Mark Byron

One Order of Church, Hold the Hate

One car in my apartment parking lot this morning (not a regular if memory serves, so they might be visiting) was festooned with a lot of progressive stickerage, some for some of the funkier music stores favored by the college crowd and some getting various digs in on Bush and the right. One attempted witticism was "I support the separation of church and hate."

Yes, you probably stay far away from church and are good at hating, or at least dissing, folks who you don't agree with.

I see more hatred from your typical lefty than I do from the church-goers they rag on. Do those conservative church-goers disapprove of homosexual behavior, for instance? Yes. But I bet that Barney Frank would have a more pleasant time speaking with a bunch of Baptist churchgoers than Sarah Palin would have speaking with a bunch of progressive activists.

Would a few anti-homosexual pejoratives fly at that church? Possibly, but I bet Palin would be cursed at more than Frank would. I'll put my money on Palin getting words that rhyme with witch and glut and boor overFrank getting called words that rhyme with rear and rag.

Not everyone in a church is a Fred Phelps four-sigma outlier on the right and are usually far more polite. The left's two-sigmas (2.5%ers) are seemingly more hateful than the right's two-sigmas.

A Call to Jam?

We're in the process of finding a new church. I'm not quite ready to talk about the underlying issues, but discontent with the pastor at Victory Baptist led to his forced resignation; Pastor Dave has yet to blog on this issue. We were well-pleased with his leadership, but there was unfortunately enough who weren't.

On top of that, our Sunday School class was disbanding, as our old leaders have both had their first child and have moved a half-hour away to Richmond; they're now too busy as parents to run the class and are looking to find a church home closer to their new home so the little guy can have friends they don't have to commute to Lexington to play with.

Thus, we were looking at a new pastor and a new Sunday School class; essentally, we'd be getting a new church whether we stayed or left. Given that the other Sunday school classes weren't particularly welcoming when we got here two years ago, the choices for fellowship if we stayed were limited. Also, a new pastor would likely be less generically evangelical and more tribally Baptist, which isn't where we were at.

One church we checked out was Crossroads Christian, a near-megachurch in SE Lexington that a former Victoryite friend of ours had moved to. It was scripturally-sound but a bit too culturally relevant. The sermon of the evening was kicking off a series on marriage, which brought out for some reason Black Horse and the Cherry Tree as the praise team's opening song. By the end of the Saturday evening service, I replied "No no, no-no-no, no,no, you're not the church for me."

It was solid and spoke to just shy of 2000 people (over 2000 and over the megachurch threshold if you include their Georgetown satellite campus) with a uber-contemporary style combined with solid, albeit more culture-centric, sermon and good discipleship training and outreach to the poor. They're "doing the stuff," as our old Lakeland pastor Dave Baker would say, but doing it with a backbeat.

A while back, I spoted a church billboard proclaiming themselves as "A church for people who like church." I Googled for that phrase and found that a fellow Lexintonian had tweeted on that sign, which turned out to be for Clays Mill Road Baptist.

Here's a church designer who also used that phrase back in 2007

The best description I think we came up with is that our current product is "Church for People Who Don't Like Church." This is your normal unchurched guy who has no positive memories or association with church and would be more impacted by a service that doesn't include a lot of the elements that they would view as associated with church.

The new product is designed to be "Church for People Who Like Church". This is for the person who has some type of positive memories of church growing up, but for some reason stopped attending. There are still safe and comforting feelings associated with a lot of the traditional aspects of "what a church should be". Not to say that this service will be "traditional" in the negative sense. The room is the most technologically advanced worship space we have ever built. But when they attend this service, first time people will quickly acclimate to an environment of worship that feels comfortable to them.

We haven't stopped going to church, but even for a former Vineyardite who is cool with casual attire and modern praise music, where was something "not church" kicking off a service with a KT Tunstall song. Eileen was bothered by the lack of a cross in the decor.

