I was just wondering if Paul Ryan had knowledge of the fact that we have three branches of government including a Supreme Court.
Since the recent Ryan budget is based off of the assumption that the Affordable Health Care Act will be repealed, I was just wondering if anyone told him about justice Roberts’ historic vote. Maybe I’ll send him a tweet, just in case he’s not informed.
I just moved Bill O’Reilly up a notch on my Top 10 Ass-Wipes of Fox News list for this outburst. It’s too bad he didn’t have his facts straight when shouting down Alan Colmes. Alan should have walked out on that little temper tantrum.
Can’t think of a more deserving recipient for the #3 spot behind only Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity.
I oftentimes take the dog on a 3-5 mile walk which gives me the opportunity to “get inside my head” as my wife says. Mid-life has been a challenge. Divorce. Job Change. Both of my parents are gone now. Dad died in 2008 and Mom in 2011. I think about a lot of different things, but memories of Mom and Dad and my childhood come up frequently, so I find myself taking a journey back to the 60’s and 70’s quite often.
20 years ago or so, I remember being really pissed about some of the over-sights my parents had during their tenure as parents of me. They started the painful process of divorce when I was 15, so there wasn’t a lot of guidance available down the home stretch. And the house rules felt kind of strict growing up at the time with mandatory private school, and some higher behavioral expectations. It’s funny how attitudes change over time though.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized and appreciated the personal sacrifices they both made in getting 4 kids raised. Each brought something different to the table. Clearly they had different priorities for the traits they would like to see in their kids. Dad seemed to focus on things like self-discipline and academic achievement and relate the two. Mom was more concerned about how her kids treated others and used the word “consideration” a lot. Both seemed slightly obsessed with how we would “turn out”.
I was very lucky to be a part of a family that kept away from the extremes you see today. While conservative in some areas of parenting, they were definitely open minded in other areas and got the big picture. Dad was a strong proponent of ‘natural consequences’ and just let my bad decisions play out. He rarely intervened with disciplinary measures after the age of 12, though there were no shortage of opportunities. If at all possible, he’d just find a way to hold a mirror up so that I could witness my own stupidity. Usually that was enough said.
Mom would get the most upset with me if I was inconsiderate or rude to someone. But both were always there for me and had my best interests at heart, always, even though I didn’t agree with the methods at times. Actually, I had very strong disagreements with the some of the methods, but that’s not what this post is about.
As I got older and became a parent myself, I realized the cool thing about Mom and Dad is that they both tried really hard to walk the talk. Dad set a pretty good example of exercising self-discipline in his own life and Mom was a saint to others, incredibly unselfish with her time and nursing skill-set. She was born to be a nurse, I am convinced of that. I could go on with examples but I’ll skip that for now.
So I’m walking the dog last summer and I’m in my head as usual, and I came across this idea that I latched onto. What’s one thing that I can put into practice to carry on the legacy of Mom and Dad? I’m a very independent thinker and challenged a lot of the status quo in their parenting plan, so I’m sure I was a pretty big challenge for them and didn’t turn out exactly as they had hoped. But now that they are gone, none of that matters. Suddenly I had a real strong desire to make sure all their hard work did not go completely to waste. To carry on some trait they deemed important.
There’s this nature park on one of the walking routes I take called Little Woodrose Park. It’s a fairly short little connector between two neighborhoods but it’s densely populated with trees and has a nice path. About half way in, there’s a pretty steep hill. This may seem a little strange on the surface, but it’s the symbolism that matters to me. What I came of with for Dad was, I’m going to run up this hill every time I come across it. I named it Jim Toner hill, and since last summer, every time I go through there, when I get to the hill, I let the dog loose and chase her up the hill and I run to the top without stopping and think of the old man while I’m doing it. I’m an out of shape 53 year old grandpa, so I’m usually huffing and puffing when I get to the top. But I do that in memory of Dad and his self-discipline message because life isn’t always easy, and we run into challenges and things that are hard.
Figuring out something for Mom was a little harder, but I recently came up with what I think is something that would make her smile. When they were married, Mom had issues with Dad being a little inconsiderate at times and not helping out as much as he could around the house. She didn’t really have the skill-set to challenge him in the moment about it, so she let her frustrations build up over time and developed a lot of resentment. Playing more of the Martyr. When I got married the first time back in 1979, about the worst report she could get back from my wife would be a story about me acting like my father in this regard. Leaving the woman to do all the work or something of this nature. That would really make her mad if she heard a story like that and she’d be likely to give me the business about that in no uncertain terms.
So in honor of Mom, what I do is, I make sure that I’m pulling my weight around the house and then some. If I ever have thoughts that maybe the chores are getting a little one-sided, I just keep my mouth shut and keep rinsing. That one is for you, Mom. I know she’d be super proud of that one and if she’s reading this now, has a big smile on her face.
