A Lie That Would Bring a Tear to the Eye of Joseph Goebbels

I can’t believe there are Jewish Democrats who are trying to portray Sarah Palin as an anti-Semite. This is insane. The claim? She “supported Pat Buchanan” in an election bid. The truth? While working for the Steve Forbes campaign, Buchanan showed up for a visit, and she put on a Buchanan button, as a courtesy.

How can you work for the Forbes campaign and be a Buchanan supporter? You can’t. I bought a Nader shirt, as a joke. I guess that makes me a liberal.

When are American Jews going to realize that Bible-believing American Christians are their most powerful allies, and that as far as Israel is concerned, the bank accounts of American Christians are God’s purse?

Sarah Palin governs a state with very few Jews. She’s extremely popular, so she has no need to court favor with a small minority. Yet she works hard to maintain good relations with them, she decorates her office with an Israeli flag, and she wears an Israeli flag pin. This is in contrast to Barack Obama, who had to be bullied into wearing the flag of his own country, and who has a decades-long track record of close friendship with–and of absorbing religious and moral instruction from–an anti-Semitic pastor. Alaskan Jewish leaders have nothing but good things to say about her. If they knew of a problem, don’t you think they’d be complaining?

Buchanan is a disgrace, and it was a mistake to wear the button. But if wearing a Buchanan button for one day is proof of hostility to Jews, why don’t we condemn his publisher and the liberal cable network that keep him on their payrolls? Actually, condemning MNBC is a pretty good idea. Buchanan’s issues with Jews and Israel are sufficiently well documented to make the granting of regular television airtime utterly inappropriate and somewhat offensive.

How can American Jews be so blind about the intentions of conservative Christians like Sarah Palin? It has to be the result of a deliberate effort to ignore the facts. All over America, we are supporting Israel and the Jews financially and in prayer, and we even base our votes largely on Israel’s interests. More than Jews do. And we do it all gladly, with no expectation of reward or even the opportunity to proselytize. What more can we do?

Obviously, Christians are not Jews. We don’t agree on doctrine. We think Jews are mistaken about some of their beliefs. We would love to see them all wake up one day and decide Jesus is the Messiah. So what? Our money and our loyalty and our prayers have no strings attached. Aren’t benevolent Christians who help you all they can better than hostile leftists who call Israel “Palestine”?

There are Jewish leaders who do everything they can to prevent Christian money from reaching Israel. That’s beyond belief. If we can think you’re wrong and still give you hundreds of millions of dollars, can’t you think we’re wrong and take it?

“Hundreds of millions” is probably understating the case. The International Federation of Christians and Jews (Christians donating, Jews coordinating and distributing) has provided hundreds of millions, all by itself. And politicans we elect have the power to send much more.

If liberal American Jews think our money is tainted, they should be sending so much of their own, ours isn’t needed. But they aren’t. Show me a Jew other Jews aren’t helping, and then tell me a Christian shouldn’t pitch in. Tell me it’s wrong for a Christian to send money to fly an Ethiopian Jewish couple home to Israel. Take a look at the way oppressed Jews are living in filthy Ethiopian camps and then try to sell me. Tell me we shouldn’t be buying hot food for Holocaust survivors who are alone and too old to take care of themselves. I would like to hear your arguments. Christians have sent hundreds of thousands of Jews home to Israel. How many has George Soros sent? We are responsible for the existence of a substantial percentage of Israel’s population. How big a percentage? At least 5%. Imagine the US without Michigan and Minnesota.

Americans send charity money to people all over the world. How can it be possible that Jews are the only people we should not help?

You know what Jewry’s punishment will be, if American Jews don’t wake up and accept the Christian right as friends? NOTHING. We’re going to send money ANYWAY. How can you beat a deal like that? This is one of the few areas in which we begin to approach Jesus’s altruistic style. We’re doing something consistent with what we preach. Give us a break. Acknowledge it. The ancient Jews let the Gentile Cyrus build the second temple. As the Jews fled Egypt, they accepted money and treasure from their former tormentors, who feared the Jewish God. Surely my money is just as clean. Why discount one of the most beautiful developments in your history?

If we are on the side of Jews in Israel, it stands to reason that we are on the side of Jews in the US. We may differ on social issues, but in an increasingly anti-Semitic world, in which the people who agree with you politically get more hostile every year, how important is that?

If anything, Sarah Palin’s political and religious beliefs indicate she is very likely to be a diehard friend of the Jews. That ought to be obvious. Goebbels said that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will perceive it as the truth. Funny how that doesn’t seem to work for the truth itself.

Genius, or Plain Old Greed?

I get annoyed with the T. Boone Pickens windmill commercials. Windmills are eyesores, and it turns out they cause a lot of environmental damage, in the form of dead birds. And the low-frequency sound they emit supposedly has devastating health effects on some animals and people. Apart from that, they draw attention away from safe, clean, abundant nuclear power, which we have utterly failed to exploit. Maybe the hazards of windmills can be beaten, but right now, the people who promote them are sweeping the issue under the rug.

One thing he says seems intelligent, however. He’s pushing natural gas as a fuel. And today I saw a news story saying many people in Utah are already using it, at a cost that compares to 87-cent gasoline.

That sounds wonderful. But I seem to recall a troubling principle called “supply and demand.” Right now, almost nobody owns a gas-powered car. That means the vehicle-driven demand for natural gas is negligible. Now, what if we convert a hundred million vehicles? What happens then? The figure may be 87 cents now, but for all I know, it could rise to fifty dollars when we’re all bidding on the same cubic foot of gas. And I can’t find the information on the web. It’s such an obvious threshold question. Has T. Boone even considered it?

People say Apple computers are immune to viruses and hacks. That’s a huge lie. The reason Apples are safer is that they make up a small percentage of the market, and hackers want to wreak as much havoc as possible, so they usually program for Windows. As Apples become more popular, they are proving just as vulnerable as Windows computers. Probably more vulnerable, because the Apple people think they’re safe, and they’re not trying as hard to protect themselves. The same sort of idea applies to gas-powered cars. The more of them there are, the lower the gas price advantage will probably be.

Look how the price of corn skyrocketed when we decided it was a fuel.

