Mark Byron

The Inverse of Envy

Schadenfreude is the inverse of envy. Envy is being sad at other people's good fortune, while schadenfreude is being happy at other people's bad fortune. Envy is covered in the Ten Commandments, but schadenfreude isn't as well spelled out.

I found this piece on TrueHoop on Dwayne Wade's shopping habits-

"So how does Wade put his looks together? With the help of his stylist, Calyann Barnett. Barnett's star client loves getting dressed but hates shopping—he can't exactly roll up to the Miami Bloomingdale's—so she sends photos to his iPad and fills up his new 800-square-foot closet."

I've had apartments not much bigger than that closet. Yet, it's his money. Envy isn't healthy, you know.

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Eugene Robinson raised my blood pressure a few points just now for a nice case of bearing false witness against the political right-

The hard-right conservatives who dominate the Republican Party claim to despise the redistribution of wealth, but secretly they love it -- as long as the process involves depriving the poor and middle class to benefit the rich, not the other way around.

Few people want to see poor people suffer. There is no joy in other people's poverty or suffering. Mind you, there are likely a few that don't have much compassion for the poor, but they don't look to change government policy in order to deliberately screw with the poor.

We have a mix of government helping the needy and a market economy providing the lion share of the jobs and productivity. If the economy is working properly, there is a smaller amount of help needed from government; folks on the right argue for a bit less safety net and more room for private-sector productivity to meet people's needs without needing a handout or handup from Uncle Sam.

Yes, we've seen income inequality rise. Part of that rise is the growth of information technology that has allowed intellectual human capital to be leveraged more than it has leveraged physical human capital; thinkers are making more than stuff-makers. Another part is a flattened tax code that lets people keep more of their money than in years past.

What needs to be done is to not deal with income inequality but the struggles of the people at the bottom of the ladder. It doesn't help the poor to bash the rich. Taking away D-Wade's drive-in closet doesn't make me any better off. Greasing the upper rungs of the ladder doesn't help the people on the lower rungs to climb; in fact, it makes it harder, since the people falling off from the top can take others down with them.

We can help the needy by bribing companies to employ them with subsidies, or send them to school to try and upgrade their skills. We can also try to do so by letting business have a lower cost of capital, so they can hire the workers to run expanding businesses. A blend of government help that doesn't slow the private sector to a crawl isn't designed to be sadistic to the poor; it's designed to make everyone less poor on the whole.

We do need a good hunk of government help to the needy. I've been on the receiving end of subsidized COBRA health coverage and unemployment insurance checks after getting let go from my teaching job almost two years ago, so I'm far from the 1% the Occupiers rail against. That being said, I'd be better off in a thriving economy where I wouldn't need the help, and bigger government, while doing some good with the money, tends to slow up the private sector with higher taxes and regulations.

 

God Calls The Shots.. and Calls a Shot?

I missed last night's wild Game 6, where St Louis rallied back twice to win a wild 10-9 game to force a game seven tonight. That was despite Ranger slugger Josh Hamilton, a devout Christan and recovering substance abuser, getting what they'd call a word of knowledge in some of my old churches as he got up in the 10th.

"He told me, 'You haven't hit one in a while, and this is the time you're going to,' " said Hamilton, who had gone 65 at-bats in the postseason without a home run. "You know what? I probably had the most relaxed, peaceful at-bat I've had of the whole series at that moment. It's pretty cool. You ought to try it sometime."

As Hamilton recalled the sequence of events in the Texas clubhouse after Game 6, he ruefully took note of the missing piece in the discussion: God promised him a four-bagger, but made no mention of the Rangers' bullpen collapse or Freese's game-tying triple in the ninth inning and game-winning homer in the 11th.

"There was a period at the end of [the sentence]," Hamilton said. "He didn't say, 'You're going to hit it and you're going to win.' "

That reminds me a bit of the old Monte Clark story, where he was praying for a winning field goal that missed; when he was asked whether his prayer wasn't answered, he said it was answered, but the answer was "no." Here, there was divine guidance (I'll take Hamilton at face value), but not to the point of a win.

Occasionally God does sweat the details. How many strings He pulls in the process is an open question. As a Lion's fan, I wouldn't mind if He let Tim Tebow fend for himself on Sunday and not pull off a improbable rally again.

Too Clean for Disney

Here's an interesting story of the new film The Mighty Macs; it covers the prime of a small Catholic college, Immaculata, which became national woman's basketball champs in the early 70s. In the pre-Title IX era, a lot of small schools became woman's basketball powers, (Delta State comes to mind as another example) since few places were taking it seriously.

This film has been on my radar for a while; since Eileen is a big Bones fan, she's been following it due to David Boreanaz planing the coach's husband. That creates an interesting symmetry, since his Bones co-star Emily Deschanel played coach Don Haskins' wife in Glory Road, covering the story of Haskins' all-black UTEP (ne Texas Western) starting five beating an all-white UK team in the 1966 title game.

