Mark Byron

Tuesday Musings

It looks like Romney's poised to take Florida today, as Newt seems more nasty and desperate by the day. When he sticks to the issues, Gingrich is an interesting and appealing candidate, but he has a mean streak that can be both effective and off-putting. When he takes that mean streak and tries to play bash-the-rich-guy, it doesn't sound right, especially coming from a free-market guy.

Anyways, this piece on his stop in Plant City struck a cord. Plant City was just outside of my stomping grounds of Winter Haven-Lakeland when I lived in Florida (on the Tampa side of Lakeland and in Tampa's county); I even interviewed for a teach job there. Even with a winter thaw bringing temperatures up to 51 today, seeing the old home turf in the news was touching.

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"Why should the Devil have all the good music?" the Larry Norman oldie asks. Newt and the Eye of the Tiger people are at it now in the ritual suing of conservatives using liberal-owned pop culture.

At least Brooks and Dunn are bipartisan, letting their stuff be used by both sides without complaint.

Creed 101-Part IA-Out of View Handiwork

One part of the beginning of the Nicene Creed stuck me as very interesting for the modern age.

We believe in one God,

the Father, the Almighty

maker of heaven and earth,

of all that is, seen and unseen.

Seen and unseen. That covers a lot of ground and also allows us to change our view of creation without changing our view of the Creator. God made everything, even the stuff we haven't found yet.

Whether it is some odd quantum particle or critters deep under the Antarctic ice or a new exoplanet, God made it, or saw to it that it was made.

Creed 101-Part I- Abba Daddy

I've been drawn to revisit the basic creeds of the church, getting back to the core. That led me to thumb through the Apostle's Creed and the Nicene Creed.

Both start fairly simply. God the Father is encapsulated quickly in the AC-

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.

Note that there aren't any time-tables here. It doesn't specify old earth or young earth or how God made things, just that He did the creating. That can let us take one heated debate off of the front burner, at least as it regards the basics of historic Christian faith.

The one kicker to keep in play here is "almighty." All-powerful. That's one that is hard to grasp for some people, especially if you're the type who mocks the 23rd Psalm, "though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil, for I'm the toughest *&^%&&# in the valley."  Not quite, Alpha Dawg, you get trumped by the Alpha and Omega.

At such core basics, we haven't kicked too many theists off the reservation. Jews and Muslims are still on board and even some secular agnostics who see God as the First Cause of the Big Bang but have little else for Him to do.

That will change when we pull out that troublesome J word.

 

Midweek Musings

I haven't gotten around to comment on Paula Deen coming down with type-2 diabetes. It's a cheap shot to call it a self-inflicted wound, but a shot that many will take at her old-school southern cooking that doesn't skimp on the sugar or fat. Moderation, folks. A steady diet of fatty stuff isn't good, but some comfort food now and then is just fine.

I'm not sure if this holds across the board, but people that don't like Paula often don't like the South and everything it stands for. Anthony Bourdain doesn't like her, but I don't think he would like living in Savannah as opposed to New York or some global hot spot. I channel-surf into his shows on a regular basis (more so than Deen's stuff), but I'd rather have her as a next-door neighbor than he.

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Interesting re-up for Kevin Love, signing a four-year extension with Minnesota. Interesting tweet from him leading up to today's announcement-

Asked last week by the Minneapolis Star Tribune if he could imagine not finalizing an extension before the deadline, Love said: "It wouldn't be ideal. So it would be nice to work something out. I enjoy it here, I enjoy my teammates, I enjoy the coaching staff, I enjoy the Twin Cities, even when it's cold.

For a SoCal kid, that's saying somethng. His lunch-pail ethic under the boards makes him a bit more midwestern than a candidate for Lob City.

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Alan mentioned the weight issue with Prince Fielder. He will need to start watching his weight, lest his knees and back start to be an issue. If he continues to carry an extra 50 pounds or so of weight, he'll not be all that productive at the tail-end of that nine-year deal.

One thing about the fresh Prince, he could not bat his weight (275 officially, but I've heard numbers a bit north of that) and still make the All-Star team. Mind you, that's on a 5'11 frame, so it's tubbier than it sounds at first.

Barry in Your Pocket

I passed on Mondays GOP debate and tonight's State of the Union; the lowlight of the evening seems to have been the president's desire to have a 30% minimum tax on millionaires. That's likely to play well, given that a certain former private equity CEO with an eye on Obama's job showed that he's paying 15%.

