GOP searches for its Mondale

Whatever else you may say about this election cycle’s Republican nomination process, you have to admit that it has not lacked for entertainment value. This week Rick Perry treated us to quite a show courtesy of his widely-discussed YouTube video aimed at primary voters in Iowa, where the first major electoral event of the 2012 election will take place in just a few weeks.

In the video, which was targeted at staunch social conservatives, Perry promises voters that he will end President Obama’s “war on religion.” He looks into the camera and earnestly tells voters that “there's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.”

If you’re anything like me, your reaction to hearing that runs along the lines of – Jiminy Cricket! President Obama has somehow passed legislation preventing children from celebrating Christmas and praying in school and I completely missed it? Why didn’t I hear about this on Fox News?!?!

I immediately went into research mode after viewing this video, trying to figure out how the President had managed to implement a covert plan to stamp out Christmas celebrations and praying in class so far under the radar. Are children being pulled off Santa’s lap in the shopping malls and remanded into custody? Are they being sent to the principal’s office when caught silently praying before their big geometry test? I had to know.

If anything like that has been happening, I could find no evidence of it. In fact I could not locate a single piece of legislation the President has signed that would prevent any child from celebrating Christmas or praying anywhere he or she might choose to pray.

It is true that there are laws in place, and they have been in place for many years, that prevent public school officials from leading prayers or having specifically religious celebrations of any kind. But those laws did not originate under President Obama, and it seems unlikely that a Rick Perry presidency would lead to their undoing.

The ad is both silly and misleading, and it’s no wonder that under the YouTube rating system it had garnered, at last count, 660,000 dislike votes against only 20,000 likes. A good attack ad can be effective even when it distorts the truth a bit, but you can’t just make up ridiculous claims that bear no relation to reality. Many Christians are passionate about their beliefs, Rick, but they aren’t stupid.

On the bright side, Perry was already fading in the polls before he committed this belly-flop, so the whole incident has been something of a sideshow. Still, the whole Republican nominating process has had the air of a slow-motion car wreck. Prospective primary voters seem to have been sorting through the candidates one-by-one, and then systematically discarding each as they hold them up to the light for a close look.

The current front-runner, Newt Gingrich, definitely has spirit and an active intellect and seems to have convinced social conservatives that he is finally settled on a wife he can stay faithful to after a series of infidelities and divorces. But really, can you imagine the phrase “President Newt Gingrich” actually becoming a reality? I can’t.

The Republicans seem to be headed down the same road the Democrats found themselves on in 1984 and 1988, when they nominated candidates who appealed to the extreme left wing of their party but left moderate, non-partisan voters (who end up deciding general elections) cold. And they got trounced as a result.

If the Republicans nominate anyone other than Mitt Romney, I fear they are heading for a similar fate. Romney is unpopular with the far right wing of the party because of his moderate-leaning past (which he has tried to renounce) and because he doesn’t go to the right church.

But unless they want a second helping of “hope and change”, they’d better decide if Romney would at least be a better alternative, or if they want to “Mondale” this election.

Looking for Jesus on Black Friday

I’m sure we all had a good laugh about the story of the lady who pepper-sprayed fellow customers on Black Friday this year to secure herself a discounted X-Box. We always laugh at such outrageous behavior because we don’t know what else to do. Some people are just nuts, and we can’t fathom what causes them to do such outrageous things.

But I have to take it a step further, personally. The whole phenomenon of Black Friday just baffles me. I understand that it‘s nice to save money, but standing in line at 2 AM to save a few hundred bucks on a TV? It would never be worth the aggravation for me.

Going even further, I will admit that I don’t really understand the logic behind celebrating Christmas with a frenzy of shopping and spending. We commemorate the birth of Jesus in a humble manger by emptying our bank accounts buying things we could easily do without. I admit I’m not a theologian or anything, but the connection just escapes me.

Let’s see what the Bible has to say about money and possessions:

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils.” 1 Timothy 6:10

“Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have.” Hebrews 13:5

“You cannot serve God and money.” Matthew 6:24

I could go on, but I think the message is pretty plain. If you’re spending most of your time thinking about money and the things that it can buy, you aren’t paying attention to the things the Bible says a Christian is supposed to be concerned with. And yet, on our most widely celebrated Christian holiday the main activity is centered on giving and getting stuff.

Certainly there are notable exceptions to this rampant holiday materialism, such as the Kids Yule Love program and the bell ringers for the Salvation Army. But if you add up the time most people spend shopping, cooking, and going to parties during the Christmas season versus how much time they spend being charitable, you know which side the scale is likely to tip.

If we were to ask ourselves how Jesus might celebrate his own birthday, I can’t imagine that he’d be in line at Best Buy at 4 in the morning waiting for a chance to buy a discounted high-definition TV. Instead, I expect he’d be doing the same thing he did every other day - being a friend to those who didn’t have one, providing for the needs of people who really needed help, and showing everyone (not just telling them) what God’s love is all about.

That’s why I get a chuckle every time I hear someone get on their soap box about the “war on Christmas”. Christmas has always been more about Santa Claus than the child in the manger. There was never a whole lot of Christ in the way we celebrate Christmas, and some people are expending way too much of their righteous indignation over how awful it is to be greeted with a “Happy Holidays” instead of a “Merry Christmas” this time of year.

I’m not saying there is anything wrong with Christmas, or how we celebrate it (as long as we don’t get too carried away with the spending and the partying). I just think we need to be honest with ourselves about what it is. It’s mainly an excuse for us to take off work, buy stuff for each other, eat, and have parties. All those things are fun, but they have little to do with Jesus or what he was about.

And somewhere this Christmas Eve, there’s probably a couple with a baby on the way wandering the streets looking in vain for a warm, dry place to lay their heads while we party and spoil each other with expensive presents. I guess some things don’t change.

An unwelcome close encounter

I had what might be referred to as a “come to Jesus” experience not long ago when I was walking my dog just a few blocks from my house. My 10-pound terrier mix was on his leash (as he always is when I have him out in public) but my neighbor’s full grown pit bull was not. And of course when the pit bull saw us he decided to leave his yard and come over and say “hello.”

I think my dog and I probably had the same thought when we saw this fearsome creature coming over to “greet” us, and that thought is not printable in a family newspaper. But I think you can guess what it was.

Luckily the dog’s owner was outside at the time and jogged over in pursuit of his pet, but it was obvious the dog was going to reach us before his owner could catch up to him.

I only had a few seconds to decide how to handle the situation. I knew that running or confronting the animal in an aggressive manner were the wrongs things to do, so I scooped up my little terrier and stood my ground as we waited for fate to take its course.

As it turned out, the pit bull just sniffed at my terrier and my dog had the good sense to do absolutely nothing in response. The dog’s owner finally caught up to us and took his dog back home, and we continued on our way. Sometime after that I regained my composure and my brain started functioning again, and I had but one clear thought – that was not okay.

I‘m sure I’m going to hear from some pit bull fans when this column runs, but I would be happy to see our community become a pit bull free zone. These dogs were bred to be aggressive, efficient killing machines, and I can’t understand why anyone would want to keep one as a pet.

Recent court cases considering the legality of bans on pit bull ownership have identified some unique genetic traits that were bred into these animals that make them especially dangerous: unpredictability of aggressive behavior, unwillingness to give up in a fight, high pain tolerance, and a unique “hold and shake” biting style that tends to inflict damage on deep muscles and rip tissues. Because of that unique biting style, the injuries caused by pit bull maulings are very similar to those caused by shark attacks.

Between 2005 and 2010, 104 Americans were killed in pit bull attacks. That’s 104 people who would still be with us if pit bull ownership was not legal.

I really wouldn’t care if someone wanted to keep a pit bull (or a lion, or a grizzly bear, or whatever) as a pet as long as the thing stayed on their property at all times or was adequately restrained when it was not on their property.