The interesting thing is that the film comes in at G. Not PG, G. When's the last mainstream adult movie that came it at G, other than the Christian-crossover features flowing from the Facing the Giants/Courageous crew?

The movie was first shown in 2009 at Indianapolis's Heartland Film Festival but took some time to land a national distributor. Disney was interested but wanted to add a few mild swears to bump it from a G to a PG rating. Writer-director Tim Chambers said heck no, so had to find a different distributor.

That says a lot for the modern film industry, which Disney is part of. They missed out on having a lot of neat ESPN tie-ins in order to not look too prissy.

 

Alternative Maximum Taxes and Other Campaign Novelties

The Republican race is getting interesting, but in some not-so-good ways.

• We're seeing Rick Perry turn into a neo-Birther in order to get some press; getting complements from Donald Trump is a bad sign.
• Perry's flat tax seems the worst of both worlds. It lets the well-off pay at 20% if that's better than what they get with the current code; call it an Alternative Maximum Tax. One of the advantages of most flat-tax proposals is that they gut all the deductions and credit that keep K Street busy; this doesn't shut those down at all. K Street stays put and the lion share of the help skews way upscale, other than some families who could take advantage of a bigger zero bracket.
• Herman Cain is my tentative pick at the moment, but the man is arrogant. Not that he's not the first presidential candidate with a healthy ego, he seems to carry his lack of knowledge in corners of policy as a badge of honor. I don't have the name of the Uzbekistani president committed to memory, either, but I don't take pride in that.
• When he's being himself and not being desperate, Rick Santorum is a good guy. He was acquitting himself on Fox News rather well this morning while I was in the doctor's office. Put him in a debate setting, and he starts swinging below the belt in order to try and make points; it doesn't become him.
• Santorum is banking on doing well in Iowa to give him a springboard. He's going to have to fight Michelle Bachmann for the social conservative vote; Cain's conflicting statements on abortion, pro-life to the max here, strong libertarian streak there, will give Santorum some wiggle-room in Iowa.
• However, they will have to cross what the Red State folks have christened the Pauldoza line; coming in third ahead of Ron Paul will give them bragging rights for going forward as an alternative to Cain and Romney. That's a bit of a pipe dream at present, since both are well under the Pauldoza line in Iowa.
• Newt is slowly gaining traction. He's just under the Pauldoza line (11%-10%) and could be a lot of caucus goers' second choice; expect him to do better in delegate count than in popular vote, as 15% is the cutoff for getting delegates if memory serves, and he could be a landing spot for less-popular candidate's fans.
• If Newt does break pass the Pauldoza line in Iowa and comes in third, he's in position to walk away with it all if one of the two leaders (most likely Cain) melts down.
• I don't see Perry recovering to get the nomination. He can be effective as a spoiler in dragging down Romney, but negative ads in a multi-player race don't always work as planned, as if B trashes A, the would-be A voter can vote for C or D instead.
• This is one of the more interesting primary seasons in recent memory

I Want a New Drug

I've been walking wounded (or sittlng-in-comfy-chair wounded) for almost two weeks with a sinus infection that morphed into bronchitis. Early on, I took a week's worth of amoxicillin, the most common antibiotic; it was somewhat bootleg, left over from a family member who fought off an infection quickly and left the lion share of their dose for the next person to get a bug.

Needless to say, it didn't work. That means it was either a viral infection (which doctors can't do much about save treating symptoms) or a Moxy-resistant bacteria. I figured the former until today, when my bronchitis got bad enough to get into my allergist, who doubles as a GP for his allergy patients.

Turns out it was the latter. Moxy has the advantage of being cheap; some places (like the Meijer chain here in the Great Lakes region) will give it away as a loss leader. However, that means that critters have had a chance to develop a tolerance for it; according to my allergist, it only works on about half of modern-day bacterial infections. Bringing out the heavy artillery from the get go might be more expensive, but it heads off a second trip to the doctor when Moxy doesn't hunt and be a better buy over the long haul.

We'll see if the better drugs work.

It's Called Fundimental Analysis, My Dear Watson

Here's an interesting piece on how web searches for a company increase just before trading in that stock spikes. That should be a no-brainer; if a stock is being researched, some folks will look to buy or sell based on what they're finding out and the research will likely be a leading indicator of activity.

However, that seems to skip past the folks at MIT-

That's surprising because Cristelli and co say that most webusers check each stock of interest just once per month. This implies that they are not expert traders. So the effect emerges from the collective but uncoordinated activity of many inexpert users--a kind of wisdom crowds.

Checking one a month might be a fair pattern for a stock that is either in your portfolio or is being tracked for possible purchase, but expert traders might well do research into a stock before trading; if something came up on their radar via any variety of screening tools, they might go on the Web to see what is making the company tick.

Note that this just tracks trading activity. It doesn't say that the stock will go up or down, just that extra shares will be traded.

Three-line Whips With a Wet Noodle

So much for three-line whips. The British Tories made voting against a referendum on the EU a party-line vote, but 80 members voted for it anyway. Often times, people bucking the party leadership can be kicked out of caucus or at least not asked to run again next time; however, when you have that large of a block giving the party leader the middle-digit salute, you might not be in position to kick everyone out at once.

