Happy Fourth

I've had a few people ask about the old column in the last few days. Sorry to say I'm still on indefinite hiatus. May never get back to it. Who knows.

I will only say this much more about that:

"Laws alone cannot secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty, there must be a spirit of tolerance in the entire population." ~Einstein

But, if you actually miss my column, and/or you love the Fourth of July as much as I do, Click here to re-read some of my old columns about Independence Day and/or the Declaration of Independence.

Have a safe and sane holiday weekend.

What happened to Ted's Column; An email exchange

On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 9:45 AM, Mapleton Press wrote:

OMG you haven't fallen off the face of the earth. Oh Teddy I do miss you so much and so do our readers. I can honestly say I have had more positive feedback on your articles than negative and I have had several asking where you are. Please come back to us.

Thanks for the pics I will email Rita for ID. Also thanks for taking pics at the COU concert.

Also I am really sorry to her about Beth's brother... I know the pain it causes love ones. It leaves a tremendous about of questions to those left behind.

Love ya
Maddog

from Ted Mallory
to Mapleton Press
date Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 3:25 PM
subject Re: COU Christmas Concert


Thanks for all your encouragement. You're a sweetheart.

I still don't know what I'm going to do yet. Brad was right when he called me busy. Christmas & Basketball aren't helping.

And in the wake of Cory's suicide, my head's really in a bad place, so that makes it even harder. It certainly is a hell of a lot harder than losing someone to illness or old age.

Since you're such a good friend, and apparently an avid reader (definitely a major supporter) I'll tell you that it's not necessarily JoAnn's, it's more complicated than that and has a lot to do with how right-wingers were making my family members feel by talking about me.

Although, I will admit that I was getting a lot of hate email and negative blog comments from people other than JoAnn and it all compounded on 8 rejection letters in a row from syndicates for either columns or cartoons- so I was both sick of putting up with people's crap feeling sorry for myself.

So I still don't know where I'm at with it yet. I was just starting to get over it (grief/withdrawls/just taking a break from it/letting go of something that I'd let become too important to me- whatever you want to call it) when my mom had a scare with a spot on her lung (which turned out to be an infection, not cancer- thank God), then one of my Aunts was killed in a car accident, and most recently this Cory thing.

No promises, not even a clue as to whether or not and if so, when...
But huge thank yous for being so tenacious in your kindness, concern, and encouragement. You're the greatest.

Maybe I'll just have to make a point of sending you dumb email forwards or something.

Thank you and Merry Christmas.

Love,
"Teddy"

---

Once again, to all of you who have told me how much you used to enjoy the column or that you've missed it, and all of those who've tired to encourage me over the last couple of months- and especially all of you who've offered your prayers and comfort to either me or our family since Cory's death-

A HUGE thank you. May God return all of your kindness to you when you most need it.
His peace this season (Philippians 4:4-8)

A reader comment I'd like to share

Anonymous said...

What are you going to blog about now Ted? Will your column come back now that you have won? Or are you still saddened over Sueferts letter?

10:15 AM

Mallory said...

I'm saddened whenever anyone tries to marginalize or impugn me because I share opinions which I have thought out carefully and hold because I care deeply about our country.

I didn't stop writing a column for the press because of JoAnn Suefert's tirade of a letter to the editor. I stopped because the whole climate and culture of the community where I live has been too polarized and too emotionally charged, and for the sake of my family and loved ones I felt that it would be better 1) not to contribute to that polarization and 2) not subject those close to me to the same resentment, indignation and ridicule which I became a target of because of my opinions.

What will I blog about now? What does any blogger blog about?

I wish I could stop writing the way that an alcoholic wishes they could stop drinking.

My column was never exclusively about John McCain, or even exclusively about politics. I'm sure life will present things that I'll find funny, things that I'll compulsively feel the need to analyze or draw attention to- and plenty of public figures and politicians that I'll want to scrutinize (including Steve King and Jason Schultz, but probably plenty of Democrats too- maybe even Barack Obama eventually).

I still don't know if I'll write a column in the PRESS again or if this blog will be the only yard I get to play in, but I've tried to stop writing altogether and it's bigger than I am.

Whoever you are, thank you for your comment, and thank you for reading- whether we ever agree on anything or not. I hope you get something out of it.

12:11 PM

My Suspended Campaign

In case you hadn't noticed, my column and cartoons haven't been running in the Mapleton PRESS for a few weeks now. It's complicated. Suffices to say that it was my personal decision to go on hiatus, not an editorial decision on their part. It has been difficult. It is a personal leave of absence, and it is still indefinite. I've gone so far as to change the masthead on this blog.

I always believed in talking about "sex, politics, and religion- not necessarily in that order," and that it is important to speak the truth as you believe it. But this election has superheated. I never minded complaints about me or the occasional hate mail, but it got intense. People feel so passionately about their sides that they become angrier and uglier faster.

While other people may be hypersensitive and wrapped up in rancor, I'm probably culpable too. I'm very passionate about what I believe too, so no doubt my tone became more acidic and less light hearted. I had planned to go "cold turkey," and never post anything here if I couldn't write a weekly column too- but obviously I didn't have enough self control for that.

My dream was that being held to the discipline of writing a weekly column might someday lead to being able to write professionally full time. In my mind, blogging was extra, superfluous, a past time- column writing was the meat, blogging the side dish. If this is all I have, I'm just another prattling voice in the vast blogosphere, that hardly anyone ever bothers to read. In the PRESS, it was farm league, small time, but there were 4,000 readers- even if most of them disagreed with me and several of them thought I should be tried for treason.

If/when I return (after this damn election) I'd have to find a way not just to speak the truth, but to speak the truth in love and with more humor and less venom. But at this point, I don't know if or when that day will ever come.

It is important that my detractors and critics know that "I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of the Communist Party" or Socialist, or Taliban, or Terrorist. I am not a baby killer, a satanist, or a debaucher. I do believe in Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and savior and I believe that might should not make right, but just the opposite- that right should make might. I believe in small town, agricultural Iowa, I believe in family and treating people with kindness and working hard. I Love America and I do not wish ill for her. Please don't feel sorry for my children or talk about me behind my back or avoid making eye contact with my wife or in-laws. Try following Jesus' advice in Matthew 5 "Love your enemies and pray for those that persecute you" (sorry if you ever felt like I persecuted you, could ya please try not to deliberately persecute me, okay? Thanks).

It is important that my fans (if I ever had any) know that no one at Enterprise Publishing and the Mapleton PRESS did this to me. I needed to take a break. After 25 years of dreaming, I finally got the gumption to send out both columns and cartoons to national syndicates and got rejected by every single one. I thought I could withstand that, but it really rattled me- though not as much as neighbors who don't think I can possible be Christian because I'm not as rabidly pro-life and anti-gay and anti-immigrant as they are. Thank you for your encouragement and camaraderie. Keep me in your prayers.

It is important for those readers who disagreed with me a lot of the time but still enjoyed reading my column and cartoons, but who don't hold all kinds of animosity towards me that you should always be willing to talk about anything with anyone, and also be willing to listen to anyone talk about anything. Listening and learning, sharing and discussing- even when you disagree, and trying to find common ground- these are what makes America great and make the give and take of democracy work. Thank you, and please pass it on.

Open letter to readers

Apparently I seemed to have touched a nerve with that column. Did you see JoAnn Seufert's letter in the PRESS yesterday? Politics is always messy and emotional.

Let me be clear, I'm sure that Sarah Palin is a good person in many respects and a devout Christian as well. I think John McCain is a good person at heart in many respects as well. I just don't think either of them are right for our country at this time.

As a cartoonist and a political humor columnist, I use exaggeration and sarcasm. I know that isn't gentle as a lamb, but it's normal to be provocative and occasionally abrasive.