Michael Spencer is working through a series on an evangelical liturgy, here's part 6 on the call to worship.-

The loss of the call to worship or the replacement of it by- of course- more music- is a significant and damaging loss. And a totally unnecessary one.

A clear strong voice, calling us to recognize God, to be serious in joy and whole-hearted in singing, praying and hearing…this is a fundamental element of worship. No technology needed

This is an area in which the “seeker” model of worship presents a real challenge. The call to worship is antithetical to the purpose of seeker worship, which is to include those who do not consider themselves to be the people of God or in relationship with God.

IMonk is no fuddy-duddy, but what I saw at Crossroads was more of a call to jam than a call to worship. It works for drawing in the unchurched, but it seems to get in the way of a deeper sense of worship.

Maybe Crossroads is a wading pool for folks who aren't ready for the deeper end. However, I want something a notch or two deeper.

More on what I found later.

Hatoyama or Hatobama?

Interesting news on the other side of the Pacific, where the long-ruling LDP got nuked in last week's election. The opposition Democratic Party, headed up by Bridgestone tire heir Yukio Hatoyama, ran the LDP out of power with a vengeance, with the DPJ getting about 300 seats in the lower house to about 100 for the LDP.

Here's the interesting part for watchers of international econ and finance; here's part of the BBC's overview of Hatoyama

Mr Hatoyama says he wants to raise spending on healthcare, child support and subsidies for farmers.

But he has ruled out raising taxes to do this - prompting critics to ask where the money will come from.

Is that spelled Hatoyama or Hatobama? Here's a pre-election summary of DPJconomics

The DPJ says it will not raise the consumption tax for at least four years. It also plans to lower fuel tax and corporate tax for small businesses. It says it can finance spending pledges by cutting waste within the bureaucracy - both in terms of budgetary controls and by reducing the size of the civil service itself.

Its spending plans include the introduction of a child benefit of $3,300 per annum until the child reaches the age of 15. It also plans to introduce a minimum guaranteed pension and abolish compulsory health insurance payments for people over the age of 75.

Lots of spending and tax cuts to boot. So much for those near-zero Japanese interest rates and fighting off deflation. We'll have a crowding out effect like a team of sumo wrestlers at a buffet.

Seriously, when the US is running massive deficits and the Japanese are seemingly following suit, that will lead to more competition for loanable funds and may do a number on interest rates worldwide. Chinese investors might opt to keep their money closer to home and plunk more of their loanable funds in Japanese treasuries.

We should also see the Yen go down in value in the long term. The yen went up in the forex markets today, but if interest rates and inflation go up, long-term exchange rates will go down, which will be bad news for US exporters.

Life Imitates Art

Eileen is a big Bones fan. The Cute Missing Female story of the week had a dead model identified by the serial numbers on her breast implants; the story of the day is that her ex and likely suspect seemingly did himself in in BC.

When I mentioned the story to her yesterday, she noted that Bones had done an episode with that as part of the plot.

Politics Ain't Beanbag

"Bill downgraded after leaving 2 dead in U.S. " I know the fights over the health-care bill have been intense, but this is stunning. Also, isn't it just like the MSM to assume that going without "the public option" is a downgrade.

Seriously, keep the folks in the Maritimes in prayer. Bill hit Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and might hit Old Scotia (Scotland) as a sub-tropical storm later this week.

No Professional Courtesy for Shark Jr.

The old joke is "Why don't sharks attack lawyers? Professional courtesy." It's also true that sharks aren't bottom feeders.

However, one Shark is ready to take on a lawyer-turned-Senator; Danny Tarkanian, son of legendary UNLV coach Jerry (Tark the Shark) Tarkanian is set to take on Harry Reid for his Nevada seat. Shark Jr. is beating Dirty Harry 49-38 in a Mason-Dixon poll.

That would be the second time in recent years a sitting Democratic majority leader was taken down; Tom Daschel was ousted in 2004. Red state Democrats are prime targets, although Nevada is leaning a bit more to the center in recent years.