The Conservatives would not have a majority were the Euroskeptic block to bolt; the Conservatives need the Liberal Democrats to prop up the government, and the 80-seat faction is bigger than the LDs. Thus, that three-line whip might be something of an empty threat, unless PM Cameron wants a new election over the issue.

The most interesting thing is that the powers that be are ignoring public sentiment against the EU. They don't want a vote on the issue because they would lose. Rarely has the public signed off on creating a stronger Europe in any country where it went to a direct vote; however, most of the votes have been legislative, where the moneyed interests can lobby more effectively.

Race to the Bottom or Suck for Luck

I haven't seen a prospective first pick in the next draft get the attention that Andrew Luck is getting this year in quite a while. LeBron James comes to mind, but the basketball lottery makes it hard for a team to tank for a particular player, since even the boobie prize in the NBA was only a 25% shot of drawing the first ball. In football, the worst shall be first, very Biblical and also very tempting to tank once your playoff hopes have been hosed.

The year Ralph Sampson was coming out of UVA was the closest to the tank-fest talk we have today. If I recall correctly, it was the teams at the bottom of the NBA that year filling their ballast tanks, sounding the klaxon and going "Dive, dive dive!" (as a piece from that era went) that gave us the modern NBA lottery, assume we even have an NBA going forward.

Meanwhile, in a battle of cellar-dwellers, we have Tim Tebow making his 2011 starting debut in Miami for the Broncos; there may be more Tebow fans from his UF days than Dolphin fans, or at least enough divided loyalties this side of West Palm Beach.

Friday Musings

Here's an interesting piece of archaeology; they have a rather old spear-point discovered in Washington State that carbon-dates to 17K years ago, a few thousand more than the Clovis finds. Once again, we have science unsettled with some new information.

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We've got bones of a slightly more recent vintage in da coolah....

Col Gaddafi's body is lying in a meat storage room in Misrata. Oil Minister Ali Tarhouni told Reuters news agency it would not be released for immediate burial.

"I told them to keep it in the freezer for a few days... to make sure that everybody knows he is dead," he said.

I know this isn't nice, but I could picture taking a page out of Rocky's meat locker scene and letting him be used as a heavy bag. No, even he deserves better than that.

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The Eurozone, putting the raunch into tranche.

Eurozone finance ministers have approved the next tranche of Greek bailout loans, potentially saving the country from a disastrous default.

And if you believe that, I have a bridge in Michigan I can sell you cheap.

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You'd be a better owner than the MoronsMorouns that currently own the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor. Their fact-twisting ad campaign against a proposed new bridge a few miles south has helped shoot the plan down in the Michigan Senate. Canada is supposed to pick up the tab for any budget shortfalls, so the fears of Michigan getting stuck with the tab is well overblown.

The Morouns don't like the planned bridge because it will take traffic away from their rather cramped facility; they'd like a second bridge right next to the existing one, but the footprint for customs and other related facilities isn't quite there. In addition, the new bridge would have a direct highway bypass to the 401 expressway to Toronto, rather than having trucks go through Windsor streets to get to 401.

However, the ad campaign has been nasty-effective, and the pro-bridge forces have not spent money on ads backing up their side of the debate.

 

 

ETA and Something Moor Both Go Out of Business

This might get lost in the noting/celebrating of the demise of Gaddafi; the Basque terror group ETA is hanging it up, opting to take the example of the IRA and become part of Spanish politics peacefully.

That should help Spain quite a bit, for the fear of terrorism will go down. There will still be the stray Islamic terror, but homegrown terror will decrease. If the lessons in Northern Ireland are any indication, there will still be a few ETA hard cases who want to keep at it, but they can morph into something like Sinn Fein or the Scottish and Welch nationalist parties.

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Meanwhile, Gaddafi went out feet first as promised. A trial might have been better, as this Globe and Mail piece notes, but there is a sense of closure in a corpse.

The death of Gaddafi (how may variant spellings do we have for him?) should allow Libya to move on towards a more democratic government. There is a power vacuum here, as the old regime was a one-man show. Also, tribalism can be a factor, so we could see a decentralized government with a lot of local autonomy.

The one big fear for a lot of folks is that Islamists will try to fill that vacuum. They aren't a majority, but a violent minority can often get their way.

Purple Days

They're having an anti-gay-bullying "pride day" tomorrow, with purple being the color of support.

That puts me at loggerheads. How do you be anti-anti-gay without being pro-gay?

As someone who was on the wrong side of bullying as a kid, I sympathize with anyone who's being picked on. As a sensitive kid (and smart and the tallest kid in class, so a triple outlier), I got hit with those anti-homosexual pejoratives, but anyone who wasn't properly macho got those; we didn't have young people who were "out" back in the early-mid 70s, at least not where I lived.

