Of Conflicts and Keith Olbermann

Journalists and editorial commentators have become embroiled in incidents that call their impartiality in question. Juan Williams was shown the door at NPR for saying on a Fox News program that obvious Muslims on airplanes make him nervous. He responded by telling Bill O'Reilly that he was viewed disfavorably at NPR because he appeared on Fox News programs.

Now it's Keith Olbermann's turn. The host of Countdown and one of MSNBC's brightest stars was suspended indefinitely last Friday for contributing to three Democratic candidates for Congress in violation of NBC policy. As it turned out, indefinitely lasts only a few days; buoyed by hundreds of thousands of protest messages, Olbermann was reinstated as of Tuesday, November 9.

There are those who argue that the old rules of impartiality should not apply to commentators who have a partisan point of view; only transparency is necessary. I do not agree.

I first became a fan of Countdown because of Olbermann's razor-sharp humorous sarcasm, honed by his ESPN days. He was an equal-opportunity spotlighter of the foibles of all public figures, whether celebrity or political. But his Special Comments developed against the excesses of the Bush Administration, and he rocketed to cable TV stardom.

However, it became clear during the 2008 presidential campaign that Olbermann showed favoritism toward Democrats in general and then-candidate Barack Obama in particular. What I once saw as righteous indignation toward Bush-era outrages had disintegrated into mere partisanship. As a result, I now watch MSNBC less and CNN more (and Fox News not at all).

Olbermann has castigated Fox News over owner Rupert Murdoch's $1 million donations to the Republican Governors Association and the U. S. Chamber of Commerce. How can he now claim the moral high ground when he himself has contributed to political candidates he has covered on Countdown? There is no difference. And this is why journalists and commentators should not contribute to those who they cover.

False Belief

Nothing is as frustrating and deflating in public policy debate as false belief -- either in the form of willful ignorance or those taken in by deliberate misinformation. Never in my lifetime has there been such an overabundance of false belief as now.

Our politically polarized world has gone beyond a difference of opinion to a place of malicious fictions where demons abound, anger is easy, and ignorance fuels the flames. As one reporter put it, how can the president get people behind his policies when he can’t convince a third of the people he’s a Christian.

So we have Rick Santelli's famous call for a tea party because of "losers' mortgages," blaming the housing crisis on the victims and not the predatory lenders. Forbes magazine stated "the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s" in a cover story. Proposed mosques are frantically opposed from Manhattan to Murfreesboro, and even wild charges have been made of Sharia law coming to Dearborn, Michigan. Such fears of terrorist havens were never leveled at Christians after Timothy McVeigh bombed the Murrah Building.

This naked deception by some and willingness to ostracize by others is poisonous to the health of our society. The only way it stops is for enough people to stand up to malicious falsehoods and demand "enough."

Letter to Daily News, 9/10/10

This was a letter I wrote to the Daily News in Bowling Green KY and published on September 10, 2010:

Your Sept. 1 editorial “Hope and Change Was Disappointing” sounded wearily like the constant drumbeat of automatic opposition that has come to characterize the Republican Party.

The editorial’s language – “ram a stimulus package down the American people’s throats,” “Chicago-style politics” – came straight from GOP talking points rather than thoughtful analysis of current events.

If “the country is angry” as the Daily News stated, it is from the constant stream of Beckian diatribes, official GOP revisionism and death panel and birther nonsense designed to appeal to people’s fears rather than their aspirations. It is also due to President Barack Obama’s lack of vigor in standing up for his policies. Whether his energy was sapped by the health care bill debate or the pro forma Republican stonewall of opposition, Obama needs to buck up and be as motivating in the Oval Office as he was on the campaign trail.

Someone should send Obama a DVD of “The American President.” In that movie, Andrew Shepherd refused to answer allegations from his political opponents and became defined by them since, like the real-life conservative blowhards and angry tea partiers, the public only heard their voice.