I apologize when that winds up being offensive to any other readers. I believe that everyone is entitled to their opinions, hope to help inform those opinions, trigger both research and discussion, and encourage people to write to the paper with their opinions. Thank the Lord that we live in a nation where we the right to have and express differing opinions (for now).

The speech he SHOULD'VE made

My friends, my speech writers prepared a script for me which my advisors and party big wigs vetted and convention officials have posted on these handy teleprompters. But my friends, this is not a time for safe, party-approved rhetoric, this is a time for straight talk.

“You all know, I’ve been called a maverick, someone who marches to the beat of his own drum,” but let’s face it, I’ve agreed with President Bush far more than I’ve disagreed.

If I truly put country before party, I’d have asked someone like my fellow Vietnam veteran Chuck Hagel, Republican Senator from Nebraska. Chuck and I disagree on Iraq and on torture, and he’d genuinely be willing to tell me the what he thinks and stand up to our party and special interests. But I’m more interested in my own personal legacy than in actually advancing real reforms.

I really wanted to pick my friend Joe Lieberman, the Independent Senator from Connecticut. I like him, we agree on things and get along well, so I know he’d be a good working partner. But after all, he used to be a member of the Democrat party, among other things.

I thought for sure that Governor Frist of Florida or Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania. Both could garner a few more electoral votes than Nebraska, Alaska or Connecticut. But lets face it, Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich, GOPAC and Republican strategists decided to stick me with this former local TV Anchorwoman and beauty pageant runner up.

You gotta admit, it was a stroke of genius. Should Liberals attack her, we'll get to cry "sexist" and make them look like a bunch of hypocrites. Even though we’ve opposed equal rights for women and equal pay for equal work, if we win, we’ll get to lay claim to breaking that glass ceiling for women, not those pesky Democrats.

Sure, for years, Republicans have argued that women should stay home with their kids instead of pursuing a high profile career, but it’s the Democrats who’ll look sexist or even “elitist” if they question her for putting her five kids through a national campaign.

It’s a win-win. She advocated abstinence-only sex education and cut funding for programs offering shelter to homeless unwed mothers, but she and her pregnant 17 year old daughter are heroes for not having abortions.

Sure, she may have improperly pressured then-Public Safety Commissioner to fire her ex-brother-in-law, an Alaskan state trooper, who had been in the middle of a custody dispute with her sister- but that just shows that she can stand up to men and she gets things done. It doesn’t mean she won’t help me fight corruption and reform government. Maybe I’ll put her in charge of hiring and firing U.S. Attorneys, so that the Attorney General won’t have to be bothered.

Let me be straight with you my friends, if elected I probably wouldn’t be so bad. I’d probably be much less of an extremist than George Bush. My advisors are just trying to activate our party’s base of extreme right wingers so that they’ll get out the vote. Once I’m elected, I’ll probably be more like an H.W. Bush or maybe even a lovable dottering grandpa type like Reagan- everyone loves Reagan.

So you won’t even have to worry about “Caribou Barbie” unless I die or am incapacitated somehow while in office.

My friends, what we really need to worry about is insuring the old Reagan ideals of trickle-down economics, less regulation of corporations and massive tax cuts for the extremely rich. We can’t let these dreams die.

Sure, more Americans are out of work than have been at any time in the last five years, but remember, a rising tide lifts all boats. If the levy breaks, then it raised cars and houses too. I want to protect middle-class Americans like my wife Cindy and myself. If the Democrats win, people like us may have to cut back to only four or five houses instead of seven or eight!

And let’s not be confused: These are perilous times, not just for America, but for freedom itself. Freedom to own and carry your own 39mm Kalashnikov automatic assault rifle. Freedom for importers, and food and drug producers from burdensome government oversight. Freedom for hedge fund managers, banks, mortgage lenders, credit card companies and financial speculators from oppressive government regulations.

Most of all it’s going to take someone of unusual strength and character, to continue to wage the world wide war on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

My friends, only I have the experience it will take to keep on torturing people, to racially profile and to harass elderly women at airport security checks.

The only way you can be safe is if you continue to let this government have the freedom to spy on it’s own citizens, and investigate and compile private data on them. If you don’t vote for Sarah Palin and me this November, the enemies of these freedoms will win.

And that’s not just empty rhetoric, that’s change you CAN believe in.

People our age

When you’re past your prime, younger people will be sure to let you know.

The other day at cheerleading practice my cheer squad recited a cadence that did just that-

“I don’t know, but I’ve been told…”

“That Mr. Mallory’s really OLD!”

Sure, you have people like Dara Torres, 41, becoming the oldest swimming medalist in Olympic history. You’d think she’d make me see how young I still am and how much potential I still have, but instead, she just makes me feel overweight and unmotivated.

It starts off with psoriasis and mild arthritis in the knees. The next thing you know, you’re calling people in their mid to late twenties “kids.” That could come from teaching. It’s hard to think of anyone who’s young enough to be one of my former students as a full fledged adult. Of course, now that I’ve been teaching more than fifteen years, that means that there are people in their thirties that are just mere kids.

Next came the heartburn and the chronic dry eye. Then comes the gray. It never bothered me too much. My hope was that it would make me look more distinguished. I was just glad to still have my hair, a lot of guys my age aren’t so privileged. So I still have the corny Alfalfa cowlick I had at ten, only now it’s grey.

It’s one thing to get to keep the hair on your head, but why did God decide I needed so much hair in my nose and on my ears?

I’ve endured ridicule from my wife and children about my snoring for years and students and colleagues are always concerned that I’m sick or need to quit smoking. I don’t’ smoke. So this summer I had an appointment with a specialist. He listened to my breathing and ruled out asthma. Then he forced me to endure a battery of tests involving needles on my back that revealed that the only things I’m allergic to are cockroaches and needles.

Next thing I know I’m getting a CaT scan. They inserted me into the science-fiction looking tube and before long had an interactive digital x-ray of my head. It’s a little unnerving to look at your own skull.

Fortunately I didn’t have a chronic sinus infection or a deviated septum. Rather, I’m just a meat-head. Basically these spongy bone things called turbinates in the middle of my nose are too big. The doctor called them sausage looking things and my little sausages are just as big as the big sausages so my nasal passages are too small. Since my sinuses have to work harder, they produce way too much snot. “It’s like an escalator with too many people on it,” he explained.

Bottom line is, I cough all the time because I’m a meat-head.

After a year or two of “borderline high blood pressure,” I decided I had to give up regular coffee. As traumatic as that was, it wasn’t going to be enough. A health screening revealed that all of my cholesterol levels were fine except for triglycerides.

“Do you have a history of diabetes in your family?” the nurse asked. The blood drained out of me as the realization sank in. (Which is ironic because I had to track my blood sugar levels every morning for the next month.) Triglycerides are kind of a sugar/fat thing where your body has broken down the food and needs to deliver it to your cells.

As Doctor Crabb explained it (different doctor, more analogies), insulin is the button that opens the elevator doors so that triglycerides can enter the cells. He said that we used to think that fat was just stored energy, but come to find out it can act like a gland that produces insulin-blockers that prevent your cells from absorbing what they need to, leaving the triglycerides out in the blood stream. In other words, I didn’t have high blood pressure because of clogged or narrow arteries, but because I was too thick blooded. Not to mention just too darn sweet.

By eating better and eating less and hauling by carcass out of bed at an ungodly hour to walk every morning, both the blood sugar and blood pressure are under control.

Dr. Crabb, bless his heart, told me with empathy that “people our age” just have to work harder to take care of ourselves. I could’ve swore I wasn’t his age. I’m obviously much older than I thought. I’m also a very sweet, thick blooded, meathead who’s allergic to needles.