I'm feeling old; Jerry's kid is already in his mid-40s and running for the Senate. It was already a quarter-century ago that he played point guard for his dad. Point guard... get one Wasilla High point in there to campaign and you'd have to clear the pool with a Shark and a Barracuda.

Stochastic Justice

Michael Vick gets two years for running a dog-fighting ring. Plaxico Burress gets two years for owning an unregistered gun. Donte Stallworth got a month for killing a man while drunk driving.

At minimum, Burress and Stallworth should have their terms flip-flopped; shooting yourself in the leg with a contraband heater isn't as bad as killing someone else while plastered.

This isn't a lack-of-representation issue; all three are well-off (or at least well-paid; Vick spent himself into bankruptcy) athletes who had good lawyers. We have a let-the-punishment-fit-the-crime problem.

What the right punishments are, I'm not sure. Second-amendment mavens would probably like to see Burress free or at best given a misdemeanor charge of reckless use of a firearm.

Squaring the Circle

It's beginning to look a lot like 1993, the last time Democrats had control of Congress and the White House. Will Rodgers had the one-liner "I don't belong to an organized political party, I'm a Democrat."

The inside-politics of the early Clinton years had the Republicans voting no on most everything (NAFTA and the WTO were two exceptions, where a center-right coalition carried the day), leaving Clinton to patch together a majority with little room to spare. If the Blue Dogs liked a bill, it was too moderate for the Black Caucus, and if Clinton moved left to appease his progressive flank, the Blue Dogs balked.

Fast forward to the summer of 2009, and Obama is stuck having to square that same circle, albeit with a larger majority. The sticking point is the "public option" of letting folks buy into the government-employee health plan; the Blue Dogs are opposed and the left wing of the party is insisting on it. Obama needs both of them on board if he is to pass a bill without any significant GOP help.

Personally, I have more problems with individual mandates, mandating coverages that will raise the cost of private insurance, and employer mandates than letting people buy into the federal-employee plan; if they provide it at cost, there shouldn't be that much of a problem. The insurance co-ops that have been proposed as an alternative seem fairly unobtrusive except for the meme that makes the health insurance industry the villain of the piece.

Do we need non-profits to "keep the insurers honest"? No, that's what competition does. It may not keep prices as low as people would like, but that's a different issue than competitive honesty. Life insurance has a mix of co-ops (if it has Mutual in the title, it's a version of a co-op) and for-profits and credit unions are tough competitions for for-profit banks, but I don't see the left shilling for either.

What the left seems to want isn't competition but control, gradually phasing out the private sector that they don't control. The problem is that a private sector is what keeps government honest in many cases. For instance, I work at a for-profit university that gives folks an option to the state-run colleges in the area; liberals look askance at such critters, but we manage to deliver a good education at a reasonable cost without cutting corners like I would have expected before coming on board at Sullivan.

The Blue Dogs get that. The left wing of the Democrats don't. Not yet, at least. It will be interesting to see if the grudgingly do get it eventually.

Caster Rated #1

Usain Bolt's jaw-dropping bashing of the record books in the 100 and 200 meters in this week's world track championships has been pushed to the back burner by the saga of South African runner Caster Semenya, who smoked the field in the women's 800.

One interesting side point is that I remember all too well when South Africa was banned from international competition due to apartheid, so that white Zola Budd had to run for the UK (she had a British grandfather) and black Sydney Maree had to run for the US after being here long enough to get US citizenship. Maree was being punished for what the powers that be were doing to keep him and other folks of color disenfranchised.

Now, the issue isn't apartheid, but whether Caster has a Y chromosome kicking around. She looks rather manly for a woman, but seems to have the proper equipment for a woman.

