The Smartest Places On Earth

 If you're interested in our economy - where it's headed and what's really happening - you need to watch this webcast from Brookings Institute.

The Smartest Places On Earth - Brookings Institute

Cage-Free Eggs

Caught a blurb a moment ago about a grocery store that will move toward selling 100% Cage-Free eggs soon. Cage-Free eggs. Hmm.

Now, Cage-Free Chicken - I see that. A way for some to feel good about eating chicken. At least it wasn't confined to a cramped coop and force-fed steroids to make it grow into a giant chicken breast with a beak before someone killed it, plucked it, gutted it, and wrapped it for display in the store.

But Cage-Free eggs

When I was a boy I had a dozen yard hens and a rooster. They wandered free and wandered everywhere. So did their nests. And when I found their nests, I gathered their eggs and took them in the house to the refrigerator. When we cooked them, they tasted like whatever the hens had eaten - bark from the camphor tree is the flavor/scent I remember most in the scrambled eggs - there was a camphor tree behind the garage and they routinely pecked at its roots.

So, if you like Cage-Free eggs, help yourself. I prefer the consistency in flavor of whatever's in the bright white cartons with the brand logo stamped on each clean, smooth egg. But I do wonder how they get the eggs so uniform in size and shape.

Health Care

I don't know the total number of people living in the United States who do not have medical insurance coverage, but I know this - whatever the size of that group might be, it's large enough and pervasive enough that doctor's offices and related businesses (medical imaging, testing facilities, etc.) have self-pay (cash) fee schedules.

Looking Ahead

Looking ahead, if Donald Trump gains the Republican nomination and wins the general election, we could face more than just the bungling missteps of an uniformed politician.

All of Trump's leadership experience comes from the private sector where he has been CEO of private corporations. As a CEO he could say, "Do this," or "Never mind. Let's do that." And he could give those directions at a moments notice.

He could do the same with the corporate budget. "Spend here." Or, "Take the money from that account and use it on this one." The president of a business corporation might have that authority. The president of the United States does not.

So, the question becomes, what happens when President Trump's ideas and plans run headlong into the constitutional process?

Republican Presidential Debates

The Republican Presidential Debates were a success. They convinced me that I really am a Democrat.

Moving On To A New Line Of Articles

I began the current series of articles by proposing to visit hamburger restaurants around the city of Houston and report about our experiences. These articles were to detail actual trips my son and I made and the food we consumed. We made those trips and I wrote a couple of articles about the first two places where we ate. But in the process of preparing a third article detailing our experience at the next stop I became convicted about two things.

First, I am overweight, and not by a small about. Recreational consumption of food is a huge problem in the United States - for me personally and for millions of our fellow citizens. Meanwhile, much of the world goes hungry. We eat for entertainment. They eat only to survive. That's not right. I'm not a Catholic but the Catholic catechism defines gluttony as a mortal sin. That is as true today as it has ever been.

Second, not all the food we ate was of equal quality. All of it was good, but some was better than others. However, each of the people operating the restaurants we visited worked quite diligently to earn a living. They need all the customers they can get and don't need someone criticizing their work.

So, I'm not going to finish the current series of articles. Instead, I'm going to focus on not eating so much. If you enjoy hamburgers and are curious about which kind is best, take a trip around your own city or town and decide for yourself. As for me, I'm pushing myself toward salad and apples.

Burger Tour of Houston - Second Stop - Hubcap Grill

Our second stop on the Burger Tour of Houston took us to Hubcap Grill. They have several locations around the city but we visited the original site, located at 1111 Prairie Street, downtown. This is another of the hamburger joints in the "store-turned-cafe" genre and as you can see from the photo below, the interior is quaint but cramped. (They have outdoor seating on one side).

The hamburger I had that day was hand-patted - which is the first step beyond the "machine burger" served by fast food restaurants - but beyond that I found it . . . unremarkable. Good, but not outstanding and lacking a noticeable  "wow" factor. You can see part of one on Jack's plate in the photo above. He gave it his typical, "better than McDonalds" rating. I gave it the, "Okay, but let's try another place" response.

Hubcap Grill is a favorite for many Houstonians and has a strong reputation. If I were already downtown for another reason and wanted a hamburger, I would go there. But for a special trip, I would go somewhere else.

The thing that did catch my interest and would take me back there on a special trip was the story of the original owners - Italian immigrants who came to America in the early twentieth century and opened the location as a store. Photos of the couple hang on the walls and the current owners were more than willing to talk about the history of the place. And though I might not drive down there solely for the burger, I would return especially to hear more of the founders' story and this time to take notes.

Hubcap Grill - 1111 Prairie Street, Houston, Texas

Burger Tour of Houston - First Stop - Lankford Grocery and Market

Our first stop on the Burger Tour of Houston was at Lankford Grocery & Market - part of the Texas grocery-store-turned-cafe restaurant sub-genre. All the Houston food web sites and eatery referral places rave about this place so we began our quest for the definitive burger here. Our first experience rated an "okay" from me. Jack gave it his usual "better than McDonalds" but really, I was underwhelmed. The burger was big, which is good, and loaded with whatever toppings we requested, also good, but I thought the flavor of the meat was flat - it didn't appear to be hand-patted - and lost in the add-ons. 

This place is known far and wide and the general public talks about it all the time so we went back for a second taste after visiting several other eateries. This time I ordered my burger plain - meat and bread. Jack still gave it a "better than McDonalds" rating and I still found the meat lacking, but the atmosphere was better and the place had that "grows on you" feel.

The story of the business is rather interesting - family owned for multiple generations, began as a grocery store now just a restaurant. Still operated by a Lankford. An in-law was manning the cash register on our most recent stop, which I suppose said something about their trust in him. It also told me the owners placed greater emphasis on the food and service than on the money, which goes a long way toward explaining why this place is always packed. They serve many other dishes besides hamburgers, including breakfast, which we intend to try, but that's for another tour.

The picture below shows the interior.

Lankford Grocery & Market is located at 88 Dennis Street in the Montrose section of Houston

Burger Tour of Houston

The picture above is a shot of Callaghan's Irish Social Club - a bar on Charleston Street in Mobile, Alabama, and home of the best hamburger on the Gulf Coast. From Corpus Christi to Apalachicola, you can't find a place that beats the taste of their burger. Jack and I have eaten there many times and when we're in Mobile we do our best to go there for lunch.

Since moving to Houston we've tried to find a burger joint with a comparable taste and similar ambiance. We've been aided in our effort by Jack's gift of "Burger Bucks" - money he gave me last Christmas to help cover the cost of a burger tasting tour of Houston. Two men with an appetite and cash, in an '85 Mercedes with a broken air conditioner - we've sweated our way through some interesting experiences.

Over the next few weeks, I'll show you pictures of the places we've visited so far and catch you up on or assessment of the flavor.

Grand Bay Elementary School For Colored

This is a picture of the Grand Bay Elementary School For Colored. It was constructed with help from the Rosenwald Fund and used to educate African-American children in the 1920s. The site is along U.S. Highway 90, east of Grand Bay, Alabama. Classes for grades one through six were conducted there until the 1940s when the school was consolidated with the school at Dixon Corner (photo from Fisk University).

Daryl Hall and Cee Lo Green

Last night, Daryl Hall was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (along with John Oates of the combo Hall and Oates). So, continuing with the Daryl Hall - Live From Daryl's House emphasis, this is Daryl singing Crazy with Cee Lo Green.

Daryl Hall and Todd Rundgren - Live From Daryl's House

Most of you have probably already seen Daryl Hall's show Live From Daryl's House. This is Daryl singing with Todd Rundgren from an episode several years ago. I think the versions they do on this show are better than the originals.