Opposition to Ethanol a bunch of manure

Food costs are up and some people seem to want to blame corn farmers. The blame is probably coming from the petroleum lobby, because people who know a lot more about corn and markets than me can tell you that if anything, there is a surplus of corn. If the price of corn isn’t high because of unnatural market manipulation or speculation, than it’s high because the price of diesel and gas that corn growers need for tractors and trucking.

One of the things that the oil companies don’t want us to understand. Corn ethanol/alcohol is made from the starch and sugar in corn. Cows are biologically and anatomically incapable of digesting those corns and sugars. A Cow’s 4-part stomach is specifically designed to design fiber or cellulose.

The starch and sugar goes in one end and out the other. Crap! What a waste of potential energy!

I am less worried about Iowa farmers sending too much corn to ethanol plants than I am about Brazilian farmers plowing under the Amazon rainforest to plant corn that competes with Americans for market share. Less rainforest means less oxygen producing trees and more carbon dioxide, less ozone, more climate change etc. etc. etc. Not to mention less money for Iowa farmers, and more Brazilians driving more cars etc. etc.

But if we’re still worried about sending too much corn to ethanol instead of food products, animal feeds, and the myriad of other industrial uses, there’s always switch grass.

According to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, switch grass “grows fast, capturing lots of solar energy and turning it into lots of chemical energy— cellulose—that can be liquefied, gasified, or burned directly. It also reaches deep into the soil for water, and uses the water it finds very efficiently.” They say it is one of the best crops for protecting the soil and preventing erosion AND, it filters more carbon dioxide out of the air than most crops.

But corn and switch grass are not the only plants that could be used as oil alternatives. Cattails, that’s right, cattails, also known as bullrush or reedmace has all kinds of environmentally friendly uses. Many cities use cattails to process their sewage. Cattails filter out nitrates not only from human waste, but from fertilizer run off. I think that cattails might be a great landscaping idea for big hog operations.

They’re also incredibly valuable as wild life habitat. Hunters have to love that. Cattails are a high starch plant, so once they’ve done their job cleaning the water, they can be harvested and processed into ethanol just like corn and switch grass. What makes it even better is that it’s a perennial, so farmers wouldn’t have to keep buying seed and replanting it every year.

One of the problems that waste water and runoff is causing is something you may have heard about in the news called “dead zones.” Dead zones are large areas of ocean where plants and fish and other life forms can no longer survive, either from pollution to that area, or from rising average water temperatures. A great solution could be kelp. Kelp is an amazing plant, basically a type of algae that can grow several stories tall under sea.

Like cattails, kelp cleans the water it’s in. Like the rainforest, kelp uses tons of carbon dioxide while producing tons of oxygen. Like corn, switch grass, and cattails, kelp provides incredible habitat for animals, which commercial fishermen would benefit from. Deliberately planted or farmed kelp can bring life back to dead zones. And what very few people realize is that, like corn, switch grass, and cattails, kelp can be made into ethanol.

Republicans are demanding that Congress open more coastlines to off shore oil exploration, but the oil companies already lease 90 million acres to do that and they are not doing it on 70 million of those acres. Why should they be allowed to risk more ecological damage when they refuse to drill where they are?

Could it be because it’s in their best interest to keep supplies low so that prices remain high, insuring their continued record profits? Who would want to scare us into believing that inflation of food prices is the corn farmers fault? People who want us to remain dependant on oil.

Especially when new drilling would only reduce the price of gas by a couple of cents a gallon and not for a decade or more anyway, more off shore drilling is not the answer. Turning to environmentally friendly fuel alternatives including ethanol, geo-thermal, solar and wind would not only be better stewardship of the environment, it would create millions of jobs- just like the New Deal, WWI, the railroads, or the internet all did. That would mean that green fuels would benefit the whole economy for at least twenty to forty years. Most importantly it would reduce our reliance on foreign oil, making Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Venezuela far less important. Best of all, it would benefit Iowa agriculture if we’re smart enough to pursue it aggressively.

Even if you think that global warming and climate change are nothing more than Chicken Little panicking about the sky caving in, “green energy” like corn ethanol is still a great idea.

Adventures in language

Life with a three year old is never boring. Just eating supper can be a learning experience.
“Dad, the fish doesn't know we're eating it!” I was told, I suppose I have Spongebob to blame for that.

Fortunately my three year old is very competitive. The eight year old claimed that she felt sick and needed to eat only chicken soup instead. The six year old agreed to eat salad, green beans, and French fries, but boycotted the fish. These displays of civil disobedience only pured on the youngest of three sisters. She raced through her tilapia with uncommon gusto.

“I'm going to eat you now, fishy, okay?” Apparently even though the fish are unaware they were being eaten, Annamarie wanted to make sure hers knew.

She's just as proud of how she is the only of the three girls who likes deluxe pizza, as opposed to just hamburger. Although I'm not sure why she thinks this is an important way to win her parent's attention and approval. “Daddy, Daddy, I LIKE MUNCHrooms!”

While we're working on it, she doesn't know many of her letters yet, she can just about recognize her name. She found a bicycle license plate that I'd gotten her and knew it was hers. When we asked her how she knew it was hers, hoping that she'd recognize the abbreviation of her name, “Anna,” she explained, “because it has two 'A's in it!”

A little over a month ago, in a concerted effort to lose weight and get healthy, I gave up regular coffee and Diet Dr. Pepper. Caffeine stimulates your appetite. But I recently read that if you really want a soda, you should stick to clear ones, rather than colas because they have less phosphoric acid. So after lunch, I cracked a diet 7UP and had it in a glass of ice.

This seemed to unnerve Annamarie, because she began asking me if I felt okay. “No, I'm not sick, I feel fine, why are you so worried, sweetie?”

“Because you're drinking 7UP” In our house, tiny amounts of 7UP is the only thing you're allowed to have in our house when you're trying to recover from stomach flu.

“Oh no, honey, I'm okay” I tried to reassure her.

“Then don't dwink that, it will MAKE you sick!”

Then there are those times when it's your job as a parent to teach your children important lessons. When the sweet corn came in at my in-laws, the whole family chips in to pick, shuck, cut, cook, and can. It's quite a process. The magnitude of the volume of produce is more than enough to impress any three year old. When her grandpa parked his pickup in the shade for us to all sit down and get shucking, she surveyed the payload in awe and exclaimed “Oh my GAWD, what a lot of CORN!”

I tried to calmly admonish her that we choose not to take the Lord's name in vain in our family.

“Don't ever say that, Annamarie, that's like saying a bad word.”

“Why”

“Well, because God doesn't want us to use His name that way.”

“Oh, okay, well, um, what CAN we say? Can we say 'holy cow,' is that okay?”

“I suppose so, that or something like 'holy buckets,' you mom used to use that one a lot.”

So for the rest of the weekend, whenever anything was the least bit impressive, she'd exclaim “Holy buckets-of-COWS!”

Senile, Sneaky, or a little of both?

It's not that he'd be Bush III, it's that he'd be Reagan II; Either McCain is an evil genius or a doddering old codger. Haven't we been down that road before? Yeah, say back in the eighties...

I got to meet John McCain once, it was when he first ran for the Senate in 1986. He gave a press conference at the offices of the Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette. He seemed a little stiff and stand-off-ish, but not nearly as smug as Jon Kyle who was running to replace him as one of Arizona’s Congressmen.

I liked that McCain was willing to buck his party for the sake of what he believed was in the best interest of the country. I considered myself a fiscal conservative and was mad as heck at the Reagan administration for letting the federal deficit and the national debt run amok. McCain was a principle supporter of the Gramm-Rudman Act, which was supposed to automatically cut spending in the event of a budget deficit.