Obama needs to forcefully advocate his policies so the public knows his vision, not Fox News Channel’s take on his vision. And he needs to tell the tea party movement that, in Shepherd’s words, “your 15 minutes are up.”

Bunning's Hypocracy on Paygo

Our retiring Senator Jim Bunning has made a national spectacle of himself the past few days, singlehandedly holding up an emergency extension for unemployment in the Senate, which was also tied to highway, health care, and small business loan funding. Bunning finally relented last night and allowed the stopgap bill to be debated (it passed 78-19).

Bunning's stated rationale was that the bill did not follow paygo, the principle Democrats want reinstated in spending that each spending increase will be paid for in a spending cut or tax increase. Bunning said the 30 day extension would cost $10 billion.

However, as a Senate colleague pointed out in last night's debate, Bunning was unconcerned about paygo during the Bush years when he voted for two unfunded wars and all the deficit spending that W pushed through. If the Republican party wants to avoid the label of the party that hates the poor, Bunning did them no favors.

Musicians' New Years Resolutions by David Kibler

A co-worker shared these New Year's Resolutions with me from a central Kentucky music publication memusicnews.com, resolutions specific to different types of musicians. They're so spot-on that I had to share them with my musician friends on this blog. Proper credit: these are reprinted without permission and come from the column David's Slingshot by David Kibler, who is lead minister at Catalyst Christian Church in Nicholasville KY. Thanks to David - enjoy!

Lead Singers:
1. Don't be like the lead singer who was asked to change a light bulb. He just held it and let the world revolve around him. Other people in the band are important, too.
2. If you can't hit the notes, don't blame the sound engineer or insist on Autotune. There are some things even reverb won't fix.
3. Don't sing through your nose. The Jonas Brothers don't need any competitions in that area.
4. Realistically, though, if anyone in the band disagrees with you, just can 'em and move on. The band is all about you, anyway.

Drummers:
1. Resist the urge to overplay. Most songs don't need a Neil Peart wannabe on drums.
2. Don't be like the guy who delivered me a pizza the other night. His knocking sped up, and he didn't know when to come in.
3. Get your own place to live -- pretty soon, you will have to move out of the parents' basement.
4. Cowbells are only cool if you play in Blue Oyster Cult. Other than that, leave them to the cows.
5. If you break up with the girlfriend, don't sweat it. There are plenty of homeless shelters for you to stay the night.

Bass Players:
1. This year, realize that none of the fans think you are important, and you will not be receiving any praise from them.
2. Resolve not to say the words "Hey guys, let's do some of MY material!" That is the quickest way to get kicked out of a band.
3. Find the "pocket" and stay there. Especially when the lead singer is picking up chicks.
4. Unless you are Geddy Lee, Michael Anthony, or Sting, don't try to sing. BAss players don't have any talent anyway.

Lead Guitar Players:
1. Develop good people skills. They are necessary for waiting tables and working fast food while you wait for your band to "make it big."
2. Effects DON'T cover up for sloppy technique.
3. This year, resolve to show up to practice actually knowing your part so the rest of the band doesn't have to waste time listening to you learn it.
4. This year, resolve to show up to practice beforehand, giving yourself time to set up and be ready when practice actually starts.
5. This year, resolve to show up to practice at all.

Keyboard Players:
1. This year, resolve to make peace with your bass player by staying off the left hand.

Accordion Players:
1. Get rid of the pager. No one is going to call you.

The Name Game

While reading yet another screed online where President Obama is either a socialist or trying to establish a socialist nation, I considered the disjointed reasoning behind said screed and others like it I've endured. I recognized that a large part of the efforts to derail Obama's proposals have centered on emotional symbols, especially when corroborating facts are thin. The most powerful symbolism is often the simplest: the names we use to label people.

The epithet of "socialist" has been thrown around freely by Limbaugh conservatives and the Tea Party set, like a magic tar that should stain the president and scare the rest of us back into line. The mere mention of the most vile leftist monikers -- socialist, Marxist, communist -- fans the wildfire of irrational anger and fear, and the mob mentality at so many town hall meetings on health care reform is a logical result of the baiting language that has been used.

