Ridiculous Priorities

 When I was a university student, I worked hard for every cent necessary to get my education. I often worked at two or three jobs, and swept together the money to pay for room, board, books, and tuition. One day my junior year, I entered a classroom on test day, ready to take the test after having studied far into the night. I had basically ruined my GPA by goofing off the first two years and was determined to get as close to a 4.0 in my remaining two years (it turned out to be two years and two terms of summer school) to get my GPA to a respectable point and get a degree I could actually use.

By that time, my professors knew me, and knew I was trying. So, when the professor that day got ready to hand out the tests, he told me he needed to talk to me first. He sympathetically showed me the note on the class roll he had gotten that day. My name had been flagged, and I was not to be allowed to take the test. It appeared I had "delinquent" dues on my dorm rent, and I had been suspended indefinitely. I assured him that I was certain I was up-to-date on my dues. He finally decided that he would let me take the test but hold it until I had cleared this up. I'm sure I didn't do as well on that test as I had planned to do, as I was distracted by the disturbing news.

As soon as I finished, I went to the financial office to see what had happened. In those pre-internet days, you paid in person, and I paid my dorm dues monthly. I had two choices: I could use the university postal system, which meant dropping my check in their box and it being picked up -- that had always worked before -- or going to the office (where I was going now), and standing in line for a while, which I had to do that day.

I finally got to talk to someone: a student about my age whose sole job was to read the printout and tell me I was no longer a student in good standing because I was delinquent in my payments. Anyone who could do something about it was safely hidden behind closed doors while I was left to plead with a student on minimum wage who was only working to try to pay her own dues and had no power to send me to someone who could fix things. I will shorten the long story here by saying that, eventually, I was able to clear my name. The internal mail system of the university had failed to deliver and process my check on time -- for a week it had apparently been sitting in a bin on someone's desk. When it finally cleared, I was mailed a statement that my account was again in good standing, and I could attempt to make up the work I had been forbidden to do in all my classes.

That was it. No apology. No acknowledgement that the error was theirs, that the "delinquency" was due to their oversight, not mine. I was left with the responsibility taking the printed mailing (which came a few days later) and begging all my professors to let me make up my work, without penalty, if possible.

I need to add that my "delinquency" was a little over $100, the amount of the delayed check, which clearly showed the date I had written it, several days in advance of the due date. The university had kicked me out of the system over a hundred bucks (yes, good days, when a month in a dorm, including food, was $100. But remember that, back then, minimum wage was $1.60 an hour).

Now, a seemingly unrelated story. This past week, a prominent university in my state fired a football coach. I know, that happens all the time. But what made this newsworthy to me was that, while he was working for them, he was making millions of dollars, and now that he was not, he was going to continue to be paid millions. If I read the article right, they are committed to over $70 million, whether he works or not.

Let's put it in context. That campus has, maybe 150,000 students. I'm sure they are having to pay room and board and books and tuition. I know prices are higher than the $100 monthly I was paying back in the 70s. Having put four kids through school, I also know that whatever the price, if they don't pay, they have to leave. My wife and I did a lot of work to make sure that didn't happen to them, and my children rolled up their sleeves and worked to help the cause.

I'm trying to figure out how the same university that would send a kid home for missing a month's room and board could be the same university that would fire a football coach and say, "Oh, what the heck. Just keep the money." I also realize that they will have to pay someone else to take his place. How could these two worlds co-exist? Some students cannot come up with the money, and university systems are more than happy to help them get loans -- lots of loans. There are adults in America today who are old enough to retire and are still paying off college loans.

Why, in a country that continually complains about inequity, does this exist? Why does a university education cost so much? We are told that it's necessary to maintain a quality of instruction, adequate facilities, all the good things that contribute to success in the university system. My first question, of course, is "How many university professors get contracts for $70 million or more?"

How can a school justify spending money like that? What type of value system invests less -- much less -- in the education and training of its students than they do in trying to get the school into a game in January that gives them a chance to have bragging rights about a "national championship" for less than a year?

I don't fault the coach. I guess if someone offered me a job for $70 million and guaranteed me the money -- all of it -- even if they fired me, I would have problems turning the offer down. But it says a lot about priorities.

Our country, our culture, needs leaders. We need people who have been trained, who have worked hard to get an education, and are ready to use it to meet the challenges of our time. We need people who have learned from the best in productivity, leadership, and innovation. Somehow, schools that get a national championship is not the priority that will equip the next generation. Don't get me wrong. I love college football, and love Saturdays in the fall when I get to watch. I am in awe of some of those young athletes, both the ones who excel on the gridiron and in the classroom simultaneously, as well as the ones who realize that God has blessed them with phenomenal abilities and decide to give back to the community.

No, the villain for me is the class of people who would keep an enthusiastic student out of a classroom through a one-hundred-dollar misunderstanding, and at the same time adopt an "it's-only-money" attitude toward a multimillion-dollar contract that needs to be tweaked.

Can anyone honestly tell me there's nothing wrong with that set of priorities?

End of an Era

When I heard that Lifeway stores were closing last week, I had a rush of mixed emotions, because the stores have been a part of my life for so long.

Once, back in pre-history, Baptists were cared for by something they had invented called "boards." We had a Foreign Mission Board and a Home Mission Board. Pastors looking to retirement had the Annuity Board, but the rank-and-file members knew about the Sunday School Board. They were a service that made sure we had those all-important Sunday School record books, the offering envelopes and even those pesky grade slips for Training Union. Those yellow training union report slips were the bane of my existence, because some schemer had listed "Daily Bible Reading" as worth 21 points, so even if you were there, studied your lesson, were attending worship, etc, you could only make a "79," a "C," in Training Union.

The Sunday School Board took care of us, though. They made sure we had Bible School materials, and of course we could get our Baptist Hymnals there. My home church, even in the 70s, was still happy with the 1940s version called the "Broadman Hymnal," when most of the other churches in our town were using the more contemporary 1956 "Baptist Hymnal." And of course, Broadman was inseparably linked to the Sunday School Board.

And they had stores! The Baptist Book Store was only put in privileged towns. I think there were only a half dozen in Texas when I was a kid, but you could actually walk in in get your materials, rather than having to fill out an order form and mail it and wait for them to get there. And Lubbock was only 60 miles away. There was a Baptist Bookstore there, at a major crossroads called Broadway and Avenue Q. I could wander through the aisles of the store while my parents checked off items from their church list.

It's so strange to think about now, but I was introduced to Robert Heinlein at -- yes -- Baptist Bookstore. His juvie novel, Have Space Suit - Will Travel - was on the shelves there with all the juvenile mission biographies and the sanctified books we bought. I thought Heinlein was probably a missionary Baptist himself until I was a senior in high school and we got Stranger in a Strange Land in our library, and I checked it out, thinking it was another of his juvies. Let's say I was a little shocked, and thought, very un-Baptistically, that perhaps Heinlein had lost his salvation before he wrote that book -- or because of it. I had bought nearly all of Heinlein's juvies, but I will always be able to say that I bought my first science fiction book at Baptist Book Store on Avenue Q in Lubbock.

They had everything, including disposable communion cups and pre-cut communion bread squares boxed and sealed in plastic -- both of those things an abomination to our local church where we drank our Welch's grape juice from crystal communion cups and the deacons' wives baked the unleavened bread, which was broken while the pastor quoted, "This is my body, broken for you."

As a student at Texas Tech, I even bought my first non-King James Bible there, and really felt I had done something. I would even buy a (gulp) Good News for Modern Man and a Living Bible there later. By that time, in the "cool" seventies, they even had a youth section, and played vinyl and cassettes of contemporary music like "He's Everything to Me," while a three color disk turned slowly in front of an incandescent bulb, changing the shading of the Jesus posters on the wall. One poster had "Jesus" in a Pepsi logo, and said, "Come Alive - You're in the Jesus Generation." I bought it.

The Baptist Bookstore flourished in those years, before the Great Divorce between the Southern Baptists and the Texas Baptists, when we all felt like children of the Divorce, and wondered if we had caused it, and if maybe they would get back together. But before that, we lived an idyllic existence. We all got our church music there. We got our Sunday School materials there. In the eighties, when I was made VBS director of our local association, I would go to Baptist Bookstore and buy a load of VBS materials on consignment to set up during the annual VBS convention I hosted, where I showed them the materials we would all use, and ran through this year's filmstrip, and thankfully had some ladies who knew how to do the crafts we would all do and taught the potential workers. And the people would buy their materials there, and Baptist Bookstore gave us, I think, a 10% commission for sales, money which I turned back to the Association so we would have plenty to finance next year's  convention.

Then, things happened. Boards became passe, and the Sunday School Board got a cooler name, "Lifeway." And the Baptist Bookstore, not wanting to seem so one-denominational, became Lifeway Bookstores, then Lifeway Christian Stores, when they realized that books were not really that cool. Of course, Christian Bookstores were on the way out. I watched other bookstores as well as our own, as they moved the books to a far wall to make room for posters, T-Shirts, and records, then cassettes, then CDs. The survivor stores also brought in home schooling materials.

I remember the time I went to the checkout shelf at one Christian store and they had "Jesus candy" for sale there.

And then, one of the competitors for Lifeway decided it was great to be open on Sundays, from 8-5 as well. They were gracious enough to give their employees Easter off, but every other Sunday was just another day. I often wondered who shopped there at 10 AM on Sunday.