One problem with that proposal is that the people who would be most affected would be people getting capital gains, and some people who aren't normally millionaires in income can become one for a year when selling a family business. For instance, a farmer who has a million-dollar spread may only make $50K a year (farmers usually don't make a good return on their investment), but he'd suddenly be making a million for this year if he sold off the family freehold.

We already have the Alternative Minimum Tax to get some of the game-playing out of the system, but there are reasons why we have special treatment for capital gains; a lot of long-term profit is actually inflation.

43 Million Hot-n-Readys Worth of Home Run Artist

It looks like the Tigers solved their DH problem, but broke the bank doing so; they have come to terms with Prince Fielder on a 9-year, $214 million deal. With Victor Martinez out of commission for most if not all of 2012, Fielder and Miguel Cabrera will likely swap duties at first base and DH. Both are so-so defensive first basemen, so there isn't a clear choice on which of the two to DH.

One thing to look at in spring training is whether Cabrera can move back to third base where he played for the Marlins. On days where Alex Avila might be useful as a DH on a day off from catching, you might play with the idea of putting Fielder at first and Cabrera at third; that would also work when visiting the NL and the DH is out of commission.

Also, depending on how bad Cabera's glove work is at third, you might look at playing him there and letting Delmon Young DH, getting someone like Andy Dirks into the line-up to add some speed.

The real fun will begin when Martinez gets healthy. If Cabrera hasn't made third base a regular home, the Tigers might need to look to move Martinez.

Fit to be Tithe

Mitt Romney finally got around to making his taxes public, and there's not much there that we didn't already know. He has a 14% average tax rate; considering that capital gains go at 15% and he can have his taxable income knocked down via donations, that's par for the course.

The news to me is that he walks the Mormon walk, giving $2.6M of his $21.7M in income to the church. That's impressive to me. While I have severe problems with Mormon theology, Mormon day-to-day praxis is largely on line with orthodox Christan teaching.

Is a reasonably devout Mormon a better bet as president than a less-devout Catholic? That's the decision going through my mind as we come up on the Michigan primary next month. I like Newt on policy (and Santorum even more so, but he has some ground to make up if he is to be in the mix in a winner-take-all vote), but we can do far worse as a president than a Harvard MBA hotshot and devout Mormon.

A Killer Scandal

Joe Paterno just died today. Lung cancer was the listed cause, but a lack of reason to live might have been the real cause. He spent the majority of his life coaching Penn State and being part of that community, and the Sandusky scandal had made him persona non grata at PSU. Taking away that lifeblood may well have taken the life out of him.

 

Next... the Home Run Artist Known as Prince Fielder?

Interesting construct on this first sentence

The Cleveland Indians pitcher known as Fausto Carmona issued a tearful apology Friday as he was released following his arrest for allegedly using a false identity to play baseball in the U.S.

"I ask for the forgiveness of my fans, the government of the United States and the Cleveland Indians for this situation," he said upon leaving the court, where a judge released him on bail of about $13,000.

Police arrested him Thursday outside the U.S. consulate in his native Dominican Republic when he arrived to get his visa renewed. Spokesman Maximo Baez Aybar said the athlete's real name is Roberto Hernandez Heredia and that he is 31, three years older than he had claimed.

He was the second Dominican player arrested in recent months for using a false identity.

I also remember a story of a Dominican teen who got his age fudged in order to dominate Little League in his adopted Nuevo York; it's easy to be a man among boys when you are a man, or close to it.

If I recall, you see ages fudged in Latin American recruits, since a player looks more impressive if he's 17 rather than 20; the scout can see three years of future growth that won't exist. Would the Indians use this as grounds to void his contract, since the person in question didn't exist?

Keep the Rats in DC-Reelect Them

This almost sounds like something out of the Onion, where a new DC law on rat removal (the four-legged variety, so K-Street can breathe easy) sees the prospect of catch-and-release... into suburban Virginia and Maryland

The law, though, exempts most rodents from its purview and allows companies to pursue four options with animals they've trapped, including relocation — but only with the property owner's permission — and euthanasia.

VA AG Ken Cuccinelli is concerned and a Maryland state rep, Pat McDonough, has a Rat Trafficking Act up, lest DC slip them a Mickey-

“This insane law obviously places Maryland and Virginia at risk for an invasion of out-of-state rodents,” the release said. “We must protect our borders.”

Even a temporary flow of rats into Maryland, McDonough warned, could have enduring consequences. 