But most of politics is smoke and mirrors. One of the authors of Gramm-Rudman, was Texas Republican Phil Gramm.

Gramm had been McCain’s senior economic adviser. He isn’t anymore. You may remember a few weeks ago that he tried to tell people that we aren’t in a recession. "You've heard of mental depression;” he said, “this is a mental recession.” Gramm said that “we have sort of become a nation of whiners, you just hear this constant whining.”

I don’t know about you, but not only do I whine every time I fill up at a gas station, but if the price of oil doesn’t drop soon, I plan to whine a lot when it’s time to fill up the home heating fuel barrel. Coincidently, Gramm was being paid by Swiss bank, UBS to lobby Congress about the U.S. mortgage crisis. McCain has been proudly campaigning on how he won’t be influenced by lobbyists.

What with the Housing crisis going on and failure and looming bail outs of Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, I think it’s important to have a President who’s comfortable making decisions about the economy. McCain has admitted that “economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should”

But he has plenty of experience in dealing with issues of banking and predatory loans. Remember he was a member of the so-called "Keating Five.” Between 1982 and 1987, McCain accepted $112,000 in political contributions from Charles Keating Jr. and friends at the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, along with trips on Keating's jets.

But I’m more concerned with McCain’s performance in the areas of history and geography.
Just last week in an interview with Katie Couric on CBS, McCain boasted that President Bush’s “surge” in Iraq made a movement possible called the Anbar Awakening,” in which Sunni tribes united to resist Al Qaida. The problem is that the Anbar Awakening happened in 2006, whereas the American surge took place in 2007. I can’t help but remind you that Al Qaida wasn’t ever in Iraq until AFTER the United States invaded, because Saddam Hussein hated them, as do most Iraqis. Also keep in mind that it was Al Qaida who attacked us in 2001, not Iraq.

Also, has anyone told McCain that there is no Chezkslovakia anymore? How about that Iraq and Pakistan don't share a border?

At least McCain’s friends, Connecticut Senator Joe Leiberman had the decency to explain to him that Iran was training Hamas members, not Al Queda members.

Obama has utilized the internet not only to bring in millions of small dollar donors instead of relying on the conventional hand full of multi-thousand dollar donors that politicians used to, but also to establish a vast ground-roots movement, especially vitalized by young voters. On the other hand, 72 year old McCain doesn’t do the internet. I appreciate that not many 72 year old would feel the need to establish their own Facebook accounts, but too much information, education, communication and commerce take place on the web for any future President to be able to afford to be technologically illiterate.

He thinks that the media has been giving too much attention to Obama, but come on, if Barrack Obama had made the same kind of gaffes that McCain has been making- especially in say a two or three week period, wouldn't the media have eaten him alive?

There was a time when I had patience for, even a level of comfort with McCain, but I just can't seem to take him seriously anymore.

And here's another thing- (and please forgive me for using these ugly words, it's just to make a point) if it's wrong for Jesse Jackson to use the word "nigger," why is it okay for McCain to use the word "Gook?" Isn't it insanely racist against Asians?

A picture worth thousands of words

Last week a weekly magazine with a pretty small niche market made a big splash in the whole media world, including the 24/7 cable news world, the morning drive time radio world, and especially the still new and relatively untamed world of the web. The splash sent shock waves nationwide, was made by a silly drawing. Yes, a mere funny picture sent pundits and prognosticators reeling.

The cover of the New Yorker depicted Presidential candidate Barack Obama in the Oval office, dressed as Osama bin Ladin giving his wife Michelle a fist-bump. Michelle is dressed as an Angela Davis style sixties militant Black radical, complete with machine gun, camo and afro. A portrait of the real Al Qaeda leader hangs where George Washington should be and the American flag smolders in the fireplace. Describing it here in words makes it sound more offensive than the whimsically sketched caricatures really looks.

Obama expressed disappointment in the magazine cover and his rival, John McCain condemned the cartoon. The tragedy is that the uproar about it reveals that America seems to have lost their sense of humor because most of us seemed to have missed the joke.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Mallory- you wrote this a couple days after it was a big deal, we’re reading it a week after that, so we’ve heard the story over and over again by now. The cartoonist and the New Yorker were trying to make fun of how many emails have claimed that Obama is really a Muslim, and that his wife is some kind of Black supremacist. That some yahoo on a Fox News morning show thinks that fist-bumping is some kind of gang sign and that some panicky extreme right-wingers think that Liberals are all flag burning America haters. We all know that they were trying to satirize Obama opponents, not slander the Obamas themselves.

Okay, okay. You get all that. And you know that I fancy myself a cartoonist too, and if you read this column regularly, it’s no secret that recent flip-flop on the FISA bill not withstanding, I’m pretty much on the Obama bandwagon. Fine. So what’s my problem?

Is it that some people don’t get that the cover was a joke about Obama’s opponents and find it offensive because they think it only serves to perpetuate the false rumors about him?

No, I understand that it seems to have back-fired. What I don’t get is why didn’t it work? Is it because since the advent of Saturday Night Live back in the seventies, our culture has been so super-saturated with sarcasm that we can’t recognize genuine irony when someone uses it? Nah… ya think? Pshaw-as if!

Or, is it that we’re so up tight and on edge that we’re suffering from some kind of Mid-Traumatic Stress Disorder that we’ve lost our sense of humor? I tell ya, it may only be a recession, but every time I drive by a gas station price sign or listen to the news, I go into depression.

Is it because we’re so polarized and passionate about our positions that we’re too freaked out to tease each other about anything political? That can’t be it, because our friends at the Republican booth at the county fair seemed to be comfortable enough to rib us about offering our kids candy as we ordered supper from the church booth across the exhibit hall.

Maybe those primaries put our teeth on edge about race. Bill Clinton lost his credibility with the Black community with as many not so subtle innuendos and back stabs as he could get in while many Hillary supporters blamed all of her problems the alleged sexism of Obama supporters. Maybe all these years the bullies on right-wing radio have been right, and progressives really are too uptight about political correctness to even have a sense of humor.

But as they say, no publicity is bad publicity. The Obamas got more attention so bad for them turned out to be good for them. The New Yorker, which has FAR fewer reads than People or US or any magazine that features the Spears sisters on the cover, got much more attention then they’re used to. So, even if they look like racist fear-mongerers instead of the Birkenstock wearing, Harvard elite liberals that they are, good for them too, right? McCain gets to look like a good guy for condemning racist fear-mongering instead of benefiting for it for once, that has to be good for him, especially with those independents in the center, right? And we all had something to talk about other than the price of gas for a week. Also good.

All I know is I don’t get it. But then, I understand that there are a lot of people who don’t always get my political cartoons either.

Crass comment cuts off debate

In case you didn't hear, last week Rev. Jesse Jackson was waiting to be interviewed on FOX and whispered his frustrations with Presidential Candidate Barrack Obama, including a pretty graphic and gruesome description of how he'd like to neuter the Illinois Senator.

It really is unfortunate that the focus from the left will be that Fox is practicing shabby journalism and that the focus from the right will be that Jackson must be a hypocrite for using such vulgar language while complaining that a Black political leader would encourage personal morality and responsibility in the Black community.

It's sad because one of the important differences between Republicans and Democrats is the emphasis of the right on individual morality (sexual orientation, drug use, abortion) and the emphasis of the left on collective/societal morality (justice, poverty, war, corporate and government responsibility, environmental stewardship).

Both are legitimate and both are important, but both sides seem to argue past each other, discount each other's concerns and even accuse each other of being somehow amoral or even immoral when in fact both camps are have deeply held "values."