Some folks on the left have their own f-word -- fascist -- that they throw around like a rhetorical gold MasterCard. Most use it the same way as the right use socialist, with a there-I-said-it certainty and nothing else to back it.

It's easy to push someone's buttons and motivate opposition. But what gets built this way? When we can't listen to the ideas in a proposed course of action because one or both sides are substituting inflammatory language for reasoned debate, nothing meaningful can be accomplished. With the great problems of our time, we can't settle for a grade-school playground level of discourse.

Judge: Ky. Can't Legislate Dependence on God - ABC News

It's been a week where there's been a little rolling back of old mindsets in Kentucky. Earlier in the week, a bill was prefiled to remove the 19th century section of oaths of office vowing not to engage in duels. No joke; my wife took that oath when renewing as a Notary Public. Yesterday, a circuit judge's ruling struck down 2006 law forcing the state Office of Homeland Security to propagandize (the term that best fits here) that "the safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God." The law mandated such references in training materials and on the plaque at the entrance to the state Emergency Operations Center in Frankfort. I can't make this up. A link to the ABC article follows.

Judge: Ky. Can't Legislate Dependence on God - ABC News

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Agitators and Our Country

Something to keep in mind as our country celebrates its birth once again: We've been through a period of time where speaking out against authority/establishment has been heavily frowned upon, with hints of treason sprinkled in. I've come across a piece by Jim Hightower, national radio commentator and author of Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow that suggested quite the opposite.

According to Hightower, "the Powers That Be detest you -- you ... you ... 'agitator!' They spit the term out as a pejorative to brand anyone who dares to challenge the established order. . . . [T]he message is that America would be a fine country if only we could get rid of those pesky troublemakers who get the hoi polloi agitated about one thing or another. Bovine excrement. Were it not for agitators, we wouldn't even have an America. The Fourth of July would be just another hot day, we'd be singing 'God Save the Queen,' and our government officials would be wearing white-powdered wigs. Agitators created America, and it's their feisty spirit and outright rebelliousness that we celebrate on our national holiday."

Individual liberty is celebrated on the 4th of July, but we should regard it as a work in progress. Our history shows it to be so. Hightower stated that while the Founding Fathers were most definitely agitators, "they didn't actually create much democracy. In the first presidential election, only 4 percent of the people were even eligible to vote. No women allowed, no African Americans, no American Indians and no one who was landless. So, on the Fourth, it's neither the documents of democracy that we celebrate nor the authors of the documents. Rather, it's the intervening two-plus centuries of ordinary American agitators who have struggled mightily against formidable odds to democratize those documents."

Hightower and I seem to share a mistrust of Establishment expectations. He said, "The Powers That Be -- especially America's overarching corporate and political forces (often the same) -- give lip service to democracy, but tend toward plutocracy, autocracy and kleptocracy. They prefer (and often demand) that We the People be passive consumers of their economic and political policies. Don't rock the boat, stay in your place, go along to get along." That sounds a lot like Ari Fleischer's "watch what you say" admonition during the W years. Actually, the confluence of corporate and political demand for passivity (joined by demands of the religious right, it should be noted) was a mark of W's time in office, weighing on the chest of individual liberty like a gorilla.

The powerful in our society may make it uncomfortable (or worse) to dissent. So it is vital to realize that it was agitators that created our country, and agitators continue to form a more perfect Union and better allow for the pursuit of happiness. Hightower's closing remark was "when the establishment derisively assails you as an agitator, remember this: The agitator is the center post in the washing machine that gets the dirt out."