Can We Still Be Friends

Same-Sex Marriage

Last fall, George and Barbara Bush attended the wedding of two friends in Maine. The friends were two women who were marrying each other. This is old news, but I refer to it now to say that same-sex marriage, like many other so-called polarizing issues, is easy to discuss in polemical terms in the abstract - “we ought to do this” or “we ought to do that.” But the issues become something else when the people involved are our friends.

I don’t know about you but when issues like this touch the lives of my friends they also touch my life as well - in a personal way - and my reaction to the critics who attack my friends is usually something like, “kiss my ass.” I think George and Barbara would give a more polite “none of your damn business” response, but the point is still the same - political issues divide us in the abstract, which is where politicians want to keep them so they can use those issues to manipulate us. But our personal reaction to those issues, when we encounter them through our own lives or the lives of our friends and family, tells us more about where the country is headed and how those issues will finally be resolved.

 

 

 

 

An old postcard advertisement 

 

 

A barn in Grand Bay Alabama

Governor Christie and the Highway Flap

As I continue to read about the controversy involving New Jersey governor Chris Christie and lane closures from Fort Lee onto the George Washington Bridge, I have become suspicious that this is an attack on Christie from the Republican right, rather than a substantive legal problem or a challenge from the left.

Many conservative Republicans were upset with Christie's comments following Hurricane Sandy, his cooperative stance with the Obama administration during hurricane recovery, and his refusal to use the catastrophe to score cheap political points with the far right. I think this continuing brew-ha-ha is more about political payback and the internal war within the Republican Party and much less about anything else - which would be an interesting twist - Christie operatives try to squeeze the Fort Lee mayor for not endorsing Christie, only to get squeezed themselves as operatives from the far right kick the story from one news cycle to the next.

Church and Society

The argument over whether we as Christians have a “right” to free speech is a trap. We should speak when the Holy Spirit prompts us, remain silent when prompted to silence, let the world react however it chooses, and we should not complain about the consequences.

The Obama Administration - An Opportunity Squandered

Recent events surrounding the civil war in Syria have followed a strange path, but one that was readily predictable from President Obama's disappointing tenure in office.

Since taking office, President Obama has consistently picked big fights only to back down at the last moment and avoid confrontation through compromise cast as significant victory. He pushed hard for healthcare reform, then caved to the demands of insurance and pharmaceutical companies. He took hardline stances on budget and debt issues, then compromised at the last minute surrendering large budget cuts to important programs. The most recent of those compromises gave us the so-called budget sequester.

In typical fashion, this latest trouble with Syria was occasioned by his "red line" stance on chemical weapons. He announced that any use of those weapons by the Syrian government would be a game changer, then for three days he watched as the Syrian army prepared to gas it's fellow countrymen a second time. When he finally did respond - ten days after the latest incident - he announced military action, then sought an international coalition, then Congressional approval, meeting with defeat on all fronts. Every other president since World War II would have acted first, then commented later. We should have known when he started talking about a military response that none would be forthcoming.

President Obama loves debate. He relishes the exchange of ideas and he likes to talk. But while he was talking and posturing, the moment for action evaporated and any tactical advantage that could have been gained by a military strike slipped through his fingers. Perhaps that's what he wanted - to talk, to posture, to pontificate but take no real action. After all, talking but doing nothing of substance has been the hallmark of his administration. This time, however, he talked himself into a corner.

That the Russians and Syrians had to come to his rescue with a compromise is telling of how poorly the current situation was handled and yet one more indication of how much he has squandered the opportunity of his two-term presidency.

The Looming Federal Budget Crisis - Again

The federal budget process is a complicated affair but usually begins with a proposal sent to Congress by the president. Lately, however, that process has been anything but usual. As September approaches we once again face the twin issues of authorizing federal spending and raising the debt limit to pay for it.

Contrary to popular opinion, President Obama has proposed a budget, albeit sometimes late, for each year he has been in office. All of those proposals, however, have been rejected by Congress. Having refused his suggestions, the House, for most years, has then drafted its own version of the budget. Those House-originated budgets have been rejected in the Senate.

To keep the federal government functioning, Congress, with House approval, has regularly passed legislation known as a Continuing Resolution which says, in effect, “we approve budget authorization for this year at last year’s levels.” However, a continuing resolution grants only budget approval. It's not a funding mechanism. Because those resolutions approve budget amounts at current levels, which exceed current federal revenue, they also continue the budget deficit, requiring an issuance of federal debt to cover the shortfall.

Lately, this process has produced a strange result, particularly in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Conservative House members regularly approve continuing budget resolutions – supposedly to keep the government open – but balk at raising the debt to cover the resulting deficit created by those resolutions. This practice of saying yes on the one hand and no on the other makes for a confusing situation, one that adds a measure of uncertainty to our economy and regularly roils world credit markets. It's a dangerous situation, and one created solely by Congressional action, but I think I’ve figured out why this happens.

Members of the House of Representatives stand for re-election every two years. Most Republican seats in the House are safe from Democratic challenge. However, any budget plan that would stand a chance of gaining Senate approval would increase the debt. Voting in favor of a budget that increases the public debt would make a Republican Congressman, even from a safe district, vulnerable to attack from the right. Supporting a continuing resolution, though also increasing the debt, is a stop-gap, short-term measure that puts House members in a much more defensible position - that is, saving the government and fighting the good fight. Defunding or re-purposing programs – the real budget solution - poses a much greater risk. (Ask someone over the age of 50 about means-testing Social Security retirement benefits and you’ll see what happens when you touch a constituent's favorite program).

So, when a conservative member of Congress votes in favor of a continuing resolution, he's not thinking about sound public policy. He’s thinking instead about the next election and about protecting himself from voter backlash over cutting a constituent's favorite government program.

When he votes against an increase in the federal debt limit - an increase occasioned by the continuing resolution he just approved - he’s not taking a stance for smaller government. He's actually only protecting himself from the accusation of a challenger (a fellow conservative) who could say “you aren't conservative enough." That is, his stance on either topic - budget authorization or debt limit increase - isn’t really a substantive position. It’s actually a campaign event.

Statesmanship – taking a course of action with the good of the people in mind – is no longer a motivating factor for House members (if it ever was). Getting elected and staying in office is the sole goal. That they gamble with their personal reputations for self-aggrandizement is one thing. But risking the national credit rating for the sake of gaining re-election shows just how small-minded politics has become.

Politics

Politics in the US is no longer guided by politicians seeking an honest dialogue of ideas as a means of enlightening us all to the truth - if it ever was - rather, it has become a profession, in and of itself, dominated by political practitioners who use half-truths and lies to incite in us fear and hatred as a means of imposing their opinion on us - in other words, we are now at the mercy of politicians who rule by violence under the guise of defending doctrinal purity.

Baseball

Baseball is an interesting sport. A player who hits the ball at the rate of 3 out of every 10 times at bat will earn a multi-million dollar salary and, upon retirement, be voted into the hall of fame on the first ballot. A manager whose team wins at the rate of 3 out of 10 games will get fired.

Regarding The Arab-Israeli Conflict

I'm reading about the Arab-Israeli War of 1948 - the war for Israel's independence - and it leaves me with a question that gets to the present conflict.

In 1948 the UN voted to partition Palestine into an Arab state and an Israeli state, with Jerusalem as an international city. The Arabs were not satisfied and chose to fight rather than accept the deal. The Arabs lost the war and in the course of that they lost control of much of the land they'd been granted by the UN partition. So here's the question - if the fighting had gone the other way - with an Arab victory - would the Arabs have given back enough land for an Israeli state?

