christmas time is here

Just in time for the holidays, we have snow! It was perfect yesterday, wandering around in the park watching sledders and the snow fall on the fountains. I even have (most) of my presents bought and wrapped. Not only am I a slow eater and slow showerer, but Jodi also says I am a slow wrapper.

Off to do a little more...

head in the sand

Alright, after a week of denial, I think I can finally talk about football. After putting themselves in the incredibly unlikely position of actually being able to win their division earlier in the season, it appears the Chiefs are almost as bad as the 'experts' predicted (however, it is worth noting that they're still clearly not among the very worst teams this year, and will finish much more competitively, and with more wins, than those ESPN folks thought possible).

More emotionally taxing has been the college season. Setting aside the elephant in the room that the NCAA's men's football and basketball leagues are for-profit entities acting as employers, this season has been ridiculous. For one thing, it seems a critical mass of commentators are sick of hearing about how much better the SEC is than every other conference. It's not exactly like Georgia set up a monster non-conference schedule. Their toughest contest was against 6-6 Oklahoma State. At home. If Kansas had set up a home game against, say, 6-6 South Carolina, would people all of a sudden be talking about them as playing the best football in the country? Georgia didn't even play a team making it to the BCS. Tennessee, the SEC East champion, beat Georgia and played two BCS bound teams. Which of course is irrelevant, because Georgia 'is playing great football now', which, by the way, is pretty easy to do when the last two teams you face in the season both have five losses. And at any rate, Tennessee ended up losing to 6-6 Cal (at least that was a road game), and had four losses overall. Those six losses are twice as many as the top two teams had in the Big 12 North. You can't blame losses like Cal on the SEC 'beating each other up' because Tennessee hadn't even played an SEC team when they lost to Cal!

Meanwhile, in the west, LSU is clearly one of the top ten teams in the country. But they lost twice, including one loss at home. And with a non-conference schedule against powerhouses like MTSU and La Tech, man, they should obviously be in the championship game. LSU really only has one impressive win, at home early against Virginia Tech. The rest of their season looks pretty average, barely winning against Florida and Tennessee, losing to Kentucky and Arkansas. The rest of the west had at least three conference losses and at least four losses overall. Auburn, the second place team, nearly lost the first three games of its season (ie, the part of the schedule played outside the SEC).

It's not like the Big 12 or the Big Ten or the Pac 10 had better non-conference schedules. Not at all. The point is that the SEC didn't prove anything special, which suggests looking at the records. And you have to go down to the 5th place team in the Big 12 to find a 4-loss team. It's almost unbelievable, but the top three teams in the Big 12 combined for 33 wins, and three of their five losses came against each other. All three teams went undefeated at home. They played four games against BCS bound teams, and they didn't lose a single game outside the Big 12. LSU, Georgia, and Tennessee, meanwhile, had three fewer wins, and they only played two games against each other, meaning that they lost six games against other teams, more than the entire total losses of the top three in the Big 12. They also played one fewer game against BCS bound teams.

But of course, it's the SEC, not the Big 12, that has two teams near the top of the BCS, one of which is bound for the National Championship. Missouri has more quality wins than LSU, beating both BCS bound Kansas and BCS bound Illinois at neutral sites, and only losing to 11 win, Big 12 Champion Oklahoma. Kansas had only one loss, at a neutral site against 11 win, Big 12 North champion Missouri. And Oklahoma beat Missouri twice and Texas once in winning the Big 12 Championship. All three have cases at least as strong as LSU. Seriously, why even have computers? If the polls are 2/3 the vote, just use the poll and scrap the concept of more objective computer rankings.

LSU is a feel good choice, especially with the game in New Orleans. And this leaves Missouri hungry for building on future seasons, with a shot this season of embarrassing the team that beat LSU at home with a national TV game against Arkansas. And Kansas gets a BCS bowl, which really, is pretty fair, all things considered. If Kansas somehow manages to win that game against Virginia Tech, I think you might have some people vote for them as the national champion (after all, Virginia Tech is ranked number one by the computers). [Did I mention that Missouri played four games, four games!, against BCS bound teams, none of them, zero, zippo, nada, at home!?! Their worst loss of the season was in the conference championship! They won their division! They beat two different BCS bound teams, from two different conferences!] And I can't be too upset, once you step back and analyze everything, because the rules are clear that you can't have more than two teams from a conference, even if the computer ranks you 4th in the country. Plus, it gives Missouri the dubious distinction of probably having the most wins ever by a major conference team excluded from the BCS. That will be a winning trivia answer for years to come. Virginia Tech, after all, is really the team that got screwed, being locked out of the national championship by those mysterious human experts, and getting matched up against Kansas. If they win, the 'experts' will just say they should have won anyway because Kansas wasn't really that good because their schedule was so soft, with Kansas' whole season being ridiculed all along the way. If they lose, they will point to the loss and say if you can't beat Kansas, how can you claim to deserve a rematch against LSU or be better than one loss Ohio State?

Don't even get me started on Ohio State. At least the SEC won some good games, and they have a crop of teams that are very competitive this year. All Ohio State did was beat a conference rival, a 4 loss rival at that. In their only game against a BCS bound team, they lost. At home! Even the 'granddaddy of 'em all' suffers. What could have been USC-Ohio State (arguably the best bowl match-up anyway), is now USC-Illinois. Bleh. If Illinois somehow wins, it shows that the Missouri win is even bigger than people think and that the Pac 10 really sucked this year (and really will make the MU/IL game exciting next year). If USC wins, uh, well, we won't know anything at all. This is practically a home game for them against a three loss team that's not even ranked in the top ten from a conference that is noticeably weak in the football arena this year.

I (generally) like Columbus and all. I'm just saying that Buckeye fans better enjoy their gift this holiday season.

