Mark Byron

Creed 101-Part II-The Boss

In my back-to-basics ramble, I get to the second passage of the Apostle's Creed-let's do the first two lest I break up a sentence-

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth: And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord

There are a number of things to unpack here. The last two words are worth noting before we head off into Trinity-land-"our Lord." Not just boss, but ruler.

I don't care for the Pledge of Allegiance, since it makes a piece of cloth my small-l lord, since I tend to wind back to the medieval construct of a liege or lord as the root of alliegance. That job is already taken.

Not everyone wants to have a ruler, since we have an inner anarchist who wants to bless and keep the Czar far away from here, as the rabbi in Fiddler on the Roof said. Pop culture is cool with God watching from a distance, but doesn't want Him doing anything to get in our way; nice song, lousy theology, since God is in da house, not in some sort of stable orbit in the Kuiper Belt.

Then we have the Son of God part. That is part of the uniqueness of Christian thought, is that we have the paradox of God incarnate and the added mind-bender of a unified God in three persons that good people of faith sometime don't quite get, as we see in the case of TD Jakes; I have a post on the Elephant Room stuff fermenting at present.

That's enough to chew on for now. People ignore Jesus at their peril; downgrading Him to mere teacher doesn't quite cut it.

Mitt's Crossover to Bear

Mitt Romney's getting razzed for voting in the Democratic primary in 1992, which he could do as a registered independent at the time. In MA, independents could vote in either primary, but were logged into the party they voted for temporarily. Since most of the action in MA was on the Democratic side, signing up as an independent made sense strategically.

In 1992, you had nose-holding choice on the GOP side of a tax-raising Bush 41 or Pitchfork Pat; I recall passing on that election as a grad student in Ohio, not wanting to encourage either of them, as the old non-voter saw goes. Had I had the option of crossing party lines in Ohio and supporting a neoliberal Paul Tsongas, as Romney did, I might have done so. Back then, as a newly recovering neoliberal, I might well have voted for "St Paul" if it was a Tsongas-Buchanan race.

Michigan does let you cross party lines, since they have open primaries; the exception is that the Democratic presidential primary is a non-binding "beauty contest" since the MI donkeys do a primary-esque caucus since they don't do open primaries. That lets you raid the "other" party's primary if you have no action going in your own; by definition, Democrats are free to raid the Republican primary to either vote for the candidate they like or for the candidate they'd find easiest to beat.

As a wet-behind-the-ears 18-year-old, I recall voting for Bush 41 in the 1980 primary even though I was a Democrat-leaning voter at the time. You vote where the action is.

Trying to make the 1992 vote out to be a precursor for Romney running in the Democratic primary against Ted Kennedy in 1994 doesn't pass the sniff test. He had a shot at winning as a moderate Republican in a general election, but beating a sitting senator in his own primary when the incumbant is a better fit for the primary electorate just isn't happening.

A Pink Stink

If the Giants need an extra cornerback, they can check out the Komen folks, for they backpeddle very well to secular orthodoxy. I will leave it there for now, for I don't want to fire off ill-aimed salvos in the culture war.

Tickled Pink

It isn't often you get a general-purpose charity make a culturally-conservative stand, especially when it is a women-oriented one, but the news of the week is that the Komen breast cancer research folks stopped funding Planned Parenthood for breast cancer referrals; the link goes to a nice Megan McArdle piece on the issue.

Of course, the usual suspects on the left are up in arms, which brings forward the question of whether they are more pro-abortion or pro-liberal than they are pro-women. Everyone benefits from a reduction in breast cancer, while a thriving Planned Parenthood helps largely those on the left side of the ideological/theological spectrum; PP has some benign GYN activities, but abortion is its stock in trade.

So far, the new donors are outweighing the pulled donors. One would hope that would be the case.

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.