“The rats multiply at astronomical rates and the rodents who have crossed the border into Maryland must be made illegal because they can produce large numbers of anchor babies,” McDonough’s release said.

The Prince George's Cat Society is up to the challenge, living up to Croc's charge to "Eat da slow ones." One thing to note is that it won't throw off the 2010 census figures, so Maryland won't have to Tom and Jerrymander until 2021.

 

Mir Christianity

That play on words describes how I feel, floating off in low-earth orbit not quite fitting in anywhere church-wise. I'm too generically evangelical to be a good Baptist, too conservative to be a good charismatic, too Reformed to be a good Wesleyan and too free-will oriented to be a good Calvinist.

It doesn't help that I'm between jobs, married but with no kids. Childless couples are often as odd-ducks as singles in family-oriented churches. Having a series of illnesses the last few months have isolated me even further, keeping me out of church for months at a stretch.

Such ill-fittedness makes it hard to write on theological issues, since I struggle to get past a roteness in my walk right now.

Open Races and Marriages

Very interesting developments in South Carolina. The post-debate polls have given Newt a big lift, with all three polls dated yesterday having Newt edging out Romney. SC voters who had to choose between Gingrich and Santorum opted for the guy next door (or at least next door back in his congressional days).

The bigger news of the day is Rick Perry dropping out and endorsing Gingrich. Just as ABC was about to drop an interview with Newt's second wife Marianne (who he cheated on with current wife Calista), Newt gets a Spy-vs-Spy riposte with the Perry news.

Will the "open-marriage" story bring Newt down a peg? Yes. He'll have some 'splainin' to do, but much of what Marianne Gingrich brought out is already factored into the price, as they'd say on Wall Street. We knew he had been a cad more than once in his past, even back as a high-schooler dating his math teacher on the side, but that's part of the package.

{Update 330PM-There is a yuck factor there that I haven't fully gotten past. Enough to get me to vote Romney in a Romney-Newt fight? Good question. My hope is Santorum rallies and can be part of the mix}

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That means we only have four folks dancing the Charleston tonight. Rick Santorum is the new weakest link, assuming that Paul sticks in the race until beamed up to the mothership. However, if we settle into four-way race with no one getting much past 30%, there are still some windows for Santorum.

Thursday Morning, 5AM

Had Paul Simon on the mind as I started writing this, so I went with a funky title 26 hours ahead of an old album title of his.

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Here's an interesting footnote from the NBA wire-the Cavs " named Zydrunas Ilgauskas special assistant to the general manager. "Z" spent last year with the Heat, having followed a certain Akron native south. At least the Gilbert regime seems to have forgiven Z his transgressions.

An interesting parallel might be brewing. Another Cav big man, Danny Ferry, made the move into the front office. Z might not have the advantage of growing up with a GM dad like Ferry did, but a smart player with a European background might well be a good asset to have, especially as I was watching a pack of Spaniards and Montenegrins make short work of the Pistons last night.

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Idle tweets... what'ya gonna do. Rob Lowe prematurely sends Payton Manning packing.

Lowe might be a tad ahead of the game, since I don't quite expect him to retire. However, Manning will be put in an awkward spot in the weeks to come.

March 8th is D-day, where the Colts have to pony up $28 million to keep him. If they are going to hand the reigns over to Andrew Luck with their first pick in the draft, that's money that could be better spent giving Luck a couple of good offensive linemen to keep him vertical.

If Manning doesn't agree to get that price-tag lowered, he might be forced into free agency given NFL hardball.  Manning then would have to see if he wanted to follow his dad's lead and move on from his signature team. Unlike Archie, Payton has some left in the tank and many clubs could be happy to have him at QB next year, assuming his neck has healed up properly.

That neck is a big if, which is why the Colts might want to not press their luck and pass on Luck.

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The Keystone pipeline got the back of the hand from the Obama team. They're trying to get in on a longer and less envrionmentally-dicey path.

I'm waiting for Obama to be at the groundbreaking of a gay-rights memorial, so that he can be putting the keystone on the Stonewall and the stone-wall on the Keystone.

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Mamma, don't take my Kodachrome away. Here's where rhymin' Simon showed up-bad earwig in the early morning as Kodak goes Chapter 11. They've tried to make a go of it in the digital era by making good cameras, but when modern cell-phones fill the casual photography niche, even that is problematic these days.

Phlegm-Bloggin'

What do you do at 3:36AM when you can't sleep thanks to bronchitis and infomercials rule cable? Get the blogging muse out from under the mucus and catch up on some news.