Lifeway managed to keep itself unstained from these things, but they had lost their vision. More and more, I found that if I needed something, I had to go online because stores didn't want to be overstocked on inventory for dated materials. There had been a time in the past when I could just tell them the name of my church, and they let me walk out without paying. Our church got the bill later. Then I needed my account number. Then came the time when a lady told me that they didn't do account numbers. That I needed a church credit card or needed to fill out some paperwork.

And now, Lifeway's brick and mortar stores are shutting down, and as far as I know, all that is left is Mardel's Book Store, and I wonder if they are only staying alive because of their parent company, Hobby Lobby, who usually has its own brick and mortar nearby.

Online shopping is easy, usually cheaper, and nearly always "in stock." But there is something about holding a Bible in your hands before you buy it. When you are buying a Bible, you are buying a companion for life, and one of your grandchildren may have it some day. You want to know how a Bible smells, how the pages sound as you turn them, and how the leather feels in your hands. And they still haven't figured how to do that on the internet. I made the mistake one year of ordering our Bibles that we give our seniors outside of a brick and mortar. It was before online took over, and I ordered them by phone, dictating each student's name to be imprinted, and paying by credit card. They got it all right, but the picture in the catalog I had was deceiving. Twelve seniors that year got Bibles that were somewhere between the size of the ones their grandmothers brought to worship, and the one that was on the table in front of the pulpit. No wonder they were a close-out bargain.

Now, all of our record keeping materials will be bought online. All of those Sunday School things -- online. VBS we have done online for a long time, because there is a  smorgasbord of competing companies, all interested in our business. That's also why we don't have an associational VBS clinic any more.

Okay, here it comes. I'm getting old. Would it be too hard to give us a Sunday School Board again? Oh, I know, we now have "Study Groups" and "Discipleship Groups" and "Growth Groups." Forget Training Union (though I was surprised to see they still have Training Union quarterlies online -- they just don't call it that now). Okay, I guess it would not be financially solvent, but then again, the Boards were never intended to turn a profit. There were there to serve.

Don't go calling me an old fogey or some Luddite for having these thoughts. Don't think I'm some close-minded fundamentalist who longs for the good old days. Remember who I am. After all, I once bought a Heinlein book at a Baptist Book Store.

An Open Letter to the New 2019 Congress

Well, congratulations! You got what you wanted -- to be in the driver's seat again. I'm neither elated nor disappointed, as I voted for an independent two years ago for president, and in the most recent congressional elections, I voted third party for congress. I have no problem with having done this. So you might think I don't have a dog in the fight, but I tend to be interested in who gets elected because I expect you all to work for me, since that's the way it's supposed to be done.

Unfortunately, you really got off to a bad start yesterday. You have 235 Democrats in the house, and you elected one of the least popular and least capable for Speaker. You are going to have a tough time convincing me that, of 235 Democrats, Nancy Pelosi is the cream of the crop. She recently told a press conference that she was not going to allow "President Bush" to bully anyone. Please let her know, for starters, that one President Bush has been out of office ten years, and the other one died recently, and that the current occupant of the White House is named "Trump." Maybe that will help.

And if any of you Republicans are listening, why did you vote for a Republican for speaker? You knew you couldn't win that one. Why did you not get together with some of the intelligent Democrats and see whom they really wanted, and promise to help out? You had over 190 votes available, and you could have made a difference, but anyway...

Back to the new majority leadership: I know you are sharpening your axe now. You are going to take down this president. I have all confidence in you that you will do this. At least, everything in your power. And you have some options:

• Censure him. That's easy enough, and it has happened before.
• Subpoena him: If you can't get him, you can at least subpoena everyone who works for him, lives in his house, and works at his hotels. Have fun.
• Impeach him: Go ahead. Make it a trifecta. He would be the third president to be impeached, and you see how much damage it did to the other two. Andrew Johnson finished out his term, left office, and probably said, "good riddance." Bill Clinton finished his term, got full retirement and lifetime secret service, and almost made it back to the same White House where he spent 8 years. The bottom line is, impeachment looks like fun, but it does very little by itself. To make that work, you need the senate to help, and I have bad news for you: the Senate has too many Republicans in it to make anything bad happen to Trump. If you manage to impeach him, it will not be the worst that has happened to him. He's been through bankruptcies, and worse, divorces. He won't lose any sleep. And like his worthy opponent, he's not ever going to jail.
• Pass bills against him. Get him declared the antichrist. Pass a resolution that he's the worst president in history. Pass a bill that denounces him and everything about him. I would like to see you do all this for the next two years, because it's very inexpensive, compared to what you could be doing: pork projects, good-old-boy legislation to get favors, money to holding companies that secretly support the companies that got you here. You know, what the Republicans do, too.

But I'm afraid that there are some of you that are suddenly going to realize that you at least have to pretend to make laws, and you are going to press Madame Speaker to do that occasionally. Oh, I'm not talking about unfreezing the budget. As long as there are chauffeurs, people to hold the doors in the capitol building and the White House, and food in the dining halls, I don't think you are going to worry much about whether those people making minimum wage start taking tickets at the Statue of Liberty and Washington Monument any time soon. You will make the same overtures the president is making, but neither of you will really worry about it as long as your rent is paid and your expense account is still liquid.

But there are a couple of things I would like you to consider if you really, really care about the people you represent, whether we voted for you or not. I put these things in no particular order:

• Taxes. Keep it like it is. Whether we liked Trump and his congress or not, we like the larger standard deduction and the lower taxes, and no, we do not think we are causing the deficit by paying less taxes. We think you are causing the deficit by spending nonexistent money, and of course, you know that the Fed no longer has to even print it. Now it just generates it electronically, like government-sanctioned bitcoins, so spare us the tax increases that supposedly can balance the budget. You could double all our tax bills, and you still wouldn't balance this year's budget, unless, of course, you are planning to spend money only on subpoenas, censures, resolutions, and impeachment votes. Then, you might just balance it.
• Medical care. Please realize that those big, greedy insurance companies are not the sole culprit in all of our problems. For me, it's the twenty dollar Tylenol tablet that they give me with a tiny cup of water. It's the 90 dollar box of facial tissue that was an off-brand, not even Kleenex, that I got charged for, and I didn't even use but one or two of them. It's the hospital room I was in, built some time in the fifties, with the metal bed, and the leaking catheter bag that the nurses were "gonna fix" in a little while, but never did, because, as they barked to my wife, they were "under staffed." But I was better off than most, because the echo from the hallway, "I huuuuurrrrt!" "I need a nuuuurrrse!" made me count my blessings. For that one night stay, I was billed the cost of five Alaska Cruises. One night. And that was just the room. Not the consultation. Not the leaking catheter bag. Not the pills or the tissues. No wonder you have to have an act of congress (excuse the outdated expression) to get an itemized bill, and then, if you are lucky, you can figure out what all the codes mean.
• Medical Care II - oh, and those bills. You don't get them all at once. You get one from this doctor, from that anesthesiologist, that radiology reader that lives in Maine, and -- oops -- that lab technician that was, er, "out of network," even though your medical team and hospital were not. And the double bill that, when you finally prove it to them, they say, "Oh, okay." No apology or admission of a mistake or -- worse -- intentional work. That's what's killing us. Literally.
• Medical Care III - But of course, you have been bravely fighting for us. Privacy. All those privacy notifications, the ones that mean that even our family members who take care of us and maybe pay our bills can't find out how we are because you were more concerned about HIPAA than you are about hip replacements, which can cost 1500 or 15000, depending on where you go and who does it, but you never know until it's over. Oh, that privacy you worked so hard for us to have, so that now we only have initials on our doors, so family doesn't know if the two JJ's next door to each other -- if one is the "Jane Johnson" you wanted to see, or the "John Jones" you never met, so you knock on a stranger's door, hear "come in," and make eye contact with someone you've never met because of, you know, "privacy." If you are not too afraid of the powerful medical industry and their lobbies that will fight you for status quo, you might drum up the courage to organize a bipartisan task force or two and get to work on some medical reform that will stop this powerful group from attacking the people you are representing when they are at their weakest, their sickest, and their most vulnerable, often bankrupting them.
• Other minor things. Today, I got two cloned calls on my cell phone from local numbers with normal names, and both were warning me that this was the last day to lower my interest rate on my credit cards. The third call was from a local man I had never met who was returning a missed call that I never made, probably because a credit card interest rate company cloned my number and called him. I have heard that, this year, over half of all wireless calls will be spam. I have problems believing that 435 elected officials can do nothing at all about this problem which has exploded in the past two years. At work, driving, sitting at business meetings and in funeral services, robocallers are dialing our numbers like never before, and you seem to do nothing. Is it because someone else answers your phone? This is only a tiny example of the many things ordinary people like us face every day, people like you used to be. This year, in record numbers, people stole packages from front porches because most families have two working parents and no way for a housewife in an apron to answer the door when a mailman calls. And you know this. And just in case you don't know, I don't think the first amendment was intended to protect and propogate any of this.

I could go on, but you get my drift. We really want to know that you are out there. I quit voting for one congressman because he refused to answer my emails with anything except a boilerplate that he needed the last extra four digits of my zip code to make sure I was in his district before he would read my letter. Are you all like that?

Part of the deal you brokered with Nancy Pelosi, the most capable leader of the majority party, it appears, was that she promise to be speaker for only two more terms. Let me tell you that, unless you can show you care, in two more terms, it will be given back to the other side so they can elect a speaker as competent as the one you just elected.

