The Exodux, Part II

Occasionally a blog entry drops out of the news like manna from heaven. You just snap it up and hope another piece falls into your desert encampment soon. In baseball, these moments are like hitting a hanging curve ball. In fishing, it’s like catching fish in a barrel. In hunting, it’s like shooting old men on the Armstrong Ranch.

The manna of which I speak – a news story about all conservative Christians (CCs) moving to South Carolina, where they will inhabit a new Promised Land and live happily ever after. This nascent movement is cleverly dubbed the Christian Exodus (CE). Well, let my people go! May God bless this exodus; and may it take them much less than 40 years to vacate our wilderness. The prospect of the religious wrong all being gathered in one place is just too sweet to dare dream of. It portends a state of affairs where everyone wins. Forty-nine states will be free of their malicious agenda; and one state will become everything they want in life. Mercy! I’d better lie down; I think I’m getting light headed.

The original exodus, led by Moses dressed up as Charlton Heston, proved a bit tricky. Only two of the captives who fled Egypt (Joshua and Caleb, the sole survivors from the Sinai tribe) actually got to cross the River Jordan and enter the Promised Land. The rest of them, including their leader, got busted by God for an array of serious shortcomings, including that raucous spring break they spent frolicking with a golden calf. They learned that being right all the time is like getting water to flow from a rock – it’s damn tough work and very few get it right.

But, unlike the CE, the Jewish Exodus didn’t have the help of the League of the South and the Patriot Network, two southern groups dedicated to secession from the U.S. version of ancient Egypt. These good-old-boy groups are staunch supporters of the CE dream to “advance the cause of liberty” (sound familiar?). In their new world, liberty is advanced first and foremost by outlawing homosexuality. That’s because, as all of us can appreciate, gay guys are the single most threatening menace on the face of the earth. Reportedly, the CE will allow girl-on-girl frolicking to continue as long as they don’t want to share health insurance or adopt pets together. Next on the advancing-liberty agenda is to end public education and have all of God’s children attend Bob Jones University in Greenville, SC. That’s the Christian “college” where they dropped their ban on interracial dating only after a W. campaign stop there accidentally flipped the switch on the national klieg light. It’s amazing what will crawl away in the glare of public attention.

As gleeful as I get over this prospect there are some troubling signs on the horizon. First, the CE leader, Brother Cory Burnell, has yet to make the move. It seems he’s been too busy recruiting from his home in Lodi, California, to pack up and head east. He says he’s “working out the logistics” to move his family. Apparently, he can’t find the phone number for the nearest U-Haul dealer. Every Sunday in church his family can be heard quietly singing the CC Revival hymn, “Oh, Lord! Stuck in Lodi again!” Furthermore, only about 20 CCs have actually exited the wilderness and found their way to South Carolina under the CE banner, although 1,200 want-a-be trekkies have signed up on the CE website. That is certainly less-than-modest results from the faithful. But, I’m not going to lose hope. I’m going to continue to have faith that God will lead these people in a rousing rendition of their anthem, which until 1931 was our national anthem, “Hail Columbia, happy land!” Cue the chorus:

Firm, united let us be,
Rallying round our liberty,
As a band of brothers joined,
Peace and safety we shall find.

(If they don’t mind, I’d like to carve Charleston out of their new and improved republic because the beautiful gardens and antebellum homes in that marvelous city need to be preserved for us heathen. Perhaps Charleston can become the New Berlin, walled off from the surrounding commune with a corridor connecting it to the west.)

One thing that strikes me as curious about this movement is that it reverses the Great Commission from Christ to “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.” Instead, these disciples have decided to bring good news to all creation by leaving the world and huddling their masses in the Palmetto State. By the way, it’s a curious irony that the CCs have selected the only state in the union where the state flag includes a crescent moon, a symbol somewhat prevalent in the Islamic world.

I’m not sure what South Carolina did to earn this honor. Maybe it was that little dustup over the Confederate flag flying over their state capitol, under the crescent moon. That kind of allegiance to the flag is just the kind of thing that rings the liberty bell for the CCs. I have nothing against South Carolina. But I am willing to surrender it for the good of the free world. Their sacrifice will go down in history as one small step for CCs, but one giant leap for everyone else on the light side of the planet. If all the uber-evangelicals move to South Carolina then we will finally have realized the dream to see freedom on the march. We will have spread liberty through 49 states and the people left behind will be free at last!

Christians - A Prologue

Over the next two days I will comment on the Christian Exodus movement. Those comments will be sharply critical. I have already taken a couple of shots at the religious right and there will be many more to come. Before I lock and load for the next salvo, I want to make some background comments about Christians so that anyone reading this blog will know where I’m coming from.

I consider myself to be a Christian, although I'm not in the traditional mold by any means. I don't believe that one must profess an acceptance of Christ (or any other person or incarnation of God) as their personal savior in order to be "saved". I do believe in the moral authority of Christ and honor his teachings as an expression of the will of God. I believe there are many paths to God and many expressions of the will of God. I do not believe that participating in the sacraments of any particular denomination is essential to salvation. I was raised in a home that had no religious affiliation or orientation. I never knew my parents to be in a church for any purpose other than a wedding or a funeral. They believed in God but they were often critical of organized religion and highly skeptical about its proponents; but, that’s where the topic started and stopped in our home. My path to becoming a Christian was a solo journey with some steep hills and hairpin turns along the way. Bits and pieces of that journey will make their way into my commentary here.

As for my fellow Christians, they are a mixed breed. Some I truly admire – they uphold Christian values and principles through lives filled with love, sacrifice, compassion, and selfless service to others. Some I feel good about – they’re good, God-fearing, church-going people who try to live decent lives that don’t impinge on the freedom of others. Some I’m neutral about – they go to church occasionally, but otherwise park their religion in a detached garage. Their approach to life is live-and-let-live.

But there are some who invoke a deep-seeded anger in me. These are the hate mongers; the name callers; the self-righteous, self-appointed judges of all they see and hear around them. These are the fundamentalists, the rabid wing of the evangelicals, the Bible-bashing demigods who are like fingernails on a blackboard in my ears. These are the modern-day Pharisees who uphold and defend their self-defined orthodoxy as the word of God, proclaiming that all who are not with them are against them, that all who do not accept their brand of salvation are lost. These are the pretend prophets who, like spitting cobras, spew their moral venom at everything and everyone to the left of them. These are the sliver-minded, so-called Christians, those who give Christ a bad name; who make him the butt of jokes; who subject him to ridicule; who turn his teachings inside out and upside down and dare to do so in the name of God.

These are the people who look out into a world filled with war, abject poverty, famine, disease, and rampant injustice – and yet all they can see is that the Ten Commandments don’t hang in their local courthouse; that a nativity scene isn’t allowed in their town square; that their local merchants dare to wish people “Happy Holidays”; that their high school football games aren’t opened with prayer; that their personal opinion isn’t taught in every biology class in every school. These are the people who expend their spiritual ammunition in fighting against Teletubbies and boycotting Disneyland because their McCarthy-like minds see gays lurking behind every tree and lesbians hiding under every rock. These are the people who till the ground from which a few twisted minds evolve into messianic criminals who firebomb family planning centers; who beat homosexuals; who drag people of color behind their pickup trucks; who still burn books and crosses in front lawns.

I believe these are the people to whom Jesus would say today, “Get thee behind me!” These are the people Thomas Jefferson was speaking about in a letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush on September 13, 1800, when he said”

“They believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” (The last phrase is engraved inside the Jefferson Memorial.)

These are the Christians I will criticize in these entries. I will match them judgment for judgment by holding a mirror in front of them. But in posting this criticism I do not mean in any way to paint all Christians with the same brush. Much good and much evil has been perpetuated in the name of Jesus Christ. I honor and praise the good. My target is the evil.

A Kan of Korn

I opened a kan of korn last night – it was interesting, and intense. Not a taste that I’m likely to acquire or even approach with appreciation, but a noteworthy experience nonetheless.

Translation: I attended a KoRn concert, the first stop on the alternative / nu-metal band’s new See You on the Other Side world tour. The original members of KoRn are from Bakersfield and their home town has been on their tour itinerary several times. I went with the other two members of Los Tres Amigos from work; all of us are post-50. It’s entirely possible that I was the senior attendee, my two colleagues being a few years junior. I didn’t see anyone older; though, I must admit, old guys don’t spend the time they have left on earth checking out the other oldies-but-goodies around them.

Almost all of the people there were certainly pre-30, if not pre-25. Black attire and heavy tats were de rigueur. Bodies in an array of altered states were the norm. I think I freaked out a couple of youngsters when I spoke knowingly about the KoRn hit, “Freak on a Leash”, and demonstrated a keen awareness of the group’s current fascination with singing children’s songs and nursery rhymes. Listening to KoRn sing “Ring-Around-The-Rosie” is a trip.