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We had an interesting debate where Newt had a hole-in-Juan; however, he forgot to buy everyone drinks at the 19th hole. How does being able to master political improv translate to being able to run the country?

What hasn't been as helpful is his faux-populist run at Bain after taking the high road most of the race. I might not trust Romney's political instincts to do the right thing rather than just the prudent thing, but Newt is showing where his disingenuousness makes it hard to trust him in general.

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The next rhetorical flourish is to try and smoke out Romney's tax returns. That's not the greatest strategy, since it might make him more human rather than less human. It also caters to the fear people have that the rich are getting away with stuff, so there is a bit of faux-populism in the effort.

Mitt's 2011 taxes aren't going to be ready right now, since he isn't exactly filing a 1040-EZ with just wage income. However, his past returns would be available if he wants to get this behind him. Also, since he likely has to file quarterly estimated taxes, he should have the first three quarters of 2011 covered in rough-draft form already.

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Ricky Rubio will be interesting to watch. He had an off-night and still helped the Wolves past the Pistons with six steals and eight assists. I didn't know you could field a starting line-up with only one person of African descent these days, which the Wolves did last night.

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The Hot Stove league heated up yesterday when news hit that Victor Martinez had blown a ACL and will be out most, if not all, of this season. That puts the Tigers suddenly in the market for a DH or an outfielder that can allow Delmon Young to slide into the DH slot, since he's not exactly the second coming of Yaz in left (boy, am I dating myself).

The default value would be to have Young be the default DH, letting Rayburn and Dirks platoon in left with Young playing some LF if you DH Avila on days off as a catcher. Before the Tigers go out and blow big money on a high-profile replacement like Vlad Guerrero, they might want to think of what the baseline production would be with that they have.

I have a feeling that Andy Dirks could become a, say, Johnny Damon level package given some playing time. However, I'm not the one cutting the checks or making the big calls.

Thursday Musings

It's sleety outside, I'm fighting off another bout of bronchitis and the Pistons are 2-8. However, the weather will improve, my health will improve and.... if the Clippers and T-Wolves can get better, there is hope for the Pistons.

Ricky Rubio and Ahmadinejad, separated at birth?

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Interesting piece from Ken Dryden on the decline in brawls in the NHL. He may have lousy taste in political parties but he has always been a thoughtful guy about hockey. Fighting is down 25%, some enforcers are out of a job and some good-ol'-boys don't like it.

The interesting thing is that this drop came with former Red Wing great Brendan Shanahan in charge of league discipline. He was no softy in his day; he's getting a message across that real men can get things done without starting fights.

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WHen I'm feeling a bit better, I'll get to Romney's faux pas from earlier in the week. For now, his "I like being able to fire people" line comes in the context of changing insurance providers, but it's too good of a line for his foes to leave alone.

I'm enough of a free-marketeer to have quoted "creative destruction" more than once here, but Romney's work had him being that economic Vishnu, the destroyer of worlds underperforming divisions, on a regular basis. It works well in theory, but that is going to be the line that will be fed back via a thousand 527 ads this fall.

WWIII in HD

I was over on the Real Clear Politics current polls page. The two ads on the right side are for a Santorum money bomb and for the video of WWII in HD-"Experience WWII like never before.

I think I am, except with weisenheimers rather than Oppenheimers.

Surfin' New Hampshire with Ron-Jon

As expected, Romney carried the day in NH with 37% as we go to press. Newt and Santorum are back in a photo finish for 4th at 10% each. The two modest surprises were Ron Paul's 24% and Jon Huntsmann at 17%.

Interestingly, Perry is having to fight off Buddy Rohmer for 6th, 0.8 to 0.4%. Rohmer has gotten an interesting cold-sholder from the media, more-so than even Gary Johnson.

Paul and Huntsmann underpolls, possibly because some of their voters were independents who were hard to categorize as likely voters in a GOP primary. It will encourage the Paulistas and set up a good photo op in Florida if we get Ron and Jon in front of a certain surfware store.

That lets Huntsmann fight another day. I had 15% as his benchmark, and he hit that. He's not likely to do much, but he gives things a stalking horse from the GOP left to drain votes from Romney.

Newt and Santorum would have come in third as a field entry... not encouraging for that sector of the ballot, but neither are well-suited for NH.

 

Run-Off Elections

The early primaries serve as run-off elections in that one candidate gets run off each week. That works nicely with the meme of this year's debate-laden campaign as reality TV, where someone gets voted off each week.