So how do you solve this? Well, there's no easy way, since we have an undefeated midmajor, a Rose Bowl that wants Pac 10/Big Ten, and three Big 12 teams that should make the BCS. But this would be better:

Rematch LSU and Virginia Tech in the national championship (they are, after all, #1 and #2 in the computers).
Let Hawaii have a shot at Oklahoma, the best conference champ not in the national championship, in the Fiesta Bowl, which is also a little closer to their time zone.

The winners of those two games would then have legitimate cases of their national championship worthiness.

Then let the Rose Bowl have Pac 10 champ USC and Big Ten champ Ohio State. They can play for the 'historic big name program that didn't play any big games this year' championship.
Send Arizona State to play Georgia in the Sugar Bowl. They have, after all, had nearly identical seasons, with 2 losses and both reaching as at large bids. Except, uh, Georgia is 'playing really good football right now'.
Let Missouri and West Virginia have their match-up in the Orange Bowl. It's like the national championship, but less important.

I think those matchups would be more intriguing, would better reflect the quality of the conferences this season, and would better emphasize the importance of doing well in your conference. Instead of a weak national championship game, no shot for Hawaii against a major conference champion, and two games that have teams which are 'supposed' to win (USC and Virginia Tech) and 'supposed' to lose (Illinois and Kansas), these games would be competitive and would give the winners of these games a chance to argue that their win means something. Virginia Tech, Oklahoma, and Hawaii deserve a chance to at least argue they deserve the national championship. You do that by putting one in the Championship game and having the other two hit each other, not by pitting two of them against teams that didn't even make it to their conference championship game.

Since the Rose Bowl is dead set on a Big Ten team, and the Big Ten has been weak, it makes the most sense of Ohio State/LSU for Ohio State to not go to the national championship. Conversely, if you send Kansas to the BCS instead of Missouri, because records are most important, then really, Hawaii should be playing in the national championship, not LSU. Even though they're undefeated, I don't think Hawaii should be in there, and that still leaves the problem of a second Big Ten team making it because the Rose Bowl will pick a Big Ten team (especially since the next best team, arguably, is from the Pac 10). You want your conference to get two teams in the BCS and have a shot at the championship, but at the same time, the Big Ten is running a very real risk of having two teams now lose high profile games, instead of having one game with a better shot of winning it. Michigan, ironically, might actually have the best shot out of the Big Ten now to win an important game. Either that, or the Big Ten's top four squads might go 0-4 against the SEC and Pac-10. Ouch.

My predictions for the next month:

Big 12: 5-3
Pac 10: 4-2
SEC: 4-4
ACC: 4-4
Big East: 3-3
Big Ten: 3-4

redneck woman

I don't have much to say. I don't have the faculties or training to provide any sort of critical response. I don't know if this is a pretty common thing.

I just have to say that you haven't heard Gretchen Wilson until you've heard her covered by a big black woman.

another good stanford reason

Ok, now, granted, Stanford's men's football team isn't quite as excellent as its women's ultimate frisbee team, but who isn't still excited this morning about that 4th and goal against the number one team in the country?

Ah, poor USC. Yet another reason there really should be a playoff system.

human energy

The Chevron ads have to be an instant classic. Amidst the general backdrop of oil wars and global warming and former directors in the Executive Branch, there's the particular fun of the hubbub in Burma (er, Myanmar) where the totalitarian state is basically abducting, assaulting, and killing citizens in rather sizeable numbers. Those ever dangerous monks appear to be especially troublesome.

How does the government stay in power? Why, that little oil pipeline Chevron invests in certainly helps a tad.

fall is here

Yay fall. A season almost as good as summer and spring. It occured to me as tonight was the first night I've driven home from work after the sun has set. Woohoo.

(P) As it's been about five years now since the Bush Administration ramped up their Iraq invasion sales pitch, I've been thinking a lot about where we're headed. The initial justifications are so obviously absurd, that it makes one conclude that the Administration must think eventually public opinion will force Congress to do something. Are they hoping the situation stays under control until they're out of office? Are they making a nice little retirement fund out of the cash that's unaccounted for? Are they planning to stay in office longer than January 2009? Do they have the goods via domestic spying on enough Congressmen to prevent real legislation or accountability?

About the only way this can be beneficial long term is if they convince the Iraqis to privatize their oil and sign sweetheart PSA deals with Western firms. But that seems far from certain, and the trends seem to favor the political forces opposing cooperation with the US.

So it begs the question of what if something catastrophic happens? We are so much more powerful than any other nation that it's hard to express the scale of the superiority of our equipment and offensive capability. Yet, it's worthless against an asymmetric foe; we're basically at an impasse. We're going through our stocks of equipment, we're paying huge sums of money to unaccountable private companies, we're destroying decades of international leadership, we're burning out tens of thousands of highly trained troops, and it's all we can do to hang on to a few bases against a fractured resistance. What happens if nationalistic groups manage to work together and overrun a base? What if they take the embassy compound we're building and a couple major airstrips? You can't airlift a quarter of a million people out of a country overnight. What if a real security concern arises unexpectedly, the whole point for having a standing army in the first place?

bye bye hkd

Exciting news! I got an envelope this weekend. Candace had just called Friday night, so I'm thinking Liberty a little, and then I see a KC postmark. 900 Cambridge, who lives on Cambridge, Candace doesn't live there, right?

Then I flash back to a conversation Stan and I had many years ago about Cambridge. Cambridge? Oh yeah, that's where Hillary lives! Or used to, or her mom does, or something.

I must say, the Liberty memory is two for two this weekend. It was in fact from Hillary.