There were usually two or three mosh pits raging away at any given time, the largest of which was like combining the Demolition Derby and Circus Maximus. The local newspaper interviewed a guy who went to the gym for four hours just before the concert in order to get his moshing adrenaline pumping. One blond woman wandered in the middle of the pit for over an hour, mysteriously remaining almost untouched. The crowd surfing was nonstop. I phoned each of my kids during the concert to tell them their old man was “in the pit”. I suspect that visual image caused each of them a measure of discomfort. That’s okay; each of them has created visual images that have had a similar effect on me.

The band was dreadful, meaning several of them came with heads full of dreads, which they dipped and flipped to the beat 27,316 times in two hours. People in the audience, most of whom were dreadless, imitated that motion in a variety of ways that ranged from amazing to amusing.

As for the music – there was plenty. Of the 30± songs they performed, 28 of them sounded exactly alike. A couple of them were slower, with lyrics that were understandable, leaving me to observe, “I didn’t know they had this kind of range. Who knew they did ballads.” As predicted, the volume approached painful levels but none of Los Tres Amigos could bring ourselves to use the ear plugs we’d brought with us. Not cool.

It’s not my intent to damn with faint praise. I’m not sure what kind of damning or praise to use, faint or otherwise, in describing the experience last night. I’ll leave it at this: for me, it was all about the energy level; the unrelenting intensity; the way-over-the-top youthful exuberance; the tribal frenzy that seized all but three of the people present; and, it was about the always popular opportunity to disorient my kids.

You can’t pass up moments like that when you’re post-50. I hope to stage dive into a few more of them before I’m done.

A Storm in the Port

I’m probably being a nervous Nellie on this, but I’m a skosh uncertain about having American ports operated by foreign companies, with foreign companies from the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula being closer to the top than the bottom of the list of countries of concerns. For the record, I’m not a “Buy American” kind of guy; I love my Lexus, Sony TV, English tea, French wine and Indian technical assistance for my computer. But when it comes to operating our ports, airports, subways, trains, and other typical terrorist targets, my default position is to keep those operations in the hands of the home team. I’ll take my chances in the taxis.

The Bush administration, which has appropriated the marketing trademark “Security–R–Us”, has decided there is no security risk in having key ports operated by people from Dubai. That may be true, but I’m not certain enough to just roll over and let the president scratch me behind the ears. Some of my best friends have been to Dubai and they tell me the dhow-like Burj al-Arab Hotel is awesome and the kataifi with candied pumpkin and yogurt is to die for. But, the United Arab Emirates is just around the Arabian corner from Yemen, where the USS Cole had a very nasty port incident. That’s not a compelling argument; but it’s not an irrelevant observation.

Reasonable people can disagree on decisions like this, but two things strike me as beyond bizarre. First, the president is acting like no reasonable person could even question this deal. He summarily dismissed questions by declaring, “People don’t need to worry about security.” Okay. I’m going to look right past the fact that the UAE was one of the few countries to recognize the Taliban government in Afghanistan; that the 9-11 Commission identified the UAE as a “persistent counterterrorism problem”; and that there’s evidence of al-Qaeda moving money through UAE banks and operating out of the UAE. The president said he doesn’t understand why people weren’t upset when a British company was operating these ports. Maybe that’s because we haven’t had much terror come from England since they burned down the White House in 1814 (I’m ignoring the cultural terrorism unleashed by The Beatles in 1964).

Second, the president launched a preemptive strike against Reb leaders on the Hill by letting them know that he will veto their butts back into the Stone Age if they send him legislation that so much as slows down the port decision for a Looky Lou or two. When I heard that threat I assumed the president had approved the port contract; but he didn’t even know about it. That decision was delegated to some Assistant Associate Deputy Over/Under Secretary in the Treasury Department. The Treasury Department? Did they assign this to the IRS, the US Mint, or the Bureau of Engraving & Printing? Did they think Treasury still supervises the ATF, which enforces the law on projectile-projecting things like firearms and explosives? I’ve seen no indication yet that the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security or Justice (ATF’s new home) were involved.

I expect this president to oppose foreign leaders and the Dims on almost any issue, but when he opposes Reb leaders as well then he reveals himself as a man who thinks he has the only set of correct answers and will not countenance opposition from any quarter. He speaks against American isolationism while he practices presidential isolationism as a regular course of business. It’s almost inconceivable that, of all issues, this issue would extract a Bush threat to veto a bill for the first time since he entered office. Is it possible that the first veto from a president who uses 9-11 as a daily invocation could come in defense of the UAE operating American ports? Yes; all things are possible.

I am not suggesting that the U.S. should categorically refuse to do business with companies from the Middle East or companies operated by Muslims. That brush is too broad. But we should stow the veto threat, open the doors and windows to the decision-making process, let a little fresh air in the oval room, and make sure that we know what we’re doing here. In elementary school, it’s called a “time out”.

Maya Con Dios

I was an hour late to work yesterday because I spent that time stroking a pretty little lady named Maya. She had long blonde hair, big soulful eyes and a pouty, come-hither nature that made her quite appealing.

Maya is a Yorkie. I was headed to the shower when I saw her wander up to our front door. The only animals we’ve had in our family have been immigrants who essentially walked up and knocked on our door. Our beloved Queensland healer, Sammy, arrived that way in April 1998. She became Dan’s best friend, providing him constant companionship over the four years they shared together. Sammy was often a true healer during that time. So, I’m not about to ignore four paws at the front door.

I picked Maya up and she was trembling, as females are inclined to do in my arms. As I stroked her she relaxed and seemed fine, as females are inclined to do in my arms. Then, filled with misplaced confidence in this new relationship, I decided to nuzzle her – at which time she went all Siegfried & Roy on me, as some females are inclined to do in the face of my nuzzle. If I didn’t have a goatee she would have turned my chin into kibble and bits! It was time to find her owner; it was clear that she was not intended to be another walk-up gift from God.

The tag on her collar provided the needed phone number. The lady who answered sounded nice, but a little harried. I could hear what sounded like a pack of dogs barking in the background so I wasn’t surprised that she hadn’t yet realized that Maya had left her husband for another man. I told the lady my address and she said she didn’t know where it was. I asked for her address and found that she lived two blocks away. I guess she doesn’t get out much. I gave her directions; whereupon she told me that she needed to get dressed first, which I very much appreciated. But, sensing a hint of delay in her voice, I gently told her that I needed to head to work soon and didn’t want to leave Maya at the front door. At that point I was about 5 – 10 minutes into the one-hour delay.

I thought maybe Maya had wandered for some time, so I tried to feed her a little of Sammy’s food, but she turned up her nose at it. I then put her down on the kitchen floor to see if she wanted a drink from Sammy’s water bowl. She didn’t; but, she apparently thought there wasn’t enough water there for Sammy so she left a puddle of it on the floor beside the bowl. Her little hard-to-get pout got less appealing.

Time passed. I made phone call number two to the lady who needed to get dressed – 20 minutes earlier. I announced myself as her dog-sitter. She said that her husband had gone to pick up Maya and should have been at my house by then. I agreed with her assessment. I asked if he had a cell phone; she said, yes he did – on their kitchen counter. I mentioned the work thing again. She said that she’d find her husband. I, of course, wanted her to find her dog first.

Another 20 minutes passed. I thought about putting Maya in the back yard with Sammy, but 1) Sammy hadn’t had her morning treat yet and 2) Sammy thinks all other dogs are edible treats. I pictured a scene that might best be described as Maya con dios. If I put Maya out there I was running the risk that she would quickly become cinco de Maya – i.e., five easy pieces of kibble and bits.

A third phone call made it clear that the lady’s husband was as lost as her dog. She agreed to come herself, because I mentioned the work thing again. I decided to wait outside on the sidewalk so I could be easily seen from almost two blocks away. Finally, after another 10 – 15 minutes I see a man walking down the sidewalk – and, I see a woman walking down the sidewalk, too - on the other side of the street.

Yep – they both walked; neither of them drove; neither of them followed the directions I had given the lady; neither of them explained how they both got to my place at the same time. Apparently, the man thought he was supposed to wait on their street corner because I was bringing Maya to him. Apparently, the lady thought the man was an idiot, which explained her desire to have a pack of yipping dogs as companions. They both thought I was kind – and late for work. I handed Maya over, and warned them to be careful about nuzzling her, because she might go all Siegfried & Roy on them.

So, as they say, no good deed goes – well – quite like you think it will.

Adopting a First-Rate Mind

The British author A. A. Milne said:

“The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.”

And all God’s people said, “Amen.” Those Brits do have a way with their own language.

In the latest assault in the cultural war against gay/lesbian rights, 16 states are considering legislation that would prohibit homosexual couples from adopting. Having made gay marriage the bellwether issue of the 2004 election, it appears gay adoption may settle into that role in the 2006 election. That means another James Dobson moral tsunami is headed for our shores. Get the kids off the beach – this one will be ugly and dangerous, too.