Thus, we saw Bachmann pack it in after Iowa, and if form holds, Huntsmann will pack it in sometime Wednesday after digesting a low-teens showing in New Hampshire. Then, Rick Perry says "via con Dios" after SC and Newt packs it in either then or after Florida, giving us a Romney-Santorum-Paul denoument the rest of the way.

Thus, we shouldn't write too much into a 20 point thumping that Romney will likely inflict tomorrow; it's in his home turf and other candidates backers will flow more to his rivals than to him once they drop out.

Air Tebow?

I was just listening to the Bronco's new theme song, Maragret Becker's Deep Calling Deep.

10 for 21, 316 yards was the tally for Tim Tebow last night. The percentage isn't pretty, but it works out to a 125.6 QB rating for the day.

It wasn't a classic comeback as per the new Denver tradition, but if you took too long making your bladder gladder at the overtime break, you missed an 80 yard TD pass on the first play of OT. It was the shortest OT in league history; I recall the Bears taking a regular season OT kickoff back for a TD against the Lions (1980 Thanksgiving, it turns out), but after starting with a touchback, the Broncos had a 20 yard head start.

After a three week hiatus, the Denver Blessing has returned. Interesting.

Edifier du Jour: Philippians 2:1-4(NIV)

¹ Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, ² then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. ³ Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, ⁴ not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

Modern life has people looking out for #1, as the saying goes. That's a disease that afflicts most of the political spectrum, from folks on the left wanting government to give them extra goodies from folks on the right wanting a pass on having to pay more taxes; both are plugging for extra wealth at the expense of everyone else. Rarely do people look at the greater good of others rather than themselves; Warren Buffett, calling for a tax increase on himself, might be an exception that the left side of the Gallery might note.

Even in the church, we can be rather self-centered, going to church, making our donations and going home. That creates a lot of errors of omission, where we might not be doing anything that looks like sin from the outside, but lacks that interest-of-others that God is calling for. Suburbanites increasing cocoon, spending more time with their neighbors in Farmville (or the Blogosphere, to point three fingers back at me) than their real-world neighbors.

That "bowling alone" meme is one that is hard to crack. Our pastor in Lexington tried to get at that issue, but was shown the door by the church (largely for other issues outside of his control); we're like the old lady who has to be dragged across the street by the Boy Scout doing his good deed for the day.

Granite State Differentiation

The polls in New Hampshire don't have a clear route for pundits to make a take. If form holds, Romney wins with 40% or so, Ron Paul scores about 20% in second and Santorum, Huntsmann and Gingrich fight for the left-overs with about 10% each.

What are passing scores? For Huntsmann, I'd suggest 15%. If he can't get 15% in a state he's camped out in, he has little room to go forward.

Santorum and Gingrich are both in no-lose situations, except if they wind up dropping below 10%. 15% for Santorum would be a moral victory and sliding past Paul for second would be a triple in the right-center gap.

The Screwtape Tweets

Libertarians weeely, weeely don't like Rick Santorum. This post over at Samizadata takes the cake-

If Santorum and his ilk keep forcing me to agree with left-wingers - in this case, that Santorum is pure evil - it is going to be a very, very long election year.

If he's pure evil, what is pure good in this alternative universe? You have your choice of amoral socialism if you think he's too conservative on economics or amoral anarchy if you think he's too liberal on econ. Neither like the fact that he actually takes Christian teachings at face value, including the fact that Jesus is sometimes a bit of a Jewish liberal.

Reading some of these libertarian screeds reminds me of The Screwtape Letters, where two demons plot to screw up a young believer's life, writing about God as the Enemy and the Devil as "Our Father Below."

It also reminds me of the catch phrase of Judges (21:25 in King James) -"In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes." That was not meant as a complement, but a libertarian would take it as such.

Day One, Decade Two

Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of my first blog post. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then. In 2002, a blog was cutting-edge on the Web, while it is a few years behind the curve today.

I tend to express myself in paragraphs more than sentences, so Twitter isn't my strongest suit, nor is Facebook. I have a Twitter account that mostly serves to cross-post links to this blog, and I have an inactive Facebook account that I am toying with reopening, since that is the vehicle of choice for a lot of people at present.

I have the free-time to write these days, being underemployed. Hopefully, that will bear fruit in some way as I go forward, as I try to put my psychological problems behind me and move forward.

If you have something you'd like me to write on, let me know. I'm here to serve as well as to have a place to express my thoughts to a friendly audience around the world.

