Why are Americans more religious than Europeans?

Everyone knows that by any measure Americans are much more religious than Europeans. But have you ever heard anyone discussing how that situation came to be? I think I might have discovered a clue. I have been reading a recent English translation of a book originally written in German about a century ago: Letters of a German American Farmer by Johannes Gillhoff, translated by Richard Lorenz Augus Trost. Link

This is a book adapted from the letters a schoolteacher in the German town of Mecklenburg received from former students who had emigrated to America, mostly to northeastern Iowa. One of the many things that amazed the Germans back home was how involved with the church these new immigrants had become. Most of the poor people in Mecklenburg, including the families from which these immigrants had come, were not very interested in or involved with the church, even though they were forced by law to attend and pay taxes to the church. The reason for that was that the nobility had total control over the hiring and firing of priests and bishops. As a result the church’s theology and social consciousness reflected the needs and desires of the rulers – not the congregation. The result was a quietist version of Christianity that served the interests of the ruling class but did not speak to or for the common folk.

In America the immigrants discovered that there would be no church for their weddings, christenings and funerals unless they built it themselves. Once they built it they discovered they could have total control over how the church was run including the hiring and firing of the ministers. As a result the church, reflecting their interests and needs, became the center of their lives in a way that amazed their relatives back in Germany.

We now hear some American evangelicals talking about the Separation of Church and State as if it were a conspiracy against religion. They seem to think they want a Christian government, like the ones in Europe in the 19th Century, I suppose.

The phrase "Separation of Church and State" was first used by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to a group of Connecticut Baptist clergy who were worried about state government's persecution of their churches. When that was their concern a complete separation of church and state was exactly what they wanted. Now that they no longer fear persecution by the government they think of that separation as being some sort of attack against them.

Eliminating the Separation of Church and State would be killing the goose that laid the golden egg for American religion.

Why didn’t anyone talk to them?

Readers of this blog who do not presently live in the Quad Cities may not have heard about this incident which occurred at a church in Rock Island with a very distinctive appearance (quite photogenic in fact) which has caused quite a stir:

Police continue to investigate a report of suspicious activity at St. Pius X Church.

Rev. Mike Schaab sent a letter home to parents of Jordan Catholic School students Wednesday warning about "several men of apparently Middle Eastern origin" visiting a Feb. 16 Mass who allegedly took photographs inside the church and its exterior.

Parishioners contacted police with the license plate of one of the cars driven by the men, but Capt. Scott Harris said tracing the plate has been unsuccessful.

…

Rev. Schaab said he does not know what would lead parishioners to describe the men as Middle Eastern as he was not present at the Mass and said he does not think anyone could definitively report their nationality.

Read entire article

Apparently some men, who according to some observers looked ‘Middle Eastern,’ came to mass, took some pictures inside and outside the church and left, without anyone from the congregation talking to them. I am not sure which aspects of that situation the police are investigating but if I was a member of that church I know what I would be concerned about. Why didn’t anyone talk to them? Where was the Greeting Committee or the Welcoming Committee or whatever they call it there? What happened to our famous mid-Western friendliness? Those guys must think that the church has a nice looking building but the people are not very friendly.

Fear sometimes makes fools of us all, but come on people – get a grip. Not every stranger with a dark complexion is a terrorist. If you see a stranger taking a picture of your church hitting them up for a donation is probably a much better idea than reporting them to the police.

Hillary – please stop

A determination to not quit when the going gets tough is, in most situations, an admirable quality. A never-say-die attitude is a common trait among successful people. So it is understandable that Hillary Clinton and her advisors, being people who have accomplished much in their lives, would not just give up when the tide turned against them in their quest for the presidency.

But Hillary needs to stop, look in the mirror, and ask herself what she really believes. Does she really not believe in hope or in the power of words and ideas to inspire and unite? [Hillary claims that words don’t matter. Hillary campaign charges Barak with plagiarism.] Does she really want to still be the nominee if she is not the choice of most of the people who participated in the Democratic primaries and caucuses? [Hillary campaign talks about stealing Barak’s delegates.] Does she really not care whether or not the Democratic nominee wins in November if she is not that nominee? Does she have any principles left or is it now all just about winning?

The Surge is NOT working

John McCain was on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos this morning. Once again he claimed the Surge is working in Iraq but said that we cannot draw down the number of our troops there without all the violence returning. Those two statements are in glaring contradiction to each other and only someone who has forgotten how the Surge was supposed to work and what was promised about it when it started would fail to see that contradiction.

The Surge was supposed to be a temporary increase in the number of US troops that would give the Iraqis time to reach political reconciliation between the Sunnis and the Shia. Once that political progress was made then the US could reduce the number of troops without the violence returning. If that political reconciliation has not happened, if we cannot reduce the number of troops without a return to violence then the Surge has NOT worked.

The military leaders were telling us that the number of troops pre-Surge was unsustainable. The current levels of troop deployment are doing severe damage to our military readiness and are causing extreme hardship to our military families. John McCain appears unconcerned about the damage being done to our military. He said that withdrawing our troops would allow Al Qaeda to say that they had won – obviously something McCain thinks is worth any price to prevent. Is that how you feel—that we must continue to pay trillions of dollars and thousands of lives in order to prevent someone somewhere from saying something?

The consequences of our abandonment of care for the mentally ill

My brother Dan, who is a graduate of Northern Illinois University and now lives in nearby Rockford, was inspired to write the following by the recent tragic shooting there. He invited me to edit or rewrite it but I could not find any way to improve it:

Tragedies like those at Virginia Tech. and Northern Illinois University stand as horrific monuments to the folly of our country abandoning its mental health care system. We hear the word “senseless” used again and again by a sadly uninformed news media as they search blindly for meaning in these grotesque acts of violence. But for all of us who remember the near complete dismantling of our mental health system by Reagan conservatives during the 1980s, these horrible acts do indeed make sense, they are but a part of a steady stream of violence and tragedy that is filling our prisons with the victims of mental illness. Today’s “prisoners” were once considered “victims,” they were patients cared for and protected from self destruction by our mental health system.

My mother and father are an example of the millions of citizens caught in the middle of our nation’s mental health tragedy. During the great labor shortage caused by the Second World War, my parents responded to the cries for help coming from State Hospitals. They became mental health workers. Indeed they met and married during war time working at a State Hospital. Following the war my father became a Methodist minister but soon returned to join my mother in their newly chosen work as mental health nurses. They planned to devote their lives to this important work.

The 1950s, 60s, and 70s saw great improvements in mental health care and treatment. There was every reason to believe that the 1980s, a time of great national prosperity, should have been a time of even greater progress in mental health. You can imagine the crushing blow felt by my parents and mental health professionals around the country as the Reagan revolution cut off this flourishing progress and indeed caused the closing of mental health facilities and programs around the country. Most of Illinois’ mental hospitals were closed and then reopened as prisons. My parents were forced to find nursing jobs outside of the mental health system and eventually took jobs as nurses at Menard State Prison.

I leave it to the reader to guess at the motivation of Reagan Conservatives for abandoning the nation’s victims of mental illness. It certainly was no great surprise that no money was saved by this vicious backlash against mental illness and the mental health care system. The results were as predicted. Those suffering from mental illness who did not become homeless street people soon found their way into our nation’s prisons where their mental illness was finally confronted (not dealt with) at a much, much greater cost to society.

