Saturday Song

Sloan have always been one of my favorite, most beloved groups of all time. This largely overlooked Canadian four-piece has consistently recorded perfect power pop songs and released several albums that due to the strength of their content hold up well to repeated listens. The band features clever lyrics, skillful song craft, and consummate musicianship. Kudos to any group where all members write their own material and play more than one instrument. An appropriate analogy might be that of a latter-day Badfinger.

Sloan had the misfortune to form during the heyday of grunge; the success of that genre largely overshadowed the band's throwback melodic rock. They have achieved cult audience in the United States and have a devoted core audience in their native land. This song, "Money City Maniacs", is a standout track from their 1998 album Navy Blues.

The End of the Beginning

I'm going to be curious to see the nature of new national poll numbers now that Obama has won Iowa. Yes, Blue Gal, I'm aware that polling has its limitations, but give the last batch some deserved credit. The polling statistics released yesterday morning showed Huckabee and Obama both the clear winners in Iowa and as we know now, those prediction were 100% accurate. Until his victory in Iowa, Hillary Clinton held commanding double-digit leads over Obama in almost every state in the nation. Due to the results of yesterday's caucus, one wonders now how the two would match up head to head.

Regular readers of this blog know that I strongly have criticized the Obama campaign in posts prior, particularly during the summer when his campaign was severely slumping. Let it be said now that I would eagerly eat my words if his Iowa success translates into widespread national support. His particular challenge now is to see if he can curtail early success into widespread support among lower income African-American voters, who by in large up until now have firmly been in support of Hillary Clinton. Until South Carolina votes, no one will know for sure whether he has succeeded or failed at this. Subsequent victories in New Hampshire and Michigan would be sufficient to remove the doubts in the minds of many voters, not just black voters, as to whether Obama is truly electable.

What also remains to be seen is whether Obama's support among young voters can be sustained on a national basis. Young voters, unfortunately, often do not vote and though many candidates prior have given lip service to the 18-30 demographic, few of their efforts have succeeded on any consistent basis. Politicians focus their attention on those who actually turn out at the polls, not those merely eligible to vote. Can you blame them, honestly? Why waste time, money, and effort on any group that isn't a factor in whether or not they are elected? One hopes that Obama's overwhelming support among traditionally apolitical or apathetic young adults will truly force political parties to take the youth vote seriously.

Does an Obama victory indicate a clear mandate for his policies of change, or does it instead represent a wholesale rejection of Hillary Clinton and her policies? I am not sure myself. What I will argue is that Obama's campaign certainly should be credited for capitalizing on Hillary's miscues. His strategy of only punching back at Clinton only when attacked first and attempting to take the high road is risky, but it seems, thus far, to be working. The winner of an election often is not the one with the strongest, most compelling message, but rather the one which makes the fewest mistakes. The primary season has just started and as such, ample time exists for mistakes to be made.

All The Cool Kids are Doing It

I'm going to take a break from serious stuff for today and instead do something fun. Boxer Rebellion tagged me with this meme several days back and I have been so busy with other things that I have just now gotten around to completing it. That being said, here I go.

1. In college, I wrote a short story about a demented young adult novelist and his obsessively devoted fan base of dysfunctional teenagers. After being rejected by almost every well-known publication, it was finally published by a small online internet magazine, achieving minimal attention and scant critical notice in the process. However, two years after being written, and in true irony, thanks to the overwhelming power of a potent combination of urban legend and pure chance, a columnist for The New York Times Magazine referenced it in detail during an interview, mistakenly attributing its authorship to Kurt Vonnegut.

2. Upon a visit to Poland, I contracted a severe case of diptheria, forcing me to be hospitalized for almost a week. A kindly nurse assigned to monitor my condition was so taken by my rugged good looks that by the end of my stay she proposed marriage. Graciously, I declined her offer due in no small part to fact she had more bodily hair than I did.

3. I accidently destroyed a work of art when I had a major seizure during a private showing and fell headfirst into the canvass. Fortunately, the painting was heavily insured and I was not held at fault by either the artist or the gallery.

4. I once had a job as the personal assistant of a elderly woman with severe physical disabilities, but I was unceremonious fired when she was discovered I was openly having an affair with her daughter.

5. When I was in fifth grade, my classroom teacher clandestinely dated a female bodybuilder. I attended their committment ceremony while dressed in blue jeans and a grey t-shirt.

6. I once danced, very awkwardly I might add, with a Spice Girl. Neither of us were particularly skilled at the endeavor.