Regardless of what someone is or does, they don't deserve to be picked on. The Golden Rule makes that loud and clear, so anyone making a gay teen's life miserable for no good reason is not on God's side.

As a Christian, I'm not a fan of Islam. It's a flawed religion that sees Jesus as merely a prophet rather than a subset of God. However, that doesn't mean I would go up to the pair of Muslim-looking girls at Midland High who leave about the time Eileen does when she subs there that need to chuck those veils or go back to Pakistan. They'd likely get far worse invective that I feel comfortable typing here, but such stuff is sinful, plain and simple.

As a Christian, I take what is written about homosexuality in the Bible at face value. That being said, that doesn't mean I have free rein to tease and be mean to a gay classmate. It's not going to help them draw closer to God to let loose with a homophobic nastygram.

The problem (for me) in the anti-gay-bashing/bullying crusade is that bullying is wrong, period. Whether a kid is getting picked on for being the "wrong" race or the "wrong" size or the "wrong" orientation, teasing and bullying is wrong.

You can be against bullying without approving of the aspect of a person getting picked on. Thus, people like me are in a box, wanting to encourage kids and not have them teased into depression and often suicide, but also not wanting to encourage improper behavior in the process.

 

Midweek Musings

I've been largely out of commission with a sinus infection the last few days, so let me get back to putting some thoughts "on paper."

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I watched a bit of the debate last night, but my spirit doesn't quite handle the bile that goes back and forth between the candidates. And these are the guys who agree with each other on about 90% of the issues in play...well, save Ron Paul, who doesn't agree with anyone too often. Circular firing squad.

The pundits don't seem to get Herman Cain. He's neck-and-neck with Romney in the polls with Perry a distant third (or even fourth behind Newt in some polls) My drinking game is to take a slug every time a pundit wants to make it a Romney-Perry race, like Cain is a rabbit in a track meet mile.

Yes, there would be some funky changes if 999 was adopted, especially the sales tax; not that conservatives would love using Canada as an example, but they have a national sales tax that functions fairly well. Some provinces have even moved to make a joint federal-provincial "harmonized" sales tax that covers the same set of products. One could see many states doing some sort of HST if 999 or something close to it went thorugh.

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Has there ever been a more dissed quarterback than Rex Grossman? At both Chicago and Washington, the pundits were asking for his head the day he started. He at least got the Bears to the Super Bowl.

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The US is going after the Lord's Resistance Army, which is an armed cult in east Africa, sending 100 advisers to Uganda and neighboring countries with the blessing of those government. About time; this is one that shouldn't have too many naysayers on either side of the aisle, for there is little to like about this demonic group that literally takes the Lord's name in vain.

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One of the interesting stories of the college season so far is Tyrann Mathieu, aka The Honey Badger, a CB who has scored four times (IIRC) on takeways. Here's the PG-13 viral video that the nickname comes from; I hadn't seen that or heard of that prior to it being applied to Mathieu.

Well, Honey Badger won't take what he wants this week-he's been suspended.

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Speaking of suspensions, it looks like Brendan Shannahan has taken to his job as the NHL's suspension-meister. He's been backing up his decisions with videos describing why the suspensions are merited and has yet to be overruled on appeal. As a hard-nosed forward (not quite an enforcer, but not bashfull either) as a player, he seems to be nearly ideal for the job, for he's not going to get called a wuss to his face.

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The Tigers had a good year, coming up short over the weekend to the Rangers. They seem to be in good shape to be regulars in the post-season, with their only glaring holes being at second and third base. The salary room that Carlos Guillen and Maglio Ordonez's expiring contracts leave can easily finance free agent pickups in those slots (or trades for players soon to be free agents) during this year's Hot Stove League.

We're Gonna Need a Bigger East

Boise and Colorado Springs are in the East? Boise is closer to the Far East than the Big East, but in the ongoing game of musical conference chairs, the Big East is looking to reel in Boise State, Air Force and Navy as football-only schools and snag Central Florida as an all-sport school. If they can stem any further bleeding, that would put them at 12 football schools and open up a championship game.

Talk about big tents.

Disorganization Man

Here's a Conventional Wisdom-on-the-hoof Politico piece on the lack of political infrastructure in the Cain campaign. It almost seems like they got out the Palin-has-no-pros essays and applied them to Cain.

Do you need a big campaign infrastructure with state insiders in each key state? Only if you think it helps; if you're running an insurgent outsider campaign, the insiders aren't easily interested and get in the way if they were. Also, it's veteran insiders who are in the reporter's Rolodex for such pieces, so such pieces have pro-insider slant to them.

In states like Iowa, where caucuses last all night and people will need to be strongly nudged to the caucus sites, having local organization is needed. But in a social media era, a string of Tea Party contacts could organically generate a network in short order.

In primary states, where only a garden-variety 10-minute trip to the polls is needed, you might not need as much infrastructure. Getting the message out might be all that is needed.

Cain's already in a novel setting, where he's the first person to be a serious presidential candidate who'd never held a elected position since Ike. His campaign might prove to be both unorthodox but effective, since the pros that are giving advice in the piece would have given him a snowball's chance of getting here in the first place.