Please show me you care. Please pass some legislation that eases my burden instead of costing me more. Please work to lower medicine prices. I know that pharmaceutical companies got you in there, but they gave money to your opponent, too. Show them how grateful you are by voting for fair pharmaceutical prices.

Oh, and one more thing. I have been paying social security taxes for 50 years this year -- ever since I started sacking groceries as a teenager, hoping to buy a red Volkswagen, which I never got, by the way. Had to pay for college. Anyway, 50 years later, I am going to get my first Social Security check. I will disregard the fact that I paid my SS taxes with taxed money, and will get the privilege now of paying taxes on what I get paid, though you ought to be ashamed of yourselves for that. I will disregard that you constantly "borrow" from that money for other things. All I ask is, "Would you please quit thinking it's welfare for old people?" No, it's a return on the investment of people who have worked for half a century, and there is no reason at all for you to be messing with it.

So, what kind of congress will you be? While your new speaker is washing and waxing the private plane she once again has, you might draw up a list of some things that we really care about, and try to do something about it.

If you do, I will not only vote for you next time around, I will even campaign for you. But I have been promising that to every party in power for some time now, and no one seems to care. I hope maybe you do, because I am a baby boomer, and there are still a lot of us, and we all vote.

So, it's the day after perhaps the ugliest election in over a hundred years in US history. I feel like no one got what they really wanted, and I have the same feeling I used to have when I watched a ballgame between two teams that I disliked, and wondered if there was any way for them to both lose.

I had seen this coming. I can readily think of two examples from recent history. The first one was the 2004 election. There were two candidates for president in that one: George W. Bush, and "Not" George W. Bush. I would imagine that many people who voted for John Kerry don't even remember whose name was in the "other" column. I never heard anyone say, "I'm really excited about Kerry. He is going to do such great things for this country!" Whenever I asked a Kerry supporter what they liked most about him, they invariably said something like, "I hate Bush." His greatest claim to fame was that he married an older woman and got into some real money from ketchup. Also, that he was on a swift boat or something. He might as well have used the campaign slogan, "I Am Not Bush." That's the great bulk of his voting bloc, and just to be frank, he came close to winning just because he was not the incumbent president.

Jump ahead 8 years. It's very similar again: an incumbent president running against "whats-his-face." The two candidates on the 2012 ballot were Barack Obama and "Not" Barack Obama. The president had some loyal supporters, but I really didn't hear anyone say, "Romney is an exciting candidate!" or "I really think Romney has some great ideas!" See, Mr. Romney could be anything. When he ran against Ted Kennedy for the senate, he was pro-choice, pro-national-health-care, and pro-gay rights. When he ran as a Republican against the Democratic president, he was just the opposite on all three of these things. And Romney didn't come as close as Kerry did, but he did make a showing in the election. Yet he was, for the most part, a major Zero. His campaign strength was, "I Am Not Obama."

But this year, our campaign makes those last two look anemic -- and nearly normal -- in comparison. This year, for maybe the first time in US history, we have two "nots" running against each other: "Not" Donald Trump running against "Not" Hillary Clinton. Yes, I hear friends from both sides: "I know my candidate is horrible, but the one one is 'horribler.'"

The Thrill of the Hunt

"What are you doing?!" my 5th grade teacher, wide-eyed, startled me as she asked the question.

"I am reading," I answered, a little perplexed. I expected outbursts like that for throwing things in class, stealing something from someone's desk, walking around when we were supposed to be seated -- that kind of thing.

"That is an encyclopedia!" she shouted at me. "Nobody reads encyclopedias. They are for research only!"

"But I finished my research," I said slowly. "I'm just reading until we are all through."

She took the encyclopedia, World Book volume "M," and returned it to the shelf, shaking her head at me.  It was a dilemma I had felt many times. I would be looking up, say, "Llamas" for a report in class, but I would slow down as I passed things like "Lincoln," including the town in Nebraska, or "Limburger cheese," and I would wonder why people ate it if it smelled as bad as the cartoons made it appear to smell. We never had time for all that added knowledge, but sometimes I would detour from a search for class just to satisfy an inquisitive mind.  Did you know that, if all the blood vessels in one human body could be stretched into one continuous blood vessel, it would reach from New York to Sydney, Australia, and back five times? I learned that while I was looking for something else. 

Those World Books were treasuries of information to me, even though they were generic blue, worn at the edges, and some of them still said Truman was president. But that old information was still good, because human bodies don't change that much, including how long the circulatory system is. I never understood why they were "forbidden fruit" to my 5th grade teacher.

Years later, I would  be living on the coast of South America with my wife and three home-schooled sons, and acquire some generic red World Books from the Carter administration. I set them out in the open where my sons could soak up the information in them. In the years we served in Ecuador, most of which did not include even dial-up internet, my sons and I probably each read through the entire set. I learned early that, if you teach a child to read, most of the rest of the education is automatic, and nothing gave me the satisfaction of seeing my 9-year-old son, curled up with a volume of World Book, absorbing the pages of info, and then, later telling me about it. My daughter, as she learned to read, also began that great search.

On one furlough in the States, I was overjoyed to find an entire unabridged encyclopedia on CD, and imagined how great that would be. I was disappointed to find, after installing it, that it merely complies with the questions you ask, that it narrows your search to that item, and that "browsing" is not a function of an electronic encyclopedia. When they went online, I found that they were even worse. I grieved when the printed version of Encyclopaedia Britannica went out of print, because, as a teacher, I have used the online edition, and sent my students to it. It has more information than the print version ever did, but it is a caged animal, and lacks the luster and wild spirit that the printed version had.

It is a basic truth of human experience: Some of our greatest discoveries occur while we are looking for something else. Some of the greatest inventions and scientific discoveries emerged totally by accident.

I am guilty: I use Google, Wikipedia, and other search engines to find info, attribute quotes, and spike rumors. But having said that, I miss the days when I had to work to get the info. The joy of research was in the hunt. Today's information gathering is like shooting fish in a barrel, or hunting game that is in a cage. There is no thrill to it. I can find important information in just a few seconds, and there is nothing else nearby to distract me. Some hunters say they like to hunt because they don't like the "taste of captivity" in store-bought meat. As I think about it, I realize that there was always a "wild" taste to the info that I had to pursue through a forest of information.

Doing a research paper, when I was in high school, involved, among other things, using a multi-volume Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, usually found in the local and the school library, that could direct you to published magazine and journal articles that featured your subject. You found your item, and then prayed that the librarian had that specific magazine, volume number, and current issue. Then, you carefully copied that precious info onto a note card, a gem of information that you would footnote later.

If someone had told me, when I was sixteen years old, researching the history and function of the Electoral College, and trying to determine if it was beneficial or not, that some day, I would be able to do all of this from a "smart phone" in my pants pocket, I would have longed for such a miracle. But looking back, I wish that young people today could know the thrill of finding information after a strong, stimulating hunt.

Card catalogues in libraries, reference resources on those shelves of books that you could not take home, atlases, city directories, dictionaries, encyclopedias -- they all worked together for me, and the result was something of great value, not only because of the content, but because of the investment that I had made in it.

And that's the problem today. Research is cheap. As a high school teacher for ten years, I would have students ask me questions, and, teacher that I was, I would not just give a straight answer. I wanted them to know why the answer was what it was, to make them arrive at it, so the next time they had a similar question and there was no teacher there to give it, or they were in the middle of a standardized state test, they could figure it out for themselves. Most of the time, the students would turn away, say "forget it," or start a conversation with some other student as soon as they heard the words from me that they wanted.

I had to learn that the students were not being rude. They are members of the "smart phone" culture, and are conditioned to that form of information gathering. That phone is a little educated slave that stays in our pockets until we need it. When we want to know something, from "Where is the nearest Starbuck's?" to "Which president served two separate terms?" we just have to fetch it out of its little prison, ask the question, get an immediate answer, and then throw it back in its own dungeon.

No joy of research. No enticements to branch out to related knowledge, or even learning something on the way simply because another idea happened to start with the same few letters. We learn only what we want, when we want, with a minimum of distraction. And we only get facts, without enough substance to weave them into something that enhances our lives.

I would love to start a school where students had to attend for at least a semester. There would be no computers, but every classroom would have a set of World Books, some dictionaries and thesauruses and atlases, and the library would have only a card catalogue.

In an era of information convenience, we are starving ourselves, and depriving our kids of the "Thrill of the Hunt."

Sick of Politics; Something More Fun!

It has been interesting to find that there will still be "Top Ten" lists in the 23rd and 24th century.  After months of tedious, back-breaking research, I actually found these in some personal logs.  Most of the entries were made by ensigns, and it shines a special light on what went on behind the cameras and below decks, that never made the show.  Enjoy.

Top Ten Reasons I Like Serving on the Enterprise 1701

1. I get free uniforms, I don't have to wash them, and the shirts I have are not red.
2. The phasers make a cool sound, and they have this hilarious "stun" setting.
3. Lots of break time unless you're in engineering.
4. The food is all replicated -- no bones, gristle, or seeds.
5. The communicators have 100 terabyte MP3 players in them.
6. The clueless captain has no idea what 400 of us are doing.
7. Year round perfect temperatures and a rec room on every deck.
8. Two words:  sonic showers.
9. Titanium hull plating, multiphasic shields, warp 15, and photon torpedoes -- this is the safest place in the universe.
10. Free health care.