Congratulations to you and Jason! I will most certainly plan on coming back for your wedding. Yay.

why aren't I a betting man

Personally, the timing on my phone worked out pretty well; I'd rather have the lower price than the store credit. But Apple did do something. I should be a consultant for them or something.

excitement excitement excitement

Man, I thought the who will lose least NL Central was exciting. I'm checking baseball scores - why didn't the Royals play the Rangers earlier in the year - and discover that Apple released some updated iPods.

Cool beans.

Now, apparently they also dropped the price on the iPhone. But not retroactively. Needless to say, a few of Apple's best customers are a tad upset. Fortunately my phone is on day number 13.

And no, I'm not counting. I just needed to make sure I was in the magic 14 day window. As I'm writing from my iPhone as we speak, I'll keep the business analysis short. But if I were a betting man, I'd guess that Apple will end up doing something to appease half a million of its best customers and sales people.

upper deck twofer

Yay for vacation! That's why we work, right? Mostly at least.

And the blinding lightning and thunderstorms were unable to get in the way of gametime. It stopped raining just in time. At the baseball game Friday night, which was a great 2-1 win, by the way (have I mentioned that the Royals aren't in last place?-still, as I write this, several days later), there were two other exciting moments besides the outcome and fireworks. Not one, but two foul balls got hit right at our section, essentially straight back from home plate. The first one went two rows behind. The second one came in really fast, but I was apparently ready to dislocate a finger or something catching it. Unfortunately (or, perhaps, fortunately) the guy in front of me reached over at the last second with his glove. He didn't catch it, but did knock it over into the next section. Oh well. I haven't come that close to getting a ball since one of McGwire's home runs the year he set the record. I was ready to throw that one back, too! Candace and Scott, good to see you. Amy and Chris, congratulations.

Fridays' schedule worked out very nicely. After the game it was off to downtown to see Kelli and Nick and, eventually, Andrew. (There ya go Nick Kromnacher, did that show up in your Google search? Or wait, is it Kromenacker? Kromenocker? Nich? Nicholas? Nickolas? Guess we'll see just how good Google is!) Seriously though, it was really nice to see you all. It's been awhile since I've been back to KC. I am very excited to tell Julie that people actually play her game.

Then Saturday was family stuff, from Liberty to Blue Springs. Pools are great when they're in somebody else's backyard, and it's summer time, but after a major heat wave has broken. I didn't even get sunburned, although I did eat way too much BBQ. Oh well, the sacrifices we make for family.

And in other random news, how awesome is the speech that John Edwards gave? I really wish Senator Obama would drop the whole new politics/civility approach and really offer his critique of the system. The longer he goes, the more it appears that he doesn't really want to critique the system at all, in which case, we might as well just elect Senator Clinton. Julie, I know you disagree. But if you want a taste of why I have liked what Edwards has done so much the last couple years, the clip from Hanover is a great example.

the new one from Hanover
the press conference from Elisabeth's treatment
the speech at the winter DNC meeting

Finally something I'm sort of burying, but nonetheless am very excited about. I, uh, caved in to months worth of anticipation and bought an iPhone. I know, I know, don't say it, I know. But nonetheless, there it is. I can now text, and email and camera phone and googlemap and schedule, to my heart's content.

My raise is now officially gone. In my pocket. And on the new tires on my car. But it sounds more exciting to just blame it on the iPhone.

confessions

Sheena, I need to tell you something. It's huge, I know. That shot glass you asked me to pick up with something from St. Louis on it for you a couple months ago? I, uh, haven't, exactly, gotten around to getting it yet.

Maybe I'll still go get one and sneak onto campus and dig a little hole where your freshman dorm room used to be and bury it and plant a sign that says in memory, Sheena's shot glass.

At any rate, I'm left with nothing to say. It's pretty shocking and suprising and it's hard to reach out to people that haven't been in your daily life for a while. I'm glad I do have friends who call--thanks Eric and Doug!--even if, ahem, Eli, who is half-way round the world in Swaziland, apparently, knew before I did. Nice work there peoples. It's almost like we all lived together in college or something.

Bye Sheena. We miss you.

how much evidence is enough

(P) One of the fundamental issues I am most passionate about deals with the process of voting. Now, it's not particularly exciting in and of itself; in fact, it's rather mundane and boring, when all goes well. But when all does not go well, it throws off the whole system. It's impossible to have representative government when the official tallies don't represent the will of the people. In fact, it's more sinister than that. It's impossible to have representative government when there is the impression that the official results are illegitimate, even if they do accurately reflect the results of an election.

There are a number of ways over the years that American democracy has been susceptable to manipulation, with perhaps the most famous cases being political bosses, or machines, in major cities, whose tactics were basically to persuade lots of people to vote a certain way through less than fair means. What's interesting about the voting issues of the past few years compared to prior periods is that the defining characteristic is no longer trying to manipulate people into voting. Rather, it's about trying to prevent certain groups of people from voting, or, if you can't stop them, prevent their votes from being counted accurately. It's also worth noting that men from New York to KC ended up being convicted and incarcerated for various crimes. Election fraud is a serious issue, and there is much precedent in our history for prosecuting it aggressively. Just like Al Capone, a common tactic was going after tax evasion if the evidence couldn't be collected for a conviction related to illegal election activity.

Now, none of the above will strike anybody as particularly controversial, as it's safely in the past and primarily dealt with urban Democratic bosses. It gets really interesting, however, when we raise questions about current GOP operatives. All of a sudden, it's treasonous, insane conspiracy theorizing to pose questions when something smells fishy (my favorite line from back in November of 2004 from the mainstream media is courtesy of the Washington Post: "spreadsheet-wielding conspiracy theorists"). We all know how irrational accountants, engineers, and statisticians tend to be.

There are lots of places to read about specific problems in Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, Nevada, and elsewhere. The unfolding story about White House political involvement in US Attorney selection certainly will shed additional light on GOP voter suppression tactics. Some people have already been convicted and/or forced to resign their positions in the following years. What's perhaps most suspicious, though, prompted this particular post.