Fried Bacon - Maybe It's Not So Bad After All

Not too long ago I read an article about longevity that indicated some of the longest lived people reside in Asia, particularly in Japan and China. In studying them, researchers found several noticeable traits in their lifestyle that differ from the typical Western lifestyle. One of those was the practice of preparing meat by boiling it, which was thought to remove much of the fat. 

 

Here in Texas, we love fried bacon, especially on Sunday morning. Usually, the task of preparing it falls to me. Bacon, being pork, contains more fat than you’d like to know about. As a result, a pound of bacon fried in a skillet on the stove produces a large quantity of grease. While frying a pound this morning I thought of the long-lived people in Asia and about how they reduce the fat from their diet by boiling it. And it occurred to me that frying meat in its own grease accomplishes the same thing. So doesn’t it follow that by frying bacon, and thereby extracting the fat, I have turned greasy pork bacon into a healthy component of a low-fat diet?

Minutemen, Cowboys, and American Gun Policy

The current debate about “gun control” in America isn’t really about controlling guns. On the surface, we use the language of control, sure, but the discussion is finally moving beyond merely limiting the sale of certain rounds of ammunition or certain types of weapons and moving on to wrestle with a definition for gun ownership in 21^st Century – post revolutionary – America. Like every other challenge we face, finding that definition requires us to let go of the past and face the future – a future that looks very uncertain and very scary. And that’s the problem. America is afraid.

In the 1700s, the United States had no standing army. Armies were raised on an “as needed” basis, mostly from volunteers who were expected to supply their own weapons. True citizen soldiers, men who responded for military service fought until the issues were settled, then returned home to plow or feed the chickens or tend their store. They served our forebears well.

Before the American Civil War, an American farmer with a good hunting rifle was as well-equipped as any regular troop from any army in the world. Together they formed that “well-armed militia” referenced in the Second Amendment and they were the nation’s only source of security against unrest from within and armed attack from without. That’s why the Second Amendment was added to the Constitution, to protect the right of citizens to “keep and bear arms” – because the nation depended on well-armed individual citizens for its defense. They were the army.

Today, that is no longer the case. Now we have a standing, well-trained, full-time army. Defense of the nation no longer rests on a “well-armed” citizen militia. But the myth of the American Minuteman lives on and the notion of unlimited individual gun ownership has morphed into a principle seen by many as the “bedrock of all liberties,” the foundation upon which all freedom stands – suggesting that so long as we own our own weapons we will one day have the means of leading an armed defense against terrorists from abroad, or an armed revolt against the tyranny of politicians in Washington, DC. One look inside a Stryker vehicle or an M1 tank would quickly disabuse you of that notion. The citizen soldier is no longer our primary means of defense. It’s time for our national firearms policy to leave the past and catch up with the age in which we live – a highly mobile, exceedingly urban, media-influenced, violence-prone age.

Think about this for perspective – there was a day when those who worked on cattle ranches needed to perfect the skill of breaking and training horses. Horses were their means of transportation and a vital tool for the cowboy trade. Over time, certain cowboys developed a knack for riding rank unbroken stallions. Today, ranching has changed and horses aren’t used much. Traditional cowboys are all but gone from the West. Horsemanship has become a hobby. But the art of riding unbroken stallions lives on in rodeos held all across the country. What once was a vital work skill has now become sport.

The same thing happened with hunting. Killing wild game was once essential for survival. In centuries past, it was the settler’s primary, and many times only, source of animal protein. Now, except in remote areas like Alaska and northern Canada, hunting is no long essential for survival. Yet the practice lives on as a sport. And so it is with the citizen soldier – long since eliminated as a factor in national defense policy, but lingering now in the American gun owner.

This argument we’re having about gun ownership isn’t about the need for a “well-armed militia,” or the notion that our freedom rests on access to the means of armed rebellion. And it’s not about taking away all firearms – no one wants to take away hunting rifles and shotguns, and not many want to limit the use of handguns. The argument is about something far scarier than that. It’s about coping with life in a rapidly changing world and grappling with a future – a very uncertain future – that’s rushing toward us at an incredible speed. We no longer live in the Minuteman age. We live in the age of Now and it’s time we addressed the real problems we face rather than struggling to hold on to the past.

The Real Cliff We Face

This so-called “fiscal cliff” we face resulted from an agreement reached last year between Democrats and Republicans in Congress to increase the debt limit high enough to fund the government past the 2012 election. Now that the election is over, the result of that agreement - about $670 billion in budget “adjustments” - is upon us. Those “adjustments” will come, unless Congress acts sooner, in the form of $135 billion in across-the board cuts to discretionary spending, and $535 billion in TAX INCREASES.

What we’re actually debating here is how to pay the tab for things we’ve done since 1980 (before then, the budget was more or less balanced) but for which we lacked sufficient revenue to pay as we went - those things include, a military incursion in Grenada, deployment to Lebanon, the S & L collapse, military intervention in Panama, the First Gulf War, Kosovo, invasion of Afghanistan, invasion of Iraq, two tax rebates (stimulus), homeowner mortgage rescue plan, financial system rescue funding during the 2007-2009 meltdown, automotive bailout, a second round of banking and mortgage bailout, and a general stimulus spending package - all of it facilitated with borrowed money.

Congress is on the verge of dealing with the situation the way Congress always does - at someone else’s expense. They’ll wring their hands and fret over the terrible mess we’re in, but in the end, they’ll pass a bill that does most of what will already occur - raise tax rates and cut domestic spending, which translated means paying for it with middle class money and the poor’s misery. Congress created this problem - both the underlying fiscal issues and the looming automatic changes. All this talk about “fiscal cliff” and “second recession” is nothing more than an advertising campaign to cover the real cliff we face, which is Congress’ pitiful lack of leadership.

Evil Begins With A Premise You Accept

First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

The words of Martin Niemoller, a German pastor and theologian who endured the Holocaust in a concentration camp, reflecting on how the Nazis, with the help of the church and typical German citizens, implemented their policies and committed the atrocities of that era.

Evil is always incremental. It starts from an easily acceptable, but subtly deceptive, beginning and moves logically from one step to the next, until even the faithful find themselves embracing a goal that they would have easily rejected earlier. That's how the Nazis did it. They started with something that almost all Germans agreed with - the economy was bad - and then they took them to an end no one could have imagined - the systematic murder of over 6 million foreign immigrants, blacks, gays, disabled, and infirmed.

Last Call For The Church

In this election, we, as Christians, are invited to support Mitt Romney, a man who is a member of a religion that by any traditional, classic definition is decidedly non-Christian, and to support a party whose agenda emphasizes the pursuit of money, power, and wealth. We now are told by leaders of the faith - many of them long regarded as bastions of the evangelical Christian faith - that because Romney is a virtuous person, we should ignore Biblical truth - against which the untruth of Mormonism is obvious - and support him over a candidate whose primary domestic goal has been to address the needs of the poor, the needy, and the sick. We are urged to do this, not because of some new found theological insight, but solely for the purpose of removing one president from office and installing another.

Theology, in one sense, is our statement of what Scripture means and how it applies to our lives. For almost two thousand years we've said that it is the standard by which we as Christians know and determine the truth, and that our actions should conform to it rather than twisting it to conform to the things we want to do. If we cast aside that standard - both as it applies to the religion of the candidate, and to the candidate's agenda - merely for political advantage, how can we then claim Scripture as an objective authority for anything? Has not our goal become our standard? Are we not forcing our faith to conform to us, rather than us to our faith?

What This Election is Really About

In assessing this current presidential election, many of you have suggested we as Christians should cast our vote based on abortion, gay marriage, and the economy. Those are serious issues, but something far more serious is at stake.

