judging right and wrong accurately, we cannot measure motive, and therefore must rightfully leave such judgment to the one who created both the human and the standard), good or evil, pure or impure.