So there you go, Mom and Dad. One thing each for now. I miss you both terribly.
Fast forward to the late 1990’s. I got the music bug pretty bad and had always wanted to become a really good guitar player, but alas I got married young and had a family and responsibilities therein. But now my kids were old enough to entertain themselves for the most part and apart from a taxi-ride now and then, they were getting pretty self-sufficient so I picked up the guitar and started taking lessons.
As someone who grew up trying to learn the guitar and appreciating that it’s a real challenge, I used to drool at the guys who could shred the neck. As luck would have it, one such individual, Erick Hailstone was playing in a band in my own home town. Erick is not your average shredder. He’s could share the stage with the top names in the business, he’s that good. He is the most well-rounded, knowledgable, gifted guitar player I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. He’s got an endless library of Jazz Standards that he can seemingly pull out of nowhere any time he wants. If he happens to be playing with a rock band, he will absolutely blow you away with speed and tastiness of his licks. There isn’t anything the guy cannot do as far as I know.
Watching Erick and his band at the Sweetbrier in Tualatin just made my music bug grow more intensely. I was obsessed with learning as much as I could and getting good enough to play in a band myself. I figured it might take 5 years or so, but I had time now and it was a priority, so I was going to do it.
A couple of years went by and I was invited to play with the company band at Xerox, “ZeeRocks”. I didn’t think I was quite ready yet for this, but I couldn’t pass up the offer. It turned out to be a pretty fun group to play with and a great learning experience for me. An off-shoot of ZeeRocks was a trio we formed called The SoundWaves Band. To start with it was Dan Brantley and myself and we featured his daughter Rena on vocals. Rena has an awesome powerful voice and I enjoyed that band immensely. We worked our way up from the Farmer’s Markets to the next level so-to-speak where we got to play in a Restaurant BBQ on a golf course. Great setting.
But all the while, I’m reminded of “leveling” and playing “at my level” and no higher. The worst thing, I reckoned, was to get up on stage where the expectations on the guitar player are high, and suck. I knew enough about the limits of my abilities to not try it.
The SoundWaves started playing local Farmer’s Markets and those were a ton of fun. Before the very first one, I went out to the market the weekend prior to when we were scheduled to play and “scoped the competition” some. It was a guy playing his guitar underneath a tree, solo. I figured we might come in with our powerful female vocalist, a keyboard player and electric guitar and rock this house, baby. We did. They invited us back for several more gigs. For their $50 budget — for the band, they weren’t used to getting a vocalist like Rena to come in and blow them away. We were actually playing “below” our level a bit, but I was enjoying every minute of it.
Several years later, Dan and Rena had to exit The SoundWaves and I tried to keep the band going with new members so that I wouldn’t lose the momentum and the gigs we had acquired. I happened across some awesome female vocalists in Tiffany Carlson and Melanie Rae and convinced them to give this thing a go. I also borrowed the drummer and bass player from a local band called Seymour, and we had a 5 piece that did both covers and originals and we were having a pretty good time of it. The wheels sort of fell off after we got all primed for a series of gigs that got cut back to one gig — argggh! But I always felt we weren’t stretching our “level” too much. The key for me was hooking up with great singers and other musicians so that very little of the whole thing depended on just me. I just had to nail down the rhythm guitar, play a few leads and try not to screw up the background vocals.
After The SoundWaves experience was over, Tiffany had connections with a local restaurant in Tualatin called Haydens and was asked to play. She asked me if I wanted to join her and Melanie for a gig there. I declined. To appreciate why I declined, you’d have to have experienced what goes on at Haydens on a typical weekend. There’s a duo that plays there – Tim Ellis and Jim Walker. Ellis’ guitar playing is on par with Erick Hailstone’s. There isn’t much Tim can’t do. He can shred. His timing is always perfect and he rarely makes a mistake. His library of tunes is endless. Pair that up with a top notch singer like Jim Walker and you’ve got entertainment.
Consequently, the expectations on the guitar player at Haydens are sky-high. If some locals came to see live music on a weekend expecting to see Tim Ellis and all of a sudden it was Bill Toner, wow, would they be disappointed. I just couldn’t do it, much as I liked the idea of playing more gigs with Tiffany and Melanie. Instead I referred them to a friend of mine, Gary Lapado, who is quite the shredder on the guitar himself. Gary is more the right “level” for that venue, not me. They took me up on that suggestion, used Gary, and did great. I even went down to see them myself, ever-conscious of that little league experience and playing up a level before I was ready.