Today, the typical inmate in U. S. prisons is suffering from mental illness and the percentage of mental illness in our prison population continues to rise. Every study clearly shows that it would cost our society far less money to be proactive than to allow these suffering victims to sink into helplessness and eventually run afoul of the law. Like the now infamous college gunmen, mental illness is nearly always recognized long before these troubled individuals turn their cries for help into acts of violence.

My parents were once a part of an effective mental health care system that was developing and building a support structure for those in our society, like today’s college gunmen, who’s cries for help today echo as the sound of gunfire and senseless death.
-- Dan Barrett

How Republicans really feel about illegal immigrants

If John McCain becomes the Republican nominee for President what does that say about how the voters really feel (as opposed to what they say) about how the United States should deal with illegal immigrants? Both Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, presumably in response to their perceptions of how the voters feel on the issue, have over the last few months hardened their positions against illegal immigrants. As governor neither of them instructed their state’s employees to spend very many state resources to ferret out and deport illegal immigrants. Quite the contrary in fact. But on the campaign trail, presumably in response to voter outrage over the issue, both men seemed to be competing with each other over who could sound tougher on the issue.

And yet they have been losing the primaries to John McCain, who still supports providing a path to eventual citizenship to otherwise law-abiding, hard-working illegal immigrants who have established roots in our communities. Obviously not very many voters in the Republican primaries are making getting tough against illegal immigrants their top priority – despite what they may have been telling Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee.

We have been hearing talk in the media about a supposed effect noted in previous elections in which white voters were more likely to tell pollsters they supported a black candidate than actually voted for that candidate. Apparently that has not been happening very much this year. Perhaps we need a name for the dynamic in which voters convince the media and candidates that they support getting tough and deporting illegal immigrants and then don’t vote for the candidates who espouse that position.

Israeli checkpoints a modern Jim Crow?

There is a letter to the editor of the Quad-City Times by Art Pitz that takes issue with Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s recent comments comparing the Palestinians feelings about Israeli checkpoints with her feelings as a southern black under Jim Crow. He claimed that the Israeli policy is a justifiable response to terrorism while Jim Crow was simply a means to maintain white supremacy. link

I wrote the following response:

Mr. Pitz,
You admit that the Palestinians feel about the Israeli checkpoints and other restrictions the same way that African-Americans felt about Jim Crow. You seem to be claiming that there is a fundamental difference between the two situations in how the other side feels about the situation. The Israelis feel that their policies are justified by the threat of terrorism -- the actions of a minority of the Palestinians (the vast majority of Palestinians are just trying to survive in a difficult situation). You contrast this with the situation in the American south during Jim Crow, where you seem to think that the white power structure would have freely admitted that their actions had no justification other than maintaining white supremacy. (You do not state it that way but your argument makes no sense unless that is what you are claiming.)

You should watch the movie 'Birth of a Nation' again. The argument for the Klu Klux Klan and Jim Crow by the whites was EXACTLY the same as the Israeli argument for checkpoints, etc. -- acts of violence by a few blacks against whites.

Your argument seems to be that the feelings of the Palestinians are of no importance as long as they do not influence American support for Israeli policies. As long as Americans can be persuaded that the Israeli domination of the Palestinians can be justified then the feelings of the Palestinians can be ignored.

Secretary Rice is right to compare the Palestinians under Israeli occupation to African-Americans under Jim Crow. Jim Crow did not end until a majority of Americans saw television images of little black girls terrorized on their way to school and black teenagers blasted with fire hoses and started to empathize with the African-Americans. The situation for the Palestinians will not change until the majority of Americans start to see the situation through Palestinian eyes. Americans might want to keep that in mind when they think about how few images of Palestinians they see on television.

An end to negative politics?

Wouldn’t it be great if the results of the Democratic primary in South Carolina, where Barak Obama won by a surprisingly large margin, signaled a new trend in American politics where negative, polarizing, attack politics are now counter-productive and almost always back-fire on the candidates that engage in them? Wouldn’t it be great if the new conventional wisdom among the political operatives and the media pundits became that the candidate who is most uniting and inspiring, who is seen to be trying to bring people together rather than pit groups against each other was the one most likely to win?

Although Hillary Clinton as president would be a vast improvement over George Bush and would be much better than any of the Republicans running, I am glad that her campaign’s decision to attack Barak Obama in the way they did in the last couple of weeks seems to have been counter-productive. Take a look at the last year of poll data in South Carolina here.

At the end of November Hillary’s support among voters peaked at 40% and has been sliding ever since. As Hillary’s support started slipping both Barak Obama’s and John Edwards’ numbers increased, so the change was not simply a move to Obama. Voters were deserting Hillary. The Clinton Campaign was obviously reacting to this trend as they went increasingly negative the last few weeks. The apparent result of their attacks was a spectacular rise in support for Barak Obama especially in the last few days where he went from about 45% in the polls a few days ago to 55% of vote yesterday.

Wouldn’t it be great if the result of the South Carolina Democratic primary was the start of a trend that resulted in the political elites coming to view a campaign strategy of trying to increase your opponent’s negatives rather than working to increase your candidate’s positives was something that no longer worked and was a losing strategy?

Memories of meeting FDR

I just got an email from my aunt who was born in 1926. She just remembered the time she met President Franklin Delano Roosevelt about 1939 or 1940. She lived in Des Moines, Iowa at this time. Her father had worked for Wallace's Farmer magazine in the 1920s and when Henry A. Wallace became Secretary of Agriculture during FDR's first 2 terms my grandfather went to work for the Department of Agriculture. His job required him to travel all over the country so the family remained in Iowa and he would rent a room when he was in Washington. My aunt's story:

This evening, [my husband] told me he was talking to a woman in the hall who was telling him about the time she shook Harry Truman's hand. And I said that the first president's hand I had shaken was FDR. And suddenly I remembered about that occasion. When I graduated from 8th grade, my father told me that because I had top honors in the county among the 8th grade graduates, he would take me with him to Washington the next time he had to go there for a week or two. that next time was that fall, October, I believe. He drove instead of taking the train, and in Washington we stayed with a Quaker family that rented rooms. In those days, Washington was smaller, safer, and less complicated, so I could spend the day walking or taking a taxi (they were much cheaper!) to all the things I wanted to see. One day I met him for lunch at the Dept. of Agriculture cafeteria, and then we went over to H. A. Wallace's office (he was secretary of agriculture then) because my father thought he would want to see me while I was there. It happened that H. A. was getting ready to go to a cabinet meeting. He took me with him and introduced me to the president before the meeting started. I don't remember any security upon entering, but perhaps there was some, but no one checked on me or asked me anything. Then I walked out of the White House and the White House grounds and went to the Smithsonian. The casual security sort of blows my mind when I think of it. We just walked in, but, of course, I was with someone who was known. I don't believe serious security started until the Second World War started.