By the way, “bellwether” is an interesting word. It’s defined as “1. a male sheep, usually wearing a bell, that leads the flock; 2. a leader, especially of a sheeplike crowd.” The sheeplike crowd will undoubtedly fall in behind a flock of bell-laden leaders on this issue. James Dobson and his band of angry prayer warriors will probably get misty-eyed over the idea of being a sheep leading a flock, what with their reputed affection for the Lamb of God. If only they could grasp the fact that all lambs are sheep, but not all sheep are lambs.

Well, you can see where I’m going on this issue. Actually, I don’t know exactly where to go on it because I just don’t get it. What is it about homosexuality that brings out the ugly, vitriolic responses consistently heard from the religious right, aka the religious wrong? Labels like ‘homophobic’, ‘bigot’ and ‘intolerant’ don’t adequately answer that question. There’s something deeper – these people have an insatiable need to speak for God; a need to act in the name of God; a need to be seen and heard as an image of God – all of which is just a cast stone away from a need to be God. May God help them.

All Christians should concede that judgment is the domain of God. Therefore, when judging others on moral issues they have to consider themselves as God’s agents, having no personal responsibility for their judgment, but just “passing the word” from God’s mouth to our ears. They’re taking the name of the Lord – the only question is whether they’re taking the name of the Lord in vain, something that I understand upsets the Lord. I think they’d better be careful. They have become the modern version of the Pharisees – and the Lord had a few vitriolic words of his own for those zealots. I think they’d better think twice about the role they’re playing on the Temple steps.

I’ve read the New Testament more than 20 times, so I’m familiar with the limited Pauline commentary on the subject of homosexuality. Paul’s boss (i.e., the Lord) was pretty much busy with other topics like love, compassion, tolerance, sacrifice, service to others, not judging, etc., so he had to leave the tough stuff to the Brethren in the field. (I’ve also read the provocative commentary from Peter Gomes, a member of the faculty at Harvard Divinity School and author of The Good Book, about the possibility that the never-married Apostle Paul was homosexual.) I’ve only read the Old Testament three times, so I might not be as familiar with the earlier comments on the subject. But, it did leave me wondering a little about just how tight David and Jonathan really were.

Notwithstanding having read The Word a time or two, I’m still left befuddled by how this subject has managed to rise to the top of the issues list. I’ve been told that the Bible has something like 2,000 references to the poor and the mandate to help the poor. How in God’s name does a smattering of references to homosexuality, several of which are oblique at best, vault that subject to No. 1 on the Evangelical Hit-Back Parade? Why aren’t Christians literally a thousand times more upset about the plight of the poor in the world. I guess they’ve read that the poor will always be with us, so they’ve decided first to eradicate an infinitely smaller number of people who would like nothing more than to be left alone before moving on to the huddled masses who would like nothing more than to be seen and heard. That would be the same huddled masses that the Lord actually focused on and cared about, repeatedly, time and time again, over and over, day after day – you get the point.

Let me just conclude today by saying, may God bless us all with first-rate minds on the subjects that divide us.

In the Year 2365

Right-wing nut David Irving, a British historian, was sentenced in Austria yesterday to three years in jail for denying that the Holocaust occurred. Apparently, it’s against the law in Austria to “diminish, deny or justify the Holocaust”. My question: did anyone go to jail for having passed that law in the first place? I appreciate that the postwar Austrian psyche needed a means to distance itself from one of the most barbaric acts in human history; but, nonetheless, that is one dumb-ass piece of legislation.

First, no one can, in fact, diminish or justify the Holocaust. Someone can make a run at it, but no one can pull it off. Other than a few skinheads in a forest outside Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and a few other right-wing nuts camped out in the Black Forest, no one is even going to tune in for the attempt. Sure, someone can deny that the Holocaust happened, but that’s just another piece of wacko babble the likes of which can be heard on about two million topics a year somewhere in the free world. How many concentration camps would it take to lock up all the people who spit up some form of verbal vomit every day?

Austria needs to calm down and give some consideration to the idea of free speech, even repugnant, ignorant-as-a-stump speech. Upholding that freedom and others like it is the best means to fight against the rise of another Baden Baden Reich. Throwing people in jail for saying unbelievably stupid things puts every Austrian at risk. Where are the boundaries for laws of this nature; what is the logical extension of the reasoning behind such laws? How about a law in the U.S. that makes it a crime for someone to claim that slavery never existed in Alabama; that the U.S. never used nuclear weapons in Japan; that man never walked on the moon; that JFK wasn’t shot by a lone gunman from the Texas School Book Depository; that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction in 2003; or that Fox News is fair and balanced? Okay, I admit that the last one in that list has some appeal.

This episode sounds a little like the law of the Inquisition that landed Galileo in trouble in 1633 for denying that the earth is the center of the universe. G.G., as he was known to his friends, thought he had the support of Pope Urban VIII but G.G. naively overlooked the fact that Urban thought that he was the center of the universe. As G.G. was sentenced to jail he is widely believed to have been the first person to declare, “We must do something to stop Urban blight!” Fortunately, all was made right when, 359 years later, Pope John Paul II officially announced that Urban VIII was acting like his boyhood hero, Henry VIII, and had “mishandled the case”. Good call, JPII.

So, David Irving can count on this Austrian blooper being made right in the year 2365. Unlike Galileo, however, nothing will ever make Mr. Irving right. Like others of his ilk, he’s way too far right to ever be right.

On the bright side, if Zager and Evans ever decide to retool their song, they have a new lyric they can work in the mix.

“In the year 2365, when dumb laws were set aside…”

The Honoree

Who doesn’t love getting invited to a party? I just got a big invitation – and by that I mean it measures 16” x 13” in size – suitable for framing, as they say. It’s a tad unusual. First, it comes from Senator Elizabeth Dole. She’s apparently the Chair of something called the 25th Anniversary Republican Senatorial Inner Circle Commission, which is a whopping if not impressive moniker. Her invitation confers a “warrant of 25th Anniversary Membership” to yours truly, who is referred to in dulcet tone as “the Honoree”. That’s also unusual; it’s been a few months since I was last honored by a member of the United States Senate.

My warrant goes on to declare to all present that “the Honoree (again, that’s me) is a Republican Leader in the Bakersfield community, a steadfast supporter of President George W. Bush and invited to be one of the one hundred in California to achieve this recognition.” One of 100 in California! I can only assume that this puts me in a small smoking tent with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Representatives Bill Thomas and Mary Bono, former Governor and U.S. Senator Pete Wilson, former Governor George Deukmejian, Nancy Reagan, Michael Reagan, and the other 92 of our good-fellow party leaders. Even Maria Shriver isn’t getting an invite to this Inner Circle! Before affixing “the Great Anniversary Seal”, the warrant notes with due solemnity that the Honoree (remember, that’s me) “is known to represent the highest Republican ideals and principles”. Like I said, this is unusual on several counts.

An invitation this large deserves a similarly large RSVP. In this case, the RSVP is to be returned in the form of a large check in the amount of, as Tony S. would say, Two to Five Large. I’ve often paid dearly for going to a party, but this one is asking for a little more payment than most. Unfortunately, it appears that there’s no other way for me to “achieve this recognition”. I confess that, as a dedicated underachiever, I’m not familiar with the alchemic "Republican ideal” that turns a four-figure donation to a political party into an “achievement”. Maybe if I were a Native American who owns and operates a casino I’d be more familiar with this Harry Potteresque principle. I just don’t know Jack (about it). (Yes, I know that line is not original, but I had to toss it in.)

I can only hope that number 101 on the list of Republican Leaders in California is ready, willing and able to step into the void created when I send in my regrets. That, of course, assumes there are more than 100 Republican Leaders in California, now that Representative Duke Cunningham has been de-listed.

One is left wondering how we honorees get selected. I don't even know where the Republican Party office is located in Bakersfield, assuming we have one, and I'm a few clicks shy of being a steadfast supporter of President W. Admittedly, I’ve been a registered Republican all my adult life. In the 11 presidential elections since I first worked as a Goldwater campaign volunteer in 1964, I've supported the Republican candidate nine times. Over the years I’ve voted for more Republicans than Democrats for key offices, such as U.S. Senator and Representative. While I have voted for Diane Feinstein in California, I've never even momentarily considered voting for Barbara Boxer.

Well, “the times they are a changing”, not necessarily with respect to Barbara Boxer, but with respect to representing anything that makes me worthy of being a Republican Honoree. The problem is simple: I’m rapidly losing sight of the vaunted “Republican ideals and principles”. Notwithstanding the opinion of the Honorable Senator from North Carolina, those ideals and principles have not been representative of me, nor have I been representative of them, over the last few years. The Bush II administration has precipitated something akin to an existential crisis for me, and for many others like me. Don’t get me wrong – I am not by comparison proclaiming the Democrats to be in possession of the “highest ideals and principles”; they certainly have their own integrity issues. I'm just noting the increased separation between me and the other 99 Republican Leaders in the great state of California. As much as I'd love to enjoy a fine Arturo Fuente or Cohiba Red Dot Churchill in Arnold's smoking tent, they’re going to have to proceed without me.