If we lived in a world where these animals never left their owner’s control, I wouldn’t be writing this column. But we don’t live in such a world. In this world some pit bull owners are going to let their dogs run loose, and even responsible owner can lose control of their dogs momentarily. Sometimes that’s all it takes.

I would fully support an outright ban on the ownership of these animals, but short of that it should certainly be a crime for them to leave their owners’ property unless they are properly restrained.
It would also be nice if people who owned these dogs were required to post a sign on their property warning the rest of us what kind of animals they have on the premises. That way I’d know to give their house a wide berth when I’m out and about, and it would be a nice thing to know about one’s potential neighbor when one is out house-shopping.

Another SPLOST, another no-brainer

One of the main reasons I started writing this column (more years ago than I care to count) was to try and counteract what I saw as a lack of balance in the way certain issues were being presented to the public by political leaders and the media. Nowhere is this lack of balance more apparent than when Special Purpose Local Options Sales Tax (SPLOST) elections are held.

Both Houston and Bibb County voters will get to weigh in on new SPLOST proposals in just a few days, and based on the political speeches and news reports on the subject the choice appears to be, as always, a “no-brainer.”

Houston County has built all the schools it needs for now with the help of the existing education-targeted SPLOST, but now government officials say those schools need to be upgraded and the tax needs to be renewed. Of course it does. And I am 100% certain that if this one is passed it will be put up for renewal again, and again, and again, for as long as we keep approving it.

In Bibb County they have come up with a long list of badly needed projects their SPLOST would pay for, including a $2.5 million “gift” to the Harriet Tubman museum that apparently would never be repaid. Local politicians have portrayed the fact that Bibb County has a sales tax rate of “only” 6% while all the surrounding counties charge 7% as a badge of shame that needs to be corrected. Funny, I never thought of having a lower tax rate than a nearby community as something to be embarrassed about, but what do I know?

The standard arguments in favor of the SPLOSTs have been dusted off and rolled out for us as they are every time they put one to a vote. Let’s run through them, for old time’s sake.

- It’s only a penny on every dollar you spend. Yes, and I’ve seen estimates that a penny sales tax costs the average family about $150 a year. That may not seem like a lot of money to some of us, but for a family barely getting by that could represent a week’s worth of groceries, school clothes for a child, or gas money to get to and from work. Any tax increase negatively impacts the finances of taxpayers and it’s asinine to minimize that fact.

- The projects the tax will pay for are badly needed. That is obviously a judgment call, but it’s kind of a tough sell when the SPLOST is paying for a long list of things, some of which may be more critical than others. And we don’t get to vote on which projects are included and which ones aren’t.

- If the sales tax isn’t approved, property taxes will probably have to be raised. That is always presented in way that sounds like a threat, but I’m not sure why I am supposed to be more amenable to paying sales taxes than property taxes. A tax is a tax. I suppose if you own a lot of expensive property you’d have to figure you’ll pay less taxes overall with a sales tax. I’m sure the argument resonates well with all the local land barons.

But my biggest issue with the SPLOST might be that we are being forced to do our elected officials’ job for them. Setting tax and spending policy is what they get paid to do. It may be their most important function. So what do they do? They spend our tax money to hold special elections so we can help them decide on tax policy.

And hold on to your wallet, because the state is going to allow regional governments to ratchet up the sales tax to 8% in the near future to support transportation projects. Expect the same arguments to be trotted out again, and expect the choice to be presented as another “no-brainer” for us simple taxpayers.

Heeding the call

I often hear ministers refer to their profession as a “calling” from God. I believe that most of the people who spend their lives as preachers or missionaries believe they were led to do what they do by a higher power.

That makes sense to me. Becoming a man or woman of God without feeling that the man upstairs has called you to do so would be like showing up for work at a place that hasn’t expressed any interest in hiring you. It probably wouldn’t turn out well.

But I wonder if God calls people to do other kinds of work too. Has anyone ever felt called to be a plumber, or a nurse, or a professional bowler? I wouldn’t be surprised if some people do feel that they are doing the job God wants them to do, especially if they are the type who pray a lot and constantly ask the Lord for guidance as they make their way through life.

Apparently some of the people who are currently running for President fall into that category. No less than four of the candidates running for the Republican nomination (Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Herman Cain) have stated that they were led in some way by God to run in 2012.

Cain, the current front-runner, has even said that he “felt like Moses” when the Lord tapped him on the shoulder and told him he needed to be our next President. “Moses resisted,” says Cain, “I resisted…but you shouldn’t question God.”

I agree with him, it isn’t wise to question an all-powerful being. But as voters, I think it’s fair that we all question the plausibility of that all-powerful being inspiring multiple people to enter a contest where there can be only one winner.

At first blush, it seems logical that if God were to get involved in political campaigns (a questionable proposition to start with) He would settle on one candidate instead of sending the voters mixed messages by backing four of them. You might argue that He was respecting our free will by leaving us with some choices, but if that was the case you have to wonder why He would get involved at all.

I think the truth of it is that all of these candidates are sincere in their faith and they believe that what they are doing is part of God’s plan for them. I also think they would be wise to be more careful about how they express that fact. One projects a certain lack of humility when one compares his campaign for President to Moses’ calling to lead the children of Israel to the Promised Land.

I also think it is worth noting that God more often than not seems to call these wealthy, powerful people to follow a path that will allow them to attain even more earthly power. I’d be a lot more likely to believe them if one of these candidates announced that they were withdrawing from the race to spend the rest of their lives ministering to their fellow man and spreading the Good News.

I am reminded of the Bible story where a wealthy and powerful man asked Jesus what he needed to do to have eternal life. Jesus told the man to keep God’s commandments, and the man said he has done so all his life. Then Jesus added this:

“One thing you lack…go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” (Mark 10:21) The man hung his head and walked away, because he could not let go of the things of this world.
That, to me, is a good example of a calling from God. It is also a good example of how we are less likely to heed these callings when they tell us things that we don’t want to hear.

Liberals throw their own Tea Party

If you’ve been wondering when American liberals would come up with their answer to the conservative Tea Party movement, then you need wonder no longer. What started as a barely noticed and loosely organized protest in New York City three weeks ago is turning into an international phenomenon. Say hello to Occupy Wall Street.

The movement has no leader and no well-defined agenda, but ongoing demonstrations in New York and several other major cities seem to be feeding off the frustration that people are feeling because of our continuing economic crisis. And they are directing that frustration towards the people that President Obama is trying (unsuccessfully so far) to get to “pay their fair share” – rich folks.

That explains the other name being associated with the protests - We Are The 99%. That is, apparently, a reference to the idea that there is an upper class in our society (the lucky 1%) that controls most of the wealth while the rest of us struggle just to get by. So I guess these people are out there agitating for me and probably for you too, even though we didn’t ask them to. Very thoughtful of them, don’t you think?

Exactly what the Occupiers are protesting is hard to pin down. The fact that some people are fabulously wealthy while so many are pinching pennies obviously sticks in their craw. They have also thrown out some strong words about things like pollution, police brutality, animal rights, and inadequate health care.

A statement by the movement’s participants in Seattle said that "the one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%.” And the motto scrawled across the website of the Los Angeles version of the group states “The revolution is happening…it’s not just in the news.”

So they are definitely fired up, and they are claiming to take inspiration from the “Arab Spring” protests in the Middle East. But the parallel to those demonstrations seems shaky at best. The people in those cases were protesting totalitarian governments in which they had no voice. But we live in a country where we elect our leaders.

Do they want to bring down and replace our government, as the Middle Eastern protestors did? It would seem not, as the Occupiers’ protests don’t seem to be aimed at the government at all, likely because there is a liberal President who is sympathetic to their cause currently residing in the White House.

Instead, their demonstrations seem to be directed at the fat cat industrialists who they believe control most of the nation’s wealth. But, again, it is not at all clear what exactly they think should be done about the situation.

In every society throughout the history of mankind there have always been the have’s and the have-not’s. There have been attempts to force economic and social equality on societies in the past, but they haven’t worked very well.