Top Ten Reasons I Like Serving on the Enterprise 1701-D

1. Red uniforms are not an automatic death sentence.
2. Captain is French.  We don't have to fight much.
3. Ten-forward -- lots of free drinks and the 500-year-old lady will give you the real thing when Baldy's not around.
4. The food replicators have an unlimited supply of tasty, non-fattening food from 1,000 planets -- and you have one in your room.
5. Two words:  holodeck privileges
6. The captain who has no idea what 1200 of us are doing.
7. Command crew that plays poker every night and has no idea what we are doing.
8. Android does most of the hard work, leaving us lots of holodeck time; generally clueless.
9. Children, families, parks, rec areas -- surrounded by deflector shields, and a warp bubble, with photon torpedoes, meta-phasic shielding, and phasers.  This is the safest place in the universe -- unless the Android goes nuts.
10. Free health care.

Top Ten Reasons I Like Serving on Voyager

1. We are in the Delta Quadrant.  Not even the IRS can find us here, though the AARP did get a message to Tuvok when he turned 150.
2. The little lizard guy makes a great omelet, but I try not to think about where he got the eggs.
3. I like imagining what Species 8472 could do to Cardassians.
4. We actually get to build our own cool new ships, and race them against aliens.
5. If I am killed, it will probably be reversed before the end of the program by traveling back in time or something.
6. Forget Kirk and Picard.  Our captain tamed a Borg.
7. Our second in command is a real live Indian with a cool tattoo.
8. We will get seventy years' hazard pay when we finally make it back.
9. Not one Cardassian or any of those idiotic shape-shifters within a thousand light years of us.
10. Free health care and a Doctor who is available 24/7.

Nine Things I Hate and One Thing I Like about 

Living on Deep Space 9

1. Ferengi everywhere.
2. It takes several years for the Cardassian smell to go away, and they keep coming back,
3. Bajorans are a combination of the worst possible traits of Catholics and Jews, with none of the best qualities of either, and a little bit of Baptist arrogance thrown in to boot.
4. Klingons everywhere.  Blood wine taste lingers in a synthesizer.  Ruins the taste of Dr. Pepper.
5. That pesky wormhole that any scum can get through and "bam" we're the first thing they see.
6. The "prophets."  A bunch of stuck-up aliens with technology that have fouled up everything in two quadrants for millennia.
7. The founders.  Yeah, right.  Think of Gumby and multiply it by one billion, then simmer on low heat.
8. The woman with the yam in her belly. Condescending, thinks she knows everything.  Captain calls her "Old Man."  Much nicer than what everyone else calls her.
9. Captain not clueless.  He knows what everybody is doing.

And the one thing I like

1. Free health care.

What If..?

I am posting this blog on my nearly lifeless site mainly for a special friend who continues to be one of the best thinkers I know.  I am a reader and writer of alternative science fiction -- the kind that imagine current events if something changed, like, say Lincoln surviving an assassination attempt, or the Moors not being driven out of Spain.

But this alternative fiction is one that I wish had happened.  I think the world would be a better place if the US had joined the Central Powers -- or even threatened to -- in WWI.  That war actually never ended, and has continued to drone on as the embers flared up to be WWII, then developed into the Cold War that included Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba, and now is in the Middle East.

The ones who actually wanted to fight for England and France lived mainly in what we call "New England."  The Celtic people of the South felt more sympathy for the Germans.  Our excuse for entering the war was German U-boat "aggression," but although we were not involved in the war at the time, we were busy carrying war materiel and support to Great Britain.  The Germans did what anyone would do to a neutral power:  stopped boats and seized armaments and military support, and when that was not enough, decided to make the North Atlantic unsafe for American intervention.  Had we honestly entered the war and fought it in the open, these things would not have happened.  Using cruise ships to arm England and France was a bad idea.

Let's talk about those two "allies."  First, there's England, who had fought three wars with us in the last century and a half.  Then, there was France, who no longer knew how to engage in warfare.  We had no real reason to side with them, and they represented no interests of ours.  By identifying with them, the whole world learned what type of nation we now wanted to be.  England, especially was hated for their vicious colonialism that could claim huge profits in occupied lands that, today, are profitless, such as current day Pakistan and Bangladesh.  They ruled a huge portion of the earth, and maintained it with a rod of iron.  France was doing the same in West Africa and Southeast Asia.  The people that hated them now hated us.

Germany had a good relationship with the Middle East; Britain (read British Petroleum) did not.  In the 20th century the US would help Britain topple the elected ruler of Persia, and install the Pahlavi family to power, whose last ruler was the infamous Shah.  The Shah's people were much more friendly to British Petroleum.  I have to ask myself, If we had been with the Germans, would we have the strife in the Middle East?  Sure, they point at our support of Israel as their point of hatred, but before the initiation of that state, they already hated us because we were Great Britain's right hand.  What would the Middle East look like today if the Central Powers had won?

When the US entered the war, we tipped the balance of power, and England and France, tired of Germany, not only demanded their surrender -- they demanded their humiliation.  The "armistice" that was signed was nothing like the gentlemen's agreement of Appomattox Court House a half century earlier.  It made Reconstruction look like a Sunday school picnic.  England and France -- and New England -- wanted Germany's back broken.  As a result, the nation was instantly forced into poverty.  We all know what happened to the German mark -- a move that gave great profit to a group of American and European bankers who had colluded to organize a banking cartel that included the US Federal Reserve, only a few years earlier.

Humiliated and smoldering, the Germans sought to restore their former glory.  This need for restoration, for a return to hope, for anyone who could get them back to where they belonged, made them ripe to receive an eloquent young speaker named Adolf Hitler, in spite of their misgivings about his character.

My contention is, if we had joined the Central Powers, there never would have been a Fuehrer, an attempt at a third Reich, or concentration camps.  If we had joined the Central Powers, there never would have been the tension in the Middle East, mainly for two reasons.  First, the Jews would not have had to leave Germany, and secondly, Great Britain would not have forced the formation of Israel.  There were many ways to restore the ancient nation; Great Britain and the United Nations chose, possibly, the worst way of all.  Imagine a world without Middle East extremism, without September 11.  If we had joined the Central Powers, Germany would not have slipped an exiled Lenin back into Russia to ease their pressure on the eastern front.  Russia was ripe for revolution against an evil royalty, but Lenin would not have been the one to topple them.  And Stalin would not have been there to take his place, and since, in my scenario, WWII never happens, there would have been no divisions of Eastern Europe, no East and West Germany, no division of Berlin, no domination of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Bulgaria, Rumania, et. al.   No Cold War.  No Red threat. No McCarthy trials.  No Korean War.  No Vietnamese War.  And no Gulf War.

Oh, sure, I believe mankind has evil at his roots, especially when it comes to politics, and something wicked would have arisen to fill the vacuum, but something in me says it would not have been as bad.

So why did we leave our neutrality and jump into a World War?  As I said before, part of it was the sympathy of the New England region of the US.  I'm sure Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, Texas, and other states with their rich German heritage would not have insisted on the war.  But the biggest part would have to be the strings that were being controlled by the banking cartels who controlled Western Europe and the United States.  In 1913, everything had changed:  the Federal Reserve took over our treasury, the Senate was selected by popular vote instead of state legislatures, and somehow, Americans "voted" for an amendment to allow the income tax.  WWI was a huge boon for banking, oil, and those controlling it.  Millions were to be made, and the debts after the war enriched bankers even more.

What a different world it would be today if the US had sided with the Central Powers.  I don't think we would have had to fire a shot.  Britain and France, seeing their great potential Sugar Daddy join the other side, would have laid down arms and negotiated a peaceful settlement.

And Adolph Hitler would have died in obscurity in Germany, a non-person.  That would have been worth it, right there.

Information: Quality vs. Quantity

I started thinking about this after something happened again, maybe for the hundredth time. I teach in a public school, and it's starting to be a trend. "Mr. Parsons," someone asks, "what is..?" The question can be anything. I prepare an answer, not as a peer across a lunch table, but as an educator. I want her to know not only "what?" but "why?" Mid-answer, she has turned away, is ignoring me, and maybe is even speaking to someone else now.

The first time it happened, I wrote it off as mere rudeness. Her upbringing lacked something, I supposed. It was too bad; she was really a nice person. This year, I've seen it happen over and over, and now I think I know why. They have been conditioned to be this way.

I don't mean "rude." They have been conditioned to gather information in this manner. I was from another generation. We wanted to learn, and there was always the understanding that those who were furnishing the learning not only knew the answers, but also knew how to supply the answers. In effect, our teachers had at least a partial control of our learning process.

The current generation has been brought up on sound bites. Whether it was the highly entertaining Bill Nye, the "Science Guy," or the quick, MTV-style changes in subject, their attention spans have been trained to make hairpin turns and stop on a dime. Now, they have phones -- smart phones -- and they don't like waiting for information. There is a sense of entitlement to that information: "I want it now. I want exactly what I have asked for; nothing more, nothing less."

When I was in the fifth grade we had a classroom set of World Books at the back of the room. Though they were missing the two most recent presidents, they were full of information. We were expected to use them as we wrote our "reports." Often, I would get distracted and stop at, say, "whales" on my way to "Whitman." I wanted to learn, and I liked the way that World Book not only supplied the information, but supplied more than I had realized I wanted to know.