O'Brien's Song

Bill O'Brien is getting into a big hornet's nest, taking the Penn State head coaching job once he finishes up the playoffs as New England's offensive coordinator. There is a bit of an echo of Rich Rodriguez coming on at Michigan, as O'Brien has no PSU ties. There is also a bit of a echo of Charlie Weis going from that same Patriot OC slot to Notre Dame.

RichRod lasted three years at Michigan and Weis managed to last five under the shadow of Touchdown Jesus. Weis was a Notre Dame alum, but most of his coaching experience had been at the pro level, possibly making him less effective coaching younger players and doing the recruiting and alumni-management that being a college coach entails. That's a problem that O'Brien doesn't have-

O'Brien joined New England in 2007 following 14 seasons on the college level, including stops at Duke, Maryland and Georgia Tech. He played football at Brown -- Paterno's alma mater.

What got RichRod in trouble from day zero was that he wasn't a "Michigan Man". For a third of a century dating back to 1969, UofM had been run by iconic coach Bo Schembechler and two of his former assistants Gary Moeller and Lloyd Carr. Moeller was run off amid a drunk-driving incident but Carr half retired-half-resigned amid a touch of underperformance by Michigan standards.

Michigan alums wanted little to do with this outsider, especially one that ran a trendy spread-option format. That gave him little support to build a program around, so that when he got the team over .500 last year, it was too little, too late.

Penn State alums are already in revolt over O'Brien-

Former Penn State All-American linebacker Brandon Short told ESPN.com senior writer Don Van Natta Jr. that members of the influential Lettermen's Club have a meeting scheduled with Joyner for 1 p.m. ET Friday.

"It's unfortunate that Coach O'Brien ... has not been made aware of the implications of him being in this position," said Short, an investment banker. "I don't envy him at all. He doesn't have support of the vast majority of former Penn State players and the vast majority of the student body and the faculty won't support him. I feel sorry for him."

Short said some members of the group were considering a range of options to express their displeasure, including asking current players to transfer and recruits to de-commit.

That would echo, with a notch more bile, what RichRod went through.

However, I don't think that anyone with a Penn State pedigree that is still alive would make it under the circumstances. Any Penn State grad or former coach would be asked "what did you know about Sandusky and what did you do about it?" A "Penn State Man" would have most likely dealt with Sandusky on some level and get a constant grilling from the media and harassment from anti-child-abuse groups. You'd have to go back to a pre-Paterno era, which would require the coach in question to be well into his 70s, to get free of that taint.

It's sad, since you have a lot of good guys who likely knew next to nothing about their DC being a pervert in his spare time. Under the circumstances, PSU needed to make a clean break and bring in a good outsider.

Tattoos, Tap Outs and Theology

We have a tattooed Pastor Bentley operating in Flint. However, this one is no relation to Todd Bentley of Lakeland Revival infamy. Here's a piece from our local CBS outlet on Steve Bentley Bridge Ministries.

The Bridge has its own tattoo parlor and holds MMA events. The bio for Bentley has him as a Flint native, so he's no direct relation to Todd. Steve also seems non-charismatic, having a theology degree from "ONU" which could be either Olivet Nazarene or Ohio Northern. Ohio Northern is a Methodist school, so Olivet seems more likely.

They are affiliated with a group called Growing Happy Churches, which is a conservative offshoot of the centrist American Baptists-

Now, as of January 1 [2006], the American Baptist Churches of the West, based in the northern California city of San Ramon, wants to be known as Growing Healthy Churches, or GHC for short.

The decision stems partly from the ongoing struggle over homosexuality and local church autonomy in the denomination. Some ABC of the West congregations “find it difficult to be identified with a denomination that will not affirm biblical standards,” the region’s executive minister, Paul D. Borden, wrote to pastors November 30.

A quick glance at the GHC literature seems a bit detailed oriented and somewhat authoritarian looking. Couple that with the MMA stuff and it sounds a lot like Mark Driscoll.

Interesting. Questionable, but interesting. If Bieber wants more Christian tatts, he might do worse than here.

Keeping Tab on the Crosstabs

Here's an interesting Washington Times NH poll with some interesting breakdowns by demographics.

Ron Paul does best among Catholics, which Rick Santorum does twice as well with Protestants than with Catholics.

Romney owns the C&E churchgoers, Santorum does best among folks who go more than once a week and Paul does well among once-a-weekers along with folks who rarely or never go to church. Paul is weakest among causual church goers.