Mecca for Post-Moderns

I recall the end of a current ad where the head of the household is in the process of eating his daughter's goldfish as sushi. When the fishies turn up AWOL, the dad says "whadya gonna do?"

We're much in the same predicament as the tweenager in the ad with Iran right now. There isn't a lot that can be done about the attempted assassination attempt on the Saudi ambassador. Any diplomatic solution by the US seems trite and any military solution seems overkill.

The best solution might come from the Saudis themselves. They have something that Iranians are keenly interested in... Mecca. Were the Saudis to declare the Haj off limits to Iranians, it would get the Iranian's attention in a hurry. It would inflame Sunni-Shia relations in hot spots like Iraq and Lebanon and possibly result in at least one civil war breaking out or resuming.

There are a lot of interesting sub-plots here if this isn't just an Amateur Night sting of a Iranian would-be spy. If the Iranians were actually thinking of recruiting the Zetas as hit men, it might start a major US intervention in Mexico, as the drug war and the "War on Terror" get a quick and dirty merger.

The Zetas are likely smarter than that; being caught helping the Iranians would make them Public Enemy #1 in the US and bring a US response that would militarize northern Mexico beyond the flawed run at Villa in the 1910s. Thankfully for them, it was a US agent posing as a Zeta.

To the Nines

Now that Herman Cain is in the lead pack in the presidential race, even  leading one recent poll, his 999 plan is getting a major roasting. He's proposing getting rid of all social security taxes and going with a 9% personal income tax rate, a 9% corporate tax rate and a 9% national sales tax.

First of all, Congresswoman Bachmann's cheap shot at it being a flip away from 666 deserves to be called out as a false witness. Just because  6.66% is about where she is in the polls doesn't give her the right to call a serious proposal demonic.

Liberals won't like the plan since it doesn't let the tax the rich at higher rates, nor let them direct behavior via tax breaks. IRS-haters don't get the stake through Count Taxula's heart that they long for. However, it seems to be a viable halfway house between a 20% or so national sales tax as a full substitute and the status quo.

One major game that would wind up being played if we had a national sales tax is to figure out what would and would not be taxes, and synching up the state income taxes with the federal one. In Canada, they have tried doing a harmonized sales tax where their federal and provincial taxes are done on the same group of items, but such synching doesn't always go harmoniously, as the British Columbian government found out.

The numbers might not quite add up, if this analysis is correct. The 999 package comes up about 15% short of current revenue; that would mean that we might need to do 10.5-10.5-10.5 to get the numbers to work or play some Laffer and count on growth to get the numbers up in short order.

Such a plan would actually help the little guy, as they currently pay about 15% of their pay in FICA and Medicare taxes, when you count the amount employers kick in for their half of the tab. However, liberals would bemoan the lack of progressivity and a variety of K-streeters would see their deductions trimmed; clearing out K-Street is a big advantage of a flat tax with no exemptions.

Contenental Drift

Interesting story out of Slovakia, where a Greek bailout brought down the government. A libertarian party in the ruling right-of-center coalition balked, but the Social Democrat opposition agreed to pass the bill and approve new elections for March.

My question to the Peanut Gallery- how much do people in the EU feel European as opposed to their regular nationality? If there isn't a whole lot of common bond there, asking people to sacrifice for someone in the southeast corner of the continent might not go over well. In a post-Christian Europe, the Christian solidarity that might have been there in the past will be hard to call upon, so more secular ties, if any, would provide whatever cohesion there might be.

I know we have some EU denizens in the Peanut Gallery; it would be interesting to hear how European y'all feel, especially given the current fiscal mess.

Capital Reform?

I wound up watching a bit of a PBS documentary on the Mexican Revolution of the 1910s. One of the underlying themes at play was a stark split between the rich landed folks and the poor landless peasants. "Land reform" was the theme of the latter and their backers, trying to give the little guy access to land of his own rather than having the patrons have all the land and power.

Fast forward to the 2010s and a nascent leftist movement (or rebranding of an ongoing one) in the OWS crowd. Giving the little guy 40 acres and a John Deere tractor is unlikely to appease this crowd, for not everyone's looking to get back to the farm.

That makes taking power from the rich and giving it to the little guy problematic. We've gone from a largely agrarian economy to a goods-and-services economy. The land reform that would work in pre-industrial societies in the early 1900s doesn't fit the modern US. We've moved on to something... different.

When I was thumbing through the coverage of the Kentucky governor's race (despite the troubles of the Democrats nationally, Gov. Beshear is cruising to reelection) the platform of independent candidate Gatewood Galbraith proved interesting.

In his writings and speeches Galbraith goes into detail on what he calls “Synthetic Subversion”. This theory seeks to explain when, how and why America, specifically Kentucky, moved from an agricultural agrarian society into an industrial synthetic society. ... Up until the early 1930's, America and Kentucky relied solely on agriculture to fuel the economy. Galbraith explains that, out of necessity, Roosevelt's shifted America towards a more industrial (synthetic) society fueled by alliances with “Greedy Corporations.”