Obama not pandering

Barak Obama spoke today at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the church that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once served as a pastor. In the speech he talked about institutionalized racism, the sensationalizing of race "by the media" and the creeping of race as an issue into the presidential campaign. But the part of the speech that will probably be most commented on was this section where he called on the black community to do more to counter homophobia, anti-semitism and xenophobia:

For most of this country’s history, we in the African-American community have been at the receiving end of man’s inhumanity to man. And all of us understand intimately the insidious role that race still sometimes plays – on the job, in the schools, in our health care system, and in our criminal justice system.

And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that none of our hands are entirely clean. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King’s vision of a beloved community.

We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them. The scourge of anti-Semitism has, at times, revealed itself in our community. For too long, some of us have seen immigrants as competitors for jobs instead of companions in the fight for opportunity.

Every day, our politics fuels and exploits this kind of division across all races and regions; across gender and party. It is played out on television. It is sensationalized by the media. And last week, it even crept into the campaign for President, with charges and counter-charges that served to obscure the issues instead of illuminating the critical choices we face as a nation.

link

Obviously in this speech Barak Obama is not just telling people what they want to hear, as candidates running for office so often do. You won't hear this degree of candor and straight talk from the other candidates, even the one lauded by the media as being a straight-talker.

Pandering to squirrel fryers

Last Wednesday Mike Huckabee, explaining to MSNBC's Joe Scarborough why he would do well in South Carolina, told the following anecdote:

When I was in college, we used to take a popcorn popper, because that was the only thing they would let us use in the dorm, and we would fry squirrels in a popcorn popper in the dorm room.

I will leave it to the voters of South Carolina to determine whether they should feel insulted by Mike Huckabee’s views concerning their dining preferences. But that story raises some questions in my mind that I have not seen asked elsewhere.

Where did Huckabee and his dorm mates get the raw squirrels? Were they road kill? If these college students got their squirrels the way most people get them then they would need rifles or shotguns. Did they keep their firearms in their dorm rooms? Did they shoot the squirrels there on campus or did they go off campus? Either way what did the other students think about all this? Was campus security concerned about these groups of armed students roaming around?

After contemplating these questions for a while I bet that you will start to suspect, as I do, that Mike’s story might not be on the up and up. Will the people who ranted and raved about Al Gore because they thought he made things up treat Mike Huckabee the same way? Don’t hold your breath! They hold Democrats to higher standards than they do Republicans.

More racists attacking Obama

An editorial in the Investor’s Business Daily says the following about Barak Obama

At the core of the Democratic front-runner's faith — whether lapsed Muslim, new Christian or some mixture of the two — is African nativism, which raises political issues of its own.

After repeating thoroughly debunked (see here and here) nonsense about Barak Obama’s church preaching separatism the editorial then asks what it claims is a valid question:

Would Obama put African tribal or family interests ahead of U.S. interests?

link

Of course that’s racist claptrap since there is no reason, other than his race, to ask that question about Barak Obama and not any of the other candidates.

Why not ask if the other candidates might put their ethnic or religious group and family ahead of the nation? Mitt Romney seems to be very family oriented and has a large family. Might not he be tempted to favor his family at the expense of the nation? It’s a good thing there are no Italians, Irish or Jews running. Those groups are famous for sticking with family no matter what. I guess if you were worried about such things you might want to support Rudy Giuliani. I’ve heard that his own children aren’t speaking to him so I guess he is unlikely to be tempted to sell out the country for their sake.

Hillary -- a class act

I cannot support Hillary Clinton for president because she just does not “get it” about Iraq. But I have to admit that she is one tough lady and has shown a lot of class in the way she stood up to the hostility of the press and the pundits as they tried to bury her campaign after the Iowa caucuses—after having been declaring her the inevitable nominee for months.

Here is Rachel Maddow’s analysis of why so many New Hampshire voters decided on or switched to Hillary at the last minute, which I think is spot on.

I had to cheer when I read about Hillary's encounter yesterday with Chris Matthews, one of her most rabid critics. link

In case you were not aware of Chris Matthew’s obsession with Hillary, here MediaMatters documents some of it.

One million new immigrant voters

The Huffington Post blog reports that immigrants are applying for citizenship in record numbers:

A record one million immigrants sought US citizenship last year so they could vote in the 2008 presidential election, overwhelming the processing offices, Hispanic groups said on Monday.

read more

In the past Hispanics have voted in approximately equal numbers for Republicans and Democrats. However, with most of the Republican candidates for president competing with each other over who can sound the most anti-immigrant no one expects very many of these new immigrant citizens to be voting Republican in 2008.

Let's all march with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (figuratively)

With each day that passes it appears more likely that Barak Obama will be the Democratic candidate for president in 2008. It also is clear that, although the great majority of the American public is sufficiently non-racist to consider his candidacy in a color-blind manner, there are enough racists and other types of bigots out there to cause considerable trouble. Since these people are almost all among the 30% or so of the voting population who will never vote for a Democratic candidate under any circumstances and without whom a Democratic candidate can still achieve a land-slide victory their opposition to Barak Obama’s candidacy does not in itself pose any problem.

The problems would only be if they are successful in spreading lies, rumors and distortions which, like the Swift-Boat Veterans attacks on John Kerry in 2004, sway under-informed undecided swing voters. As we learned in 2004, considering obvious lies and smears as being unworthy of a response is not a winning strategy. People of good will need to immediately respond to racist and bigoted talk about Barak Obama whenever and wherever they encounter it. Even if you do not support Barak Obama’s candidacy decency demands that this is the time to stand up to bigotry and lies.

Mitt Romney had been talking on the campaign trail about how he remembered seeing his father marching with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for civil rights. When people who had researched the issue and had documentation proving that Governor George Romney, Mitt’s father, had never actually marched with Dr. King (although he apparently shared most of Dr. King’s views on racial matters) asked the Romney campaign about this they explained that Mitt had not meant to imply that his father had literally marched. He had figuratively marched alongside Dr. King.

Well, ok. Let’s all figuratively march with Dr. King. When you hear someone trying to imply something negative about Obama because his middle name is Hussein ask what someone’s name has to do with anything. When someone says that they have heard Barak attended a Muslim religious school as a youngster tell them that CNN and ABC investigated those charges and refuted them. When someone talks about “those” Obama supporters who may riot if he loses or may be or do this or that, ask them what Obama supporters they mean—Iowans?

Democrats energized, Republicans dispirited

239,000 Iowans attended Democratic caucuses last night, while only 115,000 showed up to vote Republican. Young people, first-time caucus attendees, independents and cross-over Republicans swelled the Democratic ranks.

Some conservative bloggers have recently been trying to take comfort from poll results showing that Congress is unpopular to try to claim that the Democratic Party is in as much disfavor with the voting public as the Republicans. Iowans have shown how wrong that idea was.

Read Michael Moore’s analysis of the results of the Iowa caucuses.

Shaken not stirred

If James Bond asked a bartender for a vodka martini, "shaken not stirred" and the bartender, out of sight of Bond, stirred it instead of shaking it, what would happen? Would James Bond take one sip and angrily tell the bartender, "I said, shaken, not stirred!" Or would he be unable to tell the difference?
If you think James Bond could tell the difference, what quality do you think he had that allowed him to discern whether a drink has been shaken or stirred?
If you think James Bond could not tell the difference then why do you suppose he ordered it that way?

