Mark Byron

The Fat Guy Sings

The fat lady hasn't even started warming up in the Republican 2012 race, but the fat gentleman sung loudly. Gov Christie is passing on a run.

That on paper is good news for Romney; the CW out of Politico is that the whales are starting to resign themselves to Mitt; no, that wasn't professional courtesy to the NJ Walrus. However, GOP insiders have one vote each in the primaries even if they can send tens of thousands of dollars to a Mitt-friendly 527.

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The bad news for Romney is that Herman Cain has pulled into a dead heat with him nationally. A CBS poll has it 17-17 with Perry at 12. Could Cain become the anti-Mitt?

Possibly. He has yet to get the withering once-over that pulled both Bachmann and Perry down once they became the conservative flavor of the month. He seems to do well once people know him and has the advantage of not having a long track record of votes and appointments.

Cain will need to round out his Grumpy German tax play "Nein! Nein! Nein!" Some folks on the right are leery of having a sales tax and an income tax, wanting to drive a stake through the IRS if they were to go with a sales tax. However, the Cain plan does keep an American GST in single digits; one drawback of the Fair Tax that Huckabee championed last go-round is that it needed to be in the low-20% to do the job, which gave sticker shock to a lot of folks.

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Ms. Wasilla is still unaccounted for. One thing to note is that if 60% of GOP voters don't want her in the race, it means 40% do. Given that the leaders are struggling to poll at 20% at present, a solid 25% plurality has room for improvement. With Perry falling fast, there is room for a Palin run if Cain can't capitalize on joining the lead pack in the next few week.

Neutrinos are Atheists-They Don't Have Mass

Does God make sense? Not to the modern secularist. The History Channel has been on a kick of attributing anything supernatural in the history of Man to alien high-tech. That seems like the inverse of the Arthur C Clark line that really high tech looks like magic to the low-tech person; now, stuff that is supernatural looks like high tech to the techie.

However, there are still miracles on the loose that don't lend themselves to natural explanation. The universe itself would be one such miracle; for the naturalist, the longshot odds of evolution creating what we see required a multitude of alternative universes in order for the longshot to come in somewhere.

Alternate universes galore or some Designer outside of the mix? Were it not for a lot of the smaller miracles, you might lean towards the AU hypthosis.

Science assumes that the universe is a closed system. An interesting piece on that from a faith-friendly atheist came on screen yesterday-

The first step in this journey is to state what I will call the Central Doctrine of science: All properties and events in the physical universe are governed by laws, and those laws are true at every time and place in the universe. Although scientists do not talk explicitly about this doctrine, and my doctoral thesis advisor never mentioned it once to his graduate students, the Central Doctrine is the invisible oxygen that scientists breathe.

Miracles break his Central Doctrine since they break the rules. Not all the rules are known and the rules can be updated when new evidence comes in. The current buzz over the neutrinos high-tailing it 60NS faster than the speed of light could require the galactic speed limit to be adjusted a tad if there isn't some sort of measurment glitch that is causing the rule-breaker.

Neutrinos barely exist; they have no charge and nearly no mass, so they are barely noticable. Yet scientists can concoct experiments with big water tanks underground in order to catch a glimse of a neutrino coming through.

God might also be hard to detect,  but there is decent anectdotal evidience of His presence. The universe begs for some sort of Creator and even the day-to-day operations of nature will have the occasional miracle that breaks the natural rules. Some studies of prayer for sick people have shown some positive effects; God doesn't lend itself to double-blind testing, but He can be seen easier than you can see a neutrino.

Change Agents

On the way back from dropping Eileen off at work, I went past a Lutheran church in town which had a spot-on church sign-"We don't change the message; the message changes us."

To the post-modern, the Gospel is living like the Constitution is living to a liberal jurist. On one level, the PMs are correct, in that the Good News is alive and kicking and active. However, God is timeless. James 1 is a good example of that

¹⁶ Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. ¹⁷ Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. ¹⁸ He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.

God stays the same. He doesn't evolve his views. That core Gospel message is also timeless, and changes the hearer if it is doing its job.

Evening Musings

The old line about Columbus from a Michigan perspective was "go south until you smell it and go east until you step in it." Three more worthless nuts are suspended for getting overpaid on a summer job by a booster. Someone is actually named DiGeronimo? If the Apache were upset over Osama getting given the code name Geronimo, they need to take this dude to court for defamation.

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Speaking of defamation, we may have seen the merciful end of the hard Knox story. The media seems to go to the Cute Female on Trial when there is a shortage of Cute Missing Females.

Watch for the young woman to show up on some sort of reality show; it will be hard for her to lead a normal life after being convicted and then acquitted of murder.

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I'm still getting my mind around this Occupy Wall Street crowd. It would be unlikely for it to be the left's analogue to the Tea Party; things seem to be a bit incoherent other than the fact that they don't like capitalism and big business. Small business might be something they like, but many of the things that Big Business does would be done by Big Government were it not for the national and global scope of big corporations.