His site says our gas reserves are twice as big as our petroleum reserves. That’s no answer. Does he mean they contain twice the useful energy? Twice the volume? The site doesn’t say. The best scenario would be if the gas reserves contained twice the energy. But that still doesn’t tell you what the gas would cost when you pull up at a service station.

Critics point out that the same people who now sell us oil have most of the world’s gas, so we might be dependent on them even after a mass conversion. If their gas is cheaper, we’ll buy it and let ours sit in the ground. And T. Boone is up to his eyeballs in potentially profitable wind and gas investments, so he has a powerful motive to push these alternatives regardless of whether they make sense. He didn’t become a billionaire through altruism.

Oil shale and oil sand still look mighty good. The break-even point is way below the current price of oil, and we have reserves so huge they give the Saudis nightmares. And oil is a marvelous fuel, and we’re already set up to use it. Ethanol is a disgraceful CO2-belching joke. We need to think about solutions that actually work, without causing famine or grotesque environmental damage.

Maybe the answer is to use gas for fleet vehicles, which don’t have to rely on a network of stations, and to power most of our passenger cars with oil from shale. It looks like Pickens may be more interested in feathering his already-huge nest than in helping the planet.

He says he’s been an oil man all his life, and now he’s pushing windmills and gas. Doesn’t that kind of make sense, now that he’s a windmills-and-gas man?

More

If you want disturbing news, go to the Pickens site and use their handy natural-gas-station locator. The places nearest to my house are in the next county. After that, I believe you have to go to Atlanta. The locator also says what the current “gallon” price is. In Atlanta, it’s $2.54. Down here, it’s $1.50 and $1.20. So 87¢ is already optimistic. I had a gas-powered car right now, I’d have to drive sixty miles to fill up, and I’d pay a minimum of $1.20.

Nice Work

I forced myself to watch the Republican convention last night. Ordinarily, I try to minimize my exposure to political programming. Long ago, I abandoned the notion that this should be a political blog. And watching people strive with each other, competing who can tell the most damaging lies, makes my stomach hurt.

My overall impression was that Sarah Palin has electrified Republicans. A couple of weeks ago, we were listless and bored. Now we’re sending money to McCain. We’re cheering for Sarah. We’re furious at the slimy attacks on her daughter. We even like John McCain. That, in and of itself, is miraculous.

Whoever chose Sarah Palin is a political genius. He moved millions of Hillary voters into the GOP camp (check PUMA sites and see for yourself), he woke up the base, he gave hope to Christians, and he added a powerful dose of legitimacy to McCain’s “reformer” label.

The vicious efforts to humiliate her child have backfired. They make Obama’s supporters look inhuman. They exposed the diseased heart of the far left, which includes much of the mainstream media.

President Bush made a brief, polished, gracious video appearance. Vice President Cheney had the good sense to stay away, even though none of the evils the left attributes to him have been substantiated. Then we were treated to a tasteful and appropriate tribute to an American hero, Navy SEAL Michael Monsoor, who threw himself on a grenade to save his buddies and three Iraqis. That was a great reminder of what Republicans are supposed to be about. Duty. Sacrifice. Service to country. National security, which is still an issue, regardless of how much Barack Obama wants it to go away.

Fred Thompson came out and gave the kind of speech he would have given last year, had he really wanted to be President. He told us things about John McCain, which most of us didn’t know. He has a total of seven children, including an adopted daughter who was an orphan in Bangladesh. John McCain had two opportunities to leave Vietnam, not one, and he refused both. When he arrived at the Hanoi Hilton, the kind, enlightened Vietnamese leftists left him on a cell floor with broken limbs and stab wounds, lying in his own waste because he could not move himself. Thompson described the torture McCain willingly submitted to by turning down a trip home. They broke his teeth out. They beat him repeatedly and used ropes to stretch his arms behind his back. He suffered more broken bones. To many liberals, this is simply the fitting and just consequence of having dropped bombs from an American airplane. To healthier minds, it is heart-wrenching.

Fred was great, but the speech I liked best came from Joe Lieberman. He’s not the orator Fred Thompson is, but he was the convincing bearer of several crucial messages which may swing this election. Some were unspoken, but they were still powerful.

Here’s what he was trying to convey. 1. Republicans are the only friends Israel and the Jews have, and it’s okay for Jews to vote for them. 2. We need a President who cares about national security, and who will terrify our enemies. 3. These issues are so important, even social liberals need to cross the line just this once. 4. The notion that John McCain is George Bush’s puppet is not only wrong, but absurd. 5. John McCain is willing to include Democrats in his administration.

That’s not demagoguery. Those things are all true. And the man who delivered the speech has zero credibility problems.

Lieberman also pointed out that Obama is a sheep in wolf’s clothing. He claims to be his own man, but he has never been involved in any kind of reform. That’s saying something, for a politician who worked in corrupt Chicago and then went on to the US Senate. He never crossed swords with his leaders. He never questioned the status quo. In fact, he did exactly as he was told. And in the Senate, he did virtually nothing, aside from showing up to vote once in a while.

“Change”? For Obama, the biggest change would be change itself. When it comes to change, he can’t carry Sarah Palin’s purse.

Lieberman spoke against his own best interests, which is a powerful indicator that he was sincere. It may be true that he’s expecting a Cabinet post from McCain, but right now, he’s a Senate bigwig who can use his majority-completing status to make the Democrats crawl. And he knows he may lose leverage in November, if the Democrat margin is expanded. Commentators sometimes call Lieberman “shrewd,” which is often anti-Semitic for “tricky Jew,” and they claim he’s doing all these things purely to advance his career. That would only make sense if Obama were a weak candidate, or if Republicans were expected to maintain their numbers in the Senate. Even if GOP Senate seats were safe, it would be risky, because now Lieberman has to answer to the liberal base that elected him. He may well be ousted.

I like what I’m seeing. Convention attendees seemed energetic and full of confidence, and the liberal pundits are lashing out with as much venom as they can muster, which proves they’re scared. Debates are coming up, and we already know Obama and Biden are very weak debaters. I wish we had had another Reagan up our sleeve last year, but we didn’t. And Barack Obama is Jimmy Carter without the experience. John McCain will do. Maybe he’ll get his chance.

Sad News

Jerry Reed is dead.