One day, I had finished my classroom work, and decided to pass the time as other fifth graders finished theirs. I went to the encyclopedias and picked out the nice, juicy "M," which was one of the biggest of the encyclopedias. I began to leaf through it, reading enthusiastically as I went. When my teacher discovered what I was doing, she asked why I had an encyclopedia, since we were not currently writing reports. I told her I was just reading it. I still remember her words: "Encyclopedias are for research; they are not for reading! Put that back now!"

Years later I would enjoy the set we had as our children were growing up. I would watch my children do just what I had done: pick out a nice volume, and start reading through it. They were sponges wanting to absorb learning; why would I want to stop that?

A week or so ago I learned that Encyclopedia Britannica has ceased production of its hard copies, opting for internet only. While I understand their reasoning, I lament the decision. They are a fine encyclopedia, one of the best. They offered their online site free for a short while. I had access to the abundant knowledge, constantly updated, but there is no

Booby Traps

I've just finished another day of teaching. There is a culture war going on in my high school, and in most high schools. It's about the bracelets, the t-shirts, the belts, the book covers, and whatever else that say "I love boobies." As I type this I realize that I've never typed the word before unless I was referring to a South American bird common to the Galapagos Islands. But the word is everywhere.

It's not permitted, of course, but that's just an encouragement to the kids here. Allegedly, these bracelets are heightening breast cancer awareness. In my school, at least, all they are heightening is "breast awareness." Boys who have never contributed a dime to a worthy cause are wearing one, two, or three of the bracelets, hiding them from principals and teachers.

When someone gets caught and the bracelet is taken, the teacher or administrator, of course, is the villain, for not supporting "cancer awareness." I want to make a simple statement: those bracelets have done absolutely nothing to heighten any awareness of any type of cancer.

I have been highly disillusioned about the whole cancer awareness thing. The Komen foundation has lost its significance. I feel I have a right to say this, being a cancer fighter myself. The cancer I am fighting -- leukemia -- is signified by a green ribbon. I'll bet you didn't even know there were any ribbons but the pink ones.

Every year, we are told to "pink out" the school on a certain day, to wear pink instead of our school colors, and to buy pink ribbons. Komen has even made breast cancer a "feminine" issue, despite the fact that men die of the disease as well.

Then there are those occasional "cutesie" statements you see on Facebook or hear in conversation: "I like mine on the car seat." "I like mine on the kitchen cabinet," etc. Or "seven inches," etc. Of course, all those suggestive little phrases are the "secret"things that only the girls know. Of course, the first one was, "Where do you keep your purse?" The second one was her shoe size, with the word "inches" added. These, of course, were designed to "heighten cancer awareness." Did they do that? Seriously? A few guys figured out the answers, and girls got mad and chewed them out; after all, this was just a "secret" among the girls.

I'm still trying to figure out how these phrases heightened cancer awareness, since half the population was to mind its own business. How do sexually suggestive inside jokes heighten awareness?

One beloved aunt of mine died of ovarian cancer; another of colon cancer. What the Komen Foundation has done is cheapen the fight against cancer; first, by making it a one-cancer issue, and second, by making it some type of feminist issue.

As a male who wears a green ribbon, I don't like being left out. And I don't like the misappropriation of funds. Let family planning clinics do their own screenings, and I am all for it. The "Fight for the Cure," however, suggests research, resources, and a unified front to beat this awful monster that has invaded lives and families, rich and poor, black and white, young and old, liberal and conservative.

Why are they wasting time with controversial bracelets that take our eyes off the fight? I would like to see an organization that really wants to "work itself out of a job," a group that wants to eradicate cancer the way Rotary International has worked in the last decade to eradicate the last vestiges of polio.

And it's not going to be done with a "boobies" bracelet.

Anonymous Cowards

It seems like it happens every day, and it happens everywhere: in the world of sports, of business, of politics, of justice. I hear the same words, that someone, "speaking on the condition of anonymity, said..." The concept of anonymity is a powerful protection in our culture. We have the secret ballot which encourages voting freedom. We have anonymous tips which lead to the apprehension of criminals.

But the explanations given for a "condition of anonymity" speak volumes about the sad state of our current culture. Maybe it's a staffer for a political leader who doesn't want to lose his job; maybe it's a legal adviser for some company and the case is currently in litigation; maybe it's a member of a sports organization, and the leaders have not yet made the announcement official. In all these cases, I'm troubled by the implications. It says, "It's wrong to say this, but if I can hide behind something and be anonymous, I will tell you all about it."

The preponderance of disloyalty astounds me -- that so many people who are working for someone, helping an organization, or participating in some movement will so easily "sell out" as long as their name is not on it.

Our nation seems to be filled with people who have no morals as long as they will get no blame. Is the only think that is keeping some people honest the fact that we know who they are? Of course, it is getting harder and harder to be anonymous in our society. Your phone has a caller ID; your computer has an IP address, and there is a good chance you were photographed several dozen times today as you walked about, minding your own business.

Maybe there is some kind of "payback" involved in getting to say something anonymous. I have been a participant in a social network for several years. I won't say its name, but it starts with "F" and ends with "book," and of course, I realized that I would not be anonymous there; after all, who wants to be anonymous on a social network?

But now, I am alarmed when I go to a news site such as CNN or USA Today, and find my status picture there, and a question: do I want to share this story on the social network? How did they know I was the same person? I used to have the same problem with Pandora until I re-set my privacy options there. I'm not ashamed of the music I listen to, but I am not vain enough to think that everyone wants to know what I'm listening to.

The bottom line is, "We don't trust each other. At all." And when I am tempted to trust someone, I hear about some other source that has spoken under conditions of anonymity, and spilled the beans.

What cowardice. If you can't say it in the light, why can you shout it in the dark? It's seen another way in the comment sections of forums and other sites. People say horrible, insulting things that I doubt they would say if they had to look anyone in the face. In an ever-growing i-culture, it's only going to get worse, as we interact in every way, buying and selling, voting and recommending, applying for jobs and learning in college courses. The applied anonymity of the internet allows us to be the kind of jerks that were tarred and feathered in the last century.

No one talked to a neighbor like people talk to each other through an electronic mask. Anonymity is destroying what little decency we have left. I have realized the importance of never speaking unless everyone knows who I am and what I look like, and never speaking on a condition of anonymity. Why? Because I don't like those kind of people, and don't want to be under the same roof with one -- even if it's me.

Ok, It's Been a While...

I could write a book on all the changes between my last post and this one, but suffice to say, things that were once of high importance to me no longer are quite that important, and things that I once took for granted are now highly important and essential to me.

We don't begin to value life until we realize that it doesn't last forever; all human beings, with the possible exception of those who die quickly and unexpectedly in their youth, come to the point some day where, for the first time, they realize that they are finite, something they always knew in their heads, but never actually believed.

I still have my opinions, politically, and I know who I really want to see in the White House in January of 2013, but frankly, even if I get my wish, it won't even make the top ten list of the most important things that are happening.

So, I will be revving this blog back up.  I am also going to delete some of the blogs that I have written that I don't think reflect my own opinion any more.  If I can find a way to move some to a historical blog, I will move them there, because I love history and have more things to say.

For those of you who followed this blog and gave up on me, I hope you will see this and come back. I have some more things to say, and I hope to get to do it.

I'm Invisible!

I don't count. I know it now. When the new census figures come out, I will have nothing to do with congressional representation or even any of the ugly new innovations like federal funding and pork projects. All because I don't count.

The census doesn't want me, apparently. It all started with the Super Bowl, where, if you are an American citizen, you watched with me as "we" paid a million bucks or so to present a largely boring, uninformative "commercial" about our responsibility to answer our census questions. They said the packet was coming.

I waited for that packet. It never came. I saw all the guilt trips they paid for to shame us into sending a packet, and I faithfully watched my mailbox. It never came. I would have filled out the short questionnaire, but I never got one. Then I heard the threat: that if we didn't fill out the package, federal employees would come by and ask us the questions in person. Now, as we near the halfway point of this constitutionally-mandated census year, those people still haven't come by. Because to Washington, I obviously don't exist.

I tried getting them to send me a packet or to come by. I went online and looked at the FAQ for the census, but evidently my question is not "frequently" asked: "What do I do if no one knows I'm here?" The site was replete with information about how to get jobs with the census and what was going to be done with the info, and how to recognize a valid census worker if one came by. But there was no information on how to get myself counted and on the census rolls.

I don't exist. This isn't the first time I've found that out. When the entire US TV industry went digital, I found out I didn't qualify for one of those government-funded digital converters because I don't live in this house and I don't exist. But enough of that. If you want that story, you can read my other post on that here. But I realize now that in Washington I don't exist.

I keep hearing the boasting about what the census will do, but I seriously question the results we are going to receive. Every day I'm hearing about fraud, about fabricated figures and forged forms, and we all know about the partisan arguments that are coming when we finally get ready to crunch numbers. We have learned that in the double-speak of American partisan politics, numbers really don't mean anything until someone has "processed" them for us, made them palatable to the unwashed masses (read "anyone outside the Beltway").

So do me a favor. When they give you the final numbers for the US population, add four to the total. That's how many people have not yet been reported here. This megabillion dollar debacle is not getting an accurate count at all. No one has even bothered to look for the people where I live. And they have not given us a way to get in touch with the rest of the world, even in cyberspace.

Will I actually be represented in Congress for the next ten years? Why would that happen? It hasn't happened for a long time anyway. It's a strange feeling, being invisible and all, but I somehow think I'm not alone. How many millions of other people never got a form in the mail, were never visited by anyone? I know my name is on the roll somewhere. Publisher's Clearing House found me out here, even though I've never played their game. And DirecTV and Verizon Wireless and anyone else that can find profit out here. But let's face it: I'm not profit. I'm not a minority, nor do I represent any special interest group. I'm just me, and my wife and two kids currently living at home are just -- well, "they."