As someone who majored in History at a Lutheran university, as someone who's faith and country are both very important to him, I think that these is things which we need to be able to discuss openly and civilly.

Recently a prominent Black pastor commented on this balance (or imbalance):

"My appeal was for the moral content of his message to not only deal with the personal and moral responsibility of black males, but to deal with the collective moral responsibility of government and the public policy which would be a corrective action for the lack of good choices that often led to their irresponsibility,"

This pastor's concern is that lecturing people that they need to be better parents or get a job or stay away from drugs or stop listening to Gansta Rap isn't needed as much as addressing the problems of institutional racism, housing and job discrimination and the failures of education and government to provide equal opportunity to minorities. You may not agree with him, but in essence, he's saying, "stop picking at the specks in other people's eyes and worry about the log in our collective national eye (Matthew 7:1-6)."

One side wants to prevent abortions, the other wants to help parents be able to afford to keep and care for the babies they have. One side wants to incarcerate young men who commit crime or sell or use drugs, while the other wants to provide a better education and a better chance for those young men to get a decent job and feel valued by and involved in something other than a gang.

One side is reactive, the other side would like to be proactive. One side wants to prohibit sin, the other wants to actively do good. Both have their own idea of how to make "Thy kingdom come."

It's a never ending debate. Way back in the 16 and 1700's political philosopher John Locke believed that all men were created equal and capable of self government while Thomas Hobbes believed that we're all selfish and in conflict and need to be governed forcibly. Both sides are partly right but both sides are missing half the picture.

Whichever side you agree with, it's about time that we recognize that the James Dobsons and John Haggees do not represent ALL Christian thinking. Not all liberals and progressives are atheists bent on debasing all our traditions. I'll betchya anything that when you die and go to Heaven, youíll be surprised by how many different political viewpoints are represented by the other people there.

Both Republican Mike Hukabee and Democrat Obama have shown that Christians are concerned about more issues than white, Fundamentalist Southern Baptist extremists may like to admit. Of course we also have to be careful to not assume that the likes of Jesse Jackson and Jeremiah Wright represent all Black people let alone all Black Christians.

Like it or not, if Jesus were here today, he'd probably be cavorting with freaks and sinners (Mark 2:14-17). Granted that's not to say that He'd condone any of their sin, but I for one think that His grace, love and forgiveness are messier than Jerry Fawell's Moral Majority would approved of.

The new, younger faith talk focuses on helping the community (Matthew 25:39-46), whereas the traditional "family values" talk of the last 30 years or so has been much more focused on how America is going to Hell in a hand-basket (Romans 1:18-32).

It's too bad that we can't "come reason together (Isaiah 1:18)" and find out how we can work together instead of accusing each other of being bad, wrong, evil, or a tool of the Devil all the time. I know, I know, who am I to talk when I draw cartoons like last week's that throw Dr. Dobson's words about Obama back at him? But that's what cartoonists do.

That pastor who made the statement about wanting Obama to deal with "collective moral responsibility?" ... Jesse Jackson.

If only he had had the manhood to say it that way BEFORE Fox caught him saying it in such a base, offensive manor, maybe then he could've castrated the arguments of his opponents instead of emasculating his own credibility.

Mammas, don't let your babies grow up

I asked my eight year old what she wanted to be when she grew up. Without hesitation she said “farmer.” I felt pretty ambivalent. Not because she’s a girl, but because as the bumper sticker says, “crime doesn’t pay, and neither does farming.” I felt the same way the last time I asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up and she answered “teacher.”

So, I started talking to her about agribusiness, agronomy, biology, chemistry, engineering, marketing, veterinary medicine, all the different fields related to farming that she might want to consider pursuing. Especially considering how little she’s pursued helping her grandpa do farm work, let alone help her grandma work in the garden.

“Maybe you didn’t here me, I said FARMER,” came the indignant reply. Okay… a few years too soon to be a surly teenager, maybe I’ll talk to somebody else for a while. So I asked my three year old what she wants to be when she grows up.

“Um… I don’t really know what I want to be when I grow up yet,” she thoughtfully explained. Holy crap, I don’t know high school and college students who are reflective enough to admit that they haven’t made up their minds yet. This is why I’m convinced that this kid will become President some day.

Then a train drove by and she decided to change her answer, “Gwace says I can dwive a twain someday if I want to. That’s what I want to do when I gwow up.”
An engineer, fair enough. With airlines doing as wella s they are, I’m sure there will be plenty of railroad jobs when she grows up.

The last time I asked my six year old what she’s like to be when she grows up, she told me “I want to be a vegetarian, because I love animals SOOOOO much! Even though my MEAN dad won’t let me have a dog, that I promise I would take care of and take for walks and give baths, and it could sleep in MY room and it wouldn’t poop in the house, I PROMISE!”

Now, I know that she loves steak, pork chops, hamburgers, and chicken too much to ever become a vegetarian, so I’m assuming that she meant veterinarian. But she’d have to do it part time so that she could still manage her career as a pop-star like Hannah Montana or the Cheetah Girls.

When I was five I wanted to be a cowboy. Now you’d have thought that growing up in Arizona, I’d have been all over that. But here’s the thing, those boots- not all that comfortable. Definitely too much work to get on and off. Then they kind of make you walk funny. One of the reasons I’m glad I’m not a woman is that there’s no way I could do those high heels. Plus I have kind of fat calves, cowboy boots can really chafe your calves if you’re “husky.”

Then there were the hats. I don’t know, I always felt kind of conspicuous. Cowboy hats make me feel phony, like I’m putting on airs or trying too hard to be cool. And to be honest, I always believed that part of being a cowboy was real and not trying to impress anyone or fit into anyone else’s stereotypes. So forget the hat. The official state neckwear of Arizona is the bolo tie. Have you ever seen anybody wear a bolo tie since Barry Goldwater? Exactly.

Growing up in the rugged, desert southwest was great. Mountains and wilderness, cacti and sagebrush. But the only “cowboy” I knew was a guy who worked in freight at the airport with my dad, he just lived in a part of town that was zoned so he could have a couple horses and a mule (or donkey, or whatever it was).

At Boy Scout camp, I got the nicknamed “Whoa-boy,” after failing to earn my equestrian badge. It wasn’t my fault, the camp people insisted on putting me on a pigeon-towed horse named “spook” and gave his butt a swat and just expected me to know how to gallop.

This is time of year I have a huge amount of respect for the real cowboys. Those people who primp their calves with blow driers and Armor All and then lead them around the show ring at livestock shows and county fairs. They work their tails off and, like other people involved in farm related industries, they feed our country. Of course around here they’re called “cattlemen” instead of ranchers and it’s truckers who lead the herds to markets.

So whatever you became when you grew up, if you’re like me or my six year old and love a good ribeye, thank a farmer, cattleman, or trucker.

I declare, yet another Independence Day

Every Fourth of July all we ever hear about is Thomas Jefferson this and Thomas Jefferson that. Oh, sometimes you’ll hear a little bit about John Adams and Ben Franklin, but it’s as if the other 56 guys who signed the Declaration of Independence didn’t exist. I hear you shouting out the names of George Washington and John Hancock, but Washington was off fighting some war, too busy to even show up for the vote on the resolution to declare independence. And Hancock may not have become president of the second Continental Congress if the previous president, Peyton Randolph from Virginia hadn’t gotten sick and died (at the ripe old age of 54).

John Adam’s cousin Samuel Adams has become better known in recent years because of the premiere beers which bare his name. But in actuality while he was an excellent politician, in his time he was an unsuccessful brewer, and a poor businessman. It’s actually pretty ironic that he became such a rabble rouser for the cause of independence and “no taxation without representation” even leading the Boston Tea Party. You see, his first job was as a tax collector.