I am going to be up-front and admit that I never bought his albums, but I really enjoyed his acting. He was wonderful in The Survivors. And he was one of those celebrities you just can’t help but like.

I have a cousin who is probably mourning tonight.

Here is proof that the man could play the guitar:

Damn cigarettes.

Francine Rescued

Get Belafonte on the Line

Usually when I start blogging, I come up with a topic to talk about. Today I think I’ll just wander around.

First of all, bananas. My plantain trees are producing bananas. Which makes them banana trees. I gave some away, and I have been informed that they make excellent chips, if you slice them thin and fry them. This doesn’t make them plantains. Some bananas stand up to cooking, and some plantains can be eaten raw. It’s confusing. I’m pretty sure these are bananas. They’re easy to peel, and they taste great raw.

I’m trying to understand bananas. If I am even close to getting it right, the first bananas humans ate had big hard seeds in them. We bred the seeds out, so bananas are now sterile and have to be propagated by shoots. Before about 1960, Americans used to buy a banana variety called Gros Michel. “Fat Mike.” The bananas we now buy are Cavendish bananas. They used to be considered junk, and they were not exported. But Gros Michel bananas succumbed to a blight.

I’ll tell you right away, some of this information may be wrong. I found a site for a company that sells little banana trees by mail, and they gave another name for the bananas we see at stores. The site says this type of banana is excellent, but only if you grow them yourself. Store bananas are picked green, and they’re not as good. Now maybe the other name means the same thing as “Cavendish.” I don’t know. But it’s hard to believe that the fairly tasty bananas we see in stores were ever considered junk.

Here is more news. A blight has hit the Cavendish banana. It’s a fungus. And because Cavendish banana trees are genetically identical, there is no hope that we’ll find a resistant cultivar. So if the blight ever gets to the Americas, we will have no bananas today, forever. Yes, that’s right. Scientists are claiming it’s the end of the banana world.

I find this hard to believe. First of all, plants mutate, so I doubt all Cavendish trees are the same. Second, predictions like this almost never come true. Third, it’s not clear to me that all edible bananas come from this line. There are hundreds of different types of bananas. Some are huge. Some are small. Some are purple. The taste varies. I can’t believe they’re all going to be hit by the blight. Surely they’re not that closely related. Fourth, if we bred tasty seedless bananas once, why can’t we do it again? You see what I’m saying.

Here in Miami, we have approximately nine billion varieties of banana and plantain (different plant, but similar). If you go to a fruit market, you may see some very odd bananas. And all of them are better than regular store bananas. Are they all going to become extinct? Can you buy into that?

Here’s the proposed solution to the banana blight: genetic modification. And of course, the greenies are scared that modified bananas will give us tumors or make us explode or something. So my best guess is, poor, backward countries will get modified bananas, and we’ll do without, just like we do without Corvairs and DDT.

I tried to identify my bananas online. It’s impossible. They’re about seven inches long and 2 1/2″ thick. The flesh is very white. They’re stubby. The closest match I can find is a Hawaiian cultivar called Hua Moa, but they’re smaller.

Whatever. I’ll still eat them.

Last night I felt I needed some Haagen-Dazs. And I noticed the twenty-plus pounds of bananas on the counter. I sliced one into chunks, added strawberry Haagen-Dazs, added chocolate syrup, and went to town. These bananas are excellent with ice cream. Store bananas tend to be mealy and flavorless, by yard-banana standards. These are firm and smooth-textured, and they have a lemony kind of taste. Very nice.

I still need a plantain tree. Maybe Home Depot has one.

If you’re worried about hard times, and you live in an area where these things will grow, get yourself a couple of banana and plantain trees. You’ll have an endless supply of starch and fiber, from a very small piece of land. And they’re good for you. And boy, are they versatile. You can even make flour out of them.

Without being gross, let me assure you that fiber from bananas or plantains has fine qualities you will appreciate. You will understand what I mean, if you’ve ever made the mistake of eating two bowls of All-Bran.

What else is happening? Let’s see. The Palin kerfuffle.

I can’t believe we’re still hearing about this. You would think liberal pundits would be smart enough to tread lightly, and some are, but last night, I saw a female comedian on Larry King, gloating about the pregnancy. She was openly thrilled that Sarah Palin’s daughter had made this devastating, humiliating mistake. She made fun of teaching abstinence, saying it was clearly a great success in Wasilla. I could not believe it. Imagine being a pregnant 17-year-old and watching adults make fun of you on national TV. What ever happened to decency and compassion? Aren’t conservatives supposed to be the mean ones? We’re pretty good about things like this. We may shoot you in the face from time to time, but we won’t humiliate your children.

I’m disgusted to see TV personalities harping on the story. They hide behind the claim that it’s legitimate news. It was legitimate news when a vice presidential candidate’s wife admitted she drank rubbing alcohol, but I don’t recall panels being convened to discuss it. For that matter, I don’t recall anyone seizing on Betty Ford’s addiction to belittle Gerald Ford. And Ford was a Republican. I suppose that if Ford were in office today, and Betty admitted her problem, we’d see the same kind of cruelty. After all, we saw a lot of Steve Irwin “humor” right after he died. You can’t sink much lower than that.

Is this how desperate McCain’s enemies are? Are they so scared of a lady from Wasilla that they’re willing to torment her child in front of tens of millions of people? Is it really that hard to stay on the issues? This is like skipping diplomacy and going straight for the H-bomb. If Obama is right on the issues, and he’s capable of being a good President, he shouldn’t need this kind of help. And it has to be counterproductive. He’s smart enough to know that. He discouraged these attacks.

People will say Republicans picked on Obama’s wife. Sorry, that won’t fly. She’s an adult. She chose to inject herself into the debate. No one forced a microphone into her hand. Notice how the pundits are less interested in Cindy McCain? That’s because she doesn’t make provocative remarks, the way Michelle Obama does. If she starts, the Democrats have every right to respond. Someone show me how Sarah Palin’s daughter provoked a response.

It makes me think about things I’ve written, which I should have kept to myself.

I wonder what the teen pregnancy rate in Wasilla is, compared to New York City, where teachers pass out condoms and probably hold counseling sessions for girls who have failed to get pregnant. The sky-high AIDS rate in New York ought to tell you all you need to know about the effectiveness of the liberal approach.