Mitch Albom's Sportwriter's Take on Racial Equality

This column by Mitch Albom contains profound observations on racial equality that I had to excerpt and share here. Taken from the op/ed page of the Park City Daily News, Bowling Green KY, November 12, 2008:

“[F]rom the start of the presidential campaign, I’ve been less concerned with Barack Obama than some of my countrymen. There were many white voters who were hesitant about a black president. Some were painfully blunt. . . . Others, who didn’t want to appear so racist, embraced labels like ‘radical’ or ‘terrorist.’ But it stemmed from the same part of human nature: We distrust that which is different.
“Well, one thing you get accustomed to as a white sportswriter is ‘that which is different.’ You get accustomed talking to black Americans doing better than you financially, being better known, more widely respected. You get accustomed to black coaches making trades, black executives returning your phone calls – or not. The music you hear is often not your music. The slang in the locker room is often not your slang. In the case of Latino or Japanese players, it may not even be your language.
“But you know what? You do your job. Everyone else does his or her job. And pretty soon all that stuff fades to the background.
“I remember a scene in the football movie Brian’s Song, where Gale Sayers is called into the coach’s office. He is nervous. What has he done wrong? They tell him they are thinking of rooming him with a white man, Brian Piccolo. ‘That’s all?’ he says. ‘You had me worried. I thought this was something really.’ ‘This is something really,’ a coach says. At the time depicted – 1965 – it was something ‘really.’ But it isn’t anymore. And of the two attitudes, Sayers’ is the one to admire. The one that says ‘That’s it?’ The one that says this is only as big a deal as you choose to make it. . . .
“Look, nobody’s being Pollyannaish here. Racism did not die Tuesday. But the first step is dismantling prejudice is taking it out of the system. You room a black football player with a white one, you haven’t eliminated everyone who hates it. But you have eliminated the idea that they’re right."

Bad Karma and the PRC

The concept of karma: believe in it or not, it opens the mind to consider the consequence of intent. Act in bad faith, and something bad will follow. Sharon Stone expressed an open question about whether the People's Republic of China has just suffered bad karma's effects with the earthquake disaster of two weeks ago. Her voiced opinion has resulted in a real-world consequence with a Chinese cinaplex giant vowing to ban her movies from their screens.

"I'm not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans because I don't think anyone should be unkind to anyone else," Stone stated in a Cannes Film Festival red-carpet interview with Hong Kong's Cable Entertainment News. "And then this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and then I thought, is that karma? When you're not nice that the bad things happen to you?"

To my mind, that's pretty pedestrian for a controversial statement. Folks are more up front -- okay, blunt -- in my neck of the woods. Still, Stone's "bad karma" statement pissed off the Chinese, particularly on the internet. Ng See-Yuen, founder of the UME Cineplex chain and the chairman of the Federation of Hong Kong Filmmakers, called Stone's comments "inappropriate," adding that actors should not bring personal politics to comments about a natural disaster that has left five million Chinese homeless. Ng vowed not to show Sharon Stone movies in UME theaters, which has cineplexes in China's biggest urban movie markets.

I tend to act as if karma exists, but I'm not sold on its literal existence. After all, there are sharks like Ameriquest, the company who has been among the worst predatory subprime mortgage lenders in the U. S. Its owner Roland E. Arnall avoided the repercussions of his company's deceptive business conduct by being appointed ambassador to the Netherlands by President George W. Bush, at about the same time that Ameriquest settled for $325 million over predatory loan practices.

On the other hand, Arnall resigned his ambassador's post in February due to his son's ill health; less than a month later, Arnall was dead of cancer himself. Maybe I was a bit hasty . . .

Food For Thought, Oil and Terror Edition

I just heard Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) on Letterman, while talking about the war on terror, Iraq, and related matters, say that the price of oil was $24 a barrel in 2002 when the justification for war in Iraq was being pushed by President Bush.

$24 a barrel. One year after the 9/11 attacks.

And look at it now. Over $100 a barrel higher as of this writing.