7. Not so very long ago, I discovered that a girl I sat next to in my high school math class apparently makes additional income by posing nude on a website. Her porn star name is Rexy Rage.

*If you hadn't guessed by now, all of these statements are lies.

The Reality of Capital Punishment

Today's local newspaper featured a front page expose on capital punishment. Many people are aware that the state of Texas executes more convicted murderers than any other state. What they may not be aware is that my home state of Alabama is almost always in the top ten of executions performed per year. This is particularly notable considering that Alabama is a largely small state, population-wise, which only comprises four and a half million residents. 2007 saw a nearly uniform halt to the procedure in September of this recently passed year, when the legality of lethal injection was called into question on a national scale, but Alabama still managed to make it to number two in the nation in executions performed. It needs to be qualified, however, that we killed three people this year while Texas, that chronic overachiever, killed twenty-six.

Public support for the practice is on the increase. A Gallup poll conducted last year reported that 69 percent of Americans surveyed were solidly in favor of death penalty. This doesn't particularly surprise me. With the current hyperbolic, sensationalist nature of the media's reporting of violent crime and the inevitable perception, if not the reality that it fosters, I'm sure it's a ever-tempting view to hold. Yet, in saying this, it should also be noted that the state of New Jersey recently abolished the practice altogether. A few other states officially sanction the practice but use it infrequently. Several others have no current death penalty statue at all.

I find it interesting to contemplate that many Christian denominations have since come out against the practice, since Biblical teachings are often used cited as justification for its adoption. Episcopalians came out against the death penalty years ago, as did the the Methodists, as did the Catholics, as did the Lutherans. Even the conservative-leaning local paper here came out officially against the death penalty a couple years back. In contrast, Mormons have an official neutral position (how does THAT work?), but Calvinistic churches like Baptists and the compendium of Fundamentalist denominations still support the practice.

I admit to you that my feelings on the matter have changed drastically over the course of my life. Though I was raised in a Libertarian-leaning family, with a Father who favored small government and idolized Ronald Reagan and a moderate Democrat for a Mother, my opinion of the matter was shaped largely by my father. Dad worked for several years as a warden in a state prison, so he was understandably staunchly in support of the practice. Among a wealth of strong opinions he was known to make while we growing up, the most fervent one was the principle held by many people that capital punishment was a true deterrent to crime and thus it must always be kept legal. Old habits die hard and we learned that there was a reason why Dad made a point to sit facing the front of the establishment when the family went out to eat at restaurants, else he and the rest of us be caught unaware by the arrival of masked gunmen. I can only imagine how years of seeing the absolute worst in human nature and humanity changes a person.

Those who support capital punishment often cite a belief that many murders are products of either crimes of passion or major lapses in judgment. This was certainly the viewpoint I was exposed to growing up. They state that many humans possess within themselves an innate ability to murder someone else, a primeval response held over from prehistoric days, motivated by self-preservation, but that they learn to restrain this impulse. If this is the case, I could conceivably buy that argument but these days, death row inmates are uniformly painted with a broad-brush, described though they are all amoral, evil, brutal butchers who hold within themselves not even a speck of humanity.

Still, a little while ago, I came to the conclusion that capital punishment ought to be done away with and set aside onto the proverbial scrap heap of bad ideas that humanity has come up with throughout time. In defense of my own position, I cite the legal precept that argues "it is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death." No doubt more than one single innocent person has been executed over the years. Anyone willing to murder another human being probably will not be dissuaded from doing so at risk of losing his/her own life. Such offenders probably have no regard for their own individual earthly existence and so they care not a whit whether they personally live or die. One of the reasons why they are so willing to take the life of another human being is that they place such a low value upon their own life and death.

A lifetime spent in the hell known as prison seems to be a far worse fate. Though I'm not sure I ascribe to this point of view, it could also be argued that dying prematurely lets the offender off the hook by having his or her life ended prematurely and that he or she ought to have a whole lifetime of remorse, contrition, guilt, and regret as punishment. The whole nature of the system is broken and if executions were swift matters, then some of the arguments cited by those who support capital punishment might be more understandable. As it stands now, convicted murderers linger on death row for years and years, launch a series of appeals and stays of execution, work through a largely backlogged legal system which functions at a snail's pace, until inevitably exhausting every other option. Then and only then do they pay the ultimate price for their crimes, but forgive me if it seems to me that death delayed to such a degree serves as, at best, hollow comfort to the victim's families by that point. In a society that still by in large preaches swift, unforgiving, punitive retribution for any and every slight and even pushes borderline vigilante style justice, I can't see how this satisfies anyone.