Each year as we turn the calendar into March and I see Dad’s with their sons taking a little batting practice out on the wet baseball fields, getting ready for Little League tryouts, I’m reminded of a childhood memory that stuck with me.
My father was a really enthusiastic sports fan and coach. He loved sports of all kinds, but I think he liked baseball the most due to its strategic nature. Unless you’ve ever tried to coach at the more senior levels ( kids above 10 or 11 ), you may not appreciate how much strategy there is in baseball. A lot of people think it’s a really boring game that moves too slowly. But Dad was really into strategy, so baseball floated his boat more than other sports and he loved a good 1-0 shutout as much as anything. Dad also played high school baseball for a small, private high school in Eugene, Oregon. He did well enough that in his own mind, he thought he had an outside chance of playing baseball his freshman year at Oregon, so he tried out. He didn’t quite make it, but I was always impressed that, realist that he was, he thought he had an outside chance. He must not have been any slouch on the field.
I have 3 older sisters, so when I came along, the good news for Dad was, he had a son. The bad news was, his son wasn’t much of an athlete! I was “okay” at sports and thanks to some extra tutoring by Dad in baseball at a young age, I even excelled a little in the minor divisions of Little League. I think he was secretly hoping he could groom me into a catcher that could play at the High School level or beyond, but that was just never in the cards. I did catch through age 10, but by then I’d had enough of trying to live someone else’s dream. I wanted to pitch!
For those familiar with how Little League works, every Spring they have a tryout for their “majors” division, which is kids age 10-12. Majors is when Little League starts to get serious. The first thing to know is that it’s a “keeper” league, which means you stay on the team you’re drafted through your 12 year old season. Little League fields have 60′ bases (full size field has 90′ bases) and the pitcher’s mound is set at 46″ (full size is 60′ 6″). The problem with majors is that some of the 12 year olds have had their growth spurt and are approaching 6 ft tall, so it’s a bit like facing Randy Johnson for batters. The best 12 year olds can throw 60 mph+ easily, and are schooled enough to throw a little junk at you, just to keep you guessing. Most 10 year olds aren’t quite ready for that.
I’d had a really fun season as a 9 year old. My team lost one game the entire season and I got to play a whole bunch of positions and the coaches were great about rotating players in and giving all the kids playing time. Fresh off of this experience I was eager for the Spring tryout to see if I could get drafted onto a majors team. I don’t recall how well I did defensively at the tryout, but I remember my turn at the plate and the coaches throwing medium-fast fastballs at me, right down the middle, and making some pretty good contact. Apparently I made an impression because a week later I was drafted onto a majors team. Yahoo! There weren’t very many 10 year olds that got drafted into the majors that year and I was one of them. Yay for me.
Then came reality. Practices started and the team already had a 12 year old catcher. I was dubbed “The Catcher of the Future”, which is not uncommon in majors — to draft a 10 year old and sort of groom him for his 11 and 12 year old seasons. So my lot for the year as far as playing time was concerned was to play 2 innings in the outfield at games, but to do a lot of catching in practice… for next year. That part was sort of okay with me anyway because it’s not like I wanted to catch the games anyway. The fundamental problem was that 90% of the kids were older, bigger, and better than I was and it felt that way every single day. The 2 innings of playing time usually translated into one at bat per game. Not a lot of action out there to hold my interest.
I’m convinced keeper leagues are a bad idea. 10 year olds do not possess the ability to think long-term and do not care about next year. Catcher of the future wasn’t a carrot for me because frankly, I wasn’t even sure I was going to sign up next year if this is how much fun it is. About half way through the season I wanted to quit. Dad had a pretty strict “no quitting’ rule. Once you start something, you finish it. So I had to tough it out.
I was on the second best team in the majors that year, Mosee Brothers. Our arch rival team, Wards, had amassed an amazing group of pitchers led by Mike Childs and Tim Pflaum. Both 12 year olds. Both threw heat like you wouldn’t believe. To make matters more interesting, Tim Pflaum was my neighbor and a really good guy and I used to hang out with Tim and his brothers playing sports in the neighborhood, so I knew him pretty well. Tim was one of the 12 year olds who had experienced his growth spurt early, so he was a towering figure to me on the mound.