Hardly anyone remembers Pennsylvania’s John Dickinson. Probably because he didn’t sign the Declaration and in fact tried several times to stifle debate over the resolution. In fact, much to Ben Franklin’s chagrin, he split the Pennsylvania delegation on the issue. His object had always been reconciliation, not independence or revolution. He loved his country and had always been proud of his country, love her or leave her. Of course, his country was Great Brittan. Ah, a regular Benedict Arnold you say? Not at all, he served in the militia as both a private and as a brigadier general. He moved to Delaware and in 1777, while Delaware's wealthiest farmer and largest slaveholder, he free all his slaves.

So Dickinson turned out to be a decent person after all. He was so decent, that in 1781 he became the President of Delaware (under the Articles of Confederation, governors were called “president”). This was complicated by the fact that he became President of Pennsylvania in 1782 without resigning from the Delaware presidency. State presidents weren’t directly elected by the people, but appointed by the state legislatures. Needless to say, Delaware was really irked.

Josiah Bartlett was the first to sign the Declaration, after John Hancock. Bartlett served on the Supreme Court of New Hampshire. He was elected the first (and presumably only) president of independent New Hampshire, and then its first governor, under the U.S. Constitution.

Another New Hamphirean was William Whipple. He lead the successful battles of Stillwater and Saratoga against General “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne. Nothing to sneeze at, but I still get a kick out of the name “General Whipple.” I imagine him ordering his troops not to squeeze the Charmin.

Speaking of grocers, they plaid a vital role in the revolutionary war. Roger Sherman started out as a humble cobbler from Connecticut. But eventually his business wasn’t limited to selling shoes, he was appointed commissary for Connecticut troops, which meant he provided groceries to military personnel. He served on the committee to write the Declaration, along with John Adams, Phillip Livingston of New York, Franklin, and of course Jefferson.

There may not have been a Declaration of Independence without Jefferson, but Congress may never have declared independence if it hadn’t been for another Virginian, Richard Henry Lee. It was Lee who actually offered the Resolutions for Independence to the committee of the whole in 1776. John Adams had tried repeatedly, but he was obnoxious and disliked, did you know that? History is stranger than mythology sometimes because this man, to whom the United States owes its birth, wound up being the great uncle of a certain Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general who nearly brought about its demise.

Finally there was Judge James Wilson from Pennsylvania. You’ll remember that John Dickinson opposed declaring independence; well Wilson was the swing vote. Despite Ben Franklin’s best efforts, Wilson rode the fence so long, he got splinters. Pennsylvania was divided on the issue of separation, and Wilson refused to vote against the will of his constituents. He had spoken eloquently for independence so long as he never had to vote on it. He didn’t want to be famous. He wanted a quiet, simple life. He didn’t want to stand out as a radical. He claimed he had to consult with his constituents. He managed to stall for three weeks. Dickinson urged him to vote in the people’s best interest, which was to reconcile with Mother England.

In the end, he sided with the majority in Congress and so faded into obscurity. Sometimes swing votes are the most important.

Holiday Road

Vacationing with your kids can be a lot of fun. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, but work can still be fun.

We had the audacity to take our girls, 3, 6, and 9 years old to supper in the Amana Colonies one night. I’m still not entirely convinced that they’re old enough to appreciate the historical or cultural significance of the experience.

“This place is SO awesome!” declared the three year old when we first entered, but it wasn’t long before she was dancing beside her chair and trying to escape our table to wander around to other people’s tables. This particular Amana establishment made things fresh and from scratch, this isn’t quick enough for any 3 year old attention span, believe me.

Our six year old was sulking. She’d enjoyed the Children’s Museum at the Coralville Mall so much that she was crushed that we had left the Iowa City vicinity. Our nine year old was sentimental about the restaurant’s music, since it reminded her of their late great-grandfather’s favorite radio show, Polka Party.

But none of them enjoyed the sweet sour kraut or the pickled ham appetizers. Guess it was a good thing that we ordered the chicken rather than knackwurst.

Middle children have it rough. Our six year old was particularly vexed when she found out that instead of another museum or the living history museum in Des Moines, we’d have to push on to get home in time for her older sister’s softball game. Amazing how one phone call to check the schedule changed it from “the best week in my entire life,” to “the worst summer EVER!” My hope is that if she gets the drama out of her system now, adolescence will go pretty smoothly. Right?

Ah, but the most fun was closest to home, when the circus came to Denison. We expectations as low as we could; “I don’t know, we’ll see… it depends on what’s going on that day… we’ll have to see how much it costs… so long as we don’t have anything else going on… as long as neither of you have ball games…you know, the fairgrounds were under a lot of water just last week…” and of course, “I heard from someone who went last year that it wasn’t really that good.”

In spite of our best efforts, the six year old was more wound up about the circus than she is on Christmas Eve. Asking when we were going every ten minutes, telling everyone that we were going etc. etc.

Finally the time had come. Six and Nine scurried upstairs to rouse Three from her nap by excitedly announcing that it was time to go to the circus. This evoked absolute TERROR in the three year old. I don’t remember her throwing such a fit. There was no way that she was going to this circus. She insisted that I stay home with her. The problem, an irrational fear of clowns. She’s three, she hasn’t read any Steven King novels, she’d never even seen a clown before in her short life. Somehow I calmed her down and reasoned enough with her to convince her to come with us, promising that I’d protect her and that there would probably be animals.

The clown was no threat. There was only one. He didn’t have crazy hair or even a face full of white makeup. Heck, he couldn’t have been more than twelve years old himself. It was a “family” circus after all.

Six year old won a balloon, making it “the greatest day of her life.” Then there was the elephant ride afterward. Six year old wanted it most, and Three year old was the most apprehensive. Nine year old was an old hand at this sort of thing because she’d already ridden one back in preschool.

Of course once we mounted the huge beast, things changed. Let me tell you, for adults, elephants aren’t nearly as comfortable as horses, especially if you’re stuck on the tail bone because three little kids got to sit in front of you. The three year old warmed up to it right away, but the six year old was in a sheer panic the while ride, sort of like her father is when I go on roller coasters.

This, along with the denial of an additional pony ride turned the experience into “the worst day of my life, EVER.”

Things I learned in Professor Jones’ Class

There was a discount movie theater near our house growing up and one summer, Raiders of the Lost Ark was playing there. My brother and I went to see it at the midnight movies every night in a row for two weeks. By the second week we were driving people crazy, sitting in the front row, reciting lines before the actors would.

So last week when I was back in Arizona form my niece’s baptism, I was pumped when my five year old nephew invited me to see the latest Indy movie with them.

Five year old boys have an uncanny ability to recite lines, describe plots, and especially to emulate sound effects from action movies. Daniel has worn out two of the three videotapes he has of the earlier movies, so it was like old times for me and his dad.

People who dissect the Star Wars movies looking for literary merit have credited George Lucas with crafting a new mythology. What he does with the Indiana Jones movies is to capitalize on preexisting myths by repackaging them with a big dose of good old American pop-culture. He and his partners cooked up another serving of cultural iconography like no one else can. Lucas, Spielberg, composer John Williams and Harrison Ford all make gold of any project they touch, but in combination- they have mythological powers.

So what if Doctor Henry Jones Jr. is just a fictional character on the movie screen, he still has impacted at least two generations of Americans with the lessons only he could teach- and not just in archeology, ancient art and antiquities.

For instance, from Raider’s we learn:

• Always wear a jacket, even if it’s a hundred degrees and humid as a Yucatan rain forest.
• Don’t be afraid of spiders.
  
• Try to replace whatever you take with something about the same size.
  
• When a problem gets too big, you must whip it.
  