I don’t need to say more about that separation now. It will be made clear as I write here. If the Republican Senatorial Inner Circle Commission had read what little I’ve written here to date, it would have saved them one nicely embossed, duly sealed, 16” x 13”, suitable-for-framing certificate. And, it wouldn’t have kept the 101st Republican Leader in California waiting so long to have her or his Two to Five Large achievement recognized. My apologies to all concerned for any inconvenience I may have caused.

Mabuhay!

In 1977 and 1978, I lived and worked in the Republic of the Philippines while stationed at the U.S. Naval Communications Station in the San Miguel barangay (barrio) of San Antonio, Zambales Province, on the island of Luzon. For 33 days in late July and August 1978 it rained continuously, literally, never stopping for longer than 45 minutes. No typhoons; just monsoonal rains that dumped over 100 inches in those 33 days. Mountains began to give way, one of which killed a couple dozen people when it flowed over a crowded highway near where we lived.

As I watch the tragedy now unfolding in Guinsaugon on Leyte Island, where as many as 1,500 – 1,800 may have died in a rain-induced mountain slide, I’m quickly drawn back to my feelings for the warm and gentle people in that country. The pictures of them in pain and sadness, suffering the loss of loved ones, including hundreds of children, reminds me of how much I loved the Filipinos when I lived there. The two years I spent in their country was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. They taught me about being happy. Being sad, as they are now in Leyte, does not come naturally to most Filipinos.

The Filipinos I encountered were happy, good-natured people, almost without exception. They appeared to love life no matter what life brought them. It seemed to take so little to bring joy into their daily living. Many around our base were poor; subsistence living through growing rice or fishing in the South China Sea was common. Many lived in nipa huts or in sparse homes no larger than the huts they replaced. Almost anything approaching a modern convenience was nonexistent in the provinces that weren’t near the cities. And, yet, these good people smiled constantly; laughed easily; sang and danced at any occasion; told jokes without inhibition; were hospitable without exception. They focused on family and community. They enjoyed each other; they enjoyed life. They had so little; but they acted like they had everything. Those are lessons worth learning.

They would cook their last chicken if we were going to be guests in their homes. Their children still ran to the side of the roadway and flashed the “V” for victory sign to passing GIs. They called all of us “Joe” and laughed heartily after doing so. All it took to kick off a barrio celebration was to find an American who was willing to eat a balut, or an adobo allegedly made with dog or monkey meat, or to join in a traditional bamboo dance.

I have a thousand fond memories washing over me; I feel important lessons being rekindled by a natural disaster that will not be able to bury the good nature of the people it struck. Before long, the Filipinos in Leyte Province will be smiling and laughing and finding joy with one another; finding joy in a life that has brought them pain and sadness. They will once again be teaching visitors a few things about how to be happy.

Mabuhay – to life!

Good as Gold

In one of my Cheney rants I commented about the difference between a friend and an acquaintance. As usual, the things we say reveal more about us than about the subject we’re supposedly talking about. I think acquaintances abound, but true friends are rare. True friends are those few who, at the very least, genuinely and consistently care for us; they’re the few who are willing to make some degree of sacrifice for our growth and well being. What they feel for us may not be love, although it certainly can and often does, but it rises well above just liking us. I think most of us can write the list of our true friends on the back of a postage stamp. Friends are the leaven in our loaf. Fortunately, we don’t need many to make great bread.

I thought about this yesterday after having lunch with two friends from work. In my job I have some wonderful colleagues, co-workers and acquaintances. I’ve worked in my company in Bakersfield for almost 19 years; almost 15 of those in my current position. But, when it comes to friends, I have two there; maybe three. Actually, if there’s uncertainty, then the lower number is the list to write on the back of the stamp. Given that work involves the largest amount of my time outside my family, and thus the largest opportunity for making friends, that ratio suggests that a true friend might come along about once a decade. If there’s any validity to that, then I should have about a half dozen in my life at this point. That number feels pretty accurate.

One or two others at work might be somewhere in the gaping hole between colleagues and friends. But if they left our company I wouldn’t regard work as a significantly diminished and less rewarding place. I’d miss them; but I’d move on. If my friends at work left; work would be diminished almost immeasurably. (That probably tells me as much about my job as it does about my friends.)

Obviously, we can develop true friends outside of work. I use work as a reference because it involves at least 10 hours of my day. Anything else that involves a substantial amount of our time can bring true friends into our life. But, I maintain the same proportion will hold true – we glean about one friend a decade from whatever field we’re in.

Some will disagree; they will look around and think they see many more true friends in their life. Based on their experience, they may believe that we can make 5 – 10 true friends a decade. Maybe; maybe not. The test comes when you add a little fire to the mix. Bring on the high heat and see which “friends” are metal and which run off like dross. Enough heat will melt any metal; but in the refinery the dross will separate and float above the molten metal where it can be skimmed off, leaving behind a purer metal of greater value.

I am, of course, speaking from my autobiography. When I decided that I no longer believed in the fundamental tenets of Mormonism, I asked to be relieved of the leadership responsibilities I held at the time and within a year I had withdrawn from the church activity that had played a huge part of my life for 20 years. In the course of those two decades, I honestly believed that I had made at least 20 truly close and lasting friends. I was wrong; very wrong. I had made two friends; one per decade. The others scrambled onto makeshift rafts like they were leaving an exploding ship. Some just drifted away; others grabbed anything that would serve as an oar and paddled off as fast as humanly possible. My apostasy made me “unworthy” (a term of art in Mormonism) and I quickly discovered that 90% of my so-called friends were, at best, colleagues, co-workers and acquaintances. A few became the antithesis of friends. Their disgust, derision, false accusations, and good old-fashioned shunning became as painful as my long association with them had been enjoyable. The two LDS friends who stayed at my side when I became a refugee are part of the gold in my life. The fire hurt, and it left scar tissue; but the gold remains and the pyrite has been left behind.

I don’t use the word “friend” lightly. I’m grateful to be married to my best friend; I’m grateful for the two friends at work; and I’m grateful for the few other true friends who have helped make life good; who have brought substance to the loaf; who have either welcomed refugees or been fellow refugees; who have cared and made sacrifice; who have walked side by side in good times and bad. I’m also grateful for the many colleagues, co-workers, and acquaintances that have come and gone. They matter, too. They’re the silver and bronze; the cooper and tin. They’re just not the gold.

Flushed Out

Mr. Vice finally showed his face, sort of. He took full responsibility for the shooting, never once referring to it as a spraying. That’s good. But, a conservative Reb appearing on Fox “News” is not exactly facing one’s critics. He should have held a press conference in the White House, where he could still make whatever statement he wanted us to hear and be questioned by the full spectrum of the media. Instead, ever the control freak, he sat down for something closer to a fireside chat with Brit Hume where he faced less-than-intensive questioning that included a hunt for the most important answer we’ve all been wondering about – whether the VP “missed the bird?” Considering how many people have flipped the bird to Mr. Vice over the last four days, I think it’s safe to say that there’s no way he could have missed it.

Because this incident is nothing more than a hunting accident, there wasn’t much to learn about what happen at Armstrong Ranch. What we wanted to understand is why the vice president and his staff handled the incident the way they did. On that count, Mr. Vice reloaded and defended himself without the slightest regret.

Indeed, the first reaction was correct – get Mr. Whittington to medical care, advise his wife and children, and get an indication of his well being. The VP acknowledges that all that was done, and that by Sunday morning he was “confident that everything was probably going to be okay.” That would have been a good time to make a statement and take questions. Mr. Vice seemed to know that because he said, “that’s when we began the process of notifying the press.” Well, sort of. That's when we come to the part about how having Katharine Armstrong call the Corpus Christi Caller-Times was clearly and without question the best way to notify the press. That's true only in the vice president's world.

On the one hand, he calls the situation “unprecedented” and on the other hand he calls it “complicated”. True; not true. There’s no question that it’s unprecedented to have the vice president of the United States shoot someone; and that makes it newsworthy. But, there’s nothing complicated about what happened in the field, and that’s all Mr. Cheney needed to discuss. The explanation about how it was handled is just unmitigated babble about Ms. Armstrong being the best person to go to the press because she was an eye-witness, as if the VP wasn’t, and about how she could speak “authoritatively” about what happened, which he seems to say meant that she could explain to the press the difference between a rifle and a shotgun, between a bullet and birdshot. If Mr. Vice couldn’t handle that explanation then he should have his Texas hunting license, his Wyoming residency, and his Y chromosome revoked. Next comes a remarkable statement that is the height of dissemblance, “She probably knew better than I did what had happened since I'd only seen one piece of it.” Uh, yeah, that would be the piece about the shooting – otherwise known as the whole story.