However, there are some folks who, due to some hormonal mess-ups in the womb, are genetically male but have a female anatomy save a lack of a uterus and ovaries. Such a person would look female, but would test as male if you checked their DNA. However, when you are dealing with Third-world medicine where DNA checks aren't part of the health care package, it would be likely that such a person wouldn't be noticed as abnormal until later in life, if at all.

It doesn't appear that this is a fraud case like some athletic versions of Tootsie that happened before sex testing was started in the 1960s; dad claims that she's all girl. It could be that she's just an outlier with a lot of muscle; with 3 billion women out there, a few might be honest Amazons.

$0.90/Ounce of Meat

I'm batching it this weekend while Eileen is off on a retreat, so I hit McDonalds on the way home; I was in possession of a free-fries-and-drink coupon if I gave one of their Angus third-pounders a try. I wouldn't buy them without the inducement, since they run $3.99 apiece, compared with $2.79 for their quarter-pound burgers like the Big Mac.  However, with the coupon, it becomes a $4 value meal, better than their package deals for the Quarter Pounder or Le Mac Grande.

A third-pound sounds more impressive than a quarter-pound, but it's only 1.33 ounces more. So, you're paying $1.20 for an extra ounce and a third of meat; $0.90/oz is what that factors out to. That's a pricey piece of dead mammal flesh.

It was a good burger, better than their other offerings, but not $3.99 good. It reminds me of the old Martin Mull hotel ad, where he goes around adding up the amenities of a fancier joint, leaving him with a (IIRC) $20 difference remaining between the fancy joint and his employer's digs before checking out the mint on the pillow.

"Good mint. It's not worth $20, but it's good."

[Correction-It was a $27 mint per this page.]

That Angus was good. Not worth $4, but it was good.

There is a penchant for having the biggest, baddest item; you either make it larger or hotter (e.g. Taco Bell's volcano meme or BK's Angry Whopper) or more loaded with extras. Enough guys have patty envy and want the biggest thing on the menu; the problem with that it that it creates a full employment policy for cardiologists and helps to sell anti-cholesterol drugs to fight the after-effects of those heart-attacks-on-a-bun.

Faculty Center Humor

The knee-replacement surgeon asked "What's a nice joint like you doing in a guy like this?"

_____________

Overheard in the math teacher's lounge.

"What's the square route of -1 divided by the square root of 64?"
" i over 8."
"Well, don't go back for seconds next time."

Sunday Musings

Eileen's down in Tennessee helping her folks move up from Texas, so I've been "batching it" this weekend; I'm still getting over a drive reminiscent of my job-hunting trips down to Florida, where we left Lexington about 7AM Friday and hooked up with her folks in Shreveport about 8PM Central time Friday. That way, with her dad driving the U-Haul and her mom driving the van, they'd have a relief driver, especially with her dad having some health issues.

Me, I did a 180 and headed right back to Lexington, taking a hour nap west of Nashville and getting back here about 11AM yesterday. I ran herd over the 2YOs (mostly 3YOs who will be promoted next month, but officially 2YOs) at church without her, trying to apply love-your-neighbor-as-yourself to "I had it first" selfishness. One girl suffered through another boys lack of sharing with a doll house, then pulled the same "Mine!" trick on a second boy when he was looking to share; that's not how you love your neighbor, little one.

__________

When I was starting my trip on Friday, we have Ana and Bill already formed in the Atlantic and a third area that they were watching near the Bahamas. However, when I looked at the southern radar, I saw a fourth area near the crook of the Florida panhandle that NOAA wasn't listing; it has now become TS Claudette. Ana looks like trouble for Haiti; even though it isn't all that strong, a rainmaker won't help the landslide-prone hillsides. Bill is expected to get well into hurricane status and could be trouble for a large swath of the east coast of the US (and even Canada) depending on how it hooks to the north.

Claudette doesn't look like it will pack too much of a punch, but central Tennessee is a notch closer to the Gulf action that central Kentucky and Claudette or her remnants may be paying my in-laws a visit on Tuesday. Ironically, when my in-laws moved to metro Houston, they arrived to the aftermath of Hurricane Alicia; now, Claudette may greet them in Tennessee.