As to abortion and gay marriage – we lost the abortion battle in the 70s and 80s when we opted to support elected officials who only gave lip service to the issue. And we lost our position on marriage when (contrary to Jesus’ teaching) the Church found a way to accommodate serial divorce and remarriage. Now, divorce rates are the same for the Church as for society at large, reflecting society’s value of marriage rather than that of Scripture. And not even conservative justices or politicians are willing to risk their appointments or elected careers to un-do Roe v. Wade. Time and the human context have moved on. The day for addressing those issues has passed.

Today, America stands at a precarious moment, and the question we face, both as a nation and as the Church, is, "Will you care for the poor, treat the immigrants among you (legal or illegal) as you treat yourselves, and care for the sick?" This is the question Jesus described in Matthew 25:31ff, the answer to which defines what it means to be a member of the Kingdom of God – a Christian. Those who care for the poor, the stranger, the sick, the imprisoned, are in. Those who don’t, are out. How we as Christians answer politically on those issues determines how we define America and ourselves. The stakes couldn't be higher.

We're at a turning point in history - the turning point. One way - defining America in terms of conservative economic policy and consumerism (idolatry), turns us toward Babylon and the end (Revelation 17ff). The other, defining America as a country of compassion for the poor, sick, and foreign (Matthew 25:31ff) allows the moment to pass and human history to continue. That's what this election is about.

Billy Graham Move Toward Romney Is Deplorable

As many of you are aware, Mitt Romney recently traveled to North Carolina where he met with Billy Graham. Following that meeting, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association removed references from its website that classified the Mormon religion as a cult. Franklin Graham has issued a statement suggesting that America is at a crossroads and that we should all vote for a candidate who supports Biblical principles and the worship of God. His message implies not so subtlety that our support should go to Mitt Romney. This statement from the Grahams is deplorable.

Since the founding of our nation, America has been a place where truth is valued, liberty prized, and justice (however imperfectly) has prevailed. We have been a nation of that character because Christianity has been the bedrock of American culture and the core of that Christianity has been the Church of Bible-believing Christians, primarily evangelicals. But for the past thirty years, the evangelical wing of the Church has defined Christianity solely and only in terms of personal piety, and has woefully disregarded and discarded what Jesus said about the poor, the imprisoned, and the foreign among us. In place of that truth, we have adopted conservative Republican economic and political philosophy – which vilifies the poor, castigates the imprisoned, and excoriates the immigrants among us. Now, we see the result of that choice as America has become a primarily secularized society with no collective consciousness of the Christian values that made us great. But instead of repenting of our error and turning to the truth we have only redoubled our flight to politics and political action, competing for votes, legislation, and government initiatives rather than the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens.

Franklin is correct. America is at a crossroads, and so is the Church. The question before the Church is whether it will hold to the truth of the Gospel and rely on the power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish God’s will in the world, or cast aside the truth and run in fear to the arms of politicians who promise one thing and do quite another. That the Mormon religion is a non-Christian religion is beyond denial. That the Grahams would forsake the truth and suggest otherwise, merely so they can feel comfortable about supporting Romney, is a travesty. We, and they, shall live to rue this day.

I Will Not Vote For Mitt Romney

Since the age of eighteen, I have seen myself as an evangelical Christian voter. I believe in the authority of Scripture, and I consider issues like abortion, national defense, budget deficits, health care, and immigration when deciding which candidate to support in presidential elections. In the upcoming presidential election of 2012, I will not vote for Mitt Romney, and here's why.

First, on the abortion issue, beginning with Ronald Reagan, every Republican presidential nominee has campaigned as the pro-life/anti-abortion candidate. But none of those nominees who actually reached office did a single thing to effectively change the law on the topic. All they did was campaign on the issue, raise money on the issue, and use it to incite voters to vote for them. I’m tired of being manipulated. So, I’m not basing my vote on the abortion issue.

Mitt Romney, a former Wall Street fund manager, is the Corporate America candidate, backed by powerful people with lots of money. Most conservatives think his ties to the business world are a good thing and are convinced that what’s good for major corporations is somehow good for private individuals. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The people and entities bankrolling Romney’s candidacy - major multinational corporations, banking and finance companies, and super wealthy individuals - are bent on making government nothing but the lapdog of multinational business interests. They already control Congress. If Romney wins this election, they will control the White House and all but the smallest sliver of the Supreme Court. If Romney wins, profit and profit alone will rule. Privatization will be the watchword but it will be code for "looting the public property." Everything - health care, the poor, illegal immigration, funding for Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and the use of federal lands - will be analyzed on a cost-benefit ratio.

Social Security will be privatized in a plan marketed as an attempt to give individuals greater control over their financial future and the opportunity to participate in investment vehicles that offer attractive returns. In reality, it will be nothing more than a government-enforced income stream directed toward Wall Street firms operated by the same people who caused the financial meltdown of 2008 - all in the name of profit. They will squander that income stream on complex transactional schemes that have no underlying value - much like the ones that fueled the 2008 meltdown - and when the money evaporates and you’re left with nothing, the Republican-led government will say to you what they say to the poor now, “Too bad. You made wrong choices. You bear the consequences.” Even though the “wrong choices” were decisions made by money managers in New York over which you had very little control.

The prison system will be outsourced also, and turned over to for-profit corporations, many of which are already operating prisons in several states. In order to subsidize the cost and bolster profit, inmates will be charged exorbitant fees - the imposition of which will carry the force of law and which they will have no means of paying. Release, even after serving the statutory criminal sentence, will be conditioned upon payment of those fees. Being unable to pay, they will be forced to work for wages, at or below the minimum standard, and will become a source of permanent, government-enforced, slave labor.

Illegal immigrants will be rounded up in a Holocaust-style military operation, much of it outsourced to private security firms who perfected their craft in Iraq and Afghanistan and who already have a ready cadre of trained personnel willing and able to do the job. Like the outsourced inmates in prison, illegal immigrants will be charged excessive fees to cover the cost of finding and detaining them. Those who can pay will be deported or allowed to immigrate to another country. Those who can’t will be shunted into the outsourced prison system where they will become part of the slave labor pool. This is how the Nazis treated the Jews before World War II and we’re well on our way to doing the same thing.

The court system will be radically transformed in the name of “tort reform” and reduced to little more than a corporate-controlled arbitration system, ostensibly to contain the cost of litigation but the real motive will be the limitation of risk and a reprieve from accountability for business, all to maximize profits. The real loser will be the American individual, who will lose the last opportunity for individual justice.

Government programs to assist the poor will be drastically curtailed, and in most cases eliminated, in the name of budget reform. All who are physically able to work will be told to get a job or starve.

Health care rationing, which conservatives fear will be imposed by the liberal left, will actually come from the conservative right as part of the never-ending lust for lower taxes and greater profits. Already, Romney is proposing to transfer Medicaid funding to the states, a move that will lead to the elimination of the program (states have no money to fund their own programs, much less a program the size of Medicaid).

The agenda is already in place. The will to do it is creeping up on us. Conservative politicians have energized their right wing base with rhetoric vilifying the poor and illegal immigrants. Evangelical churches - churches that actually believe the Gospel and understand that Jesus really meant what He said - have bought into the conservative political viewpoint, equating conservative politics and national loyalty with the Gospel. This election is the watershed moment for our nation. If Romney wins, the American story will become one of the saddest stories in history - the greatest democracy in the history of the world deceived into voting itself out of existence, all in the name of profit.

And that’s why I will never vote for Mitt Romney, and neither should you.

