Going Fishing...

Modern life can be a complicated mess. Mysteries and contradictions are everywhere. Devoted free market men like myself are frustrated to the point of cynicism when we find crony-capitalists in positions of influence in our political party of convenience. Devoted followers of Christ spend half our time appalled at the narrow-mindedness and irrelevance of the churches we attend. Small business owners are stunned at the level of contempt with which we are held by the current president. Lifelong sports fans carry around with them the unspoken intuition that our favorite sports are being destroyed right before our eyes by the influence of money and the overexposure that it brings. Nobody fixes their own cars anymore because they’re all just big computers on wheels. Every time we go to the grocery store, that tube of toothpaste or that box of maccaroni & cheese is just an ounce or two smaller than it was last month, but the price is the same. Our newspaper just got an inch skinnier, on the same day that it’s price went up 33%. A complicated mess.

But you know what’s not complicated? Fishing. I say “not complicated” when what I mean is “less” complicated. I went to Dick’s Sporting Goods the other day to buy a license, and to replenish my tackle box, and discovered that capitalism has turned fishing into a bizarre avocation involving many brightly colored accessories of dubious purpose. I resisted the urge to become a high tech, cutting age modern angler, preferring to remain a guy who just wants to take an afternoon once in a while to get away from everything and everyone and fish. The State charges $23.00 for the privilege. I was told by the enthusiastic cashier that the money from these licensing fees went towards, “ fishery and hatchery management, habitat development and protection, fishing and conservation programs, and many other valuable programs.” And here I thought that this was just another government money grab. Maybe I’ll write for a list of those “other valuable programs”. But if I do it will just hurdle me further down the dead end road of cynicism when I discover that my fishing license fee was helping to fund Planned Parenthood or something. No, I’ll pass on digging deeper into the reasons why I just paid 23 bucks for the right to fish for one year in the state of my birth.

Sometime soon, maybe tomorrow, I’m going to drive out into the countryside somewhere and find a place to fish. I will not use my cell phone. I will not use any artificial lures. My rig will be the same one I’ve always used, night crawlers and a red and white bobber. I will stare at that bobber and contemplate the meaning of my existence. I will pack a sandwich and maybe a beer or two. If I catch anything, I will enjoy the slimy feel of it’s scales as I hold it in my hand and stare into the depths of it’s glassy eye. Then I will place it gently back into the water and watch it disappear. So simple. So clear. So unambiguous.

At the end of the day I will be refreshed. I will feel whole. On the drive back into town I will try not to think about my complicity in funding those “other valuable programs”.

Game Over.

Poor Mitt. You gotta feel for the guy. For the first time in his entire campaign, he finally tells the unvarnished truth about something and BAMM...game over. Not to say I told you so, but go here for proof that I warned all of you Romney fans about the political facts of life months ago. Although he spoke the truth, there are a few quibble-worthy points to make.

It is a fact that roughly 47% of Americans pay no income tax. This is the result of 40 years of pandering by BOTH parties. This fact has indeed created a huge constituency for whom tax cuts offer no benefit. To respond, as most liberals do when confronted with this reality, along the lines of ,"Yeah, but all Americans pay payroll taxes!!" is nonsensical. Of course we all pay payroll taxes. The reason we all pay is because the law provides no escape, no deduction or qualifying dodge to get us off the hook. In addition, payroll taxes are payments we all make for a future benefit ( Social Security ). Herein lies a quibble. When Romney calculates the 47% of Americans who are "dependant" on the government, he includes retirees whose only claim against that government is the Social Security check they earned through a lifetime of paying into the system. These people are merely collecting on a promise, and can hardly be described as "dependant".

 Mitt's serendipitously recorded words were correct about the electoral landscape. Any Democrat running for the Presidency starts out with a huge base of support that in large part consists of those citizens with a vested interest in government spending. That percentage has been growing each year since LBJ's Great Society was launched over 45 years ago. But to be heard writing off nearly half the country as hopelessly dependant and helpless is never a good thing for one's electoral prospects. The fact that his statement is mostly true doesn't change the facts on the ground. Just because something might be true does not mean that it should be said. Any husband who has been asked by his wife if a particular pair of pants makes her look fat knows this instinctively.