Thomas Sowell, You Old Curmudgeon You

As I've mentioned before on this site, I often read conservative commentary not out of a spirit of masochism, but rather as a means of comparison. It is often helpful to know how the other side thinks and in attaining it, strive to obtain at least a grain of truth in the process. However, this article by Thomas Sowell I find objectionable in many ways.

The opening paragraph immediately grabs me.

Apparently there is nobody among either the Democrats or the Republicans who is going to cause a runaway stampede like that which toppled all the Republican front-runners in 1940, when the convention delegates began loudly chanting “We want Wilkie!”

I would question the logic of making this comparison, since if history serves me, Wendel Wilkie ran as a dark horse, outsider candidate against an extremely popular Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was at that point running for his third full term in office. Once all the votes were tallied, Roosevelt had garnered what might very conceivably be termed "a landslide victory" in the electoral college, to the tune of 449 to 82, as well as a majority of the popular vote in addition--nearly 55% of all ballots cast.

Is Sowell arguing that the GOP needs to select a candidate for President who is uniformly liked by all in his party, but then loses hands down in November? I certainly wouldn't have any problem with that, but it certainly doesn't seem to make much sense in the context of Sowell's argument.

This whole article is riddled with several nonsensical talking points, which I'm tempted to laugh at rather than take seriously. I'm not sure which among these is paramount. There are certainly many "candidates", so to speak, for the dubious honor of most ridiculous argument. His assertion that Fred Thompson has the best qualifications to be president? John Edwards is a phony? Barack Obama has no new ideas, just warmed over rhetoric? Mitt Romney looks Presidential? John McCain's campaign finance bill restricts free speech? Rudy Guiliani is articulate?

Has Mr. Sowell been paying attention to the same debates and statements I've seen over the course of several months of campaigning? If he bothered to do his homework and at least back up these opinion statements with facts, I might be inclined to take him more seriously.

The coup de grâce, so to speak, occurs when Sowell states that, and I quote, "[Hillary] Clinton might even be shameless enough to put Bill Clinton on the Supreme Court." That really is funny. On what precedent? William Howard Taft is, to date, the only former President to become a Supreme Court justice but it also should be noted that Taft had years of experience as a judge before becoming President. Bill Clinton, as memory serves, does possess a degree in law but as a largely career politician, his experience in a legal setting has been limited, at best. Anyone seriously considered for the high court would have an extensive history as either a judge in some large position of authority or as a top-tier lawyer, and Bill Clinton fits neither of these qualifications.

The premise of Sowell's argument seems to be that no candidate in either party seems to inspire runaway support. To which I respond, is this such a bad thing? In this era of twenty-four hour news coverage, exhaustive analysis, and the blogsophere, could it be possible for anyone to escape criticism or to not have his/her credentials called into question? In years past, it was much easier to whitewash over the flaws of a candidate. I might also take Sowell more seriously if history proved that politicians in some past age were somehow more noble or at least weren't forced to give serious attention to their manner of presentation at the expense of their proposed ideas.

Like it or not, people often make decisions based on personality, not cold hard facts. They always have and they always will. With a more literate, informed populace and one with the benefit of a variety of different sources of information from an even wider variety of different viewpoints, it seems pretty understandable to me that we hold candidates for elective office under close scrutiny. So long as we are pondering whether we should elect human beings and not robots, every person running will have his or her own set of imperfections thrust out into the open. What's wrong with competition for the highest office in the land? At worst, this will be an entertaining race with the outcome in doubt until the very end. I believe that the days whereby any candidate for President caused "a runaway stampede" of support, as Sowell put it, are long ago and far away.

An Introvert's Quandry

Let it be known, sleep is golden. After languishing in bed yesterday afternoon, cobbling together a few moments of rest at a time, I finally drifted off somewhere around eleven in the evening. Seven hours trumps three the night before, but since I don't have much to do today, I'm going to return to bed after I finish writing and hope I can grab a few more hours. Here's hoping, anyway.

Thanks for the tea and sympathy from all the usual suspects. Know that you are loved and always appreciated for what you do and say. Our tight-knit band of like-minded kindred spirits is a major reason why I enjoy blogging as much as I do.