I still can’t believe educators hand out condoms to children. It’s one of those things that make you wonder if you’re living in a lucid dream. In a few years, they’ll be passing out beers and buying spray paint for vandals.

Let’s move on. To sea monsters. It looks like Sweden is competing with Loch Ness. Some Swedes in need of a hobby set up a camera, trying to catch their version of Nessie, which lives in a lake the name of which I can’t identify, because the website, Storsjöodjuret (“More state-subsidized vodka, please”), is in Swedish. They have footage of something that looks like a blob of mucus caught in turbulence. The site asks the compelling question: “Vad händer just nu?” To which I gamely reply, “Clap it up, my hammies.” That’s my stock response to everything.

It sure looks fake. Maybe it’s an angry lutefisk. Never get between a lutefisk and its cubs.

I predict that this will turn out to be just as genuine as the beer-cooler Sasquatch that turned up in Georgia. It’s too bad that was a fake. Think of the beer endorsements. “Hey, Bigfoot! WASSSUUPPPPPPP!”

I’m so glad people stopped saying that. I’m pretty sure there was a point where preachers were using it to start their sermons. “WASSSUUPPPPPPP, sinners! Open your Bibles to Exodus, chapter three, verse seven…”

I got a lot of responses to my last post on religion. I want to thank everyone. I feel a lot of relief, even though I have improved to a pretty limited extent. Sometimes I feel myself about to say or do something of the sort that used to weary me in the past, and something stops me, and it makes me very glad. It’s like rejecting delivery of a time bomb. I hope that in the future, I’ll be able to do it more consistently.

I got an email from a friend yesterday, asking about another friend, who has gotten a divorce. I managed to catch myself and provide only limited details, for fear of gossiping. I know the inquiry was well-intended. But I thought it was best not to start down that road. In the past, I would have blabbed whatever I knew. I know the divorced friend wouldn’t care, but still, it’s best not to function as a local version of TMZ.

Looks like Hurricane Gustav is all washed up, which is an answer to prayer. The storm caused a number of deaths, and it damaged a great deal of property, but it also highlighted the persistent vulnerability of New Orleans, without flooding the city again. I know people who were affected by the storm aren’t feeling grateful for that, but maybe it will move the government to speed up improvements.

The GOP needs to go ahead with the convention. The usual cranks will criticize them, but the streets are dry, the Superdome is empty, the winds are gone, and it’s okay to resume normal life.

I hope Hanna continues to disappoint. The projected path is promising, in that it takes the storm away from areas that have already been pounded, and it keeps it offshore and headed into cooler water for quite some time. The farther north it goes before it makes landfall, the better. Ike is disconcerting. I hope Haiti and the DR and Cuba don’t take any more blows. The historical data suggests it will go north and vanish. That would be nice.

I’m annoyed to see weather people calling the next wave “Josephine,” when it’s still nothing but a bunch of wobbly clouds. There are some kinds of optimism we really don’t need.

What tires me is the endless sensation that hurricanes are nearby. The weather has a certain feel to it when tropical activity is going on within a few hundred miles. It feels ominous. And we get a lot of drizzle and clouds. It’s like being held at gunpoint for weeks.

Supposedly, we’re in a period where sunspots are infrequent, and that may mean the planet will cool for a number of years. If cooling means fewer hurricanes, I’m all for it.

My coffee is cold. I better publish this.

I Think It’s Possible

Sometimes I like to write about my experiences as I pursue my faith, to see how they compare to what happens to others. This is one of those times.

Aaron is an Orthodox Jew. He doesn’t allow broadcast or cable television in his house. And he has…boy, I hope I get the number right…six well-mannered kids with wonderful personalities. He’s glad he kept TV out of their lives. He says there is no way to restore lost innocence.

I think what he has done is smart. Feeding your mind television is like giving your body a diet of Skittles and vodka, and his kids lost nothing of value. But I suspect that innocence can be restored.

Over the course of my life, I’ve become jaded and cynical to shut out the pain of feeling things. It’s a defense I worked at deliberately. The world is a challenging place when you let yourself feel, and growing a thick skin can save you a lot of suffering. On the other hand, you lose the ability to gauge the effects of the things you say and do. Your empathy becomes masked. You find yourself saying and doing things which, on reflection, seem hard or trashy or cruel. It becomes hard to avoid offending people, and you find that you’re often embarrassed by the memory of your actions. How many times have I crossed the line here? More than I can remember.

It’s perverse. You develop the defense because you’re innately sensitive, and therefore vulnerable. compared to other people. You do it in response to behavior which you perceive as wrong. Then what happens? You find yourself behaving like the people you wanted to protect yourself from. Your sense of humor turns dark. You laugh at suffering. And people reward you for it. They laugh, too. They approve. The unspoken excuse is that everyone knows you’re joking. But sometimes you may find that you’re not joking. Or you’re not sure whether you’re joking.

It’s an easy trap to fall into. Since the late Seventies, American humor has been very cruel. It seems like there was a turning point in that era. Maybe it happened with Kentucky Fried Movie or The Groove Tube, or maybe it came later, with Animal House. I was a pretty nice kid, but after I was exposed to cruel humor on TV and at the movies, I developed the ability to make people laugh by saying things that were extremely vile. Worse than anything I’ve put in my writing. And even while I’ve been blogging and thinking of myself as a Christian, in private, I’ve said things that would curl your hair. And as I’ve said before, I’ve gotten tired of myself. And it wasn’t something I could quit on my own. It’s one of the things I ask God for help with. It may not seem important, but it is. If you can become convinced that everything you do or say is okay, because deep inside you don’t mean it, you may sink deeper and deeper into the behavior, until you reach a point where you do mean it, and you still think it’s okay. Then you’re a jerk. A bad person.

You may think I’m a nice person, even after all the things you’ve read here, but before you say it in a comment, ask yourself if you might have the same problem I do. You’ve been exposed to our sick culture, too. I may be nice by current standards, but that’s not a high bar to clear. Especially on the Internet.

Since I’ve been trying to correct my backslidden ways, I’ve noticed some changes in myself. I feel as if my emotions are being brought back to life. I think more about other people’s feelings. Things that wouldn’t have stirred me at all three years ago make my eyes mist up. I get much more pleasure out of doing things for people. And I become more and more aware of the things I’ve been doing wrong. I was trying to be a moral person already, but my compass was rusty.