If I was Mitt's speech writer, here's what I would have him say....

     " The fact that we have a social safety net in this country is something that we should all be proud of, it speaks well of our national character. As Americans we all believe in providing for those who have fallen on hard times, because we know that in America, bad luck and bad fortune are often temporary setbacks. Government plays a vital role in helping men and women recover from the unexpected, unplanned setbacks of life. But our safety net has over time been transformed into a hammock and government "help" has become a way of life for too many of our people, at precisely the same time as too many of us have been taken off the tax rolls. This is an untenable reality. Our tax system has become a tool of manipulation that government and business use against the rest of us. When you're in line at the grocery store and watch a twenty-something man wearing $200 sneakers buying beer and lottery tickets with food stamps, it should upset you because something is wrong with a system that allows that. But you should be equally upset when huge agri-business corporations receive billions in tax preferences to not grow things, or when politically connected businesses get subsidies written into our Byzantine tax code by their own lobbyists. Many of us complain about how complicated our tax code is, but it's complexity is by design. The more convoluted the tax code, the more power the code writers have. On day one of my administration, our 73,608 page tax code will be  replaced with a one page flat tax with no deductions for anything. For our country to be able to provide adequately for the weakest among us, everyone needs to have skin in the game. For some of you the new system will mean higher taxes, for others your bill will be lower...but all of you will be treated equally, and none of you will be able to game the system to avoid paying."

Poor Mitt doesn't have it in him to offer a transformative alternative to the cradle to grave welfare state. We can only hope against hope that President Obama, once he is no longer running for office will have the guts to confront the deniers in his own party and face the deteriorating mathematics of socialism

The Very Worst Day

This day. This bloody day. One hundred and fifty years ago, today. Near the obscure Maryland village of Sharpsburg 26,000 Americans dead, wounded or missing. This time the pools of blood dried and caked on Union soil. Body parts were stacked in piles outside of the German Baptist church. By nightfall, Miller's cornfield was mowed down, clean shaven by the artillery fire. The bloody lane was paved with the dead and dying. Mothers and Grandmothers from Louisiana to New York felt a horrified chill, a cold premonition that interrupted their work. Fathers and Grandfathers would soon descend into a lifetime of silence about this day, September 17, 1862.

This death, this carnage, would be the beginning of the end of the Confederacy. Still, no one celebrates. It's all just too much. The numbers are too daunting, the savagery too unthinkable. We did this to each other up close, hand to hand. The artillery pieces were hauled into place by horses and mules, communication accomplished by couriers, intelligence gathered from mostly unreliable informants. There were no drone attacks, no ground assets conveying coordinates to killing machines in the air, no machine guns to facilitate the destruction. This was no second hand slaughter, this was one on one brutality. These were teenagers choking the last breath out of other teenagers with their bare hands. These were grown men slashing throats with glistening bayonets. Abraham Lincoln would come to inspect the field and not long after issue the Emancipation Proclamation. He had been waiting for a Union victory so as not to appear desperate. His generals told him that Antietam was a victory. He would have to take their word for it.

One hundred and fifty summers have baked those fields since that awful day. The snows of one hundred winters have  washed away the stains of war. We don't think about it much anymore. It was so long ago, before electric lights, before Gershwin tunes and television. We would move on to new wars with more awesome weaponry. But we would never manage to experience so great a day's loss as that September day. It trumps 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and D-Day. We've forgotten most of the names...Hooker, Burnside, Hill. Lincoln didn't give the Antietam Address, so it has fallen from our national memory. But today, one hundred and fifty years later I marvel at man's inhumanity to man, and my heart trembles when I consider how high a price God asked us to pay for the sin of slavery.

The SEC...and the rest of college football

The SEC. Love them or hate them, there is no middle ground. Either you think that they are the most dominant force in college football with a death grip on the National Title, or you're convinced that they are the most over-hyped collection of genetically modified monsters in the history of sports. Everyone knows about the six consecutive national champions. I spent 3 years of my life living in Louisiana and Alabama and can tell you without hesitation that college football means more to those people than life itself. There is a fanaticism there that borders on madness. After three weeks of the 2012 season it's clear that all of you SEC haters out there are going to suffer through another year nursing that well-deserved inferiority complex.

