Toyah

It's clear that white Republicans can't dance any better than white Democrats can. I'm not significantly impressed by the music, any more than I was by the Democratic music. At least they're not singing "This Little Light of Mine."

Arnold's speaking now. Some of what he's saying is cliche', but gosh, he's fun to listen to! And no, I don't mean his accent. He's a fun speaker. The convention likes him, a lot. The Democrats are surely glad he can't run in 2008, or ever.

So I know this is drawing on an old story, but back then it made me think about something that I'd like some opinions on.

We all remember when New Jersey governor James McGreevey resigned, effective in November. But why did he resign?

"Given the circumstances surrounding the affair and its likely impact upon my family and my ability to govern, I have decided the right course of action is to resign."

What perks my interest is the relation to President Clinton. Besides the fact that McGreevey was having a homosexual affair, the inappropriate behavior is the same. Both men engaged in an extra-marital affair. McGreevey resigned, where Clinton did not.

This, to me, puts lefties in a tough position. Either McGreevey is more of a man than Clinton, and Slick Willie is implicitly being told that he was wrong not to resign, or there is something more wrong with a homosexual affair than a heterosexual one. Either way, this situtation should force a die-hard liberal to admit something that would leave a bitter taste in his or her mouth.

politics, legal wrangling, and family values...all
from a post by Dallas

3.) Dead Couple to Be Married - morons strike again...marrying a man and woman
from a murder/suicide case
2.) Ohio Man Offers Vote for Sale on EBay - California officials checking for voter fraud
found this case and informed Ohio officials. EBay pulled the listing
1.) Underwear in Public Not Indecent, Court Says - Finally Massachusetts courts get
one right. The undies-only pillow fight was deamed not indecent...the fact that it was
done as a PETA protest was evidently not considered.

see...I can read the news, too.

John Kerry has challenged President Bush to a weekly debate:

John Kerry challenged President Bush on Thursday to weekly debates from now until Nov. 2 on campaign issues like education, health care and national security.

"America deserves a discussion like we're having here today, which I'm prepared to have with this president every single week from now until the election," the Democratic presidential candidate said.

Bush-Cheney spokesman Steve Schmidt:

"There will be a time for debates after the convention, and during the next few weeks, John Kerry should take the time to finish the debates with himself," responded Bush-Cheney spokesman Steve Schmidt.

From ABC today.

When the Illinois GOP asked out-of-stater Alan Keyes to run for Senate against Barack Obama, Toyah commenter Keith said they were desperate. I was skeptical: I remembered Keyes as a brilliant speaker, flawed only by his tendency to get stuck on one issue. I thought that if the Illinois GOP could get him to run, they weren't scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Now, it seems that perhaps I was wrong. Keyes is proposing that African-Americans be exempt from taxes, as a form of reparations. According to the Chicago Tribune, via TaxProf Blog:

"When a city had been devastated [in the Roman empire], for a certain length of time--a generation or two--they exempted the damaged city from taxation."

Keyes proposed that for a generation or two, African-Americans of slave heritage should be exempted from federal taxes-federal because slavery "was an egregious failure on the part of the federal establishment."... The former ambassador said his plan would give African-Americans "a competitive edge in the labor market," because those exempted would be cheaper to hire than federal tax-paying employees and would "compensate for all those years when your labor was being exploited."

Apparently Keyes himself dismissed the idea of reparations two years ago:

Those responsible [for reparations lawsuits] propose to settle the accounts of slavery leaving the Civil War out of the equation — complete and utter nonsense. The price for the sin of slavery has already been paid, in blood. . . .

Pettifogging lawyers and dishonest scholars will always be able to carp selectively and ignorantly about the warts upon our body politic.

But the truth of the Civil War is that the terrible price for American slavery has been paid, once for all, by the American people's deliberate acceptance of their duty to pay it when, in God's providence, Southern intransigence brought it due.

I'm not interested enough in Keyes, the Illinois elections, or race reparations to check into this story and see if there is anything else to it, but as it stands now, I've lost a great deal of respect for Alan Keyes. Reparations is a silly idea and always has been. It would certainly not advance a color-blind society, which is what we're supposed to be trying to get to.

The churches that I’ve been a part of just don’t talk much about plain old practical how do you be a Christian subjects. For example, every church I’ve ever been in encourages its members to pray; yet I rarely hear a class or a sermon on how to pray. I looked into this, rather briefly, a few nights ago for a Wednesday night class: here’s what I found out.