I feel lighter. I feel less comfortable watching and reading things I know are bad for me. I’m not reformed, but I’ve improved a lot. Sometimes I’m a little shocked, when I think about the things I thought were acceptable. I was crazy.

My hope is that this is what is referred to in the Bible as “the fruit of the Spirit.” When I was a churchgoer, we heard a lot about the gifts of the Spirit, which means things like prophecy and discerning of spirits and so on. But those things don’t make you a good person. They don’t bring happiness or repair your life. The fruit are more important. Things like love and patience and generosity. And empathy. How can you have love, if you don’t empathize?

I think this is a good thing to write about. It’s easy to feel that the world is a certain way now, and that you have to conform to it or go live in a cave. It may seem that the baseness of modern life is inescapable. But it’s not. A lot of people manage to live on this planet without getting too dirty. A lot of them are actually successful and popular. The fear that tells you you have to fit in is an illusion. Maybe someone who reads this blog will read this and be encouraged. It’s good to change your behavior, but it’s better to be re-made, so the behavior isn’t natural to you any more. That’s what I think.

We’ll see how I do in the long run. If it works out, you’ll have no excuse not to try it yourself.

I Almost Miss Cronkite

I am thinking about the new Palin pregnancy kerfuffle. Trying to figure out where I stand.

Let’s see.

First of all, it was despicable for left-wing bloggers to attack Sarah Palin’s daughter, who is a minor. I don’t know why they always have to act like this. It doesn’t help their cause. But you can always count on them to do it, and it’s not just little-known, sparsely-read blogs. This time, once again, it’s The Daily Kos. Last time I checked, Kos was five times as big as Instapundit. The DNC invites these people to their convention. The Kos Kidz have a big annual meeting, and Democrat politicians show up, hat in hand, to beg their approval. Like Roman Senators who had to respond to invitations to have dinner with Caligula’s horse.

They claimed, with absolutely no evidence, that Palin’s daughter (whose name I am not going to use) had a baby, and that Sarah claimed it as hers, to avoid scandal. Simultaneously, other left-wing bloggers were asking whether Sarah Palin caused her son to have Down’s Syndrome, by maintaining a busy schedule as governor. Don’t worry about the inconsistency; they were just hoping something would stick.

Mrs. Palin got fed up and announced that her daughter was pregnant. Great. We have succeeded in intruding on the privacy of a young girl, at a very difficult time in her life. Her shame is now reality TV. That’s the big achievement here. She could have delivered quietly, a few months down the road, and things would have gone much easier for her. But the ruthless fringe kooks couldn’t leave her mother’s baby alone, so an announcement had to be made.

People say it’s fair to expose the daughter, because her decisions reflect on her mother’s character. That’s strange, coming from the political left. But then they criticized Mrs. Palin–the ultimate actualization of feminism’s best hopes–for not staying at home with her son, so I suppose there is no argument too hollow for them. This isn’t about Sarah Palin’s character. It’s a grotesque attempt to embarrass her, and the humiliation of her innocent daughter is acceptable collateral damage. Strangers with blogs are calling this child a whore. That’s okay, if it helps Obama.

We have no idea why the daughter allowed this pregnancy to happen. We don’t know how her mother raised her, or what kind of person the daughter is, or whether she listens to her parents. We do know that kids don’t always do what they’re brought up to do.

Maybe Sarah Palin failed her daughter. Do we really want to get into that, as a country? Should we put her on the witness stand and make her answer questions under oath? Do we ask her how much time they spend together, or whether she makes the daughter go to church, or what kind of sexual counseling the daughter received at home? None of that is going to happen, unless the liberal press is farther gone than I realize. Everyone realizes that teenagers do disappointing things. They’re not robots. You do your best; you can’t program them.

Here’s what we’re expected to conclude: Sarah Palin is a hypocrite because she goes to an Assemblies of God church, and her daughter is pregnant. I grant you, it would be easier for the daughter of a person who attends church to get pregnant, if the parent was a hypocrite. No doubt about that. But modern children don’t live in Petri dishes. They’re exposed to bad values all the time, regardless of whether their parents are good people. And sometimes those bad values win out. I would be happier if I somehow knew that all of Sarah Palin’s kids would remain virgins until they got married, but I can’t conclude that the daughter’s mistake says anything about her mother. If the rest of her daughters end up in the same boat, okay, something is wrong. But that’s not where we are right now.

From a practical standpoint, which is a little sordid, I see this as a tar baby leftists won’t be able to resist playing with. They’re going to alienate the PUMAs even more, by saying this happened because Sarah Palin went to work instead of staying home with her kids. Liberals with no sense of shame are going to make this child suffer, and the PUMAs are all women, and many of them have been where this girl is now, and they’re not going to like seeing Obama’s supporters abuse her.

Will it hurt McCain with conservatives? Hard to say. It makes you wonder about his judgment. But it doesn’t make me see Sarah Palin as less qualified. I’m just sorry this happened to her and her family. And I’m impressed that they’re confronting it, and that they’re going to support the daughter in her decision to have the baby. Leftists will say they’re forcing her to carry the baby to term, of course. And the evidence will be? Nonexistent, as usual.

There’s no doubt about it. It can’t be a good sign, when your underage daughter gets pregnant. We shouldn’t whitewash it. But smoke isn’t fire, and there is no excuse for tormenting a candidate’s minor daughter to score poll points. This story tells us very little about Sarah Palin, but it speaks volumes about the character of some of the people who oppose her. I guess that sums up how I feel.

So…

Just heard from a friend. He and his wife are looking for better jobs, and he asked me to keep them in my prayers. I can do better than that. I’ll keep them in YOUR prayers.

Put in a word for them, if you have a minute.

Gustav Coverage Fails to Serve Public Interest

It’s amazing how the press can turn a blessing into a curse.

I have been glued to the screen, watching the Gustav coverage. Earlier today, it seemed that things were going very well. No hurricane-force wind for New Orleans. No real problems for our oil industry. No significant flooding. But the TV commentators managed to half-convince me that we were headed for another disaster. Fox News was the worst. I would hate to see their reaction to a true catastrophe.