Newt has a positive gender gap, scoring 7% with guys and 12% with gals. One would think it would be the other way around. Paul is the one with a big negative gender gap and if single folks could rule, Paul would win.

The HEAV Act- Part I - A Modest Proposal

Here's a little political thought experiment that will likely make me lose any conservative street cred that I have, if my last post didn't do it already.

The next Republican president puts forward a proposal to give every K-12 student a $2000 voucher to go to whatever school the student wants to go to on the condition that the school district that the student is in matches the voucher. If the kid goes to public schools, the system gets two grand from Uncle Sam, no strings attached. As part of the deal, No Child Left Behind and most other federal school regulations are scrapped. Special Ed and other high-degree-of-difficulty students will get higher voucher amounts to account for the lower teacher-student ratios in such programs.

That will put school districts $2K ahead for the kids they currently have and $2K in the hole for kids in private schools. $4k won't get you into BlueNose Academy, but it will get you into the local Catholic or evangelical school with a bit out of pocket.

Using my local schools as a guide, Blessed Sacrament charges $5000 for non-parisioners and Calvary Baptist charges $4600 for kids of non-members. The $4K voucher will cover the lion share of that, and many schools charging more than that might wind up "eating the co-pay" if they can make up the difference in donations.

After the NEA is done throwing a conniption fit, Senate Democrats make a counter-offer. We'll go with your voucher plan for K-12 if you make the Ryan-Wyden plan open to all citizens rather than just those on Medicare. Here's a write-up on the plan from last month

Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan on Thursday [12/15/11] plan to introduce a new Medicare reform plan that would allow seniors to choose between traditional Medicare and new private insurance programs.

The plan has some key differences from the Ryan blueprint that Republicans had rallied around earlier this year — and which Democrats had been united in pummelling in Congress and on the campaign trail as the beginning of the end of Medicare.

Dirty Harry and friends will push Obamacare under the bus if we make everyone eligible for Medicare and give them the option of taking a voucher for the average cost of coverage to an insurance company. If they already have a labor contract with qualifying coverage at work, they can cash in the voucher and keep their coverage. New labor contracts will see the voucher go to the employer if the employee wants the company health insurance.

The downside is that will cost money; the reason they needed the individual mandate is that didn't require shelling out cash for most folks and stuck the tab with businesses and the self-employed. We'll have the Cain Memorial VAT tax, a 9% tax on all purchases, with credit for VAT tax paid for supplies. The CBO has yet to score this bill, but they estimate that 9% should cover the cost of providing health care to all pre-seniors.

After Rand Paul gets done with some colorful verbiage and a 13-hour one-man filibuster, the Senate takes up consideration of the Health and Education Voucher Act

Assuming there isn't any killer details in the HEAV Act, would that be something that would make sense?

Rick and the Establishmentarians

Libertarians won't like Rick Santorum much. He's both a social conservative and somewhat economically moderate. Since he's been gone from the Senate since 2006, we have to take the Wayback Machine for a spin to get his ACU ratings.

89.7, 89.1, 88.1 sounds like a NPR station guide (or K-LOVE, for that matter), but that's the career ratings for Mitch McConnell, Orrin Hatch and Santorum as olf 2006. We can throw in Bill Frist's 87.8 and John Thune's 87.0, but they ruin the bottom of the FM dial vibe since they have even tenths and 87.7 is the bottom of the FM dial.

That's a rogue's gallery of establishment Republicans save Santorum. Hatch is having to fend off a primary fight from Tea Partiers this year, but he's far from a RINO. Thune was getting some mention as a presidential runner, but that never got too far.

Newt pitched a 90 in his House career if we wind Sir Wayback back eight years further. Yes, the hard-core pundits on the right don't like him, either, but trying to slide Santorum to the left of Newt is a non-starter. Ron Paul had a 82% career rating as of 2006, so he isn't a great pick on that front, although there are often votes where Paul will vote no where the conservative position isn't conservative enough.

90% or close to it still gives political carnivores 10% or so to she-dog at. It doesn't make one so "left on the issues that matter he makes even Mitt Romney look like a red meat conservative", as Ross Kaminsky quotes James Delingpole as saying of Santorum. I guess Romneycare doesn't matter much.

In Kaminsky's case, it seems that the social conservative side has caught his ire, thus requiring sounding like a Delingpolock to make the fiscal conservative trashing.

If we were to ACU Romney, he'd likely be in the 70s as a governor but talking in the 90s as a candidate. He'd likely have been in that high 80s range were he in the Senate for the last decade plus.