Under state law and a specific court order, Ohio election officials were required to secure results from the 2004 election for further study. Guess what? The documents have been destroyed or are missing from over half the counties in Ohio.

Nothing to see here folks, move along.

14k

I had to write about this milestone. It is an excellent time to remind that for long-term investing, a critical component should include equity markets.


However, it is worth noting that the vast majority of these gains go to the richest people. The top ten percent control over 3/4 of the stock market. In contrast, the poorest half of the country control less than 2 percent.

If those kinds of numbers don't move ya, well, I guess you're just not moved by numbers.

a new reason to go to Stanford

I grew up playing ultimate frisbee. It was a regular part of my life by junior high. We would play every Sunday afternoon, year round, and sometimes in the evenings over the summer. Good times!

Well ESPN decided to do a little exploration of less well known sports, and they decided to profile the Stanford women's team. If you didn't know, they're kind of dominant.

This quote is particularly awesome:
"Dantzker, who joined the team as a sophomore, said she improved as a player each season. More significantly, she said that with each game her love of the sport grew. She admits that part of the reason she decided to pursue a graduate degree at Stanford was to continue playing for Superfly."

GSB, here I come.

They say about 100,000 Americans play in total. I find that hard to believe, though. Even ten years ago there were a lot of leagues and it definitely felt like a lot more involvement than .033% of the population, and I'm sure more play now than when I got started. I wonder if that's only people who participate directly in leagues through the UPA.

We were a tad more casual. In fact, it was kind of funny when people would try to organize our efforts and get us to run specific plays (out of the stack) and so forth. We mostly just wanted to have fun running around throwing the frisbee, which I would argue is still very much in the spirit of the sport, combining competitive traits with self-regulatory ones (there are no refs in ultimate). Plus, teamwork is the most important thing. It's really fun when you know people so well that you can make something look chaotic to the other team but you are instinctively aware of what your teammates are up to.

Ah, that's been a while...

back on the table

(P) I was a little surprised the Administration, historically stingy with its pardoning powers, commuted the sentence of convicted Vice Presidential aide Libby. They had been handed a Congress with little interest in directly challenging the core criminality of their time in office. One of Speaker of the House Pelosi's most famous phrases was about impeachment being off the table.

But now, amidst a number of interrelated and growing scandals, Bush committed an act clearly linking himself to the heart of the problem, the lack of accountability and transparency, the utter disdain for the Constitution and the rule of law.

He went all in, and I think even members of Congress will become increasingly persuaded by the public to call the President's bluff. One of the great checks of our system is that people consumed by power tend to overreach. While certainly enough impeachable acts have already been committed, keeping Libby out of jail has a beautifully simplistic nature to it. It's very easy to understand and quite difficult to obfuscate. We either have an executive branch bound by the rule of law, or we have a dictator beyond it. Even comfortable DC Democrats won't be able to ignore the increasing pressure that is building on the system.

As we celebrate the Declaration of Independence, maybe it's appropriate that our leaders have given us a gift of such clarity and meaning.

je deteste les voitures vraiment

les enfants aussi. That may not be grammatically correct enough for L'Académie Française, but you get the idea.

I'm going to lunch this afternoon and notice a sizeable crater in my windshield and a large crack going up from it. Now, there are rocks in the parking lot at the next building, and kids, too, because it's a daycare. But the daycare swears they supervise the kids whenever outside. Unfortunately, no one where I work saw when it happened.

So, it appears that a rock magically picked itself up off of their parking lot and smashed into a windshield in another parking lot. I hear that happens all the time these days.

c'est moi

Facebook is going crazy with all these new apps they're adding. This one's pretty cool, though.

rip lazy days

Terrible news. The People of Lazy days have disappeared.

While some fear a pandemic disease, asteroid impact, nuclear war, gloabl warming, massive volcanic eruption, or space aliens, uncomfirmed reports place the blame on the country's creator for being absent for too many consecutive days.

The People of Lazy days would request further study and assistance if they still existed to harbor such sentiments.

maybe we should be recruiting them

(P) I was doing a little reading this afternoon, and I ran into a very interesting tidbit of information. One of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay in the cases that were recently thrown out, Omar Kadhr, is charged with killing a special forces medic on the battlefield.

Omar was 15.

For all the talk about how illegal and immoral the Bush Administration's wars are, maybe there's another problem we need to address.

Let's suspend disbelief for a second and assume Omar is guilty. What does that say about the state of our military when a teenager in an impoverished country can kill a special forces medic on the battlefield?

can the espn curse affect even the royals

Imagine my shock when I saw the following on ESPN's preview of the Cardinals/Royals game this evening.

bye bye eli

Have a great time in Swaziland.

Don't forget to come home at some point.

over the hill

I've now put 40,000 miles on my car! That pushes it over the 75,000 mile mark. Not so young any more. But it's been a pretty good car. Hopefully that continues for several more years.

I'm off to Florida, so it gets a rest this weekend. See you in a few hours Doug! Assuming I make it past all the dumb Orwellian airport "security".

happy valentine's day

This is really cool.

Apparently a Navy officer sent a list of Guantanamo detainees' names in a Valentine's Day card. As he told a reporter, "My oath as a commissioned officer is to the Constitution of the United States". He was sentenced to six months in jail, but it could have been a lot worse.

AP story
Dallas Morning News

an open letter to senator mccaskill

(P) Dear Senator McCaskill,

I am disappointed that after such an inspiring campaign in which you unseated a heavily supported Republican incumbant, you are not yet willing to show the courage and leadership to declare clearly and publicly the need to change course in Iraq.

I understand that there are a variety of influences you face and that you may not feel the urgency of this issue. But a majority of your constituents have felt the urgency for some time, and now we have a vote on the Feingold-Reid Amendment with a majority of your Democratic colleagues recognizing publicly the urgency of this issue.