The Communist Revolution in the early 20th century was all about bringing down that fortunate 1% and spreading the wealth to all the repressed workers of the world. It was not very successful. Not only did the governments that sprouted from the Communist Revolution not make people very happy, they didn’t even do a good job of redistributing wealth. The people who had power also seemed to have the best of everything. Such is human nature.

But maybe the Occupiers have some brilliant plan they are sitting on that will allow everyone to enjoy the finer things in life that doesn’t involve the kind of heavy-handed government regulation of private industry that has proven to be a disastrous folly every time it has been attempted. I’ll be waiting patiently for them to come up with an economic model that works better in practice (and not just in theory) than free-market capitalism. But I’m not holding my breath.

We can’t this wrong

The state of Georgia has been in the news in a big way this week. We’ve been on the minds of a former FBI director, a former president, numerous heads of state across Europe, and even the current Pope. Unfortunately, the attention we’ve been getting is not the good kind.

All of these high profile personalities, as well as hundreds of thousands of regular folks around the world, have been protesting the scheduled execution of Troy Smith, whose fate is still to be decided as I write this. He was convicted of killing a police officer in Savannah back in 1991 and has been on death row ever since. His case has been through numerous appeals but each time the legal system refused to overturn his conviction or give him a new trial.

I have to admit that the situation has me a bit baffled. Depending on who you listen to, the guy is either guilty well beyond a reasonable doubt or else the case against has completely fallen apart over time.

Davis conviction rested mainly on the testimony of nine witnesses to the shooting. No physical evidence of any kind presented at his trial. Since then, seven of those nine witnesses have recanted or significantly altered their stories, and two other individuals claim that someone else has confessed to the crime. Davis even offered to take a polygraph test to prove his innocence.

Yet the legal system has time and again denied his requests for a new trial and his oft-delayed conviction has remained on track. I am not a legal expert by any means, but the reason for that seems to be that once a person is convicted of a crime he has to do a lot more than introduce reasonable doubt to get that conviction reversed. He has to more or less prove his innocence, which is a much higher standard than what is required for an initial conviction.

And there’s a reason for that. If that was not the case, I’m sure you would have convicted criminals constantly besieging the legal system with “new evidence” that might cast some shred of doubt about their guilt. The system would get into a state of constant review and re-review of cases that have already been tried. Once a person gets their day in court, in other words, they don’t get to continue to retry the case over and over, hoping that something will eventually sway someone’s opinion and get them sprung.

However, I think when we are talking about death penalty cases the standards need to be different. Before we stick a needle in someone’s arm and take their life we need to be sure, at that moment, that we are not harboring any doubts about whether or not this person committed the crime they were convicted of.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t care much about what the Council of Europe or Pope Benedict XVI think about Georgia’s legal system. But based on what I know about this case I have doubts about whether or not Troy Davis was guilty of the crime that we executed him for. I would like to know why the Board of Pardons and Paroles does not seem to share those doubts, and I think I have the right to know that.

This is my state. I pay the taxes that fund the courts, the jails, and the execution chamber. I vote for the people who oversee the courtrooms and make our laws. This is not a case where I can say “I’m not responsible for happened.” I am responsible, and so are you. It is my government, acting on my behalf, which ends the life of men like Troy Davis.

There is no way to undo an execution once it’s done. So we better be damn confident we get it right, every time. And if we aren’t, we need to stop executing people until that confidence can be restored.

Housework makes you smart

I’ve used this space a number of times in the past to lament the fact that I am afflicted by a disorder that, unfortunately, seems to be a fairly common one. Doctors call this disorder “aging”, and if you are suffering from it too you know what a challenge it is to live with it.

Unless you are a vampire, though, it is just something you have to learn to deal with. So I also like to use this column to share tips I come across that help those of us who are on the wrong side of 40 to keep decrepitude at bay for as long as possible.

Today I bring you some good news on that front. New medical research has shown that one of the best ways you can keep your mind functioning (fairly) well as you get older is to keep up with your daily chores.

So mow the lawn. Wash the car. Take the dog for a walk. Vacuum, dust, and do the laundry. It may not sound like a glamorous life, but by keeping yourself in motion as opposed to sitting back and taking it easy you might stave off senility.

According to a study published in a recent edition of the Archives of Internal Medicine, the level of physical activity an older person engages in seems to have a direct impact on how much decline they experience in their mental abilities.

The study followed 200 adults whose average age was 75 and kept track of how many calories they burned each day. The test subjects who were most active and burned off at least 1000 calories daily were 91 percent less likely to see declines in memory, concentration, and language skills than the most sedentary subjects. 91 percent! That’s what the bean counters call a “statistically significant” number.

And those active seniors were not a bunch of gym rats. Whether or not they burned calories running on a treadmill or pushing a lawnmower did not make a difference. The one thing they all had in common is that they kept moving throughout the day. Most of the calories got burned off doing all those mundane chores for themselves that we all wish someone else would do for us.

I have noticed that people tend to approach getting older in one of two ways. Some decide that by the time they reach their golden years they’ve done quite enough work and feel that it’s time to put their feet up and let someone else take care of them. As they accrue the aches and pains that inevitably come with age it tends to encourage them to move around even less, until at last they pretty much become one with their easy chair.

And then there are those seniors who don’t want anyone doing anything for them that they can still do for themselves and are always out and about and being as active as their bodies allow them to be. It is intuitively obvious that the ones who keep moving around are going to keep their bodies healthier, but now it appears that all that getting up and going will help keep their minds working well also.

I know, it’s easy to say “stay active” when I’m not the one whose back or knees or ankles ache every time I try to pull myself up off the couch, and most of us aren’t going to be doing gymnastics when we’re in our 80’s. But unless you are totally immobilized, you need to keep doing for yourself as much as you possibly can.

The fact is laziness overtakes all of us at times, and it can become a really bad habit when your body starts to wear down. But we need fight it off if we want our body to be able to continue to get us where we want to go and our mind to remember how to get back home again once we get there.

Election season in Toon Town

Barack Obama has been having a rough couple of months. America is a troubled place and he doesn’t seem to have many answers for the challenges we currently face. With an election coming up in a little more than a year, you’d think he might be pretty worried about his chances of winning a second term. But when he looks at his potential competition on the Republican side I bet it eases those worries quite a bit.

He had to enjoy a quiet moment of satisfaction, for example, when Rep. Michelle Bachmann recently promised that if she is elected President the price of gas would once again be no more than $2 a gallon. Never mind that gasoline is an internationally-traded commodity whose market price is determined by a host of complex economic, political, and geographic factors that no U.S. President could ever completely comprehend, much less control – she’s going to find a way to bend reality to her will and keep the cost fixed on an arbitrary number that opinion polls say would make us all happy.

Of course, once she made this ridiculous, impossible-to-keep promise she was laughed off the stage at the event she was speaking at and quickly became the object of scorn and ridicule amongst savvy Republican Party activists. She quickly withdrew from the campaign and the public eye and has promised to make no further public statements until she acquires a modicum of common sense.

I’m kidding, of course! Despite the jaw-dropping stupidity of her comment Bachmann is still very much in the thick of the Republican nomination process because she has charisma, physical attractiveness, and rigidly adheres to a conservative ideology that stokes the enthusiasm of the Tea Party faithful. The fact that she seems to be only dimly aware of how things work in the real world is not seen as an impediment to her qualifications to be our Chief Executive.

But that’s only fair. Why should we hold her to a higher standard than we hold the rest of them to?

It’s always fun to watch the candidates try and top each other with their ridiculous promises while these campaigns are going on. They all have a plan to create jobs, lower taxes, balance the budget, and even get us right with God. You’d pretty much have to be God to do all the things they promise they will do, but I guess they feel like they have to top each other or risk seeming like the lesser man (or woman) in the contest.

One notable exception to all this outrageous grandstanding is Republican candidate Ron Paul. Say what you want about the guy, but he does no sugar-coat his views or over-promise what he thinks he can deliver.

