Break

Sorry, I've been away. My job has been CRAZY since ... well ... since the market went crazy. Our family is going to Germany for a couple weeks, and hopefully, when we return, I can start up again. - R

PALINdromes

Those who haven't figured out Governor Palin's genius by now simply don't understand that during the debate she is burdened with trying to figure out how to say her position in a palindrome format:

Ifill: "Governor, what did you whisper to the witchdoctor who visited your church?

Palin: "Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas"

Ifill: "Please name 3 reasons Americans should vote for John McCain?"

Palin: "A man, a plan, a canal—Panama!”

Good Fences Make Good Neibuhrs

A great Reinhold Niebuhr quote from a 1916 Atlantic Monthly article about democracy, individualism, etc., from one of our nation's great theologians:


The Atlantic Monthly

Neibuhr concludes with this powerful critique, that is profound in its relevance today:


The Atlantic Monthly

A Nation of Adolescent Profligates

After reading Andrew Bacevich's book on The Limits of Power, I became fascinated with the idea of profligacy. I found an interesting quote from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics which described profligacy in terms of it being a childish fault.

For years now I've been feeling that we as a nation/culture have been regressing. We are leaving adulthood, and falling back into a cultural adolescence. We want things, but don't want to pay for them. We are ego-centric, selfish, short sighted, competitive, hard to manage. A civilization of teenagers basically.

Here is the quote from Nicomachean Ethics:


The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle By Aristotle, Frank Hesketh Peters

Teddy Says the Darndest Things...

I was reading Theodore Roosevelt's autobiography the other day (since John McCain just loves to vacillate between being a Reagan Republican and a Roosevelt Republican). I found an interesting section that seemed almost to foreshadow our current predicament. Look closely at the sections dealing with "doctrines of laissez-faire economists," "unlimited individualism," "immunity," etc. Very, very interesting :


Theodore Roosevelt, an Autobiography an autobiography By Theodore Roosevelt

Jesting with the Infinite and His Terrible Master

David Foster Wallace is dead. What a F'ing RIP.

IT is impossible to relate to those who haven't read DFW what the literary world has lost.

His essays were brilliant, his fiction was innovative. His writing was fresh, fast, and violently funny.

In DFW's 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon, he said:

It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.

And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out.

So Long DFW. God speed into the real and the infinite.

Books I'm Currently Reading

Andrew Bacevich -- Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism

Bacevich (an old friend of my wife's family) argues that although many in this country are paying a heavy price for US domestic and foreign policy decisions, millions of Americans simply continue to shop, spend and satisfy their appetite for cheap oil, credit and the promise of freedom at home.

This is one of the GREAT books I've read during my adulthood.

Richard Ben Cramer -- What it Takes: The Way to the White House

How do presumably ordinary people acquire that mixture of ambition, stamina, and pure shamelessness that makes a true candidate? This book is VERY illuminating, especially during our current election cylce since one of the eight people covered in Cramer's opus is Senator Biden.

Robert D. Kaplan -- Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground

Several of Kaplan's books are among my favorite non-fiction reads. Balkan Ghosts was fantastic, as was The Coming Anarchy.

Anthony Everitt -- Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

In exploring the rise to power of Augustus, adopted son of Julius Caesar, Everitt alos explores the Roman Empire, with all its violence, greed, debauchery, and heroics.

I didn't realize it until I had listed the four books currently at home on my bedside table, but they are ALL ... to one extent or another...books about Empire and Imperialism.

Digitus Impudicus: FU We Can!

Although I am a fan of Joe Biden, in the shadowy recesses of my mind, I was kinda hoping that -- in a show of 'Business Unusual' -- Barack Obama would declare John McCain his running mate.

Everyone in the press would go absolutely ape, until the next day when...wait for it...McCain would declare Barack Obama to be HIS running mate.

I don't think CNN, FOX, or MSNBC would know what to do with that.

The party system would begin a series of dry heaves that would only end after the election.