• Always bring a gun to a knife fight.
  
• Pay attention in Sunday School.
  
• Be careful meddling with powers you don’t understand.
  
• Always read both sides of everything.
  
• Don’t eat dates if you notice there’s a dead monkey around.
  
• Never trust NAZIs and be wary of Frenchmen.
  
• Snakes can be dangerous.
  
• There’s always a way out of anything, even if you have to make it up as you go.
  
• When someone thinks they’re about to unleash the power of God, close your eyes and keep them closed.
  
• And, the government maybe keeping a lot of secrets, but they don’t know what most of them are.

From the Temple of Doom:

• Your seat cushion can be used as a flotation device.
  
• You can travel from China to India very quickly, but you may not enjoy the ride.
  
• Monkey brains should be served cold.
  
• Never eat anything that looks back at you.
  
• If someone tells you to eat your heart out, don’t let their hand get anywhere near your chest.
  
• Potato shaped rocks may look worthless, but they may be important to someone.
  
• Children are treasure.
  
• When working in mines, make sure your mine cart has good brakes.
  
• Before you go cutting ties, grab something to hold on to.

From Last Crusade:

• Don’t be selfish, some things belong in a museum.
• The Boy Scouts can teach you a lot, especially how to be prepared.
  
• If you have to get chased by bad guys on a train in the desert southwest, make sure it’s not a circus train.
  
• Listen to your father.
  
• When it comes to treacherous NAZI spies, beautiful Austrian women are as dangerous as ugly German men.
  
• Likewise, you can’t always trust American business men.
  
• Penitence is important.
  
• Let your footsteps be guided by God’s word.
  
• Don’t be afraid to take a leap of faith.
  
• Jesus isn’t into flashy jewel-encrusted gold chalices, like any carpenter, His cup is just a simple clay pot.
  
• A good relationship with your Dad is worth more than youth or power.

And from Crystal Skull:

• Always carry a compass.
  
• Greedy friends will turn on you.
  
• If you need to survive an imminent nuclear blast, hide inside a lead-lined refrigerator.
  
• No matter how much you do for your country, people will still question your patriotism.
  
• A real friend is someone who will sacrifice a job for you.
  
• Never bring a knife to a gunfight.
  
• If you want to be an archaeologist, you’re going to have to get out of the library.
  
• Finish school.
  
• Relationships are more important than careers.
  
• It’s important to always return things that don’t belong to you.
  
• The greatest treasure is knowledge.
  
• Don’t mess with ants.
  
• And too much of human existence is lost in waiting, but it’s never too late to start again.

And above all, the right hat can make a man a legend.

America, this is our moment

Hillary Clinton made history by coming so close to winning the Democratic nomination on June 3.

Barack Obama graciously called her “a leader who inspires millions of Americans with her strength, her courage, and her commitment to the causes that brought us here tonight.”

More history was made that night. Only two sitting Senators have ever been elected President, Warren G. Harding, and John F. Kennedy. No matter who wins in November, they will be the third. Arizona Senator John McCain (age 71) is the oldest man to ever run for President.

I believe that history was made Tuesday, June 3, not because a Black man had accumulated enough delegates to win a party nomination, but when Sen. Obama told us that “Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past. Our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love.”

McCain’s speech that night was about Barack Obama, about how McCain doesn’t think Obama is qualified to be President and that his rhetoric about hope and change is just rhetoric. Hillary Clinton’s speech that night was about herself and how many people voted for her and how she deserves power. Obama’s speech wasn’t about a Black man making history, it wasn’t about himself or his rivals (except to praise them). His speech was about providing jobs, making taxes fair for the middle and working classes, making college and health care more affordable and restoring our reputation in the world.

Hillary supporters need to pull together behind the Democrat’s new nominee. Democrats will only hurt their chances in the Fall if they continue to campaign using fear, innuendo, and division. Those were the tactics of the Bush administration. Obama showed what he was made of when he stuck to the high road.

"What you won’t hear from this campaign or this party,” he told the crowd in St. Paul that Tuesday night, “is the kind of politics that uses religion as a wedge, and patriotism as a bludgeon – that sees our opponents not as competitors to challenge, but enemies to demonize."

Frankly, I think that’s been a problem afflicting our nation since the days of Joseph Mccarthy.

Religion should be a tie that binds, not a tool for political leverage. So-called conservative Christianity is neither genuinely conservative or at all Christ-like. It’s radical and legalistic, like the Pharisees who were constantly trying to trap Jesus in the Bible.

The Right-wing religion introduced into the public square by the likes of Jerry Falwell back in the 1980’s is about fear, anger, and a need to control culture. It’s about prohibiting and preventing. It’s against a lot of things- but what is it for? It opposes things but what does it propose? Does it propose we feed the hungry? Refresh the thirsty? Invite in the stranger? Clothe the needy? Visit the sick and imprisoned? What would Jesus do?

TRUE patriotism is standing up for the principals embodied in the Declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights- not just the flag or the pledge or a car magnet shaped like a ribbon. It's not a lapel pin.

Choose hope over fear? Yes we can.

I hope that Hillary supporters will unite with Obama supporters to truly change the direction of the Democratic party. So that it will be bottom-up and not top-down. So that it won’t be politics as usual. Millions of small donors on the internet instead of millions from corporate donors and special interest groups and lobbyists.

I also hope that Republicans who are sincere in their concern for traditional values, for families and for honest people who work hard for a living will find something about Senator Obama that they can agree with and be leery of the faux-maverick promises of John McCain.

We all need to be able to argue and debate and hash out solutions together to our problems without calling each other names or writing each other off as irrelevant or morally inferior. It really is time for some serious change.

Let’s come together “to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals."

Left-wing blogger has moral qualms

Former Deputy White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s new book has created a storm of controversy. I’d like to touch briefly on some of the debris being blown around by that storm. But first, let me say a little about the cartoon sitting above this column.

Anytime you employ the NAZIs you're being heavy handed, but then again, cartoons are nothing if they're not hyperbolic. Of course, little Scotty McClellan was never as powerful as Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda. Most people might think Karl Rove was more like Goebbels. From a strictly visual perspective Heinrich Himmler has Roves round face and hairline. Himmler oversaw the SS and the Gestapo, so he was a pretty bad guy too.

I’m obviously a big fat hypocrite because last week I cartooned about how President Bush compared Barrack Obama to Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister who tried to appease Hitler and now I’m comparing Bush Administration members to German monsters. My intention is not to label all right wingers as NAZIs, my intention is to make you think- hmmm, what if we had had cable TV news in the 1930s and 40’s AND to focus on that line from the Karl Rove quote “if he had moral qualms he should have spoken up.” THAT needed the dramatic force of NAZIs to get driven home.

If Scott McClellan had been Hitler’s Deputy Press Secretary, how, when and to who could he have spoken up to? I’m not here to defend him. Most Democrats figure he’s an opportunist making a lot of money for his book. But my point is, if you worked among people with the power and gravitas of the President of the United States, Karl Rove, Collin Powell, Dick Cheney, and Condaleeza Rice while they were beating the drums of war- how easy would it be for you to become a whistle blower? I think it might take me five years to say anything too.

Although, Benito Mussolini said that fascism should more properly be called "corporatism" since it was, under Mussolini, a blending of state and corporate power. Minus the cult of racism that Hitler injected into it, this pretty well describes the political and economic philosophies of President Bush and the Neocons. Which is why I’m always begging my more traditional Republican friends to scrutinize our leaders more closely.

McClellan may prove to be to George Bush what former White House Counsel John Dean was to Richard Nixon. The insider who felt that his loyalty was betrayed so he decided to stop lying and start exposing the lies of his superiors.