Oh, I need to mention one more thing. I went by the local HQ of the census office that I found nearest my address. It looked like an old office, temporarily rented for the year. I went by making sure it was not a holiday or lunch hour. I thought I could just pick up a form there. I'll never know, however, if I could have gotten one.

They were closed.

Dressed for Success?

The strangest thing has been happening to me for the last ten years. I will be in a Home Depot looking for a saw, and a total stranger will approach me and ask where the light bulbs are. When I say "I don't know," he looks at me disgustedly and walks away. At the supermarket, I'm supposed to know where the pimentos are. A couple of months ago, I was on my way to Dallas and stopped at a popular convenience store along the interstate. I was getting a cup of coffee from the self-serve machine when a girl about twelve years old approached me and said, "We're out of cups," and pointed to the soft drink machine. My look of puzzlement is probably what caused her to clarify herself: "I need you to get some more."

I looked around and all I saw were coffee cups. I pointed to the checkout counter, five deep in customers, and suggested she ask the clerk there. She turned back and addressed her mom, about six feet away, "He won't help me!"

I used to think I must just have the "store employee" look. Some people say I constantly exude an air of self-confidence and poise, which is really a good act, because I seldom feel that way inside. For ten years I have accepted this as my cross to bear, that I look like a store manager, no matter where I am. It is only recently that I've figured out why I look like a middle-aged chain store manager.

My epiphany came that day in the convenience store when I heard the angry mother say, "Well, let's find someone who will help us." She took her daughter by the hand, staring darts through me all the time. Her flip flops snapped angrily against her heels, and all I saw was Mom from the back, pink shorts and white tank top not quite covering the star tatoo that peeked out between them. I looked around the store and realized that I was the only one that was "dressed up."

Don't get me wrong. I once went four whole years without wearing a tie. I don't usually have a coat and tie, nor nice slacks. The only reason my shoes are not from WalMart is because they don't carry large half-sizes, but I don't like to use three days' salary on shoes. I was not dressed like an executive. My problem was that I had on long pants, a nice button-type long-sleeved shirt that was tucked into those pants, and shoes with socks. If someone had been looking for a potential executive in the store, I came the closest.

It's not "dressing up" that makes you obvious; when you don't "dress down," you stick out like a sore thumb. Long pants and a button shirt will get someone asking you where you keep the mayonnaise every time. It wasn't too long ago that everyone dressed up. Watch the black and white TV shows, and you find out that, evidently, in the fifties and earlier, even the bad guys -- the ones that murdered and stole and kidnapped -- didn't go out in the morning without their hair combed, a nice sport jacket with matching tie, and a hat to set the mood.

When I first started to fly on commercial airlines, it appeared that people took time to dress up for the trip. I haven't flown in years now, but I realize that now, people don't bother to dress up to fly. Just a pair of warmups, or some shorts, sandals, and a worn-out witty saying t-shirt is all you need to get from Dallas to Chicago. I have also learned that people don't really see the need of a bath before flying, either.

At one point, people dressed up to go out to eat. Maybe putting a nice jacket and tie on your eight-year-old son was a little much. I'll concede that. But now, that's not a problem. Many times my wife and I have looked forward to eating at a nice restaurant, and dressed for the occasion, only to later have the table next to us occupied by a couple who obviously just got off the tennis courts. Maybe I have a weak stomach, but a man's pasty white hairy leg does nothing for the KC sirloin that just got set in front of me. And he's set back from his table, leaning backwards, tennis shoe propped on the knee so I can see the whole show.

We have a problem with customer service anyway. Not many people can find a locally owned store where the proprietor is someone you went to high school with, who takes pride in his store. Now the boss is usually upstairs on the phone with China while short term minimum wage kids walk the floors below. They don't know what size handle fits that particular hammer. Then here you come, probably dressed better than the guy upstairs talking to China, and you are swarmed by people hungry for customer service.

Most Americans fear someone who dresses up. My wife, who enjoys dresses, has been asked before why she thinks she has to wear them all the time. It seems they make some people "nervous." I was once at a function where the host was appalled that I had worn jeans, which I felt were casual enough. He had on shorts, and thought I was deranged because I didn't. "Why didn't you wear shorts?" he asked. I wanted to tell them that it was because it had been a long time since I had been six, but I know times have changed. Before our little group set out on our jaunt, he excused himself for a moment, and returned with a pair of shorts for me. I smilingly pointed to my larger waist and the nice shoes I had, and said "I'll survive."

People feel threatened when you "dress up." Churches seem ashamed of "Sunday go to meeting" clothes now, and some will even make you check your tie at the door; after all, we don't want to "run people off." It seems the only time we dress up now is when we are high school kids in academic competition, or adults who have to face the judge on a felony charge.

Is it any wonder it's hard for my wife and daughter to find dresses? After all, no one buys them now. We are a generation who has forgotten the basic rules of body cover. When it's 25 degrees outside and I see a grown man at subway in shorts, sandals, and a "US Drinking Team" t-shirt, I know something has snapped somewhere.

As long as I can find my wardrobe, I will continue to wear the clothes I like. It's who I am. Some day, I may have to go to Salvation Army or Goodwill to find them, but that's not too much of a problem. However, I really need to go back to the grocery store and memorize the aisles so I can tell the tattooed lady what aisle the toilet paper is on.

But it's a small price to pay.

Who's Paying for This?

Here is the latest update on who is not paying taxes: 47% of Americans. A direct quote from a story on Yahoo News today says, "About 47% will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions, and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That's according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization."

Reading further in the article, we find the upper limits of tax freedom: "a family of four making as much as $50,000 will owe no federal income tax for 2009, as long as there are two children younger than 17, according to a separate analysis by the consulting firm Deloitte."

Let's review. First, nearly half of all Americans will pay no tax this year; secondly, it is possible to make as much as $50,000 and not have any tax liability at all. Why do I keep hearing about the "tax burden of the poor?"

Now, let's do the math, and I will say up front that this is sloppy and inaccurate, since I am not an accomplished statistician. Let's just take, oh, one trillion dollars. That won't quite cover the "stimulus money" this year, and doesn't even touch anything else, like grants, subsidies, military spending, congressional and staff salaries, and the list could go on. Now, we are told that only a little more than half of all Americans will pay tax, and I assume that means those who would have been tax eligible. For argument's sake, let's round the population off to 300,000,000. Now, let's assume that the average family has three people, so let's say 100,000,000 families. Then, let's say that in every family, both wife and husband work and are tax eligible. That makes 200,000,000 potential taxpayers. Now, let's cut that in half, and say that there are only 100,000,000 that will pay taxes from last year. Let's be fair and divide only the stimulus package costs by those taxpayers. Let's see...that's $1,000,000,000,000 dollars and 00 cents, divided by 100,000,000. That comes out to a per-person tax burden of 10,000 dollars each. With two earners per family, that's 20,000 dollars burden per taxpaying family.

Remember, this is just federal income tax, not FICA social security. Remember that this tax burden will be shouldered only by those who make $50,000 per year, more or less; that's a thousand a week. But also remember that, in my example, we have two earners, so it's actually much more. I'm even letting them live together without marriage so they can get that tax break; in spite of Republican promises, married people still pay more for the privilege of being married to each other.

And again, remember that we've only paid for the "economic stimulus" package. I know my figures are way off, and sadly, they are off in the wrong direction. If we were only to pay for the "stimulus" bill, the per-person rate would actually be higher.

We need to acknowledge that taxes are no longer the major source of revenue for our federal spending gone wild. Printing and electronic generation are where we are getting our money. The major purpose of income tax and the IRS is to regulate behavior -- behavior of businesses, organizations, and individuals. And now with "Health Care Reform," we find that the IRS will also be in charge of making sure we buy insurance out of our own pockets -- that is, those who are taxed. The rest of our country will be furnished all or part of their insurance by the half that work and earn, who invest and improve their positions.

So, who is paying for this? Well, simply put, it would appear that 53% of you who read this are. Of course, literacy leans toward higher earning potential, so if you found this blog and are reading it, there is a good chance that more like 70-80% of you would appear to be paying for this. But the real answer is, "all of us," including our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and so on, because this rampant manufacture of artificial dollars will inflate prices and shrink the dollar to the point that a box of facial tissue will cost 20 dollars in a few years; of course, we've already had a taste of that since it already costs that much in a hospital room right now.

And now we have the truth about the IRS in its fullest form. The "I" is not true, since this is not "internal," but a private firm, unelected and un-approved, doing the work of collecting money; the "S" is silly, since it is not a "service" at all. Services provide things. The IRS doesn't even provide billing, receipts, or tax counseling. And the "R" is also false. There is no "revenue" in this work. The major source of revenue is coming from somewhere else.

I will continue to "render unto Caesar" since my faith and ethics tell me to. But my citizenship in this country, for now, allows me to speak out. I don't want to shoot anyone, nor do I want to break the law. But I would be remiss in my duties if I did not speak up.

My Plan to Get Rich

I had been planning this for a while, but now that the last brick is in place with universal health care, I'm ready to jump in with both feet. I found out why I'm having trouble making ends meet: I'm too rich. I am one of the greedy, filthy class that actually wants to pay for things out of my earnings, but this will happen no more.