Yep, that sure worked out, didn't it. Diverting resources out of Afghanistan, which was safe harbor to those who attacked us, and into Iraq, which was uninvolved in 9/11, sure kept the "terror premium" of oil down. I don't see a Texan or Okie being elected president anytime soon.

Sudanese Sauce for the Political Goose

Here's a political story refreshingly without the reflexive knee-jerk opposition between sides. Cindy McCain, wife of Republican presidential candidate John McCain and heiress to a nine-figure beer distributor fortune, has sold some $2 million of investments related to Sudan. John McCain has called for international financial sanctions against the Sudanese leadership in light of the genocide in the Darfur region, and the Associated Press pointed out that mutual fund investments held by Cindy McCain included companies that do business with Sudan.

Cindy McCain has repeatedly stated she will not reveal her income tax records publicly, even if her husband is elected president. But give her points for transparency here, for when previously disclosed investments in American Funds Europacific Growth fund and American Funds Capital World Growth and Income fund proved to incorporate companies doing business with Sudan, Cindy McCain quickly sold her investment in both funds.

Since John McCain has publicly criticized China for its dealings with Sudan -- "There is only one reason China has opposed sanctions to pressure Sudan to stop the killing in Darfur: China needs Sudan's oil" -- having investments that are even indirectly connected with Sudan would appear highly hypocritical.

Lest anyone think this is political sinning on the right, four presidential candidates had to divest of Sudan-related holdings last year: Democrats Barack Obama and John Edwards and Republicans Sam Brownback and Rudy Giuliani. Brownback also wrote 44 governors to urge them to divest their employee pension funds from businesses linked to Sudan. Guess it all goes to show how difficult it can be to invest wealthy sums of money without inadvertently lining some tyrant's pockets.

So, it's nice to see a political story where figures from both major parties agree on the proper course of action. Maybe our political landscape isn't irreversibly toxic.

This And That News Items

Some end-of-month observations:

Today is the fifth anniversary of Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech. White House press secretary Dana Perino acknowledged that the Administration has "paid a price" over that banner. Gee, ya think? Five years and 4,000+ U.S. military deaths after Bush announced "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended" beneath that "Mission Accomplished" banner . . . there's just no way to spin that into anything positive.

Tomorrow is the National Day of Prayer. Unfortunately, in nearby Bowling Green, a cult that calls itself a church will be coming to picket a fallen soldier. Yep, the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas -- a group I have written about in this blog -- will protest outside the funeral of Sgt. Adam Kohlhaas who was killed in his third tour of duty. This fruitcake brigade led by "Rev." Fred Phelps uses signs such as "Thank God for IEDs" and "God Hates Fags" to show their stated belief that God is punishing America's supposed tolerance for homosexuality by killing American soldiers. Perhaps some folks should extend their prayers tomorrow for Phelps and his ilk, for they are about as close to Christian belief as the Taliban is to Islam.

Yesterday, Supreme Court Justice David Souter told a conference of judges that a visit he made to Gettysburg changed his view of difficult cases. Admitting he once wondered why he had to resolve a case, Souter said he found an answer after going with his law clerks and secretaries to the battlefield where the Civil War changed course. He mentioned a desperate bayonet charge by a commander at the end of the Union line which ultimately stopped a Confederate charge, observing "It seems a fair assessment that one of the pivots of American history was at that place, at that moment." About deciding difficult cases, Souter summed up, "I could not ever again, under any circumstance, say it is unfair that I have to do this."

And what in the hell do we make of the out-of-left-field emerging scandal with Roger Clemons and Mindy McCready? Rocket met Mindy when she was 15 and they had a 10-year relationship which included him sending bundles of money to her and (she says) giving her a different high hard one than he gave batters from the mound. Just when you think you've heard it all . . .

Whizz Kids in Washington

Your tax dollars at work . . . According to the New York Times, President Bush is persisting in his nomination of Steven Bradbury to head the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department. Bradbury is so toxic on both sides of the aisle -- in a lower job at Justice, he signed off on two secret legal memos authorizing waterboarding at detention camps -- that he's already been rejected twice by the Senate. Yet Bush, who said in December that a president has to have "a sound set of principles from which [he] will not deviate," stubbornly clings to the Bradbury nomination.