Congress has been issuing subpoenas for Karl Rove, Harriet Meyers, Scooter Libby and Anthony Gonzales. Congress wants to know why the anyone in the Justice Department who spoke up about their “moral qualms” got fired. They want to know who ordered the leaking of a CIA agent’s name in retribution for her career diplomat husband having “moral qualms” about the build up to the war. And now, they’re going to want to know who organized the “elaborate propaganda campaign to sell the Iraq war.”

But the Bush administration refuses to testify before congress. Congress may have to exercise their power of “inherent contempt” and send their sergeant of arms out to bring people in to talk because the Attorney General has already ordered area district attorneys from enforcing House subpoenas.

This storm may just dissipate like the Iran-Contra scandal of the late 80’s. Or, it may get a whole lot messier than Watergate.

But Neither Bush nor McClellan is really responsible for the storm.

Cable news anchors rarely practice actual journalism. They present stories that viewers watch, that boosts ratings, which means that they can charge more for commercials. They blow whichever way the prevailing political wind blows. Five years ago we wanted revenge for September 11 so we let the networks beat the drums for war against Iraq. Now, with everyone on both Dems and Republicans weary of the war, Bush approval ratings in the twenties, and we want revenge for rising gas and food prices, the media is realigning to make sure that they continue making money.

There is no true journalism on the national level, only “info-tainers” If corporations didn’t control the media, than Phil Donahue wouldn’t have been fired from MSNBC or Aaron Brown from CNN, or Dan Rather from CBS. But if you think I’m wrong, then go ahead and keep watching those radical liberal-journalists Lou Dobbs and Bill O’Rielly.

We get the media we deserve. The Pentagon has tightly controlled coverage of Iraq, the White House has even prevented footage to be taken of soldiers’ coffins being returned to the U.S. If you’re convinced yourself that the media is liberal or unpatriotic, then you haven’t noticed who really controls the media. Worst case scenario, it’s CEOs protecting the interests of their shareholders. Best case, it’s the free market of consumers- which means us.

McClellan’s book may have been like chum in the water, but the sharks who smelled blood weren’t reporters, they’re we the viewers. Either enjoy the feeding frenzy or turn off the TV and read a book.

You're only as young as you feel

One of the few things about winter that is easier than summer is getting your kids to get ready for bed.

“Annamarie, time to get in the bathtub!” I called to our three year old the other night.

“No Dad, it not even night time,” came her reply.

Glancing at my watch, I told her that it was indeed after seven and reminded her that bedtime was supposed to be eight o’clock.

“Dad look,” she pointed out the window, “it isn’t even dark, look Dad, the sky is still blue.”
How was I supposed to argue with such logic?

“You’re funny,” I told her.

“No I am’nt,” she protested in three year old grammar.

I realize that the correct contraction is “aren’t” but at least she didn’t say “Aint.” However, unless I’m mistaken, “aint” has be officially recognized as a legitimate word (much to the chagrin of my eighth grade English teacher), whereas, “am’nt” is pretty much Annamarie’s very own invention.

With her older sister finishing kindergarten, beginning to read and doing things like playing soccer and riding bikes and her oldest sister undergoing nine excruciating months of intensive therapy for her double-vision and therefore reaching her own milestones in balance, reading, writing, actually catching and hitting a softball… well, I guess that s lot of Annamarie’s life changes have been flying by.

Whatever you do, don’t ever call her a “little” girl, she’ll correct you, “No I am’nt! I’m BIG.”
Don’t try to pour the milk on her cereal for her “I kin doo it, I kin doo it!” she’ll say as she wrestles the gallon jug away from you, “Look! I kin doo it, I’m STRONG,” she’ll say, as she sloshes milk on the table.

Everybody tells me to enjoy them while they’re young, and they’re constantly warning me about how I should expect trouble with boys once they’re older. We already have a big problem with imaginary boyfriends.

“Dad,” Annamarie likes to tell me, “You’re my best fwend.”

“Aw shucks, thanks honey, I love you too.”

“But Dad, I have to tell you sometin,” she’ll explain, getting very serious.

“What is it, is something wrong?” I ask.

“It’s my boyfwend. You know my boyfwend, Jacob?”

“Jacob who?” Who is this guy, some kid at the babysitter?

“Jacob Brownie, my boyfwend!”

“Oh, THAT Jacob, what happened?”

“He died.”

“He died? Oh my goodness, you must be devastated.”

“yeah, but only now I have a new boyfwen.”

“Oh, already? Who is he?”

“Jacob.”

“But I thought Jacob died.”

“Not THAT Jacob, my new boyfwend is Jacob Marshmallow, not Jacob Brownie, Jacob MARSHMALLOW!”

She’s only three and I already can’t keep up. But I know she won’t be three forever.

The other day, I had all three girls in the van on the farm when we saw a farmer park a tractor, followed by his year old son moving his pickup. After living here in Iowa the better part of a decade now, I’ve gotten used to the idea of 10-13 year old boys helping move vehicles to help with planting and harvest. Be that as it may, my girls were all impressed with their very impressive. Ellen, who’s six asked how she’ll have to be before she can drive.

“Well, when you get into eighth or ninth grade you can take Driver’s Ed class and get a learner’s permit when you’re 14 or 15 and then you’ll be able to get your license when you’re 16,” I explained.

“I’M SIXTEEN!” announced Annamarie from her car seat.

“When did you turn sixteen? I could’ve sworn you were just three?” I said.

“I pooped in the big girl potty today and now I’m sixteen!”

Memorial Day is about more than beer and barbecues

Every Memorial Day and Fourth of July I cry. Maybe I’m a sap, or maybe I just have a deep affection for our country and the ideals it’s supposed to be founded on.

I realize that I have a tendency to rock the boat sometimes with the opinions that I air in this column. Each and every one of us holds unique perspectives on every event and every issue. Sometimes our opinions come between us which is too bad. Some say ‘my country, right or wrong, love it or leave it.’ I prefer to think of patriotism as a relationship that you participate in, not just blind loyalty. My country right or wrong, but when she’s wrong, try to right her.

Yes, “God bless America”, but also “stand beside her, and guide her thru the night.” I don’t know about you, but I want my country to be a blessing to all the other nations of the world, not a curse.

Here are some of the words that make me tear up whenever I hear them.

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

What did Lincoln mean by that? I think he meant ALL men, rich or poor, black or white, European or Latin, African or Asian. Liberty means the freedom to make decisions about the laws that affect us. It means the right to participate in society. Jefferson put it this way-

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

You could say we get the government we deserve. You could say we have met the enemy and he is us. What you should always remember is that we ARE our government. That’s the great experiment. It started in 1776 and countries around the world tried to copy it. By the 1860’s there were some who thought that the experiment was failing.

“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure,” Lincoln recognized.

Lincoln summarized what the true purpose of Memorial Day would be, “We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.”

“But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate,” he admitted, “we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.”

We often hear people say that our soldiers are fighting for our “freedom.” What freedoms are important to Americans? The First Amendment guarantees us the freedom to practice our own religion and the freedom from having any single official religion opposed on us. It promises freedom of speech, freedom of the press, do we exercise those rights? Do we bother reading and writing and speaking up for what we believe in, or do we take our freedom for granted? The First Amendment includes freedom of assembly and petition, and freedom of association. How often are we afraid of people getting organized, or people who protest? How do we impose guilt by association?

What was it that was being tested by the Civil War? That dedication to liberty and equality. That experiment where we are all in this together, that we’re here for each other, or as it says in the Constitution-

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…”

I think that the most important part of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address is not merely recognizing the noble sacrifices of the dead, it’s his admonishment for us to keep working for those ideals.

“It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”

“…for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Amen.