I’ll never forget what he said at one of the 2008 primary debates when the other candidates were giving their competing visions on how they would “fix the economy” if they got elected. When his turn came, Rep. Paul responded:

“The Constitution is very clear that the president is commander-in-chief of the military, but the president is not the commander-in-chief of the economy, or of the people.”

This annoying and unwelcome reference to the Constitution and to reality was politely ignored by the other candidates and the moderator of the debate, and they quickly resumed their content-free chatter. Poor Rep. Paul is a real human being in a world of cartoon characters, like Bob Hoskins when he entered Toon Town in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.” In the world of political campaigns, the only limit seems to be the candidate’s imagination.

And so the Bachmann’s of the world are treated as serious contenders while Ron Paul is seen as a curiosity, someone who could never appeal to a broad enough demographic to have a real chance of winning. Unfortunately after someone is elected they have to operate in the real world and not in Toon Town. And in the real world when our government falls off a cliff, we all actually get hurt.

This is all my fault (and yours)

All things considered, it doesn’t seem like America is experiencing its finest hour right now, does it? No sooner did we barely get past the whole debt-ceiling nightmare when a major credit rating agency lowered our country’s rating for the first time in history. I don’t know what all the real-world economic effects of their action will be, but I’m pretty sure our image around the world and in our own eyes has already taken a hit.

But as bad as the economic situation may be, I think I may be just as disappointed by our collective reaction to the apparently not-quite-successful attempt by our government to get its financial house in order. Before the ink was even dry on the debt-ceiling agreement, people on all sides of the political spectrum fell all over each other trying to be the first to assign blame and score political points against their opposition.

President Obama and his Democratic allies did their best to make the Republicans look reactionary and unreasonable as they refused to the bitter end to agree to any sort of tax increase as part of the debt-ceiling compromise. The President even went as far as to blame Standard & Poor for lowering our credit rating, saying the logic they used in evaluating us was “flawed.” Someone’s logic is certainly flawed Mr. President, but it isn’t Standard & Poor’s.

And despite public opinion polls that say most people think the Republicans handled the crisis even worse than the Democrats did, the Tea Party crowd seems to be claiming victory. Although I for one tend to agree with them that we need to attack government spending with a great big hacksaw, it doesn’t seem like a majority of Americans are on board with that kind of thinking.

But the GOP presidential candidates seem to be committed to towing the Tea Party line despite what public opinion may indicate. There is even one guy who is apparently about to jump in the race (Texas governor Rick Perry) who has been “anointed” by a group of self-proclaimed modern prophets who believe that all of our ills are a punishment form on high for our declining morality. If we straighten up and fly right (i.e. stop being so tolerant of abortion and homosexuality) they believe that all of our problems will disappear.

I won’t pretend to know what God is thinking or what His plan for our country might be, but I do know that we don’t need any supernatural explanations for why we find ourselves on the verge of economic disaster. We are merely being punished by the most basic law of economics. If you spend way more than your take in, and you do it for a long time, eventually very bad things happen to you.

And I don’t blame Barack Obama for that. I don’t blame the Democrats. I don’t blame Republicans. I don’t blame the wealthy, big business, big labor, the Tea Party, or Standard & Poor’s.

You want to know who I blame? I blame you. I blame myself. I blame anyone who has ever voted for a politician who promised to keep the government pork flowing without raising anyone’s taxes. And we’ve all been buying into that song and dance for a very long time.

There is no surer way to lose an election than to suggest that you would either cut back on our cherished entitlement programs or raise somebody’s taxes, and by continuing to punish any candidate who would even hint at doing either of those things we have all had a part in digging the deep hole that we’ve fallen into.

Soon another big election will be bearing down on us. Are we finally ready to change course? Will we reward a candidate who tells us that we can’t get out of this mess without someone (likely all of us) taking a major hit in the pocketbook? Will such a candidate even emerge? We’ll soon see.

Red State versus Blue State

One of the worst things about having a government that is dominated by two diametrically-opposed political parties is that they always have the option of blaming each other for whatever is going wrong in the country. We are seeing a lot of that right now as they point fingers over who is more responsible for our woeful financial state.

The fact that we tend to get fed up with whichever party is currently in power and turn to their opponents in hopes they will do better makes it even harder to decide which of them is more incompetent. As the years go by control of the White House and Congress swings back and forth, and each side claims that they could get things straightened out if only those miscreants on the other side of the aisle would stop mucking things up. There seems to be no way to settle the argument of which party could really do a better job governing the country.

Well, I think that I have thought of a way to settle the argument once and for all. I would like to propose that we try a little political experiment.

My idea is to give each party one of our fifty states to rule over completely. They would do things their way in this state, unopposed by their nemeses in the other party, and at the end of a predetermined period of time (maybe 10 years or so) we’d see which of these states ended up with happier citizens.

Now which state would we give each party to run? I think we should choose a state that already leans heavily toward the party that is taking it over and one that is not terribly large or populous so it will be easier to manage.

I’m thinking I’d give South Carolina to the Republicans. I lived there for eight years and it’s a pretty conservative place, but there wasn’t much to do there. They could do with some excitement.

I’d give the Democrats Massachusetts. The state gave us the Kennedy’s, after all, and this would be a good way to pay them back.

In the Republic of South Carolina taxes would be low, government entitlement programs would be non-existent, and the Ten Commandments would be displayed on the grounds of every public building. Abortion would be completely outlawed, every school day would start and with a prayer, and the borders would be very secure (thanks to a very tall fence, and possibly land mines).

Meanwhile, a huge party would be going on up in the liberal utopia of Massachusetts. Everyone (who had a job) would be paying at least 50% of their income in taxes, but no one would mind because health care, education, retirement, and nearly everything else you need would be provided by some government program. The borders would be wide open, people could marry anyone or anything they wanted, and only the really bad drugs would be illegal.

At the end of ten years we’d do extensive polling in each state and see which group of citizens was most satisfied with life under exclusive control of each party and then we’d know once and for all whose ideas are really superior. Then maybe we could put an end to all the bickering between the parties and the loser would graciously disband itself.

You’re probably wondering if I’d be interested in living in either of these trial states while the experiment was going on. The answer is a resounding “no.” My suspicion is that after ten years Massachusetts would end looking too much like Greece does right now and South Carolina might have a little too much in common with Saudi Arabia.

Instead I will have slipped off to the Florida Keys, where the Libertarians would have quietly established their own little proving ground. You’re welcome to come and join us as long as you don’t expect something for nothing and you know how to mind your own dang business.

My endorsement in the Macon mayoral contest

It’s almost Election Day in Macon, and as usual the Telegraph will endorse its favored candidates in some of the major contests as we close in on the big event. I’ve been known to occasionally make some endorsements in this space as well, and I’ve decided to formally back one of the competitors in the Macon mayoral contest this year. But before I get to that, I should probably clarify the criteria I use when picking a candidate to lend my support to.

The editorial board of a major newspaper like the Telegraph endorses candidates who they think will best represent the interests of their constituents. As an opinion columnist, however, I have a very different agenda. I endorse the candidate who I think will be the most fun to write about should they be elected.

In order to decide who I’d most enjoy writing about, I have to calculate what I call a “goofball factor” for each competitor. There are several personality characteristics that help to increase an individual’s goofball factor. Possessing an inflated ego, having no sense of shame, and displaying an obvious contempt for one’s political opponents all help ramp up the goofball factor, and being completely oblivious to how ridiculous their actions appear to the general public really helps put an individual over the top.

Calculating this factor for each of the four Democratic candidates for mayor quickly eliminates two of them from contention for my endorsement. Paul Bronson is a political newcomer and as such he is a largely unknown quantity, but to date I am not aware of his saying or doing anything silly or outrageous so he can’t really compete for my endorsement at this point. Incumbent Robert Reichert has held the job for nearly four years and I can’t recall a single instance of him embarrassing himself or the city of Macon in all that time. He has given me virtually nothing to work, with and it’s time for him to go.