Though in retrospect, I probably shouldn't have risked public contact on so little sleep, I muddled through Quaker meeting yesterday morning feeling tired and spouted awkward replies to the inevitable questions and general small talk of the tiny gathering. I doubt seriously I made as horribly unforgivable an impression as my fears wanted to make me think I did, but then again, my whole life I have had to excuse the irrational paranoia that often grips me. Medication, therapy, experience, and a sense of perspective have helped but I'd be lying if I said social interaction wasn't still a constant challenge for me.

I wish I were more comfortable being immediately social with strangers. My potent combination of introversion and social phobia makes me appear detached, distant, and often standoffish. Yesterday, in between first hour and second hour, a man greeted me warmly and, being caught off guard, my already-frayed nerves created a less-than-fantastic first impression. Over the years, friends, I have learned to compensate for this by bringing light to my fears when they arise and making jokes at my own expense. One can't please everyone, nor can one be responsible for what others think of him. Part of the nature of my illness is an extreme sensitivity to criticism and nagging fear that others despise me. It has no basis in reality, and I recognize that, but I still feel caught off guard and overwhelmed among people.

And on that note, I have a warm bed calling my name.

Ugh.

I didn't sleep very well last night. It was one of those frustrating nights where you tell yourself "you know, it really would be nice if I could drift off" but instead your mind wants to race and process things when it really would be better off CHILLING THE FUCK OUT and resting.

Boxer, I'll get to your meme tomorrow. If I could be a character today, I'd be a monosyllabic grumbler.

Read this.

What Made My Year Special?

*vomit* Well, I'd say it's because you got damn near everything you wanted, George.

Saturday Video

I came of age just in time to bask in the dying embers of the early 90's Britpop movement. By the time I entered high school and was intellectually mature enough to properly understand it, the early exuberance and complementary manic energy had long since faded. Instead, what remained were melodic, albeit melancholy discourses like these that seemed to be asking , a la The Kinks, Where Have All The Good Time Gone?

This song "Beetlebum", released in 1997 and featured on the group's self-titled effort, which also notably Blur's first widespread American success, has been long rumored to be about heroin addiction. A UK number one for one week at the end of January 1997, it was ultimately displaced by LL Cool J in the UK Singles Chart. Though a fan's favorite and even a personal favorite of number one competitor Noel Gallagher of Oasis, "Beetlebum" had a rather limited stay in the charts during the time of its release.

2008's Central Theme?

Nearly.

The assassination of Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto earlier in the week crowded everything else off the front page. Despite its impact, one still can't discount that this has, for the most point, been a slow news week. To a large extent, this was expected. The week of Christmas historically means a Congress on hiatus, a minimum of government offices open, many businesses closed, and on election years such as this, a temporary strategic de-emphasis on voracious campaigning. Every Presidential candidate running has taken great care to refrain from direct attacks on its opponents and has been loathe to drop major bombshells. What remains are the over-warmed shadowy leftovers of arguments, accusations, and innuendo. No need to worry, American People. We are only in a momentarily lull, so rest assured the gloves will be off again well before our post-New Year's hangovers have subsided.

I notice a few conservative commentators are ranting anew about immigration, hoping to make it the central campaign issue of the year, let we forget, is finally only a few days away from arriving. At long last, the answer to the bumper sticker that proclaims "Is it 2008 yet?" will be emphatically provided. These pundits hope to make illegal immigration as important an debate as was National Security in 2004, but I would qualify that thus far their attempts are mostly in vain. Wishful thinking alone is insufficient to influence the fight for the hearts, minds, and tip of tongue banter of the average citizen. This blog addressed the immigration debate in length months upon months ago. I feel no compelling need to revisit it and so curious enterprising souls can scour the archives if they wish.

The question remains, then, what will be the central issue of the year to come? I cast my vote for economic woes, since it has been proven time and time again that the American public responds more potently to it more than anything else. Send its young people to war on false pretenses, restrict its civil liberties, resort to barbarically punitive means of punishing its so-called enemies, call into doubt the patriotism of the Loyal Opposition, Americans have proven time and time again to be a remarkably forgiving people until they realize the latest conflict they face is the War on Pocketbook. Even the self-described apolitical spring into action and spout platitudes of outrage with a sense of vigor so pronounced one wonders from whence it came.