The Real Story Behind The Unemployment Rate

While unemployment remains stuck around 8.5 to 9 percent, and many analysts continue to insist the economy is in dire straits, corporate profits are at an all-timehigh. The reason profits are high is quite simple. Corporations have fired many of their employees and have required more production from those they retain. Those mighty corporations, who tell us they need lower taxes and less regulation to spur employment, are the very ones shrinking the number of available jobs. But they aren't shrinking their workforce because they can't afford to retain the employees. They're reducing the number of employees because executive compensation is tied to quarterly profits and firing employees is the quickest way to affect the bottom line. This is why major corporations oppose labor unions and support right-to-work laws - getting rid of the unions gives executives much greater latitude in firing employees, which provides greater flexibility in reaching those target numbers for the quarter, resulting in million-dollar bonuses for executives at the expense of hourly wage earning American workers.

Secularization of the Christian Right

In the 1970s, as the Carter administration took office and American politics moved beyond the Watergate era, conservative Christians began to exert renewed influence in American elections. Always a political force, the 1970s saw an organized effort to corral evangelical Christians and harness their votes as a force for change. Much of that effort focused on opposition to abortion and attempts to counteract the Supreme Court’s (at the time) recently announced ruling in Roe v. Wade. Chief among the organizers was Jerry Falwell. His Moral Majority organization became the standard bearer for that effort.

As a primary strategy, leaders of emerging conservative Christian political groups sought to target key elections and issues as a way of injecting a Christian worldview into the political process. By electing Christian leaders, it was supposed that the direction of government policy could be turned from what was perceived to be godless secularism to an embrace of Biblical values.

Initially, the effort was energized by Jimmy Carter’s rise to the presidency but when Carter went along with the Democratic Party’s position on abortion and when he failed to pursue policies on school prayer and education that Falwell and others supported, the Moral Majority turned its attention to the Republican Party and, more specifically, to Ronald Reagan.

Through the Reagan administration’s two terms, the Moral Majority remained at the forefront of the conservative Christian political movement and continued to provide a voice for evangelicals in their attempts to exert influence over the political process. But as the Reagan era came to a close, public sentiment regarding the group’s primary issues waned. The broader context of the Christian church moved towards opinions more in line with the general public. Many evangelical political groups found themselves marginalized.

In the late 1980s, the Moral Majority ceased to exist as a formal organization and the group splintered into what is now identified simply as the Christian Right – a loose confederation of Christian leaders and organizations. The Christian Right, however, has moved one step beyond Falwell’s Moral Majority and has focused less on electing Christians to office and more on marrying Christianity with secular conservatism. The Christian Right still coalesces around the pro-life issue, but spends most of its energy promoting traditional conservative positions on lower taxes, less government regulation, and opposition to increased government control over health care. As a result, what were once merely political positions on taxes and government regulation now have become articles of Christian faith for many evangelicals. It is this shift of perspective that has marked the end of the Christian Right.

In the 1980s, no pro-choice candidate ever obtained the Christian Right’s endorsement. Indeed, most evangelical political groups were organized specifically for the opposition of that very position. At the same time, no candidate who did not profess to be a Christian ever received that group’s support. Now, things have changed.

That Mitt Romney is a Mormon is well-known. His position on abortion prior to his entry into his first presidential campaign is equally well-known. In spite of efforts to morph Mormonism away from the writings and influence of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, Mormonism is not a Christian organization. The traditional, bright-line distinction between what is and is not Christianity comes from the apostle Paul’s Letter to the Romans and consists of two points – the exclusive deity of Christ and His physical resurrection. Mormon beliefs fail on the question of Christ’s exclusive claim to deity.

Today, members of the Christian Right find themselves endorsing a candidate for president who is neither Christian nor opposed to abortion. And they offer that support not because they think Romney will advance the pro-life position, but because they think he will reverse recent legislation that attempts to provide health care insurance coverage for 40 million Americans who are without it. In the process, those in the Christian Right have abdicated their claim to Christianity and have become nothing more than conservative political lobbists masquerading under the name of God, in an attempt to manipulate voters, solely for the purpose of maintaining their supposed political power. They have ceased to be Christian and proved once and for all that they are more devoted to political power than to the standards of the Christian faith.

A Thought For Good Friday

Jesus didn't say, "Love the sinner, hate the sin."

What He actually said was, "Love the sinner. And when you've done something about the sin in your own life, then you can talk about theirs."

The Myth About Drilling For Oil

In the current election cycle, we’ve heard from Republican candidates about how we can reduce high gasoline prices by drilling more domestic oil wells here in the US. You should know that suggestion is nothing short of campaign myth.

Refining capacity and domestic consumption aside, the price of crude oil is the single biggest factor affecting gasoline prices. As oil prices rise, gasoline prices rise, too. However, prices for crude oil are not set by a national market. As a general rule, oil produced from a well in Texas goes into the global bucket with oil from every other region in the world. Minor variations in price are based on sulfur content of the oil and transportation costs, not simply on the region from which it came. For more US drilling to change the price of oil, we would have to increase our production to a level high enough to lower the global market price (by increasing the amount of oil available in the market, therefore driving down prices). Based on oil production alone, moving gasoline prices from $5 per gallon to $2.50 per gallon would require a doubling of current global oil production.

Global oil production stands at a rate of 74 million barrels per day. In order to double global oil production, thereby reducing the cost of oil by one-half, the US would have to produce 74 million barrels of oil per day. US production, already the third largest in the world, is currently 6 million barrels per day. Moving the global market price low enough to drop oil prices to half the current price would require the US to raise its production by 12 times its current rate. The US currently has about 530,000 oil wells in production. Increasing production levels to twelve times the current rate would require more than 6 million new wells. Even if the US had the reserves to exploit, drilling that many new wells would be physically impossible.

Merely meeting US demand with US oil, a presupposition behind the call for additional drilling, would be equally impossible and do little to affect the price of oil. Currently, the US consumes about 19 million barrels of oil per day. With production at 6 million barrels per day, the US would have to triple domestic production in order to meet current demand. That alone would require the addition of a million new wells and would still not insulate US consumers from the effect of global oil prices. Simply producing as much oil as we consume would yield no market dynamic that would force oil companies to sell their oil at prices below that fixed by the global market.

Penn State

I want to believe the Penn State trustees acted from righteous indignation, but the cynic in me wonders if they weren't merely attempting to get ahead of the lawsuits, the NCAA, and the media. That doubt about their motives stems from the fact that everyone associated with the situation failed, and they failed because of the potential consequences that doing the right thing might have had on their own careers.

The graduate assistant - told his father and Paterno, and left it at that. Paterno - told a school official the next day, and left it at that. School officials - took away Sandusky's locker room privileges, and left it at that. Yet NO ONE CALLED THE POLICE - and meanwhile, a kid is getting his anus ripped out.

Paterno, being Paterno, could have called the police that night and they would have responded immediately. He could have had the grad assistant drive him over to the locker room, then to Sandusky's house. They could have made a huge deal out of it right then because a child was involved and the threat was immediate.

But they didn't. And I think they didn't because they knew that if Sandusky wiggled away from the charge, they would all see their careers evaporate. This is "winning is everything" taken to the extreme and it's an attitude and culture that permeates the entire school - you can see it in the reaction of the students - and it permeates all of college football. No one cares about anything except winning.

If there was ever "lack of institutional control" this is it. And I, for once, hope the NCAA gets into this case and closes the program and goes on a rampage through the ranks of college football and cleans house and rids the entire system of its obsession with winning and money. But they won't. And they won't for the same reasons no one acted to stop Sandusky - they're afraid of what will happen to their own status and position.