The Democratic leadership in the Senate has responded by halting all controversial nominations until Bush drops Bradbury's. Even though this means, according to Politico.com, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Mine Safety and Health Review Commission, the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board and the National Labor Relations Board do not have enough members to do their jobs; many federal judgeships are vacant; and the Council of Economic Advisers is in singular tense.

Bush has dug in his heels. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid kept the Senate in pro forma sessions over the holidays so Bush could not make Bradbury a recess appointment like he did with (now former) UN Ambassador Bolton.

How high on the tree can we pee, guys?

These Are the Impulses Which Must Be Fought

The following (in italics) is an excerpt from news stories about President Bush's March 8 radio address on why he vetoed a bill barring the CIA from waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques:

Bush, who used his weekly radio address to announce the veto, said the program had helped stop plots against a Marine camp in Djibouti and the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, and plans to fly passenger planes into a Los Angeles tower or London's Heathrow Airport and city buildings. "Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that al-Qaida and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland," the president said.

"I cannot sign into law a bill that would prevent me, and future presidents, from authorizing the CIA to conduct a separate, lawful intelligence program, and from taking all lawful actions necessary to protect Americans from attack," Bush said in a statement.


This was my response which appeared as a letter to the editor in the Daily News, Bowling Green KY on March 21:

Even in our hyperpartisan political climate, only the most strident Bush supporters could not be sickened by the president's veto of a bill that would ban the CIA from using torture techniques such as waterboarding. In his March 8 radio address, Bush hid behind the term "lawful" to describe the CIA enhanced interrogation program and continued to claim the widely discredited plot to fly planes into a Los Angeles tower as one of the program's successes.

The presidency that pressured the CIA to produce intelligence findings that supported an invasion into Iraq cannot be trusted when its attorney general calls waterboarding legal, nor can its claims of foiled terrorist plots be taken at face value. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has stated that he knows of no terrorist attack disrupted by the CIA's enhanced interrogation methods. He added, "I do know that coercive interrogations can lead detainees to provide false information in order to make the interrogation stop."

The Daily News endorsed waterboarding "in a time of war" on March 11, and syndicated columnist Jonah Goldberg characterized U. S. use of waterboarding as a few well-spent minutes. These are the impulses which must be fought. Even if the information obtained is factual, we forfeit our moral standing in the world by sub-human treatment of detainees and create more monsters than we may catch.

Shut Up and Sing?

I was sitting at the computer reading about President Bush calling for greater power in both wiretapping and reading e-mails while also watching the Dixie Chicks on Austin City Limits. I thought of how the Chicks were run over a few years ago for Natalie Maines' comment in London during the run-up to the Iraq invasion. So many in our society condemned them (a few made death threats against them) for expressing an opposition to the President's war in Iraq that most of us feel now, and yet the Chicks are still held in low regard by many who were once rabid fans.

I don't know to what extent this phenomenon is related to a desire among music fans to not hear "political" messages from artists at live performances. A similar thing happened to Linda Ronstadt when she expressed a favorable opinion of Michael Moore onstage and concertgoers walked out. That incident also happened during the height of public sentiment for the Iraq war, so that sentiment could be a factor. Yet the Dixie Chicks lost their spot on the popular music pedestal even after popular opinion turned strongly against the Iraq war.

Personally, I feel the Bush Administration has exceeded politics and conducted itself in a constitutionally dangerous manner, usurping power for the executive branch in the name of fighting terrorism. Having said that, I don't want to hear a political lecture every time I go see a concert - yet the Dixie Chicks have been steamrollered for one comment and not given the benefit of re-acceptance when the public changed its view.