Luckily the other two candidates rate much, much higher on the goofball scale. I felt my heart skip a beat when the Honorable C. Jack Ellis announced his intention to pursue the office he previously held for eight wonderfully bizarre years. The Ellis administration was a gold mine for an opinion columnist who loves to skewer politicians. Whether he was cozying up to Hugo Chavez, conducting one of his many diplomatic missions (taxpayer-financed vacations) to exotic foreign lands, or changing his name/religion and then immediately changing them back again, Ellis was the kind of gift that keeps on giving for a snarky news columnist.

An Ellis endorsement would be a slam dunk if lovably wacky State Senator Robert Brown hadn’t thrown his hat into the ring as well and made my decision quite difficult. Brown seems to only pay his taxes when the mood strikes him and he recently made headlines when he made a statement that seemed to imply that certain local Republicans just might be members of the Ku Klux Klan.

When a predictable media firestorm erupted over this statement his idea of “softening the blow” was to call a news conference and claim that his reference to the GOP’s need for stocking up on “white sheets” was actually meant to imply that they were especially prone to sexual indiscretions. As the press conference broke up, the son of one his Brown’s best friends inexplicably roughed up a Telegraph photographer who was trying to snap a close-up of the mercurial senator. Good times.

It’s a tough call between Ellis and Brown. Ellis has a proven track record of mayoral lunacy, and it’s very tempting to stick with a known quantity. But I really have to give credit to Senator Brown, who has a stellar track record of buffoonery as a state senator and has faithfully continued his personal war on logic and humility while campaigning for mayor.

And so, considering his solid history of bizarre behavior and the air of self-importance that seems to animate his every statement, I hereby endorse Robert Brown to be the next mayor of Macon. Let’s help him bring the goofy back to the mayor’s office.

Losing the war on unchecked power

I could never be President. My brain is just not flexible enough to comprehend the subtle logic that’s required to make the kind of decisions our Chief Executive has to make. Take, for example, the question of when a President should involve the country in a military confrontation in a foreign land.

Being the rather simple-minded guy that I am, my first impulse would be to find out what the Constitution has to say on the issue and try and follow that. Article One, Section 8 says very plainly that the Congress has the power to declare war. It doesn’t say anything about the President having the right to declare war on anyone, so I would be off the hook on this one, right?

Apparently that is not the case. Congress has only formally declared war five times in our country’s history, and the last time it happened was World War II. I think we all know we’ve engaged in some pretty serious war-like activities a lot more than five times. Apparently Vietnam, Korea, and all of the various skirmishes we’ve had in the Middle East in the last few decades were not really wars, despite all the shooting and killing that was going on.

Presidents from both parties have sent troops into foreign lands many times without issuing a declaration of war. Congress finally got fed up with the situation during the Vietnam era and they passed the War Powers Act in 1973 to try and reign in the situation. It states that the President can’t get us into an armed conflict for more than 60 days without seeking authorization from Congress.

Unfortunately The War Powers Act hasn’t stopped our Chief Executives from continuing to involve us in undeclared wars. Most recently President Obama got us knee-deep in a civil war in Libya without getting an okay from Congress, and he’s catching some flak for it.

Congress is divided over whether or not they should be concerned about their irrelevance in the Libya situation, and the division is not completely along party lines. Some of the most liberal of the Democrats aren’t crazy about Obama’s “gun boat diplomacy”, and a smattering of Republicans are okay with his using our troops to play global sheriff, Congressional oversight be damned.

John McCain, for example, says that Republicans who oppose the Libyan campaign are “isolationists” who are being unfaithful to traditional American values. “We don’t want people needlessly slaughtered by the thousands,” says he, “if we can prevent such activity.” Seriously, John?

Anyone who has spent more than a few days on this planet knows that there are many governments who “needlessly slaughter” their own citizens every single day. Are we going to invade all of those countries too? If not, how do we decide when to spend billions of dollars and sacrifice our young men and women not because our national security is threatened, but because we want to protect innocent lives in other countries? And why is it that we seem to value human life more in Libya than we do in Syria, or China, or Rwanda?

My simplistic view is that if we get attacked or if some unexpected emergency occurs in a foreign land the President should have some latitude to engage our military on a moment’s notice for a time-limited basis. But the Constitution and the War Powers Act wisely restrict the executive branch from committing us to long-term, premeditated military conflicts on the whim of a single man. Or they would, if more people in Washington cared about obeying the law.

The whole separation of powers thing only works if all the parties involved follow the rules. The executive branch of our government has accumulated way too much unchecked power in recent times, and I’m willing to bet that none of the 2012 Presidential candidates are going to offer to cede any of that power back to Congress if they should win the office they seek.

Presidential tall tales

Barack Obama is a closet Muslim who wants to hand our country over to Islamic militants. He’s also a socialist who wants to replace our free market system with a government-run economy. And he’s a fascist who wants to take away all our freedoms as well as our privately-owned firearms. He might even be the anti-Christ.

Chances are you’ve heard all of these rumors about our current president at some point. All of them (except maybe the last one) probably have some tenuous connection with reality, but they are all emotionally charged distortions of the truth. Like funhouse mirror images of a real person, they are loosely based on a person that exists in the real world, but the reflection has been stretched and skewed to create something that is either ridiculous or scary.

This is what we do to our presidents. George W. Bush and William J. Clinton didn’t fare any better during their years in office. Remember how the left painted Bush as a complete idiot who cared only for the rich and liked to start wars mainly to feed his own ego?

And Clinton? Well, it seemed that a number of people had full time jobs keeping track of all the outrageous things he supposedly got up to in his spare time. Some of those things turned out to be true of course, as we all know now that he was not exactly a faithful husband to poor Hilary. But he was also believed in some circles to have a penchant for disposing of his political enemies by faking suicides or orchestrating plane crashes or, in the case of the poor Ron Brown, combining the two methods to make sure he was extra-dead. Still unsolved is the mystery of how he was able to conceal being a mass murderer from the general public but unable to hide his trysts with a silly White House intern.

It seems that whenever someone from the “wrong” party gets elected they are invariably characterized by their opposition as dangerous nut-jobs intent on destroying everything America stands for. And be assured that the next president, whoever he or she turns out to be, will get the same treatment from his or her political enemies. Unfortunately far too many of us will eat it up if our candidate doesn’t win.

I did not vote for Barack Obama. I don’t think he has been a good president, and I hope he doesn’t get reelected. I disagree with his philosophy of government on a very basic level. He believes that government is a tool to make the country a better place and he is not afraid to wield it liberally, while I think that government is a necessary evil that has already grown too big, too invasive, and too expensive.

I do not, however, hate or fear Barack Obama. I do not dislike him as a person. From what I can tell he loves his family and is probably a pretty good guy, for a career politician. I’m not interested in reading or listening to factually-challenged tall tales about how he is the new Hitler or a pawn of the Imams in the Middle East.

And I don’t think I’m the only one that feels that way. I’d be willing to bet that the hysterical character assassinations that get endlessly circulated as chain emails don’t convince a lot of people who were on the fence about whoever is in office to change how they will vote in the future. In fact they may very well do more harm than good.

I read that stuff and think, “I do not want to be associated with people this out of touch with reality, whatever their political beliefs may be.” I don’t rely on the aluminum-foil hat brigade to inform my political beliefs, and I wish they would take me off of their mailing list.

Where is the love?

So the day the world was supposed to end came and went and it seems that it was just another false alarm. Not many of us seem to have been surprised to still be here on May 22, as even most evangelical Christians thought Harold Camping was hopelessly misguided in his attempt to set an exact date for the rapture of the church.

Still, many Christians in this country do believe that the world is going to eventually end in a manner much like the one Camping described, and quite a few of them seem to think that the day is going to come relatively soon.

Much of this “end times theology” is based on the last book of the Christian Bible, Revelation. If you’ve never read that part of the Bible, it’s a little hard to describe. It is very symbolic and filled with metaphor, and throughout the centuries there have been widely varied opinions on what it might mean. There have been those who believe it describes events that happened in past, events that are in the process of occurring over a long period of time, or events that will happen in the future.