STAGES OF VOTING IN THE ELECTORAL PROCESS

Even though the next presidential election is still more than a year away, political pundits are busy trying to figure out who the current Republican frontrunner might be and which of the contenders might have a realistic hope of obtaining the Party’s nomination and a realistic possibility of unseating President Obama. Having observed elections both up close and from the ease of my sofa, I have found that voting for candidates occurs in lengthy selection process that includes at least five stages. The outcome of each round in that process narrows the field of candidates and provides clues to the identity of the potential winner.

The first votes in an election are cast by political operatives. Working in the backrooms and back roads of America, they scour the country for candidates who will stand for election to offices at every level – city, county, state, national. Some of these operatives are party loyalists who see it as their duty to ferret out candidates who agree with their positions. Far more are paid employees of large corporations or influential political action committees. These operatives make their living locating candidates who agree with their employers’ political positions and facilitating their rise to office. Once they locate the right candidate, they offer inducements to entice the candidate to seek elected office. Those inducements include campaign contributions, technical assistance, and election expertise. The selection process by which these operatives find their candidates comprises the first round of voting. Candidates who are selected in this manner have a far better chance of success than those who choose to run for office simply on their own decision.

After professional political operatives vote, the potential candidates vote. They vote in the affirmative for themselves by agreeing to seek office. They signify that decision by filing the necessary documents to form a campaign committee and qualify with their party. That is the second round of voting.

At the third stage, major donors cast their votes. This is the point at which wealthy individuals, corporations, political action committees and the like make their choices from the field of candidates already winnowed by the previous stages of the process. In almost all elections, candidates who raise the most money – and raise it early – win the election. They get that money from a select group of major donors. You can see some of the major donors for President Obama and John McCain from the 2008 election by clicking on the links.

Then, in the fourth stage, those citizens who are registered voters enter the process. In elections for state and national offices they make their initial selections from among a slate of candidates in a party primary election.  That first round of voting narrows the field of candidates further, reducing the field to just one candidate per party for each office.

Finally, after these four rounds of selections are made, the electors go to the polls in the general election and cast a concluding vote. In many ways, Election Day isn’t a choice among candidates, pure and simple, but a ratification of decisions made by others long before the first campaign speech was delivered.

So, if you want to know which candidates have the best chance of success, just follow the professional political operatives and the money.

HAS THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT LOST ITS MIND?

With candidates lining up for a chance to unseat President Obama, Republican rhetoric has begun to take shape. One of the key elements in that rhetoric is a distinct dislike for “government programs.” Mitt Romney, among others, has shown a fondness for stressing the supposed error of those who think government can do things better than private business. This is part of the standard Republican campaign message echoing a strong belief in capitalism as the solution to every problem and a belief that business, left to its own designs, will eventually rectify every ill. This message is then wrapped in the cloth of the Founding Fathers and presented as the great American gospel. It is a message echoed by conservative Christian organizations such as Eagle Forum and the Christian Coalition.

It is true that those who crafted the Declaration of Independence held government in disdain and were skeptical of government’s ability to do much besides wage war. But the men who drafted the Constitution were equally skeptical, not of the ills of government but of the ills of mankind. They knew that individuals and private business COULD solve any ill, but they were skeptical that they WOULD unless compelled. The government created in our Constitution emanates from their point of view. Men may consider lofty ideals for the common good, but they are prone to act from selfish motives.

Those who oppose government programs and regulations need only look to the reasons behind those programs to understand why they were created and why they must exist. Social Security was enacted because the nation’s elderly, most of who were from the working class, were forced to live an impoverished, miserable life after their bodies were spent from physical labor. Employers, who reaped great profits from the labor of their employees, had done nothing to address the situation. Medicare was enacted for much the same reason. Elderly, who faced greater medical challenges, found they were unable to acquire health insurance and unable to afford medical attention. Private insurers could have offered insurance to them, physicians could have solved the problem on their own, but they didn’t (or wouldn’t) because there was not enough profit in the age group. The EPA was created because industries and developers chose profit over the environment. Automobiles were regulated because manufacturers chose profit over safety. And the list goes on.

This same scenario was repeated in the area of civil rights. Southern states, left to their own devices, refused to offer equal protection to persons of color. Had they done so on their own, there would have been no Civil Rights era. But they did not. And so, the federal government stepped in. Desegregation, school busing, affirmative action and the like were all instituted because people left to themselves chose to do the wrong thing.

In more recent years, we saw an unregulated mortgage industry loan its way to the bottom of the housing market. Securities firms then purchased those mortgages, packaged them as investment securities and sold them to investment banks and mutual funds. Banks and funds then securitized the risk of default in the underlying mortgages and sold that risk to each other as credit default swaps. All of that happened outside the veil of government regulation and proved once again that offered a choice between profit and common sense, private business will choose profit every time.

The problems we face aren’t the work of a left-wing conspiracy out to regulate us into submission. The problem we face is the ancient problem humanity has always faced. Mankind has a profound propensity for choosing self-interest over common interest. Conservative Christians – that part of Christendom that actually believes in the authority of Scripture – ought to know this better than any. Classic Reformed theology is grounded on the notion that human nature is totally and absolutely corrupt. Yet, in the current political cycle, conservative Christians lead the parade chanting the Republican-Tea Party privatization-deregulation mantra. They, who ought to be wary of trusting their lives to any mere mortal, want to hand themselves over to the care and whim of Wall Street executives, captains of industry, and titans of retail sales – the very people who have proven time and time again to be incapable of acting responsibly and sorely in need of a watchful eye.

TEA PARTY ISSUES IN PROPER CONTEXT

The Tea Party push for a smaller federal government and less onerous tax structure rests on the issue of state sovereignty. This issue is not new in American politics and has been the subject of rigorous debate since before our Republic was formed. Unfortunately for Tea Party supporters, the state sovereignty side of the argument has lost every time, and for good reason.

After the Revolution, the American central government operated under the Articles of Confederation which held state sovereignty supreme and created a very weak national government. That approach proved ineffectual in dealing with national defense and interstate commerce, two areas vital to the new nation’s survival. As a consequence, Congress threw out the Articles of Confederation and started over.

The Constitution that Congress drafted gave a nod to state sovereignty but created a strong federal government with final authority in the areas of national defense, foreign policy, and interstate commerce. It forced states to recognize the lawful acts of their fellow states and gave the federal government authority to levy its own taxes without state approval. The central government worked much better, but the tension between federal authority and state sovereignty continued to simmer. The issue came to a boil in the middle of the 19^th century and erupted in the Civil War – a war fought over the fundamental question of how to interpret and apply the federal constitution.

At the time it was ratified in 1789, the federal constitution was seen as a wall around the central government defining the limits of that government’s authority. Hemming it in, as it were, and restraining it from subsuming the authority of the states. But by the mid-1800s, life in the United States was quite different from the previous century. Industrialization was well on its way to transforming the economies of most western nations. The issues of commerce, foreign policy, and national defense had acquired a subtle complexity.

States in the southern half of the country were situated in a region where soil and climate conditions favored agricultural production. Cotton and tobacco grew well there. Southerners found a lucrative market for both commodities in Europe. Exports grew and the economies of the Southern states flourished.

By contrast, states in the northern half of the country were located in a region where conditions were less favorable to agriculture but more conducive to emerging industrialization. However, cost and quality issues hampered the North’s access to European markets. If industrialization was to continue in the United States, northern industry would have to find a profitable place to sell its goods. The southern states were a natural market for those goods, but as the South’s export trade to Europe increased their import trade did as well – partly as a matter of convenience but also because the southern plantation culture saw itself as a reflection of European aristocracy which it reinforced through the purchase of European wares. To remedy the situation, President Lincoln proposed a tariff that would have effectively ended Southern trade with Europe.