It's easy to run an agrarian culture without too many big companies, especially if you have the government do some of the larger-scale things like banking and railroads. However, it's hard to do a manufacturing economy without having corporations of some sort. For instance, Apple has been used as a counterpoint to the OWS crowd; you need the economies of size that a big company brings to get those wonderful toys to market at a price that the average person has a shot of affording.

If we can't do land reform, what can we do to help the little guy? The US stock market has about 16 trillion in market capitalization. If we took half of that and gave it to the population at large, each person would get $27,000 worth of stock. A nice sum, but not enough to make people set for life. Also, such a operation would not make corporations less greedy; stockholders are still primarily looking to make money off of their investments.

The answer isn't giving the wealth to the "99%." If corporate greed is your bugaboo, you need to ditch the corporation altogether. That will mean government control of industry if something needs a larger scope than mom-and-pop proprietorships can handle.

Sunday Night Meanderings

Here's someone at the WaPo who doesn't quite get what the Church is in business for."On family planning, does the Catholic Church represent Catholics?" No, the Catholic Church represents God, or at least that's what they're shooting for. One could have a good debate on whether that stance on that is Godly or not, but the Catholic Church is a theocracy, not a democracy.

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CNN wants to play up the Mormon cult meme; everyone else has let it rest. They've played the moderate evangelical going against type card in getting Fuller's Richard Mouw to sign off on Mormons as fellow believers, or at least close enough to not write them off.

Mormons are heterodox in their view of God, Jesus, eternity and a number of other things. Even if they appreciate some orthodox Christian writers and has a scholarly streak, it doesn't make them orthodox Christians.

Some other thoughts on that front-

(1) The religious test clause doesn't apply to people's voting decisions. I'm free not to vote for Keith Ellison because he has Nation of Islam sympathies, but Congress is not free to bar him from taking office because he's a Muslim. Likewise, people can vote against Romney because they don't like Mormonism; it may not be right, but it is perfectly legal.

(2) Stating that Mormonism is heterodox isn't bigoted in it of itself. Refusing to vote for someone because of it leans in that direction.

(3) I'd rather have someone of another faith who would do a good job in a political office than a believer who is ill-suited for the job.

(4) There's very little in Mormon thought that would lead a follower's policy in a direction opposite of that of orthodox Christians. That's not to say that there aren't theological differences, but the nature of God being an evolved being rather than an unchanging I Am doesn't play out in tax policy or foreign policy.

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I liked what I heard of Terry Francona yesterday as he got to play color-man for the Detroit-Texas game. If he wants to get into broadcasting for a bit between managing gigs, he would seem to be a natural.

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Interesting piece on French politics and the rise of the National Front. They really aren't far right, they are nativist lefties. They're economics would be not far from the French socialists in their distrust of globalism and lean towards larger government. The only thing that isn't leftist is their distrust of foreigners. Jean LePen's daughter Marine is now in charge, and she might wind up being the next president if the she can beat out Sarkozy for second in the first round, then beat the Socialist nominee in the run-off.

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The OWS folks forced the closure of the Air and Space Museum yesterday when they tried to swarm it. It's ironic, for it is the exploits of government-bought aircraft and spacecraft that make up the most eye-catching part of the museum; it's one part of big US government conservatives would get positive about, yet our arch-lefties shut it down.

Facebook or Twitter Christian?

One of the bullet points from today's sermon at church was that God wants followers, not fans. For some reason, my mind made the connection to modern social media, where interested parties like things on Facebook and follow people on Twitter.

Were it that easy to follow God. If He could be boiled down to a handful of short messages a day sent electronically, He'd be easier to follow. On the good side, God isn't limited to 140 characters and can deliver things like grace and love that don't lend themselves to words and emoticons.

On the liking-God front, Jesus' post-resurrection conversation with Peter comes to mind, where Jesus asked if he agaped him and Peter answered that he phliosed him. As flawed humans, we fall short of giving agape, but we need to shoot for that.

Let's Play Smear the Aggie!

Here's some good news for Herman Cain; we're getting one more media body in the Perry pile-on. Last weekend it was the N-head hunting camp, and this one is a Perry-backing pastor going after Mormonism as a "cult."

That was bound to happen, given the disdain that folks in the deeper reaches of the Bible Belt think about ... er  ... heterodox offshoots of Christianity like the Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses ("Sorry, I can't be a Witness; I didn't see the accident"). In areas where the fundamentalism is particularly thick, even Catholics will get the cult label.

Such a news item is supposed to help Romney among more cosmopolitan folks, making Perry and his backers look like hicks not ready for the White House. However, I think that card has already been fairly well played, and this might just help push Perry out of the lead back, since the media is seemingly got into bashing Perry with Palin not in the race.

Lovely Day

Good news; the president's jobs bill withers in the Senate.

However, he still thinks it could head off a recession. Yes, by creating a depression in its place.