At some point, as more and more time passes, you will come around and vote for legislation to end the disaster in Iraq. I urge you to come to this realization and act on it publicly sooner rather than later. If you will not lead on this most important issue, Missourians will be forced to find new leaders. Do not be afraid to be bold.

Regards,

Nathaniel Dempsey
St. Louis, MO

on the march

The People of Lazy days are happy to announce that the population has zoomed past the 4 billion mark. 5 billion is on the horizon!

my newly 17 year old sister

Off to prom:

the unbuycott

That would otherwise be known as a boycott. I wrote a post a couple years ago about Citgo, and guess what got forwarded (through about ten people) today from somebody at work? The opposite of the article I talked about in 2005. I got so excited I checked my blog, and sure enough, that post was the first one I listed under my personal favorites section.

It's a very interesting email. Here it is, with the annoying "> > >" that seem to be a requirement of any mass-forwarded email removed and the spacing fixed so it's readable. I left the spam note at the bottom because I think it adds just the right touch.

" From: Austin, D'larce A
Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2007 9:54 AM
Subject: FW: [Fwd: Citgo]

Subject: Citgo Changing Name

President Chavez of Venezuala is NOW getting a Russian Weapons Factory built by Putin. He has previously "vowed" to destroy the United Sates of America because we are a threat to the rest of the world.

The RUSSIANS are building an AK-47 Kalashnikov Assault Rifle factory in Venezuela, to give armament support to Communist Rebel groups throughout the Americas.

Chavez NOW has IRANIANS operating his oil refineries in Venezuela for him. It is likely only a matter of time, if not already, before Chavez has Iranian-built LONG RANGE missiles, with a variety of warhead types aimed at: Guess Who?

CITGO is NOW in the process of Changing Its Name to PETRO EXPRESS due to the loss of gasoline sales in the USA due to the recent publicity of ownership by President Chavez of Venezuela.

Every dollar you spend with CITGO or PETRO EXPRESS gasoline will be used against you, your basic human rights, and your freedoms. He will start wars here in the Americas that will probably be the death of millions of free people.

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT because Chavez is starting to feel the loss of revenue from his holdings. HE OWNS CITGO. This is a very important move that everyone should be aware of.

ANNOUNCED JUST RECENTLY, CITGO, BEING AWARE THAT SALES ARE DOWN DUE TO U.S. CUSTOMERS NOT WANTING TO BUY FROM "CITGO-CHAVEZ", HAVE STARTED TO CHANGE THE NAME OF SOME OF THEIR STATIONS TO: "PETRO EXPRESS"

DO NOT BUY FROM "PETRO EXPRESS" EITHER!!! "PETRO EXPRESS" IS ALSO 100% OWNED BY "CHAVEZ."

KEEP THIS MEMO GOING SO THAT EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT IS HAPPENING.

BOYCOTT "CITGO" AND "PETRO EXPRESS" AND MAKE SURE THIS IS PASSED ON TO EVERYONE YOUR E-MAIL LIST IN THE UNITED STATES AND OUTSIDE OF AMERICA ..


!DSPAM:461e57b950446673066691! "

earth day in the lou

I spent a gorgeous afternoon hanging out with some Edwards folks in Forest Park. Check it out.

an open letter to senator bond

(P) Dear Senator Bond,

In 1998 your office was kind enough to take some time to meet with me when I was in DC with the NYLC. I still have the books a staffer gave me. I appreciate that understanding that you are in Washington to serve your constituants, even someone just in high school. There are times, of course, when there are legitimate differences of opinion on how to approach legislation. There are also times, however, when a clear choice exists between crass partisanship and acting in the best interests of your constituants.

This is one of those times. As the ranking member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, you have a uniquely important voice in the discussion surrounding the intelligence funding legislation. You are not in Washington to serve a President or a party; above all, you are there to serve those of us back here in Missouri. I urge you to reconsider your stance on the legislation and lead your colleagues to reconsider, as well. It may not be easy, but it is a fairly simple choice. As taxpayers and citizens, we have a right to the best intelligence we can get, uncompromised by unauthorized leaks, and we have a right to know what orders are given to our intelligence professionals, even if that transparency and accountability may cause embarrassment for the highest officials in our government.

Stop the filibuster.

Respectfully Yours,

Nathaniel Dempsey
St. Louis, MO

news from the home front

My sister seems to have gotten a little too trigger happy with the Facebook photos. I'm going to have to watch her. Photos keep appearing with me tagged in them.

And if I'm going to complain about cable and telecommunications companies rewriting Missouri laws so that local cities can't negotiate on behalf of school districts to get cable channels (among other things), then perhaps I should share some of the cool stuff that KLPS does. Like a telethon happening today and tomorrow.

In case you were too lazy to click that link, students across the district have put together their own programming, and they're even streaming this particular event live over the web. Did you know we were voted the country's top high school football telecast for the 2006-2007 school year? Now you do. It's no wonder the telcos are scared of the kiddies.

And of course, a certain brother gets his birthday on Friday the 13th every once in awhile. This time, it's number 21.

how about giving up torture for lent

I had a good trip home to Liberty, and maybe I'll get around to writing about it. Or maybe those thoughts will sink down into that morass of vague feelings too distant to put into precise language.

But I did have one Easter thought I wanted to share. If you can talk about the suffering of Jesus and not be outraged to the point of insanity with our prison system, from "correctional" institutions stateside to military prisons to CIA black sites to partnerships with autocratic foreign governments, you need to read your Bible again.

Torture is one of those lines in the sand. You cannot be a Christian and not be adamently, vehemently, passionately, vocally, obnoxiously, ceaselessly against our government torturing people. It seems like every day we learn more details about how expansive have been the variety of injustices conducted in our name. It is disgusting.