All the cable networks are focusing on a levee in the northern part of the 9th Ward. The levee is twelve feet above normal water levels, and the water has risen 11.2 feet. So there are waves coming over the top of the levee. And the levee is a thin concrete wall. I’d say under a foot thick.

The Fox crew found out a barge had come loose in the Industrial Canal, which is in the area of the levee. You should have heard the hysterics. A runaway barge broke a levee during Katrina, so clearly A BREACH COULD HAPPEN AT ANY MOMENT, FLOODING THE ENTIRE NINTH WARD. I halfway expected Shepard Smith to ask for the last rites. By the way, he was hyping the storm while standing outdoors in a golf shirt.

When they first began describing the barge problem, there wasn’t a whole lot of video from the area. I’ve seen a bunch of hurricanes, so I know you don’t want to be outside while the wind is blowing. I had a mental image of twenty-foot waves, with a giant barge bucking on top of them looking for a levee to break. They said the Coast Guard was going to “attempt” to recover the barge and secure it. I wondered how they would manage to navigate.

When they showed video of the canal, the water was calm enough for a small boat. It gets worse here in the bay. And the wind was so light, no one had trouble standing. And the rain was on and off. In weather like that, getting to a barge would be no problem at all. The problem was easily solved by two tug boats, which went out and rounded the barge up.

Other reporters said there was flooding already! Homes and stop signs were underwater!

Okay, think about that. If a stop sign is underwater, how can you tell? You wouldn’t be able to see it through the dirty water. Obviously, what really happened was that water came up and covered the base of a sign. As for the houses, my bet is that a few low-lying homes have water up to their foundations.

Funny, they haven’t shown any submerged houses or signs, which is exactly what they would have done, had they had any footage. That probably tells us everything we need to know.

I saw an honest weatherman a few minutes ago. On another channel, someone was saying the new estimate for the surge went as high as fourteen feet. You can imagine how awful that would be, with an eleven-foot wall. This guy must have missed the “Please Terrify the Viewing Public” memo, because he pointed out that the eye of the storm had already passed its nearest approach to New Orleans, and that the storm was getting farther away, and that things should start improving.

I truly do not understand the ethics of a journalist who exaggerates the severity of a natural disaster. This hurricane could have been a horror, and it could also have impacted a national election. It could have been a very big deal. People all over the country were concerned. I certainly was. It’s not right for reporters and anchors to yank our chains like this. It upsets people, and it erodes the credibility of the press. If the TV heads scream every time the wind blows, who will believe them when we really have a problem?

Another thing: what is the explanation for the eleven-foot levee? You should see this thing. It would remind you of the little concrete half-walls they put between lanes of highway traffic during road work. We already know ship owners aren’t responsible enough to secure their vessels. Why build a thin levee which would give way when struck by a ship? Today the winds were something like forty miles per hour, and the water only rose eleven feet. What if the surge went over fifteen feet, as it has in other places, and the wind went to 175? What good would that little wall be? If you can make a wall a foot thick, you can make one six feet thick. If you can make it eleven feet high, you can make it twenty feet high. We’re not talking about building the Panama Canal, here. We’re talking about a few miles of wall, to save lives. Am I wrong? Is there some reason why we can’t do better? Here in Miami, we have dozens of miles of elevated highway. That took much more material and effort than a decent levee. If we can build expressways, why can’t we build levees we know will work?

What if Gustav had landed five miles east of New Orleans, with 150-mile-per-hour winds? Those levees would have been underwater, along with the rest of the city. No question. How would our government officials have explained that?

Regardless of my complaints and criticisms, it’s great to see this mess behind us. I just hope the right people are scared enough to prepare for the next Gustav.

Everyone is Happy, Except Michael Moore

Isn’t it wonderful to wake up to good news?

A few days ago, we were worried about Hurricane Gustav hitting New Orleans with high winds, in a cruel mimicry of Katrina. This morning, however, the storm came ashore a good distance away from New Orleans, and it immediately dropped to Category 2, and there is considerable doubt as to whether New Orleans will get hurricane-force winds. On top of that, Gustav missed the bulk of our oil rigs, and the drilling and refining industries are expected to rebound quickly.

Gustav is also a much smaller storm than Katrina, at the core level. While the tropical-storm-force area is as wide as Katrina’s, the width of the area in which winds are at or above hurricane strength is half as big. Tropical storms are unpleasant, but I can tell you from experience that life below 74 miles per hour is much better than life above it.

There is nothing like seeing prayers answered. This storm could have been a nightmare. But God gave us all a break. Our oil supply is fine, the levees are expected to hold, and we’re not going to see bodies floating in the streets. If things keep going the way they are now, this story could be second-page material by tomorrow morning. People’s lives could be back on track by the end of the week.

More good news for Republicans (and by extension, America): the GOP convention will go on more or less as planned. George Bush probably won’t be there, but he has been demonized to such an extent that his presence might have been a negative. The liberal press and the DNC have managed to characterize John McCain–a waterboarding critic and persistent thorn in the side of the GOP–as a Bush puppet. They’re convincing America that John McCain is Bush’s Medvedev, which is absolutely ridiculous. “Would that he were,” is all I can say. I wouldn’t say the storm prevented George Bush from going to the convention. I’d say it gave him a much-needed excuse for staying away.

I wish Bobby Jindal could be there, so the nation could see the difference between him and Kathleen Blanco, who refused to allow the National Guard into Louisiana after Katrina. But I suppose they’ve already seen the difference, as Jindal prepared for Gustav. Any governor who followed Blanco would have improved on her performance, out of self-interest, if nothing else. But it looks like Jindal has done a particularly impressive job. He oversaw the biggest evacuation in US history.

Maybe he’ll be able to sneak off for a quick speech. We need to promote this guy; if McCain loses, he’ll be running in four years. He’s what Obama would be, if Obama had a resume.

I hope the good news continues. Times don’t need to be any tougher than they already are.

Get Religion on the Dirty old Web

I rooted around online today, checking out such local churches as had bothered to create a website.

I’m very confused about the Assemblies of God. On the one hand, they have a lot of problems in their history, such as the Swaggart and PTL scandals. On the other, it seems like many of the churches are fed up with the monkey business, and they’re talking about things like the need to lead a righteous life.