One can be sure the growing recession, a largely a lethal product of greedy subprime lending, unwise overseas war, and persistently high energy costs will be co-opted by Democratic candidates in the same fashion as Bill Clinton's "It's the Economy, stupid" mantra of his 1992 campaign. Though interest rates cuts and slight-of-hand tactics have largely kept the bottom from dropping out, one can be certain that if it does, the Bush administration and by implication the GOP will find themselves blamed in wholesale fashion. It nearly goes without saying that this is the Democratic party's race to lose. That being said, I have grown too cautious over the years to make any sort of pronouncement of victory before all the votes are counted, or at least before the votes which will count are tallied. The last landslide victory was twenty-four years ago and these times are far different to those.

Fallout from the Bhutto Assassination

Upon hearing about tragic circumstances like this, I often reach the same inevitable conclusion. After the moral indignation subsides, after my theorizing as to the identity of the parties responsible for the killing concludes, after my often-justified wary suspicion of widespread international ulterior motive arrives at a practical, rather than emotional resolution, after I take deep breaths and calm down, what I am is often left with is a renewed realization of how fortunate we Americans are.

Indeed, we are very lucky to live in a country where overt and shocking acts of violence like these are still relatively rare. Say what you will about the rising level of violence in this nation, the latest school shooting, or the latest human with untreated mental illness who opens fire in the middle a crowded group of people. When public violence occurs on these shores, one can be sure it will be proclaimed in screaming headlines and then exhaustively analyzed by talking heads. Rest assured if events like these were not newsworthy, no media outlet would find them worthy of bringing to our attention. The reality of violence in other parts of the world, particularly the Middle East and Africa, to cite two key examples, is a sadly more prosaic affair.

The brutality of the killing might give us all reason to pause. Not content to simply take her life by gunfire, the assassin detonated a bomb to seal the gruesome deal. The bombing yesterday succeeded not only in taking her life but also ending the the lives of several bystanders in the process. Nor did it lack precedent. As it has been extensively noted, she had recently dodged several similar threats on her life. Though I am filled with many strong emotions, I cannot say that surprise is one of them.

Rest assured, I'm not going to attempt to add some new dialogue to this debate. Others have done a much more admirable job of it over the past two days. I don't have any new pet theory, or web of conspiracy contribution. Yet, I would like to add some perspective.

We on the left often are criticized for being America haters, calling into account our patriotism and devotion. Those who levy such accusations might do well to realize that there is a difference, and a rather large one at that between constructive criticism motivated by righteous outrage and, on the other hand, destructive vitriol designed purely to destroy. Let it be known that I love this country, though I must admit I rarely like it. How could I, owing to the fact that I strongly believe it is on the wrong course? I'm not sure how any sane person could conceivable like seven years, going on eight of gross misuse of power. I'm not sure how anyone could like a war justified by false pretenses and lies. I'm not sure how anyone could like soaring energy costs and a slowing economy. Furthermore, the hypocrisy of the patriotism argument is rather telling, since I've never seen anyone on the right refrain from bitching up a storm when their agenda is being overlooked.

A motivation in writing this post is to directly address those who say leftists never have anything positive to say about America. They do have a point, albeit one they likely never intended, nor implied. It would do us all well to occasionally acknowledge the good things about our country, if only for our own sanity. However, it cannot be ignored that do we have our work cut out for us, particularly when we consider the vast need for reform that exists in the world.

The Latest Addition to the Blogroll

Open Source Punk Name Database

A creation of the lovely Dragon, this site features a vast selection of supremely clever band names. Have any of your own to contribute? If so, please submit.

Comrade Kevin has vanity projects too, ya know.

A Day in the Life (In Pictures)

I decided to take a sanity break from politics to complete a meme I'd been meaning to do for a while. This is the Day in the Life in Pictures (DLIP) in which the goal is to document one's daily doings, pictorially, to whatever degree one wishes. What follows is a relatively restrained retelling of my day. Some people have been known to go to obsessive lengths when fashioning their DLIP. I find these sorts of people usually have small children.

If the spirit moves you, be the next to contribute! I tag no one but openly invite all interested participants to act in kind.


9:00. My stockinged feet and pajama clad legs hit the carpeted floor


Time to take my medication.


Then shower.


Rummage through the closet looking for what I'm going to wear today.


Breakfast, part one.


Breakfast part two, tea.


I read the news today, oh boy.

Upstairs to the computer room.


A look out the window to see what's up, if anything.


Onto my blog roll.


Noon already? Time for the next pill.


While I'm at it, I might as well write some letters.


Laundry!


Dryer!


Off to write reviews of largely boring pedagogical texts such as this.


Clothes done!


Clothes sorted and put in drawers.



The kitchen floor needs to be swept.


Twilight, already? Where does the time go?