Better yet, during the Republican Convention, it would be awesome if John McCain would mention he decided to accept the Republican nomination, but instead of an inspiring speech he simply flips the bird for 20 minutes. Declaring his mute "double-barrel salute" a solemn devotion to Bush and Rove.

McCain would instantly jump back into the role of Maverick and send the entire Republican Convention into hysterics.

No one in 100 years will really remember anything about Kerry, Dole or Dukakis. Think about it. Who really knows anything about James Cox (Harding), John Davis (Coolidge), or Al Smith (Hoover)?

BUT, if John McCain gave the Republican Party the 'rigid digit salute' at the Republican Convention, win or lose, he would join the pantheon of American folklore fantastic. He wouldn't be a footnote in American Politics. John McCain would be its exclamation point!

China's Other Syndrome

The other day while watching Michael Phelps (and the rest of the US men's relay team) smash another world-record and earn another Gold in the 4x100 relay, my seven-year-old son Jakob said "Dad, I think Michael Phelps has Marfan Syndrome."

I laughed and said, "well Jakob, he does have our ears, and that is does seem to be a requirement of being a world-class swimming athlete...so maybe you're destined for greatness."

Then last night on NBC they were doing all the physical stats on Phelps. Height, shoe size, wingspan, flexibility, etc., and I though...maybe Jakob IS right and did an Internet search. I found an article that from a Cleveland paper that reported that Phelps did have Marfan Syndrome.

I love how the Internet gives you the ability to find lists of famous people with connective tissue disorders.

Google to the rescue. Michael Phelps DOES have Marfan Syndrome (according to Google).

However, I guess we will never know if Abraham Lincoln could have been -- just maybe -- if born in a different era, a world-class relay swimmer.

Would old Abe have called it a four x five score relay?

My one wish, I guess, would also be to know definitively if Osama Bin Ladin has Marfan Syndrome.

If Osama were caught alive in the mountains of Pakistan, I would love to see the guy dropped into an Olympic-sized pool next to Michael Phelps.

Tell him we'd let him go if he beat Phelps in the 100 meter butterfly. If he has Marfans he might just have 1 in 5000 chance, and I like those odds.

"Cheesus" Made It

God smiles upon Pepsi.

Pepsi as you know owns Frito-Lay which makes Cheetos. And, apparently, corn-based, cheese-flavored, carb-heavy snacks are the New World's Sinai of divine revelation...if you live in Missouri.

Why, oh why does this constitute news?

One cynical view is the MSM has a huge bias against religion. Oh the long-tail FoxNews grabbed when they discovered that wacky lady (with more indulgent friends and family than sense) in middle America who sees GOD in the impulse snack aisle. Some well-pressed, local television producer (with only a Presidential election, a congressional scandal, a recession, a housing crisis, two dynamic wars, Israel/Iran, Russia, China, and the Olympics to cover) just finished reading Chris Hitchen's recent book God is Not Great or the Dawkins' God Delusion and thought... "oh you silly believers...look at what you do? Look how absurd faith, hope and charity is..."

A second cyncial view is that the MSM really is just that indulgent and incompetent. Issues like debt, education, politics, etc., are hard to cover, and not very sexy but dammit, we can get a ton of clicks out of "Cheesus" in Missouri. That story has LEGS.

Ted Stevens?

That's so Sunday Talk shows demographic, we want the Chester Cheetos demographic. Hell, we want the Pepsi sponsorship too. A definite win win. Send a camera out there before CNN catches on.

My final cynical view is that for most Americans our faith has become JUST that superficial and stupid. St. Augustine would be freaking out at the baseness of our narcissistic, and pareidolian devotions. Really Sir? You see God in an X-ray, rust stain, burnt tortilla, cat spot, or garage door?

I guess I'll repent and be less flippant when I open that next Doritos bag and come face to face with the seven horsemen of the Apocalypse covered in a cheese-flavored powder. No one knows the day of his arrival except PEPSI.