The rest of what flows from this babbling brook is about wanting to wait in order to be accurate about the condition of his “friend”. Of course, he could have, and probably should have, left that part of the story to Mr. Whittington’s doctors and family. But, more importantly, I was struck by his repeated reliance on the image invoked by using the word “friend” during the course of the interview. After all, at the top of the interview Hume asked, “Would you describe [Mr. Whittington] as a close friend, friendly acquaintance, what —.” Cheney responded, “No, an acquaintance.” That’s probably the truth. But, Mr. Whittington somehow morphed from acquaintance to friend because the way this “complicated” situation unfolded Mr. Vice needed a friend to lean on.

What we see here is a man who can’t and won’t say anything until he knows how everyone is reacting; how many options he has; how much delay he can get away with; how little he can say; and how everything is going to turn out before he says a peep. Only at that time can the necessary and appropriate spin be applied to the pitch he finally deigns to throw to the rest of us.

That’s the Dick we know and love.

Loud Silence

I can’t believe that I’m writing about quail hunting for the third day in a row. There are bigger issues to address, but this one keeps getting bigger because the vice president of the United States, who is next in line for the presidency, is revealing that he is a deeply flawed man who has no sense of accountability to the American people, or to the man who selected him as a running mate.

The Dims were all over this latest example of Cheney’s penchant for seclusion and secrecy, as expected. But now the Rebs are beginning to break the critical surface because they can see that Mr. Vice is starting to present a political threat to them and the president. Yesterday, former press secretaries for President Bush I, President Bush II and President Reagan all expressed serious disagreement with how the vice president and his staff are handling this matter. Even Scott McClellan dropped his guard and made it clear that this hadn’t unfolded the way he recommended. It appears Mr. McClellan strongly, and appropriately, favored an immediate public statement on Sunday morning. It’s now Wednesday morning and the public has yet to see their vice president face them. I’ve called him cold and calculating, and deeply flawed. Other can call him what they will. The point is that this refusal to come forward and act in a responsible manner isn’t right.

There will be no more joking about Mr. Whittington on my part. His condition took a scary turn for the worse yesterday; he deserves to have the rest of us just keep him in our thoughts and prayers. At least we now understand why he spent two days in the ICU before moving to the trauma unit – the doctors knew there was birdshot inside his body and that it could move. It moved, and in the wrong direction.

The birdshot in Mr. Whittington’s body is acting like the man who shot it – moving from superficial, to a concern, to a threat, to a condition that needs close and careful attention.

It’s time for the president to call the vice president, assuming the president can reach him, and tell him, “Dick, you’re acting like a petulant teenager; step up and take your medicine like a man.” The longer Cheney hides, the worse the national reaction will likely become. Sooner or later, he will have to stand up and answer some questions; the questions will be waiting for him no matter how long he waits. The problem for him is that the list of questions is getting longer, and far more serious than they were on Sunday. Now the questions are about his character, not his adherence to bird hunting protocol.

On Sunday, and even on Monday, the questions were mere birdshot. Now they’re bullets.

Duck and Cover

Yesterday I just wanted to poke a little fun at Mr. Vice shooting Mr. Nice. Then, wouldn’t you know it, the White House, as only they can, managed to turn a minor Elmer Fudd moment into a semi-serious story. An honest-to-goodness, it-can-happen-to-anyone hunting accident morphed into Quailgate, because no one whose day job is in the White House can step up and say, “My bad”, “I’m sorry”, “Oops”, “I messed up”, or have some other form of … what’s the word … oh, yeah … normal reaction to an incident involving one of them. Conclusion: these people aren’t normal.

First, neither Mr. Vice’s staff nor the White House said anything about this incident until they were flushed out 24 hours after the fact. Ah, the facts – that’s the problem. The White House claims that they didn’t come forward because they were “gathering the facts so [we could] provide that information to the public. Those facts were coming back to us throughout the evening and into the morning." What we learn here is that no one at the White House was willing or able to just pick up the goddamn phone and call the Vice President of the United States! What’s that about; was he in a location where his Verizon cell phone showed no bars; no one in that crowd carries a BlackBerry? Wasn’t it obvious that Mr. Vice was, is and always will be the best source of the facts; why did the fact gatherers have to look elsewhere? Maybe they thought that Mr. Vice and Miss Facts are still having problems in their on-again, off-again relationship. We also learn that shooting a guy in the face with a shotgun isn’t enough to get Mr. Vice to phone home on his own. Amazing.

By the way, what if the president actually needed this guy when he’s out trying to kill two birds in a bush because the one in the palm of his hand isn’t enough?

Then we learned that fact gathering wasn’t the first priority in the White House this weekend. As always, their first concern was humanitarian. The White House claims that their “very first priority” was making sure that Mr. Whittington was getting the medical care he needed. That almost sounds like the White House staff was providing the medical care and was just too busy in triage to saying anything to anyone not dressed in scrubs. Again, after 24 hours they had not received enough assurance on this point to finally breathe a sigh of relief and surface with a statement. There’s just a bunch of stuff wrong on this count.

First, what is Harry’s condition? We’re told by the doctors at the hospital that his wounds are “superficial”, and according to his visitors he’s doing fine and cracking jokes – he’s just an old salty dog that got “peppered” a little. Then why was he in the intensive care unit for more than a day, and then moved to the trauma unit, and still isn’t out of the hospital? Isn’t this the first time in medical history that an ICU has been used to care for superficial peppering? There’s more to this part of the story, and I’m sure it will be duly reported by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. Heaven knows, no one else is going to tell us anything.

Even after being flushed out, the Bush gang still flies as low to the ground as possible, just like south Texas quail. Standby folks, here comes the backward, inside-out spin that makes Washington, DC such a special warp in the space-time continuum. Time magazine is reporting that White House aides are “expected to say that the Vice President did not shoot Whittington, which suggests a bullet, but rather sprayed him with birdshot, a type of ammunition made up of tiny pieces of lead or steel.”

Did not shoot him – sprayed him. That’s the Barney Fife defense – no bullets; no shooting. As I’ve said before, you can’t make this stuff up. Here we go: Mr. Vice was not using a shotgun; he was using a spray gun. At the start of the day, Mr. Vice asked his host, “Where are we going to spray today, Kathy?” When someone in the spraying party brought down a bird, I guess the others would say, “Nice spray there, Dick!” When people see Mr. Whittington, will they ask, “Hey, Harry, how are those spray stains and pepper marks healing up?”

The only thing that sprays quail in south Texas is a skunk. Can you imagine the reaction among Texans when they learn that they’ve never shot a quail, dove, duck, goose, chucker, pheasant, turkey or any other form of feathered target with a shotgun – because it has no bullets? It’s a gun, and you load it with shells, and then you kill things with it – but buckshot or birdshot does not a bullet make. So, no bullets; no shots; no shooting – just another case of Tom, Dick and Harry out for a little Saturday spraying. Every bar in Texas will be aflutter with this hunting vocabulary lesson for months to come.

Please, can we back up and agree that Harry got shot; no one “sprayed” him. Of course it’s entirely possible that Harry sprayed himself when he saw the business end of Dick’s weapon.

I’m truly amazed that with the best comedic minds in America running at full speed reacting to this story none of them has mentioned America’s favorite “quail” – J. Danforth Quayle, himself a vice president with a gun that couldn’t hit any target other than himself. Hasn’t anyone thought to ask the question, “Where was Cheney when the country needed him to hunt down Quayle, back when that birdbrain was terrorizing Murphy Brown and little kids who didn’t know how to spell “potatoe”?

The most amazing part of this story is that there didn’t need to be a story. All the vice president needed to do was come forward and make the kind of statement that the rest of us would have made – “I made a bad mistake today and I’m genuinely sorry about it. I’ve been hunting for 40 years and I’ve never had something like this happen. I apologize to my friend and his family and I hope and pray that he’ll be fine as soon as possible.”

But, we can rest assured in one fact. We’re told that Mr. Vice immediately sent off a $7 check to pay for his missing bird stamp, because that’s what you do right after you shoot your friend in the face; right after you make sure your friend is getting the medical care he needs; right after you’ve helped gather all the fact. After all, what if someone else wants to go spray some quail next weekend? Need to be legal next time.

Don't Ever Flip Me The Bird, Harry!

I told you Dick Cheney is a scary guy! I told you there’s something cold and calculating about him! He shoots old people!

Poor old Harry Whittington; it appears he was just trying to search for the vice president’s kill, but he did so without a warrant and that really pissed off Mr. Vice. Warrants are an issue with him.

Another rumor is that immediately prior to the shooting Harry made the mistake of asking about gay cowboys in Wyoming, a subject the VP is a little sensitive about right now, it being the award season in Hollywood and all.

Sooner or later it will leak to the press that Mr. Vice and his party were not hunting quail as initially reported – they were gunning for doves. The quail simply made the mistake of being in the wrong place at the wrong time – that being on the left side of the road in Texas.