______________

I don't have a good link for this, but the University of Louisville has been running a series of "UL...and proud of it" billboards facing the outer loop of New Circle Road (KY-4, the main beltway in Lexington); pundit Howard Fineman and Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli have graced the board in the recent past, while it currently has a pack of recent Fullbright Scholars.

That's just waiting for a Rick Patino parody, although keeping it to PG is hard. The radio ad would have some scraping of chairs and bedroom sounds followed by "UL and proud of it."

Here's part of Mark Story's take on the issue from Friday's Herald Leader-

It is a dreary fact of life that college sports crowds, especially student sections, get ruder and cruder with each passing year.

The tawdry aspects of Pitino's "indiscretion" — sex with a stranger in a restaurant after closing time; a secret meeting allegedly discussing an abortion after Sypher claimed she was pregnant — are apt to be prime fodder on road trips.

You can almost hear the elongated chants of "Karrrenn Syphhhher" when Louisville takes the floor. You can't help but wonder what objects will be hitting the court when Pitino is introduced.

For a coach who has always had a case of rabbit ears when it comes to the peanut gallery, it is going to be hellish.

The other interesting thing for Pitino is that the Big East has a strong Catholic presence. Nine of the conference's basketball teams are from Catholic schools and UL will visit four of them this season per Story's story. Even though a lot of those schools are theologically left-of-center like the Jesuit-run Marquette and Georgetown, the abortion part won't sit will; thankfully, they'll try to keep their students to keep the razzing G-rated.

I'd be more worried about the secular schools like Pitt or UConn; there, the students will be more than willing to dwell upon what Story calls "the tawdry aspects." It might be best to put the audio feed on a seven-second delay on those games.

WTMI in Louisville

Would you want your kid playing for Rick Pitino after this episode? After-hours sex at a restaurant followed by financing an abortion followed by an extortion attempt by the gal. That sounds like a Law and Order SVU episode except that the gal didn't wind up dead. I could see SVU do a rip-and-read of this case where she does wind up at ambient temperature and figure out who offed her; the coach, the AD, the husband or someone out of left field.

That's Way Too Much Information. As the cowboys in the Clydesdale football ads would say "Didn't need to see that." "Nope."

My God, They're Running as Christians

This Eric Groski AP piece just about yanked my chatty-ring out of its socket; here a long version of it via Fox and a short-version that was above-the-fold front page in today's Lexington Herald Leader. It focuses on "evangelical Christianity's abstinence culture" and a plug for marrying younger.

Why evangelicals? Last I checked, Christianity as a whole generally discourages sex outside of marriage, as do most major religions; Islam makes the Baptists look like swinging singles on that front. If you want to focus on a "abstinence culture," you might want to check out the other side of the Tiber and the Latin Rite's celibate priesthood.

What catches the secular eye is that evangelicals tend to be more conter-cultural and want to follow traditional Christian doctrine more closely; it's sexual issues that get the media's attention. A five-part sermon series on what Jesus accomplished on the cross won't get attention in the press, but a sermon on marriage will.

On that front, the church is just being the church. Is there too much emphasis on sexual purity in the church, especially in youth ministry? Possibly, but as pop culture gets courser on the issue, churches often feel the need to work harder against its effects.

People are often surprised when people actually take their church's teachings seriously. For instance, the media often is surprised when the Pope actually sticks to church teaching; it shouldn't, especially when the current Pope Benedict was head of the church's doctrine department before becoming pope.

I'm reminded of the story of Barry Goldwater's 1964 convention speech. Pundits were expecting the libertarian firebrand to lean to the center, but he stayed hard right in his speech, prompting one to utter-"My god, he's running as Goldwater!"