I
I am unfortunately out of milk, so I crank the car, pull out of the drive.



Here I am at the grocery store.



The goods.



Time to curl up with a good book



And hit the bed


but not before forgetting to take my night medication.

Blogging in the News

I knew it was only a matter of time before I'd open the paper and read an article like this. Newspaper columns like these I strongly object for a variety of reasons, mostly because they trivialize blogging, whether intentionally or not, describing it as though it's little more than the latest craze for young people. The first website mentioned, for God's sake, is described in terms that render it little more than an approximation of a low-rent Elle or Cosmopolitan magazine feature. Those not in the know might assume we bloggers talk exclusively about cutesy fashion tips or sure-fire ways of making sure our cuticles are perfect. The reality is not nearly as easily defined. This knowledge, I realize, will not be news to my regular readers or active participants in the nebulously-defined endeavor we called collectively deem "the blogsophere" but in the odd chance someone new to the parade reads what I have to say, please let me set the record straight.

Maybe this is merely common sense, but as Voltaire famously put it, "Common sense is not so common." The egalitarian format of the web provides a wealth of different kinds of blogs in a staggering variety of genres ranging from the ever-popular emotional vomit type, to Mommy blogs which obsessively document the lives of the writer's children, to the fashion tip modern day Emily Post sorts, to blogs which showcase a person's art, to the kind of citizen journalist/social commentary blogs of which this is an example. One of the strengths of the internet is that it is, as yet, unregulated and so it's truly a medium of the people.

The reality, however, and call me a snob if you wish (I've certainly been called far worse) is that They The People often have very little to say of substance. As anyone who has browsed the internet for any length of time at all, the challenge is not finding a wealth of information, the challenge is instead sorting through the copious amount of crap in order to find the proverbial rose in the garden of weeds. The relative ease of blogging opens up the internet to anyone, and this more often than not invites any yahoo with a computer and/or a digital camera to spill his/her guts all over the monitor. Sometimes the results are fantastic and deeply thought-provoking, often they induce little more than yawns.

I have a bone to pick with the writer of this article. Several bones, actually. My first criticism is in references to a particular assertion in the text of the article.

...Young Adults are joining a national trend of posting thoughts and ideas in hope of making a difference and/or making enough money to call it a career.

Most blog authors who I interact with on a regular basis, indeed, the ones that you will find linked to this blog are usually several years older than me. The reality, take it how you will, is that most people my own age and younger do not "blog" in any conventional sense. If they do, they likely use their blogs for largely masturbatory activities like the sort described above, or worse yet as a template for emotionally overwrought confessionals--little more than a high-tech journal. Some of us have hopes to make money by blogging, but so far, paid positions are rare. Those who make money off their blog either a) advertise copiously on their site or b) have the connections and luck necessary to get a job writing at the handful of heavily-visited sites. As it stands now, this blog features no advertising for a reason. I'm opposed to it on principle and I also understand quite well that a relatively low-traffic site like mine would not produce much income from ad placement.

The article does get it right when it mentions that many of us want to make a difference. That I can get behind, though I do make a point to qualify that I never forget to remind myself that my relative scope is fairly limited. Small potatoes blogs like this one average twenty hits a day and most of those visits are by members of an adoring core audience. To me, the real thrill in this exercise is making an impact on a few people who I love and who love me in return. This family atmosphere would be compromised, if not made far more difficult if I hit the big time, so to speak.

Yet, if you spoke to most of us, we'd like nothing better than to be one of the big boys. Count me as someone not holding my breath.

A Comparison

Then





Now

Merry Christmas!

Late morning on Christmas Day. By this time, most of us, particularly those of us with children, have unwrapped presents. Living rooms have been transformed to heaps of discarded wrapping paper, each family member is giving their gifts a trial run, and we are all collectively basking in a sense of accomplishment. Another Christmas brought to a successful conclusion. Soon there will be lights to put away, ornaments to remove, and expenditures to contemplate, but for right now, we are content to bask in the lazy warmth of Christmas Day.

Or so it goes for some of us, that is.

My Christmas wish this year is to remember those who have no family to return to this season and thus are sitting at home alone, painfully aware of said fact. My Christmas wish this year is to remember those those for whom holiday gatherings entail familial obligation, but no real sense of familial love. My Christmas wish this year is to remember those for whom even the mention of the word "Christmas" connotes worry and negative feelings. My Christmas wish this year is to remember those who are separated from their family: fighting wars, working, or otherwise occupied with demands which keep the away from their loved ones.