We now have indisputable proof that Washington is being run by the notorious Gang Who Can’t Shoot Straight. Once again, someone in power yelled, “Read – fire – aim!” We also now have proof that guns don’t kill people – politicians with guns kill people.

Scooter Libby has quoted Mr. Vice as saying, “You have to cover your backside, Scoots, because the greatest danger comes from those who are behind you.” Supposedly Mr. Vice told Harry, “Stay out front where I can see you, Harry.” Now that I think of it, when Scooter’s little legal problem hit the news he was on crutches. Did anyone check to see if he’d been shot in the kneecaps?

Fortunately for Harry, Mr. Vice travels at all times with an 87-member medical team, a heavily armored Humvee ambulance, and a life-flight helicopter equipped with two door-mounted 50-cal. machine guns. The medical team is there because Mr. Vice’s life is pretty much a continuous near-death experience. The heavy armor is there because hunting is a dangerous sport in Texas; they’re deadly serious about shooting stuff.

Harry is an attorney. Mr. Vice has been displeased with the pace of tort reform in Congress so it appears that he’s settled on a time honored method for bringing lawyers under control. If Harry were an oil man, then the gun control lobby in Texas would finally have a poster child for their flagging campaign.

Mr. Vice has championed deep cuts in Medicare and Social Security payments, believing that old people are costing us too much and producing too little for the supply-side in return. It appears that he’s licensed to “thin the herd” by culling out the oldest and weakest among us.

There’s probably no truth to the rumor that Harry asked for better body armor before entering the field with Mr. Vice. After all, Cheney has been quoted as telling the troops, “Suck it up; the bad guys can still shoot you in the face, no matter what kind of body armor you have on!”

Mr. Harry has said from his heavily guarded hospital bed that he will have no comment for the press, “Out of respect for Mr. Cheney.” No shit, dude! Your mamma taught you to never use the name of your lord in vain. When he’s finally released from custody, we expect Harry to claim that the red holes in his face are a bad case of adult onset acne. That might be the truth, when you think about it, because Mr. Vice usually shoots people from behind.

I think Mr. Vice is probably just fed up with people who fail to get behind a bush when the shooting starts.

One good thing has come from this unfortunate incident – the Bush administration has finally found the weapon of mass destruction it’s been looking for. Now we can bring home the troops, so they can protect all the doves, and the errant quail, in America.

Thanks for falling through the ice, Dick. This might otherwise have been a slow day, with Apollo Anton Ono only slipping on the ice in Torino and Michelle Kwan coming home in order to avoid slipping on the ice.

Happy to Listen?

I need to add a postscript on the recent appearance of Attorney General Gonzales before the Senate Judiciary Committee. At several points in the hearing the AG said something I couldn’t believe I was hearing. In a truly condescending tone, with a subtle facial smirk to match, he told the Senate panel that if the Senate had legislation it wanted to “suggest” related to the subject at hand, the president would be “happy to listen to their ideas”. Oh, really. He repeated this phrase several times, so it appeared to be one of the fully vetted and duly blessed phrases that are all the rage in Washington, DC these days. It’s hard to imagine cramming more executive arrogance into a few words. Every sixth grader knows that Congress doesn’t suggest legislative ideas; Congress passes legislation that becomes the law of the land unless the president vetoes it or the Supreme Court finds it constitutionally deficient, neither of which happens all that often – per the checks-and-balances plan.

Congress doesn’t send the president a little handwritten note that says, “Your Highness (or ‘Your Holiness’ if the president’s party is in the majority in Congress), we’ve been sitting around in the Big Domed Building on The Hill just schmoozing and musing, as you know we love to do, and we think we have some pretty darn good ideas we’d like to bounce off you, if you don’t mind. If you have a little spare time after you’ve cleared the thorny brush in Crawford, we hope you’ll be willing to listen to our suggestions. Please let us know if our ideas are good enough for you to act on. Your pals, the Congressional Think Tank of America.” Nope – the Congress sends the president a rather formal document that begins with words like, “Be it enacted by the Congress of the United States of America….” The president, who is no less and certainly no more powerful than Congress can then exercise his constitutional prerogative, which, we can only hope, involves a hell of a lot more consideration than just “happy listening”.

And we thought that little skirmish with the British in 1776 took care of King George and his monarchial unwillingness to regard the representatives of the people as his equal. Maybe it’s about time to gather for teatime at the Old North Bridge in Concord, again.

Crowded Skies

I may need to hire an air traffic controller for this blog. Sometimes the airspace in my head feels like the crowded skies above LAX. There are just too many things trying to land on one runway at the same time. Today, I’m just jot down the short list of topics that have popped up on the radar screen, each of which is likely to be cleared for a blog landing in near future.

Jill Carroll – as I watch this young woman plead for her life I ask myself, what are the good, decent God-fearing, God-loving Muslims around the world thinking when they watch her, and the many others who have been kidnapped and executed before her? Why aren’t these Muslims, who profess that the barbaric and inexcusable actions of radical Islamic terrorists bear no relationship to true Islam, massing in countless numbers and marching in cities around the world? How can they watch the holy names of Allah, Islam, and the Prophet Muhammad be used in this manner and remain, by and large, quiet. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of the Islamic faithful are marching throughout the world right now in protest of a series of blasphemous cartoons published in Denmark. Why can’t every one of them, and millions others, see what is being “published” daily by Islamic terrorists around the world and declare it to be infinitely more blasphemous than these cartoons? Why doesn’t blood trump ink every time? I get a snippet of Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim wisdom from Beliefnet.com each morning. Today’s Muslim wisdom is a powerful quote from the Prophet Muhammad: “He who is deprived of gentleness is deprived of good.” Amen.

Dick Cheney – if he directed his chief of staff, Scooter Libby, to release Valerie Plame’s name to the press, then he needs to go back to Wyoming and his little spread on the backside of Brokeback Mountain. Cheney scares me. There’s something cold and calculating about him that just isn’t right for someone holding down the job of Mr. Next-In-Line. May God bless George W. Bush.

I’m a sucker for the Olympic spirit. I enjoyed every minute of the opening ceremony of the Winter Games in Torino last night. I never grow tired of watching young, vibrant people transcend boundaries and differences to share the world stage based on their common love of something other than what resides within those fabricated boundaries and differences. When they united to sing John Lennon’s Imagine last night, many of us watching were actually able to do just that – imagine a better world than the one these young people have left behind for 17 days. You know, it’s easy if you try. We’re just not trying as hard as we should.

There is a backside to these Olympics. Four years ago our family watched most of the Winter Games held in Salt Lake City while sitting beside Danny’s bed in the Kaiser Permanente Hospital on Sunset Boulevard in LA. When Dan’s dad and step-mom were with him, my wife and I would retreat to our home in Bakersfield and watch the games as an R&R escape from the war being fought in that room. I suspect the Winter Games will forever bring bittersweet flashbacks to the winter of our discontent in 2002.

Don't Forget To Flush

I started this blog as a spontaneous reaction to reading the blog recently started by one of my wife’s friends. Having always believed that spontaneity has its time and place, I decided this was the time and place for me to be spontaneous. Hair on the Soap was up and running less than an hour later. Keeping the Hair on the Soap, however, is a much bigger challenge than starting it.

I’ve asked myself why I’m doing this. I think I need to do it; I need the therapy. I’ve always heard that writing is good therapy, but I’ve never done anything like a journal in order to get “stuff” out. I have “stuff” in me, and it’s the kind of “stuff” that needs to get out of me. As I get older I find myself less able to suffer fools, and as I get older I find that there’s been a veritable population explosion in fools. I swear; they’re everywhere! I get pissed off about someone or something – usually in the realms of politics or religion – on a regular basis and, well, I need to relieve myself. If you'll pardon the indelicate analogy (or is it a metaphor or simile?), this makes a blog similar to a toilet. And, as we try to teach our three-year olds, the important step in using that household item is to remember to flush – in other words, don’t just “get it out,” but send it on down the line. Come to think of it, that’s down the same line traveled by the hair that gets washed off the soap.

I also think that I have some things that I want to say, without regard to therapeutic need. I have opinions and assessments about the world around me and I have enough ego to think that some of these tidbits are worth expressing. They’re just another set of opinions, of course; but, they’re mine and I love them dearly.

On occasion, I’ve been accused a being a better talker than a listener. While I regard myself as a decent listener, I admit that sometimes listening is what I do while I’m thinking about what to say next. So, on the days when I don’t make a blog entry – that’s when I’m listening, trying to figure out which opinion is traveling down the birth canal and trying to crown. Having now made my second analogy/metaphor/simile to some function that involves getting things out of the body, I think it’s time for me to return to listening. But, these two bodily references do serve a point – sometimes what comes out of us is a wonderful living thing, a child to be loved, nurtured and raised to maturity. Other times, it’s just “stuff” that needs to be flushed and sent off to some treatment facility.

What I need right now is a good Pat Robertson sound bite. That’s some "stuff" worth flushing.