In Luke 11 Jesus’ disciples asked Him to teach them to pray, just as John taught his disciples. Jesus replied with "The Lord’s Prayer." Clearly it’s a model prayer, but personally, I’ve never found it very helpful. Presumably God doesn’t want us to merely memorize and recite this prayer at Him, does He? So I looked further, and found that the times when Jesus prayed were much more useful to me. The difference between classroom education and the real world, I suppose.

I found the first useful example in John 11:41ff, when Jesus prayed before raising Lazarus from the dead. There, He used His prayer to make it clear to the listening people that He didn’t need to ask God for permission or help in raising Lazarus.

In Luke 22:46, Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, before His crucifixion. Knowing what lay ahead, Jesus prayed that He would not have to go through with it, knowing even so that there was no other way. Once on the cross, He prayed several times: when He felt forsaken by God, for forgiveness for the people, and to commit His spirit to God. So we know that Jesus prayed, and we know what He said in some situations. He didn’t say the Lord’s Prayer when He was under great spiritual strain: He just talked to God.

Jesus wasn’t the only character who talked to God: there are many examples from the Old Testament too: Elijah prayed for God to raise a child from the dead. Habbakuk had a long conversation with God about the evil of society, and what God was---or wasn’t---doing about it. David prayed for forgiveness after committing adultery with Bathsheba and murdering her husband to cover it up. And there are many Psalms where David complains that God doesn’t hear or care about him.

Several years ago, I recall being in a Bible study class in which a sweet little old lady commented that she had been told, as a child, that it was selfish to pray for herself, and so, she had never asked God for anything, except once when she made a bargain with God: if He would do this one thing, she’d never ask Him for anything else again. I thought, "What a tragedy!" She was afraid to tell God what she wanted. Yet David, the man God said was "after His own heart" prayed for himself all the time. So did Jesus, in the Garden. David and Jesus, it seems to me, never made a big deal about praying. They may have set aside a special time for prayer, but mostly they seem to have prayed whenever they felt like talking to God, and they talked about whatever they needed to talk about.

David especially said exactly what was on his heart. Sometimes he complained bitterly that God didn’t care. Sometimes he asked God why He had forsaken him? Sometimes he praised God, and sometimes he thanked Him for His blessings. Sometimes he begged God to kill his enemies, just smite them left and right. It’s all in the Psalms...read them. David actually spends more time complaining than he does anything else, a trait I happen to share with David.

I concluded, therefore, based how real people prayed in the Bible, that how we pray is not all that important. Some people need a set of rote prayers: sometimes that is especially helpful in very stressful times when we don’t even know what to say. Some people like to write their prayers out as a letter to God: King Hezekiah took a letter in before God once, and showed it to Him. Sometimes God’s answers shock us: Habakkuk thought God had gone crazy!

But mostly, I think God just wants us to talk to Him. David, Moses, Jesus, Habbakkuk, Elijah; they all had conversations with God. Sometimes it was a formal prayer with a beginning and an end and a middle. Sometimes, like when Jesus was on the cross, it was just a gasp (is there anything more haunting than "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"). It seems to me that any and all of these prayers are perfectly acceptable to God. Be flexible: don’t think of it as "praying." Just talk to God!

You Know You're From Michigan When...