We played Wards 3 times that season. I knew it had to happen eventually, I had to go to bat against Tim Pflaum. God help me. I was shaking in the on-deck circle trying to think of a last-minute winning strategy as I watch him fan the guy in front of me with 60 mph fastballs. “Batter-up!”, here we go. I had decided that my strategy would be to not swing and hope that Tim would walk me. Tim probably walked about 4 batters all season, but I didn’t know or care, I wanted a walk. “Strike One” said the ump as the first fastball went by, right down the middle of the plate. I don’t remember seeing it go by. No time to change strategies now, I’m still hoping for a ball. “Strike Two” said the ump on the next pitch. Same location, same result. Damnit, I better change my strategy. Okay, I’m swinging on the next pitch. That way I won’t get yelled at for not getting the bat off the shoulders. So I got ready, looked old Tim in the eye and waited for the next fastball and even though I knew I probably wouldn’t be able to see it, I might get lucky and make contact. Tim loaded up the pitch in his mitt, reached back and here it came. I swung the bat with all my might and I’m sure I may have even grunted a bit. A little later, the pitch, commonly referred to as a “hanging curveball”, looked as if it was coming straight for me, then cut downward across the plate and into the catcher’s mitt. I was out in front of the pitch by a full 2 seconds. “Steeeee-rike Three!”
Holding back the tears, I put on a happy face and jogged on back into the dugout.
Wards had remained undefeated during that season, but late in the second half, they lost to a team called United Homes which was a shocker. That wasn’t supposed to happen. So Mosee Brothers and Wards ended up tied in the second half with one loss each, forcing a playoff. Great, a second game! That’s the last thing I wanted.
They playoff game was a packed house at Meadowland Little League. The stands were completely full and there was tension in the air. I was penciled in for 2 innings in left field. By this time, my goal was to just get through the game without incident. Please, no balls hit to me. Please. As my luck would have it, with a runner on third, there was a short kid at the plate and I just had this awful feeling he was going to hit one to me. I don’t know how I knew it, I just did. I thought that maybe if I moved in and played shallow left, he’d have a better chance of hitting it over my head and then I wouldn’t get blamed for not catching it. I was nervous as hell that a ball would come to me and I’d drop it. So I moved in. The coaches noticed and waved me back to play deeper, so I did. Sure enough, the batter lined one to left field, right at me. I mis-played it by coming in for it instead of going back a little and it went over my head. The coaches were mad and I was embarrassed in front of a huge crowd. Wards took the lead and won the game. My dad said the runner on third would have scored even if I had caught it, so I felt a little better about not being solely responsible for the loss. But yeah, the coaching at that level was pretty good in the sense that these guys knew baseball. Some had played at the college level and beyond. They knew the game and you can sure tell coaches who know the game vs. not when watching little league just by watching the kids.
Fast forward a few years to the Spring of my 8th grade year when I turned 14. I decided to go out for baseball again just to see what I could do. The Sr. League was 13-15 year olds with 90′ bases, same as Major League Baseball. I remember trying to throw runners out at second base from behind the plate and it seeming like it was all I could do just to get the ball down there let alone beat the runner.
The powers that be in Little League had decided to take a novel approach in structuring the league. They decided to separate division out into two levels – Sr. Majors and Sr. Minors, sort of like they do today with other sports where they’ll have a “competitive” group and a “recreational” group. I tried out and since I’d been out of the game for a while and hadn’t played — and I was no specimen as far as athletes go, still pretty short and slow, I was drafted onto a Sr. Minors team. I was a little surprised and disappointed at first, but as the season went on, I couldn’t have been happier about it.
I remember being tapped on the shoulder to pitch and play shortstop quite a bit. And I remember hitting well. I was on base all the time (even stole a few bases which I’m sure shocked my old man). And I got to play shortstop and loved every minute of it. I wasn’t that bad at it, actually. I threw a lot of guys out and I was decent with the glove. On the mound, I found my groove that year. I had developed a little bit of junk to throw. Just enough to keep the batters off-balance a bit and I had quite a few strikeouts that year. Compared to the other pitchers in Sr. Minors, I was probably one of the harder throwers. That was a FUN season and a great experience for me. Once again I loved baseball and had enjoyed a lot of success “out there”.
My 15 year old season, I tried out again and this time was shocked that I was left down in Sr. Minors. I thought this was an incredible injustice of some sort, but whatever. They had a rule back then that 15 year olds could not pitch in Sr. Minors. That just added insult to injury. But just a couple of games into the season I got a “call up” to the bigs. A Sr. Majors team lost a player and I got the call. Yeah, I can pitch again! Woo-hoo! Obviously these guys wanted me for my pitching prowess, right? They’d heard about all those strikeouts I had in Sr. Minors, I’m just sure of it!
So I suit up for my first game and I get to the field to find out I’m scheduled for 2 innings in right field. What? Is this going to be like my 10 year old season again? What is this? Oh man, send me back, send me back!
Like Yogi Berra once said, it’s like Deja Vu all over again because in the very first game, a batter hit a fly ball to me in right field and I when I say “right to me”, I mean “right to me”. I dropped it.