No note taking or map reading in Chicago!

If you ever find yourself in Chicago, you'd better walk right, you better not stagger, you better not fight. You also better not take notes, use binoculars, cameras, video or maps. In their "Winter Holiday Public Awareness Bulletin" issued Nov. 8, 2007 the Chicago police request the public to immediately report any suspicious activity. Among the activities they specifically request the public to report are: taking notes, using binoculars, cameras and video and maps. See the bulletin here. If you need a map to find your way in Chicago you'd better be prepared to explain yourself to the police!

"Environmentalists removed wolves from Yellowstone," -- Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck, a man who has been given his own show on CNN Headline News, spouted this wonderful piece of wisdom recently:

...it's these same kind of environmentalists that took the wolves out of Yellowstone Park and said, 'Oh, it would be so much better without the wolves.' Well, they shipped them up to Canada. Now they had to put them back into the wildlife.

link

You know, I think I read about that in the history books. They captured all those wolves in Yellowstone, crated them up and shipped them off to Canada. If memory serves me right it took thousands of trucks to bring in the empty crates and then take the crates with the wolves in them up to Canada. I think I vaguely remember something about some ranchers in Canada complaining that there were already too many wolves in Canada and they didn't need any more. Or something like that. You can look it up, but if you did you would be one up on Glenn Beck.

What the Mad Hatter said

“Take some more tea,” the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
“I’ve had nothing yet,” Alice replied in an offended tone: “so I can’t take more.”
“You mean you can’t take less,” said the Hatter: “it’s very easy to take more than nothing.”
from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol

The above exchange came to mind when I was thinking about the likely effects of the new immigration law in Arizona, slated to take effect in January. See a description of the law here.
See how the Arizona business community is reacting to the law here. Read today's New York Times editorial about it here.

Insofar as the law is enforced (laws that negatively impact business often are not) I have no doubt that it will reduce illegal immigration and cause illegal immigrants already in Arizona to leave. But will the lives of the people of Arizona be better as a result?

Since Arizona’s current unemployment rate is at a rock bottom rate of 3% (the level at which every employable person who wants work is already employed, other than people temporarily between jobs) the law is hardly likely to reduce the unemployment rate.

Since no terrorist that we know of has entered the country by crossing the US border with Mexico illegally that number is unlikely to be reduced either. As the Mad Hatter said, you cannot have less than zero.

Since people who come to this country as adults (legally and illegally) commit about one fourth as many crimes as people of the same ethnicity and social-economic level who were born here reducing the number of illegal immigrants is unlikely to have a positive effect on the crime rate either.

There are hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants currently in Arizona's labor force. If this law is vigorously enforced it will create a labor shortage that will take years of increased legal immigration to alleviate. The short term effects on Arizona's economy are going to be devastating.

If the law is not broadly enforced, if it is only selectively enforced against only certain industries and as occasional publicity stunts for political purposes, then the likely effect is an increase in corruption and a continuing decrease in respect for the law.

In six months or so it will be interesting to ask Arizonians how that law is working out for them.

Bold red ties are patriotic?

In a typical example of what passes for political analysis in the mainstream media these days Robin Givhan of the Washington Post writes:

One of the most distinctive elements of Barack Obama's public style comes down to what he so often is not wearing: patriotism on his sleeve. Whether he is speaking at a campaign rally, attending a fish fry or debating his Democratic challengers, he comes across as the candidate least willing to drape himself in the usual symbols of nationalism and politics. No flag pin on the lapel. No hand on heart during the national anthem at Tom Harkin's Iowa steak fry. And he generally shuns bold red ties.

Obama refuses to dress the part of the presidential contender, with all of its safely prepackaged banality. He has never fully embraced the stereotypical uniform of Washington. Even in the glossy pages of Men's Vogue in September 2006, when he was positioned as Kennedy, Santa Claus and the Messiah all rolled into one, he was never pictured in the traditional political costumes or doing any of the glad-handing that is standard practice.

read the entire article

Bold red ties are patriotic? Is that universal or just in the United States? Do other countries have different colors or what?

Mainstream Media’s Cold Cold Heart

Political reporters for the main streammedia seem to have cold, cold hearts. They interpret everything the candidates say, not as honest and sincere statements of their principles, beliefs and intentions, but as cynical campaign ploys and attacks on their rivals. The candidates must feel like Hank Williams, complaining that these reporters think "each thing I do is just some evil scheme."

For example, Jim Kuhnhenn of the Associated Press explains John Edwards focus on corporations and lobbyists, rarely mentioning other candidates, this way:

On his current bus tour of Iowa, with the caucuses only three weeks away, Edwards rarely mentions his rivals. …
On the campaign trail, his antagonists now are the corporations and special interests themselves. The Clinton and Obama references are merely implied, hidden in a populist message he calls "America Rising." For the former trial lawyer, it's a closing argument to break away from a virtual three-way tie in Iowa and rise above the fray engulfing his main opponents.

read entire article

If a reporter on the campaign trail does not hear what he expects to hear in a campaign speech, attacks on the other candidates, hypocritical posturing and cynical pandering, then he claims those things are implied and hidden in the message. The idea that the candidate might be expressing his/her sincere beliefs and intentions apparently never occurs to the reporter.

What is the true meaning of Christmas?

When I was young my family belonged to a Methodist church here in the Illinois Quad Cities. I remember at this time of year people in the church talking about how the true religious meaning of Christmas had been lost amid all the commercialism and emphasis on selling and buying things. I also remember noticing that our minister did not jump on this particular bandwagon. Although he preached sermons about how this time of year should remind us of our religious obligations to help the less fortunate and to be loving and generous he never talked about the ‘true’ meaning of Christmas.

I asked my father, who had studied for the ministry, about this and he explained that anyone who had studied the history of the church knew that the gift-giving and revelry, the tree, the mistletoe and the Yule log, WAS the true meaning of Christmas. The celebration on December 25 was a pre-existing pagan holiday that Christianity had co-opted. My father explained that among the New England Puritans from whom he was descended the more religious you were the less you celebrated Christmas. My mother’s family was Quaker and although I was not raised as a Quaker I attended a Quaker boarding high school. I discovered there that the Quakers as a religious body did not even mention Christmas as a religious holiday, although almost all the Quaker families I knew had a Christmas tree and exchanged gifts at home. (The Quakers also did not celebrate Easter, feeling that anything worth celebrating should be celebrated every day of the year, not just on one special day.)

Well, over the last 40 years or so, apparently the debate has shifted. People who call themselves conservative are now outraged, not that the true Christian meaning of Christmas has been lost amid the commercialism and marketing, but that store employees are being told by their bosses to say “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas” and, at least in Australia, some store Santas are being told to say ‘Ha-ha-ha’ rather than ‘Ho-ho-ho’. Conservative talk-show hosts and bloggers are outraged that stores are more concerned about not offending their non-Christian customers than they are in preserving Christmas traditions of saying “Merry Christmas” and “Ho-ho-ho” – traditions that extend all the way back 100 years or so. See examples here and here.