That last interpretation - that it describes a coming “apocalypse” that signals the end of the world - didn’t really take hold in Christian thought until the 19th century, and it didn’t gain a wide following until the Scofield Reference Bible came out at the beginning of the 20th century. Scofield’s notes on Revelation sketched out the end of the world scenario that continues to influence modern end times prophets like Hal Lindsey, “Left Behind” novelist Tim LaHaye, and Harold Camping.

I’ve read the book of Revelation several times, and my own personal interpretation is that I have no idea what it is trying to say. I’ve also perused the various modern and historical interpretations of it and frankly I’m not convinced that anyone knows what it means.

But of course there are plenty of people who do think they have it figured out, and a surprising number of churches seem to base much of their message around a particular interpretation of this difficult-to-fathom little corner of the Good Book.

The really surprising thing to me is that while some of these people seem enraptured (pardon the pun) by whatever fiery death Revelation may or may not predict for the world, they seem to pay less attention to parts of the Bible whose message seems to me to be a lot more clear and instructive.

I would imagine, for example, that anyone who calls himself or herself a follower of Christ would spend a lot of time reading the four gospels that document his words and deeds, using them as a guideline for how to conduct their own lives.

Interestingly, Jesus isn’t quoted as saying a much about how the world might end. Instead, he spent most of his time showing compassion to people the world tended to despise and imploring his followers to do the same. He also had a lot to say about loving your neighbor (Mark 12:31), forgiving others if you expect God to forgive you (Matthew 6:14), and serving God instead of living for worldly pleasures (Matthew 6:24.)

John 3:17 says that God sent his Son into the world not to condemn it, but that “the world through him might be saved.” I’m no theologian, but it seems to me that the people who think of themselves as Christians and spend most of their time looking for signs of the end of the world instead of showing compassion to their fellow man might have gotten seriously off track somewhere.

If America is truly a Christian nation, then shouldn’t we be a country full of people who are slow to judge others, seek spiritual enrichment rather than material gain, and constantly look for ways to be of service to those in need? Look around – is that what you feel surrounded by?

Where did heaven go?

With all that’s going on in the world, it’s sometimes hard to keep up with all the news that we need to be aware of. Important stories can slip through the cracks if we aren’t careful, and I consider it my duty to bring some of those stories to your attention. For example, did you hear that a leading scientist announced this week that heaven does not exist?

Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking made that proclamation in a recent interview with the British newspaper The Guardian. But it was not exactly front page news here in America, what with randy politicians grabbing all the headlines fathering illegitimate children and chasing hotel maids around their rooms. Still it seems to me that we ought to take a moment to consider what brought one of the great intellects of our time to this startling conclusion.

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you much about that, as Hawking didn’t present any data to back up his assertion. He merely stated his opinion that once our neurons stop firing it is a lot like a computer that gets shut down – we merely stop functioning. He refers to a belief in the afterlife as a “fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

I probably shouldn’t be surprised that Hawking’s announcement didn’t receive much attention here in the US. After all, we are a very religious country, and it would take a good deal more than the proclamation of a physicist to persuade most of us to abandon our belief in God and heaven.

A Pew survey in 2007 revealed that 92% of Americans believe in God and 74% believe in heaven. In England, where Hawking makes his home, it’s a very different story. A 2010 survey there revealed that only 17% of the British population considers religion to be a very important part of their lives.

Plus, most Americans are not physicists. People who make their living as pure scientists are not likely to be packing the pews on Sundays. A 1998 survey of members of the National Academy of Sciences showed that 72% of its membership identified themselves as atheists and 28% as agnostics.

I think most Americans are aware of the fact that scientists like Hawking tend to be irreligious, and they seem to scarcely take notice when people like him mock their beliefs. But I wonder if deep down some of us find it a little troubling that the majority of the people who spend their lives studying the nature of the universe claim to see no convincing evidence that our belief in God and an afterlife have any basis in objective reality.

Maybe that is troubling to some people, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Most believers see both God and our immortal souls as purely spiritual things that exist completely outside the material world. They occupy a space that is beyond the reach of our five senses, and thus beyond the reach of science and the men and women who practice it.

A scientist can only speak intelligently about those things that can be observed, measured, and tested. Science can tell us nothing about God or heaven because those are not things we can see through our telescopes or microscopes. Hawking’s position is perfectly reasonable if you believe (as I’m sure he does) that either nothing exists beyond the material world or that, if something does, there is no way we can know anything about such things since we cannot see, hear, taste, smell, or touch them.

To the proverbial man of science his outlook is perfectly reasonable. To a man of faith it is a sad, stunted view of reality that ignores the things that truly matter. I think that is why the chasm between science and faith seems to be so hard to bridge.

It’s also might be why Stephen Hawking decided to make his home in secular place like England instead of in America.

So far, so good

During the last election season I wrote that I was voting a straight Republican ticket in hopes that this time they were really serious about reigning in our runaway national debt. I was trying to be optimistic, but in truth my expectations were pretty low. I’ve been burned too many times in the past by big-spending Republicans (I’m looking at you, George W. Bush) who haven’t governed according to their supposed limited-government principles.

Anyone who knows me at all knows that I am not quick to praise politicians, but I have to say that so far I’ve been pleasantly surprised by what the Republicans are trying to accomplish in House of Representatives. Not only did Rep. Paul Ryan propose a long-term budget plan that deals with our deficit situation in realistic way, the House actually passed the thing.

Of course the plan, which includes future spending caps on Medicare and does not raise taxes on “the wealthy”, has no chance of passing the Democrat-controlled Senate or being signed by our current president. But it is a start. And it has even forced the president to introduce his own less serious but still impressive (for a left-wing Democrat) deficit-reduction plan of his own.

The Republican plan is revenue-neutral and relies on spending reductions to put us on the road to fiscal sanity. Obama’s plan would (of course) raise taxes on the well-to-do and would preserve entitlement programs much as they exist now. Although I think the president is wrong to think that we can tax our way out of this crisis I am encouraged that we are now having a real debate about just how much spending we need to cut and/or taxes we need to raise to back us away from a financial cliff.

The truth is I am not completely opposed to some combination of tax increases and spending cuts if (and this is a very big “if”) it is part of a budget plan that seriously deals with our debt situation. Realistically speaking, any deficit reduction plan that would have a chance of passing our currently-divided government will need to represent a compromise between the two parties. Rich folks (as defined by the Democrats) are probably going to have to pay at least a little more in taxes and we have to come up with some way of capping entitlement spending that won’t cause the AARP to have a meltdown.

I’m not sure how likely it is that we will see the two parties reach such a compromise, but it seems that a sense of urgency is at long last present in their deliberations. But they need to work fast as another election season will be bearing down on us very soon.

Already liberal lobbying groups are buying air time to whip senior citizens into a frenzy over Ryan’s plan to end the open-ended nature of the Medicare program, even though his proposal would not affect anyone who is currently over the age of 55. Things could get ugly really fast and the spirit of compromise could fall apart very easily.

If that happens, the voting public might have to settle the debate next year. The Democrats will likely promise to rescue our sinking financial ship by soaking the rich while preserving entitlement programs in their current form and Republicans will probably tell us that we can’t tax our way out of an economic sinkhole.

And I would be fine with that. I would welcome a national referendum on entitlement reform. It’s time that we made a decision on whether we want a government that is grounded in reality or fantasy.

If it comes to that, I hope that the Republicans stick to their guns and provide us with that choice. If they do, they can count on my support next year and for many years to come.

Can we really stand four more years of this?

This week got off to a very bad start for me. One of the first news items that caught my attention Monday morning relayed the tragic news that Barak Obama has already launched his reelection campaign for 2012.

To tell you the truth, I have yet to really accept the fact that my fellow Americans saw fit to elect an ultra-liberal “community organizer” who had never held a non-government job in his life to be our commander-in-chief two years ago. Now I must face the reality that this sad spectacle could go on for another six years.