Whether Lincoln could have rallied enough support to win a war over the issues of trade and taxation is questionable. After all, these were the identical issues that lay at the heart of the Revolutionary War. Arguments advanced in support of colonial independence were easily transferable to the economic issues that the South faced in the 18^th century. But there was a twist to the complexity of these issues. The economic advantage held by southern agriculture was obtained on the backs of slaves.

In order to gain approval of the current Constitution, delegates and drafters had to sidestep the great moral issue of slavery. To do that, they relegated it to the control of the individual states. Those who were bent on securing approval of the new constitution viewed the move as a way of securing ratification. Those who valued state sovereignty saw it as a victory for their cause. In reality, the treatment of slavery in the Constitution put the issue of state sovereignty to its most crucial test – the morality test. Few, if any, state sovereignty proponents realized that the future of their argument for interpreting the Constitution hung in the balance.

All government, regardless of its structure, rests on the moral authority of its leaders – their ability to do what is right, even when it means opposing the interests of those whom they were elected to serve. Even monarchs and dictators derive their political power from their moral authority. That has not always been readily obvious but the steady erosion of monarchical forms of government attests to it, as does the collapse of communist governments in all but a few nations. They failed not because the form of government was inept but because their leaders failed the moral test. The Southern Confederacy met with the same fate.

Had leaders of the southern states exercised their moral authority properly and disbanded the practice of slavery, the map of North America might look quite different. Instead, they put the force and effect of their central government squarely behind the ownership of slaves and perpetuation of the plantation lifestyle slavery afforded. With it they staked the future of state sovereignty. When Lincoln finally made the abolishment of slavery the focus of the war, both the Confederacy and the notion of state sovereignty as the controlling doctrine for constitutional interpretation were doomed.

A century later, the state sovereignty argument resurfaced as a defense to state-enforced racial segregation. What little remained of the argument was sacrificed on the altar of prejudice and bigotry. Attempts by southern states to defend institutional segregation offered convincing proof that state leaders could not be trusted to appropriately exercise their moral authority.

Book Listed Among Most Influential in Affecting Congressional Policy

Not all of you would agree with this, but the 2008 biography I wrote about Sarah Palin was recently listed as one of the top five Christian books affecting Congressional policy.

http://tiny.cc/qp84b

Locked In The Garage

One afternoon last week my son, Jack, and I went out to the garage for our usual afternoon exercise routine. We walked out from the kitchen into the garage and pulled the door closed behind us. About an hour later we were finished and ready for a drink of water. That’s when we realized the door into the house was locked. We had the remote to raise the garage door but it was cold outside and getting dark. I already knew the other doors and windows were locked, so there we were, stuck in the garage with no keys, no cell phone, and no one else at home.


The garage got reorganized last year when we started going out there regularly to exercise, which meant we knew where everything was located. Rather than mope about it, I dug out a basket of art supplies, converted a cardboard box into a table, and set up Jack with a sketch pad and pencils. I found the extra Coca Colas and divided one between us (using a cup from some extra dishes stored on a shelf - wiped out with the tail of my shirt), then used the empty Coke can for an art lesson in perspective, etc. While Jack drew 2 versions of the can, we talked – about everything.

After an hour of that we were getting cold, so we went back to the treadmill and sit-up bench for a second round of exercise. Then we got out the tennis balls and made up a game. Finally, after almost four hours in the garage, our liberators arrived with supper.

Just the night before I had been talking to Jack about how we work hard to make memories, but the best memories turn out to be the ones we make on the way to making memories.

Will Republicans Sell Their Soul To Win An Election

The 2010 Midterm Election saw the Republican/Tea Party Alliance take control of the House of Representatives. Had they offered more credible candidates in several key Senate races, they may well have taken control of Congress. That said, the party faces a serious dilemma as it looks ahead to the 2012 presidential race.

As I outlined in my earlier post (Midterm Elections Show Republican Party in Crisis, see below), the Tea Party has brought fresh energy to the Republican effort. Credible Tea Party candidates did well, and their supporters voted. Their grassroots effort created a block of voters through which any successful Republican Party presidential candidate will have to pass. And that block is strongly motivated by opposition to President Obama, a fact reflected by the similarity between Obama’s Rasmussen Daily Tracking Poll disapproval rating – 41% (http://tiny.cc/dwxcn) and the number of voters in 2010 House elections who identified themselves as Tea Party supporters – 41%.

A Republican/Tea Party presidential candidate, holding Tea Party policy positions, could expect to receive the support of everyone to the right of those positions – immigration reform, lower taxes, curb federal spending, repeal of recent healthcare changes. Those issues worked well in the House races which targeted individual candidates and compartmentalized voter choices. To get to the presidency, a Republican/Tea Party candidate would have to appeal to voters closer to the center. Not many issues offer the option of a move to the left of Tea Party positions. One possibility might be abortion.

Once the decisive issue among Evangelical Christian voters, opposition to abortion has faded as a motivating factor for the way Christians view and decide political issues. For instance, in opposing healthcare reform, only 3% of those polled said they opposed it because of the possibility of increased funding for abortion (Pew Forum http://tiny.cc/x8by5). Most said they opposed it because of the cost and increased government intrusion on their lives.

Opposition to abortion is not the primary motivating factor among Tea Party faithful. Their motivation comes from strong, deep-seated opposition to Barack Obama and is expressed through economic issues. Blue-blood Republicans, another faction of the Republican coalition, have longed for a day when they could jettison the Christian right. Now, they might have that opportunity.

A pro-choice Republican candidate, with genuine pro-choice credentials, running on a platform that stresses economic and personal liberty issues, would open the Party’s appeal to progressive voters nearer the center of political opinion. Evangelical Christians would be forced to decide between not voting, and handing the election to President Obama, or voting for a pro-choice Republican based on other issues. It’s a strategy that just might win.

Which leaves the Republican/Tea Party alliance, and Evangelical Christians, facing an interesting question: Will you sell your soul for the sake of opposing Barack Obama?

Midterm Election Results Show Republican Party In Crisis

According to 2010 Midterm Election exit polls, 41% of those voting in House elections favored the Tea Party. 31% opposed it. 25% had no response. Overall, 53% opposed the Republican Party – yet the Republican Party won control of the House of Representatives. Traditional Republicans see this election as a referendum on the Obama administration and a mandate to undo many of the things that have been done in the past two years. Tea Party leaders see the election results as placing them in the driver’s seat for the presidential election in 2012. Actually, the 2010 Midterm Elections revealed a political party in transition and crisis.

In this election, Tea Party candidates ran as Republicans and were a big part of the Republican success in taking control of the House. But they did not run with impunity. Credible Tea Party candidates did well, but most of their candidates lost – many of them because of a lack of credibility. Yet, with 41% of voters identifying themselves as Tea Party supporters, the Tea Party has emerged as the source of energy in the Republican Party.

For the past thirty years, the Republican Party found its strength in a coalition of traditional conservatives and evangelical Christians. Those groups were bound together by hot-button issues like abortion, national defense, and lower taxes. Now, that coalition is changing and the emerging Republican alliance is an uneasy one – a fact revealed in the poll results showing 53% of voters identified themselves as opposing the Republican Party, even though a significant number of that opposition voted for Republican candidates.

The Tea Party tapped into voter anger over the direction of the economy, immigration, same-sex marriage, and a general distrust and dislike of President Obama. Fueled by that anger, the Tea Party turned to the familiar tactic of street protests to build support for its positions. (They called their gatherings ‘rallies’ instead of ‘marches’ but they served the same function just as well). Though somewhat ill-defined, the Tea Party has loosely coalesced around several charismatic spokesmen – Sarah Palin, Glen Beck, and Rush Limbaugh among them. They offered a hard-line, uncompromising, decidedly conservative message that energized supporters to hold local rallies, work for approved candidates, and vote.