I guess I liked it better when people were complaining that Christmas had become too commercial. The idea that store employees and store Santas have become the high priests of our Christmas experience and the debate is only over how well or badly the stores are fulfilling their obligations to our Christmas is just absurd.

Faith-based intelligence analysis

Apparently the neocons who wanted us to invade Iraq and are now agitating for a US military strike on Iran are not motivated by facts. The facts, such as reports by our intelligence agencies, are not used to determine what they think should be done. The facts are only used to try to convince others. Their belief in the need for military action is obviously faith-based, beyond the reach of facts or reason. This can clearly be seen by their reaction to the intelligence reports that Iran had suspended their nuclear weapons program in 2003. Their reaction, such as this op-ed in today’s New York Times, is to disbelieve the intelligence and to even impugn the motives and patriotism of the intelligence agencies.

This is in stark contrast to what they had to say about the intelligence about Iraq before we invaded that country. When the intelligence agreed with their pre-determined conclusions they claimed to have reached those conclusions as a result of the intelligence. It should be obvious now that they never were swayed by the facts and have always been faith-based.

Nice man with long stick will retrieve hat

Nice man with long stick will retrieve hat, originally uploaded by t-dawg.

This picture that I came across at flickr.com shows that Japan is truly a civilized country. They actually put up a sign to reassure people that if they lose their hat a nice man will come along and retrieve it for them. At least, that's what I think the sign is trying to convey.

Bush’s logic justifies Pearl Harbor

Blogger Cenk Uygur of the Huffington Post makes an excellent point:

"I view this report as a warning signal that they had the program, they halted the program. The reason why it's a warning signal is they could restart it."
-- George W. Bush

This is George Bush talking about Iran's non-existent nuclear weapons program. He explains that a National Intelligence Estimate that says they have no program is a warning that they might have one. Obviously this has to win some sort of award for circular reasoning (come on, how ridiculous is it that he says the fact they don't have one proves they might have one later….

And if he does believe this absurdity, then wasn't Japan justified in attacking us in Pearl Harbor?

They heard that we had a nuclear weapons program - and we did. And that we might be able to start it any time - which was relatively true. And that if we had nuclear weapons, we might use them against Japan one day - which obviously proved to be true. So, they launched a pre-emptive strike against the United States because we had a nuclear weapons program they feared we might use against them at a later time.

Under the Bush doctrine, isn't Pearl Harbor the perfect case for using a pre-emptive first strike? Japan was rightfully concerned about our weapons program and they rightfully struck us first.

Of course, the only problem with that theory is that there is an excellent chance we would have never used those nuclear weapons against Japan if they hadn't attacked us first. Gee, I wonder if this could be a decent argument against pre-emptive strikes.

link

New assessment: Iran halted nuclear bomb program in 2003

According to this morning’s New York Times:

A new assessment by American intelligence agencies released Monday concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen, contradicting a judgment two years ago that Tehran was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb.

What, I have to wonder, has changed in the last two years. If the program was halted in 2003 then that should have been just as obvious to our intelligence people in 2005 as it is now in 2007. Presumably the official explanation for what has changed involves new data or analysis that was not available two years ago.

My suspicion is that what has changed is that the intelligence people saw the Bush Adminstration, after having pressured the intelligence agencies to find evidence for Weapons of Mass Destruction in pre-invasion Iraq, then turn around and place all the blame on the intelligence community for the faulty assessments when no WMDs were found. I suspect that the sure knowledge that they would get the blame again for faulty assessments of Iran’s capabilities and intentions gave them the backbone to resist pressure to ‘sex up’ the intelligence on Iran as they had on Iraq.

Foreclosure Community Meeting this Saturday

I got a nice email from Shelley Sheehy in response to my previous post about the home mortgage foreclosure crisis.

I think that being conservative means a laissez-faire attitude toward enforcement and that is precisely what had gotten many people into the foreclosure situation. When the bank regulators do not enforce fair lending laws or CRA requirements to serve LMI and underserved populations, the predatory products flourish. Not to mention the fact that many of these products were securitized by the investment side of the bank and encouraged through the formation of subprime affiliates early in the history of this debacle. Blaming the consumer is a common practice, but there should be some accountability for Wall Street before any bailout is considered. Conservatives also advocate bailing out Wall Street before the neighborhood.

I have attached the schedule for a Foreclosure Community meeting this Saturday.

Shelley Sheehy
River Cities Development Services
1400 East River Drive
Davenport, Iowa 52803
563,343,5699

Board Member, National Community Reinvestment Coalition
To learn more about NCRC, visit our websites at:
www.communityinvestmentnetwork.org or http://www.ncrc.org/

Proposed Agenda for Foreclosure Summit

Saturday, December 8, 2007 8:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

The Quad Cities Reinvestment Coalition (QCRC) is sponsoring a Foreclosure Summit, Saturday December 8th beginning at 8:30 a.m. and ending at 1:30 p.m.

QCRC is convening this meeting in an effort to bring all community resources together to educate ourselves on the extent of the problem and to form a working group to address issues that have come about as a result of the this crisis.

We will meet at the Kahl Building in the 10^th Floor Conference Center located at 3^rd and Ripley Streets in downtown Davenport. Senator Chris Dodd, Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee is scheduled to speak at 11:30 a.m.

Again, this meeting is not designed for those who are in the midst of a foreclosure, but to form a community support system drawing upon federal, state, and local resources in the public and private sector.

8:30-8:45 a.m. Registration and Continental Breakfast

8:45-8:50 a.m. Welcome and Orientation to the Schedule for the Day

8:50-9:05 a.m. Congressman Phil Hare (tentative)

9:05-10:35 a.m.

Identification of the Problem: Foreclosures in the Quad Cities

· Context from a National/State Perspective: Stephanie Preush-Iowa AG Task Force

· Discussion of Local Situation: Brooke Upton/Dawn Mutum-Plies

· Implications for the Local Economy: Jerry Anthony U of I- Bob McGivern-Koester/McGivern Appraisals

10:40 a.m.-11:50 p.m.

Resources Inventory

· Federal: Senators/Congressional Representatives

· State: IFA/AG/IHOEP (Illinois Resources)

· Local: Non-profits/Cities

· Financial Community Response: National/Local

Senator Dodd will speak at @ 11:30 p.m.

12:00 p.m.-1:30 p.m. Brownbag Working Lunch

Community Response: Interactive Session

· Intake/Counseling Support/Gaps in Service

· Monitoring and Updating the Community

· Communication with State and Federal Resources

Update
Since we plan to provide lunch-attendees will need to reserve a spot by emailing rschloemer@housingcluster.org

Some questions for those over the age of 35

Have you been reading about the financial crisis caused by the home mortgage debacle? Here is what Paul Krugman has to say about it. Thinking about it has raised some questions in my mind.

Anyone over the age of 35 or so knows very well the basic rules for making safe home mortgages – ones that will likely not go into foreclosure. They were the rules in place when we were young. A sound and safe home mortgage is based on an accurate appraisal of the value of the property, does not exceed 80% of the property’s value, and is made to someone for whom the mortgage payments are no more than one third of their take-home income.