So, don't be surprised by this; it's evangelicals running as evangelical Christians who take their faith seriously. Plugging sexual purity might not be the highest doctrinal priority, but it is one area where culture is pushing in the wrong direction and extra effort might be needed to plug that spiritual dike.

Have Mercy

Somebody Googled in looking for [Christian Rock Crash Indiana]. I didn't have anything at the time, but hopped onto the Indianapolis Star's site.

It involved the bus of Mercy Me, who's I Can Only Imagine became one of the few CCM songs to get secular adult-contemporary airplay a few years back; they continue to be CCM staples. Someone tried to turn left as the bus was going through a green light early this morning after a Fort Wayne concert, and two of the left-turning car's passengers were killed. Here is a good touch from the AP

Two passengers in the car, a male and female, were pronounced dead. Driver Kara Klinker, 18, of Fort Wayne, was in her third trimester of pregnancy and the baby died. Klinker was hospitalized Saturday in critical condition, Thomas said.

At least they called it a baby rather than a fetus, as many reporters are wont to do with an unborn.

From the reports, it appears that the bus driver was not at fault, but nonetheless, the band is shaken up and canceled a concert today in St. Louis.

Young Ms. Klinker could use some prayers. She lost two friends, her baby and may have some serious charges looking at her from that accident, if she survives.

[Update 8/12-Kara didn't make it; she died Tuesday. Get Religion covered the baby angle in the AP piece; interestingly, the Ft. Wayne Journal Gazette piece on Kara's death went with fetus, but the headline was "Crash with band bus claims fourth victim." Maybe the headline writer had a different opinion.]

You Mean "'No', 'No Way' and 'Hell, No!'" Aren't Diverse Answers?

Here's an interesting passage at the end of a Sally Jenkins piece on the South and George Voinovich's RINOey dissing of southern control of the GOP. I'm adding italics on the line that caught my attention-

Voinovich's view of Southerners is the one that is unrepresentative and regionally isolated. He ignores the fluidity of American society, that great river of movement that brought the blues from the Delta to Detroit and Cleveland, and back again. If his party has a problem, maybe he should blame Republicans' lack of a broad spectrum of answers. Perhaps the problem lies less in Dixie than in the fact that an Ohioan who is the ranking Republican on a Senate transportation and infrastructure subcommittee doesn't seem aware of these basic interchanges and currents in American life.

Part of the nature of conservatism is that it generally doesn't want government to do much. For instance, there are a number of ways of doing health care policy from the left. You can make people buy insurance, you can make employers buy insurance, or you can provide it to everyone in a single-payer plan. On the Republican side, other than free-market based ideas like health insurance plans, the Republicans have any answer you want as long as it's "no."

There are a number of ways that government can try to solve a problem, but only one way to not try to solve it. There are multiple ways to do birth control but one way to do abstinence. There are multiple ways to fight CO2 emissions but one way to ignore the issue.

There are some policy areas where, as Joshua put it in War Games, "the only winning move is not to play." Unlike DL Moody's quip on evangelism, we might like the way the our government doesn't do something better than the other guy's government does do something.

That's not going to sound sexy inside the beltway, but sometimes "No" is the best answer.

Friday Bullets

• Sotomayor got through the Senate as expected, 68-31 with Ted Kennedy a no-show. Nine Republicans crossed the aisle on the vote, with Kit Bond the biggest head-scratcher. Most of the others were RINOey (Lugar, Snowe, Collins, Voinivich, Lamar!) Hispanic (Martinez) or non-confrontational (Gregg and Graham; Gregg thought about a Commerce Secretary spot before realizing that being on the Obama team was more than he could swallow and Graham is a moderate on judicial picks).
• With the August recess among us, the Republic is once again safe for the moment. Members of Congress will get an earful about the health care package, much of which Democrats may not want to hear. Stories of members of the lower chamber ducking their constituents have become common. We're repeating 1993 and Hillarycare, and as the old saw goes, when history repeats itself, it does so as a farce the second time.
• Speaking of history repeating itself, we have Ben Wallace signing up for a second stint with the Pistons. In three years, Big Ben goes from getting a near-max contract with Chicago to league min. He might be past his freshness date, but he still can do his thing under the boards.
• Here's a new way to get turf toe. That'll teach you to desecrate the Big House like that.
• I hit two-score and eight on Wednesday, and was touched by my FIN 354 students bringing a birthday cake to our Wed. night class. I pulled the old Sally Field line "You like me, you really like me."