That long jog back to the dugout was too much for me to handle, I think. What else is there to do this summer? Swim? Ride my bike? Get a paper route again? Take guitar lessons? Go golfing? Anything? Anything but play 2 innings in the outfield for these guys,
Finding your right level makes all the difference. I personally believe it’s better to be star of the show in the minors vs. riding the pines in the bigs. That’s just my view from personal experience. I have a close friend who has a son who was a highly recruited high school football player at Tualatin. Really nice kid and dad. He could have gone to Linfield and started for 4 years. Instead, he went for big time college football at Oregon St. and worked his way up through the scout team. But at Division I college football, if you want to be a starting lineman, you have to be 260# or more and the competition is fierce.
To his credit, he got put in during a home game when the Beavers were far enough ahead for a series or two if I have the story right. But that was it as far as glory. It’s a lot better than I could have ever hoped to do, but I wonder now if he wouldn’t have had a better overall experience going to the smaller school and getting more playing time.
I think the same thing can be applied to life in other areas such as work as well. I’ve worked at places where I felt like the dumbest engineer in the building and I’ve also worked at places where they treated me like some sort of rock star. I have to say I like rock star better.
Footnote[1]: The coaches from Wards drafted the All-Star team and about 1/2 the players came from their own team. I think the entire infield was from Wards plus two of the pitchers. They did well. They won the district tournament and State, advanced to the regionals in San Bernardino California and eventually lost there. But I think they were just one tournament away from going to the really big show, The Little League World Series in Williamsport, PA. In some ways this makes me feel a little better. The league was pretty stacked with talent that year so I was playing against some top quality kids.
Footnote[2]: I’m also grateful for the “no quitting” rule from my father. That’s a good rule for parents to have. Finish what you start. Life isn’t always about success. Tough experiences can be our teacher too.
Footnote[3]: During Dad’s junior baseball season at St. Mary’s High School in Eugene… The team only played 3 games that year, and two of them were a part of a double-header. Week after week of rainouts. He recalled sitting in class, watching outside as the rain poured and then hearing the announcement about the cancelled game. Such is the problem with trying to have a baseball season in the Pacific Northwest when the season starts in March.
Sometimes software programmers get too cute. Every time I turn around, they exercise a technique called “Information Hiding” where supposedly all those nitty-gritty details that you don’t need to worry about are tucked away in a far away method that you either don’t have access to or will take a week to discover. The problem is, when I’m debugging, I want access to everything. I don’t want to have to go read up on your little API and sort through 60 methods to find the one I’m interested and how to use it before I can continue my debugging session. I want to be able to “see” what’s happening on the other side when I invoke a method. Such is the case with Java.
I’m using an Open Source Continuous Integration Build tool called Jenkins to deploy some WAR files to Tomcat containers. All I need to do is setup Jenkins to pull in a dynamic list. To get my list in true dynamic fashion I have to go through 3 layers of programming interfaces before I can actually think in terms of one of the simplest data structures, a List.
Jenkins employs something called “Scriptler” which is a fancy name for calling a “Groovy” script. Groovy is a dynamic language that is basically a layer on top of Java with some additional features. Oh, and there are other Java plugins involved just to throw in a few more variables about what could be different between systems.
The problem I’m having is that on Apache Tomcat, with a specific version of Java under the hood, I can get my list to display properly in Jenkins. For some reason under SpringSource Tomcat, it doesn’t want to work. This line:
def line = new File(prefix + appServerType + “/” + envType + “/jvms_by_server”).readLines()
On Apache, “line” results in an array of lines snarfed in from my file “jvms_by_server”:
On SpringSource, “line” results in [big-long-line-of-all-tye-lines-in-my-file-as-a-single-element]
So it doesn’t display right.
In both situations I’m passing the exact same array back to the caller, up through Java, Groovy, Scriptler, and finally back to Jenkins — none of which I can “see”. So how do you explain how it works? In Software-speak, we call that “Fucking Magic”, aka FM.
I have no way to trace the flow of execution because everything is just a little too cute.
I miss strcat, strlen, strcmp, and strcpy and being able to visualize every character in an array from main() to the lowest level subroutine with good old fashioned gdb. Got an extra “\n” in there? Chop off your char *ptr by a character and be done with it already!
Screw FM, I want me some good old fashioned C code so I can see what the hell I’m doing!
The first thing that went through my head when I read what the CEO of Titan Tire Corporation said about the French and their work ethic was “yep, that’s exactly why the rest of the world thinks we’re such ignorant assholes.” It’s because we are. The thing is, it’s not even what Maurice Taylor is saying that’s the issue, it’s how he’s saying it. He doesn’t qualify his words or make any attempt to show some type of compassion or understanding about French culture before he leads into his objective argument. He simply tosses cultural differences aside as if his technical college never forced him to take one of those silly “arts and humanities” classes to round out their degrees.