I'm currently working two jobs, and that's two jobs too many. I have discovered some wonderful things that can replace those jobs:

• Lonestar. Not the beer or the state. It's a magic card. I only noticed one recently. There is a secret slot in the Walmart check out line. If you run a card down the highly visible slot, you will lose money. A Lonestar card goes into a less obvious slot before you buy, and just stays there. Then the checker scans items and if it beeps, you get billed zero, and get to take the item home. Sometimes it makes another noise, and you have to pay for that, but it's not too bad. I figure that card could save us a couple of thousand per month. Money that I plan on not making any more.
• Section 8. I thought that was what Klinger wore a dress for, and it was to get out of the army. But now I know better. When you get a section 8, someone else pays your rent and utilities. I see apartments advertising that they welcome "section 8" people, so they must be a popular bunch. I could live in a house without having to pay any rent or utilities. Now there's a money saver. I wonder if they help with cable.
• 1040 EZ. I don't get to file one of those because I have too many jobs and make too much money. I have to file the regular 1040, the one that penalizes stupid people like me for trying to make it on my own. You go to one of those cash advance places, and they look downright disappointed when you show them the 1040 instead of the EZ, because they know there's less money to be skimmed from you with that thing. But after I quit my jobs, I will be able to get an EZ. It's free and at the post office. I looked this year for the schedule C, the SE, and some forms starting with the number "8" that I had to use, that the post office doesn't have them. Next year, I'm getting a free EZ from the post office, and sending it in. I expect money.
• Tax credits. I have been so stupid. I did not realize that if you earn money, you have to pay the government, but if you don't, the government pays you! Millions of Americans this year will get money from the IRS even though they didn't pay taxes. All you have to do is quit earning and this money can be yours. Now I did get some tax credits for the three kids I have in college, but those jobs messed me up again. If I don't have these two jobs, I will get more help for my kids. But if the don't, I'm thinking about telling them about this too. They will like me more. I'm always on their case about getting a job, about working harder. No more of that. My goal for all my kids is that they be able to sum up their lives on a 1040 EZ every year, and get paid for it. And get medical care. And a house.

It has been a real wake-up call for me. I cannot believe how stupid I have been. When I think about all the time I could have stayed home while my kids were growing up, how I could have tended my yard and read some good books and watched Oprah, I realize that I have thrown my life away. The benevolent government tried to educate me with this, but I had listened to my grandparents and been brainwashed. I thought people still earned money and used it to take care of themselves.

I'm kind of old to be starting, but I'm going to be a good citizen from now own. I will trust my loving, benevolent, big government to care for me. I will trust them for a roof, heat and cooling, and a meal on my table (I wonder where I go to get a free table to put it on?)

My moment of awakening happened this week. I have been wasting several hundred dollars a month on insurance, and still, when we go to the doctor, I have to add to that. I have been tempted to just quit paying insurance, but Nancy Pelosi says that, since I still make money, I can be sent to jail for doing that.

But no problem. I'm quitting both my jobs. I will no longer be earning. I'm getting a section 8 and a Lonestar, and I'm going to use a 1040 EZ so I can get money in April. The icing on the cake is that I will also be getting medical care. It will be so nice not to have those monthly insurance payments any more. All I have to do now is go to a clinic and show them my government card. They will take care of me.

In case you are wondering about other items, don't worry. I am not letting my wife quit her job. It will be enough to take care of the things I want, like a car and a DVD player to connect to my 60 inch television that I'm going to buy with my EZ money next year. If I can't find any way to get the government to pay for my gas, she can. She can also buy some luxuries and other nice things. If she can't pay for these things, I'm counting on those of you who still have jobs to take up the slack, because that's your responsibility.

I'm just sorry I took so long to get with the program. I'm going house-hunting as soon as I quit my jobs. But don't worry, readers. I will keep in touch. This computer is going with me. I believe it's every American's right to have unlimited high-speed internet. For those of you who work, like I used to, well, it's your privilege to pay for it. Thanks in advance.

Much Ado Over Nothing?

Everybody get ready to duck! America as we know it is about to be irreversibly damaged! Is it a threat from Iran? Is it a new plan by the Taliban? No, it's much more subtle than that. It is an attempt at brainwashing that will sneak into our living rooms through the TV screen. This propaganda will slither through and past a modicum of entertainment, and most vulnerable, innocent Americans will never know what hit them. They will be at their most susceptible, full of chips and dip, sandwiches and pizza, colas and beer. Some will feel guilty because they skipped church or lied to the night shift coordinator about being sick.

Then, it will come onto the horizon, when we least expect it, like an Al-Quaeda attack. Maybe it will just be a lull in the action, or an official time out to review a pass play to see if the receiver had control of the ball, when suddenly, BOOM, it will detonate right in front of our families, our dear friends, our children, our pets!

It will look innocent enough, of course. One of the people will look like a middle-aged grandmother type, the kind that makes you an apple pie or serves samples on a toothpick at Costco. Standing near her will be a dashing young man, handsome, athletic, likeable -- wait a minute -- that's a football player! Tim Tebow and his mom are actually agents of a subversive group that wants to control your mind, impose their archaic, outdated beliefs on you.

Actually, we don't know yet what they will say. The commercial has never been seen. They may say "eat your vegetables" or something like that, but the "hot buttons" of this event have already sent Those Who Are Sworn to Protect Us from the Cradle to the Grave (short version: "white liberals") into a pre-emptive frenzy to save us from the damage this unlikely pair will do.

Let's cut to the chase. Basically, Jehmu Greene, "spokes-person" in opposition to this commercial, along with "women's" groups, would like you to know the truth: Tim Tebow did not deserve to live. A medical professional had told his mother that she needed to abort, and that foolish woman did not obey the doctor's advice, and went ahead and gave birth to the little parasite.

There is a huge uproar. CBS is being condemned for accepting the $2 million plus that the ad will cost. Thirty seconds for a mother to tell about choosing life. Now I've never seen the commercial either, but I'm willing to bet paper money that she will not say a word about shooting doctors, picketing clinics, or even overturning Roe v Wade. She's just going to say, probably, something like "I chose to have my son and I'm glad I did."

This is very uncomfortable for the so-called pro-"choice" people, who refuse to think that Pam Tebow made a "choice" as well. They are much more comfortable talking about a fetus, about a woman's freedom, about "rape, incest, and life of the mother." They do not like candidates for abortion who win Heisman trophies and national championships, who get college degrees. This makes them very antsy.

So, the outcry continues. In an article in USA Today, columnist Michael Hiestand actually said this will be "the most controversial TV ad -- perhaps the only really controversial ad -- to ever air during America's biggest TV show." I have so many questions for Michael, but I guess we will get to the big one: Michael, have you ever even watched any Super Bowl commercials? One that comes to mind would suffice, I guess. A couple of years ago, one commercial featured two "manly" types working on a car who began to eat the same Snickers bar, and it ended in a man-to-man kiss, followed by both guys trying to do something "masculine." This commercial would be a good candidate for Guinness' record book. It made everybody mad -- conservatives, Christians, and on the other side, gay and lesbian groups.

But that commercial is nothing, it appears, compared to the one that will air this year. A mother will tell about the decision to give birth. Now that's controversial! The very idea that the media would even call this controversial shows how out of touch they are with real human beings. Every year, real people wade through the famous Super Bowl commercials. Whether it's busty women advertising a job website, clumsy fools touting their own brand of beer, or the Mormons wanting to send you "Bible: the Sequel," everyone gets a say.

The Left is the first to demand "First Amendment" rights. That means that Rosie O'Donnell can complain on "The View" that she cannot marry her girlfriend. That means that anything is fair game, unless, of course, you don't agree with the Left. Then all bets are off.

Some people have even complained about "Focus on the Family" spending 2.8 million dollars for a thirty second ad. After all, that money could have gone to help the poor in Haiti, they add, kind of like our friend Judas whining about the oil poured on Jesus' feet (see my earlier blog post).

Maybe they have a point. That much money could go a long way in Haiti. But remember, people are going to spend that much touting beer and colas, job sites and semi-clad women, candy and chips and who knows what else. What about the players, many of whom make much more than $2.8 million for playing a kid's game. Then there are those skybox seats, valued in the thousands and tens of thousands, or just the regular stadium seats, any of which could buy several Haitian families a week's worth of meals.

How about the obscene amount of money that will be paid to "The Who," singing middle-aged songs from the seventies while a multi-million dollar spectacle of lights and fireworks explodes around them. You know, a marching band would have done the halftime show for free, and all that money could have gone to Haiti.

Hypocrisy, thy name is liberalism. I imagine a sheriff in the old West. He tells the posse, "string him up. He looks like he wants to steal a horse." The Left has done that. They want this thirty seconds of life silenced! Banned! Outlawed!

And they haven't even seen the commercial.

Something's Wrong Here

This is not an original thought with me, but it expresses just how I feel. A blogger in another forum today said, and I paraphrase, "Here I sit in Texas, worried about a senatorial election in Massachusetts, and I realize this is not the way it's supposed to be."

I feel exactly the same way. The design of the Constitution is such that a Texan should have absolutely no concern over a Massachusetts senatorial election. Even a neighboring state like New Mexico or Louisiana should not concern a Texan.