Hair of the Dog that Bit You

Politicians can often get into trouble for badly-chosen words, like Steve Largent's use of an unabbreviated BS sullying a solid Christan image in his OK governor's run to George Allen's death-by-YouTube macaca incident.

We've got a miniature version of that here in Kentucky, where a summer political tradition, the Fancy Farm picnic, went on this weekend. Political junkies converge for good food and speeches from whoever's running for office in the next election. State AG Jack Conway might have been invoking the chorus of Nazareth's Hair of the Dog in his speech; I bowdlerized the offending line, putting the common acronym in brackets.

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jack Conway misquoted former U.S. Sen. Wendell Ford when he uttered a profanity at last weekend’s Fancy Farm political picnic.

Mark Riddle, Conway’s campaign consultant, acknowledged the misquote Tuesday and said Conway had apologized to Ford and Fancy Farm officials.

Riddle had declined to discuss the Ford issue Monday with the Lexington Herald-Leader after Conway, the state’s attorney general, reversed himself and apologized for using profanity in his speech at the picnic sponsored by St. Jerome Catholic Church in Graves County.

Conway said in his speech on Saturday that he had a tough hide and was “one tough [SOB].” He said Ford had used the same line, though Ford actually had said “one tough son of a gun.”

Kim Geveden, a campaign consultant for Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo, Conway’s chief opponent in the May 2010 Democratic primary election, said Tuesday that Conway’s “attempt to drag Wendell Ford into the gutter with him to defend his inexcusable conduct should appall all Kentucky Democrats.”

You have a generation gap between Conway and Ford, two to be exact, since Conway just turned 40 and Ford is 84. A WWII vet wouldn't use SOB in polite company, especially on a church grounds. He may well have used it in private (I don't know how earthy his vocabulary is in private), but not on the stump to be sure.

"Son of a gun" was often used as a polite version of SOB; I'm reminded of Roger Miller's Dang Me where he has a bon mot of "My pappy's a pistol, I'm a son of a gun." I always thought he said mother rather than pappy for some reason.

It may not have too much effect, but there is a meme brewing of a rural-city divide, with Mongiardo, who's from eastern KY coal country, playing Conway as a tree-hugging city slicker who doesn't understand rural Kentucky. This won't help Conway with more centrist Democrats who might prefer quoting a son-of-a-gun than Guns n' Roses (note-link not work-friendly).

Madam People Power, RIP

Former Filipino president Cory Aquino died early this morning, losing a fight with colon cancer. Time does fly; it's been 23 years when the People Power movement kept Marcos from stealing the 1986 presidential election.

It's hard to tell how much influence that event had on world history. You can see echos of that in the Czech Velvet Revolution and the Ukrainian Orange Revolution, with the latter having the strongest echos of the people insisting that an election not be stolen from their choice. The Filipinos showed that the good guys can win if they have enough support an a little luck; key generals opted to support Aquino, making it harder for Marcos to pull martial law off.

Of course, the bad guys don't always lose scuffles with the people. The Tiananmen Square Massacre is one case where the powers that be held sway (coming only three years later, it would have been fresh in the protestors' memories), and Zimbabwe is another. Iran is looking like yet another where the official losers in an election went to the streets in protest but the powers that be got to "steal it fair and square."

Another factoid from the obit was that Aquino was "Asia's first female president." It turns out to be true; there were lady prime minsters before her (Indira Gandhi and Golda Mier) in Asia, but no presidents.