The French aren’t interested in your arguments about work ethic and 40 hour work weeks. They’ve been there, they know what that reality is like, and they’ve chosen a different path. What I’d really be interested in is how much Maurice Taylor could be persuaded that the French have got this one right by spending a little time in their country and working by their rules. I spent nine months in France teaching English to elementary children. I didn’t work much, about 20 hours per week or so, a bit less than even the French standard (the French work week is actually 35 hours). The mindset is different there. They give you extra time for lunch, and people fill up the tables outside local cafes and restaurants since they have adequate time for a sit down meal. It’s a remarkable act of community engagement that breaks up the work day.
The French believe that you should work to live, not live to work. That doesn’t mean you can’t be passionate about what you do and make an impact in fewer hours, it just means a slightly different idea of exactly how many hours with and away your family is reasonable. Once the entire economy is forced to obey by these rules, it levels the playing field in all domestic markets and the population enjoys extra time off. Is this at a loss in production? The numbers show no, and that that might be changing, but even if it does, who cares? Why are we so obsessed with working? Are we really meant to work ourselves into a state where our bodies no longer function ideally and then see what we’ve got left in us? Forget that.
You can say what you want about the French, but they’re healthier, more educated, more visited, and more devoted to the things in life that really matter than we are. I find that humbling, and I think it’s sad that our immediate reaction involves cynicism and cultural ignorance.
My favorite part is when people think that the French are doing all of these things at a huge expense to their debt ratio. Here’s a list of the top countries’ debt to GDP ratioshttp://www.economicshelp.org/blog/774/economics/list-of-national-debt-by-country/
… look who’s higher up than France? AMERICA. The French are doing more with less, their country is less in debt than ours is yet they are afforded more time off and more access to quality healthcare and services than just about any other place.
Instead of criticizing the French way of life maybe Maurice Taylor should be asking for tips on how relieve stress of his employees and maintain profitability. This is America, though, and we don’t ask for help, we lend it.
Republicans have a huge problem. They desperately want to be the party of fiscal restraint, but have no idea how to get there without losing even more of their dwindling piece of the electorate pie. The latest tactic employed by more senior members of Congress is to publicly go on the warpath for programs that really don’t make any sort of a dent in the budget what-so-ever, just so they can be on the record as “wanting cuts”. They are also not shy about “wanting cuts” to entitlements yet refuse to get specific about which ones. Doing so would risk being held accountable by seniors and the poor during the next election cycle.
Case in point. Eric Cantor recently lamented on twitter a $4M spend on IRS TV. Mitt Romney went way out on the limb with 100 times this amount, $445M for killing Big Bird and PBS.
Here’s where we need Ross Perot to step in with some PIE charts and explain to the American people what these suggestions actually mean.
Even Mitt’s commitment to defund PBS amounts to 0.014% of the 17 Trillion dollar federal budget. Maybe that’s what it is. Trillion is just too big of a unit to comprehend. Million, Billion, Trillion. What’s the diff?
I can’t even show the impact of this on the above chart because it would not be visible to the naked eye.
As the PIE chart shows, 60% of the budget goes towards Medicare, Social Security, and Labor, and 18% to the Pentagon. This is where the real meat is.
The dilemma they have is getting specific about the meaty parts. That’s tricky business. The usual tactic is to offer up vague proposals for spending cuts and then point the finger at the other guy for not having a specific proposal. Both sides engage in this.
I think the American people would be okay with the labor spend if we could actually have something to show for it. Where’s our Mt. Rushmore? Where’s our Timberline Lodge? Where’s our Hoover dam? I’m not seeing it or anything close to it. I understand Obama inherited a leaky ship and QE I and II were just about trying to keep the ship from sinking. But still, we don’t have much of anything to show for it and that’s unsettling and opens up the door for massive criticism about where did the money go?
I just wanted to take time out this morning and thank Eric and Mitt for their detailed suggestions and then see if I could put them in perspective with an actual PIE chart. Turns out it’s not possible.
10. Laura Ingraham
Laura Ingraham is a watered down version of Ann Coulter. Not nearly as vitriolic as Ann, but a conservative holier-than-thou ass-wipe just the same. There’s a definite vibe of “listen to me, I know best” when listening to Laura.
9. Karl Rove
Rove is the puppet-master that runs the Republican machine. He’s the one directing where all the money comes from, and where it goes. The fact that he promised to deliver Mitt Romney and then failed to do so ticked off a lot of rich people. His waffling on election night was entertainment at its best.
8. Geraldo Rivera
Geraldo sensationalizes everything and is an attention grabber. His 15 minutes were over after the pirate treasure debacle.
7. John Sununu
Sununu hasn’t smiled since 1980. 10 minutes of negativity from John every time. Count on it.