I looked at David Wilkerson’s site, just to find out what he was about. This is the man who wrote The Cross and the Switchblade. He moved to New York City in the Fifties and started reaching out to gang members, and now he has a huge ministry.

I listened to a couple of his sermons. He makes me a little nervous when he talks about how he’s sure the end of the world is close. A lot of preachers have ended up embarrassing themselves, talking like that for fifty years and then dying without seeing any of it come to pass. But he talked very convincingly about living by faith, and unless I have him confused with someone else I listened to today, he said he never asks for money.

I turned on the TV at breakfast time, and a guy named Randy Brodhagen was on. At first, he came off as crabby and maybe a little crazy, but he gave a lot of good, stern advice about forgiveness. He doesn’t ask for money, either, which seems unusual for a charismatic these days.

Sometimes a tough preacher is what you need. In the past I’ve seen preachers make unrealistic promises (on God’s behalf) and then berate their congregations for failing to receive them. Your leg didn’t grow back? You must not be doing X, Y, or Z right. That’s fraud, pure and simple. But a preacher shouldn’t pander, either. Part of the job is telling people what they’re doing wrong. I thought Brodhagen made some good, useful points. I don’t know what denomination he is.

I listened to a sermon by a local pastor with a very nice church. Seems like a great guy, but I could not find the lesson in what he was saying. It’s strange; he’s an AG preacher, and usually, they’re very big on exegesis and so on. But his sermon almost sounded like a secular newspaper column. Not many scriptural references.

I found another local guy who talked about alcohol. He doesn’t drink, and he’s against drunkenness, but he won’t tell believers they have to be teetotalers. That seems reasonable and hard to fault. But he went off on an explanation of the water-to-wine miracle which was a little gross. He talked fast, so I may have misunderstood, but it sounded like he was saying drinking from the six jars, which were ordinarily used for ceremonial washing, was like drinking from a toilet. I must have gotten it wrong. It doesn’t make sense. I’m no zero-century Jew, but my guess is, they didn’t wash with dirty water. And Jesus wouldn’t serve someone from a dirty vessel.

I always thought that miracle was some sort of metaphor for filling people with the Holy Spirit.

I see the value a church website has. People like me are out there, thinking about going to church, and they’re reluctant to just drive around interrogating preachers. A church with an informative site and some sermon downloads is a lot more likely to get chosen for a visit.

I just can’t get over the power of the Internet as a tool for Christians. I’m so used to seeing filth and anger and depravity pour out of it. It’s amazing to see how wholesome it can be. You can read just about any Bible translation. You can listen to sermons. You can read Bible teaching. And you can shop for a church. Next time you find yourself caught up in obnoxious blogs and political feuds and other unhealthy Internet pursuits, look around for religious material. If you haven’t done it before, you’ll be shocked. And the best thing about it is that it’s habit-forming.

Six Hours of Silence

I appreciate all the comments and emails RE church choices. As you may have noticed, my server was down all day, so I haven’t responded yet. But I have not forgotten.

You Can Eat Them Raw

A while back, I wrote about my plantains. I have a couple of trees. The nursery guy said they were big, long plantains, just like the ones you get at the grocery.

The fruit appeared and got mature. Funny, the plantains were short. They were maybe seven inches long. But they were as big around as regular plantains. Okay, I guessed that was still all right.

I peeled a green one and nuked it. I ate a bite. The texture was wrong, and it had no flavor. But maybe I had cooked it too early. Maybe it was some kind of special plantain that had to ripen a little before it could be eaten.

That was a few days ago. Today I started peeling a yellow one. Plantains are very hard to peel, unless they’re pretty ripe. I did what i usually do. I made slits down the peel with a knife, and then I started yanking the peel off.

Hmm. It sure peeled easy.

Then I looked at the flesh. Plantains are kind of mango-colored on the inside. Not quite as dark, but same general color. This one was white. What on earth?

It smelled like a banana. I took a bite. It WAS a banana. My plantain trees are producing bananas. They gave me the wrong trees.

Now I have to figure out what to do every month with thirty pounds of bananas shaped more or less like a beer can.

Here’s to regularity.

Eeny, Meeny…

I had a sad experience today.

I’ve been looking around online, trying to figure out which Christian denomination suits me best. I really need to start going to church.

I want a church that believes in the Holy Spirit, and that God is as active today as He ever was. And I can’t buy into the saints. That rules out a number of otherwise acceptable older churches. On the other hand, the heavy-duty faith-filled churches tend to get into craziness and greed. I want a church that accepts charismatics, but which doesn’t insist that everyone pray in tongues. And I’d like a church that has a sense of duty; a church that tells members you actually have to try to do the things Jesus told us to do, even if you are saved by grace.

While I was searching online, I came across a church started by a couple my mother knew. Back around 1980, they were teachers. They felt they had the calling, so they took off and went to Bible school in another state. My mother stayed in their house while they were gone. This was a tough time for her, so it was a real blessing to have the house. I remember staying there over spring break when I was in college.

They were charismatics. They studied under a well-known evangelist who used to appear on Trinity Broadcasting from time to time.

When they came home, they started a warehouse church. And it survived for quite some time. A few years back, I drove by the site, and I didn’t see the church. I assumed it had failed.

Today I found that the church had moved to a new, bigger site. Things appeared to be going great. I was so happy to see it. My mother thought the world of these people, and they were good to her, and she would have been pleased.

I wondered if I should go to the church and introduce myself; I’ve never met them. I wondered if it might be a good place to attend services. It would sort of complete a circle.

I took a look at an archived sermon. And the husband was at the front of the church, holding a notebook with a cover that looked like a giant banknote. A twenty or a hundred, maybe. As I understood it, they had printed notebooks like this up for church members, and they were studying from them. And he was talking about money. For the few minutes I listened, that was all I heard. Money, seed, tithe, offering, sowing, reaping. It was like taking a time machine, back to the days when I got so discouraged with the church, I couldn’t make myself go any more.

Maybe they know something I don’t. Maybe they’re right and I’m wrong. But it broke my heart to see that man waving that notebook. My mother admired him and his wife so much, and spoke so highly of them. And they were so brave, leaving their secure teaching jobs to become preachers. And after all these years of work, this is what it amounted to. I can’t believe this is a good result.