We have three flavors of establishment conservative and whatever Ben and Jerry's would dream up (Libertarian Lemon-Lime? Von Mises Fudge Pieces?) for Paul. None are going to be mistaken for a modern American liberal (although Paul and Newt could pass for a classic liberal), and only Paul could earn a RINO lable as he toys with the idea (or at least doesn't clearly preclude it) of turning back into a capital-l Libertarian.

Are any of them paragons of conservative virtue? Santorum on a good day can look like a paragon of virtue (sometimes to a fault), but there are times where the two aren't one and the same.

Pick your flavor and move along. Bachmann Green Tea Party is off the menu and Chicken-Fried Perry Berry can still be requested if you ask the waitress nicely.

 

 

Blackjack, Rick

I didn't know Rick Santorum is a gambler, but he just got 21... percent of the Republican vote in a post-Iowa Rasmussen national poll. Romney gets 29% and Newt is back at 16%. Paul finished out the lead pack with 12%, with bottom-feeders Perry and Huntsmann each at 4%.

This is an interesting baseline vote. He was bottom-feeding right with Perry and Huntsmann at 4% in national polls before the new year, but he got an instant 17% bump post-Iowa.

The nightmare for conservatives (other than the picky ones, for whom none of the top four thrills them) is that the three-way split of the non-Mitt vote lets Romney slide in with 35% pluralities in winner-take-all settings. Paul isn't going anywhere but a few shuttle trips back to the mothership, so we need to have some sort of settling of that Newt-Santorum split before the winner-take-alls kick in. Between the two, they have 37%, and even a 4% bleed out to Romney (some of the loser's backers might prefer Mitt) would have a 33-33 split.

Dick Morris was on one of the evening Fox talkers (I think O'Reilly-I was surfing in during a bad Pistons loss, honest) saying that Newt needed to take on Santorum. Only if Newt wants to play scorched earth; the two seem to get along and might be a decent ticket. If Newt is as much an ideas-guy has he claims to be, getting a fellow traveler in the White House would be a good concellation prize for a surprisingly effective run so far.

The question to watch is whether people like Santorum when they see him or whether the barrage of attack ads bring him down. When they have pre-NH debates this weekend, he'll be at the adult table for a change, but also open to snipes over the Bridge to Nowhere, the Specter-Toomey primary and other deviations from Tea Party orthodoxy.

Man, has this been a poli-sci geek's dream campaign, with more twists than a Kentucky back road. And we've just had the first votes two days ago.

 

Thursday Musings

The WaPo "factcheckers" go for some low-hanging fruit on a Santorum rhetorical flourish that everyone on the West Bank are Israelis. Yes, I'm about 99.99% sure that the former senator knows about the facts on the ground, but was merely stating his thought that Israel has historial rights to the territory.

On those grounds, these folks would give JFK four Pinoccihios for "Ich bin ein Berliner"-- if he were a Republican.

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The Broad Street Bullies are alive and well; just ask these poor NY Ranger fans who went south to Philly.

The graphic video shows three suspects wearing Philadelphia Flyers jerseys beating and kicking the two victims outside Geno's Steaks in South Philly at 7:15 p.m.

If they listened to Santorum, they would know better than do the wit or witout shtick-that's a Pat's thing.

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Meanwhile, while we're digesting all things Iowa (and thinking about digesting a classic cheesesteak), the president is trying to pull a fast one by trying to recess appoint three NLRB members and the head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The fine print of the CFPB law might keep the new boss, Richard Cordray, from taking control, since it keeps that authority in the Treasury department until a head is approved by the Senate.

That doesn't affect the NLRB folks, however. The problem is that the normal rule for recess appointments is that Congress has to be out of session for at least three days for it to be considered eligable for a recess appointment, lest the President use it in the middle of the night when Congress is not in session.

The Senate has been in pro-forma session over the Christmas break, just showing up every few days and counting heads, in order to block such a recess appointment. That's a trick both sides of the aisle have used; Democrats used that trick to block Bush appointees in the 2007-8 session.

Thus, there is game-playing on both sides here, but the Senate pro-formas are at least constitutional if not sneaky. Trying to use a recess appoitment on an overnight adjournment is a lot like calling not buying something interstate commerce.

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Speaking of Santorum, he's single-handedly redeeming the sweater-vest after Jim Tressel gave it a bad name in Tattoogate. He's got vested authority even without holding office.