Grisham on Political Manipulation

Former lawyer, former state legislator, and current mega-selling author John Grisham recently shared his opinion with the Associated Press of how the Democrats have been outmaneuvered by Republicans in elections. "I think what the Republicans have done in past elections is brilliant . . . they've convinced a lot of people to vote for them against their own economic self-interest, and they've done that by skillfully manipulating a handful of social issues, primarily abortion and gay rights and sometimes gun control," he said. "And the Republicans have used those to scare a lot of people into voting for Republican candidates. It's skillful manipulation."

Lest you think the hard-boiled legal/political author is full of hubris, Grisham also threw water on his own literary importance, stating "I'm not sure where that line goes between literature and popular fiction. I can assure you I don't take myself serious enough to think I'm writing literary fiction and stuff that's going to be remembered in 50 years. I'm not going to be here in 50 years; I don't care if I'm remembered or not. It's pure entertainment." He believes he's an entertainer, not a Faulkner or Joyce. But at $9 million earned last year, he's obviously compelling to contemporary readers.

Clicking Off the Next Year

What's in a number? Why should it matter that a new year is about to click into place on the calendar? Physically, nothing much will be different about January 1, 2008 than it was on December 31, 2007. The rising and setting of both sun and tide will work the same, and the air quality will not be measurably clearer or duller on either side of the man-made dividing line between years on the calendar.

Basically, what change there is from 2007 to 2008 is what we make it out to be, which is to say how we perceive the world, ourselves, our prospects. That will also affect what we do with the world around us according to what we perceive. Aside from the occasional reflexive shying away from things with the number 13, I have never been much on numerology. So it is my opinion that what the end of one number sequence and the start of the next brings is hope. The start of 2008 will bring hope to the minds of many -- that this is when one's life can become better, easier, wealthier, healthier, fill-in-your-desired-outcome-in-the-blank-er.

While I may throw cold water on numerology (and new year's resolutions, by the way), I do not disregard the value of new beginnings, fresh starts, the ritual hitting of the reset button. Sometimes the existence of the ritual is just the extra push we may need to shed inertia and undertake new effort.

So Happy New Year, everyone. Let's look forward, even if it's just for the hell of it, because it sure beats standing still.

Today's Quote on Fiscal Irresponsibility (or Hypocrisy)

"It is extraordinary that the president would request an 11 percent increase for the Department of Defense, a 12 percent increase for foreign aid, and $195 billion of emergency funding for the war while asserting that a 4.7 percent increase for domestic programs is fiscally irresponsible" -- Sen. Robert Byrd (D- WV), chairman of Senate Appropriations Committee

News Weirdness for Today

Some days the weirdness of people just comes to the fore. This, apparently, is one of those days. Here's what today's news brought to my attention.

A fellow named Timothy Elliott won $1 million dollars on a scratch ticket; he's already received the first $50,000 annual installment of his prize. One problem: he's on five years probation for a January 2006 bank robbery in Cape Cod, and one of the conditions of his probation was no gambling -- including purchasing lottery tickets or being in establishments where lottery games are played. He goes before a judge December 7.

My wife heard Paul Harvey talk about someone burglarizing a shop named Everything Amish. He stole a big screen TV. Um, does this sound like a very un-Amish product to anyone else?

She also heard of a man in Aiken, South Carolina who went to the bank to open a new account. He handed the teller a $1 million bill. Hmmm. Seems the last place you want to go to pass off a bill in a non-existent denomination would be someplace where money is exchanged and transferred -- like, I don't know, a bank. He was arrested for disorderly conduct (he cussed the bank tellers when they refused his deposit) and two counts of forgery (he'd earlier bought cigarettes with a forged check).

Finally, I read of Richard Roberts speaking at a chapel at Oral Roberts University, where he told his student audience that he resigned as ORU president because God told him on Thanksgiving to do so the next day. "Every ounce of my flesh said 'no'" said Roberts, but he said he listened to the divine intervention after praying about it with his wife and his father Oral Roberts.

And so it goes.