I Spy, You Spy - Two

Attorney General Gonzales tells us the president’s authority to conduct surveillance without a warrant stands on a second leg, thereby avoiding the embarrassing “Flamingo!” soubriquet. The second leg, which suffers from the same degenerative disease as the first one, is that this intrusion is allowed by the Congressional authorization to use force against Iraq passed after 9/11, the Mother of All Excuses. Okay.

I’ll bet no member of Congress grabbed their pocket Webster’s in the heat of debating this authorization to look up the definition of ‘force’, just to see if it includes tapping phone lines or opening e-mail. Those activities just don’t come up when people are discussing the use of bunker-busters, cluster bombs, smart bombs, Tomahawk missiles, artillery shells and the always-popular hand grenades. Furthermore, when this legislation was being debated the administration asked that the words “including in the U.S.” be inserted in the authorization, but those words were rejected by Congressional leaders because those silly guys and gals thought this was about using military force outside the U.S., which, of course, is exactly what it was about! Normally, that little tidbit alone would allow someone to declare, "Game over!" But, when you’re prone to the trendy ready-fire-aim approach to government, then you often have to revise the history surrounding the aiming phase of the game. The duly elected often attempt to drive while looking through their rearview mirror.

It is disconcerting that Attorney General Gonzales is the primary author of the legal analysis that purportedly supports this authorization – an analysis he did while serving as White House counsel. In that former position, he was acting as an advocate for his client, the president. It was his professional responsibility then to zealously advocate the position of his client and to cast his client’s arguments in a light most favorable to his client. But, as attorney general, in my naiveté and admittedly idealistic haze, I want to think that the client to whom he now owes a duty of professional responsibility is more than just the president; rather, his client is something closer to the people of the United States of America, or at least the entire federal government. Unless we accept the idea that the Attorney General of the United States is just another White House gunslinger, albeit one with an immigrant driver and a really big corner office, then he’s being called upon to advance an analysis that he made while serving in a very different position, and that feels like something akin to a conflict of interest to me. He's before Congress defending himself as much as he's representing the president. Yes, I know; I'm in a haze.

Now we come to the gnarly little problem known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, as the kids like to call it. FISA, which is really close to VISA, is like a credit card for purchasing federal surveillance warrants. Those in the know never leave their White Home without it. You can use this handy little card almost anywhere if you just show a picture ID and can read a short story. It’s like the average temperature of a living body – 98.6% of time that you flash your FISA card you’re going to get a warrant to conduct some snappy surveillance somewhere, sometime, against somebody; or, as the Friends of FISA like to say, anywhere, anytime, against anyone. But, what’s really amazing about this FISA account is that you can buy what you want and then come back and pay for it up to 72 hours after the fact! Is that cool, or what! In effect, you can shoplift people’s communications with this account and it’s not even a teeny-tiny problem if you can find your way into the FISA office within the next three days. And the process that authorizes these shopping sprees is totally secret and the people involved are complete unknowns. This just keeps getting better and better – who writes this stuff? Heaven knows you can’t make it up.

Now, why can’t the administration play ball by these rules. This game is fixed, man! The dice are loaded; the cards are dog-eared; the wheel is greased; the dealer is wearing reflective sun glasses when she looks down at her hand! Said another way, why can’t the administration comply with this law, a law they admittedly use on many, many other occasions; a 28-year old law that they now, rather suddenly, suggest is surely unconstitutional if anyone thinks that it’s application in any way impedes the presidential spy program that is now under scrutiny. If this law is unconstitutional, then what does that portend for all the evidence that has been and continues to be gathered under it? And if this law is not unconstitutional, what does that portend for all the evidence that has been and continues to be gathered outside of it? I think I hear the pitter-patter of little feet as any number of bad guys walk free out of various courthouses in American with smiles on their faces. Like I said, who writes this stuff?

Oh, yeah, White House counsel.

I Spy, You Spy, We All Spy

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales appeared yesterday before a Congressional hearing on the White House authorized program to conduct surveillance on telephone calls in the U.S. without a warrant. My feelings on this issue are strong enough to make me watch C-SPAM last night. It takes a lot to make me watch C-SPAM, especially during dinner.

I listened carefully to the Attorney General as he explained the White House interpretation of the law on this subject. As a lawyer, I don’t buy it. I think the administration is trying once again to cloak an issue in the dust cloud of 9/11, because they're convinced that after that solemn invocation we will buy anything that follows. Well, this is an attempt to sell us a pig in a poke. That cute little phrase originated in the Middle Ages when traders would put a cat in a poke – a bag – and attempt to sell it to an unwary buyer as a pig. If you like cat meat and eggs for breakfast, then this little misdirection play isn’t a problem. But, if you prefer bacon or ham, then you’d better open that poke and pull that squirming thing out by its hairy tail.

We’re told that this warrant-free surveillance is authorized under the president’s Constitutional wartime powers as commander-in-chief. Problem: this isn’t a war as contemplated by the Framers because Congress hasn’t declared war as provided in the Constitution and because … well … it just isn’t a real war. Real wars are fought against other nations or governments or some other definable entity; real wars have measurable objectives that can be achieved in the expected lifetime of not more than one commander-in-chief; real wars involve enemies who hang out in army-like outfits that eventually can be located, surrounded and eliminated; you know when you’ve won or lost a real war because someone raises a white flag or stops trying to kill you and your friends.

The war being invoked for this surveillance is a war on a noun – in this case, terrorism. It’s similar to the surreal wars on other nasty nouns – tyranny, communism, poverty, drugs, and crime. These are snappy little phrases, and a hell of a set of political mantras, but they’re not real wars as contemplated by the delegates who granted power to the executive branch on September 17, 1787. Where are the strict constructionists in this Constitutional interpretation game when we really need them?

Let’s look at an analogous war on another noun - the war on tyranny. That word is often invoked alongside its more popular sibling, terrorism. At the base of the twin flagpoles at the magnificent National World War II Memorial in Washington, DC, is the following inscription:

"Americans came to liberate, not to conquer, to restore freedom and end tyranny."

Noble words, to be sure; words that sound very familiar to what we’ve been hearing over the last couple of years. Well, how did that “end tyranny” thing work out in 1945? Not well; you can look it up. Before we finished sweeping up the confetti from the V-E and V-J Day parades, tyranny, like freedom is apparently inclined to do, was “on the march”. The newly empowered Soviet Union under the brutal hand of Joseph Stalin was spreading tyranny through Eastern Europe like it was soft margarine. The list of tyrannical dictators who have ruled with terror around the globe since we fought WWII to end tyranny is still being compiled. Tyrants and terrorists will always be with us as long as politics, religion, geography and other beloved boundary lines are with us.

Again, no one ever has won or every will win a war against these ethereal enemies. But – that doesn’t mean we don’t fight against them – of course we fight against them! The point is that these fights don’t rise to the level of Constitutional wars that invoke the full scope of powers wielded by the commander-in-chief in a war declared by Congress. To conclude otherwise is to accept the notion that we are in a global war against the faceless, numberless powers and principalities of evil that will last forever. All time will be wartime, and the loss of personal liberties will be the price we pay for the so-called security obtained through our perpetual wars on terrorism and tyranny. In the end, we will be left to ponder the words of Benjamin Franklin, who knew a thing or two about freedom, liberty, and war:

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

More to come.

XL Down, XL to Go

Super Bowl XL is in the books. Pittsburg did not win; Seattle lost. There’s not enough cappuccino (a quad grande, skinny and dry, if you please) in the Emerald City to ease the pain in their sorry hearts this morning. That big-mouthed tight end of theirs needs both of his hands transplanted. All he proved is that if your end is tight, stupid things come out of your mouth.

XL – a somewhat daunting number that’s more than a little hard to believe for those of us who have seen them all. Forty years! How does this time-flying thing happen? I easily recall sitting in the living room of my college fraternity house in January 1967, watching the curious but semi-exciting match up between the NFL and AFL champs. Green Bay kicked Kansas City’s butt, as expected, before a less-than-sold-out crowd at the LA Memorial Coliseum. There was very little pre-game hype for a game that had not yet been christened as either “Super” or a “Bowl” (it was the “AFL-NFL World Championship” game). Some die-hard football fans viewed that game as little more than a post-season exhibition. Two years later in SB III, a bold and brash young man known as Broadway Joe would predict and then deliver an AFL victory, when the New York Jets humbled the Baltimore Colts. Football and the Super Bowl changed that day, reminding us that anything and everything can change in a day. Now, we’ve had forty Super Sundays – and I’m forty years older.

On an otherwise innocent day last year I was watching TV and along came a commercial advertising the 50th anniversary of Disneyland. It struck me like the proverbial truckload of earthen building material – because I went to Disneyland just a few months after it opened in 1955, back when Dumbo and the Peter Pan ride were the big attractions. I got my picture taken in Frontierland wearing a coonskin Davy Crockett cap alongside life-sized cutouts of Fess Parker and Buddy Ebsen, because that was cool in 1955. Fifty years! I can’t believe that I’ve been alive for, much less can recall, the fiftieth of anything. The Twelfth of Never, sure; but not the 50th of the Anaheim version of Never-Never Land. When will this madness stop!