So, if you are over the age of 35, have alarm bells been going off in your head over the last 15 years or so about what has been happening with home loans? If you have investments have you been avoiding ones that involve pools of residential mortgages? Have you said no to second and third mortgages and variable rate mortgages? If not, why not? Did you think that the need for the old rules were figments of our parent’s imaginations? Or did you think that something had changed so that the old rules did not apply any more? If so, what did you think had changed?

If you considered yourself a conservative at any time during the last 15 years did being a conservative make you more or less likely to think that throwing out the rules for how to write home mortgages was a problem? What exactly have conservatives been conserving?

What has happened to the rule of law?

Supposedly the George W. Bush administration is conservative, but what exactly are they conserving? The way the world has worked up until now, at least the parts of the world that are civilized and operate under the rule of law, people are not kidnapped by agents of foreign governments. People facing criminal charges in the United States who reside in, say, the United Kingdom can only be brought without their consent to the United States if the United Kingdom agrees to arrest and extradite them.

Until 2001 the only time this procedure was circumvented were when Nazi war criminals were kidnapped by agents of Israel.

Since 2001 the United States has claimed the right to kidnap people suspected of being terrorists. This did not unduly alarm people who did not think they were likely to be suspected of being war criminals or terrorists. But now the Bush Administration is telling the world that the United States claims the right to kidnap anyone anywhere.

As reported by the TimesOnLine (London Sunday Times):

AMERICA has told Britain that it can “kidnap” British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States. A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.

The admission will alarm the British business community after the case of the so-called NatWest Three, bankers who were extradited to America on fraud charges. More than a dozen other British executives, including senior managers at British Airways and BAE Systems, are under investigation by the US authorities and could face criminal charges in America.

Until now it was commonly assumed that US law permitted kidnapping only in the “extraordinary rendition” of terrorist suspects.

The American government has for the first time made it clear in a British court that the law applies to anyone, British or otherwise, suspected of a crime by Washington.

link

How could people called conservative claim this kind of power, a power that allows them to ignore international law? How do you feel about the world being told by the Bush Administration that this is what America stands for – that might make right? What are these conservatives conserving? What historic period are they returning us to?

Hostage drama

A New Hampshire man walked into a Hillary Clinton campaign office in his town with what he said was a bomb duct taped to his chest demanding to speak to Hillary Clinton. Link What the heck? I thought everyone is New Hampshire had already personally spoken to all the candidates multiple times.

How many reindeer pull Santa's sleigh?

I am starting to get in the Christmas spirit. I have been thinking about Santa Claus and his reindeer.

How many reindeer pull Santa’s sleigh? Is it eight, as in Clement Moore’s poem, or nine as claimed by the song “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”? It can’t be both. The two accounts contradict each other. At least one of them has to be wrong.

Of course, we don’t worry about such things because we know the authors of this poem and song did not intend us to take them literally. Since their purpose is to relate myth rather than historical accuracy they can both be true – they are both valued because they both serve their intended purpose in the realm of myth and fantasy.

But what if someone in the future only had access to the words of this poem and song in a printed form that did not make clear that they were fiction? What if all they had were the words of the poem and song themselves – no helpful library classification or other context? What internal clues within the text itself should clue the insightful reader how to classify these writings?

If the action was set in some fantasy place like Never-never land where people lived in tree houses or holes in the ground it would be easy to tell that it was fiction, but the action seem to be set in our world where people live in houses like ours, so that is no help. A good clue that should tell any intelligent reader that this is fiction is the supernatural feats Santa and his reindeer perform – flying and visiting every house in the world in a single night. Another clue to their fictional nature is the fact that the later account adds details to the story – an extra reindeer – without any explanation for why the first telling of the story was wrong about this. The author of the song felt free to modify the story told in the poem in a way that would render the first story false if it were viewed as history. That should alert any intelligent reader that the author of the song did not view the original story as history and did not expect her/his audience to view either the poem or song as literally true or historically accurate.

That all probably seems so obvious that you think it was hardly worth my time to type it. But you would be surprised how many people miss obvious points like this when dealing with religious documents from long ago.

Illinois considering scanning driver's licenses on boarding riverboat casino

According to an article in this morning’s Quad City Times:

Gamblers, no matter how old they are, may have to show their driver’s license and have it scanned before entering Illinois casinos under a new proposal.

The Illinois Gaming Board is considering the card-everyone idea as a way to catch people who have voluntarily agreed to be arrested if they board one of the state’s riverboat casinos

The article goes on to explain that once someone has banned themselves from the riverboat casinos it takes 5 years and a doctor's evaluation that they are no longer addicted to gambling to get their name removed from the lists.

I think this is an excellent idea. If it works out well how about extending it nationally to all forms of legal gambling? And if that works out how about extending it to sales of alcohol? Just think, once someone agrees that they are a problem drinker and promises to quit, you would get them to ban themselves from alcohol and then it would be a lot harder for them to fall off the wagon.

Everyone selling alcohol (by the bottle or by the drink) would have a driver's license scanner connected to a central database so fake driver's licenses used by underage kids would no longer work. Everyone who did not have a driver's license because they were illegal for any reason would not be able to drink. Everyone who was of age and legal and had never declared themselves a problem drinker would just have their driver's license scanned and they would be scarcely inconvienced. I think it is a great idea.

Randy Newman - A Few Words in Defense of Our Country

Check out patriot Randy Newman's "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country"

For those of you who don't get what he is talking about -- don't worry about it. He's just defending our country.

What I am thankful for

Since today is Thanksgiving Day I thought I would talk about why I am thankful to live in the United States of America. I’ve been listening to a lot of immigrants lately talking about why they came to this country and this gives me an appreciation of what is right in this country. I believe the great majority of Americans believe that our government (federal, state and local) is and should be honest, non-corrupt and serving the needs of the people. I think most Americans are shocked and motivated to do something to fix it when they find out about instances when the government has been corrupt or has subverted the rule of law. That is not the case in many countries in the world, especially the countries from which many of our immigrants come.

The collapse of the Soviet Union showed how ultimately all governments, even the ones in countries we call non-democratic, can only stay in power with the consent of the people of that country. I think as long as most Americans refuse to accept as normal and commonplace that the government will be corrupt and serving special interests rather than the people then this country will remain free and democratic.

Polls show that about 70% of Americans think that the country is heading in the wrong direction. I am thankful that most Americans recognize the same problems I see and are prepared to do something about it. Happy Thanksgiving.

If a woman is b___ what is a man?

At the breakfast table this morning I was reading Leonard Pitts’ column which was commenting on the lack of reaction to a woman who asked John McCain, “How do we beat the b___,” referring, of course, to Hillary Clinton. McCain laughed and said it was an excellent question. The column asks if the reaction would have been the same if Lieberman had been the front runner and a questioner referred to him as a Hebe, or Richardson as a spic, or Obama as a coon? Leonard Pitts had no doubt that McCain would not have thought those were ‘excellent’ questions.

I agreed completely with the point the column was making but my wife did not. She did not think that calling a woman a “b___” was comparable to calling a Jew a Hebe or a Hispanic a spic. She thought an equivalent insult was calling a man a bastard. Should the column have asked whether John McCain would have thought that “How do we beat the bastard,” referring to Obama or Edwards was an ‘excellent’question? What do you think?