It must stop.

Update: Apparently, I'm a little restless tonight. A long weekend must have done me good.

It occured to me that the passion narrative is a remarkably detailed description of the situation we face today. The authors make a point to tell us that Jesus was subjected to various forms of accusations, degrading and humiliating treatment, physical discomfort, and extended stress positions. Was this exceptional treatment for a high value target? Nope. Two common criminals are in similar stress positions next to him. Are the writers sympathetic to the needs for such tactics? Nope. In fact, the perpetrators, from jailors to priests to the masses, are made to look most misguided and despicable. While vile, is the response at least justified, given the threat of the day? Nope. Again, the authors are quite clear. What is done to Jesus is both wrong and counterproductive.

Interestingly, the Romans seem not to have needed to render the prisoners blind and deaf, and they left them so close to each other that they could actually interact--and even have visitors, of a sort, in this public place where all could see.

annoyed baseball fan

(R) When ranting about sports coverage, it's hard to not address the wider problems we have with corporate control of the media and lack of competition and whatnot, not to mention disparities in how baseball distributes TV revenue. But, honestly, this is a very targeted complaint. There are lots of other opportunities to complain.

You've got a freakin' $100 million dollar pitcher starting his first major league game, and you can't watch the game in the state it's being played on a cable package that costs hundreds of dollars a year, not to mention funding from commercial breaks. It's absolutely ridiculous. What's on ESPN, ESPN2, and FSN? Reruns. Lovely. Don't even ask about the 40 other channels showing crap at 2 in the afternoon on a Thursday.

Oh, but of course, you can watch the White Sox on WGN. Whoopdeedoo.

And who would have thought the Royals and Cards would have started the season 1-5? Bleh.

40 years

This speech is worth remembering. Civil rights, economic justice, and opposition to military aggression are all related. MLK remains one of the most important leaders, organizers, and speakers in our country, speaking to us today.

One cannot celebrate just the work on civil rights. To uphold King's vision is to support peace. To support militarism is to reject his message.

"...For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent...I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours..."

This particular transcript is from American Rhetoric.

*Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here tonight, and how very delighted I am to see you expressing your concern about the issues that will be discussed tonight by turning out in such large numbers. I also want to say that I consider it a great honor to share this program with Dr. Bennett, Dr. Commager, and Rabbi Heschel, some of the distinguished leaders and personalities of our nation. And of course it’s always good to come back to Riverside Church. Over the last eight years, I have had the privilege of preaching here almost every year in that period, and it is always a rich and rewarding experience to come to this great church and this great pulpit.*

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King?" "Why are you joining the voices of dissent?" "Peace and civil rights don't mix," they say. "Aren't you hurting the cause of your people," they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church -- the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate -- leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they must play in the successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reasons to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellowed [sic] Americans, *who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision.* There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath --
America will be!

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1954** [sic]; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission -- a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I'm speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

And finally, as I try to explain for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls "enemy," for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the ideologies of the Liberation Front, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence *in 1954* -- in 1945 *rather* -- after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not ready for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination and a government that had been established not by China -- for whom the Vietnamese have no great love -- but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam. Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.

After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva Agreement. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords, and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by United States' influence and then by increasing numbers of United States troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictators seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America, as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received the regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs.

So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation's only noncommunist revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist Church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men.

Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. *Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call "fortified hamlets." The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These, too, are our brothers.

Perhaps a more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies.* What of the National Liberation Front, that strangely anonymous group we call "VC" or "communists"? What must they think of the United States of America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem, which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the North" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings, even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent communist, and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam, and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will not have a part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them, the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again, and then shore it up upon the power of new violence?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the North, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French Commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which could have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again. When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered.

Also, it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva Agreement concerning foreign troops. They remind us that they did not begin to send troops in large numbers and even supplies into the South until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the North. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than *eight hundred, or rather,* eight thousand miles away from its shores.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called "enemy," I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words, and I quote:

Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism (unquote).

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to play. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war.

*I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:

Number one: End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.

Number two: Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.

Three: Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.

Four: Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and any future Vietnam government.

Five: *Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement.

Part of our ongoing...part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country, if necessary. Meanwhile... meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices and our lives if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible.

*As we counsel young men concerning military service, we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is a path now chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover, I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors.* These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

Now there is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing.

The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality...and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing "clergy and laymen concerned" committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.

And so, such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.

It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

*This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations.* These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. *We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.*

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions.

It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch antirevolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain."

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: "Let us love one another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love." "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us." Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.

We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word" (unquote).

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood -- it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on."

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message -- of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:

Once to every man and nation comes a moment to decide,

In the strife of Truth and Falsehood, for the good or evil side;

Some great cause, God's new Messiah offering each the bloom or blight,

And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.

Though the cause of evil prosper, yet 'tis truth alone is strong

Though her portions be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace.

If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

opening day part 2

The good news is that the Royals were on ESPN today. The bad news is that they decided to have the game while I was working. Not very thoughtful.

So, I took a late lunch and hung out at Laclede Street Bar and Grill down by SLU for an hour. Of course, my waitress had to be a Red Sox fan. What are they doing in St. Louis, anyway? Got there just in time to see Schilling walk in the tying run. That's always smart to do. Something must have been wrong with the TV, though. That Royals pitcher actually looked like somebody who should be paid a fair amount of money to play baseball. I'm sure Bud Selig and David Glass are looking into it.

Lookie, it's day 2, and the Royals are still tied for first. I think I'm not getting a hair cut until they lose.