Wasn’t eight years of George W. Bush enough punishment for any generation of Americans to endure? What possible sins could we have committed as a nation to deserve two helpings of Bush followed by eight long years of Obama? Those sins must have been very bad indeed.

But, you say, just because Obama is running again is no guarantee that he will win. Perhaps a sober, level-headed challenger will appear on the Republican side who will sweep Obama out of the White House and return a long-absent air of competence to the office. If you hear that such a person intends to jump in the race be sure and let me know, because as yet that person has not appeared.

Brushing aside potential candidates who have trouble speaking coherently (Palin, Bachmann), and those who couldn’t even best a weak McCain for the 2008 nomination (Huckabee, Romney), what do we have to look forward from the Republicans? Could that be Newt Gingrich riding in on his white horse, ready to elevate the 2012 campaign with intelligence, wit, and passion?

It certainly appears that someone who looks and sounds like Newt is making noise about running for president, but this person certainly can’t be the same guy who shook up congress in the Clinton years with his radical ideas and clearness of purpose. He seems to have been replaced with someone who is acting like a Stephen Colbert- like parody of a real conservative politician.

Witness Newt’s recent high-profile speech before a group of evangelical Christians, where he warned that America is in grave danger of becoming “a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists.” Now remember, this was not an off-the-cuff remark made during a live interview. No, this was a prepared speech. He actually meant to say that secular atheists (who do not believe in God and do not believe religion has any place in government) and radical Islamists (who ardently support a very specific version of theocracy) are somehow going to work together to take over our country.

That’s not pandering to conservative Christians - that’s pandering to people who are unfamiliar with what words in the English language actually mean. Newt was trying to get his audience worried about people who don’t share their religious beliefs, but I’m afraid instead he’s gotten us all worried about the state of his mental health.

I think I understand, at least a little bit, how those protesters in the Middle East are feeling. I do not feel connected to my government and I do not feel they represent my interests. However, the problem is not institutional. We have a great Constitution, one that is designed (when followed properly) to protect our freedoms and bless us with a limited government in which power is derived from the will of the people.

That is a rare blessing that not many people in this world enjoy, and it is most frustrating that such a good system is being run into the ground by a bunch of morons who seem to be unfamiliar with how it was designed to work.

Is there any chance we could do a Jurassic Park and clone Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, or Washington? Whatever those guys had on the ball when it came to running a government seems to have been bred out of our gene pool.

World to end ahead of schedule

There have been some wild rumors going around, largely based on the fact that an ancient Mayan calendar finishes a 5,000 year countdown next year, that the world is going to end in 2012. Well, I’m afraid that I have some disturbing news for you – it might happen even sooner than that. We may run out of time on May 21, 2011, to be exact.

That is the day, according to Christian radio broadcaster Harold Camping, when born-again Christians will be raptured to heaven and everyone else will have to face 153 days of horror and torment before the real, true end comes on October 21 of this year. If he’s right, the end is most definitely nigh.

Of course, Mr. Camping’s credibility is a bit suspect to some since he previously predicted that the end would come in September of 1994 and, apparently, it did not happen. But this time he feels that he has definitely got the date nailed down thanks to a careful study of scripture and some rather advanced mathematics. Consider the following:

Noah's flood, according to Camping, happened exactly 7,000 years ago in 4990 B.C. And, since the Bible says that for God a day is like a thousand of our years, he believes that God is giving us exactly seven of His days until humanity experiences its next dramatic population shift. So 2011 is the year when something big is bound to happen.

But that’s not all. Camping says that we can also arrive at the exact date of the rapture by working forward from the date of the crucifixion, which he says was on April 1, 33 AD. There are exactly 722,500 days between April 1, 33 A.D. and May 21, 2011. And the number 722,500 can also be represented as 5 x 10 x 17 x 5 x 10 x 17.

That is significant, claims Camping, because those numbers all have special meanings: 5 represents redemption, 10 is associated with completeness, and 17 signifies heaven. So, you see, it is fairly obvious that the apocalypse pretty much has to begin on May 21 of this year. The numbers don’t lie, right?

As it turns out, Camping is not taken very seriously even among most evangelical Christians, the great majority of whom do not believe that there is any way to predict the exact date of the Rapture. They point to a verse in the Bible (Matthew 24:36) that seems to say that fairly plainly.

But he does have his followers. There is, in fact, a small band of people who have sold all their possessions and left their homes to travel around the country with Camping in an End Times Caravan, trying to warn us all of our impending doom. People like him always seem to attract a small, but very enthusiastic, following.

I don’t really understand what the attraction is, or why some people seem to get so obsessed with this “end of the world” stuff. I don’t know if life as we know it will come to an end on May 21 or not, but I do know that any one of us could shuffle off this mortal coil at any moment.

I don’t see why it would make a difference whether your demise were to come about at the feet of one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse or at the bumper of an eighteen-wheeler you carelessly pull out in front of – either way you’ll be meeting your maker on that day, ready or not. So if you aren’t ready for that, I’d get it taken care sooner rather than later.

I would not, however, advise anyone to sell all their stuff and join the End Times Caravan. Math is a really tricky subject, and I won’t be at all surprised if Mr. Camping has to pull out his calculator on May 22 and come up with some new figures.

No more running, part 2

I’ve been writing this column for nearly 13 years now, and the one piece that I probably got more response to than any other was one I wrote in October of 2010 regarding some health problems I’d been having. I was in a pretty frustrated mood at the time and the column was probably a little overdramatic, leading many readers to ask me what exactly I was dying from and how long I had left.

The fact that I am still writing my editorials is good evidence that what I have is not fatal, at least in the short term. After seeing 7 different doctors in 8 months and being poked and prodded and jabbed with needles more times than I care to count, I have only recently gotten a diagnosis that I have some measure of confidence in.

The doctor’s best guess is that I have both Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), two difficult-to-diagnose conditions for which there is currently no known cause or cure. The good news is that they are not life-threatening and there are drugs that can hopefully help manage the symptoms they cause.

I say “hopefully” because, as I noted in my column in October, not everyone who has the same condition reacts the same way to a particular drug, and the only way to find a treatment that works for you is through trial and error. Now I can say that I know how it feels to be a laboratory rat, and it’s not an experience I would recommend to anyone.

I wrapped up my column in October with a list of things I’d learned while dealing with my health issues and I thought I’d do the same thing this time. Here are some further lessons I learned from my experiences with our “best in the world” health care system.

- We live in the information age. Before you visit a doctor you should be able to look up your symptoms on the Internet and get a pretty good list of what illnesses could be causing them. I encourage you to do that, and write down what disorders match your symptoms and (this is very important) what tests are commonly done to determine whether or not you have a particular illness.

- Also take the time to write down all the symptoms you are experiencing and when you experienced them, if they have changed over time. Take this information with you to the doctor as well.

- When you do see a doctor, go in with the realization that he is likely going to want to hear your symptoms and then make a very quick, on-the-spot diagnosis (i.e. an educated guess) as to what may be wrong. He will then either schedule some diagnostic tests to be done and/or write you a prescription for some medication to try. This is where you may have to become assertive. Make sure that he listens carefully to all you have to tell him about your symptoms. Ask questions if what he is saying is not clear to you, and if your research has led you to conclude that you need to be tested for something that he is not testing you for, make sure he explains why he doesn’t think you should have that particular test.

- Know upfront that many doctors will not react well to the kind of active discussion I am recommending that you have with them. This is understandable to a degree, since they need to be in charge of the situation and can’t have patients dictating their own course of treatment. But remember that you are a paying customer and that this is your health and your life that is in the balance, not theirs. If the doctor you are seeing does not adequately answer your questions and/or refuses to order any and all reasonable diagnostic tests to give you your best diagnoses, you need to find another doctor.