There is one prospect for a Jobs bill; the funeral home's tab for the Apple boss' cremation.

The Cross Trumps T-Rex

I had this Mark Shea post in the stories-to-blog folder for a few weeks. The headline is "Does Evolutionary Science Disprove the Faith?" As a good Catholic topologist, his view is no-"one can be a perfectly orthodox Catholic and affirm the doctrine of the Fall without having to believe that Genesis 3 is a newspaper account."

However, many if not most evangelicals would question the perfect orthodoxy of an old-earther. Even there, it should not disprove ones faith. Our faith, as best I understand it, is in God, not a particular interpretation of the Bible.

Jesus become incarnate, dying for our sins and rising again is where our salvation lies. That's something modern science can't take a whack at. Even if a young-earth six-day Genesis is called into question, it shouldn't disrupt one's grander faith in a risen Christ. Even if the days of Genesis are eras, Jesus still died for us and still is the great I Am.

 

A Tea Party Halloween

Not that I'm promoting trick-or-treating, but if you do go, might I suggest a Herman Cain mask; that way, you'll be dressed to the nines. Fair warning; it might be too scary for some of your liberal neighbors.

You may have to make your own, however, since I don't see one easily available.

Arbitrary Church Rules

I recall going to a church business meeting last year at Sunrise Baptist here in Midland where they were debating a clause in the church bylaws forbidding members from taking the church to court, requiring their favored Christian mediation serves as a replacement for such disputes. One one level, there is good scriptural standing for such an attitude; 1 Corinthians 6 calls for keeping disputes within the church.

However, some of the rationale for such rules stems from the deep pockets many big churches have. When Sunrise was renting a small church building in the older section of town at the turn of the millennium and not having the money to pay a full-time pastor, there would be little for a litigious member to sue for. Fast forward a decade, and they have a nice newer building bought off the Midland E-Free near-megachurch when they outgrew the 600-or-so seat building and built even bigger digs; now, they are more likely to feel the need to have such suit-stopping rules, since they have more assets to cover.

A similar issue is at the Supreme Court, where such an arbitration mandate is in play. A teacher at a Lutheran school in metro Detroit got let go after coming down with narcoleptic symptoms; she felt the need to press an disability-discrimination lawsuit, but her contract stated that any such issue needed to go to arbitration instead. The church wants the suit thrown out and the Obama team is backing the sleepy teacher in her right to sue, saying that any pastoral exemption shouldn't extend to school-teachers, even if such teachers do a lot of religious teaching as part of their job.

This is a toughy. On one hand, that Biblical mandate makes taking a church to court problematic. However, if the arbitration process is stacked against someone who was wronged by a church, there seems to be a miscarriage of justice that needs a judicial remedy. I don't know the winning percentage of churches in such settings, but there is often an assumption that the church elders are right and the plaintiff is wrong.

We're quick to want to keep Muslim internal law from getting into our courts, especially if the deck is stacked against women and children and for men; one of the more troubling parts of Herman Cain's rhetoric is his excessive fear of such sharia rules getting respected in US courts. However, if we want to go after Islamic legal infrastructure as unfair, would we also be on constitutional grounds to go after Christian legal infrastructure that may be unfair to some parties?

That's what the Supremes have to deal with. I have the feeling that there will be a lot of concurring opinions. Having to be nice to a gal with nap attacks wouldn't be a huge breech of Christian values; if anything, the school looks more like Pharisees at this point. Somehow, I don't see this one being 5-4 with Kennedy being the swing vote either way, since I could see this going anything from 7-2 for the teacher to 6-3 for the church.

Every Vote Matters

They're counting the votes in Ontario's provincial election, and it's a squeaker. The Globe and Mail count page has the ruling Liberals at 53 seats, the Conservatives at 37 and the NDP at 17. That leaves the Liberals just short of a majority.

It will be interesting to see the horse-trading that would go down if that result holds up. I remember 2005, when the national Liberals had to scratch together a majority and lured a RINOey Tory, Belinda Stronach, over to the Liberal side to fight off a no-confidence vote.

Who, if anyone, will be the Stronach of 2011? Wooing one person to cross the aisle would be easier than working out either a vote-by-vote deal like the Conservatives had to do on the national level or a full-blown coalition.

Hopaway Bride

TCU looks like it is changing its mind and is going to go to the Big 12 rather than the Big East. The Big East didn't make much sense other than as a way to get into an AQ conference; the Big 12 is in their back yard and TCU makes a good swap-out for A&M in a reconstituted South division. The Big East will get a $5M exit fee for a team that never played a game in it; there's a one-liner there, but I can't quite make it work.

The next problem is filling in the Big 12 North, which is down to four and may be down to three if Missouri jumps ship for the SEC. Louisville, West Virginia and BYU might be possibilities, as might Memphis and Cincinnati.

There might not be much left of the Big East once the dust settles. Sending Louisville, WV and Cincy to the Big 12 and UConn and Rutgers to the ACC would polish off all but South Florida from the Big East's football schools.

This looks like someone is playing a Sim NCAA game with real life.