Note to Royals, I'm planning on getting a hair cut Thursday. Don't let me down.

they're back

(P) I got a little caught up in the Missouri vote last year regarding stem cell research, which you may have noticed if you've perused my archives or visit regularly. Among other things, I became acquainted with the Vitae Foundation, and wrote this post in particular about an ad that I found most distasteful.

Well, Vitae is back! They are running an anti abortion ad with the tagline think about it. This time, unlike the tasteless anti stem cell ad, you can see the ad on their website. Like the stem cell ad, they're running it during a major sporting event (opening day for the World Champion St. Louis Cardinals).

It is quite interesting. It is in a classroom, with a black teacher asking a class of all black students what they want to be when they grow up. You see a child want to play professional basketball and fade away (a boy of course) and another child want to be an actress (a girl this time) and similarly fade away. The teacher/narrator explains that abortion has killed more of us than anything else.

Wow.

Not only is it offensive for what the backers of the Vitae Foundation support regarding public policy, opposing things that would actually help black children in this country like Headstart, universal daycare, more spending on public schools, universal healthcare (in particular better prenatal and neonatal care), improved mass transit, better access to family planning and contraceptives, ending the drug war, and so forth, but more topically to the focus of the ad, it raises a number of interesting areas of discussion which conservatives usually assail liberals for raising.

Basically, the ad suggests we should look to the effects of aborting fetuses. That is perhaps the strongest argument in support of keeping abortion legal, something that pro-choice people supposedly unfairly include in the argument. It's important to note that the ad doesn't say anything about the beginning of life or a soul being created or anything like that; only the future potential of what these fetuses could become is what's suggested. This is very important for the moral position they are staking out, as I'll get to later. Now that the cat is out of the bag from such an interestingly supported organization (among other people, the Iran-contra traitor Oliver North is offered on the website as one of many VIPs supporting the organization), let's delve into the consequences. The first place to start, perhaps, is the rather interesting correlation between the Roe v Wade decision in the 1970s and the dramatic drop in crime a generation later in the 1990s.

But that's just the beginning. We know from all over the world that as countries get richer, family size decreases. Across cultures, families recognize the value of planning for and limiting the number of their offspring. If you want to reduce the number of abortions among blacks, you should support a variety of policy options that make black communities better off, healthier, and improve access to sex education, condoms, birth control, and so forth. Vitae seems to want blacks to take responsibility for abortions while being in league with the very political thought that makes policies which impoverish and imprison and disenfranchise blacks all over the country, not to mention people who push for ridiculous programs like abstinence only education.

Perhaps most intriguingly for me, this touches on one of the major big picture moral problems we face, the massive explosion of the sheer number of people on the planet. To vastly summarize, basically there are enormous environmental, poverty, and destabilization issues related to the unprecedented increase in the global population. This is one of those moral positions where there is absolutely no middle ground with the way Vitae has staked out their position. Either it is ok to limit potential humans, or it is not. As they suggest, think about it. Every time a woman of child bearing age passes an unfertilized egg (or a fertilized one, called a miscarriage), a future potential human is destroyed, wasted, squandered, murdered, whatever word you want to use for the death of that egg, a living cell with the potential to create a new human being. Now, I don't think that China's approach to solving the very serious problem of overpopulation is the way to go. But not because it acknowledges a role for abortion, but rather because it forces the choice upon families. Rather, families should make those choices. But, it is important that China at least recognizes the issue and is doing something. I am curious what Vitae's solution for China would be. Is their ideal to have billions more people crowd into the massive cities on China's east coast? Or would they suggest to the Chinese to just stop having sex?

This was a fabulous way to cap a wonderful birthday week. Yay for excitement.

Now we just need the Cards to score a few more runs. Oh, and have you checked the standings? The Royals are tied for first right now. And they're on ESPN tomorrow!

While I'm at work.

revolution

(P) One of Jefferson's more famous letters has a line about God forbid we go 20 years without rebellion. That's about how much memory I have as I approach birthday number 25, and I am wondering if we're overdue. Or, perhaps, if it's already happened?

Hatred and fear and authoritarianism and greed have arrested such incredible dominance over our country that I wonder if we've already seen the apex and are now watching the collapse of movement conservatism. The battle for ideas is clearly lost to them. The thing is, they keep winning the outcomes, from disenfranchising millions of Americans to unfathomable wealth consolidation to controlling what most of the major media outlets consider appropriate topics of conversation. Is that disconnect a sign of revolution underway, or a call for revolution? Are the lengths to which the ends justify the means an inherent strength, or a sign of hollowed out weakness? John Edwards commented last month that "...we have reached this point in our history where we have to leave behind half measures, broken promises, sweet rhetoric...".

That's certainly revolutionary for leadership in Washington. But is Washington (and other power centers) so removed from what Americans want that to actually have a government representing us is a radical change? But maybe that's exactly the kind of rebellion Jefferson would have in mind, one whose very strength is the disgust of the people with the excesses of their leaders. We need radical change precisely because the current leadership is so entrenched and so poorly represents the people they govern, not because we need a fundamental change in the people being governed.

I remain quite optimistic and am excited that we seem to have reached a point in the last year or two where truth seems to be overwhelming the fingers in the dam holding back all the ugliness and lies and inconsistencies. Perhaps the most radical change we need is to simply stop accepting the misgoverning of our country, to be that which we want to see happen. The next 25 years could be very different.

But they won't just because we want them to be different. We actually have to stand up and say no, offering our own vision for the future.

I'm not entirely sure how to do that.

must brag quickly

I haven't followed college basketball very closely this year, but I seem to have accidentally stumbled across a good standing. Seriously, check out where my ESPN pool stands, for a brief moment, at least. (There are millions of entries, by the way).

must read

Someone from my work who likes to send joke emails around forwarded this little gem to me this week. It made my whole weekend. Approach with an appropriate level of humor at the ready.