Yes, I believe we’re supposed to have prosperity. No, I don’t think we should wear hair shirts and live in huts. But like another preacher said in an article, God is not a vending machine. You give out of duty, and because you feel in your heart that it’s a privilege to give. You give to know the pleasure of being allowed to help people God cares about. I just can’t believe it’s right to go to church and donate money with wealth as one of your main goals.

That church is out.

I like Corrie ten Boom and Brother Andrew. I tried to see if I could find something resembling the Dutch Reformed Church, to which they belonged. But it has split over and over, and they expelled Brother Andrew for evangelizing. I can’t find out what denomination he belongs to now. He says he has no use for denominations. That’s fine, but where does he go every Sunday? I know he’s not sitting around the house.

It appears that the Assemblies of God has changed a lot. The church I used to belong to was somehow affiliated with them. At that time, they were too caught up in TBN-style money-and-miracles theology. But now they openly condemn prosperity preaching. This is the church to which Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker used to belong. Is it possible that they’ve reformed enough to be considered viable?

The Seventh-Day Adventists seem to be less scary than you would think. Most of their theology seems very reasonable, and I think they may be right about hell. But they’re a bit on the cultish side, and they tell you what to eat and so on. They seem like fine people, even though I don’t agree with their more-unusual ideas.

I took a look at the Foursquare website. This is Jack Hayford’s church. Seems pretty much okay, although somewhat inclined in the TBN direction. The thing I don’t like is that their website proudly features the biography of Aimee Semple MacPherson, while omitting the part where she pretended she had been kidnapped and was nearly indicted. You shouldn’t hide a thing like that. Makes you wonder what else they hide.

Someone mentioned the Reformed Church in America, which is somehow related to Dutch Reformed. This is Robert Schuller’s organization. A church with that much pomp scares me. If you can’t preach in a normal voice, and if Larry King actually likes you, it makes me uncomfortable. I’ll give Catholicism credit; the Pope wears some fancy outfits, but he doesn’t seem affected, and he doesn’t seek approval from people who don’t believe.

Some churches substitute theater and human effort for the active power of God; that’s the thing that worries me. A church the world accepts and praises seems unnatural. I’ve always thought that a church that demonstrates God’s power will provoke the god of this world and spark resistance and persecution. Going to a big, bland church that accepts everyone…well, to me, it seems like going to one of those churches the government of China approves. If people on the other side of the aisle like what you’re doing, maybe you should stop. It’s just an impression, though. I know virtually nothing about the Reformed Church.

It occurs to me that this is like any other kind of Internet shopping. You get so many choices, in the end, you become paralyzed.

I came across a couple of interesting concepts. They’re not churches, but they’re worth commenting on. One is the International House of Prayer, or “IHOP.” This is an outfit that keeps prayer services going at all times. If you walk in at 3 a.m. on a Tuesday, there they are. I really like that. Isn’t that a fantastic idea? Off the top of my head, I think prayer and Bible study are the things we neglect the most, and they’re the most powerful parts of a Christian life. What could be more powerful than constant prayer? The IHOP folks seem a little “out there,” though.

I found another group called Healing Rooms. They have offices where you can go and receive prayer for your illnesses. I’m not sick, but you can bet I’d want to go, if I had a real problem. Free prayer from total strangers who don’t owe you a thing? How can you turn that down? When I saw it, I thought it would be a great place to volunteer to help. But they probably don’t take walk-ins, and I’d feel a little funny, showing up and offering.

It seems like we don’t DO much, when it comes to prayer. Do most Christians even pray every day? I know there have been many days in my life, in years past, when I didn’t. And what percentage of Christians fast when they have problems? It’s pretty neat, having establishments whose sole purpose is providing a place for prayer. Prayer is powerful, right? If so, we should be doing it every day, with goals and direction. If not, why do it at all?

I checked out the Promise Keepers. Not a church, obviously. They seem okay, but they have offended people by letting gays show up at their events. They have an unusual policy. They say homosexuality is wrong, but that they will still allow gays to participate. I guess that’s a good approach. It’s a tough decision. Do you want to run people out of the church, when you believe they truly need help? On the other hand, you don’t want them becoming such a big part of the group, they start agitating to change the rules. You don’t want to have to celebrate Promise Keeper Fantasy Fest.

I think it’s pretty obvious that Catholicism is not in my future, but I did check out some Catholic TV, just so I could claim to be open-minded. The thing that struck me was that nobody on EWTN seems happy. They seem kind of worn out. Like a party that just lost an election.

When I used to go to church, I had a wonderful time. I went twice a week. I enjoyed the teaching. The music wasn’t that great, but I got through it. I enjoyed seeing people I knew. I loved the atmosphere; that relaxed sensation that God was present. I don’t get much of that flavor from Catholicism. I’m trying not to be critical. Don’t get out the comfy chair and the stuffed cushions. Catholics say it, too. Where do you think guitar masses came from? Priests were trying to compete with the wacky Protestants.

There used to be a charismatic priest down here who was considerably more upbeat than the EWTN crowd.

There has to be some healthy middle ground, between Robert Tilton and Mel Gibson. One thing I will never believe is that you have to belong to a certain denomination to be saved. God has given me a number of supernatural experiences. Surely He wouldn’t go to all that trouble without warning me I was on the way to hell for going to the wrong church. Surely there would have been a clue by now, with all my searching.

It seems like an odd thing is happening. Bible-believing Christians have more denominations than ever, yet we seem less inclined to be divisive. We tolerate each other better than we used to, I think. I sometimes wonder if the charismatic movement has brought people together. It started with Protestants, but some Catholics proudly insist one of their Popes got the ball rolling with a prayer. And now it seems to have penetrated many denominations to one extent or another.

I’ll figure this out eventually. I want a church, and I would also like to be of some use to God.

I used to believe you could measure a person’s goodness by what he didn’t do. Lately I’ve learned I was wrong. The Bible says your deeds will be measured in the afterlife. And you can’t get points just by naming all the sins you didn’t commit. You have to make some effort to improve the world. I would like to feel that I accomplished something of value on earth. Luckily–if that’s the right word–the opportunities are endless. The world is a smorgasbord of remediable suffering.

I suppose I should see this as a hopeful time for me.