At this point, OWS seems to be akin to the G-8/WTO/IMF protester class who doesn't like the current world disorder and wants something else. For it to go beyond low-level civil disobedience and street theater would require something radical to happen to the American left; the media would like to cheer it one, but I don't see much of substance coming of it.

Yank Hank

Interesting little news item on the sports page; Hank Williams Jr. has been doing a Monday Night Football pre-game ditty based on All My Rowdy Friends for many moons, but he became un-PC towards the president and Da Mouse pulled the plug.

Williams ... told "Fox and Friends" that he thought Speaker of the House John Boehner playing golf with President Obama "would be like Hitler playing golf with (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu ... In the shape this country is in?"

That wasn't great rhetoric on Hank Jr.'s part; you start losing the argument when you compare your foes to the Nazis.

Had he cast Boehner as Hitler, he'd likely still have his gig. He also made the mistake of making the statement on Fox; heaven help you if you say something naughty and conservative on the Network That Shall Not Be Mentioned Favorably.

Juan Williams got hired on full time at Fox after NPR gaven him the heave-ho over un-PC statments about Muslims; maybe the Wagnerian theme music for Fox football could use a country overhaul.

 

Flaming Moderates

Interesting Fox piece on the ramifications of a Chris Christie presidential run. The focus is on him taking votes away from Romney on the establishment right, leaving the path clear for either Perry or possibly Cain to win some pluralities.

Northeastern moderate Christie, though, would be a tough dose for Romney to take. Christie has tremendous support inside the Republican establishment, which is more moderate than the rank and file to begin with. Christie's support of some gun control measures, embrace of civil unions for gay couples, decision to minimize abortion as an issue and appointing of a Muslim activist to New Jersey's Superior Court are all pluses for Republicans who believe the party has gone too far right and needs to moderate in order to defeat Obama next year.

However, if you look at Christie's style, especially as he fought with a state legislature to put through budget cuts, it shows a more combative style than we're used to. A good example came from the coverage of Irene earlier this year, when the highlight was Christie telling folks to "get the hell off the beach." That will resonate stylisticly with the edgy and often angry mood on the right; I could see some of the more libertarian Tea Partiers signing off on him.

I haven't seen Christie talk on social issues as of yet, but he doesn't seem to have the smug cosmopolitan tone that Rudy had (or Huntsmann has); Christie doesn't have the Mayor 9/11 meme going, but he fits that part of the Republican political ecosystem. He would be a tough sell to social conservatives and his more centrist view on climate change has drawn fire, but if he stresses econmics in a tough economy, he'll have a shot.

Sunday Musings

Interesting sports day, as the Lions managed to pull off yet another second half comeback, beating Jerry's Kids 34-30 after being down 27-3 early in the third quarter. It's beginning to be like you can expect such a comeback; I tongue-in-cheek said "They've got 'em right where they want 'em" after they went down 14-0.

To top it off, the Tigers managed to even things up at 1-1 with the Yankees, as they hung on to a 5-3 win.

Adding to the fun over the weekend was wins for Michigan and MSU (in Columbus, no less); somehow, I don't see Michigan as a top-12 team.

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Interesting three-way fight in Ontario, where a minority legislature looks likely, as the New Democrats are coming in a strong-enough third to keep either the ruling Liberals or the Conservatives from getting a majority. Current Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty is ruling out a coalition, but he'd need to get one of the other two parties to prop up a minority government.

Might a NDP-Conservative coalition work? A checklist from NDP provincial leader Andrea Horwath might point that way-

While the list has been seen as a way of telegraphing to her opponents what they would have to do to earn her support, Ms. Horwath insisted they are pledges that would be carried out if the NDP wins the election outright.

Among the pledges were promises to cut taxes for small business, freeze postsecondary tuition fees, take the HST off some expenditures, cap executive salaries in the public sector and reverse corporate tax cuts within 100 days of the election. It also guaranteed a balanced budget by 2017-2018.

With the exception of the corporate tax increase, that looks like something the Tories could sign off on, and if that's that was needed to get in charge in Toronto, they might just sign off on a Denver Bronco blue-and-orange coalition. The election is Wednesday Thursday.

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How close is Mexico to turning into Columbia, where the drug gangs effectively control parts of the country? We're seeing anti-Zeta hit squads. That reminds me of some of the "paramilitary" groups in Columbia and other parts of Latin America where the powers that be hired goon squads to do the dirty work the government couldn't or wouldn't do.

It could be just another gang making a hit look good, but if there is an organized anti-drug goon squad on the loose, we'd better get better coverage of the border pronto, for a civil war of some sort seems not that far off.

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Greek bankruptcy? It seems to be a question of when rather than whether. It may take a few banks down with it, so the Europeans are in the dilemma of having to send good money after bad and stave off the pain, or bit the bullet and get it over with. The Greek government isn't closing the deficit and may not be able to do so without having anarchy take over.