Republican Values

According to the Yeas & Nays blog at www.examiner.com written by Jeff Dufour and Patrick Gavin:

DeLay told Yeas & Nays that Republicans in Congress are "looking for something to believe in" and "they're not getting it out of this Republican leadership. … The leadership just isn't getting it."

"They're looking for some backbone,"

Presumably demonstrating the kind of backbone he thinks Congressional Republicans need Tom Delay said of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, "I'd like to bitch-slap him."

Read the entire article.

Tom Delay is an example of the kind of politicians the so-called "Values Voters" have been supporting. What values do you think he was demonstrating in that interview?

As bad as Dafur is Somali is worse

According to an article in this morning’s New York Times as bad as Dafur is Somali is worse.

The worst humanitarian crisis in Africa may not be unfolding in Darfur, but here, along a 20-mile strip of busted-up asphalt, several top United Nations officials said.
…
Top United Nations officials who specialize in Somalia said the country had higher malnutrition rates, more current bloodshed and fewer aid workers than Darfur, which is often publicized as the world’s most pressing humanitarian crisis and has taken clear priority in terms of getting peacekeepers and aid money.

Read the entire article.

Congressman Hare getting noticed

Our freshman Congressman, Phil Hare of Rock Island, is getting some notice for his work to try to prevent the Peru free trade deal. There is a front page story about this in this morning's Quad City Times

“I’ve been working on trade issues for 17 years, and Rep. Hare, as a freshman, showed more leadership, more character and, frankly, more relentless insistence for what was good for his constituents ... than I’ve seen more multi-term members pull off,” said Lori Wallach, director of the Global Trade Watch Program at Public Citizen, which opposed the deal. “It was incredibly impressive.”

Read the entire article

NAFTA was promoted as the kind of trade deal that is good for both developing countries like Mexico and developed nations like the United States and Canada. Well, the verdict is in on its effects and it has been a disaster for the people of Mexico, as evidenced by their desperation to come to our country to find work. The Peru deal is similar to NAFTA and there is no reason to think its impact would be any more positive for the working people of either the Peru or the United States.

Robert Novak being ignored

Apparently Bob Novak has written a column in which he claims that the Hillary Clinton campaign told him they have information about Barak Obama that would be disastrous for his presidential aspirations if it were to become public. Apparently the Clinton campaign has denied this. Apparently Barak Obama has responded by saying that he will not be intimidated by such rumors – he will not be “Swift-boated”. I say apparently because I can find no information about any of this from a source I trust. None of the newspapers I read have anything on this, including the New York Times. Nor do any of the mainstream or liberal blogs. The only source I have for any of this are a couple of local conservative blogs, here and here, that I read because they are listed along with this blog on a local blogger’s page on the local newspaper’s website. I gather other conservative blogs around the country are also talking about this.

It is not surprising that no one without a conservative ax to grind will touch this. The whole story is based solely on the thoroughly discredited word of one man, Robert Novak. In the same way that scientists usually just ignore crackpot theories rather than bothering to refute them, apparently real journalists are simply ignoring this story. I advise you to do the same.

You can earn college credit by reading this blog

This blog's readability rating, the level of education required to understand the blog, has been judged by an independent rating service to be college level (undergrad). I would expect that would mean that college students (undergrad) can earn college credit by reading it -- check with your professors.

Of course, some of you may be thinking that this rating means that I am not writing clearly and plainly enough, that I am going over most of my potential audience's heads and that may explain my low readership ratings and the fact that my blog has been judged to be worth only $564.54 based on the number of links to my blog from elsewhere on the web. I choose not to look at it that way.

Instead, displaying the attitude that has got me where I am today, I say that anyone who can't understand this blog needs to go back to school.

Lou Dobbs thinking about running for president

An article in the Wall Street Journal by John Fund says that CNN’s Lou Dobbs is thinking about running for president.

Friends of Mr. Dobbs say he is seriously contemplating a race for the first time, although it's still unlikely. They spin a scenario under which the acerbic commentator would parachute into the race if Michael Bloomberg, the New York billionaire and favorite of East Coast elites, enters the field as an independent. With Hillary Clinton continuing to score badly in polls in the categories of honesty and integrity, and with the public's many doubts about Rudy Giuliani and other GOP contenders, Mr. Bloomberg may well see an opportunity to roil the political waters by entering the race late. If so, Mr. Dobbs then sees a niche for a "fourth-party" candidate who could paint the three other contenders as completely out of touch.

Nothing could more perfectly illustrate how people in the media think about political races and running for office. They think politics is a matter of personifying opinions. For that, after all, is all that Lou Dobbs offers – opinions. He has no experience in government or even in running a business. At least Ross Perot had experience as an executive who had accomplished something by managing people and an organization. Lou Dobbs only has experience expressing opinions. If elected president Lou Dobbs would be in the position of having to work with a Congress in which no one was of his political party or owed him anything. The idea that campaigns and elections are how we select our leaders has been lost on these people who think elections are how we express our opinions.

David Broder's feelings of awkwardness

In his column this morning David Broder opines that the relationship between Hillary and Bill Clinton poses unique challenges to the nation should Hillary be elected. He remembers his discomfort when Hillary was given a prominent role during Bill’s presidency:

When Bill Clinton was president, the large policy enterprise that was entrusted to the first lady -- health-care reform -- crashed in ruins. The causes were complex, and some of the burden falls on other people -- Republicans and Democrats in Congress, the interest groups and, yes, the press. But as one who reported and wrote in great detail and length about that whole enterprise, I can also tell you that the awkwardness of having an unelected but uniquely influential partner of the president in charge affected every step of the process, from the gestation of the plan to its final demise.

I don’t get it. How is having the president’s spouse in charge of some initiative any different than having any other equally unelected appointee or advisor, selected by the president, in charge? Condi Rice seems strangely, at least to me, close to President Bush. She is “an unelected but uniquely influential partner of the president.” Why is not David Broder disquieted by that situation? I have to suspect that David Broder’s feelings of “awkwardness” concerning Hillary Clinton have more to do with his political differences with her and his prejudices and hang-ups than with anything else.

Universal Hovercraft

Click on this link to go the website of an Illinois company named Universal Hovercraft. As you can see by their website this is a company that makes personal hovercraft. They helpfully list the various models as either 1-2 person, 3-6 person or larger. They offer “turnkey” hovercraft and also plans, kits and parts.

This company came to my attention when I was banking on-line and perusing the charges to my and my wife’s credit cards for the past week. A charge of $420 was paid to Universal Hovercraft. I did not have a receipt for that and did not remember ordering anything from that company or my wife having told me she had ordered anything. So, I googled to find out more about the company and discovered their website. As you can see the website makes no mention of anything the company does or sells other than hovercrafts.

So I asked my wife a question I had never imagined I would ever ask, “Honey, did you buy a hovercraft this past week and not give me the receipt?”

She got somewhat alarmed. She has always had a fear that a thief would get our credit card information and suddenly charges for things we had not bought would appear on our credit card statements. The charge for the purchase of a personal hovercraft apparently struck her as the epitome of something we would not have purchased and so it seemed that all her fears were suddenly coming true.