6. Herman Cain
Cain is an idiot, plain and simple. The fact that he garnered support for a run for the White House is downright scary. Almost as scary as Sarah Palin at the helm.
5. Charles Krauthammer
Charles is an arrogant intellectual wanna-be. Points off for chumming up to Bill O’Reilly
4. Michelle Malkin
Michelle is that little twit that you just want to smack upside the head but can’t.
3. Bill O’Reilly
O’Reilly occasionally surprises me with some objectivity, but it’s rare. As of late he likes to intimidate. He’s a partisan hack like the rest of them and he’s miserable now that Obama has been elected for a second term and I love watching him espouse his strict father approach to everything. A veritable one-size fits all solution to whatever ails the country.
2. Sean Hannity
At least Fox isn’t trying to mask the Fair and Balanced charade with Hannity and Colmes anymore since Colmes departed. But still, Hannity spews vitriol at liberals for 60 solid minutes every day, and is anything but a News man.
1. Ann Coulter
This one needs very little explanation from anyone who has seen Ann in action. To see her is to instantly know why she qualifies for the #1 pick. I’m delighted at the increasing number of youtube.com videos on display that show Ann getting booed off the stage.
Honorable Mention:
Greg Gutfeld, Monica Crowley, Dennis Miller, William Kristol, Cal Thomas, Britt Hume, Sarah Palin, Dick Morris, and Lou Dobbs
Fox sure can pick ’em eh? What a staff!
E.J. Dionne has a suggestion about how to move the Catholic Church forward in the 21st Century:
The Vatican conclave should elect a nun as the next Bishop of Rome. Even though Las Vegas odds makers have this probability at 0.00001%, Dionne weighed in with some interesting angles on the idea just for the sake of discussion, and I agree it’s a worthy discussion.
The Church has a numbers problem. The number of men entering the Priesthood has been on the decline to the point where there are now over 1300 Catholics per Priest in the United States. And the US is in better position than other parts of the world by an order of magnitude.
I haven’t been a weekly attendee since 1986, so my personal experiences are somewhat dated, but the fundamental reason I applaud Dionne for having the audacity to suggest improbable reform is I sensed parishioners desperately need a tangible way to connect with their leaders, and that’s been missing for decades. The people I talk with are fascinated by the history of Rome and all its artifacts, but they seldom listen to the messages coming from the hierarchy.
The fact is, when the Priest isn’t looking, the whispers in the coffee and donut area paint a picture of Rome as a bunch of inflexible, out of touch old geezers. Everyone wonders when someone will do something about the role of women in the Church, and why so much hub-bub about birth control. Connection with your leaders is important in any organization, as is a shared vision.
Personal experience tells me that most practicing Catholics take little, if any, guidance from Rome when it comes to their personal lives, struggle with the more conservative teachings of the Church, but carry on just the same as practicing the faith with their local local Parish because they can connect at a local level. This gives their lives additional meaning and purpose in spite of what the Church hierarchy has to say.
There are countless anti-birth control, pro choice, gay marriage supporting, “could care less about celibacy” Catholics attending Mass every week. That’s got to be a tough pill to swallow for those parishioners when the guy at the pulpit is focusing on those particular messages. I guess it’s just ignore for now and move on. Indeed there is even a reform movement amongst Priests to attempt to change the celibacy rules and women’s role, but alas it falls on deaf ears every time.
The fact is, most people have inherited a belief system from our families and in most cases, this decision was made at infancy. The was no objective choice involved in it. Along the way we have not taken the effort to fully reconcile their personal, religious, and political beliefs, and the reason there is, it’s nearly impossible to complete the exercise successfully if you’re a practicing Catholic in the modern world. To complete the exercise might result in the realization that if I get to be honest about it, maybe I’m not really on board with some of the basic tenets of the Church. It’s certainly not reflected in my voting record, which is sort of where the rubber meets the road. And then there’s figuring out what to do about that discovery.
Which brings me back to the hierarchy in Rome. There’s a certain mystique about the flow of successors from St. Peter. Papal visits as recent as Pope John Paul II have drawn enormous crowds in the hundreds of thousands of people, come to be near or touched by the chosen one. As humans we tend to do that though. There aren’t many organizations that span the entire world as the Catholic Church does.
So then the question is, what’s the real connection people have with the Pope? Obviously he can’t go on a continuous world tour, be there to say Mass for us every week and we don’t get to invite him over for dinner, so apart from getting himself a new Twitter handle (@pontifex), what is it that he can do to connect with his flock?