You define summer as three months of bad sledding. You think Alkaline batteries were named for a Tiger outfielder. You can identify an Ohio accent. Your idea of a seven-course meal is a six pack and a bucket of smelt. Owning a Japanese car is a hanging offense in your hometown. You know how to play (and pronounce) Euchre. The Big Mac is something that you drive across. You believe that "down south" means Toledo. You bake with soda and drink pop. You drive 75 on the highway and you pass on the right. Your Little League baseball game was snowed out. You learned how to drive a boat before you learned how to ride a bike. You know how to pronounce "Mackinac". The word "thumb" has a geographical rather than an anatomical significance. You have experienced frostbite and sunburn in the same week. You expect Vernor's when you order ginger ale. You know that Kalamazoo not only exists, but that it isn't far from Hell. Your favorite holidays are Christmas, Thanksgiving, the opening of deer season and Devil's Night. Your snowmobile, lawn mower and fishing boat all have big block Chevy engines. At least one person in your family disowns you for the week of the Michigan/Michigan State football game. You know what a millage is. Traveling coast to coast means driving from Port Huron to Muskegon. Half the change in your pocket is Canadian, eh. You show people where you grew up by pointing to a spot on your left hand. You know what a "Yooper" is. Your car rusts out before you need the brakes done Half the people you know say they are from Detroit... yet you don't personally know anyone who actually lives in Detroit "Up North" means north of Clare. You know what a pastie is. You occasionally cheer "Go Lions- and take the Tigers with you." Snow tires come standard on all your cars. At least 25% of your relatives work for the auto industry. You don't understand what the big deal about Chicago is. Octopus and hockey go together as naturally as hot dogs and baseball. You know more about chill factors and lake effect than you'd EVER like to know! Your snowblower has more miles on it than your car. Shoveling the driveway constitutes a great upper body workout. When giving directions, you refer to "A Michigan Left." You know when it has rained because of the smell of worms. You never watch the Weather Channel - you can just assume they're wrong. The snowmen you make in your front yard actually freeze. Solid. The snow freezes so hard that you can actually walk across it and not break it or leave any marks. All your shoes are called "tennis shoes", even though no one here plays tennis anyway. Your major school field trip includes camping and cross-country skiing. Half your friends have a perfect sledding hill right in their own backyard. You actually get these jokes and pass them on to other friends from Michigan.

I've just finished reading Albion's Seed, (1989) by David Hackett Fischer. I was browsing the shelves of a Half-Price Books a few years ago, during a lunch hour, and spotted it. Recommended to me by none other than Sir James, I bought it, and it decorated my bookshelf for the next several years, always intimidating me with its bulk (898 pages). But last spring I decided it was time to read through the various books which had been bought but not read by me, so into Albion's Seed I went.

And I was hooked! For a long, mostly-academic sort of book, it's fascinating. The colonial migrations to the New World can be divided into four rough time periods, groups of people, and geographical entities, consisting of:

• East Anglians to Massachusetts (1629-41): The English Puritans
• South England to Virginia (1642-75): The Cavaliers
• North Midlands to the Delaware Valley (1675-1725): The Friends
• Borderlands to the Backcountry (1717-1775): The Borderers

Fischer then goes into each folkway in great deal, examining each in their everyday life: life-ways, death-ways, building-ways, election-ways, church-ways, child-rearing ways, sex-ways, language-ways, farming-ways, and all sorts of other cultural "norms" for each culture. He found that in each American colonial experience, the traditions which became dominant for an American region could be traced to a specific part of Britain. The Appalachian people of the United States, for example, share an enormous number of traditions with their Scots-English borderer ancestors, one of which is a tendency to violence and extreme distrust of strangers. Large parts of backcountry Carolina spoke Gaelic as late as the 1900's, in fact.

I was fascinated in how I could see myself, and my own personal tendencies, fit right into the cultural "norms" and "ways" that Fischer identified. My family is from the West, from eastern Oregon, but almost of all of my ancestors immigrated from Kentucky or Tennessee. Other branches of the family came from Virginia, although where in Virginia I'm not quite sure. Possibly there is a distant connection to the Lees, so not all my ancestors were of the "backcountry" folkways, but---from what I know of my family---most of them were. That makes sense, when I think about which of the four folkways I most closely identify with. It's the backcountry way. I'm hardly quick to violence, nor do I live in a log cabin, but in most cases I prefer direct action, violent if necessary, over diplomacy or negotiation. I can negotiate when I have to, but it always goes against the grain. Also like the backcountry, I prefer plainness, and in general care very little about niceties of custom and "proper" ways of doing things. Perhaps most importantly, I have a very strong stubborn and independent streak, tending sometimes to contrarianism, which would be recognizable to anyone familiar with Andrew Jackson or John C. Calhoun.

Back to Albion's Seed, Fischer concluded with a brief summary of U.S. electoral results as interpreted regionally, and argued that, though none of the regions has maintained itself in any sort of a pure way, and though some regions (such as New England) now have harldy anyone left of their original British stock, still the regions maintain much of their original tint, and over the course of American history, the regions have tended to vote consistently, with just the ocassional aberration like FDR in 1932, Eisenhower in 1952, or Reagan in 1980.

Fischer's final words on the regions of America:

Regional diversity has created a dynamic tension within a single republican ssytem. It has also fostered at least four different ideas of liberty with a common cultural frame.