Most of the pre-season pretenders have already crashed back down to Earth. USC, and Virginia Tech have fallen out of the competition to see who gets to be the latest team to be mauled in the title game by virtue of their losses yesterday. But there are still some teams out there with high hopes. Oregon, Texas, Florida State and Oklahoma will all take turns as the great white hope, the flavor of the month, the team upon which all SEC-hating college football fans will pin their hopes. To my eyes, however, it looks like in order to get to the best team in the country not located in the Confederacy, you first have to wade through Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida and LSU.

A strange and eerie silence has fallen over the Internet in the State of Virginia since yesterday. This was finally going to be the year that Virginia Tech was going to take that final step and win it all. With their Heisman trophy candidate QB Logan Thomas leading the way, Hokie faithful were sure that this year the magic would come. Frank Beamer would finally have a trophy to put in that famously empty box in Blacksburg. Tech fans would finally see their team win a game against a quality opponent in January.

Maybe next year.

If I Were Secretary of State....

Going for an MRI on my shoulder this morning. That's right, on a Saturday morning. Who ever heard of having medical procedures on the weekend? Aren't the weekends supposed to be MRI-free? Stupid shoulder. Stupid rotator cuff tear. Psshhtt...and get this, it's my left shoulder. How does a right-hander tear his left rotator cuff? I've done no heavy lifting, I've not been overworked by my manager by being asked to throw 130 pitches in two consecutive starts. "So, Doc, how could this have happened", I asked my doctor incredulously. "Doug, you're 54 and active. Normal wear and tear my friend. If you were a fat slob who sat around on the sofa eating cheese-puffs all day this would never have happened."  I stared blankly at him, at a loss for words. Then he offered this, " Yeah, I know. Pretty ironic, huh?"

After my "procedure", I intend to give my dog a rigorous bath, maybe go for a run, do a little yard work. Then after lunch, I'll settle in front of the TV and watch the unraveling of United States power and prestige in the Middle East. The spectacle will be bitter sweet. On the one hand, no patriotic American can possibly enjoy seeing their flag and name literally dragged ablaze through the streets. And yet if the ultimate end of this results in America withdrawing all financial aid and military encumbrances from that hell-hole, we will be much better for it. If the Arab world thinks that America is their problem, let them learn of the wonders and benefits of Soviet or Chinese hegemony. I'm sure the Arab street will be thrilled with the atheistic inclinations of their new sugar daddies. Personally I can't think of a greater example of cosmic justice than to have the middle east overrun with communist party apparatchiks. Let them deal with the honor/shame culture oddities, the 2000 year old hatreds. Let them pour billions of their national treasures down the sink hole of grievance that is the Middle East.

But Doug, you say, what about Israel? OK, what about them? They are an independent nation that has proven to be more than capable of defending themselves against their barbarian neighbors. We can still give them military hardware. They are an ally after all. But the days of us being led around by the nose by every wind of hatred that blows through Jerusalem are and should be over. But Doug, what about the oil? We've got plenty of oil right here and it's high time we developed it. Let's once and for all remove the only weapon the Arab world has ever had against the west. Let them sell their oil to the Chinese and learn to run and maintain their refineries by themselves. If we need to import some oil, I prefer the Canadians since they have no history of flying planes into our buildings. Plus, they gave the world those awesome round slabs of bacon. Why not buy oil from neighbors like that?

I will now take a shower and head over to St. Marys, and brace myself for a deluge of responses to this blog pointing out how any nation that isn't a friend of Israel is forever doomed by God.

Freedom of Speech vs. Muslim Hurt Feelings

Something terrible and exceedingly rare happened this week. In the 236 year history of our nation, we have lost only 6 ambassadors in the line of duty.  Number 6 came earlier this week when a mob of angry Muslims stormed the American consulate in Benghazi, killing Chris Stevens and 3 others. Although the most recent information suggests a more complicated narrative, the original reason given for the violence was the wounded feelings of the Muslim faithful over an Internet movie deemed blasphemous to Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. One of the promoters of the film was the notorious Muslim-hating Florida preacher Terry Jones, the same guy who caused a furor awhile ago with the staged burning of the Koran. Some thoughts...