As a result, the coalition under the Republican umbrella has now become a Tea Party-Traditional Conservative-Evangelical Christian coalition. However, the galvanizing issues for that coalition are no longer opposition to abortion, lower taxes, or military support, but opposition to President Obama and the undoing of measures passed during the first two years of his administration. This shift in motivation gave the Republican/Tea Party success in the midterm elections, but it puts them in a precarious position for 2012.

Assuming 2010 voter patterns hold in the 2012 election, any presidential candidate hoping to win from the Republican Party will have to do so with Tea Party approval. The Republican candidate will be a Tea Party candidate. That gets the Republicans a theoretical 41% of the vote, which leaves them 10% shy of victory. To attain a majority, the Republican/Tea Party candidate would have to appeal to half of the 21% who identified themselves as having no position for or against the Tea Party or the Republicans – essentially, undecided voters. Assuming the Tea Party’s 41% support lies to the right of center, a Republican/Tea Party presidential candidate would have to find motivating issues through which he or she could appeal to those slightly to the left of current Tea Party policy – without alienating supporters on the extreme right. Very few issues offer the potential for even a slight shift to the center and none of the potential candidates who have appeared so far seems capable of accomplishing the task. Getting from 41% to 51% will be a monumental task for the tenuous Republican/Tea Party alliance, one that will require a candidate who has yet to step forward.

The Walk, by Shaun Alexander

Earlier this year I had the privilege of assisting former NFL running back Shaun Alexander with preparation of his latest book The Walk (from WaterBrook Press, a division of Random House). The book is now available at your local bookstore and online at all the usual places.

The End of Dual Citizenship

For perhaps the first two hundred years of our American republic, Christians had the luxury of holding dual citizenship. Christians arguably could maintain a commitment to the Kingdom of God and the United States without jeopardizing their allegiance to the former by their allegiance to the later. That is no longer true.

When Christians in America turn to the question of civic involvement, they are faced with only two realistic choices. On the one hand, they can express their political interest by supporting candidates of the Democrat Party, a party that not only supports the right to abortion-on-demand, but which seeks to use government to promote that practice. Those not satisfied with that option can express their civic opinions through the Republican/Tea Party, which still has a pro-life stance but has adopted a Darwinian economic policy that damns the poor to a miserable existence for the sake of the wealthy, and a Draconian immigration policy fueled by racial hatred and division. The options posed by both parties place Christians at odds with Scripture.

In the end, religion has become merely one more tool by which politicians motivate their electoral base. And though that effort may have influenced the outcome of elections, it has done little to influence government policy. All the while, the church has grown more and more like secular society, reflecting the same rates for premarital sex, infidelity, divorce, and preoccupation with wealth.

Jesus wasn't kidding when he said, “You cannot serve two masters.”

The Place To Be - By Roger Mudd

Last night, I finished reading The Place To Be (Public Affairs/Perseus Group 2008), by former CBS News correspondent and television anchor Roger Mudd. I purchased the book from the $2 rack at Books A Million in Pensacola. What a surprise! After reading the first few chapters at my desk I resolved to limit myself to one chapter per night. It was a book I wanted to read, but I did not want it to end. Those evening chapters became a private conversation with Mudd about politics, politicians, the 1960s and 70s, media, news, and journalism. In the course of which I caught a glimpse of Mudd's life and the lives of the many people he knew. This book was a treat. I hope Roger Mudd writes more. You can find the book in hardback and paper at all the usual locations.

Barack Obama and the Ancient Prophets

When the ancient Hebrew prophet Daniel was a young man, Nebuchadnezzar led the Babylonian army into the Levant and conquered Israel. After ravaging the countryside, the Babylonians gathered up the brightest and best of Israel's young men and took them back to Babylon. No doubt, Daniel would have rather stayed in Jerusalem. He would have rather had a Jewish king over him, and he would have preferred to have known Nebuchadnezzar only from a distance. But God had other things in mind.

In Babylon, rather than being forced into slavery, Daniel was placed under the care of Ashpenaz, Nebuchadnezzar's chief court official - his chief of staff. Daniel was fed the best food, offered the best living quarters, and afforded the best instruction available in the Kingdom of Babylon. After a while, Nebuchadnezzar experienced a series of troubling dreams and when he sought an interpretation from his court magicians he found them unable to answer his questions. As events unfolded, Daniel was able to interpret the dreams. In interpreting one of those dreams, Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar, ". . . the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes." (Dan. 4:25)

That was a message for the king - he served at the pleasure of Another - and it was also a message for Daniel. God rules the kingdoms of man and He orders them for His own purposes.

Rather than fight against God's purposes, Daniel did his best to discern what God was doing and then joined God in that work. As a result, Daniel lived a long and successful life. He never returned to Jerusalem, but through him, God turned the heart of Nebuchadnezzar to Himself, which led to the Hebrews' eventual return to the Levant. And much later, a remnant of those who learned about God from Daniel came from Babylon to Jerusalem as the Maggi when Jesus was born.

Daniel didn't spend his days wandering the streets of Babylon searching for every opportunity to discredit the king. He didn't spend his time plotting to replace Nebuchadnezzar, and he didn't slink off to the corner and sulk. Instead, he yielded to God's purposes in placing him under the authority of Nebuchadnezzar, discerned every opportunity to join God in furthering those purposes, and submitted to God's choice of leadership.

Many of you spent the 2008 election cycle praying that someone other than Barack Obama would be elected president. Some of you worked diligently in an attempt to see that he did not win the office. But in the end, he won. If you believe God is at work in the world, if you believe that He still rules the kingdoms of man and sets over them whom He wills, then it is time to submit to His purposes, discern what God is working to accomplish through President Obama, and join Him in His work.

Abstract Abstraction - The Nature of Banks in the Current Era

Banks are often viewed as repositories of cash, evoking images of vaults with currency stacked to the ceiling. And we talk about the money banks hold as if it actually had substance. In reality, the concept of money is quite ethereal. Money, after all, derives its 'substance' solely and only from our confidence. Money has always been abstract.

Banks, on the other hand, were always places of substance. You put your money in there and they locked it in a safe. "Here for you anytime you need it." They also kept important documents for you and the image of that safe with the big doors made you feel like not only were your documents and money safe, you were, too. But, alas, times haves changed. Now, banks have gone over to the abstract side. Today, banks are not institutions with cash in the vault. Instead, they have become Government-Authorized Digit Allocation Centers.

Think of it this way - the bank operates a computer server on which, for a fee, one is allowed to create an account. Using a numeric code assigned to that account, customers may execute a defined set of transactions with other accounts on similarly authorized servers located around the world. Digits may be shifted from the simplest account (a time deposit, for instance) to specialized accounts through which complex transactions may be executed (brokerage accounts, for instance). At any given time, all or a portion of the digits in those accounts may be converted to a national scrip - paper currency or metal coin - or converted to a printed or handwritten draft drawn upon the institution that operates the server.

In this way, pizza can be ordered from the local pizzeria by entering the correct numeric code on the pizzeria's server authorizing it to notify the bank's server to subtract digits from a hungry patron's account and add them to the pizzeria's account. This is abstract abstraction. You can obtain pizza - actual, real, tangible food for your hungry belly - by entering a numeric code on your computer that tells the pizzeria's computer to notify the bank's computer to create a numeric image on the pizzeria's computer screen.