********

School answering machine:

A School District is being sued for this message left on the answering machine. A group of rouge teachers from each school coordinated their efforts to put it on their school's machines on a Friday afternoon.

- no wonder some people were offended!

Here's the outgoing message when parents call the school......

Hello! You have reached the automated answering service of your school. In order to assist you in connecting to the right staff memeber, please listen to all the options before making a selection:

......to lie about why your child is absent - press 1

......to make excuses for why your child did not do his work - press 2

......to complain about what we do - press 3

......to swear at staff members - press 4

......to ask why you didn't get information that was already enclosed in your newsletter and several flyers mailed to you - press 5

......if you want us to raise your child - press 6

......if you want to reach out and touch, slap or hit your child - press 7

......to request another teacher, for the third time this year - press 8

......to complain about bus transportation - press 9

......to complain about school lunches - press 0

......if you realize this is the real world and your child must be accountable and responsible for his/her own behavior, class work, homework and that it's not the teachers' fault for your child's lack of effort - hang up and have a nice day!

......if you want this in spanish, you must be in the wrong country.


Thank You!

what would you do

(P) I've been thinking about this for a while, but the thoughts tend to be more angry than thoughtful. So lacking what I feel an appropriate post as we mark another year, I am left with a question.

What would you do with four years and a trillion dollars?

I must say too it is fabulous timing that the next DVD on Jodi's Blockbuster queue was a documentary about the Dixie Chicks. Bravo karma.

clean sweep

While not quite the miraculous finish of a Liberty sweep, basketball turned out pretty well this weekend. The Liberty girls took first while Julie's school, McCluer North, took the boys title. Even got her German and math teacher parents watching the local news at the cabin late to catch the scores!

Yes, I said the cabin. Apparently her parents have this fabulous place south of Warrenton. Cabin doesn't do it justice, though. It's really a two bedroom house nestled in a hilly area which is a development of a couple hundred such structures on a couple woody acres each. Yay stars. These and these.

stop the clash

(P) I have had some interesting discussions recently about Islam and relations between the US and Middle Eastern countries and differences between public opinion and the people running governments and so forth. And if you remember, I really enjoyed the speech the Executive Director of the Missouri Baptist Convention gave at the annual meeting.

I found this video looking at some blogs, and it is really interesting.

Check it out.

the great moral tissue of our time

This is great. I would end up quoting every other paragraph, so just read the whole thing.

I know you want to. It even says genitals in the title. No self-respecting person can avoid an article like that. Plus, I needed an excuse to add a new label called scrotum.

"You liberals are such losers...
I bet you think it’s a big deal that al Qaeda and the Taliban – you know, the folks we said did 9/11 – are regrouping in Afghanistan, and that Osama bin Laden remains a free man five years later. So?...
How about all the corruption scandals and gross incompetence of George Bush’s crony government? Get over it...
I’ve heard you guys ranting on and on about the mountain of debt we’re leaving for your children to pay off, plus interest, in order to finance our twin extravaganzas of huge tax cuts for the wealthy and a useless war costing $1-2 trillion. What’s wrong that?...
No, the great moral issues of our time are: Your genitals..."

this is it

Hmmm, it was kind of settling in today that I am turning 25 this month. It's the first age that I have a distinct memory of noting when I was younger. I remember one particular dinner at my grandmother's when my uncle was about to turn a quarter of a century. He was reminded of this repeatedly in a variety of ways.

I remember thinking that by that age you had to grow up and know what you're doing. I've discovered exactly the opposite. I was much more focused and intense in high school. Now it's kind of wandering around going through the motions. I could live with Jodi for 10 years, or end up in Paris next month.

Grr, it's really exciting finding something you're really passionate about at a pretty young age, but it makes you wonder about times that are less so. Is it ok? Are you supposed to be looking for something? Are those rare times, to be treasured? Or the standard for how most things are supposed to be?

Are you talking to yourself?

Don't worry though, I'm not hearing voices yet. That's still a few years down the road.

back to school

When you spend all weekend back in high school, you see and hear some interesting things. Particularly when most of that time is spent with high school kids saying things at you.

My favorite Freudian slip? President Cheney. Oops.

But there were lots of good ones.

One puffer thought that the con's statistical evidence was seriously screwed. Repeatedly so, in fact.

An orator seemed to go out of his way to emphasize he was only opposed to illegal immigration, then left an awkward sentence hanging with immigrants notably lacking a preface of illegal. Also, among other things, we need to stop border smuggling of drugs before they get out of hand. Before? High schools are shopping malls. Then the next speaker mentioned how Ritalin could be considered kiddie cocaine so many kids abuse it. Considered? It's only a schedule II drug just like meth and cocaine and amphetamines.

An extemper was talking about how peace in the Middle East means the US needs to protect Israel better. After all, it's where the civilized nations, er, cities, are.

And one guy tried to convince me that Hugo Chavez is so dangerous that his influence is unstoppable in creating some kind of evil anti-capitalist socialism. He has so much influence he can make a PhD in economics do it [whatever exactly this horrible it is]. I mean, the US is such a great example of free trade in South America, from the DEA's coca eradication efforts to such open borders with Cuba.

And then there were the debate rounds. Ah, good times. Did you know that 277% of housing foreclosures are due to bankruptcy? Or that a war with North Korea is imminent unless we expand the army...7 years ago?

But perhaps those lovely posters teachers love to plaster all over the walls take the cake. I share two. On one, a very comfortable Garfield lies down, thinking in thoughtbubbleland that to make your dreams come true, you have to stay awake. Right. My dream after setting an alarm for 5:45am was precisely to not be awake. And 30 years from now, it won't matter what jeans you wore or what hairstyle you had...it's what you learned and how you used it. Uh huh, let's see, you didn't graduate from high school, but you say you learned a lot. Welcome aboard Johnson!