I'm not going to lie, every time I see this Jones knucklehead on television, my humanity goes into the fetal position. Only in America can such an uncredentialed hack rise to such a position of influence and notoriety. Any idiot with an Internet connection has the potential for out sized mischief, and 15 minutes of fame. The fact that Jones styles himself as a "Christian minister" is what causes me the most embarrassment, proving once again that the biggest enemy of Christianity are and have always been...Christians. The true heroes of my faith are the men and women who daily take up their crosses and follow the commands of Jesus to be salt and light in the world, doing so in complete anonymity, far away from cameras and accolades. But let some Dog The Bounty Hunter look-a-like with an IQ of 50 stage a Koran burning, and every news organization on the planet practically kill each other trying to get an exclusive.

But this is America. We have a constitution, and in it there is a Bill Of Rights which guarantees us, among other things, freedom of speech. It not only protects important, uplifting, intelligent speech, but also protects the bloviating ramblings of idiots. It is part of the mixed blessing of democracy. Although Jones has a constitutionally protected right to his ignorant ravings, the rest of us have an equal right to shame him back into the cave that he crawled out of. WE have that right, but not the state. Freedom of Speech is one of the things that define who we are as Americans, and yet, in the wake of the murder of Ambassador Stevens, I'm hearing disturbing talk from some of the talking heads in Washington, talk about whether or not an exception should be made in this case. Do we as Americans really, in fact, have a right to "hurt the feelings" of 1.6 billion Muslims around the world?

Yes. We do. We have the right essentially because to carve out an exception for Muslim feelings, would render our constitution meaningless. What is it about Muslims that make their feelings more valuable than say the feelings of Hindus or Buddhists? If we as a nation go down this road, then there are an awful lot of writers, directors and producers in Hollywood who have a lot of explaining to do about their depictions of Christianity over the past 30 years. When Christians are daily portrayed as knuckle-dragging simpletons and slack-jawed bigots in movies and television, the reaction of Christians has largely been limited to letter-writing campaigns, ill-conceived boycotts, and resigned indifference. Can't recall the last time a mob  of angry Baptists stormed Warner Brothers studio looking to murder a couple of executive producers. Seems to me that if Islam wants to be considered a great religion, it needs to put on some big-boy pants and learn how to deal with criticism. Our Bill of Rights doesn't need to be tweaked to accommodate any one's hurt feelings, let alone the religion whose adherents flew airplanes into the World Trade Center. Do those terrorists represent all of Islam? Certainly not. Neither does Terry Jones represent Jesus Christ.

9/11 Memories

Time is a strange thing. When I sat staring at the clock in my 7th grade math class it seemed to stand still. But when summer finally came, the days would race by like a series of comets blazing out across the sky. So it is with 9/11. It's been 11 years since the towers fell.  On that day my children were middle schoolers, my wife was still in her thirties and my mother had 11 years to live. It doesn't seem possible.

I remember exactly where I was when I saw the first images...my office on Glen Forest Drive. There was a small television on my desk. At first we watched in horror and mostly silence except for whispered prayers of "God help us...". By the time the second tower came down our mood had changed. Anger and righteous indignation replaced fear and helplessness the minute we realized that this was no accident, that we were under attack. It seems like an eternity since that day, that feeling.

Back then we were all sure that this was only the first wave, that there would be many more equally devastating attacks. We all gathered our families close, but a second wave never came. Now the legacy of that day is the annoyance we feel in line at the airport watching grandmothers and 6 year olds getting patted down by grim TSA people in cheap uniforms.

There's finally something at ground zero. After years of enviornmental impact studies and turf wars and bureaucratic incompetence there's a memorial that cost $700 million to build and will cost $60 million a year to operate. In 1972 it cost $400 million to build the towers, now it cost almost twice that to build a hole in the ground. Such is progress.

On this day I will say a prayer for the families who lost loved ones. I will remember what it felt like. I will once again watch that horrible footage. But luckily for me I will also think about my big sister Linda, who was born on 9/11. The blessing of her life and her powerful presence in the life of my family will always redeem this day. The celebration of her life will for all time balance the scales and brighten the dark sky that history has placed on September 11th.