Hours later, after she had calmed down, she remembered what she had charged to her credit card for $420. Our cleaning lady had been complaining that she had borrowed some money from one of those car title/payday loan places and, because of the high interest her balance had kept increasing faster than she could get it paid off. The balance had grown to $420. My wife went down there, whipped out her credit card, paid off the loan. She told our cleaning lady she could pay us back by cleaning our house and we would not be charging her any interest.

Well, it was a relief to know that this was a legitimate charge to our credit cards but why did it show up as a payment to Universal Hovercraft? I have given it some thought and I now have a theory. Whatever relationship there is between the car title/payday loan place and Universal Hovercraft was created, at least in part, in order to give cover to the customers and employees of the loan place who are ashamed of their association with the high-interest loan shop. Not having the name of a quicky-loan place on their credit card statements must prevent some embarrassment for some customers (although it only caused confusion for me.)

The more speculative part of my theory is that the relationship between the two businesses gives cover to the employees of the loan shop who don't want to admit their association with the car title/payday loan business. When asked what they do for a living they say they sell hovercrafts. When they are asked to come to their children's school to talk about what they do they bring catalogs of hovercrafts for the kids to oh and ahh over. That's just speculation on my part, of course.

Why you can't see the news the way others see it.

Very few Americans have the opportunity to see international news the way millions of people in the Middle East see it, on Al Jazeera. Among those few are our soldiers in Afghanistan. According to Roger Cohen in his column in today’s New York Times:

In the gym at the NATO base in Kabul, U.S. soldiers hit the treadmills every morning and gaze at TV screens broadcasting Al Jazeera’s English news channel. When Osama bin Laden makes news, as he did recently with a statement about Iraq, America’s finest work out beneath the solemn gaze of their most wanted enemy.

Back in the States about the only way you can watch it is if you are one of the 147,000 subscribers to Buckeye Cablesystem in Toledo, Ohio.

Allan Block, the chairman of Block Communications, which owns Buckeye, [says]: “It’s a good channel. Sir David Frost and David Marash are not terrorists. The attempt to blackball it is neo-McCarthyism.”

Block, like other cable providers, got protest letters from Accuracy in Media, a conservative watchdog. Cliff Kincaid, its editor, cites the case of Tayseer Allouni, a former Afghanistan correspondent jailed in Spain for Al Qaeda links. This is evidence, he suggests, that “cable providers shouldn’t give them access.”

How do you feel about conservatives like Cliff Kincaid threatening cable providers to prevent you from seeing Al Jazeera?

Scott Adams, Dilbert Cartoonist – “Why We Should All Become Muslims”

I just discovered that one of my favorite cartoonists, Scott Adams, author of “Dilbert”, has a blog. As you would expect his blog is full of unexpected ideas that make a lot of sense. One of his recent posting got a lot of comment – “Why We Should All Become Muslims.” He points out that people around the world of all different religions seem about equally happy. If one religion was better or truer than the others and human beings were capable of determining that then we all (or at least the smarter ones among us) would be followers of that religion. But that is not the case so it appears that we have no reason to pick one religion over another based on the merits of that religion. Therefore, he concludes, we should all become moderate Muslims so that Osama bin Laden would have less reason to want to kill us.

As you can imagine, that provoked a big response. Some commenters responded to those ideas in the same spirit in which they were proposed. Others, presumably people who were personally invested in the idea that their religion was the true one, disagreed with his arguments without being able to offer any counter arguments. Check it out.

Are driver's licenses incentives to illegal behavior?

Eight out of fifty states currently issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. Does this fact encourage people in other countries to come here illegally?

There are an estimated more than 12 million illegal immigrants in this country and as far as I can tell they are all working or are the spouse or children of someone who is working. When you talk to them about why they came to this country and why they came to this particular state and city they invariably say that they came because they heard that they could find work here. I have never heard any of them say or indicate in any way that there was any other factor in their decision than their prospects of finding work. (If a baby is on the way they may also factor into the decision that it would probably be better for the child if she/he was born in America.)

So do the people who are arguing against driver’s license for illegal immigrants have any facts or hard evidence that issuing driver’s licenses is in fact an incentive to illegal behavior? My guess is that there are no such facts because no one decided to enter this country illegally based on any incentive other than the fact they could work here.

Notice the lack of facts in newspaper columnist Kathleen Parker’s column in this morning’s paper:

The illegal immigrant problem is huge, obviously, and there's no single solution. But there is one word that would get the ball rolling in the right direction and win a lot of voters' hearts: disincentivize. Stop making it so attractive to slip through, over and under the border.

As long as we offer jobs, medical treatment, drivers licenses and in-state tuition to those who come here illegally, why would any right-thinking, would-be immigrant take a number and wait his turn? Why not just throw in the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders and free tequila while we're at it?
….
Certainly, no serious person thinks we can round up 12 million people and deport them. But it would be refreshing if we began to take seriously what it means to be a citizen and stop making it so attractive to be a lawbreaker.

read entire article

Why can’t we round up 12 million people and deport them? The few times I have ever heard anyone address this issue they talked about the logistical problems of moving that many people and how many buses and airplanes it would take. But that is not the main issue. Although it is the 800 lb. gorilla sitting in the living room that no one talks about the main reason we cannot send them home is that there are whole industries dependent on their labor. It would have devastating effects on our economy if they were to suddenly disappear. We cannot deport them all in exactly the same way that we cannot shut down all the coal-fired power plants and we cannot stop cutting down trees in the national forests.

So, they are here and are going to remain here. The only thing to decide is how to treat them.
When Kathleen Parker admits we cannot deport them all and then talks in the next breath about “what it means to be a citizen” she is talking about a two-tiered class system in which we exploit the labor of the non-documented while denying them the benefits citizens and legal residents enjoy. This would have all the standard advantages for us that the upper classes enjoy in any class-based society – and all the disadvantages also. Does a permanent under-class of exploited workers with fewer rights and benefits than the rest of us fit your picture of what America is about?

Are you to blame for Iraq?

If you are one of the 75% majority of the American public who thinks that the War in Iraq is not going very well then you probably also have some opinions about the reasons our military has not completely vanquished those opposing them there. You probably blame some or all of the following: inadequate planning for the occupation, too few troops, a misguided mission, bad decisions made by our leaders, social and historical factors that result in our best and brightest young people not volunteering to join the military, our history of supporting unpopular repressive undemocratic regimes, our unquestioning support of Israel or other factors involving Washington insiders and the military-industrial complex. You probably have never entertained the thought that you might be the one to blame – your doubts, your lack of complete support for the mission. The idea probably seems absurd, if for no other reason than because those making all the decisions show no indication that they pay the slightest attention to what you think.

Well, hold onto those thoughts because, if history is any guide, at some point in the not too distant future people are going to suggest that our troops could have prevailed in Iraq if they had not been stabbed in the back by people back at home. As absurd as that idea seems at the moment, unless you make a special effort to never forget how you feel right now about the war, you might find yourself being swept up by this scapegoating. Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.

My Blog is worth $564.54

Based on the theoretical monetary value each link to a website supposedly represents and a count of all the existing links to my blog I have just been informed that my blog's worth calculates as $564.54. link

I guess I won't give up my day job.