I’ve witnessed incredibly strong connections among Parishioners of several Churches and there is also sometimes a connection with the Priest as teacher, mentor, and friend. To the extent he can deliver messages that touch our personal lives he will be successful in his job. To the extent that he focuses on the more controversial subjects of our time, he starts to lose that connection. Thankfully, Catholicism is not usually considered synonymous with fire and brimstone teachings. I would characterize it as more of an intellectual endeavor for those who see richness in the traditions, find comfort in rote phrases, but not horribly intimate on a personal level as people usually keep to themselves. It’s more unspoken – the sharing of the common bonds we have in all of our upbringings. The values passed down from our parents that help us choose personal sacrifice over greed when we are able.
There are two themes of messages that come from the church in my own personal experience. Quite coincidentally, there is an Old Testament and a New Testament and one can easily get confused about which message should get the most attention or guide us in the modern world. The confusion comes about because people can’t decide if the focus should be on the the Old Testament God who frequently imposes his wrath on those who disobey his commandments with floods, drought, and pestilence, or his son Jesus who preached about humility, forgiveness, unselfishness, and love thy neighbor.
The Old Testament has many messages in it, but the one people tend to focus on the most is The Ten Commandments. For those who’ve been indoctrinated, this is where self-discipline comes into play. Self-discipline is a good thing of course, but the Church over-simplifies the “rules of the game” if you will. Using the Old Testament as documented proof, they proclaim that a broken commandment will result in eternity in hell. They are pretty clear about that. Any questions? No? Okay, time for recess.
This is over-simplifying it greatly, but The New Testament is more about Jesus’ life and his message of do unto others. In the context of the teachings of the Church, it’s much, much easier to connect with the teachings of the New Testament vs. The Old Testament. When I think about The New Testament and its ideas coming into practice, I think about volunteering down at the Oregon Food Bank. I think about how I should be donating more money to charity. About social justice and how criminal it is that we have so many poor among us, especially children live in poverty. About making personal sacrifices so that others can have a chance.
When I observe Catholics today, I have this tendency to put them into one of these two camps. There’s the Bill O’Reilly / Sean Hannity / Laura Ingraham “Old Testament” conservative camp who often suggest, as they were taught, that if only we could just get everyone to adhere to the Ten Commandments and exercise more self discipline in our homes and schools, the world’s problems would be solved. Also known as the “Strict Father” approach. They often staunchly defend the more arcane teachings of the Church including birth control and abstinence, even though they don’t practice these teachings themselves.
The other camp is those who believe the Old Testament is an interesting collection of historical documents, but do not recognize it as their behavioral compass for the the 21st century. They recognize the hierarchy in Rome but truth be told, they think it desperately needs change in the modern world. They are more focused on things like social justice and rolling up their sleeves to help the poor and adopting some of the more traits we identify with Jesus’ teachings. These are the folks I can connect with the most.
It’s sort of baffling to think that these two extremes exist under the same roof, but they do every Sunday. But it’s no wonder when one week the focus is from the Book of Leviticus and the next it’s the Gospel of Luke, the power of forgiveness and turning the other cheek.
Most baffling of all, is the O’Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh’s of the world and their never ending support for winner take all ‘pure capitalism’. They seem to have no qualms what-so-ever about billionaires amassing grotesque fortunes while 2/3 of the world’s population goes unfed. Is that God’s will? Meanwhile they use their media pulpit to pontificate about the benefits of torture, the latest weapons program, unrestricted access to assault weapons for all, and cry blasphemy whenever cuts to the Defense Department are suggested. This brand of Catholic, I simply do not get and probably never will. All I can surmise is, they must have spent 10 weeks on the Old Testament in class, and about 5 minutes on the New Testament.
Circling back to Dionne’s suggestion of a nun as Pope and my main point that the people benefit the most when connected with their leaders, the very idea of having a modern day Mother Theresa as leader of the Church would energize the faithful more than anything else I can possibly imagine. The connection would be instantaneous and powerful. People can instantly identify with roll up their sleeves leadership who spend their lives in service to others, focusing more on what’s important today – feeding the world’s poor, ending violence, social justice. The message would be 100 times more powerful because it’s not coming from someone cloaked in layers of robes and funny looking hats being driven around in a Pope-mobile perceived as someone whose priorities are completely out of whack, focusing on keeping the clergy an old boys club, only celibate men allowed, to the bitter end.
And speaking of the end, here’s my prediction. The next Pope will indeed not be a nun. He will instead be a conservative like his predecessor. The number of Priests will continue to decline, and Churches around the world will adjust using whatever means they figure are reasonable, Rome be damned.
They will still gather, say Mass without a Priest, recite the Creed, give the sign of peace, sing hymns, have a Gospel reading, take communion, and carry on all of the traditions they were taught and pass them on to their children. A few men in Rome will hold on to “power”, but very few people will care what they say or do.
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