These four ideas are not European, though they derive from there. They are:
1) The Puritan idea of ordered freedom
2) The cavalier idea of hegemonic freedom
3) The Quaker idea of reciprocal freedom
4) The backcountry idea of natural freedom

Each of these four freedom ways still preserves its seperate existence in the United States. The most important fact about American liberty is that is has never been a single idea, but a set of different and even contrary traditions in creative tension with one another. This diversity of libertarian ideas has created a culture of freedom which is more open and exapnsive than any unitary tradition alone could possibly be.

There are many explanations for why America is what it is, and all of them have some part of the truth. Fischer's work is an invaluable aid to anyone seeking to understand what made the United States.

The California Supreme Court has held that the mayor of San Francisco does not have the power to marry same-sex couples in violation of California law. The court was at pains to stress that they were not ruling on the issue of gay marriage, but simply noting that California law at present does not allow gay marriage, therefore the mayor can't marry gay couples:

We hold only that in the absence of a judicial determination that such statutory provisions are unconstitutional, local executive officials lacked authority to issue marriage licenses to, solemnize marriages of, or register certificates of marriage for same-sex couples, and marriages conducted between same-sex couples in violation of the applicable statutes are void and of no legal effect. Should the applicable statutes be judicially determined to be unconstitutional in the future, same-sex couples then would be free to obtain valid marriage licenses and enter into valid marriages.
(hat tip: Volokh Conspiracy)

That's good, I think. Not because they invalidated gay marriage: I suppose I should care about gay marriage, but I really don't. I do care about the rule of law, though, and the thing that bothers me most about the gay marriages in California is that they are against the law. The mayor, a representative of the law, can hardly be claiming to give gay couples the protection of the law (i.e., legal marriage) when he is acting against the law, can he?

His defence was that he believes the California law against gay marriage is unconstitutional and thus he has no responsibility to uphold it. But that is a very slippery-slope, and I'm glad---for the sake of the rule of law---that the California Supreme Court rejected that argument.

Hey guys, tonight is the eve of greatness, tommorrow I will be bringing the smack down on a drunk driver. That's right, Mr. Kehr for the People of the State of Michigan vs. Naughty Drunk Driver Man. I'm clerking/interning with my local Prosecutor's Office this summer and this will be my trial debut and it should be fun and challenging. I've worked up a great opening statement though, so I think I'll have the jury from the start. There is something of an entrapment issue in the case, which is really going to be fun, but I am going to try and nip that right in the bud with a motion right before trial. Anyway, if you guys read this tonight or tommorrow (Thur, Aug 12) send a little prayer up for me and I'll let you all know how it goes. J-Roc

I've been seeing a commercial on TV lately: a mother comforting her child, sitting in the bathroom with the shower on, encouraging the child to breathe deeply. The camera pans to the medicine cabinent, where the mother chooses a medicine capsule, and continues to murmur comforting words to the child. The commercial concludes with something about 1 in 5 families in America must choose between medicine or food.

The shower confused me the first few times I saw the commercial, but presumably the child has asthma. I am wondering about the 1 in 5 statement though: how did they come up with this number? I don't remember who pays for the commercial, or I'd look them up, but I checked around on Google rather extensively, and---for a problem so large---there is precious little real information.

Nearly every website I visited was an assertion by someone, usually a politician sponsoring a bill, a aid worker, or an opinion writer, that some people, especially the elderly, must choose between medicine and food. The only actual evidence I could find was a study done in a Minneapolis hospital in 2001 or before, which concluded that 18% of 527 patients (53 people) had not had enough food to eat at least once in the previous year.

Now, it may be true that thousands upon thousands of Americans must choose between medicine and food, as one source I read claimed, but I haven't seen any evidence of that. I'd like to know the truth, one way or the other: too many of those "1 in 5" claims are based on estimations or plain old spurious data.

I believe that congratulations are in order for Toyah's very own Anthony Williams. The A-Train recently proposed to his girlfriend, Debbie, who naturally accepted. That makes it one Highlander down and five to go. Way to go, Anthony!

Missouri citizens just passed a state constitutional amendment forbidding gay marriage (federalism at work) and, according to the blog ScrappleFace, judges are vying for the opportunity to be the first to strike it down. Life as a tyrant must be nice!