The company we keep

There are some jobs that are so difficult and stressful that I wouldn’t want to have them no matter how much they paid. College football coach would be one such job. President of the United States would be another. And frankly I wouldn’t want to be in Hilary Clinton’s shoes right now, either. Imagine sitting in the Oval Office this morning while President Obama looks across his desk at you with a furrowed brow and asks, “okay Hil, what should we do about this Egypt business?”

Once again, we find ourselves in an awkward position because we have chosen to play ball with a government that does not share our views on human rights and democratic principles because it suited our purposes at the time. The Mubarak government has been critical to what we consider stability in the Middle East with its hard line stance against terrorist groups and its relatively cordial relationship with Israel, so we in the past we chose to look the other way when they behaved badly.

It’s not the first time we’ve compromised our principles for pragmatic reasons (Saddam Hussein was on our “friends list” before we later declared him to be part of the Axis of Evil) and I fear that it won’t be the last. And now there are thousands of Egyptians marching in the streets demanding a voice in their own government and we are standing on the sidelines with our hands in our pockets not sure what to say or do.

Actually, Hilary’s job may not be that difficult. Her answer to the “what should we do?” question is probably a shrug of the shoulders, because there probably isn’t much we can do now except hope for the best. The best in this case would be a transition to a new, less autocratic government that doesn’t hate us and doesn’t want to wipe Israel off the map. A fire-breathing Muslim theocracy in Egypt would make the world a much more dangerous place for Israel and (by association) for the United States.

So how should the average American, who doesn’t live and breathe world events, feel about what’s going on in Cairo, and the part we’ve played in it? For me, the short answer is “not too good.”

I’m no expert on foreign policy, but I do understand that we have to engage all sorts of governments and that most of them aren’t representative democracies, much as we would like for them all to be. We can’t realistically have an antagonistic relationship with every “bad” government without regard to numerous extenuating circumstances.

And yet I can’t help feeling that we are not measuring up to our own standards somehow. It seems to me that in the decision matrix that we use to separate or friends from our enemies on the world stage, the fact that a government imprisons and tortures its political opponents or executes people for practicing their chosen religion ought to figure more prominently than it does right now.

It’s like if you were looking for a good mechanic to fix your car, and you found a guy that knows his way around a transmission but you also found out that he regularly beats his wife and kids. Would you do business with that guy? And if you did, would you sleep well at night?

Whether you’re talking about a person, a business, or a government, you are to some extent known for the company you keep. Our cozy relationship with the dictatorships in places like Egypt, China, and Saudi Arabia says something about our national values. It says, I think, that we often put practicality ahead of our principles.

Maybe that is something you have to do to get along in this world. Or maybe that is just what we like to tell ourselves.

We will miss you, Phil

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about two different stories that were reported on extensively by the Telegraph this week. One of them was, of course, the shooting of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and a number of bystanders in Tucson. The other was the passing of long time Telegraph contributor Phil Dodson. You might not think these two events were related in any way, but for me there is a connection.

First of all let me say that I had a lot of respect for Phil and I will miss his voice on these pages. He was a very intelligent guy who took his job seriously, and unlike a lot of news “personalities” these days he was more concerned with informing the public than in drawing attention to himself. I always admired the fact the he never seemed to lose his sense of humility. Even when he was criticizing someone Phil always stuck to the facts and never resorted to pettiness and name-calling.

And that brings me back to that other story that everyone is talking about this week. One of the major subtexts of the reporting on the Arizona shootings is the question of how much the personal attacks that politicians and media types launched against Giffords in last year’s election influenced the unstable individual who fired the shots. Sarah Palin has been especially singled out in this discussion because of an image displayed on her Facebook page last year that featured a crosshair symbol positioned over congressional districts she was “targeting” for a Democratic defeat. Rep, Giffords’ district was one of those in Palin’s crosshairs.

Can heated political attacks help to push unstable people over the edge and commit violent acts? It is certainly within the realm of possibility, I suppose. But does that mean that the people who launch these personal attacks against their political opponents are partly to blame for the actions of an unbalanced individual, and should we put pressure on them to tone things down?

I think we need to be careful here. This reminds me a bit of the attempts that have been made from time to time to censor musicians whose dark, brooding lyrics have been blamed for causing troubled young people to commit suicide. It’s a misguided attempt to shift responsibility from where it rightly belongs.

Most of us aren’t going to kill ourselves after we listen to “Don’t Fear the Reaper” one too many times and most of us aren’t going to start shooting at liberal politicians because of the barely-intelligible ramblings of someone like Sarah Palin. The culprit here is mental illness, and we don’t need to start some misguided campaign to censor political speech the way some people have sought to censor certain books and music in the past to protect us from what they believe are dangerous thoughts and ideas.

And yet.

Maybe it is not such a bad idea for all of us to take some time to reflect on how our words and deeds affect those around us. I always admired the fact that whenever Phil criticized a public official he stuck to the facts and never made it seem personal. I can’t say that I have always done that. At times I have let my emotions get the better of me and engaged in what might be called personal attacks on certain public figures. Perhaps in the future I should choose my words a little more carefully.

So even though my political views may line up more with Sarah’s than with Phil’s, I still consider Phil to be the better role model. Just because someone is (in my opinion) a bad politician doesn’t mean they are a bad person, and it certainly doesn’t mean that they deserve to be in anyone’s “crosshairs.”

I think Phil recognized that, and we’d all do well to remember it before we open our mouths or start pounding on our keyboards.

Obama call to Lurie was out of bounds

I don’t know exactly what the President of the United States does on a typical day, but I would imagine that his plate stays pretty full. I’m sure that he has lots of meetings to attend, documents to sign, photographs to pose for, etc. And of course he still has to find time to do the things that regular people do like eating, sleeping, and spending time with his family.

But even with all that important stuff going on, our current president took time out his busy schedule this week to call up Jeff Lurie, the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, to tell him what a great guy he is. And one of the reasons he gave for having such a high opinion of Mr. Lurie is that he is the guy who gave Michael Vick a job this season after he finished serving time in federal prison for running a dog-fighting operation.

I don’t know enough about Jeff Lurie to say whether or not I agree with Obama’s glowing assessment of him, but I will say that my opinion of the President definitely took a turn for the worse when I heard about this phone call.

To be fair to the President I have to say that I don’t think that there is anything wrong with the sentiment behind what he said to Lurie. He said that people who make mistakes and go to prison deserve a chance to rejoin society if they show remorse for their crimes and make every effort to be good, law-abiding citizens once they have served their time, and I can’t argue with that.

So why do I have a problem with the phone call the President made? Well, everything has to be viewed in context. If Obama wanted to get the point across that people coming out of prison deserve a chance to rejoin society if they have straightened themselves out, I think that he could have chosen a much better poster boy than Michael Vick.

Vick was not some down-on-his-luck family man who robbed a gas station to get money to feed his kids. He was not some misguided youth who got caught up in drugs and made a mess of his life. He was a fully grown adult, a millionaire many times over, who ran a dog-fighting operation because (I must assume) he thought it was a fun hobby.

That was a weird, sick, disturbing thing for a person to do, and I will never understand how he was able to live with himself while he was doing what he was doing. And it seems quite plausible that if he hadn’t gotten caught he might still be running his little operation to this day. He seems to me like a really questionable choice for the President of our country to go to bat for in such a public manner.

Of course Obama was actually heaping praise on Lurie, not Vick, but even that is hard to understand. Do you think Jeff Lurie scours the prisons on a regular basis looking for soon-to-be-released felons so that he can employ them in his organization? I’m guessing not. Vick got his “second chance” because he is a ridiculously talented athlete who was going to give whoever he played for a chance to win a lot more games, and that is the only reason he has a job today. Does Lurie deserve a medal for that?

So to President Obama I say, right message, totally wrong time and place to deliver it. And I don’t think that hitching your wagon to a man who at some point in his life thought it was cool to teach dogs to kill each other for “sport” is ever a good idea.

Of course the way things are going it may not really matter too much. It’s looking as if his only chance of keeping his job in 2012 would be to join the Republican Party like the rest of the country seems to be doing.