Yet today, and I write this before the outcome of the Massachusetts contest for Kennedy's throne is known, the whole nation is holding its breath over this one special election for a partial senate term. Both sides of the aisle are pulling for the win. Special interests from all over the country have been in the state pushing their side of the issue. The president of the United States has gone to Massachusetts to plead his case, and our special envoy to Haiti, the honorable William J. Clinton, last week after the earthquake in Port au Prince, flew to Massachusetts for what he saw as a greater disaster, a deeper crisis: that Ted Kennedy's heir apparent seemed to have dropped her crown.

In the original design of the constitution, states were to conduct their own business, including commerce, health care, education, et al, but somewhere -- somewhen, the monster of federalism has reared its ugly head.

It is preposterous that a Massachusetts senatorial election should send aftershocks to Texas, or for that matter, that a Texas senatorial election should send them to Massachusetts, but that is the sad state of affairs in our nation today. During the Lincoln administration, a grammatical change was imposed on our country. Before Lincoln, the correct sentence was, "The United States are..." Since that time, it has been "The United States is..."

Before, we were a union of states, unified for the purpose of mutual defense and support. We relegated such important issues as the coinage of money, the making of treaties with foreign nations, and the declaration of war to the federal government, an entity which could do nothing without the permission of the states.

Somewhere in and around the 14th Amendment, that perception changed. Now, the states are minor principalities that can do nothing without the permission and consent of the federal government.

So, we have a monstrous "health care bill," as some like to call it. It is full of pork, bribes, corruption, and under-the table deals. Both Massachusetts and Texas will have to fork over extra money -- we're talking several zeroes -- to Nebraska and Louisiana because two senators were bought for their votes. We all have to pay for the bribes.

This bill, which is now despised by both rank and file Democrats and Republicans, is being forced upon us by a beltway minority who are determined to have their way. Harry Reid is so despised in his own state that he may not survive his own party's primary, and he certainly will not survive past the November elections, and this lame duck has been put in charge of this Jabba-the-Hutt legislation.

So I sit in Texas and shouldn't even care what they do in Massachusetts, but along with sane people, both Democratic and Republican, I am concerned. We have seen what a super-majority can do on either side of the aisle, and it is not pretty.

Would it have been this way even a hundred years ago? Probably not. In 1910, each state decided how to select senators; most of them were chosen by their states' legislatures. It is safe to say that, if that were still the process, maybe 75% of the senators we have today would be doing something else. Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd would certainly have not experienced their obscenely long terms in office.

The constitution was not meant to be this way, and it was the seventeenth amendment, passed in 1912, that diluted the purpose of the senate, turning it into a "light" version of the house, with longer terms of office.

When this election is finally decided in Massachusetts, it will heavily influence how we live in Texas, in California, in Alaska and Hawaii, and in all the other 49 states. Seriously, a senatorial election in Massachusetts should not even affect life in Maine or Connecticut.

We need a revival of the tenth amendment. States need to be allowed to do what they were intended to do. Be it prohibition, the income tax, or the fugitive slave law, every time the federal government has taken over a state issue, even with good intentions, it has only made things worse. Do we want our health care, flawed as it is, to be run by the same people who have given us the IRS, the US Postal Service, and Amtrak? Who really wants that?

I am not nearly as bothered about who might or might not win tonight in Massachusetts as I am bothered about the fact that it even concerns my way of life in Texas. It ought not to be so!

Dropping the Ball Big-Time

I did not think it was possible to do it this fast. Oh, I knew it was possible to accomplish, but this was a speed record. In one of my earliest posts in this blog, I commented on the Republican party and the great election sweep of 1994, which was followed by a Republican president in 2001. Suddenly, this party was in the driver's seat: both houses of congress, the White House, and the prospects of three or four new Supreme Court justices.

They had a mandate including such new ideas as the "Contract with America," involfing term limits, the line item veto, and a return of tenth amendment power to the states. But what happened when they got there? It must be the swampy air of the Potomac. It seems that most people's minds lose IQ points when they get to Washington.

Fast forward to 2008. The Republicans had already lost their majorities; now they lost the White House, and gave up even more congressional and senate seats. I looked back on those fourteen Republican "golden years," and I could find nothing -- nothing -- of the "Contract with America." What we had was greed, pork, corruption, increased spending, and general incompetence. Their brightest new stars, such as J.C. Watts and Steve Largent, had disappeared earilier, seemingly disillusioned by "business as usual" politics of their own party in the Capitol cloakroom. The "pro-life" party had allowed abortion in America to increase; the "pro-family" party had stood by apathetically as radical "gay" rights groups had made violent invasions into the institutions of family, religion, education, and state.

But it took Republicans fourteen years to make a shambles of their party. Democrats will do it in two. They may be candidates for Guiness' Book of World Records. Whether I agree with their principles or not, they have failed miserably to accomplish anything at all. The war continues, and they promised it would be over. All of the special interest groups: abortion rights feminists, gays and lesbians, and government-controlled education radicals, have all been disappointed. Many now call Mr. Obama "Bush-Lite," and wonder what happened to the other people that they sent to Washington in the November sweep of 2008.

One case in point is the obscene "health care" bill, which no one has read, the majority of Americans don't want, and whose contents are being kept "top secret" by Reid and Pelosi. The bill has already cost us more than we can imagine, and if it comes to pass, the gigantic pork-filled earmarks will bankrupt our descendants four generations from now. We have watched them spend over two trillion dollars with no visible improvement to the economy, the job situation, or the general welfare of Americans. The only ones who seem to have benefited at all are those large Wall Street businesses and money-collecting banks that the Democrats told us were so evil and were in "cahoots" with Republicans.

Harry Reid's numbers are so low that even though he's from Nevada, I don't know how his own Las Vegas could give him any odds on winning. Yet he says it's all "okay." Massachusetts, where I didn't even know any Republicans lived, including Mitt Romney, the Democratic party has been seriously embarrassed. Scott Brown may not win next week, but the fact that the Democratic Party has ramped up money and publicity to try to protect "Ted Kennedy's seat" says to me that the Republicans have already won this election, even if Brown does not, by making it an actual race. Most people, conservatives included, thought it would be a coronation for Kennedy's heir apparent. The very idea that it is even close is frightening to the Democratic party, which really thought it had been given a carte blanche by American voters.

The free-wheeling spending, the abuse of power, and the wholesale breaking of promises has destroyed the faith that the electorate put in the Democratic party in 2008. Everywhere you look, you hear of "buyer's remorse," especially among independents.

America has even been disillusioned by the so-called "independents." Whether they are "blue dog" Democrats like Nebraska's Ben Nelson, pseudo-Republicans like Arlen Specter claimed to be, or self-aggrandizing fence-sitters like Joe Leiberman, we have realized that these people were not really "independent" thinkers, but people who realized their significance as "swing votes" and used that power to obtain special favors. Nelson is probably the biggest traitor with a close second being Louisiana's Mary Landrieu, who both pretended to have the interest of the nation at heart, to be fiscal conservatives and social moderates, but who, when offered literally hundreds of millions of dollars in state pork, quickly abandoned their own convictions and those of their constituencies for a bribe.

We have watched as Democratic leaders have cut special deals for special interest groups. Perhaps the most obscene is organized labor, which was rightfully incensed at the tax penalty that is proposed for those who actually have good health insurance. They were quick to back down when the Senate leadership promised them that unions would be exempt for a few years.

This Democratic session has been anything but "democratic." They have lived off the "me first" mentality that they were so fond of accusing Republicans of having in the Reagan years. What we as Americans have to look forward to is an ever-burgeoning, gigantic debt, which realistically, any economist will tell you our collected taxes can not even pay the interest on the interest of what we owe. This bill will further erode what little medical care we have in rural areas -- any district of less than 250,000 people -- and consequently will further crowd and congest the hospitals and emergency rooms of our metropolitan areas.

Republicans are gleefully clapping their hands at the gains they will make in November, but most Americans are not. Republicans will gain ground, of course, but we had a fourteen year lesson in what will happen to them. As I see the same tired, failed poster children of the last Republican takeover, Newt Gingrich being their leader, I realize that we have nothing to look forward to in this party.

The best we can hope for in current conditions is a "draw." We need a 50/50 senate, and a house with a less than ten margin either way. Such close numbers tend to deflate partisan arrogance and encourage the bipartisan cooperation that we heard Democrats boasting about so much in early 2009.

But can I close this by dreaming a little? What we really need is a purge. We need to vote out incumbents in both houses. The best way to do it, of course, would be to put third party candidates in the house and senate. I'm not talking about "independents." There is a special arrogance there, and I haven't really seen an indepentent recently who wasn't either a traitor to his former party or a boot licker to it. Some have even been both.

What we need is to elect people from identifiable third parties. The Libertarian and Constitution party come to mind, though if you are more to the left, there are others, such as the Green party that I guarantee will do more for environmental causes than any Democrat with lobby money in his pocket.

At the very least, Americans should seriously consider other political parties besides the "big two." Republicans and Democrats, in spite of all their differences, work together on one issue: keeping third parties off state ballots. Even if you don't want to vote for them, you can sign petitions, or start one, to get more parties permanently on your state's ballot. Encourage people to run for positions at all levels in these parties. The Democrats and Republicans are counting on you to ignore the other columns on the ballot. They both want "status quo," and we will never get any new, fresh ideas until we are willing to break out of the two party mold.

My dream for a better America is to wake up on a January morning where no political party has a majority, where politicians must come together and work out bills, rather than draw up obscene agreements behind locked doors. It is a dream I hope to see fulfilled in my lifetime. It is a dream that would make me supremely happy next January.