The word on the street is that Illinois Republicans have narrowed their search for a candidate to challenge talented Democrat Barack Obama to two black politicians, Andrea Grubb Barthwell, a former deputy drug czar in the current administration, and Alan Keyes, a perennial favorite of those who have followed past Republican presidential primary races. I for one would gladly pay large sums of money to see Ambassador Keyes debate the media-dubbed boy-wonder Obama on national television. Though I don't pretend that Mr. Keyes' chance of being the selected candidate is very good, or that, if selected, he stands much chance of winning, I think any race in which Mr. Keyes participates, or for that matter any candidate who must challenge him, will be much better for it. Please, Illinois, give us Keyes!

You need to see this trailer . . .

"Alec Baldwin, Sean Penn, Tim Robins, George Clooney, Liv Tyler . . ."

I'm back from a few weeks of work and travel and ready to make totally random comments on issues about which I should spend much more time thinking before I opine. But, the beauty of blogging is that we get to open our random and developing thoughts to comment by others so that we can adjust and fine-tune them. So here it goes: Here's my impression of the place of third parties, and the Libertarian Party in particular, in the American political system.

The major American parties are essentially coalition parties that form before an election, rather than, as in our European counterparts, after an election. The truth of this can be observed in the fact that members of single factions within a party, such as the libertarians or evangelical Christians in the Republican Party, or the environmentalists or civil libertarians in the Democratic Party, persistently wail that the rest of the party has lost its backbone, gives in to its opponents, has sold its soul to the Devil, and simply no longer looks like “them.” As in all coalitions, party coalitions share several transcendent themes, such as limited government or progressive government. But these themes themselves are bifurcated and shift in emphasis depending on the cultural and political climate of the day. Libertarian members of the Republican Party enjoyed a prominent position in the years leading up to and including the Reagan Administration because of the problems created by the post-New Deal boom in government. In recent times, the so-called neocons have dominated in a climate of terrorism and national security. Both sides share many common beliefs, but not so much that they don’t still maintain their separate affinities and identities.

This is where third parties come in. First, third parties surface when, while in the governing coalition, they feel dissatisfied with the way their coalition is running things. Examples on point: the Libertarian Party arose during the big-spending Nixon administration; Ross Perot’s Libertarian-leaning Reform Party during George H.W. Bush’s centrist administration; and Ralph Nader and the Green Party during centrist Bill Clinton’s administration. In each instance, the effect of the defection was to weaken the governing coalition and hand control of government to the opposing coalition party, the proverbial “heads you lose, tails you lose,” as the switch had the effect of handing government from a potential ally to a clear enemy.

The Libertarian party, however, is an odd duck. In truth, though the LP’s free-market, anti-welfare state principles find more in common with the Republicans, their general anything-goes, absolute liberty presumptions also attract a number of left-leaning civil libertarians to their ranks. These folks, once convinced that the LP does not match their Republican brethren in repugnant religious zeal, find in the LP a group of agnostic and pro-marihuana hippies they can easily identify with.

So, what effect the formation and growth of the Libertarian Party? Overall, the presence of an active LP lessens the influence of libertarian thought in either party, and correspondingly, lessens their influence in government. This statement, however, deserves some explanation. First, there are relatively few consistent Libertarian (big “L”) voters out there, and even fewer Libertarian candidates. The Libertarians’ loss of influence, therefore, does not happen at the polls. The real loss is in terms of the libertarian (little “l”) politicos. These are the folks who would (and in past administrations, did) actively work for Republican (and Democratic) officials or governments, but have instead thrown their lot in with a separate Libertarian third party where their influence in government is nil. Instead of working for reforms from within the fortress, where many were quite successful in the past, they have tried to storm the ramparts from outside, and all without the benefits of a coalition.

The result of a separate Libertarian Party therefore is to go from having some libertarian influence in government by operating within one of the coalition parties, to having no influence. The LPers may feel better about themselves, but they’ll wind up with worse, not better government (at least from their perspective).

There is a final chapter to this story. Often following the third-party split and fall of the ruling coalition, both the newly-defeated coalition party and the prodigal third-party re-form to defeat the common enemy. From the perspective of the third party, they have won by forcing the coalition in their direction. The cycle, of course, usually repeats because the ruling coalition must have 51% to win. In the Libertarian Party phenomenon, however, the advent of a LP coalition that includes a left-leaning faction could permanently dampen the LP’s chances of rejoining a ruling coalition, as the new commitment by leftists will permanently lock the Libertarian Party out of any ruling coalition.

To recap, by not participating in the major coalition parties, libertarians have significantly lessened their influence in government. If the libertarians feel perpetually left out of the Republican Party, they only have the Libertarian Party to blame.