Today's editorial section in the local paper, The Birmingham News, sums it up better than I could.

...[I]t's easy to forget this in the frenzied activity that so often leads up to this day. We stress out. We fight our way through the crowds in the stores. We overspend. We cook and eat more food than sanity should allow. Sometimes, we put impossible demands on the ones we love and on ourselves.

That's true even of Christians, for whome this holiday is supposed to honor the birth of Jesus and to commemorate the greatest gift of all time. It's a great irony that we have come to equate

hostile parking-lot standoffs and tense family gatherings with a holiday that marks God sending a Savior to identify with and ultimately restore our fallen humanity.

The best manifestations of Christmas should not be confined to one month, let alone one day. One day of giving cannot make up for 364 days of neglect, whether it's downtrodden strangers or your very own family.

Merry Christmas to all, and especially to the ones we often overlook!

*In the meantime, Mom and Dad remind us all to keep it real.

Mike Huckabee's Risky Scheme

Those of who have long since grown weary of the 2008 Presidential Election need not wait much longer for some kind of resolution. The primary seasons kicks into high gear with the Iowa caucus on 3 January. I for one am eager to get moving and put an end to largely meaningless poll numbers and theoretical analysis, all of which boils down to, at best, little more than a gigantic guessing game. We will not get a break from exhaustive coverage, but at least we'll have the benefit of concrete details rather than 100% speculation.

The current darling of the GOP, Mike Huckabee, has co-opted a libertarian idea and instituted it as one of his campaign proposals. Like many libertarian ideas, this one almost makes sense until you closely evaluate it. I for one am no fan of the IRS either, but I would propose far more modest reform. Sales taxes of any sort are deeply regressive levies that punish the poor at the expense of the rich. Far fairer taxes are those on property or on corporations.

Not stated by this article, but often cited as justification for why it should be implemented, this scheme seeks to find a way to tax undocumented workers at the same rates as American citizens. Often paid in cash, under the table, illegal immigrants evade paying their share of income tax. However, I do not believe this is the proper way to go about it. I instantly grow nervous when anyone proposes sweeping tax reform this radical, because I'm immediately reminded of destructive taxation policies which have been implemented in the past. The first that springs to mind is the sort which was instituted by the UK. Foolish policies such as these nearly forced the country to go broke. The Beatles sang about them in the song "Taxman".

Let me tell you how it will be
There's one for you, nineteen for me.

American readers might not understand that under the pre-decimal pound system, a pound was equal to 20 shillings. Thus, it stood that the wealthiest members of British society were paying 19 shillings out of every twenty in tax alone. Or to put it another way, 95% of all their income was paid in tax.

Lest it seem that I have some kind of wholesale sympathy for the super rich, rest assured I do not. However, knowing what I know about the whole premise of the capitalist system, I recognize that punitively punishing those at the top for the benefit of those not as well off usually fails. The strategy involved in the UK plan attempted to motivate the rich to spend more in an effort to avoid paying the lion's share of their income in tax, thus thrusting more capital into the system. A desire to preserve wealth, more often that not, creates tax refugees who put their money in other places where tax is lower. This same premise has resulted in massive outsourcing of American jobs to other countries.

The fairest plans keep taxes at tolerable levels for both the rich and poor. So long as an unequal distribution of wealth forms the basis for the capitalist system of which we are a part, so also will our tax policies need to be modified to affect each socio-economic level in a different way. This will lend some degree of complication to the tax structure, but neither should it be as unnecessarily complex as is today. In that, at least, I do agree with Huckabee.

Good Tactics Make Good Bloggers

Occasionally I think we bloggers need to take the time to focus our attention inward towards the blogging community at large. Since most of our time we comment on the outside world and the problems of said outside world, I understand how we might overlook the same sorts of issues when they exist amongst us. Worse yet, we might feel as though these situations only pertain to the outside events that serve as our impetus to blog in the first place. For example, some of us talk about how we ought to extend kindness, compassion, and fairness to the poor and disenfranchised then act in hypocritical fashion towards our brethren. If anything, we ought to be more kind, more benevolent, more understanding towards all people and along with our regard for needed societal change, make sure that we nurture individual relationships with those whom we interact.