Thursday Musings

Nixon had an enemies list, and so does Obama. At least Nixon's team only did character assassinations.

That being said, it isn't that bad of a thing, even as it blurs the line between warfare and policecraft. There's little threat of Obama and Nixon style lists merging and seeing reporters getting a US fatwa against them, as much as our favorite libertarian thinks otherwise.

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Sarah Palin is passing on a run. 2012 would have been a tough year for her, as the right is rather crowded this year and the shrapnel from media attacks lingers. She's likely to stay as a political celebrity for a while to come, and she's young enough for 2020 to be a real prospect; by 2020, all the kids except Trig will be grown and she can focus better on a run.

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Here's an odd story out of St. Pete; the county government is going to stop putting fluoride in drinking water. Back when fluoridation was becoming the norm back in the 50s, reactionaries were viewing it as a communist threat. Change communist to globalist and you have a Tea Partier's rhetoric of today-

Opponents such as the Fluoride Action Network say the fluoride could harm children and should not be administered by the government. "Fluoride is a toxic substance," said Tea Party activist Tony Caso, the Times reported. "This is all part of an agenda that's being pushed forth by the so-called globalists in our government … to keep the people stupid so they don't realize what's going on."

One can only hope that the average TPer isn't cut and pasting John Birch material that's old enough to get an AARP card.

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"Who will be the GOP Messiah?" We already have one, but He's not a native-born American, so He's not eligible to run for President. Even if He did get around that, the Tea Party folks would look at Him as a Jewish liberal.

Once we get past that, maybe Cain is able;-).

Losing Jobs... to the Hearafter

The media is playing the death of Steve Jobs in a way I haven't seen since John Lennon, treating him as a sort of secular saint and calling him the modern Edison.

Not that groundbreaking, as this nice Rick Newman obit notes. He's not quite Edison, more like Tesla with a second and third act. The first act, inventing the Apple and the Mac, was a bit like Tesla, who did a lot of innovating but lost out on the really big bucks to IBM and Microsoft. Apple perfected the modern PC, but IBM put it on office desks and Microsoft's DOS running on IBM clones brought the price point down to consumer levels.

Jobs then had a decade hiatus from Apple, in which time he gave us Pixar; not bad for a second act, but the third act was a doozy, turning Apple into a mobile electronics giant. There was a bit of a role reversal for Apple; now,they were popularizing gizmos rather than inventing them.

There were smart phones before the iPhone, MP3 players before the iPod and notepad computers before the iPad. However,they popularized all three, giving a cache that was both trendy and mature at the same time. Even then, Apple wasn't able to expand its desktop and laptop sales too much, as Jobs wanted to keep Apple's OS proprietary, scrapping a plan to have Apple clones available.

I've yet to enter that universe as a user. My laptop has my MP3 stash, and I have yet to get a smartphone or a pad-computer; however, that will probably change the next time I replace my cell-phone, for the entry-level iPhones or their Android rivals are now the freebie-with-a-renewal phones these days.

Before we knew of Jobs' passing, I saw this piece on the Corner about the Wall Street protesters and their allies-

I might have told him that if he really wanted to “protest capitalism,” he could start by ditching his $2,000 MacBook Pro, which is produced by one of the largest corporations on the planet — Apple (AAPL) — currently trading at more than $370 a share, on Wall Street.

Apple has something of a near-cult following that leans a bit left but doesn't exclude the right, other than occasionally getting PC over some more pointed anti-gay aps and podcasts. The new high priest of the cult presided over a new iPhone earlier in the week, but he likely won't have Jobs' iconic status.

 

Out of Practice

I was at the gas station when I saw a yoga studio across the way on Ashman Circle; I can think of at least three yoga emporiums in town, one of which took over the building that housed the old barber shop that I had been getting my hair cut in since I moved to Midland when I was 5. Ted's was so old-school, I joked that the ancient cash register was Y1K compliant.

I would venture to guess that the time practicing yoga might easily challenge the time practicing Christianity in this country. That doesn't mean that there are more yoga afficianados than Christians, but someone does yoga in a way that most people don't do being a Christian. As much as pastors will encourage us to "do the stuff" of the faith, few people actively practice their faith, either by improving their knowledge of the Word and of God or by having that knowledge change how they live their hour-by-hour lives.

I have three fingers pointing back at me as I point the finger at the rest of the Body of Christ. My practice has been lacking as of late, hence the lack of the old daily Edifiers. It's not that I haven't lost my faith, it's just been a bit flabby other than Sunday mornings.

Here's a good like from Paul in 1 Timothy 4. The end of 1 Corinthians 9 was what I had in mind when I was rough-drafting this in my mind, but The 1 Timothy passage works better for this-

⁷ Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives’ tales; rather, train yourself to be godly. ⁸ For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come. ⁹ This is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance.

The people who gave us yoga were shooting for multiple lives to come rather than eternal life that comes from the incarnation of Christ rather than bogus reincarnations.

I need to get back into training. So do a lot of us.