The first boomer just turned 60! It’s been 42 years since the Beatles arrived in the U.S., the Rolling Stones performed in Bakersfield (yes, they did), and JFK was assassinated; 37 years since the same fate struck down MLK and RFK; 36 years since Woodstock, the first moonwalk, and my first trip to Haight-Ashbury; and 35 years since the Beatles disbanded! My high school class “celebrates” its 40th anniversary this year, and my law school class marks its 30th (yeah, I know, it took a while)!

Is anybody paying attention to this cataclysmic erosion of time? I’m telling you, this could end poorly if we don’t do something about it. Other similarly stressed boomers have asked me what I’m going to do. I think the answer is rather obvious – – –

I’m going to Disneyland! There are old rides to enjoy again, and new rides to experience for the first time. It is, indeed, a Magical Kingdom; a place where grown men can wear coonskin caps; a place where madness stops and time does not erode.

Yo, Mick!

Synchronicity

Synchronicity – defined in the online Webster’s as:

the coincidental occurrence of events and especially psychic events … that seem
related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality -- used
especially in the psychology of C. G. Jung

Since Dan’s death we have encountered numerous “coincidental events”. We wonder, have such events always been present in our life but not noticed; or do we notice them now because in the context of our loss such events are given subjective meaning beyond mere coincidence?

Last week we went out to dinner and talked about Danny along the way. As we pulled into the restaurant parking lot the first car we saw had a license plate that read, “DannyXY”. Danny Boy, not just a reference to my stepson’s name, but a song that was played at his memorial service, a song that continues to move us each time we hear it.

Last night I was on this blog and I hit the “Next Blog” button above, which took me to a somewhat unstructured blog about Japan and Japanese culture. Dan was fascinated with all things Japanese and was seriously studying the language at a college level with a tutor who became a family friend. His reward for completing his second round of chemo in June 2001 was a two-week trip to Japan – Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, Hiroshima, and Himeji – an experience he called the “highlight of his life”. Dan’s intense interest and that trip opened our family to a vista that continues to enrich us.

One of the entries made on the “next blog” yesterday was a five-star review of The Last Samurai, which the unidentified blog writer had seen on Friday evening. On Friday evening, my wife stayed up late and watched that movie for the second time, but experienced much of it as if seeing it for the first time. Yesterday morning, she gave it a five-star review. Day before yesterday, and again today, the "next blog" had nothing to do with the one we saw yesterday.

Small occurrences, to be sure. The purely rational mind will almost certainly view them as mere coincidence and attach no added meaning to them. But the mind that has traveled a long and seldom-trod path and has emerged before a new and seldom-seen vista, may view these subtle alignments with a touch of open wonder.

After all, a broken heart is an open heart, into which new things enter and from which new things emerge.

March On

January and February are tough months in our home. We've been forever imprinted by the events of January and February 2002, when my stepson, Danny, relapsed with leukemia for the second time, spent 39 long and difficult days in the hospital, and died on March 15, 2002, after two weeks back home. The months of January and February represent becoming aware that something was seriously wrong, again; the painful bone marrow aspirations that confirmed another relapse; the demoralizing reinserting of a central line for a third chemotherapy protocol; the constant monitoring of oscillating blood counts; the assessment of hard treatment options; an unexpected stint of kidney dialysis; the changed and almost distant look on the faces of the doctors and the altered tone in their voices; the futile preparation for a bone marrow transplant that would never happen, including the early removal of orthodontic braces in preparation for radiation; and the all-too-familiar loss of weight, hair, energy and strength in a vibrant young man.

Every step along the path in those two months was filled with pain and a foreboding sense of possible loss. Early on, there was also hope as we looked toward a BMT buoyed by the fact that Danny's brother was a perfect match. But, we had to reestablish a remission first, and that didn't happen. As February wore on, we became increasingly aware that Dan was not responding to the latest round of chemo. This time, the leukemia was here to stay. On the 28th of February we brought him home.

It is interesting that March is not as difficult a month for us. March 2002 was a month of mostly quiet days at home with Danny being relatively comfortable in our family room and his bedroom, where I’m making this entry. Our focus was palliative; our challenge was reconciliation; our time was dedicated to simple sharing; our goal was maintaining a sense of peace sweetened with a few drops of joy. Certainly, there were difficult times in that month, such as renting a wheelchair because for the first time Dan could not get up and around, and arranging for hospice for a 14-year old. But, there were many remarkable moments that continue to inform us and resonate in our lives every day. There were transcendent late night discussions between my wife and her son that touched on the threshold of the sacred. There were early morning encounters between me and my stepson that redefined the peacefulness that is found only when one lives in the here and now.

That experience changed almost everything for my wife and me. We are profoundly different people now – we are better people; our hearts are more open and compassionate; our minds are more open and aware. So much good has come into our lives since March 15, 2002. And yet, we are conflicted – because we would give it all up in a second if we could snap our fingers and return to 2001 and have Danny back in his room, making a blog entry, rather than me. But, we can’t.

It would be too easy, too presumptuous and too self-centered to say that the betterment of our lives has revealed the purpose to Danny’s death. But, it is correct to say that we have gleaned meaning, awareness and vision from our experience at Dan’s side during a four-year journey. We remain determined that we will not allow the seeds he planted in us to lie in fallow ground. We will grow, because he wanted to; we will learn, because he wanted to; we will live, because he wanted to; we will continue to change; because he did; we will be resilient, because he was. We will fight our way into the here and now because that is where he taught us to live in peace in the face of adversity.

He would be pleased; and that pleases us.

Spit!

What in the world has gone wrong in the realm of common decency! Yesterday I pulled into a local shopping area to pick up some take-out food for dinner. As I walked along about 50 yards of sidewalk and other common walkways I saw no less than a half dozen places where someone had spit on the sidewalk. A couple of the deposits had ... uh ... "chunks" in them. Disgusting! I am relatively confident that each perp was a male under the age of 25, having seen a countless number of them do this over the last few years, often in the presence of a parent. If I had done that in my dad's presence, he would have knocked me into an adjoining zip code. I saw one of my sons do it once and what followed was probably a felony in most states, certainly in all Blue States! My wife can't stand watching me spit in my backyard, probably for good reason - she was raised to be thoughtful about other people, including those who are doing nothing other than looking our way.

While I'll reserve judgment about the proper behavior in one's own yard, it is simply and indisputably indecent behavior to spit on public walkways - on public anything, for that matter. Can all adults over the age of 25 agree on this - and then unitedly rise up and tell our brats to knock it off! If they won't comply, then I recommend "relocating" them to an adjoining zip code.

May God Save Us - Part 2

One of the first things that struck me as I read the Washington Post article is that the healthcare workers who want this legislation passed seem to be claiming that they are forced to do certain things that violate their conscience. Forced? As in forced labor or indentured servants? No, they're not. They're free, because they live in the good old USA. They were free to chose their profession and did so with full knowledge of the scope of responsibilities that would and could come their way. They have been free to reap the benefits of their profession. And, they remain free to leave the responsibilities of their profession at any time, for any reason. They are like people who knowingly build a new home next to agricultural land and then complain about the dust that blows on their patio.

These ill-considered laws would essentially end the rule of law because they would make every individual a law unto themselves. The subjectivity of personal belief would reign supreme. The variations on the theme of individual conscience are infinite. At some point, society has to function on a level of shared values, allowing for differing values but not trying to conform itself around every possible value permutation that springs into the mind of man or woman. I recall the pockets of ultra-right tax revolts in the 60s and 70s when some "people of faith" refused to pay taxes because doing so violated their "core beliefs", either because of their views about government in general or the things that government did with those taxes. It didn't take long to make it clear to these folks that these protests were not within the definition of "freedom", even in America.

The so-called caregiving proponents of these laws would have us convert our healthcare system into an individually governed conditional process by asking those who are in need of their care to first conform to the caregivers values in order to be deemed worthy of receiving their services. I am relatively confident that these people would not be willing to accept exactly the same proposition in those areas where they need the basic services of daily life.

Most of the apparently offended are Christians who have decided to ignore Christ's golden injunction to, "Do unto others what you would have them do unto you." Assuming these offended servants of God are genuine believers, then we can only conclude that they would have us treat them in the same manner as they now propose to treat others - with a discriminating prejudice that is lighted by a light that has been under the bushel basket so long that it has gone out, leaving only darkness. It is amazing to see these people proclaim that what they're advocating is in accord with the word of God. To me, it is blatantly inconsistent with the most basic values of their professed faith. "Take no thought of yourself," Jesus taught. Listening to them, I'm left with the impression that they are thinking about nothing else.