I'd like to address a trend I find more than slightly disturbing. Perhaps it's not so much a trend as it is an unfortunate reality. Trends sound finite and fickle. The behavior to which I'm referring appears deeply ingrained in the consciousness of many folks. I'm not sure why the curmudgeon setting some of us seem to be stuck on is so prevalent these days. In particular, I'm speaking about the way some of us love to devour our own. No, I'm not speaking to EVERYONE, but I think it would do us well to contemplate how we ought to avoid this kind of behavior. Especially as this is the Christmas season, where our ultimate stated purpose is, lest we forget, to extend goodwill and peace towards all, and this includes people with whom we might disagree.

Let it be known that there's absolutely nothing wrong with a well-placed snarky remark. Indeed, an off-the-cuff clever remark is well appreciated. Gems like those are what make blogging worthwhile and rewarding.

There's absolutely everything wrong with snark that is destructive in nature and serves no purpose. How did we get so callous over the years? Not only callous, but so convinced in the indisputable rightness of our own personal message that we deem anyone who deviates from it even a fraction is somehow worthy of scorn? I find this a kind of inexcusable idolatry of sanctimony that needs to be addressed.

Some of us love to pick fights and split hairs. Some of us want to be right at all costs. May I suggest that there's much to be said for diplomacy. Anger and negative salvos do have a kind of seductive immediacy to them, but their ultimate impact wins few friends and more often than not backfires. Repeatedly nasty assaults often lead to certain people being referred to as blowhards, trolls, loose cannons, or worse.

I'm twenty-seven years old, and I once assumed that once I became an adult that the kind of pettiness so prevalent in adolescence would subside. This knowledge served as great solace in those often painful times. Yet, I find example after after of people clearly old enough to know better ripping into their fellows. Are we that insecure? Should I add a qualifying statement that says a person can act stupidly at any age?

As Robert Frost mentioned in "Mending Wall"

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know/
What I was walling in or walling out.

Saturday Video

Your humble narrator acknowledges how many good things have come his way over the course of his life.

The REAL War against Christmas

Cal Thomas, more often than not, turns my stomach. Most of the time I heartily disagree with every argument he sets forth and object to the smarmy way he trots out his obnoxious rhetoric. Still, I read him almost every day if only to know what the other half thinks. It was quite a surprise to me then, that I found much to agree with in his most recent column. Readers might wish to ignore the inevitable partisan swipe at the left while contemplating the overall message behind it.

Passages such as these are firmly in keeping with arguments I've seen advanced by a multitude of lefty blogs.

Why has the acquisition of "more" produced so much less — less contentment, less happiness? When the income increases don't come fast enough to keep pace with the want increases and pleasure is not constant, many complain and moan about "hard times." Anyone who has not been through a Great Depression and a world war has no reason to whine.

Most of our demands are a response to marketing. We are assaulted with commercials and ads that assert our "need" for whatever it is they are trying to sell us. When our income is insufficient to meet those newly discovered wants, the spouse goes to work to help pay for them. The kids go into day care, or its equivalent — ever earlier pre-kindergarten. When these children display social malfunction, we find doctors to prescribe drugs to soothe their legitimate anxiety.

Though a conservative commentator would never put them in these terms, herein is the REAL War against Christmas. In its ideal incarnation, (and to his credit, Thomas points this out at the end of this column) the gifts we gave to other people would have some functional, practical appeal beyond the latest electronic toy or product with shelf life shorter than milk that either falls apart within months or becomes another long-term occupant of our garage or attic. Or, to broaden the scope of this line of thinking, how often have we gotten passive-aggression in wrapping paper, presents that conform to someone else's ideas and/or fantasies of what we ought to receive? If we don't spend our lives trying to keep up with the Jones, there's always someone out there more than willing to remind us of that fact.

Acquisition of possessions is the almost uniform litmus test of what constitutes success in this society. Yet, as it has been shown time and time again, through history and through modern day examples, success almost never equates to happiness. Furthermore, the more wealthy we are and the more stuff we acquire, the more unhappy we seem to become. If we strike it rich and buy a huge sprawling McMansion, we become so deadly afraid that we'll lose it all that we prefer to live behind fortified compounds, gated communities with security guards regulating the flow of traffic.

It doesn't really have to be this way. I'd expand Thomas' premise and state that, in future, the gifts we give ought to be given for their practical value, reflecting true unselfishness in the process. Recall O.Henry's short story "The Gift of the Magi". The presents given by both the husband and the wife are gestures of love, though in typical fashion, the author inserts an ironic twist at the end. He concludes by saying,

Here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

What I'm Thankful For This Season

I know I'm supposed to say something serious but really, I'm thankful for not having to watch the movie Love Story.

Masochists can indulge below.